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BRITAIN, IRELAND and INDIA
When Lenin came to power and denounced imperialism, criticism of imperialism spread to British leftists. British conservatives, on the other hand, believed that with determination Britain could hang onto its empire, and they continued to believe that British rule in India was better for the people of India than the people of India ruling themselves. People in India, on the other hand, had been encouraged in their desire for independence by Britain's description of fighting World War I for the sake of self-determination in Belgium. People in India, moreover, were upset by the privations of the war years and the great influenza epidemic of 1918, which left five million Indians dead.
Mohandus Gandhi had become a prominent political leader in India -- an Indian who had read Thoreau, Emerson and the New Testament in addition to India's sacred literature. Gandhi advocated non-violent protests against British rule, and when Gandhi's protests spread among the masses, violence erupted -- in the Punjab, in Gujarat and in the city of Delhi. And although Gandhi regretted the violence, he was not dissuaded from continuing his campaigns.
At Amritsar, between April 10 and April 12, 1919, a mob murdered five Europeans and attempted to murder an English missionary woman and an English woman doctor. A crowd of Indians set fire to an Anglican Church while students were inside studying. A mob looted two British banks, killing three managers. They set fire to a British railway depot, killing a British official there, and they attempted to burn down other buildings associated with British rule. The British in Amritsar responded by declaring assemblies illegal, but the next day at Amritsar a mob gathered, and the British officer in charge, General Reginald Dyer, ordered his troops to fire into the crowd, killing 379 and wounding 1,208 in less than ten minutes.
On the street where a British woman had been assaulted, Dyer posted soldiers and ordered any Indians wanting to pass across a 140-meter (150-yard) part of the street to crawl on the stomachs, sealing off the street for residents for six days. Word of this humiliation spread to people across India.
The Jalianvala Bagh (Amritsar) Massacre was a turning point in India's drive for self-rule. Many who had been for gradual steps toward autonomy (self-rule with the British in charge of foreign affairs) swung to favoring complete independence. Jawaharlal Nehru and his family gave up their splendor and pro-British attitudes in favor of local dress and political action, Nehru joining the party to which Gandhi belonged, the Congress Party, which was leading India's independence movement.
British newspapers praised General Dyer, describing him as having prevented another [Sepoy] mutiny. It pained Indians to see English ladies standing in front of British men's club and hotels collecting money for a sword of honor to give Dyer. But by mid-year, 1920, a government inquiry in London condemned Dyer, upsetting some British patriots. Britain's Secretary for War, Winston Churchill, told the House of Commons that killing people in order to terrorize them to obedience should be forbidden as policy, that Britain's policy toward India had never been and should never be "based on physical force alone." British rule in India, he said, was based on "cooperation and goodwill" between the two races and firing into unarmed crowds was "frightfulness."
In Britain support for the massacre would continue to be divided, with many believing that it had been a necessary show of force. In India, the British attempted to appease the rise in nationalism in India by setting up government councils with Indian representatives that were to function under British control. The massacre had failed to produce law and order. Political assassination and terrorism in India increased. People believing in terrorism as a strategy for independence entered the Congress Party. They were elected to its committees and their resolutions were accepted by the membership. Bombs of a more powerful type were manufactured. Robbing wealthy Indians as a method of obtaining funds was discarded in favor of attacks on post offices and railway cash offices.
Gandhi's influence resulted in women entering India's nationalist movement in numbers, these women remaining exceptions in a land that where generally women were oppressed -- Hindu women as well as Muslim women. Indian women has been described as "perhaps the highest in the world." Women in India still married in their infancy and childhood and became chattel to their husbands. The had had all the limitations forced upon women of past centuries. [note]
In 1922, the British arrested Gandhi and sentenced him to six years in prison. Then, with the publication of E. M. Forster's novel, A Passage to India, in 1924, belief among the British that their rule in India was justified began to erode. That same year, Gandhi was released from prison. And in 1925, at odds with other leaders of the Congress Party, he retired from politics. He turned his attentions instead to a war against taking drugs and drinking alcohol and to attempting to transform the world through spiritual power. Soon, however, he would return to political action, combined with his appeal to non-violence.
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Copyright © 1998 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.