Book review: Irfan Habib,The National Movement,Part 2: The Struggle for Freedom 1919–1947

The volume under review is the fifteenth offering of the extremely valuable project of A People’s History of India undertaken by the Aligarh Historians Society. It is part 2 of the set on The National Movement, the first one on Origins and Early Phase having covered the period up to 1918. Taken along with three other volumes already published on the colonial period (The Establishment of British Rule, 1757–1813, Indian Economy under Early British Rule, 1757–1857, and Indian Economy, 1858–1914), they represent a major contribution to the study of modern Indian history.

The volumes in this series have some special features, which it is worthwhile to mention, as these immensely enhance the utility of these books. Each chapter has a chronological table listing all the major events and a bibliographical note suggesting relevant readings. In addition, it has very interesting extracts from primary sources, which give the reader a feel of the subject being discussed and a peep into the historian’s raw material. For example, we have extracts from the Non-Cooperation Programme of the Congress, the Gandhi-Irwin Agreement of 1931, the Karachi resolution of the Congress of April 1931, the Poona Pact of 1932, the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League, 1940, and much else.

A fourth feature is offered by the notes appended to each chapter, which take up at some length issues and aspects which do not fit well into the main narrative but are nevertheless important in themselves. Examples are the very informative notes on the institution of the Khilafat, on Bhagat Singh and his cause, separate electorates, socialism and communism, the Dravidian movement, and communalism and secularism. The last mentioned, for example, explains how the term communalism came into being and the different meanings attached to it in different contexts. This note also goes into the origins of the term secular, elaborates on the manner it is used and argues that the ‘Indian’ meaning given to it by S. Radhakrishnan (equal respect for all religions) is not really correct and we should go back to the original meaning (distance from all religions).

The volume is likely to be very popular with students and teachers, and general readers, for it presents an accessible narrative combined with comprehensible analysis (a rarity these days!) of one of the most crucial phases of our epic struggle for freedom. One of its strong points is that it continuously places events in India in the context of major developments taking place in other parts of the world, something we find missing in other comparable studies. For example, developments in India during World War II are explained with reference to what was happening in Europe, China, Russia and Southeast Asia. Professor Habib here brings his evident knowledge of world history to bear on his study of Indian history.

Another positive aspect of the book is that it weaves constitutional history seamlessly into the main narrative and makes it intelligible. Unlike traditional histories, it also gives adequate attention to other streams, such as the revolutionary nationalists of the HSRA, the Congress Socialists, and the Communists. The Poona Pact and Gandhji’s Harijan campaign are also covered, as are the achievements of the Congress ministries in the area of agrarian legislation. There is also a very useful section on Savarkar and Hindutva, which tells us how the two-nation theory was first espoused by Savarkar and endorsed by Golwalkar, and only later appeared in the writings of Jinnah and the resolutions of the Muslim League. In fact, one of the major concerns of the book is to document and explain how communal forces grew and attained the proportions they did by 1946–1947.

Historiographically speaking, the volume, as is to be expected from one of India’s foremost Marxist scholars, enriches the sturdy tradition of left anti-imperialist scholarship on the Indian national movement, which has been fortunate in attracting the attention of the finest practitioners—R.P. Dutt, M.N. Roy, Jawaharlal Nehru and E.M.S. Namboodiripad from among the political leaders; and A.R. Desai, Bipan Chandra and Sumit Sarkar from among the social scientists, to name a few. In comparison with some of the earlier writings, particularly of R.P. Dutt and Sumit Sarkar, there is a discernable shift in Habib’s text towards a more positive interpretation of the leadership and policies of the Congress, particularly of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

For example, while discussing the new political current of socialism that emerged in the 1920s, inspired by the Soviet Revolution, Habib notes that ‘its most prominent exponent was Jawaharlal Nehru’. He also points out that in his presidential Address to the Lucknow Congress in April 1936, Nehru ‘projected the vision of socialism for India once she attained freedom’.

Though the author remains critical of the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation movement by Gandhiji after the Chauri Chaura incident in 1922, in line with the approach laid down by R.P. Dutt in India Today, he moves away quite significantly from both R.P. Dutt and Sumit Sarkar in his analysis of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. He mentions but does not endorse Sumit Sarkar’s view that it was pressure from the capitalists on Gandhi that led to the compromise. His own understanding, for which he cites Jawaharlal Nehru, is that the Congress was unwilling to tap the reserves of agrarian discontent, especially among the tenants, to continue to provide momentum to the movement which he admits was weakening in urban areas. He also notes that this could be because outside of the UP, the Congress did not have much of an agrarian orientation. He also points out that Congress supporters were very happy because they thought that the Viceroy, for the first time, had to treat an Indian leader as an equal and that political prisoners released as a result of the settlement were given heroes’ welcome by jubilant crowds of supporters.

Similarly, Irfan Habib’s narrative of the negotiations beginning with the arrival of the Cabinet Mission and ending with Independence and Partition in 1946–1947 is very different from Dutt and Sarkar, in whose eyes the very ‘negotiated’ nature of the ‘transfer of power’ is tantamount to compromise and surrender. Neither R.P. Dutt’s view that the upper class leadership of the Congress and the Muslim League were frightened by the popular upsurge represented by the RIN Mutiny and other mass protests into entering into negotiations for a quick transfer of power nor Sumit Sarkar’s addition that it was an aging and tired leadership hungry for power that accepted Partition as the price for independence, appear to have found much favour with the author of the present work. Habib navigates the bumpy ground of complicated negotiations and the evolving situation on the ground with considerable clarity and finesse, and while criticizing some positions taken by Nehru or Patel or Jinnah, does not assign motives such as hunger for power to any of the actors. He justly treats their stand on various issues as representing their ideological and political positions and that of their organisations; his critique thus is of their understanding and not of their persona.

The last pages of the book also contain a very moving account of the ceaseless efforts of Mahatma Gandhi, whom Habib, echoing Viceroy Mountbatten, describes as a ‘one man army’, to stem the tide of communal madness that was sweeping the land in 1946–1947. He follows him from the beginning of November 1946, from the villages of Noakhali to Bihar, and then to Delhi and Calcutta, and back to Delhi, through bloodied streets, refugee camps teeming with suffering humanity, fasts and promises of peace, triumphs and despair, till his martyrdom on 30-January-1948. In fact, the book ends with a very evocative sentence which expresses the author’s appreciation of the Mahatma’s contribution: ‘By his relentless struggle against communal madness, the cause for which he ultimately sacrificed his life, Gandhiji had done enough to establish peace in the land so as to enable India, at last, to begin charting a new course for itself as an independent nation’.