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Title: Anarchism in India Author: Jesse Cohn Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: India, history Source: Retrieved on 22nd November 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0059 Notes: Published in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.
In the context of India and its anti-colonial struggle, the meaning of
the word “anarchist” has been highly variable and contested since the
turn of the twentieth century. The British colonizers then called Indian
radicals – particularly rebels in Bengal, who had begun to use
explosives as a means of fighting – “anarchists.” Around the same time,
on a 1909 visit to London, Mohandas K. Gandhi, deeply influenced by the
radical pacifism espoused by Leo Tolstoy, debated anti-colonial tactics
with the residents of India House, among whom he encountered young
radicals whose ideology he, too, described as “anarchist,” although he
may have meant by this merely that they were advocates of armed
struggle. While Gandhi’s manifesto, Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule),
repudiated their “brute force” methods (Gandhi 1989: 104–5), seven years
later he was to alarm his allies by announcing, at the opening of
Benaras Hindu University, that “I myself am an anarchist, but of another
type” (1989: 134). This assertion was to be strongly endorsed by
self-defined anarchists of other nations – not only anarcho-pacifists
such as Brazil’s Maria Lacerda de Moura (1887–1945), who cited Gandhi as
a positive example in her anarchist-feminist attack on militarism, but
also by exiled Bombay radical Mandayam Prativadi Bhayankara Tirumal
Acharya (a.k.a. M. P. T. Acharya, 1888–1954).
Writing for the American anarchist journal Man! in 1933, Acharya
described Gandhi’s 1930 civil disobedience campaign against the Raj salt
laws in glowing terms: “In the salt-making protest, Gandhi acted like an
Anarchist tactician of the first magnitude.... That day we must reckon
as the birth of popular Anarchy in the world – not only in India. He
planted the seed of Anarchism – even if he did not want or know it”
(Acharya 1947: 2). These “claims” were greeted with frank skepticism on
the part of the editor, Marcus Graham (a.k.a. Shmuel Marcus, 1893–1985),
and while British anarchist Albert Meltzer (1920–96) praised Acharya for
“striving on his own in the whole sub-continent to establish a
movement,” he nonetheless spoke for many other western anarchists in
deprecating Gandhi’s “cult of extreme non-violence” as elitist, a
moralistic “check” on authentically popular rebellions (Meltzer 2000:
32). To such charges, Geoffrey Ostergaard replies that Gandhian
non-violence indeed represents “an indigenous Indian anarchism and not
one of the varieties of Western anarchism imported into India,” adding
that “if Western anarchists do not recognize Indian anarchism when they
see it, this merely exposes their unconscious Eurocentric perspective”
(in Sonnleitner 1988: viii). Finally, many of the Indians whom Acharya
and Ostergaard call “anarchists” have firmly rejected the label as a
derogatory term applied to them by colonial discourse. With all of these
caveats, however, Indian history bears the traces of two distinct
anarchisms.
The best known of these is that of Gandhi and the Sarvodaya movement,
which shares with western anarchisms a rejection not only of militarism
but of the distinction between means and ends, and a project of land
collectivization (Bhoodan and Gramdan) in the context of a decentralist
economic strategy, as well as “a critique of both Bolshevik Communism
and Welfare State Socialism, the espousal of community action and the
notions of direct participatory democracy, ‘people’s power,’ and ‘the
politics of the people,’ as distinct from ‘the politics of the State’
and party politics” (Ostergaard 1971: 148; Ostergaard in Sonnleitner
1988: viii). It is distinct from most western anarchisms in founding
this program not on a refusal of religion as a source of oppression, but
an embrace of religion as a source of collective spirit, which has
entailed an anti-materialist asceticism, even a “puritanical character,”
entirely at odds with the hedonism and sexual libertarianism of Lacerda
de Moura and her counterparts (Ostergaard 1971: 156–7).
A second, far smaller anarchist current has consisted in a number of
Indian radicals who took on board the ideas of western anarchists. Among
these were two of the young men Gandhi may have met at India House: Lala
Har Dayal (a.k.a. Lala Hardayal, 1884–1939) and M. P. T. Acharya. Har
Dayal, who had begun flirting with anarchist ideas as early as 1907, was
inspired by the example of the Mexican anarchists Ricardo and Enrique
Flores Magón on his visit to America in 1911, infusing anarchist ideas
into his Ghadar (“Rebellion”) movement for Indian independence. Settling
for a time in California, Har Dayal established a Bakunin Institute in
1913, but was subsequently forced to flee political persecution, taking
refuge in Germany and later renouncing his radicalism.
Acharya began his political life with a lengthy exile in Europe and
Central Asia, helping to found the Communist Party of India in Tashkent
in 1920 before becoming disillusioned with Soviet-style communism and
turning to the anarchosyndicalist views to which he had been exposed in
London and Paris (Ralhan 1997: 119–20; Meltzer 2000: 128). A prolific
writer, Acharya contributed to western anarchist publications such as
the British Freedom, Tierra y Libertad in Mexico, and the French Contre
Courant while corresponding with fellow Asian anarchists such as Yamaga
Taiji (1892–1970). Bhagat Singh (1907–31), impressed by his reading of
the history of European anarchists’ “propaganda by the deed,” rejected
Gandhian non-violence as an inadequate tactic, calling for the
assassination of colonial officials, and wrote a series of articles in
1928 endorsing the anarchist goals of “complete independence” and the
elimination of “the Church, God and Religion” as well as “control by the
state” and “private property” before turning back towards a Marxist
position (Grewal 2007: 52–4).
While the Sarvodaya movement at least retained strength long after
Independence and Gandhi’s assassination, neoliberal economics and
authoritarian politics have largely eclipsed India’s libertarian
traditions.
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REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Acharya, M. (1933) Nationalism in India. Man! 1, 7: 2.
Acharya, M. P. T. (1947) Principles of Non-Violent Economics. Calcutta:
International University of Non-Violence.
Brown, E. C. (1975) Har Dayal, Hindu Revolutionary and Rationalist.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Doctor, A. H. (1964) Anarchist Thought in India. London: Asia Publishing
House.
Gandhi, M. K. (1989) The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and
Writings. New York: Grove Press.
Grewal, P. M. S. (2007) Bhagat Singh, Liberation’s Blazing Star. New
Delhi: Leftword.
Lacerda de Moura, M. (1933) Serviço militar ohrigatorio para a mulher?
Recuso-me! Denuncio! São Paulo: A Sementeira.
Meltzer, A. (2000) [1981] Anarchism: Arguments For and Against.
Edinburgh: AK Press.
Ostergaard, G. (1971) Indian Anarchism: The Sarvodaya Movement. In D. E.
Apter & J. Joll (Eds.), Anarchism Today. London: Macmillan.
Ostergaard, G. & Melville, C. (1971) The Gentle Anarchists: A Study of
the Sarvodaya Movement for Non-Violent Revolution in India. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Parel, A. (2006) Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
R. D. (2006) “ACHARYA, Mandyam Prativadi Bhayankara Thirumalacharya.” In
Sans patrie ni frontières: Dictionnaire international des militants
anarchistes. Online at
www.militants-anarchistes.info
.
Ralhan, O. P. (1997) Encyclopaedia of Political Parties: India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh: National, Regional, Local. Vol. 13, All India
Trade Union Congress. New Delhi: Anmol.
Rao, N. (1997) Bhagat Singh and the Revolutionary Movement.
Revolutionary Democracy 3, 1.Online at
www.revolutionary-democracy.org
.
Sonnleitner, M. W. (1988) Vinoba Bhave on Self Rule and Representative
Democracy. New Delhi: Promilla.