WRITTEN BY R. NANJAPPA                        

Post No. 8635

Date uploaded in London – – – –6 SEPTEMBER 2020   

Contact – swami_48@yahoo.com

Pictures are taken from various sources for spreading knowledge; this is a non- commercial blog. Thanks for your great pictures.

 1947: INDEPENDENCE OR TRANSFER OF POWER? – 3

R.Nanjappa

TRAGEDY OF CONSTITUTION

We then set about the task of giving this British imposed structure an air of Indian legitimacy. When we set about making a Constitution for ourselves, none of the basic structures or their underlying purposes or continued relevance was questioned or reviewed in the light of the ideas that guided our freedom movement. That structure was taken for granted.
The man in charge of drafting it  (B.N.Rau) was a career bureaucrat and part of British administration. There was a 7-member committee to go through the draft and make amendments. 6 of these members had been part of the British system and its beneficiaries. None of them had taken part in the struggle for freedom. One of them- Dr. B.R.Ambedkar –  in fact had been a staunch supporter of the British, did not participate in the freedom movement, and was an  opponent of  Gandhiji.   Ironically, he became the Law Minister! He was a member of the Viceroy’s Council when Gandhiji, Patel, Nehru and the entire top leaders of the Congress were in Jail in 1942-45! None of these people had worked with Gandhiji, really knew or shared or cared for his ideas on Swaraj . They were mostly lawyers practising the law they loved, or were part of the administration! Naturally when they set about making a Constitution, they retained all the elements that the British system had imposed on us and with which they had fallen in love. Not a single idea of Gandhiji was included or even seriously discussed. Most noteworthy was omission of any reference to the village at all! 

INDIAN VILLAGES KILLED AGAIN

Dr.Ambedkar had no love for Indian villages and he made no secret of it. He said in the Constituent Assembly:

“The love of the intellectual Indian for the village community is of course infinite if not also pathetic.” 

He openly boasted of his disdain for the Indian village:

“I hold that these village republics have been the ruination of India…. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the draft Constitution has discarded the village..”

From what we know of historical records, we see that Dr.Ambedkar was completely wrong. Today, with all the historical evidence available to us, his ignorance in the matter is even more appalling. Dr. Ambedkar did not know his facts.
But we have another such gem from another man considered great, Jawaharlal Nehru. His differences with Gandhiji are well known, but are underplayed. Though he pretended to follow Gandhi, he did not share any of his core values, especially about village industries and village Swaraj.. In 1945, he wrote to Gandhi:

” I do not understand why a village should necessarily embody truth and non-violence. A village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally, and no progress can be made from a backward environment.”

This is shocking, coming from someone perceived to be close to Gandhi and supposed to be his follower. One wonders where he got this idea from- it is Cambridge, not certainly Indian villages, where Nehru had never lived or  worked! Such Westernised elite never read our true history, never understood that the poor condition of the village was due to the 150 years of British rule which had “ruined India economically, politically, culturally and  spiritually”, in the words of Gandhiji’s 1930 Resolution.

The result was that with such ’eminent’ people around, the Constitution merely solemnised what the British had created for their benefit and left behind. Our administration. law, education, general attitude to life and society, the philosophy behind the whole edifice- everything continued as before, unchecked and unaltered. With Nehru continuing as Prime Minister for 17 years, there was no chance that there could even be a second look or review. In these 17 long years, Nehru did not implement even a single programme of Gandhiji. It was Nehru who killed Gandhiji’s spirit in free India.

Some people had really informed Gandhiji that the draft Constitution had entirely discarded the village. Gandhi reacted:

“…there is no mention or direction about village panchayats and decentralisation in the foreshadowed Constitution.It is certainly an omission calling for immediate attention if our independence is to reflect the people’s voice. The greater the power of the panchayats, the better for the people……”

Gandhiji wrote this on 21 December 1947. Alas, he was dead in about 40 days. None in the Congress govt who came to power in Gandhi’s name cared to listen to him or do anything in the matter. To think that Gandhi named Nehru his successor- how awful! Great men do indeed make great and silly mistakes.

SWARAJ FOR THE ELITE

The result is that in the name of Independent India we continue with the same British systems and approach which were meant to oppress the people, and suppress their initiative. We still suffer from the cleavage between the elites and others. The police still treat the common  people as cattle, as of no worth.  Our officials still continue to treat the villagers with disdain, and continue to exploit them. Indian officials are every bit as arrogant and mindless of the people as during the colonial times.they are as ready to use force against dissent as the British. Now, they are even more corrupt. Even doctors educated in subsidized government colleges refuse to work in rural areas..  Villagers are steadily leaving their habitats and marching to towns and cities in search of livelihood. The village economy is ruined, its autonomy still lost, and its exploitation continues by the town and city. People exercise their vote once in five years, but by that they ensure their continued bondage to the town masters for another five years.

 The ideal of village emancipation lies buried with Mahatma Gandhi.

So, what was achieved on 15 August 1947 was mere transfer of power from white sahibs to their  brown Indian imitators. It is not Independence as Mahatma Gandhi taught us.

***

WRITTEN BY R. NANJAPPA                        

Post No. 8630

Date uploaded in London – – – –5 SEPTEMBER 2020   

Contact – swami_48@yahoo.com

Pictures are taken from various sources for spreading knowledge; this is a non- commercial blog. Thanks for your great pictures.

1947: INDEPENDENCE OR TRANSFER OF POWER ? – 2

R.Nanjappa

GANDHI ENTERS THE SCENE

Gandhiji entered the scene then. He had in his small book, the only book he ever wrote, “Hind Swaraj” (1909) outlined his idea of how India lost its freedom. He also said how it could regain it. He considered India not as a mere country, but as a civilization; the real enemy it was facing was Modern Civilization. The British were also its victims., more to be pitied than hated.  Swaraj for India really meant the protection of its civilization.”My swaraj is to keep in tact the genius of our civilization”, he said. India gave up its adherence to its civilization and so it lost its freedom.

WHY INDIA FELL

But having said that, he also understood and pointed out what made us give up our adherence to our civilization. It was the economic exploitation forced on the nation by the British and relentlessly pursued for 150 years. Here, Gandhiji touched on the real, core issue: India did not live in the cities and towns; it lived in the 7,00.000 villages. These villages had been independent economic units, self-sufficient for all practical purposes.  Kings and emperors rose and fell, but had not touched the villages. This was the basis of our national Polity and Society. This was the secret of India’s survival and prosperity through the ages.  But the British disrupted their economy, deprived them of their independence, and took away the products of their labour by way of excessive taxation. Polity and Society too declined in consequence. The three lost their organic links. Real Swaraj was therefore to restore to  the villages their rights as independent economic units, to let them function as a society and operate their own Polity. Gandhiji therefore ceaselessly talked of Village Swaraj, or empowering the villages.

The centre of power is in New Delhi, or in Calcutta and Bombay, in the big cities. I would have it distributed among the seven hundred thousand villages of India.

There will then be voluntary cooperation….Voluntary cooperation will produce real freedom. 

Gandhiji knew that Indians had to fight for it, the British just won’t grant freedom. As early as in 1916, he had said in his Benares Hindu University speech:

 If we are to receive self-government, we shall have to take it. We shall never be granted self-government. Look at the history of the British Empire and the British nation; freedom loving as it is, it will not be a party to give freedom to a people who will not take it themselves.  

ELITES AND MASSES

The British as colonialists did not want to encourage Indians in any way.India was not suitable for their direct colonisation, i.e by immigration and settlement.( such as Australia or Canada) So they devised a method to rule the country by military power, and in course of time engaged Indians themselves in enslaving India and its exploitation. These Indians formed an elite, the English educated elite, who studied English language and literature, law, some Western philosophy- all at superficial levels. They were given very junior and minor positions in administration; but this was enough to make them identify with the colonial masters and alienate themselves from the people of India. On top of them were the British bosses.

This “elite” force was created by the education system imposed by the British, discarding the indigenous education system. But it achieved its objective only because the British had made knowledge of English compulsory for service. The Indian economy having been fully disrupted by then, the educated people had to take up ‘service’ or employment in increasing numbers for a living. This made them increasingly identify themselves with the colonial masters and distance themselves further from their own people and traditions.

This system was sustained by the enforcement of colonial law and order, and a police department under the control of the British officers. 

This was the system we had in India on the eve of Independence in 1947. So, what happened on 15 August 1947? What changed afterwards?

Indian government under Prime Minister Nehru took over the structure as it was then. Not a single element in it was discarded or altered. Law and order, administration and education-everything continued as they had been under the British. Nehru even continued Englishman Lord Mountbatten as the Governor General (unlike Pakistan). The Army Chief was also an Englishman- Robert Lockhart.

           *           to be continued