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Write a short note on the Chauri
Chaura incident.
Chauri Chaura is a small village in the Gorakhpur district of Uttar
Pradesh. On 5 February 1922, the police stationed there fired at a group of
demonstrators. The demonstrators retaliated by burning down the police
station, which caused the death of twenty-two policemen.
Gandhiji had all
through the movement emphasized on peace and non-violence. This incident,
deeply hurt him and he called off the movement. On 10 March 1922, he was
arrested and sentenced to six years imprisonment.
The national movement during the years AD 1905-1922 turned into a
popular movement largely due to the efforts of Gandhiji. In the following
years, he was the person who symbolized the attempts of the Indians to secure
freedom from British rule.
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Chauri Chaura & Gandhi’s Vision of
Responsibility
by NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
If ever we reverse course and attain to a degree of sanity
(an expectation unwarranted by recent history), March 18 will surely be
celebrated as one of the most important anniversaries in our calendar.
On March 18, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi addressed the courtroom
of the District and Sessions Judge, Ahmedabad, India. He was being charged
with "bringing or attempting to excite disaffection towards His
Majesty’s Government established by law in British India", the offences
being in three articles published in Young India (Gandhi’s journal).
When, after the charges were read out, Judge CN Broomfield
asked Mahatma Gandhi how he would plead, he replied, "I plead guilty to all
the charges".
The prosecuting counsel, JT Strangman, insisted that the
judge take into account "the occurrences in Bombay, Malabar
and Chauri Chaura, leading to rioting and murder. Mr. Strangman stated that "in (Gandhi’s) articles
you find that non-violence is insisted upon as an item of the campaign and of
the creed. "But", he added, "of what value is it to insist on
non-violence, if incessantly you preach disaffection towards the Government
and hold it up as a treacherous Government, and if you openly and
deliberately seek to instigate others to overthrow it?"
Gandhi’s statement in reply (after having pleaded guilty)
is a timeless classic, ranked by many as equal in tone, wisdom and eloquence
to Socrates’ statement before his accusers over 2000 years before.
Before we study Gandhi’s answer, however, it is instructive
and necessary to survey the events leading up to the trial.
When Gandhi’s Satyagraha (non-violent, non-cooperation)
movement was in full swing in 1921-22, a group of non-violent protesters was
beaten up by some policemen in the small town of Chauri Chaura in Northern
India. Such beatings were scarcely uncommon, but the instructions to the
satyagrahis (protesters) was very clear — they would take the beatings but
not respond in kind.
For whatever reason, in this instance the protesters were
provoked enough to chase the policemen who, finding they were outnumbered,
locked themselves in their police station. The crowd then set
fire to the police station, killing 22 policement.
Gandhi, without even consulting with the Congress Working
Committee, called off the movement. He took personal responsibility for the
atrocity. In doing so he earned the criticism (and the wrath, in some cases)
of many of his associates, who believed this was a small blot on an otherwise
peaceful movement. Besides, many felt that the momentum was so much in favor
of the freedom fighters that but for Gandhi’s precipitate action, freedom
would have been theirs by year end.
After he had withdrawn the movement, the British Government
ordered his arrest. That was what the trial was about. Now to Gandhi’s
statement, portions excerpted below:
"…I have no desire
whatsoever to conceal from this court the fact that to preach disaffection
towards the existing system of Government has become almost a passion with
me."
"…I wish to endorse all the
blame that the learned Advocate-General has thrown on my shoulders in
connection with the Bombay occurrences, Madras occurrences and the Chauri
Chuara occurrences. Thinking over these things deeply and sleeping over them
night after night, it is impossible for me to dissociate myself from the
diabolical crimes of Chauri Chaura or the mad outrages of Bombay. He is quite
right when he says, that as a man of responsibility, a man having received a fair
share of education, having had a fair share of experience of this world, I
should have known the consequences of every one of my acts. I know them. I
knew that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk and if I was set free I
would still do the same. I have felt it this morning that I would have failed
in my duty, if I did not say what I said here just now."
"…I wanted to
avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also
the last article of my creed. But I had to make my choice. I had either to
submit to a system which I considered had done an irreparable harm to my
country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when
they understood the truth from my lips. I know that my people have sometimes
gone mad. I am deeply sorry for it and I am, therefore, here to submit not to
a light penalty but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not
plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and cheerfully
submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law
is a deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a
citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge, is, as I am going to say in
my statement, either to resign your post, or inflict on me the severest penalty
if you believe that the system and law you are assisting to administer are
good for the people. I do not except that kind of conversion. But by the time
I have finished with my statement you will have a glimpse of what is raging
within my breast to run this maddest risk which a sane man can run."
"…I came reluctantly to the conclusion that the
British connection had made India more helpless than she ever was before,
politically and economically. A disarmed India has no power of resistance
against any aggressor if she wanted to engage, in an armed conflict with him.
So much is this the case that some of our best men consider that India must
take generations, before she can achieve Dominion Status. She has become so
poor that she has little power of resisting faminies. Before the British
advent India spun and wove in her millions of cottages, just the supplement
she needed for adding to her meagre agricultural resources. This cottage
industry, so vital for India’s existence, has been ruined by incredibly
heartless and inhuman processes as described by English witnesses. Little do
town dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of India are slowly sinking to
lifelessness. Little do they know that their miserable comfort represents the
brokerage they get for their work they do for the foreign exploiter, that the
profits and the brokerage are sucked from the masses. Little do they realize
that the Government established by law in British India is carried on for
this exploitation of the masses."
"…No sophistry, no jugglery in figures, can explain
away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked
eye. I have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the town dweller of
India will have to answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against
humanity, which is perhaps unequalled in history. The law itself in this
country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased examination
of the Punjab Marital Law cases has led me to believe that at least
ninety-five per cent of convictions were wholly bad. My experience of
political cases in India leads me to the conclusion, in nine out of every
ten, the condemned men were totally innocent. Their crime consisted in the
love of their country. In ninety-nine cases out of hundred, justice has been
denied to Indians as against Europeans in the courts of India. This is not an
exaggerated picture. It is the experience of almost every Indian who has had
anything to do with such cases. In my opinion, the administration of the law
is thus prostituted, consciously or unconsciously, for the benefit of the
exploiter.
"…In fact, I believe that I have rendered a service to
India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way out of the unnatural
state in which both are living. In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is
as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But in the past,
non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the
evil-doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent
non-co-operation only multiples evil, and that as evil can only be sustained
by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from
violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for
non-co-operation with evil."
"…I am here, therefore, to invite and submit
cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in
law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a
citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge and the assessors, is either
to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil, if you feel
that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil, and that in
reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you
believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good
for the people of this country, and that my activity is, therefore, injurious
to the common weal."
That
the atrocity at Chauri Chaura happened despite Gandhi’s efforts to keep the
movement peaceful, that such misfirings were rare in a huge national movement
involving hundreds of thousands, made no difference to Gandhi. He took total
responsibility as the leader of the movement, and staked his entire career
upon it. Much as he believed in non-violence, his action here, I believe, was
as much about orienting the movement’s sights in a highly visible manner.
One of the main tasks of
leadership is to set standards. Every act of a leader does so, consciously or
otherwise. Every act of compromise, hidden under some convenient excuse, in
the end must lower the standards for all. The fact that not one single statesman today seeks to set
standards shows why a Gandhi is rare. But it goes beyond that — far from
setting standards, no politician or leader today is even embarrassed by
shirking responsibility. And we are so used to this that we hardly notice
it any more. So it is Bush continues to defend the attack on Iraq. On the
other side, does anyone expect Kerry to say, "Yes, I voted for the Iraq
resolution, because I was afraid of Bush’s popularity. I should have sided
with Sens. Robert Byrd and Paul Sarbanes to postpone the vote till after the
2002 election. But I lacked the courage then." Get real. Nor is this an
affliction of American politicians alone. King Fahd will not accept the blame
for 15 of his people causing the world to turn upside down. Nor will Putin
for the daily killings in Chechnya.
Stopping the non-cooperation movement following Chauri Chaura
was one of Gandhi’s most significant acts — a cleansing of the body politic,
in effect. Years later, despite several heapings of criticism, from being
called a confused man to being called a British lackey, he did not waver on
the correctness of the decision. Writing in 1928, he said, "[to] this
date I have felt that I have served the country by calling off the
non-co-operation movement. I am confident that history will look upon it as a
form of perfect satyagraha and not as an act of cowardice."
Eighty two years later, after innumerable instances of
idealism degenerating into senseless violence, Gandhi’s good sense (and sense of good) stands vindicated.
NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN is a writer living on the
West Coast. His writings can be found on http://www.indogram.com. He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com.
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