Mahatma Gandhiji Withdraws Non - Co-operation Movement 12th February 1922
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Gandhi as Mahatma:
Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP,
1921-2'
SHAHID AMIN
'Many miracles, were previous to this affair [the riot at Chauri
Chaura], sedulously circulated by the designing crowd, and firmly
believed by the ignorant crowd, of the Non-co-operation world of
this district'.
—M. B. Dixit, Committing Magistrate,
Chauri Chaura Trials.
I
Gandhi visited the district of Gorakhpur in eastern UP on 8 February
1921, addressed a monster meeting variously estimated at between 1
lakh and 2.5 lakhs and returned the same evening to Banaras. He was
accorded a tumultuous welcome in the district, but unlike in
Champaran and Kheda he did not stay in Gorakhpur for any length
1
Research for this paper was funded by grants from the British Academy and
Trinity College, Oxford. I am extremely grateful to Dr Ramachandra Tiwari for
letting me consult the back numbers of Swadesh in his possession. Without his
hospitality and kindness the data used in this paper could not have been gathered.
Earlier versions of this essay were discussed at St Stephen's College, Delhi, the Indian
Institute of Management, Calcutta, and the Conference on the Subaltern in South
Asian History and Society, held at the Australian National University, Canberra, in
November 1982.1 am grateful to David Arnold, Gautam Bhadra, Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Partha Chatterjee, Bernard Cohn, Veena Das, Anjan Ghosh, Ranajit Guha, David
Hardiman, Christopher Hill, S. N. Mukherjce, Gyan Pandey, Sumit Sarkar, Abhijit
Sen, Savyasaachi and Harish Trivedi for their criticisms and suggestions. My debt to
Roland Barthes, 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives', in Stephen
Heath (ed.), Image-Music-Test (Glasgow, 1979), Peter Burke, Popular Culture in
Early Modern Europe (London, 1979), Ch. 5 and Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of
Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983), Ch. 6 is too transparent to require
detailed acknowledgement.
Gandhi as Mahatma 289
of time to lead or influence a political movement of the peasantry.
Gandhi, the person, was in this particular locality for less than a day,
but the 'Mahatma' as an 'idea' was thought out and reworked in
popular imagination in subsequent months. Even in the eyes of some
local Congressmen this 'deification'—'unofficial canonization' as the
Pioneer put it—assumed dangerously distended proportions by
April-May 1921.
In following the career of the Mahatma in one limited area Over a
short period, this essay seeks to place the relationship between
Gandhi and the peasants in a perspective somewhat different from
the view usually taken of this grand subject. We are not concerned
with analysing the attributes of his charisma but with how this
registered in peasant consciousness. We are also constrained by our
primary documentation from looking at the image of Gandhi in
Gorakhpur historically—at the ideas and beliefs about the Mahatma
that percolated into the region before his visit and the transformations,
if any, that image underwent as a result of his visit. Most of the
rumours about the Mahatma.'spratap (power/glory) were reported in
the local press between February and May 1921. And as our sample
of fifty fairly elaborate 'stories' spans this rather brief period, we
cannot fully indicate what happens to the 'deified' image after the
rioting at Chauri Chaura in early 1922 and the subsequent withdrawal
of the Non-Co-operation movement. The aim of the present exercise
is then the limited one of taking a close look at peasant perceptions of
Gandhi by focusing on the trail of stories that marked his passage
through the district. The location of the Mahatma image within
existing patterns of popular beliefs and the way it informed direct
action, often at variance with the standard interpretations of the
Congress creed, are the two main issues discussed in this essay.
In a number of contemporary nationalist writings peasant perceptions
of and beliefs about Gandhi figure as incidents of homage and
offering. Touching instances of devotion and childlike manifestations
of affection are highlighted in the narratives of his tour in northern
India during the winter of 1920-2.2
And if this spectacle of popular
regard gets out of hand, it is read as a sign of the mule-like obstinacy
(hathagraha) of simple, guileless kisans. The sight and sound of
2
See Mahadev Desai, Day-to-day with Gandhi (Secretary's Diary), iii (Varanasi,
1965), pp. 143ff. and 262-6. For a condensed version of the same ideas, see D. G.
Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, ii (Bombay, 1952), p. 78. 290 Selected Subaltern Studies
uncouth peasants invading the train carrying Gandhi, rending the
sky with cries of *jai' and demanding darshan at an unearthly hour,
could be annoying and unnerving. But all was not yet lost because
local Congress leaders could be counted on to restrain the militant
exuberance of lathi-wielding, torch-bearing enthusiasts.3
A passage
tided 'Boundless Love' from the tour diary of his secretary is representative
of ho w peasant attitudes towards Gandhi have been written
about in nationalist narratives:
It is impossible to put in language the exuberance of love which Gandhiji
and Shaukat Ali experienced in Bihar. Our train on the B.N.W. Railway
line stopped at all stations and there was not a single station which was not
crowded with hundreds of people at that time. Even women, who never
stir out of their homes, did not fail to present themselves so that they
could see and hear him. A huge concourse of students would everywhere
smother Gandhiji with their enthusiasm. If at some place a sister would
take off her coral necklace and tell him, T give this specially for you to
wear', at some other, sanyasis would come and leave their rosaries on his
lap. If beautiful sheets or handspun and hand-woven cloth, many yards
long, would be presented at one place, at some other place would turn up
a loving villager from the woods, boastful of his trophy, saying, 'Maharaj
(an address of reverence) this is my feat of strength. The tiger was a terror
to our people; I am giving the skin to you'. At some places, guns normally
used as fog-signals were fired in his honour. At some others, we came
across railway officers who would not give the green flag, when our train
came within their jurisdiction, in order to have and let others have
Gandhiji's darshan. Not minding the fact that our 'Special* was certain to
pass by them in terrific speed, people were seen at some places, standing
along the railway lines in distant hope of having just a glimpse of Gandhiji
or at least of making their loud shouts of 'Gandhi-Shaukat Ali-ki-jai'
reach his ear. We have met with even policemen who had the courage to
approach Gandhiji to salute him or touch his hand, and CID's [sic] also
who would plaintively say, 'We have taken to this dirty work for the sake
of the sinning flesh, but please do accept these five rupees'.4
Seeking darshan was obviously a fairly visible sign of popular
reverence, and no wonde r it occupies a prominent place in descriptions
of Gandhi's tours. D. G. Tendulkar writes of the Mahatma's
'tour of mass conversions to the new creed' in 1921 as follows:
Remarkable scenes were witnessed. In a Bihar village when Gandhi and
his party were stranded in the train, an old woman came seeking out
Gandhi. 'Sire, I am now one hundred and four', she said, 'and my sight
has grown dim. I have visited the various holy places. In my own home I
have dedicated two temples. Just as we had Rama and Krishna as avatars,
3
See below, p. 21.
4
Desai, pp. 142-3.
Gandhi as Mahatma 291
so also Mahatma Gandhi has appeared as an avatar, I hear. Until I have
seen him death will not appear'. This simple faith moved India's millions
who greeted him everywhere with the cry, 'Mahatma Gandhi-ki-jai'.
Prostitutes of Barisal, the Marwari merchants of Calcutta, Oriya coolies,
railway strikers, Santals eager to present khadi chaddars, all claimed his
attention.
From Aliearh to Dibrugarh and then as far as Tinnevelly he went from
village to village, from town to town, sometimes speaking in temples and
mosques. Wherever he went he had to endure the tyranny of love.5
Examples of such darshan-seeking scenes could be multiplied, and
we shall come back to them in our account of Gandhi's passage
through Gorakhpur. It is worth stressing here that the Gandhidarshari
motif in nationalist discourse reveals a specific attitude
towards the subalterns—the sadharan janta or ordinary people as
they are referred to in the nationalist Hindi press. To behold the
Mahatma in person and become his devotees were the only roles
assigned to them, while it was for the urban intelligentsia and fulltime
party activists to convert this groundswell of popular feeling
into an organized movement. Thus it would appear that even in the
relationship between peasant devotees and their Mahatma there was
room for political mediation by the economically better off and
socially mor e powerful followers.6
The idea of the artifacts of the 'mythopoeic imagination of childlike
peasants' being mediated by political intermediaries occurs in antinationalist
discourse as well. Referring to stories about the power of
Gandhi current in Gorakhpur and other districts of eastern UP in the
spring of 1921, the.Pioneer wrote in an editorial:
Mr Gandhi is beginning to reap the penalty of having allowed himself to
be unofficially canonized (as we should say in the West) by his adoring
countrymen. We say 'reap the penalty', because it is inconceivable that a
man of his transparent candour and scrupulous regard for truth should
hear without chagrin the myths which are being associated with him as a
worker of miracles. The very simple people in the east and south of the
United Provinces afford a fertile soil in which a belief in the powers of the
'Mahatmaji', who is after all little more than a name of power to them,
may grow. In the 'Swadesh', a paper published in Gorakhpur, four
miracles were quoted last month as being popularly attributable to Mr
Gandhi. Smoke was seen coming from wells and, when water was drunk,
it had the fragrance of keora (pandanus odaratissimus) an aloe-like plant
which is used in the manufacture of perfume; a copy of the Holy Quran
was found in a room which had not been opened for a year; an Ahir who
refused alms to a Sadhu begging in Mahatma Gandhi's name, had his gur
5
Tendulkar, p. 78. « Cf. p. 19 below. 292 Selected Subaltern Studies
and two buffaloes destroyed by fire, and a sceptical Brahmin, who defied
Mr Gandhi's authority, went mad and was only cured three days afterwards
by the invocation of the saintly name! All these events admit of an
obvious explanation, but they are symptoms of an unhealthy nervous
excitement such as often passed through the peasant classes of Europe in the
Middle Ages, and to which the Indian villager is particularly prone. Other
rumours current in Ghazipur are that a man suffered the loss of his wife,
sons and brothers because he had offended Gandhi, that the 'Mahatma'
was seen in Calcutta and Multan on the same day, and that he restored two
fallen trees. In all these instances we see the mythopoeic imagination of the
childlike peasant at work, and perhaps nobody is much the worse, but a
case reported from Mirzapur would require sooner or later the attention of
the police. The story is told that a young ahirin who had been listening
during the day to speeches took a grain of corn in her hands when playing
with her companions in the evening, blew on it with an invocation of the
name of Gandhi and, lo! the one grain became four. Crowds came to see
her in the course of a few days and she quadrupled barley and gram and
even common objects like pice. But it is reported that strange coins could
not be multiplied. While this is obviously a mere trick of mouth concealment,
the agitator is proclaiming it as a miracle, and all the neurotic girls of the
countryside will be emulating the achievement.7
A fuller analysis of some of these stories is presented in another
section of this essay. Wha t is important to notice at this point is that
while the Pioneer locates the origin of these stories in a popular
imagination fired by 'nervous excitement', their circulation is attributed
to 'agitators'. There is no room here for the 'deified' Mahatma
inspiring popular attitudes and actions independent of elite manipulation
and control.
Jacques Pouchepadass' sensitive study of Gandhi in Champaran
can be read at one level as an elaboration of this theme. 8
In an
extended discussion of Gandhi's presence in this district in 1917, the
'obstinate quest for his darshan' is picked out as the initial point of
departure. Pouchepadass notes that Gandhi was 'invariably met by
throngs of raiyats at railway stations' and elsewhere, and this, combined
with the influx of peasants from a large number of villages to
Bettiah and Motihari to give evidence against the planters, enlarged
the area of agitation in the district. 'The name of god was frequently
used to denominate Gandhi' and the 'obstinate quest for his darshan
gives further evidence about the deification of the Mahatma' in the
7
Pioneer, 23 April 1921, p. 1. Italics mine.
8
Jacques Pouchepadass, 'Local leaders and die intelligentsia in die Champaran
satyagraha (1917): a study in peasant mobilization', Contributions to Indian Sociology
(NS) 8: 1974, esp. pp. 82-5.
Gandhi as Mahatma 293
district. The peasants' faith in Gandhi's power was indexed by
'fantastic rumours':
Those rumours . . . reported that Gandhi had been sent into Champaran
by the Viceroy, or even the King, to redress all the grievances of the
raiyats, and that his mandate overruled all the local officials and the
courts. He was said to be about to abolish all the unpopular obligations
which the planters imposed on their raiyats, so that there was no need to
obey the word of any planter any more. A rumour was also in the air that
the administration of Champaran was going to be made over to the
Indians themselves, and that the British would be cleared out of the
district within a few months.9
N o t all of these however were the product of popular imagination.
Pouchepadass is of the opinion that 'many of these rumours were
very consciously spread by the local leaders, wh o took advantage of
Gandhi's charismatic appeal to give additional impetus to the agitation
... . But what matters is that the peasants believed them because
Gandhi's name was associated with them'. 1 0
This faith also broke the
normal ties of deference in the countryside—the hakims and the nilhe
sahebs held no terror for the peasants testifying before the Champaran
Enquiry Committee. The implication of all this for direct political
action by the peasants is unfortunately left unexplored. In fact a case
is made out for the transference of Gandhi's charisma to the authorized
local interpreters of his will. Pouchepadass warns against overrating
Gandhi's 'personal ascendancy over the humbler classes':
When he is present, of course, only his own word counts. But once he is
gone, the local leaders are apt to retain part of his prestige, and become the
authorized interpreters of his will. It is a fact that from 1918 onwards,
after Gandhi had left and the planters' influence had begun to fade away,
the hold of die rural oligarchy grew more powerful than ever.11
9
Ibid., pp. 82-3. It is interesting to note that most of these rumours can be classified
under the motif 'redressal of wrongs done to the peasantry', a development of the
popular idea that Gandhi had come to Champaran precisely for such a task. In
war-time all rumours are concerned with war. Though not each and every one of the
thirty rumours collected by J. Prasad after the great Bihar earthquake was about
seismic upheaval, all of them were nevertheless concerned with disaster. See J. Prasad,
'The Psychology of Rumour: a study relating to the great Indian earthquake of 1934',
British Journal of Psychology, 35:1 (July, 1935), p. 10 and and passim.
10
Ibid., p. 84; cf. Pandey: 'The belief in an "outside leader" can also be seen as an
obverse of a belief in the break-down of the locally recognized structure of authority; and
rumour fulfils the function of spreading such a notion as efficiendy as die leader from die
town'. See Gyan Pandey, 'Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: die peasant movement
in Awadh, 1919-22', in R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I (Delhi, 1982), p. 164.
11
Pouchepadass, p. 85. 294 Selected Subaltern Studies
However, evidence from north Bihar and eastern UP suggests that
no authorized version of the Mahatma could have been handed down
to the peasants, either by 'local leaders' or by members of the District
Congress Committees. The spate of boat-looting incidents in Muzaffarpur,
Darbhanga, Rae Bareli and Fyzabad in early 1921 in the name
of Gandhi was clear proof of a distincdy independent interpretation
of his message.12
Blaming agent provocateurs for misleading 'the
poor ignorant peasants'13
into committing these acts would, therefore,
be to turn a blind eye to the polysemic nature of the Mahatma myths
and rumours, as well as to miss out the stamp these carried of a
many-sided response of the masses to current events and their cultural,
moral and political concerns.
In existing literature the peasants of eastern UP and Bihar are often
portrayed as more superstitious than those of some other regions
such as western UP and Punjab. We have seen that according to the
editor of the Pioneer, 'the very simple people of the east and south of
the United Provinces afford[ed] a fertile soil in which a belief in the
powers of the "Mahatmaji" . . . [might] grow'. In a recent piece of
sociological writing the metaphor of 'fertile soil' seems to have been
taken literally. In eastern UP, writes P. C. Joshi, summing up his
experience of field work in the area, the 'very fertility of soil had
minimized the role of human effort', as a result of which 'religion and
magic permeated every sphere and occasion of life'.14
Whether rice
growing areas dependent on monsoon rains are more superstitious
than canal-fed wheat growing tracts is a question which need not
detain us here. Instead I propose, very briefly, to sketch those
features of the political history of Gorakhpur in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries which throw some light on the specific
response of the area to Gandhi's visit in February 1921.
II
The spread of Gaurakshini Sabhas (Cow Protection Leagues) in the
1890s and the subsequent growth of the Nagri movement, Hindi
journalism and Hindu social reform in the 1910s appear to have been
12
See Bihar and Orissa Legislative Assembly Debates, 28 Feb: 1921, i, p. 279;
Stephen Henningham, Peasant Movements in Colonial India. North Bihar, 1917-42
(Canberra, 1982), pp. 98-9; Kapil Kumar, 'Peasants' Movement in Oudh, 1918-1922'
(Ph.D. thesis, Meerut University, 1979), pp. 154-7.
13
J. Nehru, An Autobiography (Delhi, n.d.), p. 61.
14
P. C. Joshi, 'Fieldwork Experience: Relived and Reconsidered. The Agrarian
Society of Uttar Pradesh', Journal of Peasant Studies, 8:4 (July 1981), p. 470.
Gandhi as Mahatma 295
the important landmarks in the political history of Gorakhpur in the
period up to 1919-20.15
These saw the involvement of a wide range of
the district's population. Former pargana chiefs—rajas and ranis,
members of the dominant landed lineages, schoolmasters, postmasters
and naib-taksildarSy middle-caste Ahir and Kurmi tenants—all 'rallied
round the Cow' (although the last two did so with ideas quite
different from the rest).16
The developments in the first twenty years
of the present century relied on rausa and trader support but drew in
the intelligentsia, religious preachers and sections of the rural population
as well. Gorakhpur neither witnessed widespread agitation
against the Rowlatt Acts, as had happened in the Punjab, nor did a
Kisan Sabha movement of the Awadh type develop in this region.
The Gaurakshini Sabhas of Gorakhpur in their attempt at selective
social reform anticipated the 'Sewa Samitis' and 'Hitkarini Sabhas'—
Social Service Leagues—of the early twentieth century. A mammoth
meeting of the Gorakhpur sabha held at Lar on 18 March 1893 laid
down rules for different castes regarding the maximum number of
haratis (members of the bridegroom's party) to be entertained at a
wedding and the amount of money to be spent on the tilak
ceremony—all in an effort to cut down 'foolish expenditure on
marriages'. Observance of proper high-caste rituals was also stressed.
Thus it was made obligatory for 'all dwija castes (i.e. Brahmins,
Kshatriyas and Vaishyas)... to recite the gayatri mantra at the three
divisions of the day', and he who failed in this was to 'be expelled
from the brotherhood'.17
Contributions 'for the protection of the
Gao Mata' (Mother Cow) were also made compulsory for every
Hindu household on pain of exclusion from caste. Rule 4 of the Lar
sabha stated that 'each household [should] every day contribute from
its food supply one chutki [handful], equivalent to one paisa, per
member', and that 'the eating of food without setting apart the chutki
[should] be an offence equal to that of eating a cow's flesh'. Women
,s
On the cow-protection movement in eastern UP and Bihar see John R. McLane,
Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress (Princeton, 1977), Pt iv; Sandria B.
Freitag, 'Sacred Symbol as Mobilizing Ideology: The North Indian Search for a
"Hindu" Community', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22 (1980), pp.
597-625; Gyan Pandey, 'Rallying Round the Cow: Sectarian Strife in the Bhojpur
region, c. 1888-1917', in R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies II (Delhi, 1983).
16
Pandey, 'Rallying Round the Cow'.
17
'Note on the Cow-protection Agitation in the Gorakhpur District', c. 1893,
L/P&J/6/365, India Office Records. This document is also discussed in Freitag and
Pandey. 296 Selected Subaltern Studies
were to be 'instructed as to the contribution of chutki in proper
fashion with due regard to pardah'.1
*
Again, the power of panchayats was brought to bear upon
'remorselessly .[to] boycott' those who sold cows or bullocks to
Muslims or butchers. It seems that these panchayats were of two
kinds. In the 'Cow Courts' of Azamgarh 'whose proceedings . .
were a somewhat flattering imitation of the proceedings in the
Magistrate's Courts' it was generally the zamindars who acted as
judges.19
In certain other cases, as in that of a 'respectable Hindu
farmer' of Sagri pargana of that district in June 1893, a less formal and
more militant boycott was undertaken by the peasants themselves.
To quote Gyan Pandey:
Villagers gathered at.. . [the house of Lakshman Paure], pulled d6wn tiles
from the roof, smashed his earthern vessels, stopped the irrigation of his
sugarcane field, prohibited Kahars from carrying sweets which were needed
for his daughter's entry into her bridegroom's house and slapped
Lakshman, adding the threat that the house would be looted and he
himself killed if he did not get the bullock back.20
The 'Gandhi Panchayats' of the early 1920s organized by local
volunteers meted out punishment similar to what Lakshman Paure of
the village of Pande Kunda had received in 1893. However, in the
spring of 1921 when all was charged with magic, any mental or
physical affliction (kasht) suffered by persons found guilty of violating
panchayat decisions adopted in Gorakhpur villages in the Mahatma's
name was often perceived as evidence of Gandhi's extraordinary
powers, indeed as something providential and supernatural rather
than as a form of chastisement devised by a human agency.21
Hindi was officially adopted as the language of the courts of law in
UP in 1900. Soon after, the Nagri pracharini (Hindi propagation)
movement began to pick up momentum in Gorakhpur as well. In
1913 the local branch of the sabha agitated successfully for judicial
forms to be printed in Hindi, and in September 1914 Gyan Shakti, a
literary journal devoted to 'Hindi and Hindu dharma prachar', was
published by a pro-government Sanskrit scholar with financial support
18
Rules 4 and 16. For analogous alms and subscriptions in the name of Gandhi, see
pp. 46-7 below.
19
Offg. Commr. Banaras to Chief Sec., NWP & Oudh, 29 Sept. 1893, cited in
McLane, p. 311.
20
Pandey,'Rallying Round die Cow'.
21
For a detailed discussion, see section VI below.
Gandhi as Mahatma 297
from the rajas of Padrauna, Tamkuhi and Majhauli, as well as some
from the prominent rausa of Gorakhpur.22
In the following year
Gauri Shankar Misra, who was later to be an important figure in the
UP Kisan Sabha, brought out a new monthly—Prabhakar— from
Gorakhpur. Its object was to 'serve the cause (sewa) of Hindi, Hindu
and Hindustan'. However, the journal ceased publication within a
year;23
only Gyan Skakti remained, and even this closed down
between August 1916 and June 1917. The full impact of Hindi
journalism was not felt in Gorakhpur until 1919. In April and August
of that year two important papers—the weekly Swadesh and the
monthly Kavi—made their appearance.24
These, especially Dasrath
Dwivedi's Swadesh•, were to exercize an important influence in
spreading the message of Gandhi over the region.
In the 1910s movements and organizations of Hindi, Hindu culture
and social reform—'nagri sabhas', 'pathshalas' (vernacular schools),
'gaushalas' (asylums for cattle), 'sewa samitis' (social service leagues)
and 'sudharak sabhas' (reform associations) of various sorts provided
the support and cover for nationalist activity in Gorakhpur. Each
type of these socio-political movements served nationalism in its own
way; but there was a considerable amount of overlapping in their
functions and interests. In August 1919 a branch of the Bhartiya Sewa
Samiti which had M. M. Malaviya for its head was established in
Deoria.25
A number of 'sudharak' and 'gram hitkarini sabhas' (village
betterment societies) and subsidiary branches of the sewa samitis
were established in the smaller towns and bigger villages of the region
during 1919-20. The inspiration usually came from the local notables
and pleaders at the tahsil and pargana headquarters, though sometimes
appeals in the Swadesh for the setting up of community organizations
also bore fruit. At these sabhas, heads of Hindu religious trusts
(mahants) and celibates (brahmcbans) from nearby ashrams or
itinerant preachers (pracharaks) from neighbouring districts and from
Banaras discoursed on the Hindu way of life and its rituals. Yagya
22
Arjun Tiwari, 'Poorvi Uttar Pradesh mein Hindi Patrakarita ka Udbhav aur
vikas' (Ph.D. thesis, Gorakhpur University, 1978), pp. 37, 49-50; Statement of
Newspapers and Periodicals Published in U.P. during 1920 and 1921, entry under
Gyan Shakti.
23
Tiwari, pp. 107-8.
24
Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals . . . U.P., 1920, 1921.
25
See Note on 'The Sewa Samiti Movement in the United Provinces', by
P. Biggane of the CID, dated 18 Dec. 1919, GAD File 604 of 1920, UP, State Archives,
Lucknow. 298 Selected Subaltern Studies
(sacrifice) was performed; a Sanskrit pathshala and a gaushala endowed
with financial support from traders, arrangements made for the
orderly running of Ramlilas and melas, and panchayats set up for the
arbitration of disputes.26
Thus, the fourth annual convention of the Sanskrit Pathshala,
'supported by the zamindars and peasants' of tappa Belhar in Basti
district, was the occasion for launching a 'Belhar tappa Hindu Sabha'
for which more than 300 Hindus from some twenty-five neighbouring
villages had gathered at mauza Kotiya on 23 October 1920. The
proceedings started with the chanting of Vedic sacrificial mantras,
and after deliberating on the progress of Sanskrit education in the
locality, Pragyachakshu Dhan Raj Shastri discoursed on samskar,
especially upanayan samskar. A Brahmchari from Ballia who for the
past five months had been 'reciting continuously' from the Mahabharata,
the Bhagavad Gita, etc. followed with a powerful speech on
cow protection. It was resolved that only those who were prepared
properly to look after the welfare of Brahmani bulls (sand) should get
them branded; those unable to do so should, as an alternative,
contribute to the sabha for other religious deeds on a scale ranging
from Rs 1.5 to 5 according to their means. The 'most important and
topical resolution' passed at this sabha was 'that in every village of
Belhar tappa, a . . . panchayat consisting of five persons [should] be
established and a big panchayat... set up for the tappa as a whole'.27
The evolution of the Pipraich Sudharak Sabha at about the same
time indicates how those who were active in the promotion of Hindu
culture could also be prompdy induced to espouse the cause of
Non-Co-operation. Pipraich was the seat of an important market
town owned by the pro-government Jawwad Ali Shah of Gorakhpur
city. A railway town, it was an important centre of the grain and
sugar trade which was mosdy in the hands of Hindu traders.28
A
sudharak sabha was formed on 21 October 1920 at a meeting of 300
presided over by the local raees, Babu Munni Lai. The Sabha handled
the arrangements for the Dussehra mela (fair) and the subsequent
festivities of Bharat-milap (based on the story of the exiled Rama's
26
Details of these activities are scattered through the 1920 volume of the Swadesh.
27
Notice by Chandra Bah Visharad, B.A., in Swadesh, 14 Nov. 1920, p. 9. Unless
stated otherwise, translations from the local Hindi journals are my own. Tappa is a
grouping of villages, widi the chief village as the seat of the dominant local landed
lineage.
28
See Statement of Bazar Collections at Pipraich, File I-A13-1917, Gkp. Collector's
Rec. Room.
Gandhi as Mahatma 299
reunion with his brother, Bharat). After ten days of activity during
the Dussehra fortnight, yet another meeting was held. Again presided
over by the local raees, it was attended by 1,500 people including the
babus of nearby Balua. However, on this occasion speakers from
Gorakhpur town gave a different direction to the deliberations. The
editor of Swadesh spoke on council boycott, and others on sewa
dharma and commercial matters. A decision was taken unanimously
to open a 'swatantra pathshala'—an independent school unaffiliated
to the government—with the spinning of khaddar yarn specified as
an important part of its curriculum.29
Traditional Hindu religious discourses addressed to large congregations
lasting several days at a time were also put to a similar use on
some occasions:
In mauza Gointha, Post Office Dohrighat (Azamgarh) the discourse of Pt
Ramanueraha Sharma, dharmopdeshak, went on for ten days. Many
thousands turned up for these lectures. After the last lecture he organized
a Vedic yagya and many indigents and Brahmins were feasted. He also
established a Bharat Hitaishi Sabha to which both Hindus and Muslims
have contributed 5 punches and 2 sarpanches each ... . Many cases have
been settled [out of regular courts].30
Caste sabhas could undergo interesting transformations as well.
Thus on 12 December 1920 a Bhumihar Ramlila Mandal was
established at Bhiti village in the Bansgaon tahsil of Gorakhpur; its
'object was to encourage unity and propagate satyagraha by revealing
the [true] character of Sri Ramchandraji'.31
Similarly, in a great many
cases lower and middle-caste panchayats imposed novel dietary taboos
as a part of the widespread movement of self-assertion which was also
exemplified by acts such as the refusal of their women to work as
housemaids or the withholding of begar (forced labour) both from
the sarkar and the zamindar. A correspondent from Naugarh in Basti
district wrote to the Swadesh:
The sweepers, washermen and barbers of this place met in panchayats of
their various biradaris on 27 January 1921. They have decided that anyone
who partakes of meat, fish and liquor would be punished by the biradari
29
Swadesh, 31 Oct., 7 Nov., and 19 Dec. 1920. Babus: members of the dominant
local lineage of a tappa.
30
Swadesh, 11 Sept. 1919, p. 11. Ramanugraha Sharma, resident of Bhelia (Rasra),
Ballia district had followed diis procedure in Shahabad, Pipraich and Paina, near
Barhaj in present day Deoria district. Set Swadesh, 4 July 1920, p. 8,1 Aug, pp. 10-11,
30 Oct. 1920, p. 7. Punch: member of a panchayat; Sarpanch: head of a panchayat.
31
Swadesh, 19 Dec. 1920, p. 8. 300 Selected Subaltern Studies
(brotherhood) and would have to donate Rs 51 to the gaushala. The
Dhobis and Barbers have also decided not to wash the clothes and cut the
hair of any of their patrons who partakes of meat, fish and liquor.32
A widespread boycott of meat and liquor 'due to the efforts of a
Bengali sadhu' was reported from Padrauna in Gorakhpur ih early
1921, though caste panchayats played a role in this instance as well.33
It must be emphasized that the very act of self-purification on the
part of the ritually impure amounted, in some instances, to a reversal
of the signs of subordination. 'All low caste Hindus, except those
who are Bhagats or vegetarians by vow, almost without exception eat
meat', observed a local ethnographer of Gorakhpur in the late nineteenth
century.34
For them, especially the sweepers, washermen and
untouchable agricultural labourers, to give up meat in 1920 was not
simply an instance of 'Sanskritization'. Thus at a sabha held in
October 1920 the Chamars of Bareilly (central UP) had decided to
forsake meat as well as liquor and other intoxicants; but they were
also very forthright in their refusal to do begar for the district officials
on tour. As they said in a petition addressed to the Governor on that
occasion: 'We are ready to perform any legitimate services required
of us appertaining to our profession but inhuman treatment, meted
out to a Chamar every day, by petty servants of the thana and tahsil is
nothing short of a festering sore'.35
By early 1922 indications of a 'growing restlessness among the . . .
[Chamars]. . . arising out of the general spirit of revolt' were reaching
the police headquarters in the districts. The movement for 'self-reform'
now revealed 'a tendency to forsake hereditary callings' as well.36
The
eight resolutions passed at a large meeting of the Chamars of
Azamgarh in January 1922 followed the standard pattern of caste
reform in their concern about the prevalence of child marriage and
co-habitation out of wedlock, and in the interdictions they imposed on
toddy, liquor and animal sacrifice. What is perhaps equally significant
M
Swadesh, 6 Feb. 1921, p. 8.
33
Idem.
34
Note by Ram Gharib Chaube on 'Eating Meat', William Crooke Papers, MS 131,
Museum of Mankind, London.
35
Extracted in Harcourt Butler to Chief Sec, UP, 26 Oct. 1920, GAD File 694 of
1920; Swadesh, 10 Oct. 1920, p. 1. For a discussion of the assertive nature of
middle-caste movements in early twentieth century eastern UP, see Pandey, 'Rallying
Round the Cow'. See also David Hardiman's essay on the Devi movement in the
present volume.
36
UP Police Abstracts of Intelligence (PAI), 1 April 1922.
Gandhi as Mahatma 301
is that members of this caste of leather workers also pledged themselves
not to trade in hides and skins and to discourage young boys
from taking up their ancestral profession.37
In western and central
UP, Chamars were refusing to skin carcasses and perform begar for
the landlords and were 'allowing their women less liberty of
movement',38
an euphemism for the withdrawal of female labour
from the homes of the upper castes.
Ill
Gorakhpur in 1920 was no stronghold of the Congress or the
independent Kisan Sabhas. In fact the relative backwardness of the
entire region comprising Gorakhpur, Basti and Azamgarh districts
was lamented repeatedly by the editor of the Congress weekly,
Swadesh, and the main reason for this was thought to be the absence
of an effective and dedicated leadership.39
Political meetings in
Gorakhpur city and in important market towns like Deoria and
Barhaj Bazar picked up from July-August 1920, as the campaign for
council elections by the rajas, rausa and vakla was sought to be
countered by challenging the bona fides of 'oppressive landlords'
and 'self-seeking pleaders'. Open letters appeared in the columns of
Swadesh highlighting the oppression suffered by peasants in the
bigger zarnindaris and challenging the presumption of the rajas to
be the natural spokesmen of their praja (subjects). At a public
meeting of the newly-formed Voters' Association in Deoria the
representative of a landlord candidate was faced with the charge
that his patron's command of English was inadequate for him to
follow the proceedings of the legislative council.40
But increasingly,
the boycott of council elections and, after the Nagpur Congress
(December 1920) the propagation of Non-Co-operation, was being
written up and broadcast as a part of the spiritual biography of
Mahatma Gandhi. In a powerful editorial, prominently displayed
by Swadesh on the front page on 11 November and reprinted the
next week, Dasrath Dwivedi appealed to the local electorate in bold
typeface:
37
Report of the Chamar conference held at Gopalpur village, thana Madhuban,
district Azamgarh, Swadesh, 8 Jan. 1922, p. 6.
38
PAI, 1 April 1922.
39
See Swadesh, 18 April 1920, pp. 13-14,23 May, p. 9, 15 Aug., p. 14.
40
See Swadesh, 16 May, 6-June, 4 and 18 July 1920. 302 Selected Subaltern Studies
OH YOU VOTERS OF THE GORAKHPUR DIVISION! HAVE
SOME SELF RESPECT. BEWARE OF THE OBSEQUIOUS
STOOGES! BE SURE WHO IS YOUR GENUINE WELLWISHER!
MAHATMA GANDHI, PT MOTILAL NEHRU, PT MALVIYAJI or
those who are now running after you, begging for your votes? Think for
yourself; what good have the latter done for you so far that you may now
expect them to help remove your sorrows and sufferings from inside the
Council. Now cast your eyes towards Mahatma Gandhi. This pure soul
(pavitra murti) has sacrificed everything for you (tan-man-dhan... arpan
kar diya bat). It is for your good that he has taken the vow of renunciation
(sanyas-vrat), gone to jail and encountered many a difficulty and suffering.
Despite being ill, he is at this moment wandering all over [the country] in
the service of your cause. It is the updesh of this same Mahatma Gandhi
that you should not vote. And you should not vote, because approximately
thirty thousand of your unarmed Punjabi brethren were fired upon in
Amritsar, people were made to crawl on their bellies, and despite the hue
and cry for justice you were shoed away like dogs (tumhen dutkar diya
gay a tha). And no heed was paid whatsoever. Look out. Beware.
DO NOT VOTE FOR ANYBODY.41
In this text, which may be regarded as representative of the local
nationalist discourse on council boycott,42
the 'Punjab Wrongs' and
the callous indifference of the British are no doubt mentioned as
reasons for not voting; but it is hard to miss the person of a saintly
Gandhi, resplendent in his suffering for the people and, in turn,
requiring and even demanding their obedience to his injunctions.
Perceived thus the boycott of elections and the rejection of loyalist
candidates appear as a kind of religiously prescribed abstinence from
the polling booth, analogous to the observance of proper Hindu
rituals and self-purification which was being propagated by many of
the nationalist religious preachers and taken up by certain low-caste
panchayats as well. It was to such a region, which was not unaware of
the peasant rioting in southern Awadh in January 1921 but had not
yet developed any comparable peasant movement of its own, that
Gandhi came on 8 February 1921.
The decision to invite Gandhi was taken at a public meeting held in
Gorakhpur city on 17 October 1920. Maulvi Maqsood Ali Fyzabadi
41
Swadesb, 11 Nov. 1920, p. 1.
42
In all likelihood the Congress volunteers who were to tour the district for a
fortnight, spreading 'Gandhiji's message of council boycott', would have taken the
above editorial as their central text. It seems that voting was thin in Bansgaon tahsil and
at Siswa Bazar, Bridgmanganj, Pipraich and Parwapar in Maharajganj and Padrauna
tahsils. See Swadesb, 14 Nov. 1920, p. 12, 12 Dec. 1920, p. 12.
Gandhi as Mahatma 303
presided over it and Gauri Shankar Misra was the main speaker. The
meeting resolved to support the cause of those arrested in connection
with the Khilafat agitation, pronounced asahyog (Nori-Co-operation)
to the uchit (proper) and decided to send a telegraphic invitation to
Gandhi and the Ali brothers to visit Gorakhpur at an early date.43
Gandhi was also approached by the Gorakhpur delegates (prominent
amongst whom was Baba Raghav Das, successor to the spiritual
gaddi (seat) of Anant Mahaprabhu and founder of the Paramhans
Ashram, Barhaj) at the Nagpur Congress and he told them that he
would visit the district sometime in late January or early February.44
To the creed of asahyog that Raghav Das and Dasrath Dwivedi
brought with them from Nagpur was added mounting excitement at
the prospect of its author's advent. Propagation of the politics of
Non-Co-operation in the Gorakhpur countryside in early 1921 had
elements of a celebratory exordium, a preparing of the district for the
Big Event. The peregrinations of Raghav Das and his brahmachari
followers around their ashram in Barhaj, the 'melodious Gandhibhajans'
sung by Changur Tripathi to a peasant assembly at Kuin
nearby45
and the 'poetical effusions' in the first issue of a rejuvenated
Kavi magazine—'written with the set purpose of arousing in the
masses and classes alike a yearning for the quick descent of Krishna,
the Messiah'46—are the few surviving fragments of this picture of
enthusiasm and expectation in Gorakhpur at that time.
An index of this popular expectation was the increase in the
number of rumours which assigned various imaginary dates to
Gandhi's visit. By the first week of January the news of his arrival had
'spread like wild fire'. Dasrath Dwivedi, the editor of Swadesb) was
bombarded with hundreds of letters asking for the exact dates. To
allay anxiety on this score the journal printed a column on its front
page on 9 January assuring its readers that the date of Gandhi's arrival
would be announced in the Aaj (Banaras), Pratap (Kanpur),
Bhavishya (Prayag), Vartman (Kanpur); the Leader and Independent
would also publish the news, while the Swadesb press would ensure
that notices, posters and letters carried the word to all six tahsils of
the district.
43
Swadesb, 24 Oct. 1920: p. 11.
44
Amodnath Tripathi, 'Poorvi Uttar Pradesh ke Jan-jeevan mein Baba Raghav Das
ka Yogdaan' (Ph.D. thesis, Allahabad University, 1981), pp. 62-7,77; Swadesb, 2 Jan.
1921.
4S
Tripathi, p. 78; Swadesb, 6 Feb. 1921, p. 9.
46
Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals, U.P., 1921, p. 33. 304 Selected Subaltern Studies
Meanwhile the District Congress Committee (DCC) geared itself
into action. It had been decided to get a national school inaugurated
by Gandhi, and the DCC was active on this front. Advance parties of
lecturers (vyakhyandata) announcing his arrival were to be dispatched
to the tahsil headquarters and to Barhalganj, Dhakwa and Gola in the
densely populated southern tahsil of Bansgaon; to Rudarj5ur and
Captainganj in the central tract of Hata; to the railway towns and
marts of Deoria, Salempur, Majhauli, Lar, Bhatpar and Barhaj Bazar
to the south-east, and to Padrauna in the north-east. Within the
sparsely populated northern tahsil of Maharajganj, Peppeganj and
Campierganj—seats of European zamindaris—and Siswa Bazar, the
important entrepot of gur and rice, were to be the target points. At
meetings held at these places, the visiting lecturers were to preach the
doctrine of the Congress and ask for contributions to the National
School Fund. In their turn the local residents were to ensure that
people within a radius of ten miles attended these public discourses on
the philosophy and advent of Gandhi.47
The massive attendance at
the Gorakhpur sabha on 8 February and the crowds that thronged
the five stations on the fifty mile railway strip between Bhatni and
Gorakhpur city suggest that the news had spread widely enough.
On 30 January the Swadesh announced that the probable date was
now 8 February and requested the people of Gorakhpur to seek the
Mahatma's darshan and bring their donations with them. It also
wrote about the need for more Congress workers to come forward
and help in supervising the arrangements.48
An editorial which appeared in the columns of that newspaper on 6
February announcing the impending arrival is a significant text and is
reproduced in Appendix I. Besides illustrating how the image of the
distinguished visitor was projected in Gorakhpur by local Congressmen,
it is also representative of nationalist understanding of the
relationship between the subaltern masses, the elite leadership and
Gandhi himself. Dasrath Dwivedi, the young author of this text, had
been trained as a journalist on the staff of the Pratap in Kanpur and on
Ganesh Vidyarthi's advice had come back to his home district in 1919
to start his own Swadesh.49 The editorial, 'The Great Fortune of
47
Swadesh, 9 Jan. 1921, p. 11; see also Appx II below.
48
Swadesh, 30 Jan. 1921.
*' The circulation of the paper in early 1921 was 3,500, though according to official
estimates it dropped to 2,300 in the course of that year. See Tiwari, p. 558; Statement
of Newspapers etc., U.P., 1921, entry under Swadesh.
Gandhi as Mahatma 305
Gorakhpur', was written by one who was obviously an ardent
nationalist disappointed at the political stupor prevailing in the region,
and who felt as if his dream of Gandhi bringing about a transformation
was soon to be fulfilled. Addressed basically to lawyers and students
whom it urges to cast off sloth, it is also significant in its attitude
towards the common people:
Our plea is that the common people (sadharan junta) of Gorakhpur are
only anxiously awaiting for the darshan of the Mahatma. The Mahatma
will arrive, the public will have darshan and will be eternally grateful for
it. There will be no end to the joy of the people when they are able to feast
their eyes on the Mahatma.
But what about those who are openly co-operating with the government
. . . don't they have some duty at this juncture... ? A voice from the heart
says
cOf course!... They should kneel before Mahatma Gandhi and pray
to the Almighty for courage to enable them to row their boats out of the
present whirlpool and into safety ... . For Mahatma Gandhi to appear
[avteern: from avtar] before us in these difficult times is a tremendous
boon, for us, our society and our country ... . Don't vacillate, arise now to
serve the oppressed brothers of your district. Blow the shankh (conchshell)
of Swaraj ... . This movement is an elixir (amrit-bati) for you.
Mahatma Gandhi is offering it to you.50
How the common people and the elite should respond to Gandhi's
visit is thus clearly laid out. The task of the janta is to congregate in
large numbers, 'feast their eyes on the Mahatma', count themselves
lucky, and after such brief taste of bliss return to their inert and
oppressed existence. So far as they are concerned the Mahatma is to
be in Gorakhpur for no other purpose than to offer them darshan.
They are not expected to proclaim the cause of swaraj on their own.
The clarion call (written metaphorically, as shankhnaad, after the
blast of conch-shells used for Hindu sacred rituals) of swaraj in
villages requires only the power of elite lungs: for that rallying blast
the 'oppressed brothers' of Gorakhpur must rely on the initiative of
the elite followers of the Mahatma. The implication is that the
peasants' pilgrimage to Gorakhpur and the mufassil stations will be
useless from a nationalist perspective unless 'leaders' step in to channel
the goodwill generated in the villages as a result of Gandhi's darshan.
That such a journey, made often in defiance of landlord opposition,
could in itself be a political.act and that Gandhi's message might be
decoded by the common villager on his own, without prompting by
outsiders, were possibilities not entertained by Dasrath Dwivedi at
50
'Gorakhpur ka Ahobhagya', Swadesh, 6 Feb. 1921. Emphasis mine. 306 Selected Subaltern Studies
this time. Yet a perusal of local news published by him in subsequent
month s shows that these were the lines along which popular response
to the Mahatma's visit expressed itself.
Apart from this the imagery, feeling and metaphors used by
Dwivedi to convince educated waverers about the greatness of Gandhi
and convert them to his cause are of interest in themselves. At this
level there is no significant difference between the religiosity informing
the peasants and the attitude Dwivedi wants the intelligentsia to
adopt towards Gandhi; the language of belief seems to be the same in
both instances with merely some variations in tone and accent. The
italicized portions of the extract quoted above testify to the religious,
indeed devotional nature of Dwivedi's writings. The boat and boatman
imagery occurs frequently in rural and urban devotional songs. As
Susan Wadley notes in her study of popular religion in a village in
western UP , 'many . . . devotional songs use the whirlpool analogy
for a crisis situation, along with other nautical imagery (the ocean of
existence, boat, boatman, ferry across, the far side, etc.)'. 3 1
Gandhi's visit to Gorakhpur was well organized and the gatherings
of people on that occasion were truly phenomenal. An advance party
of Gorakhpu r Congressmen had been sent to Bhatni junction at the
south-eastern edge of the district, and the train by which he travelled
made its way very slowly through, stopping at every railway station
wher e people had assembled for darshan. As Shyam Dha r Misra who
led the reception party reported in Swadesh:
At Bhatni Gandhiji addressed (updesh diya) the local public and then the
train started for Gorakhpur. There were not less than 15 to 20,000 people
at Nunkhar, Deoria, Gauri Bazar, Chauri Chaura and Kusmhi [stations].
. . . At Deoria there were about 35-40,000 people. Mahatmaji was .very
pleased to witness the scene at Kusmhi, as despite the fact that the station
is in the middle of a jungle there were not less than 10,000 people even
here. Some, overcome with their love, were seen to be crying. At Deoria
people wanted to give bhent [donations] to Gandhiji, but he asked them
to give these at Gorakhpur. But at Chauri Chaura one Marwari gentleman
managed to hand something over to him. Then there was no stopping. A
sheet was spread and currency notes and coins started raining. It was a
sight ... . Outside the Gorakhpur station the Mahatma was stood on a
high carriage and people had a good darshan of him for a couple of
minutes.52
51
Susan Wadley, 'Power in Hindu Ideology and Practice', in K. David (ed.), The
New Wind: Changing Identities in South Asia (The Hague: Paris, 1977), p. 144, n. 17.
sz
Swadesh, 13 Feb. 1921, p. 3.
Gandhi as Mahatma 307
Amon g the peasants wh o had come all the way from their villages for
Gandhi-darshan on this occasion, there were many who would again
in a year's time—in February 1922—march past the Chauri Chaura
railway station to the adjacent thana as participants in another fateful
event. Indeed, at the trial of the peasant-rioters of Chauri Chaura,
some of those who acted as witnesses for the prosecution found it
necessary to try and offer an innocuous explanation of their presence
among the crowd at the station on 8 February 1921. As Shankar
Dayal Rae, a prosperous contractor of the locality, put it to the
Sessions Judge in June 1922: 'I never before went to the station to
meet any rajnaitik (political) leader—to Gorakhpur or Chaura—
except that I went to pay my respects to Gandhiji when he passed
through Chaura in the train.'53
The devotion of the Gorakhpuri
peasants to the Mahatma seems to have acquired a militant edge.
According to Mahadev Desai's account of the return journey from
Gorakhpur, darshan was now demanded almost as a right:
The train started from Gorakhpur at 8.30 p.m. at night... . It was a train
that halted at every station ... . Hordes and hordes of people began to
rush upon our compartment.... At every station peasants with long long
lathis and torches in their hands would come to us and raise cries loud
enough to split the very drums of our ears. Of course, all of us in the
compartment were making as many appeals for quiet as we possibly
could. But whoever would care to listen to us? . . .
Many of these devotees do not even know how their 'Mahatma Gandhi'
looks like. A few of them thrust themselves into our compartment, and
began to bawl out, 'Who is Mahatma Gandhiji?' 'Who is Mahatma
Gandhiji?' I got desperate and said T. They were satisfied, bowed down
to me and left the compartment! What a difference between my presumptuousness
and these people's untainted love! But it was no use
getting enchanted with that guileless love ... .
Any sleep for Gandhiji in the midst of this uproar was out of question ..
. . The people's hathagraha (mule-like obstinacy) was repeated at each
and every station that came after Bhatni: At last even Gandhiji's endurance
and tolerance was exhausted ... . He began to entreat the people 'Please
go away. Why do you harass us at this dark hour?' He was answered only
by sky-rending shouts of victory to him! . . . That was the height of the
people's love-mad insolence . .. .**
IV
If this was the way in which the peasants reacted to Gandhi, how was
his message understood by them? Were there any ambiguities in what
53
Evidence of Shankar Dayal Rae, Chauri Chaura Trials (Sessions Judge), p. 508.
54
Desai, pp. 263-6. 308 Selected Subaltern Studies
Gandh i said or was believed to have said? If so, what implications did
these have for peasant beliefs about Gandhi as revealed in the 'stories'
about his power ?
T h e main thrust of Gandhi's speeches at the 'massive gatherings of
peasants' in Fyzabad and Gorakhpur was to condemn the recent acts
of peasant violence and rioting in southern Awadh. As Mahadev
Desai recounts in his diaries of this period:
Gandhiji had only one message to give them, viz. those big sticks [lathis]
were not to be used for killing or injuring anybody. The same thing was
preached at Fyzabad also. Gandhiji's utterances were devoted exclusively
to the outbreaks of robbery, villainy and rioting that had taken place in
the United Provinces.55
This was indeed so, but a close reading of his speech at Gorakhpur
suggests that it had enough ambiguity in it to cause semantic slides.
After a laudatory poem written by the Hindi poet 'Trishul' and read
by Dasrath Dwivedi, Gandhi started his speech to ? mammoth
gathering of over 1.5 lakhs, which included a 'fairly large number of
illiterates and rustics',56
as follows:
This gathering is not the occasion for along speech. This gathering shows
that mere is a commonality of purpose amongst us. The poem that was
recited just now did not mention Mohammad Ali . . . . Now brother
Shaukat Ali, Mohammad Ali and I are saying the same thing ... .
After stressing the need for Hindu-Muslim unity, he warmed up to
a condemnation of peasant violence in Awadh:
What happened in Fyzabad? What happened in Rae Bareli? We should
know these things. By doing what we have done with our own hands we
have committed a wrong, a great wrong. By raising the lakri [i.e. lathi] we
have done a bad thing. By looting haats and shops we have committed a
wrong. We can't get swaraj by using the lakri. We cannot get swaraj by
pitting our own devilishness (shaitaniyat) against the Satanic government.
Our 30 crore lakris are no match against their aeroplanes and guns; even if
they are, even then we shall not raise our lakris. The Quran says so.
Brother Mohammad Ali tells me that [according to the Quran] as long as
the raising of the stick is unnecessary we cannot do so .. . .
Our kisan brothers have committed a mistake. They have caused great
anguish to my brother Jawahar Lai. If further difficulties [of this sort] are
put in our way then you shall see that that very day it would become
impossible for Gandhi to live in Hindustan. I shall have to do penance—this
ss
Ibid., p. 267. For a detailed discussion of Gandhi's 'Instructions' to die
peasants at Fyzabad, see Pandey, 'Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism'.
S6
Gyan Shakti, Feb. 1921, p. 407.
Gandhi as Mahatma 309
is a peaceful struggle. Only after I retire to the Himalayas can it become a
violent struggle. Our fight should be like the one put up by our Sikh
brethren in Taran Taran ... . They did not seek revenge against their
oppressors ... . This is our way, this the asahyog dharma, this is real
Brahmacharya. This is kshatriya dharma. And today this is the dharma of
the Musalmans. To go against it is to commit a sin .. . .
Right now we should forget about 'social boycott'. The time has not yet
arrived for such actions. Nobody should prevent any brother from going
to the burial ground, nobody is to prevent anybody from the use of the
services of barbers or to have chilum [i.e. ganja] and liquor. In fact we
want to rid everybody of chilum and booze (daru)." If all of you give up
[these things] today then we shall attain swaraj straightaway ... .
[Congratulating Gorakhpur on its organization of this meeting Gandhi
continued] The real result of your organizational abilities and your work
would be seen when in Gorakhpur lawyers give up their practice, schools
no longer remain sarkari [i.e. affiliated to the government], titles are given
up, no drinkers, no whoremongers, no gamblers remain in your district.
When every house has a charkha and all the julahas of Gorakhpur start
weaving [hand-spun yam]... . You should produce so much khaddar in
Gorakhpur that you people don't have to go to Ahmedabad, to Bombay
or Kanpur [for your cloth]... .
I would request you to be patient and listen to Maulana Mohammad
Ali's speech and carry on donating money to the volunteers. Please refrain
from being noisy. I want to tell you, if you follow my programme—I
want to assure [you] if you do as I tell you, we shall get swaraj by the end
of September. We could also get the Khilafat and the Punjab Wrongs
undone by the sarkar. But this is the right [task] of only those who
accept the things discussed at the Nagpur Congress. This is not the
business of those who are not with us in our work ... . From those who
are not with us, but still come to our meetings, I expect that they will at
least keep the peace—we can attain swaraj by end September if God
grants us peace; if all of us Indians have the spirit of self-sacrifice and
self-purification then 30 crore people can achieve just about anything.58
The main constitutive elements—baat in the indigenous
parlance—of Gandhi's message to the Gorakhpur kisans could be
arranged as follows:
1. Hindu-Muslims unity or ekta.
2. What people should not do on their own: use lathis; loot bazaars and
haats; enforce social boycott ('naudhobi band').
57
The words used were 'Koi kisi bhai ko kabristan jane se na roke, koi kisi ko
hajjam, chilum aur daru se na roke'. Chilum is an earthenbowl for smoking tobacco,
but is understood in popular parlance to refer to ganja smoking. It seems that Gandhi
is here using the word chilum to refer to ganja, but this can also be understood to be an
injunction against smoking as such.
58
Translated from the verbatim report published in Swadesh, 13 Feb. 1921, p. 6. 310 Selected Subaltern Studies
3. What the Mahatma wants his true followers to do: stop gambling,
ganja-smoking, drinking and whoring.
4. Lawyers should give up their practice; government schools should
be boycotted; official rides should be given up.
5. People should take up spinning and weavers should accept handspun
yarn.
6. Imminence of swaraj: its realization conditional on innate strength
of numbers when matched with peace, grace of God, self-sacrifice
and self-purification.
This sequential summary of Gandhi's speech is an attempt to
reconstruct the way in which his utterances might have been discussed
in the villages of Gorakhpur. It is reasonable to assume that such
discussions would proceed by breaking up his message into its major
ideological constituents.59
If the practice, which is current even
today, of communicating printed news in the countryside is any
guide, then in all likelihood the main points of that speech summarized
from the version published in Swadesh was conveyed to the illiterate
peasants in the local dialect.
It will be seen that baat no. 4 does not greatly concern the peasants.
N o . 1 is very general and figures only marginally in the Gandhi
'stories'. Baat no. 5 is, in part, far too specific as an instruction
addressed exclusively to weavers, while the advice in favour of
spinning might have sounded rather too general, lacking as it did an
infrastructure to make it feasible at this stage. It is the conflation of
baats no. 3 and no. 6, and its contexualization within the existing
ideas about 'power' and magic, which lay at the root of some of the
'stories' relating to the Mahatma in Gorakhpur. It seems that the
complimentarity of his negative advice with regard to popular militancy
(baat no. 2) and the positive actions enjoined on the 'true followers'
(baat no. 3)—the complimentarity, so to say, of the do's and don'ts in
these particular messages, was (pace Mahadev Desai) largely lost on
his rustic audience. On the other hand baats no. 3 and 6 came to be
associated in the popular mind as a linked set of spiritual commandments
issued by a god-like personage. As such these were consistent
with those legends about his 'divinity' which circulated at the time.
59
For an example of one such breaking up of Gandhi's message to the peasants into
main (mukhya) baats, see 'Kisanon ko Mahatma Gandhi ka amritmay sandesh',
Abhyudaya, 18 Feb. 1931, p. 19. For an extended use of the term baat, and its use as an
organizing principle in the narrative of Bhojpuri fables, see George A. Grierson, Seven
Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihari Language etc., Pt. II (Calcutta,
1884), pp. 102ff.
Gandhi as Mahatma 311
The enforcement of social boycott was not widespread yet; it was to pick
up only from late 1921. Meanwhile, that is immediately in die wake of
Gandhi's visit, people, acting on their own or through their panchayats
and sabhas, were still involved in efforts at self-purification, extending
and transforming his message on this theme. It is with the intervention
of the supernatural in this process and the Mahatma's role in it that most
of the Gorakhpur 'stories' are concerned. To these we now turn.
V
The feeling of devotion towards Gandhi in Gorakhpur was commented
on in glowing terms in the nationalist press. Dasrath Dwivedi wrote
in an editorial about the 'fantastic flow of bhakti' (devotion) caused
by the Mahatma's visit. Mahavir Prasad Poddar, a Gorakhpuri
merchant resident in Calcutta and a popular retailer of Swadeshisugar
of yesteryears,60
elaborated on this theme thus in the columns
of the Swadesh:
It had not occurred to us in our wildest dreams that the same Gorakhpur
which was politically dormant would suddenly wake up like this. A
crowd of 2-2V2 lakhs for the darshan of Gandhiji is no ordinary thing. It
can probably be said that this is the biggest crowd that has ever gathered
for the darshan of the Mahatma ... . But let no one think that this vast
multitude came like sheep, inspired by blind faith (andhbhakti) and went
back empty handed. Those with eyes can see that the darshan of 'Gandhi
Mahatam' (diis is the phrase used in villages) have not been in vain. The
janta came with devotion {bhakti) in their hearts and returned with
feelings and ideas (bhav). The name of Guru-Gandhi has now spread in all
four corners of the district....
But roses have thorns as well ... . A zamindar of the city had it
proclaimed in his ilaqa that anyone going for Gandhi's darshan would be
fined Rs 25 and receive twenty-five shoe-beatings to boot.... The people
of this area wrung their hands in despair A Ramlila procession goes in
front of the house with so much fanfare and the children are locked up in
the attic! .. . I know there are other creatures like the above-mentioned
raees in this district.61
Here is a far better understanding of the impact of that visit than we
have so far encountered in nationalist prose. The janta does not just
have bhakti; seeing and hearing the Mahatma also inspires bhav, a
word suggestive not merely of feelings and ideas but of urge to action
as well.62
The laudatory poem read as a welcome address to Gandhi
had ended on the note:
60
Swadesh, 20 April 1919, p. 4. " Swadesh, 27 Feb. 1921.
62
I am grateful to Veena Das for diis suggestion. 312 Selected Subaltern Studies
jaan dalega yahan aap ka aana ab to; log dekhenge ki badla hai
zamana abto...
aap ayehain yahan jaan hi aae samjho, goya Gorakh ne dhuni phir
hai ramai samjho.63
By February 1921 times had indeed changed, beyond the 'wildest
dreams' of Poddar: a new life was already infused into a 'politically
dormant' Gorakhpur—a regeneration brought about by, as it were,
the powerful tapasya of Gorakhnath, the eponymous founder of the
city. Gandhi's advent was perceived as a major event by the zamindars
who had sought forcibly to prevent their peasants from seeking his
darshan. It was for them an event which stood out of the flow of
quotidian existence and as such threatened to bring about displacements
in the local power structures. The analogy of eager children
being denied the joy of participation in an important religious procession
was apt, for it suggests in the landlords a cruel paternalism
designed to prevent any subversion of the relationships of dominance
and subordination which constituted the stuff of everyday life in the
countryside. The enthusiasm Gandhi generated, the expectations he
aroused and the attack he launched on British authority had all
combined to initiate the very first moments of a process which, given
other factors, could help the peasant to conceptualize the turning of
his world upside down. This was an incipient political consciousness
called upon, for the very first time, to reflect—albeit vaguely and
intermittently—on the possibility of an inversion of many of those
power relations deemed inviolable until then, such as British/Indian,
landlord/peasant, high-caste/low-caste, etc. This process of conceptualization
was set in train that spring in Gorakhpur by a clash
between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between the habitual
and the contingent—a clash triggered off directly by the Mahatma's
visit.64
VI
Stories about Gandhi's occult powers first appeared in the local press
in late January 1921. An issue of Swadesh which announced his
arrival in the district also carried a report under the heading: 'Gandhi
in dream: Englishmen run away naked'. A loco-driver—presumably
63
Swadesh, 13 Feb. 1921, p. 5. Your coming here will enliven this place; people
will notice how times have changed; you coming vinually brought back life to this
place and Gorakhpur has bounced back to life and pride.
64
The argument in this paragraph owes a lot to discussions with Bernard Cohn and
Ranajit Guha.
Gandhi as Mahatma 313
an Anglo-Indian—who had dozed off while reading a newspaper at
Kasganj railway station in Etah district woke up from a nightmare at
11 p.m. and ran towards a cluster of bungalows occupied by the
English and some Indian railway officers shouting: 'Man, run, man!
Gandhi is marching at the head of several strong Indians decimating
the English'. This caused a panic and all the local white population
emerged from their bedrooms in a state of undress and ran towards
the station. The key to the armoury at the station was asked for, but
could not be found as the officer-in-charge was away. English women
were locked up in boxes and almirahs, and some Englishmen were
heard saying, 'Man! The cries of "jai jai" are still reaching our ears. We
shall not go back to our bungalows'. In the morning Indians who
heard of this incident in the city had a good laugh at this example of
English self-confidence (atmik-bal).6
* This story, first published in
the Banaras daily Aaj and then in Swadesh, is illustrative of the wider
tendency of the times to berate British power and boost Indian
prowess by contrast.66
The British emerge in tales of this kind as a
weak-kneed race, mortally afraid of the non-violent Mahatma.
Other stories to appear in the press just prior to and immediately
after his arrival were about a lawyer of Deoria who was cursed by a
follower of Gandhi for going back on his promise to give up legal
practice and had his house polluted with shit; about a high-caste
woman who suffered the same polluting fate after she had denied a
young boy a blanket to protect him from the cold when he wanted to
go to the station at night to seek darshan; about a Kahar who tried to
test the Mahatma's power with a foolish wish and came out the worse
for it; and about a Pandit who sought to defy Gandhi by insisting on
eating fish only to find it crawling with worms. These stories have the
same sequential and structural characteristics as many others reported
65
'Swapn mein Mahatma Gandhi: Angrez nange bhage', writer Banwari Lai Sewak,
Swadesh, 30 Jan. 1921 (extracted from Aaj).
66
Thus Mohammad Ali addressing the Gorakhpur meeting on 8 February after
Gandhi, concluded his speech with the following exhortation: 'We should only be
afraid of Allah, and no one else. No Deputy Commissioner was sent saddled with his
office from the house of God. No midwife ever said that the child-to-be-born would
become a Commissioner, or a Viceroy. Even the Collector and Commissioner of
Gorakhpur, even Sir Harcourt Butler must have emerged from their mothers' wombs
as innocent babes, like the rest of us. Therefore [don't be afraid], have faith in Allah,
keep the peace, all thirty crores work the charkha—you shall get swaraj in six month's
time'. Reported in Swadesh, 13 Feb. 1921, p. 8. 314 Selected Subaltern Studies
from Gorakhpur. Taken together and classified according to their
motifs, they may be said to fall into four fairly distinct groups:67
A. Testing the power of the Mahatma.
B. Opposing the Mahatma.
C. Opposing the Gandhian creed in general and with respect to
dietary, drinking and smoking taboos.
D. Boons granted and/or miracles performed in the form of
recovery of things lost and regeneration of trees and wells.
A. Testing the Power of the Mahatma
1. Sikandar Sahu of thana Mansurganj, mauza Mahuawa (Dist.
Basti) said on 15 February that he would believe in the Mahatmaji
when the karah (boiling pan) full of cane-juice in his karkhana
split into two. The karah split in two in the middle!68
2. On 18 February a Kahar (domestic servant; palanquin bearer)
from Basantpur said that he would be prepared to believe in
Mahatmaji's authenticity (sacha manoonga) only when the
thatched roof of his house was raised. The roof lifted ten cubits
above the wall, and fell back to its original position only when
he cried and folded his hands in surrender and submission.69
3. On 15 March a cultivator in mauza Sohraghat (Azamgarh) said
that he would believe in the Mahatmaji's authenticity (sacha
jaane) if sesamum sprouted on 1.5 bighas of his field. Next day
all the wheat in that field became sesamum. 'I have seen this
with my own eyes at the house of Pt Brijwasi Vakil', wrote a
correspondent. 'The ears look like that of wheat, but on rubbing
with hand, grains of sesamum come out of them'.70
4. Babu Bir Bahadur Sahi of mauza Reaon was getting his fields
harvested on 15 March. In order to test the Mahatma's powers
he wished for some sweets. Suddenly sweets fell on his body.
Half of the sweets he distributed among the labourers and the
rest he kept for himself.
67
These stories, unless otherwise stated, are taken from Swadesh, 27 Feb., p. 11; 6
March, p. 9; 13 March, p. 5; 10 April, pp. 1,11; 17 April, p. 4;24 April:pp. 11-2; 1 May,
p. 7 and 8 May 1921, p. 2.1 am aware mat these stories can well be classified differendy,
and that a particular story can be grouped under more man one category. However, I
have found the above classification useful for die purposes of the present discussion.
68
These stories have been translated from the Hindi versions reported in Swadesh.
69
'These news items (samachar) have been sent in by Sri Sam Raj Chaudhuri of
Rajpur. He maintains diat all of diese incidents are true'. Swadesh, 27 Feb. 1921, p. 11.
70
Reported by Shyamnand Lai.
Gandhi as Mahatma 315
5. On 13 April a karahi was being set up as an offering to the
Mahatma. The wife of one thakur saheb said that she would
offer karahi to the Mahatmaji only if there were some miracles
performed. Suddenly a dhoti hanging on a peg caught fire and
was reduced to ashes, although there was no smell of burning
whatsoever. 'I have seen this with my own eyes'.71
6. A reader of Swadesh from Barhaj wrote: 'Two chamars while
digging were having a discussion about the murti (idol, image)
that had emerged in Bhore village (Saran). One of them .. . said
. . . "only if a murti emerges at that site as well will I accept that
the one at Bhore is calling out for Gandhi". By a coincidence,
while digging, a murti of Mahadev came out. On hearing the
news people rushed for darshan, and puja-paath was done and
offerings made. People are of the opinion that the cash offered
should be sent to the National School [fund]'.
7. A similar incident was reported to have happened at the well of
Babu Shiv Pratap Singh of Gaura [adjacent to Barhaj]. But it
was said that as soon as people rushed to get the murti out of the
well, it disappeared.
8. A Brahman of mauza Rudrapur (Post Office Kamasi) had the
habit of stealing grass. People tried their best to convince him
that Mahatma Gandhi had forbidden such evil deeds. He replied,
T shall believe in Gandhiji if when I go stealing grass at night
someone catches me, or I fall ill, go mad, or start eating gobar
(cow dung)'. Strange are the ways of God: all these things
happened. While stealing grass he started shouting that someone
was coming to catch him. He fainted. He ran a high fever.
People got hold of him and took him to his house. Soon after he
ran out and started eating gobar. When after three days his
family members took the manauti [i.e. pledged to propitiate
Gandhi if the patient recovered], he started feeling better. 'As a
result of this people in the village and its neighbourhood have
given up theft etc. completely'.72
9. Shri Balram Das of the Gorakhpur School reported, 'On
February 26th I had gone to the Rudrapur village in Maharajganj
71
Reported by Jaikumar Singh. For die practice of karahi-offering see p. 47
below.
72
Reported in Sarju Singh. Manauti: from minnat: taking of a vow; a promise to
offer somediing (normally cash) in return for die fulfilment of a wish or the granting of
a boon. 316 Selected Subaltern Studies
tahsil to give a lecture. Everybody agreed to follow the ways of
Mahatma Gandhi. But one character did not give up his [old]
habit and went to cut grass. On his return he went mad. He
broke and smashed things around him. When he offered Rs 5 in
the name of Mahatmaji he quietened down (shanti hui)'.13
Even a cursory reading of these 'stories' suggests that two obvious
processes are at work here. First, the rumours are indicative of a
considerable discussion about Gandhi in the villages of Gorakhpur in
spring 1921. The recurring phrase, 'I shall believe in Mahatmaji only
in the event of such an extraordinary happening', should be read as an
index of a dialogue between sceptics and firm believers. It makes
sense only in the context of such a discussion.
Secondly, this crucial phrase also suggests that what people thought
of the Mahatma were projections of the existing patterns of popular
beliefs about the 'worship of the worthies' in rural north India.74
As
William Crooke has observed, the deification of such 'worthies' was
based among other things, on the purity of the life they had led and
on 'approved thaumaturgie powers'.75
The first of these conditions
Gandhi amply satisfied by all those signs of saintliness which a
god-fearing rural populace was prone to recognize in his appearance
as well as in his public conduct. As for thaumaturgy, the stories
mentioned above attribute to him magical and miraculous powers
which, in the eyes of villagers nurtured on the lore of Salim Chishti
and Sheikh Burhan, put him on a par with other mortals on whom
peasant imagination had conferred godliness.
Turning to the stories themselves we find that they are developments
of the basic idea of the genuineness of the Mahatma as revealed
through various tests. In its simple version a test is set in the context
of the immediate activity or environment of the person concerned, or
there is the fulfilment of an expressed wish. The conditions are met
and the story or the rumour connected with it goes no further.
Examples of this are to be found in Nos. 1, 3 and 4, and to a lesser
degree in No. 5 as well. In some of the other instances a further
development takes place: the person who sets the test submits to the
Mahatma's power. Thus the Kahar of Basantpur in No. 2 gets the
roof of his hut back in position only after he makes amends for
questioning the saint's authority by tearful repentance.
73
Swadesh, 1 May 1921, p. 7.
7
* W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, i (London,
1896), pp. 183-96. We are not concerned with die deification of diose 'who have died
in a miraculous way', discussed by Crooke under this category.
75
Ibid., p. 191.
Gandhi as Mahatma 317
A clearer example of the power of rumours in spreading the name
of Gandhi in villages and reorienting normal ritual actions towards
nationalist goals is contained in story No. 6. Of the two Chamars,
one evidendy believed in the rumour from Saran district in Bihar. But
the other made his acceptance conditional on an extraordinary
occurrence taking place in the context of his immediate activity—
digging. When as a result of coincidence76
his spade brought out a
murti from the ground, the Chamar (perhaps convinced of the power
of the Mahatma) retired as the subject of the narrative. Now others,
who also had heard this particular rumour (further proof of which
had been unearthed in their own area), entered the scene and propitiated
the image of Mahadev in the usual way by having darshan and making
offerings of flowers and money. But it is significant that the money
which would otherwise have gone towards the. construction of a
concrete platform at that site was earmarked as a contribution to the
National School Fund, a project with which Gandhi was directly
associated in Gorakhpur.77
The story about finding a murti in Barhaj (No. 7) follows the line
of popular interpretation adopted for the previous anecdote. That
this particular rumour might have been spread deliberately by someone,
and that the idol had 'disappeared' by the time people rushed to
the scene, is immaterial for the purposes of the present discussion.
What is important is that a series of 'extraordinary occurrences' in the
villages of Gorakhpur were being read in a familiar way, that is
according to the conventions of reading the episodes in a sacred text
but with their religiosity overdetermined by an incipient political
consciousness.
There is an element which story No. 2 shares with No. 5—where
the thakurain makes her offering to the Mahatma conditional on the
occurrence of a miracle and where this happens in the form of a dhoti
bursting into flames. In both stories it is fear which imposes faith on
non-believers. This penal motif recurs frequently in many religious
ballads in eastern India. The doubting woman and the sceptical
Kahar are persuaded to join the devotees—and do so ritually in the
karahi episode—in the same way as a forceful display of an offended
76
Phrases like 'by a coincidence', or 'strangely enough', which would otherwise
qualify these miracles, occur very seldom in these stories. Besides, these should be read
more as reflecting the viewpoint of the person reporting these occurrences to the press
rather than as indicating a sceptical attitude on the part of the people as a whole.
77
The fund was launched by the DCC in late 1920 so that Gandhi on his visit could
open a National School at Gorakhpur. 318 Selected Subaltern Studies
godling's wrathful power breaks the resistance of a non-conformist
in a vratkatha or panchali.
This motif is made explicit in No. 8 and its variation, No. 9, by the
challenge to the Mahatma's power and the manner in which the latter
is seen to triumph. The Brahman thief of Rudrapur village is representative
not just of the ordinary village sceptic but of high-caste
opposition to the Gandhian creed. His resistance questions by implication
the conformism of the rest of the village (see the modified
version in No . 9). But he pays for this by being subjected to physical
and mental suffering. Only when his family relents on his behalf,
joins the Mahatma's devotees by taking a vow in the latter's name and
makes an offering does the man's condition improve. It is hard to
miss the similarity between this and many other stories of opposition
to the Gandhian creed, and between their predictable outcomes. (See
Nos. 12,21 and 23 below). The ending—'as a result of this particular
occurrence people in the village and its neighbourhood have given up
theft/drinking/gambling, etc'—announces in each instance the
victory of the new moral authority which is made all the more
resplendent by the fact of having been deified at the outset.
B. Opposing the Mahatma
This theme of personal suffering (kasht) and pollution recur in many
other stories expressly concerned with incidents of direct opposition
to Gandhi. Thus:
10. Pt Damodar Pandey from mauza Gayaghat, PO Uska Bazar
(Dist. Basti) reported that a man in mauza Dumariya near his
village had called Gandhi names, as a result of which his
eyelids had got stuck.. .
11. In Unchava village, one mile from Chara Ghat, four seer of
ghee belonging to Abhilakh Ahir had gone bad. The reason for
this was that he had made some sarcastic remarks (vyang
vacban) about Gandhiji.
12. Mauni Baba Ramugraha Das of mauza Benuakuti (Benuatikur?)
had slandered Mahatmaji on several occasions. As a result of
this his body began to stink of its own (khud-ba-khud). After
some exertion in the right direction (kuch yatn karne par)
things improved somewhat. Mauniji then made arrangements
for a lakshaad ahuti (sacrifice).
13. Sri Murlidhar Gupt from Majhauli reported, 'When Mahatma
Gandhi was going back on the night of 8 February from
Gandhi as Mahatma 319
Gorakhpur to Banaras there was a huge gathering at
Salempur station to have his darshan. There was a lad of a
Barai (betel-leaf grower) in that gathering as well. It is said
that he had asked a Mishrain (wife of a Misr, a high caste
Brahman) for a wrapper to come to the station. Sne, reprimanded
him and refused to give him the blanket. The poor
soul came shivering to the station, had darshan of the
Mahatma and went back home. In the morning I heard a
rumour in the village that she suffered the same fate as befell
the household of Babu Bhagavan Prasad, vakil of Deoria [i.e.
shit rained all over, see Nos. 17 & 18]. In the end, only when
she kept a fast, not even touching water for a day and a night
and did aradhana (ritual praying) of the Mahatma, did peace
finally return to her.'
14. In qasba Hariharpur, tahsil Khalilabad (District Basti) a big
raees was getting a mandir (temple) constructed after the
wishes of his deceased father. Babu Gyan Pal Dev—the
raees—had been against Gandhiji, and had threatened his
praja with a fine of Rs 5 if anyone even talked of Gandhiji or
became his follower. On 4 April at 11.30 p.m. a huge figure
with four hands appeared on the scene and announced aloud
before a large gathering, 'I am a follower of Siva. All of you
should do puja to him. Babu sahab give up your wrong
policies (aniti ko chor do). Speak the Truth. Follow the
Dharma; forsake adharma' After this it assumed a diminutive
form and disappeared. 'This is a factual and eye-witness
account'.
In the first four stories (Nos. 10-13), physical ailment and pollution
are seen as supernatural punishments meted out to those who opposed
Gandhi or (as in No. 13) any of his devotees in word or deed. In No.
14 the idea of physical punishment is replaced by a divine warning
which, since it was delivered in front of a crowd which included
presumably his social inferiors, hurt the prestige of the anti-Gandhian
raees of Hariharpur.
The story (No. 12) of the holy man of Banuatikur (Mauni Baba)
who seems to have broken his vow of silence to criticize Gandhi, puts
the usual image of religious preachers and peasant audiences in a
slightly different light. It is generally believed that the manipulation
of popular religious idiom by renouncers—babas, sanyasis and the
like—was conducive to the spread of the nationalist message in the 320 Selected Subaltern Studies
countryside.78
The peregrinations of dharmopdeshak Pandit
Ramanugraha Sharma in eastern UP and western Bihar and the career
of the Ramayana-reciting Baba Ramchandra in Awadh were clear
examples of this process at work.79
However, the rumour about the
Mauni Baba's criticism of Gandhi and the afflictions it causecTsuggest
that the word of the local sadhu was not always taken at its face value
in the villages of Gorakhpur. His suffering was interpreted in
Benuatikur and broadcast through rumour over a wide area as an
obvious punishment for his anti-Gandhian stance. Apparendy the
holy man himself found this explanation convincing enough to repent
and make amends in an appropriate manner. We do not know
whether it was a local Congressman or the common people who first
thought up this explanation. Even if the former did, the wide currency
of this and similar stories structured around the theme of physical
suffering caused by opposition to Gandhi and his creed indicates that
in these we have a moment representative of a very general idea.
Nos. 13 and 14 provide additional insights into the widespread
phenomenon of Gandhi-darshan. In the first of these the resolve of
the true darshan-seeker enables him to withstand personal discomfiture
while bringing suffering and pollution to an opponent of
Mahatmaji. Here fasting and puja add up to an act of penance; in
other instances, to 'worship' the Mahatma would appear to be a part
of the customary female ritual of vrat and aradhana, which were not
necessarily linked with the notion of penance or prayschit.*0
The text
of the story is also suggestive of the power and spread of rumour: the
alleged pollution of the Mishrain's household as a divine retribution
provoked by her anti-Gandhian attitude is identical to the terms of a
78
The following description in a pro-government newspaper is illustrative of the
crude view which projects the peasants as objects of their manipulation: 'The special
correspondent of an Indian contemporary [newspaper] dirows considerable light on
the methods of certain politico-religious preachers professing to be followers of Mr
Gandhi who have been carrying on active propaganda in the Rae Bareli district. They
settle in a village, . . . dress themselves in saffron-coloured clothes, and in the
beginning of their career refuse to take food for many days. The village people diink
that their saviour has come. The disciple of die Mahatma next takes to preaching, and
gathers round him a great following of persons . . .'. Pioneer Mail, 28 Jan. 1921.
79
For Ramanugraha Sharma, see p. 12 above. For Baba Ramchandra and his use of
the Ramayana and the religious cry 'Sita Ram' in mobilizing peasants in Awadh, see M.
H. Siddiqi, Agrarian Unrest in North India: the United Provinces, 1918-22 (Delhi,
1978); S. K. Mittal and Kapil Kumar, 'Baba Ramchandra and the Peasant Upsurge in
Oudh', Social Scientist, 10:71 (June 1978); Gyan Pandey, 'Peasant Revolt and Indian
Nationalism'. *° Seep. 46below.
Gandhi as Mahatma 321
similar report received from Deoria twenty miles away a couple of
days ago. (See Nos. 18 and 19 below).
The Mishrain from Salempur only rebuked the Barai lad for seeking
darshan; there were landlords like Rai Kishore Chand (raees of
Sarheri estate in northern Gorakhpur) and Babu Gyan Pal Dev (of
Hariharpur in Basti) who sought to restrain their praja (tenants) in a
more forthright fashion.81
The supernatural occurrence at a mandir
in Khalilabad tahsil on 4 April, timed by our correspondent for 11.30
p.m. and attested as factual, once again shows how such phenomena
lent themselves to very different interpretations. Both Jamuna Prasad
Tripathi who contributed this story to Swadesh and Babu Gyan Pal
Dev agreed that a daitya (ogre) had appeared on the scene, but while
the former understood this as a divine rebuke for the landlord's
anti-Gandhian actions the latter denied the charge in a rejoinder and
claimed that the apparition was merely a signal for the promotion of
the Siva cult. How the assembled peasants read this supernatural sign
we do no know for certain, but it is unlikely that they would have
failed to identify in it an element of divine rebuke to landlord
oppression.
C. Opposing the Gandhian creed in general
15. A gentleman from Gorakhpur city wrote that a mukhtar of
Alinagar mohalla had asked the women of the house to ply
charkha. They said that they were not short of anything, so
why should they ply the charkha? By a coincidence a trunk in
the house caught fire in a strange way. 'The whole city was
talking about this incident'.
16. There was a criminal case in mauza Bistauli. When the police
arrived, both the accused and the aggrieved started telling lies.
Someone, invoking the name of Mahatmaji (Mahatmaji ka
pratap hatla kar), told them not to tell lies. As soon as the
evidence was taken down, the culprit's daughter-in-law died.
17. 'Sri Tilakdhari Rai from Dhoki (Azamgarh) writes that it was
decided on 18 February at a sabha in mauza Ghaziapur that no
one was to let his cattle loose. Qadir chaukidar had also
pledged (pratigya) not to let his cattle loose, but later he broke
his pledge. People reminded him of his solemn promise. He
replied, "I shall let my cattle astray, let's see what your
*' One of the zamindars referred to on p. 25 was Rai Kishore Chand Raees, a
resident of Gorakhpur town and member of the District Board. 322 Selected Subaltern Studies
panchayat and Gandhiji can do?" An hour later his leg started
to swell up and pain. Even now the swelling has not stopped'.
18. 'A special correspondent writes from Deoria that Babu
Bhagvan Prasad vakil is in a strange predicament; shit is to be
found all over his house. Suddenly a murti that was kept in a
trunk fell down from the roof of his house. Even when he left
the house, the same predicament prevailed. The illiterates of
the town are of the opinion that this is due to the fact that the
vakil sahab had got into an argument with a speaker who was
discoursing on Non-Co-operation'.
19. 'The wife of the famous vakil, Babu Bhagvan Prasad of Deoria
has been in a strange predicament for the past few days.
Wherever she sits, she sees a bit of vishtha (shit) kept at a
distance from her. Sometimes she sees shit kept in a leafcontainer
(dona) for food. There is a murti in the house. When
she keeps it back after puja it either disappears or is to be found
on the roof, or falls down from there. If she serves poori (a
type of fried bread) to someone, four of these become two; if
she serves five then they are reduced to three.
But it is absolutely false that she has been cursed by a
disciple of Gandhiji. People say that the vakil sahab had gone
to the Calcutta [Congress] and had agreed there to give up his
practice, but went back on his word. Subsequendy a disciple
(shi'shya) of Gandhiji cursed him. Now wherever the vakil
sahab goes he encounters shit, and even his food, when served,
is transformed into shit. All this is untrue. Vakil sahab is
healthy, he does not see these things; neither did he go to
Calcutta nor did he promise to give up his practice, and
nobody has cursed him. Whatever his wife sees in the house,
people say, is the work of a ghost (bhoot-leela)' .
82
20. 'On 11 April some people were gambling in the village of
Parasia Ahir. I told them not to. People accepted my advice.
Only one person did not listen to me and started abusing
Gandhiji. The next day his goat was bitten by four of his own
dogs, as a result of which he is now very unhappy and has
accepted his qusoor (fault)'.83
82
Gyan Shakti, Feb. 1921, p. 407.
83
Reported by Kasinath Tiwari, Swadesb, 1 May 1921, p. 7. Some other stories in
which Gandhi is not directly mentioned have been gathered together in Appendix III
and serialized as Nos. 42-50.
Gandhi as Mahatma 323
Opposing the Gandhian creed with respect to dietary, drinking and
smoking taboos.
21. 'Rao Chokri Prasad writes, "The sons of a Tamoli (betel-leaf
grower and seller) in the Tamoli neighbourhood of Lalchak
near Bhatni station killed a goat and ate it up. Some people
tried to dissuade them but they paid no heed. Later, all of them
started vomiting and got very worried. In the end when they
vowed in the name of Mahatmaji never to eat meat again their
condition improved" '.
22. A Pandit of Rampur village, thana Mansurganj (Basti) was
repeatedly told by many to give up his habit of eating fish, but
he did not listen to anybody. He said—T shall eat fish, let's see
what the Mahatmaji can do.' When he sat down to eat [the
fish] it was crawling with worms!
23. Babu Bhagirath Singh of Paisia, thana Naikot, district
Gorakhpur wrote—'On 21 February the riyaya (peasants) of
Babu Chandrika Prasad Singh promised to give up liquor as a
result of his persuasion. But one Kalwar (of the caste of
distillers) did not keep his solemn promise. As soon as he
started for the liquor shop, brick-bats started to rain in his
path. When he spoke the name of Gandhiji from the core of his
heart the brick-bats stopped flying.'
24. On 22 February a sadhu came to Godhbal village, and began
puffing at his ganja pipe. People tried to reason with him, but
he started abusing Mahatmaji. In the morning his entire body
was seen covered with shit.
25. Pandit Krishnanand Misr from Paharipur village, PO Rampur,
District Azamgarh wrote: 'It was decided at a sabha in mauza
Kamal Sagar that nobody was to partake of any kind of
intoxicant. Later a couple of persons, hiding from general
view, started rubbing surti (tobacco-leaf, chewing-tobacco)
on their palms. Suddenly the leg of a calf fell near the house of a
Chaturvedi sahab. As a result of this strange occurrence
everybody has given up tobacco, surti, etc. [as well]'.
26. A man in a sabha in mauza Majhwa had vowed not to smoke,
but he took to smoking once again. Suddenly he was hemmed
in by worms and insects from all sides. Because of this incident
people in villages far away from Majhwa have also given up
intoxicants.
27. In mauza Davani a Tambolin who used to smoke tobacco 324 Selected Subaltern Studies
dreamt that she was smoking and the pipe had got stuck to her
mouth. She got afraid and has vowed not to smoke tobacco
again.
In a sense these stories are variations on Nos. 10-13. The movement
of the narrative as a sequence of personal suffering and/or pollution
followed by repentance which, in its turn, generates a social impact,
remains as of before. However, in the present series the punishments
are seen to be meted out to those defying popular decisions taken in
accordance with generally accepted tenets of the Mahatma. Nearly all
rumours about the ill effects of breaking dietary and other taboos are
indicative of a local elaboration of what was believed to be Gandhian
ethics. Even Nos. 16-20 and No. 42 (in Appx III), not concerned
with such taboos, suggest that an imbrication of popular attitudes
and Gandhian ideas of self-purification was under way in the villages
of Gorakhpur.
The story (No. 15) from the Alinagar ward of Gorakhpur city is
the only one concerned with the refusal to ply charkha, while No. 20
about gambling refers to an activity specifically denounced by Gandhi
on his visit there. Nos. 15 and 16 deal with truthfulness and attempts
to regulate by a formal pledge the anti-social practice of letting one's
cattle loose on other people's fields. The two variations of the story
about the Deoria vakil and his wife (Nos. 18 and 19) draw on the
familiar themes of pollution through human excreta and the breach of
a solemn promise—that of Babu Bhagvan Prasad to give up his legal
practice in accordance with the Non-Co-operation creed. It may be
worth our while to pause for a closer look at these two versions.
The special correspondent of the Swadesh sought to distance himself
from the popular interpretation of this story—'it is the opinion of
the illiterates of the town'—without providing an alternative explanation.
This mild disclaimer notwithstanding, he in effect gave
currency to what had been thought up by the 'illiterates' of Deoria.
The editor of the pro-government Gyan Shakti (whose pamphlet
against Gandhi and Non-Co-operation was the standard text used by
the district's loyalists),84
provided a fuller account of the rumour,
rebutting each and every ideological element of this popular story. In
his account, which accepted the pollution of the house as a fact, it was
the wife rather than the lawyer-husband who was the object of
84
See for example the eleven-page pamphlet, Hoshiyar ho jao ('Beware'), written
by Shiv Kumar Shastri and printed by him at the Gyan Shakti press for die Aman
Sabha, Gorakhpur.
Gandhi as Mahatma 325
retribution. Any suggestion of the woman suffering for her husband's
misdemeanour was rejected by the demonstration of all the rumours
as being untrue, including the one about the lady having been cursed
by a disciple of Gandhiji. The lawyer who, according to this report,
had not broken any promise (made to the Congress), remained
healthy in mind and body. Having taken the politics out of this
rumour, the editor of Gyan Shakti offers an alternative explanation
of this episode. The strange occurrence was not itself in doubt, it was
just the reading of the signs which was problematic. In the popular
version the rumour appears as a moment in the march of nationalist
politics in the district. In the columns of the loyalist Gyan Shakti it
loses that particular function: the empirical refutation put forward by
the editor results in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi being replaced by
the activity of apolitical spirits (bhoot-leela)!
However, it is the stories in the next series which are truly
illustrative of the way Gandhi's message was being decoded and
amplified in terms of the popularly accepted notions of pollution,
with coincidence and temporal sequence being read as indicators of
casuality. Gandhi did not press his Gorakhpur audiences to forsake
fish and meat, yet Nos. 21-2 reproduced above and Nos. 43-6 in
Appendix III suggest that a considerable amount of discussion,
ending sometimes in a collective resolve (e.g. No. 46), was going on
in the villages on the subject of vegetarianism. In these texts Gandhi's
name is not explicitly associated with any pratigya (vow) to give up
fish, meat, liquor or ganja. However, as in Nos. 21, 22 and 24, the
image and 'power' of Gandhi are the essential turning points in the
progress of the narrative: they imbue what precedes and follows with
a particular set of meanings. The defiant phrase, T shall eat meat/fish,
smoke ganja, drink toddy/liquor, let's see what Mahatmaji can do' is
crucial to the construction and progress of these rumours. It suggests
an interlocution between persons for and against abstinence and the
use of Gandhi's name as a part of the argument. A calamity befalling a
non-conformist, its social impact and his repentance are then connected
in popular imagination with the unpracticability and undesirability
of going against locally imposed decisions in these matters.
Again, the absence of the Mahatma from the texts supplied in
Appendix III (see Nos. 43-6, 48) suggests that he has been so fully
internalized in this kind of discourse as to require no mention. It
would indeed be a narrowly empirical reading which would see in
these rumours no trace whatsoever of the popularly accepted notions 326 Selected Subaltern Studies
of dietary taboos associated with the Mahatma in Gorakhpur. A
comparison of the stories in which he figures explicitly (e.g. Nos. 21,
22) with those from which he is missing would suggest much affinity
in the ordering of the two sets of texts. The sequence: interdictionviolation-consequence
in Nos. 43,46 and 48 is the same as in No. 21.
In No . 44, the first step, interdiction, is absent (for no one warns
Shankar Kandu against eating fish), but the follow-up—worms
emerging from fried fish and the village giving up consumption of
fish and fowl—is suggestive of the notice being taken of such evils as
might result from transgressions of this kind, and of the tailoring of
popular behaviour in accordance with them.
"Why this concern for dietary purity? We have no evidence to
enable us fully to answer this question. However, some plausible
explanations may perhaps be suggested. We have already seen that
conforming to the drive for ritual purity in the 1910s, a movement in
favour of giving up not only liquor but also meat and fish had picked
up momentum in the towns and bazaars of Gorakhpur and Basti
districts.85
Religious preachers were not alone in their advocacy of
vegetarianism. Even the low-caste panchayats of Dhobis, Bhangis
and barbers were insisting on heavy fines as a penalty for breaking the
newly-imposed dietary taboos within their respective communities.
This particular emphasis on purity in the spring of 1921 may therefore
be seen as an extension of the Gandhian idea of self-purification
(through abstinence from ganja and liquor) to a context where the
prohibition enlarged its scope to include meat and fish and could be
regarded as indicative of religiosity and lower-caste self-assertion at
the same time. It is worth recalling in this connection that caste
panchayats in northern Basti had decreed in January 1921 that fines
imposed at a standard rate of Rs 51 for each violation of this taboo
would have to be donated to the gaushala (asylum for cows).86
An example of this extension from one banned item to another is
provided by the widening of the scope of interdiction against ganja to
smoking and even chewing tobacco. It has been noticed above that
Gandhi's injunction against smoking chilum, by which he meant
ganja, could be regarded as applicable to smoking in general.87
Nos.
25—27 of our stories show how this process was worked out in
popular imagination. In No. 25 the ban on intoxicants (maadak
vastuven) by which is generally meant liquor, toddy and ganja is
already extended to surti—chewing tobacco. In that story divine
85
See pp. 12-13 above.
M Idem »7
See n. 57 above.
Gandhi as Mahatma 327
retribution helps to reform not only the culprit, but also the entire
village. In No. 26 the violation, and the punishment which follows,
has an impact not only on the village concerned but far beyond it.
The story from mauza Dewani (No. 27) about a tobacco-addict
frightened out of her wits in a dream may perhaps be read as a
measure of the way in which the interdiction against the use of
tobacco in any form had already been internalized.
In some cases (Nos. 22, 23, 43, 44) transgressors of dietary rules
suffer physical harm and pollution of various sorts. The notion of
pollution is articulated in a multi-faceted way, and for good reasons.
In popular Hinduism, as Lawrence Babb has argued recently...
. . . Pollution has certain physical embodiments. All body effluvia are
polluting, especially faeces, urine, body saliva, menstrual flow and afterbirth.
Products of dead cattle, especially beef and leather, are highly
polluting. Decaying things are polluting (a common rationale for considering
liquor to be mildly polluting: 'It's a rotten thing'). Corpses, or
anything having to do with death, are sources of extremely powerful
pollution.88
In our collection of stories the same polluting agents—worms (as
an embodiment of the idea of decay) or human faeces—are often
associated with rather different acts or items of food. Thus faeces is
associated in No. 19 with a curse for breaking a solemn promise, in
N o . 24 it is the consequence for abusing Gandhi and not conforming
to the local advice against smoking ganja, and in No. 45 it is seen as a
proof of and punishment for animal slaughter. Worms as polluting
agents are associated with fish (Nos. 22, 44), though the idea of a
miracle—live worms emerging from fish that had been fried or
roasted—is also present. However, in No. 26 worms figure as a kind
of calamity, while the frying of fish in No. 48 leads to the burning
of huts.
Punishments for wrongs done could be (as in No. 42 below) visited
on persons other than the actual wrong-doer. Thus in No. 46 the
spread of an epidemic is associated with violating the generally
accepted taboo against eating fish in a village near Pipraich. The
gratuitous suffering by a high-caste person for the sin committed by
another—the defilement of a Chaturvedi's house because of an attempt
at surti-eating by others (No. 25)—is a theme that is encountered in
other contexts as well. Thus Kashi Nath Tiwari of mauza Asiya Ahir
88
Lawrence A. Babb, Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India (New
York, 1975), p. 48. 328 Selected Subaltern Studies
wrote to the Swadesh in early April that in his village 'one person had
mixed water in milk, as a result of which the dahi (yoghurt) of several
notable persons was infested with worms'. One can hardly miss here
the echoes of a Brahmanical tradition going back to antiquity.89
D. Boons granted and/or miracles performed in the form of
manauti and the recovery of things lost
28. PanditJiwnandan Pathak from mauza Devkali, PO Bhagalpur
wrote, 'As a result of manauti of Mahatmaji a vessel of a
Musalman which had fallen into a well six months ago came up
on its owri\.
29. In Naipura village (Azamgarh), the long-lost calf of Dalku
Ahir returned to its peg as a result of the manauti of Mahatmaji.
Dalku Ahir has contributed the one rupee of the manauti to
the Swaraj Fund.
30. A gentleman from Ballia district wrote, 'In mauza Rustampur
a thaili (purse) of a gwala-sadhu containing Rs 90 had disappeared
from his hut. When he took manauti of Mahatmaji,
he found it back in his hut, and the money was intact'.
31. A well-known zamindar of mauza Samogar (tahsil Deoria)
had taken a minnat [manauti] of Bhagwatiji and offered a goat
as a sacrifice. Many took the meat zsprasad. After some time
the son of the zamindar found his hands stuck to his chest and
his wife went mad. It was only when the zamindar vowed to
contribute the price of the sacrificial goat to the National
School Fund and feast Brahmans that both the son and the
daughter-in-law began to feel well.
Boons granted and/or miracles performed in the form of regeneration
of trees and wells
32. 'In mohalla Humayunpur, Gorakhpur city, two dead trees
which had fallen in the garden of Babu Yugul Kishore, vakil,
have planted themselves back! Many believe that this is due to
the grace of Mahatmaji. This, because the person who cut the
trees said that if the pratap (spiritual power) of Mahatmaji was
89
Swadesh, 10 April 1921. The idea of die sins of the lower castes visiting the higher
castes is represented in its classic form in the Ramayana story of a Brahman child's
death caused by a Sudra's insistence on engaging in the purificatory rituals of tapasya in
order to attain a high degree of spiritual merit. For a Sudra to do so was to commit a
sin. So a Brahman had to pay for it.
Gandhi as Mahatma 329
saccha (genuine) the trees would stand up on their own!
Thousands gather at this site everyday and batashas (a kind of
sweetmeat), money and ornaments are offered by men and
women alike. It is said that the proceeds will be donated to the
Swarajya ashram and the Tilak Swaraj Fund'.90
33. 'A frail mango tree had been bent by a storm. As a matter of
fact its roots were not strong enough to withstand the weight
of its branches .. . Because of the storm some of the roots were
uprooted, but a part remained embedded in the ground. The
tree dried up in a few days. People began cutting its branches
and taking them home for fuel. As the weight of its branches
was now reduced, the tree straightened up either on its own,
or with the aid of some person. People proclaimed that [the]
fallen tree [had] planted itself back. A crowd soon gathered,
assuming the proportions of a mela (fair). They are now
offering flowers, batashas and money to the tree. It is said that
the tree has stood up because of the pratap of Gandhiji. The
educated are laughing at the mela, and this particular exemplification
of Indian beliefs'.91
34. A respected person from Basti district reported to the Swadesh
the following incidents: 'Two saplings have sprouted from the
khunta (peg) of a Mahua tree in Chakdehi village, two miles
from the Khalilabad station. This khunta had been fixed in the
month of Kartik (October-November), and every day the
bullocks of one Pandeji used to be tied to it. It is also rumoured
that a Chamar had seen a sapling coming out of the peg on an
earlier occasion, but his wife had plucked it out. Subsequently,
the Chamar was rebuked by some people. He then prayed to
the Mahatma: "Oh! Mahatmaji, if you are a true Mahatma,
then let another sapling sprout". And so it happened. Now
every day crowds of men and women are coming to the spot to
see the peg'.
35. 'In Basti town there lives a widow of Sri Raghubar Kasaudhan.
She had a son who died three years ago. Her late husband had
planted two mango trees; one was cut down some time back
and the other dried up a year ago. Fifteen days ago it began
sprouting fresh leaves. The old woman maintains that she had
taken a manauti of Mahatmaji: "This tree is the only nishani
90
Batsha: A light sweet-meat, in appearance like ratafia cakes.
91
GyanShakti, April 1921, p. 34. 330 Selected Subaltern Studies
(sign) of my late husband, let this tree live". A large crowd
gathers at this site as well'.
36. 'Last Saturday smoke started coming out of four or five wells
in Gorakhpur city. People exclaimed that the water had caught
fire: The whole city rushed to the spot. Some people drew
water from one well: it had the fragrance of keora (pandanus
odaratissimus). It is believed that this is also due to the 'pratap'
of the Mahatma! Some money etc. has also been offered to
the well'.92
37. 'Some days ago a major fire broke out in a village near the
Gorakhpur Civil Courts. The entire village was burnt down.
There is a nala (open drain) nearby. People started digging a
chaunra (katcha well) in the nala to get some wet clay and
water, but water was not struck even after digging several
cubits. It is said that in the end one person took the manauti of
the Mahatma. After this such a huge jet of water gushed out
that not only was the 16-17 cubit deep well filled up, but the
two adjacent garhas (depressions) were also submerged. Since
then thousands of men and women gather at the site. Flowers,
batashas and money are offered, they bathe and wash their
faces there and some even carry the water back to their homes'.93
38. 'There is a big depression (garha) to the south of Bulandpur
village [on the outskirts of Gorakhpur]. This garha is not less
than twenty-three feet deep. The water level in Gorakhpur is
around twenty-one feet. In some cases water is struck even
before this depth is reached. An eleven cubit rope is normally
used in these parts [to raise water from wells]. The present well
from which water gushed out was dug in this deep depression.
When water was struck it filled the chaunra to the brim. Now
a mela is taking place here. When a chaunra is dug in a deep
depression such an occurrence is only natural. The water level
in Gorakhpur is eleven cubits; if you so desire you may,
measure it. We have seen scores of such wells which, when
dug in a depression have been filled with water to the brim.
People are offering flowers, batashas and money at the [above
mentioned] well. They say that even this is an example of the
grace of Gandhiji. This well is now called "Gandhi Chaunra"
. . . Does one require this kind of intelligence for the attainment
of swaraj?'94
92
Sivadesh, 13 March 1921, p. 5. " Swadesh, 10 April 1921, p. 11.
94
Gyan Shakti, April 1921, p. 34.
Gandhi as Mahatma 331
39. 'The bhakts (devotees) have .. . offered Rs 23-8-12 in Mirzapur
Bazaar where water had come out on its own. Sri Chedi Lai
has arranged for this sum to be sent to the Gorakhpur Swaraj
Fund'.
40. The water of a well in Bikramjit Bazaar, tappa Belwa (Basti)
had a very foul smell. Two mahajans took a manauti of the
Mahatmaji. By morning the water had become pure.
41. 'Plague was raging through Sonaura village. People were living
in [outlying] huts. The water in a well at this place was so
shallow on 27 April that even a small drinking vessel (lota)
could not be fully submerged in it. Seeing this, one Misrji
offered to distribute Rs 5 in the name of Gandhiji. Subsequendy,
water began to rise slowly. By the afternoon of 28 April the
well had filled up to five cubits, the next day it was eleven
cubits deep'.
Once again we have in these stories the suggestion that the
Mahatma's image takes form within pre-existing patterns of popular
belief, and ritual action corresponding to these. In Nos. 28-30,
Gandhi is fitted into the widespread practice of taking a vow (manuati)
addressed to a god, a local godling or a saint on condition of the
removal of an affliction or the fulfilment of a wish. In No. 31 we have
an interesting development of this idea. Here the sacrifice of a goat in
accordance with a manauti to Bhagwatiji boomerangs—it brings
physical and mental suffering to the high-caste household of the
zamindar of Samogar. The penance required is not limited to the
traditional feasting of Brahmans; it now includes the donation of an
amount equivalent to the cost of the sacrificial goat to the National
School Fund.
The rational, if politically insensitive, explanations offered by the
anti-Congress Gyan Shatki with regard to the regeneration of trees
and wells (see Nos. 33 and 38) indicate the material basis for belief in
these miracles. On the other hand, a couple of stories (Nos. 49 and 50
in Appx III) not strictly connected with Gandhi point once again to
the existing stereotype of 'strange occurrences' in which the
Mahatma's name figures so very often. It is thus that the traditional
offerings made at the appearance of an image (No. 6) or at the site of a
miraculous tree (Nos. 32 and 33) or a well can so easily be transferred
to a nationalist fund.
The stories connected with wells (Nos. 36-41) which underline
their importance for irrigation and even more for supphes of drinking
water, call for some additional comments. The two major themes 332 Selected Subaltern Studies
here are, first, the taking of a manauti by a banker or a high-caste
person (usually a landlord) for the purification of drinking water
(Nos. 40 and 41), and secondly, the more common offering of
flowers, batasha and money to wells where water has appeared
miraculously. Both these are readily understandable once it is realized
that it was generally the bigger zamindars and bankers who invested
in the expensive construction of pukka (masonry) wells. This was a
highly ritualized activity in Gorakhpur and was described thus by a
local ethnographer towards the end of the nineteenth century:
When a man intends to sink a well he enquires an auspicious moment from
the Pandit to commence it. When that hour comes, he worships Gauri,
Ganesh, Shesh Nag, earth, the kudari (spade), and the nine planets. After
worshipping these deities the person himself begins to dig with the kudari
five times, facing the direction the Pandit has prescribed. Then the
labourers begin their work. When they have sunk, so far as to make water
appear, an auspicious moment is obtained to put the jamuat or wooden
support on whom [sic] the brick structure of the well rests in the well. At
the auspicious moment the person to whom the well belongs smears the
jamuat with red powder in five places and ties grass (dub) and thread
(raksha) on it, and then it is lowered down in the well. On this occasion a
fire sacrifice (homa/hawan) is performed and Brahmans are fed. When the
well has been sunk, cow-dung, cow-milk, cow-urine, cow-ghee, Ganges
water, leaves of tulsi plant and honey are put in it before its water is made
use of. Then a fire sacrifice (boma) is performed and Brahmans are fed.95
In Gorakhpur, according to the same informant, a mango tree was
usually 'married' to a well.96
Accounts from neighbouring Basti
district suggest that the construction of a pukka well was both a
communal and a ritual act. Neighbouring zamindars sent men,
women and children to collect wood for the firing and baking of
bricks, and the sattu, gur and liquor received by them were regarded
'in the light rather of a marriage feast than of remuneration'.97
The
'marriage' of the well to an image (jalotsarg) was preceded by the
carpenter spreading a cbaddar (sheet) on the wooden frame. Into this
the members of the brotherhood would throw coins of various
denomination ranging from one paisa to one rupee, depending on
their means and liberality. It was a measure of the importance of
ritual in the consecration of pukka wells in this region that the
95
Note by Ram Gharib Chaube, North Indian Notes and Queries, 3:12 (March
1894), no. 437.
96
North Indian Notes and Queries, 4:12 (March 1895), no. 437.
97
Statistical, Descriptive and Historial Account of the North Western Provinces, vi
(Allahabad, 1881), p. 595.
Gandhi as Mahatma 333
'regular cost' of constructing a well, eight feet wide and nineteen feet
deep, was reckoned to have been Rs 43 in the 1860s, while nearly
twice as much was spent on ceremonial expenses.98
As the settlement
officer reported from Rasulpur Ghaus, Basti, 'On account of the
expense the ceremony is often delayed one or two years, during
which time the family of the builder makes no use of the water*'.99
With this kind of worshipful attitude towards the construction of
masonry wells, the offerings of flowers and money to those spots
where water had appeared miraculously in the spring of 1921 and the
transference of these offerings to a nationalist fund appear as an
elaboration of existing ideas in a novel context. The practice of
Gandhi manauti, of his vrat and aradhana (fast and worship), and of
women begging alms in his name and making offerings of cooked
food (karahi charana), as noticed in some of the earlier stories, can all
be adduced as further instances of this process at work.100
98
The break-up was as follows:
Offering to family god
Given to Brahmins: 5 dhotees and 5 rupees
Given to head beldar, 1 dhoty and 1 rupee
Liquor for remaining beldars
Feast to Brahmins (5 to 20)
Given to Brahmins and workmen, 5 rupees and 5 dhotees
Marriage ceremony from 10 rupees to an unlimited amount
Total:
See Report on Pegunnah Rassolpore Ghaus, Appx L, in Gorakhpur-Bustee
Settlement Report, i (Allahabad, 1871), p. 48.
99
Idem
100
In a study of popular religion in a north Indian village it has been suggested that
the relationship between the devotees (bhakts) and the power-wielding deified beings
moves along the grid of Bhakti/Sewa: Krpa/Vardan. Faith (bhakti) leads to the mercy
(krpa) of the gods, while die sewa (service) of the devotees results in the granting of
boon (vardan). On the other hand, the mercy of the gods leads to faith, and the
accompanying boon results in further service (sewa) through the ritual of vrat (fast,
puja and bhakti). Powerful deities have the ability not only to remove immediate
distress, but are distinguished by their power to provide long-term shelter (sharan)
and even moksha (salvation). See Wadley.
While the idea of boons and removal of distress is present in the stories collected
above, the notion of the Mahatma providing sharan to his devotees seems to be absent,
probably because Gandhi has not been constructed yet as a full-fledged deity in his
own right. Rather, we have the suggestion that Gandhi, because of the fluidity of his
'powers', can stand in place of existing powerful beings and appropriate ritual actions
connected with their worship, without upsetting the existing hierarchy of the divine
and the deified.
Rs
1
9
1
0
11
9
50
82
125
annas
0
0
12
4
0
0
0
0
0 334 Selected Subakern Studies
The editor oi Swadesh reported in April 1921 that 'news [had] been
received from several places of women begging in the name of
Gandhiji as they did for Devi Bhawani and offering karahi [to him]'.
Women were also going round the threshing-floors, where the rabi
crop had just been gathered, and asking for donations of grain, again
to make offerings of karahi to the Mahatma.101
The contemporary
significance of the karahi ritual is somewhat unclear, though it appears
to have been associated with propitation and the bringing of luck.102
What is significant, in any case, is that this was an extension of a
practice related to the worship of Devi Bhawani and that begging at
the threshing-floor put the peasants under a moral obligation to
donate some grain in the name of the Mahatma at a time when a
surplus was readily available at the very site where it was being
processed. In fact a similar obligation was placed on peasants manufacturing
gur at the kolhuar as well: to turn a beggar away from a
place where so much raw sugar was being made was an undesirable
act which would seldom go unpunished.103
It is hardly surprising,
then, that the refusal of an Ahir in Nanusakh village (Azamgarh) to
offer some gur to a hungry sadhu who came begging to his kolhuar
(on 1 March 1921) was rumoured to have resulted within half an hour
in the gur and the two buffaloes of the Ahir being destroyed by
fire.104
The version of this story, as reported in the Swadesh, did not
mention Gandhi, although the Pioneer suggested that the sadhu was
asking for alms in the Mahatma's name. True or not, it is possible that
the Lucknow journal was not alone in associating him with this
particular episode.
101
Swadesh, 10 April 1921.
102
Prof. A. N. Pandeya (IIT, Delhi) informs me that the phrase 'karahi charana'
refers in his part of the district (Padrauna tahsil) to the practice of women offering
cake-like cooked food, prepared at the site of the local godling (usually female) in the
open under a tree. Devi Bhawani, according to Crooke, is a north Indian mother
goddess.
103
Grierson's account of the worship of Makkar or Makar Bir in Bihar by the
workmen of the kolhuar is worth recalling in this context. 'Near the place where the
cane is cut into slips the men make a round idol of the deity called makar bir . . . He is
said to have been originally a Dom, who once came to a sugar manufactory in the olden
time and asked for juice, which the people refused to give to him. Thereupon he
jumped into the boiler and was boiled to death. His spirit became deified, and is now
worshipped by the workmen . . .'. G. A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life (1885: reprint,
Delhi, 1975), pp. 55-6. The theme of suicide leading to the wrongdoer accepting his
fault and then propitating and worshipping the spirit of the deceased is a recurring one
in Indian folklore. See Crooke, pp. 191-5.
,04
Swadesh, 13 March 1921, p. 5.
Gandhi as Mahatma 335
VII
Taken together, these stories indicate how ideas about Gandhi's
pratap and the appreciation of his message derived from popular
Hindu beliefs and practices and the material culture of the peasantry.
Does not the fact of the reporting of these rumours in the local
nationalist weekly suggest that these were actively spread by interested
parties? It is true that such rumours enter our sources at the point
where a correspondent communicates them to the Swadesh. But that
need not be taken to mean that these did not exist prior to and
independent of their publication. Their generalized circulation in the
villages of Gorakhpur is also attested by their being reported and
denied in the local anti-nationalist monthly, Gyan Shakti.
There can be no doubt that the reporting of these rumours in the
local paper, Swadesh, must have added to their circulation and even
to their authenticity. Lefebvre in his study of rural panic in revolutionary
France observes how journalists imbued rumours 'with a
new strength by putting . . . them into print'.105
However, it seems
unlikely that printing could have changed the character of these
rumours to any significant degree; it merely increased their effectiveness
as oral and unauthored speech.106
People in the Gorakhpur
countryside believed in these not out of any unquestioning trust in
the weekly newspaper but because they accorded with existing beliefs
about marvels and miracles, about right and wrong.
In Indian villages even printed texts often revert to their oral
characteristics in the very process of communication. It has been
noted that newspapers, pamphlets, etc. are made intelligible to the
illiterate population in the countryside by reading aloud, paraphrasing
the text in the rustic dialect and commenting on it.107
In 'advanced
cultural communities', Vachek notes, written texts are taken 'as a sign
of the first order (i.e. the sign of an outside world)', the deciphering
of which requires 'no detour by way of spoken language'.108
It
seems that one of the reasons for the reading aloud of newspapers in
105
Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France
(London, 1973), p. 74.
106
For the characterization of rumour as oral and unauthored speech, see Ranajit
Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983),
Ch.6.
107
'Language Problem in the Rural Development of Nordi India', in Language in
Social Groups: Essays by John J. Gumperz (California, 1971), p. 19.
108
Josef Vachek, 'Some Remarks on Writing and Phonetic Transcriptions', in Eric
Hamp et al. (eds.), Readings in Linguistics, ii (Chicago, 1966), p. 155. -336 Selected Subaltern Studies
Indian villages is that even for a large part of the technically literate
population printed texts can be deciphered only by a detour through
the spoken language. In such readings, it seems reasonable to suggest, a
story acquires its authentication from its motif and the name of its
place of origin rather than from the authority of the correspondent. It
the n spreads by wor d of mouth , and derives its credibility from any
association, real or imaginary, it might have with place-names familiar
to the local population. 1 0 9
H o w did the local Congress leadership react to the spread of these
stories? Maulvi Subhanullah, the DC C President, while recounting
some of these to the Sessions Judge in June 1922, admitted that 'no
attempt was made by the Congress or Khilafat to prevent [the] public
from believing in them'. ! I0
Swadesh, the newspaper which published
these stories under the sanctimonious rubric bhakton ki bhavnain—
'beliefs of the devotees'—adopted a double-edged policy in this
regard. 1 1 1
On the one hand it published a note every now and then
debunking some of the mor e fanciful stories and also let its satirist,
Manna n Dwivedi, poke fun at them. On the other hand when
attacked by the Pioneer, it came up with a spirited defence of its
policy of printing these stories.
In March 1921 some people used the services of public criers to
announc e that 'Mahatmaji had emerged from fire [unhurt] and that
Swaraj had been established'. They went so far as to swear by the
truth of such statements. The editor of Swadesh promptly denounced
this as an irresponsible act which had no sanction from the Mahatma.
However, the same issue of the journal contained two columns of
Gandh i stories unde r the heading 'strange happenings'. Elsewhere in
the same issue Mannan Dwivedi, writing under the pen-name Shriyut
Muchanda r Nath , satirized some of these as follows:
It is true that a felled tree in the front of Babu Yugal Kishore's garden has
planted itself back and even sprouted leaves due to the grace of Mahatmaji.
See No . 32 above]. Every day lakhs of people come to see this [miracle],
109
Thus in Satyajit Ray's film, Ashani Sanket, the foreign place-name Singapore is
made meaningful to the peasants in a Bengal village by the suggestion that it is
somewhere near Midnapore!
110
Evidence, Chauri Chaura Trials, p. 556.
111
Dwivedi, when queried by the Court about these miracles, proffered little
information, and in fact maintained mat in his paper he had 'given a summary... of me
teaching of Mahatma Gandhi that he [was] not a god'. An extract from Navjivan in
which Gandhi disclaimed to be an avtar was printed by Swadesh on the front page of its
issue of 4 September 1921. See Evidence, Chauri Chaura Trials, p. 569.
Gandhi as Mahatma 337
as a result of.which crores of rupees are being collected. Therefore, due to
the efforts of Babu Krishna Prasad, neither will postal rates go up nor will
there be a deficit in the budget this year . . .
It was rumoured that a well in Gorakhpur was smelling of keora. [See
N o . 36]. Now it has been confirmed by the Khilafat Committee that Sri
Shiv Mangal Gundhi had emptied his karahs full of keora into the well, as
it is said that he is going to perform the last rites for his Sundar Shringar
Karyalay [a perfumary in the city] and is shortly to take up the running of
a [nationalist] press.' u
It is doubtful how many outside the city of Gorakhpur would have
understood Mannan Dwivedi's allusions or allowed satire to get the
better of belief. Even the editor of Swadesh, when pressed, could
write an impassioned defence of the peasant's acceptance of these
stories:
We do not consider . . . Swadesh to be the property (mirds) of its editor.
Therefore, we consider it as part of our duty to report the thoughts and
feelings current among the people (janta), whether right or wrong, in our
paper ... . It is possible that some people might doubt these strange
happenings, but the janta does not consider them so [improbable]. And
there is a reason for this. It is because Hinduism has placed faith and belief
(shraddha aur vishwas) on a high footing. It is because of this that those
who worship stone images have their prayers answered. It is because of
this that people take a dip in the holy waters of Gangaji and think that
their sins have been washed away. In every age and country, every now
and then, such things have happened. Even in the time of the Buddha,
Mohammad and Christ such miracles were supposed to have taken place.
Then we see no reason why miracles (chamatkar) should not be associated
with Mahatma Gandhi whose name is perhaps even better known in India
than that of Ram and.Sita. It has been said: 'Vishwaso [sic]phaldayakah':
faith yields fruit.
'jaki rahi bhavana jaisi,
prabhu moorat dekhi tin taisi'.'
,3
The editor of Swadesh, who had himself sought to inculcate an
attitude of devotion in the district towards the Mahatma,114
had thus
no hesitation in printing rumours about the latter's pratap. It was
only when these appeared to instigate dangerous beliefs and actions,
such as those concerning demands for the abolition of zamindari,
reduction of rents or enforcement of just price at the bazaars, that the
journal came out with prompt disclaimers.115
112
Swadesh, 10 April 1921, p. 5.
113
'Bhakton ki Bhavnain', editorial note, Swadesh, 1 May 1921. Whatever faith one
has, the image of god appears accordingly.
1,4
Cf. pp. 17-18 above.
"
s
SeeSwadesh, 18Sept. 1921,p. 8;6March 1921,p. 12. 338 Selected Subaltern Studies
VIII
Just as the Mahatma was associated in Gorakhpur with a variety of
miraculous occurrences, so did his name lend itself as a label for all
sorts of public meetings, pamphlets—and of course for that polysemic
word Swaraj. Surveying the background to the Chauri Chaura riot,
the judges of the Allahabad High Court found it 'remarkable... how
this name of "Swaraj" was linked, in the minds of the peasantry of
Gorakhpur, with the name of Mr Gandhi. Everywhere in the evidence
and in statements made .. . by various accused persons', they found
that 'it was "Gandhiji's Swaraj", or the "Mahatmaji's Swaraj" for
which they [i.e. the peasants] were looking'.,16
'Announcements in
Urdu' were sold by Lai Mohammad, one of the principal accused in
the Chauri Chaura case, as 'Gandhi papers' which were to be preserved
and produced 'when Gandhiji asked for . . . [them]'. The receipt for
donations to the Khilafat fund, which bore a superficial resemblance
to a one-rupee bank note, was referred to as a 'Gandhi note' by the
peasants of Gorakhpur. The editor of Gyan Shakti, to whom we owe
this information, alleged that villagers interpreted its non-acceptance
(as legal tender?) as an act of opposition to the Mahatma.117
Whether
peasants genuinely failed to recognize the difference (as officials.in
some Awadh districts implied),'18
or whether this was just a conscious
manipulation of an ambiguous printed paper to force non-believers
into acceptance, we do not know for certain. What is clear, however,
is that we have in the 'Gandhi note' an index of the popular tendency
to look upon the Mahatma as an alternative source of authority. We
have it on lotal testimony that peasant volunteers proceeding to a
sabba at Dumri on the morning of 4 February 1922 (hours before the
historic clash with the police was to occur at the Chaura thana a
couple of miles away), claimed that they were 'going to hold a
Gandhi Mahatma Sabha' which would bring about 'Gandhi Swaraj'.'19
The popular notion of 'Gandhiji's Swaraj' in Gorakhpur appears
to have taken shape quite independently of the district leadership of
1,6
Appeal No. 51 of 1923: King Emperor vs. Abdullah and others. Judgement of
the Allahabad High Court, dated 30 April 1923, p. 9, High Court Archives, Allahabad.
The evidence about Lai Mohammad in the next sentence comes from the testimony of
Shikari before the Sessions Judge, p. 1.
117
Gyan Shakti, Feb. 1921, p. 404.
118
See for instance the official handbill 'Khabardar', issued by the Dy. Commr. of
Rae Bareli, encl. in Jawaharlal Nehru Papers, Pt II, File 120, NMML.
1
" Evidence of Mindhai, cultivator of Mahadeva, and Birda, cultivator of Bale,
Chauri Chaura Trials, pp. 512-13.
Gandhi as Mahatma 339
the Congress party. As the High Court judges observed, the local
peasantry 'perceived of it [Swaraj] as a millenium in which taxation
would be limited to the collection of small cash contributions or dues
in kind from fields and threshing floors, and [in] which the cultivators
would hold their lands at little more than nominal rents'.120
During
the course of the trial the district Congress and Khilafat leadership
repeatedly denied having propagated any such ideas in the villages. In
fact there is evidence that as early as March 1921 public proclamations
about the advent of Swaraj were being made in the Gorakhpur
countryside. These, as we have noted above, were denounced by the
Congress paper Swadesh. The pro-landlord Gyan Shakti drew pointed
attention to such occurrences as ominous signs which boded ill for all
concerned:
One night people from all the villages [!] kept awake and roamed over five
villages each. That night it was impossible to get any sleep. They were
shouting 'Gandhiji ki jai'. They had dhol, tasa, jhal, majiras (kettledrums
and cymbals) with them. The din thus caused was unbearable. People
were shouting, this is the drum of swaraj (swaraj ka danka). Swaraj has
been attained. The English had taken a bet with Gandhiji that they would
grant Swaraj if Gandhiji could come out of fire [unhurt]. Gandhiji took
hold of the tail of a calf and went through fire. Now Swaraj has been
attained. It was also announced that now only four annas or eight annas a
bigha would have to be paid in rent. We have also heard that some
peasants are insisting that they will not pay more than eight annas a bigha
as rent.
These rumours are signs of an impending clash between the peasants
and the landlords. As a result of this both parties shall suffer. Sensible
(parhe-likhe) peasants, landlords and the government should refute such
rumours. Remember this! If ordinary people retain their belief in such
rumours and persist in their quest for the chimerical then the attainment of
Swaraj will become increasingly distant. Peasants are now refusing to
obey their landlords, or work for them. This is not a good sign for the
country.121
Quite clearly this was a miracle (Gandhi's passage through fire)
consistent with the existing level of peasant consciousness and its foil
in Utopian hopes for a world free of rents—a far cry these from
120
Judgement, Allahabad High Court, p. 9.
121
'Swaraj ka Danka: Char Anna Malguzari: Zamindaron ki Chinta', Gyan Shakti,
April 1921, pp. 34-5. This rumour, which had originated in the villages of the
south-eastern tahsil of Deoria, spread to the neighbouring district of north Bihar and
underwent a transformation in the process. It was rumoured here that Gandhi Baba, a
cow, a Brahman and an Englishman had been put to an ordeal by fire, and only the
Englishman had got burned. People were to pass on this story to five other villages on
pain of incurring the sin of killing five cows. Cited in Henningham, p. 100. 340 Selected Subaltern Studies
official Congress policy—which marked the irruption of Swaraj that
night in Gorakhpur villages.122
However, as local-level volunteer
activity entered a more militant phase in late 1921, the coming of
Swaraj was perceived—contrary to anything the Congress stood for
at that time—in terms of the direct supplanting of the authority of the
police123
(just as the earlier notion of divine punishment for opposition
to the Gandhian creed was replaced by the idea that it was for the
panchayats themselves to dispense justice in such cases). Thus Sarju
Kahar, the personal servant of the murdered thanedar of Chaura,
testified that 'two or four days before the affair [he] had heard that
Gandhi Mahatma's Swaraj had been established, mat the Chaura
thana would be abolished, and that the volunteers would set up their
own thana'.124
According to Harbans Kurmi of Mangapatti, Narayan,
Baleshar and Chamru of his village said on their return from the riot
that 'they had burnt and thrown away and Swaraj had come'.125
Or as
Phenku Chamar told the Sessions Judge in August 1922:
Bipat Kahar, Sarup Bhar and Mahadeo Bhuj were coming along calling
out 'Gandhi Maharaj Gandhi Maharaj' from the north, the direction of
Chaura, to [the] south, the direction of Barhampur. I asked why they
were calling out 'Gandhi Maharaj' and they said the thana of Chaura had
been burnt and razed to the ground [by them] and the Maharaj's swaraj
had come.126
IX
Corresponding to this dramatic change in the manifestation of
'Gandhiji's Swaraj', there was for the peasant volunteers of Chauri
Chaura a transformation in the spirit of that ubiquitous cry, 'Gandhi
Maharaj ki jai', as well. We have noticed how this cry had assumed an
audacious overtone during Gandhi's return journey from Gorakhpur
in February 1921.127
Within a month, as the 'Swaraj ka danka'
episode suggests, xhejaikar of Gandhi had become a militant avowal
of the organized strength of peasant volunteers, a cry which mobilized
122
The belief in an impending Swaraj was no doubt related to Gandhi's utterances
on this point, though its signs were far from Gandhian.
123
See 'Some Instances of the highhanded mediods of Non-Cooperation
Volunteers', encl. to Bihar Govt, letter dated, 5 Dec. 1921, Home Poll. File 327/1/
1922, NAI.
124
Tajwiz Awwal, Chauri Chaura Trials, p. 358.
125
Chauri Chaura Trials, p. 525.
126
Chauri Chaura Trials, p. 516.
127
See pp. 19-20 above.
Gandhi as Mahatma 341
and struck terror in the hearts of waverers and enemies alike.128
For
the peasants of north India this had ceased in effect to be a Gandhian
cry; it was now a cry with which an attack on a market or a thana was
announced. 'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai' had, in this context, assumed
the function of such traditional war cries as 'Jai Mahabir' or 'Bam
Bam Mahadeo'. An interesting case of such a transformation is
provided by the following intelligence report from Bara Banki:
The big Mahadeo Fair near Ramnagar passed off quiedy, though the
extensive substitution of Gandhi ki jai for the orthodox Bam Bam Mahadeo
was noticeable even when there were no government officer[s] present.l29
The crowd of Badhiks (a so-called 'criminal tribe') that looted the
Tinkonia Bazaar in Gorakhpur on 15 February 1921, did so to the cry of
'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai'. In a small fair at Auraneshwarghat in Bara
Banki a dispute with halwais (confectioners) on 22 February 1922 led to
the upsetting and looting of sweetmeat and other stalls 'to the accompaniments
of shouts of Mahatma Gandhi kijai aur mitbai le leu'.*30
Thus a 'jaikar' of adoration and adulation had become the rallying
cry for direct action. While such action sought to justify itself by a
reference to the Mahatma, the Gandhi of its rustic protagonists was
not as he really was, but as they had thought him up. Though deriving
their legitimacy from the supposed orders of Gandhi, peasant actions
in such cases were framed in terms of what was popularly regarded to
be just, fair and possible. As an official reply to the question of
haat-looting in north Bihar in the winter of 1921 stated:
The evidence in the possession of the Government leaves no doubt that
the haat-looting was directly connected with the state of excitement and
unrest produced by the non-co-operation agitation. The persons who
started the loot first of all asked the price of rice, or cloth or vegetables or
whatever me particular article might be, and when the price was mentioned,
alleged that Gandhi had given the order that the price should be so much,
usually a quarter of the current market rate. When the shopkeepers
refused to sell at lower prices, they were abused and beaten and thenshops
were looted.131
128
This transformation was similar to what the cry 'Sita Ram' had been undergoing
in the villages of Awadh at about the same time. See Pandey, 'Peasant Revolt and
Indian Nationalism', pp. 169-70.
,2» PAI, 1 March 1922.
130
Idem; King Emperor vs. Badloo Badhik and odiers, Trial no. 25 of 1921, Judgement by the Sessions Judge, Gorakhpur, 30 April 1921.
131
Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council Debates, 8 March 1921, i, p. 293. There
was a rumour current in Gorakhpur villages as well, that wheat, rice and clodi would
become cheaper because of the 'order of Mahatma Gandhi'. See Gyan Shakti, Feb.
1921, p. 405. 342 Selected Subaltern Studies
Ther
e wa
s thu
s n
o singl
e authorize
d versio
n o
f th
e Mahatm
a to
whic
h th
e peasant
s o
f eastern U
P an
d nort
h Bihar may b
e sai
d t
o have
subscribe
d i
n 1921
. Indee
d thei
r idea
s abou
t Gandhi'
s 'orders' and
'powers' wer
e ofte
n at varianc
e wit
h thos
e o
f th
e loca
l Congress
-
Khilafa
t leadershi
p an
d clashe
d wit
h th
e basi
c tenet
s o
f Gandhism
itself. Th
e violenc
e a
t Chaur
i Chaur
a wa
s roote
d i
n thi
s paradox.
Appendi
x I Appendix II 346 Selected Subaltern Studies
Notes to the Map
Legend
f Places where lecturers were sent to announce the arrival of Gandhi.
• Places from where volunteers came to Gorakhpur on 8 February 1921 to
help with the organization of the meeting.
* Approximate locale of Gandhi-stories reported in Swadesh.
Note
This is a rough and tentative sketch map which makes no claim to be entirely
accurate. Not all the unmetalled roads as they existed in 1921 have been
shown. In a majority of cases it has been possible to locate the villages by
checking place-names mentioned in Swadesh with the Village Directory of
the North-Western Provinces, xxi, Gorakhpur (Allahabad, 1893), compiled
by the Postmaster-General NWP. Where the village concerned does not
appear in the district and tahsil maps, I have hypothetically situated it near
the Post Office which served it. However, in spite of my best efforts I must
inevitably have fallen into a degree of error in those instances where, for
instance, the text does not mention either the tappa or the Post Office,
especially if its name was identical with that of any other village or villages.
However, it seems to me that even if the marking of villages from which a
particular 'story' originated may not be cartographicaUy accurate in all cases,
a rough placement may be of some use in indicating the locale of a story and
the territory generally traversed by a rumour. The geographical coverage of
rumours outside Gorakhpur district has not been indicated, except by a
rough marking for some of the places in Basti district.
Appendix III
Some 'extraordinary occurrences* in Gorakhpur,
1921, other than those ostensibly related to
Mahatma Gandhi.
Motif: Opposing the Gandhian creed
42. 'A Koiri of mauza Tandwa forcibly brought a woman to a
village and kept her in his house. Far from reprimanding and
punishing him the men of the village offered their congratulations.
Consequendy, the harvested crops of the villagers kept
at a common threshing-floor caught fire and were reduced to
ashes'.
43. 'Pandit Madho Shukl of Kakarahi village (tahsil Bansgaon)
continued to eat meat despite the attempts by his family to
dissuade him. One day a trunk kept between two others in the
house caught fire. Seeing this his wife raised an alarm and
people from the village rushed to the house. Now Panditji has
promised not to touch meat again'.
44. 'In Sinhanjori village (PO Kasia) hundreds of live worms
emerged out of the fish fried by Shankar Kandu. Seeing this
the entire village has given up meat and fish [rnans-machlif.
45. 'In Kurabal village shit rained in the house of a Bari (caste of
domestic servants) for a whole day, and he is now living in
another's house. On enquiry he has confessed to his crime
(dosh)of slaughtering a goat'.
46. 'A gentleman from mauza Patra (PO Pipraich) writes that
people of the village had given up the practice of eating meat
and fish. However, on the instigation of a karinda some
people caught fish in a shallow ditch and ate it up. Since then
an epidemic has spread here; ten people have been swallowed
by death (kaal ke graas ho gaye)m five days'.
47. 'A Muslim toddy-tapper of Padrauna was told by a Master
sahab to give up this practice. One day he fell down from the
tree. As a result of this incident all the Muslims are giving up
toddy-tapping'. 348 Selected Subaltern Studies
48. 'The building of the Punjab Sugar Mill, Ghughli was being
constructed. On 4 March, a few of the memars (construction
workers) went to the bazaar of the Mahant and despite the
attempt by some people to prevent them, they bought fish and
drank toddy. When they sat down at night to fry the fish their
huts caught fire. They had to sleep out in the open, with dew
falling on them. That very night it rained and hail fell as well.
In the morning the news came that their homes had also caught
fire. What could they do? Crying and repenting they went
back to their respective homes'.
Motif: Boons and Miracles
49. 'In mauza Surdahi (PO Sahjanwa), a branch has come out at
one end of a dead-and-cut pipal tree. Huge crowds are
gathering at this sight'.
50. 'In Padrauna on 29 April, two new springs sprouted in a well
three feet above the water level. Now the source of the spring
has gone down because of the rise in the water level. For the
past three days large crowds have been gathering at the site
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