Gandhi’S Technique of Mass Mobilization

By Madan Mohan Verma

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lived during a time of intense struggle, but he envisioned a world where people could live in harmony.
Madan Mohan Verma explores how he appealed to such a diverse population in the second edition of his landmark book exploring Gandhis techniques. Learn how Gandhi:
cultivated the loyalty of the Indian masses;
trusted his instincts in determining how the masses felt;
combined the best values of Indian culture;
reconciled the conflicting interests of the haves and have-nots.
While some have attributed a sort of mysticism to Gandhis leadership, its dangerous to assign him supernatural powers. His methods were commonly used by leaders in the Western worldbut few could duplicate his skill in applying them.
Gandhi used to say, My life is my message. Therefore, when researching his techniques, its critical to turn to his life to understand the ideals he stood for and how he worked toward and promoted a richer concept of democracy.
Explore how the greatest leader of modern times launched a revolution and gained influence over the masses with this in-depth account highlighting Gandhis Technique of Mass Mobilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482873412

Madan Mohan Verma

Madan Mohan Verma is professor and chair of religious harmony at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Education in Rajasthan, India. He’s also the author of Bhagavad Gita: A Perspective, and Gandhi’s Techniques of Mass Mobilization, both published by Partridge.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Madan Mohan Verma.

ISBN:      Hardcover        978-1-4828-7343-6

                Softcover         978-1-4828-7342-9

                eBook              978-1-4828-7341-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Philosophical Basis

1.   Tolerance

2.   Hinduism

3.   Ends and Means

4.   The Land Belongs to All

Interaction

1.   The Buddha

2.   Tagore

3.   Jawaharlal Nehru

4.   Influence on Gandhi

5.   Thoreau

6.   Ruskin

7.   Tolstoy

8.   J. S. Mill

9.   Kant

10.   Bentham

11.   Marx

12.   Laski

Techniques - I

1.   Satyagraha and Satyagrahis

2.   Axioms of Non-violence44

3.   Conditions for Success45

4.   Qualifications for Satyagrahis58

5.   Rules for the Satyagrahi69

Techniques – II

1.   Leadership

2.   Response from other Leaders

3.   Approach to Religion

4.   Hindu-Muslim Unity

5.   Harijans

6.   Propaganda

7.   Not Mere Speeches

8.   Conferences

9.   Padayatra

10.   Press

11.   Constructive Program

12.   Ashrams

13.   Women

14.   Education

15.   Prayer and Fasting

16.   Fasts Undertaken by Gandhi

17.   Silence

18.   Dispelling Fear

19.   Loss of Property

20.   Risk of Life

21.   Hartal

22.   Social Ostracism

23.   Picketing

24.   Approach to Economic Questions

25.   Bread Labor

26.   Swadeshi

27.   Khadi in Dress

28.   Charkha

29.   Rural Economy

30.   Transform Capitalism

31.   Trusteeship

32.   Industrial Relations

33.   Code of Conduct for Workers164A

34.   Labor Unions and Code of Conduct for Strikers

35.   Conditions for Successful Non-violent Strikes165

36.   Ahmedabad Textile Labor Association

Application

1.   Fight against Untouchability

2.   Concrete and Limited Objective

3.   Recruitment of Indian Labor

4.   Champaran

5.   Ahmedabad Labor Satyagraha

6.   Kaira

7.   Rowlett Bills

8.   Khilafat Movement

9.   Khilafat and Swaraj

10.   The Prince’s Visit

11.   Vaikom Satyagraha

12.   The Contemplated Bardoli Civil Disobedience

13.   Lahore Congress

14.   Civil Disobedience Movement

15.   Salt Satyagraha

16.   Quit India

17.   Twenty-one Day Fast

Conclusion

Glossary

Select Bibliography

Towards

Freedom for All

Justice for All

Preface

The present study seeks to identify Gandhi’s techniques of mass mobilization and struggle. It is an enquiry into the nature of his methods in leadership. It is indisputable that he controlled and led the Indian masses for nearly three decades, and that is evidently supported by the facts of history.

The present study, however, does not purport to examine the extent of actual success achieved by Gandhi in transforming the Indian society. It is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to measure the actual success achieved by him in absolute terms. The scope of the present study has, therefore, been deliberately and carefully confined to Gandhi’s techniques of mass mobilization and struggle.

Gandhi himself did not bother much about the ultimate goal. He ventured to put the masses on the right path as far as he could understand it. He had adopted techniques, which varied from time to time and situation to situation, in giving the Indian masses a specific direction. He did not present his techniques in the form of impersonal, religious, or moral codes but as a series of personal experiments. Gandhi never claimed either finality or universal validity for his methods. His techniques were inspired by and directed towards the solution of the immediate problems.

Hardly had any Indian leader ever touched the masses’ mind as deeply as Gandhi did during his own lifetime. S. Radhakrishnan said, ‘Gandhi’s voice had penetrated deep into the hovels of obscure villages in the country and reached the ears of the lowest of the low.’ When he travelled from place to place wearing only a loincloth, thousands of people ran to get a darshan of Gandhi, and many prostrated themselves on his feet.

Motilal Nehru frankly conceded to Gandhi, ‘Our difficulty is that in politics you beat us at our own game.’ Later, Jawaharlal Nehru expressed to Gandhi, ‘but even in the wider sphere, am I not your child in politics’. [Nehru to Gandhi, 23 January 1928, in S. Gopal (ed.), Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol.3, (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1976) pp. 18-19.]

There are a few leaders in human history who appealed to all sections of the diverse population as Gandhi did. He rose above all conflicts and envisaged perfect harmony in the midst of diversity. What made other leaders, each one of whom was a hero in his own right, look up to Gandhi as the best of them and the best part of each one of them? What was the secret of his amazing hold over the minds and loyalties of the Indian masses? What was the secret of his influence?

The alien imperialist had sought to ridicule Gandhi as a ‘half-naked fakir’. But the scoffer did not realize what he regarded as cause for ridicule was, in fact, the secret of Gandhi’s hold over the Indian masses.

Gandhi had a deep insight into the mass psyche. He was always with the masses as one of them. He served the Indian people, whom internal discord and moral degradation had condemned to political subjection and poverty. Gandhi felt that in order to raise them morally, economically, and spiritually, it was essential to infuse in them a spirit of self-respect and self-reliance in their struggle against the exploiters. Gandhi was a fairly accurate student of human nature, having studied it in all its shades and casts. His long experience as a Satyagraha leader, his extensive tours of India, his contact with the vast masses, and the intimate correspondence that he kept for more than half a century with men and women in India and outside, gave him a profound grasp of mass psyche.

Gandhi sought to transform India’s weakness into a source of strength by transmuting the inertia which had gripped the Indian masses. He perceived fatalism and passivity in the Indian populace but charted for them a new political function.

Gandhi liberated four hundred millions of his countrymen from armed tyranny after an unprecedented and unparalleled struggle. In fact, Gandhi wanted to liberate man from other thralls, other shackles in social, economic, cultural, and spiritual spheres too. It is this integrated and basic approach to man as a whole that distinguishes Gandhi from most other leaders of mankind. The other leaders are remembered only in the context of the freedom movement. On the other hand, Gandhi is a world figure who joins the rank of saints, political philosophers, and revolutionaries of the highest order.

The leader must have his finger on the pulse of his followers. The leader cannot afford to have a chasm between himself and the people. Gandhi clearly stated, ‘My faith in the people is boundless. Their’s is an amazingly responsive nature.’ It was a remarkable feature of Gandhi’s leadership that he was able to lead and direct great mass movements. The response of the masses was unprecedented and almost unbelievable. India found in Gandhi a unique leader who had no enemy, who created no enemy, who was totally committed to his people, who depended on the people for his movement. The hallmark of his leadership was his tact and understanding of men and situations.

The purpose of this study is to present in a logical form the techniques, tactics, and strategy, which Gandhi adopted to mobilize the masses for immediate goals. The achievement of immediate goals was the prerequisite to the achievement of ultimate goals. Gandhi wanted to proceed systematically and scientifically. A study of the Gandhian techniques of mass mobilization and struggle is a fascinating topic of research, though arduous an effort. It is essential to take a look at the panorama of freedom struggle while trying to appreciate Gandhism in totality. This study has been conducted in a spirit of enquiry into understanding Gandhi’s techniques of mass mobilization and struggle. It is grounded in history, but it is not a historical study. It is an enquiry into the nature and method of Gandhi’s leadership.

The difficulty arises because Gandhi refuses to separate ends from means. He adopted this method for two reasons. First, it was not his object to propound a strategy or a bizarre approach for physical mobilization. Second, he drew his technique of action from what he perceived as absolute truths and developed them in and through his contact with life and people.

Gandhi’s spoken and written words, studied along with his action, revealed fully and clearly his techniques of mass mobilization and struggle. Gandhi used to say, ‘My life is my message.’ Therefore, while re-searching Gandhi’s techniques, one must naturally turn to his life and perceive the ideals he stood for. The key to an understanding of the Gandhian techniques lies in his mode of action, viz., Satyagraha and his lofty goal of sarvodaya—the good of all—leading to Ramrajya, a fuller and richer concept of people’s democracy.

The second edition of Gandhi’s Technique of Mass Mobilization is a revised and restructured presentation. Gandhi as a subject of study will always remain new and original as it throws open new insight and understanding, when read deeply and followed truthfully. Gandhi remains the most unique seeker and crusader of truth for a genuine reader. It is interesting to learn how Gandhi got the highest degree of enlightenment and how he enhanced it by his experiments with truth. Gandhi is knowledge and action personified. The second edition of this book is a restructured version of the first edition. It is being published with the confidence that Gandhism will forever remain a stimulus to create a spiritual atmosphere in human relationships.

Introduction

Gandhi has sometimes been spoken of as the interpreter of India to the outside world, but it is equally true and even more significant that he was the interpreter of India to herself. He knew that the true heart of India resided not in her sophisticated and westernized cities but in her seven hundred thousand villages. And it was to this core that he addressed his appeal. Through his techniques, he mobilized the masses as no one had ever done before in Indian history.

‘To wipe out tear from every eye’ was the great object to which Gandhi dedicated his life. This was the idea which dominated his mind and the purpose underlying all his actions. Naturally, he wanted everybody to concentrate on the service and well-being of his fellow countrymen. All his techniques of mass mobilization and struggle were a rational and moral expression of this inner urge.

Gandhi believed that he was born to show people the better way. He said, ‘God has chosen me as His instrument for presenting non-violence to India.’l

He further stated: ‘It was his mission to convert every Indian and finally the whole world to non-violence for regulating mutual relations whether political, economic, religious or social. There is no other way of purging the whole world of evil…’²

‘The whole of my activity is directed to that end,’³ said Gandhi. He was an activist and a practical philosopher. He was a contemplative man of action and not an ivory tower theorist. Gandhi’s mind was in essence not mystic but prophetic. Gandhi’s idealism was not utopian. He was no ‘ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings in the void.’ He claimed to be a practical idealist.⁴ He showed how goodness could be made effective, how good ethics must be good politics and vice versa. And what was moral was also practical. ‘He was a politician and social worker.’⁵

Gandhi was concerned not so much with the philosophical explanation of evil as with the specific kinds of evil, political, social, and economic. ‘I know too’, Gandhi wrote, ‘that I shall never know God if I do not wrestle with and against evil’ even at the cost of life itself. All through his long public life, his preoccupation had been a relentless war against evil. In this crusade, he devised a new moral strategy. His techniques were concerned with regulating along non-violent lines, the group life, in its political, economic, national, and international spheres.

One of the epoch-making events in the saga of Indian national movement was Gandhi’s entry into Indian politics in 1916. It has been considered and described as dramatic by some historians. The Congress historians described Gandhi’s entry as revolutionary and dramatic.

Prior to Gandhi, i.e., before 1916, the base of politics in India was relatively narrow. It was termed as ‘council politics’. Not much had been done to bring the masses into the mainstream of the national movement. It was Gandhi, who, for the first time, brought different sections of the society into the forefront of Indian politics. He brought the much-needed conversion in Indian politics, which was long overdue in Indian history. He was able to achieve all this mainly because of his deep understanding of men and situations.

Gandhi’s revolutionary genius lay ‘firstly in the intuitive recognition of the situation as revolutionary, which could not be solved either by constitutional agitation or by terrorist methods, but by direct action, and secondly, in finding out method of direct action, suited to a disarmed people to meet a revolutionary situation.’⁶

Gandhi put focus on pepole’s grievances and exposed injustice. He suggested the way out in a simple form and manner. Naturally, he caught the imagination of the masses. He became the symbol of the masses and finally succeeded in involving them in Indian politics.

Gandhi was the first leader in Asia and Africa, who stood against the White colonial races and fought for human dignity. In this regard, he was the pioneer of Afro-Asian awakening. Gandhi was the greatest leader, who was venturing to liberate four hundred millions of his countrymen from the armed tyranny of alien rule after an unprecedented and unparalleled war, which made no resort to force, violence, or bloodshed. He mobilized one and all. He could defy the whole might of an unjust empire … and lay the foundation for that empire’s fall …’⁷ Gandhi ‘was far ahead of his surroundings’.⁸

The above interpretation gives Gandhi the image of a charismatic leader, who enjoyed boundless loyalty of the Indian masses. However, this interpretation and the resultant image of Gandhi were disputed by another group of historians. According to them, Gandhi was not the first mass leader. Before him, several leaders had tried to broaden the base of Indian politics. Tilak in the first decade of the twentieth century made efforts to involve the masses in the western part of India. Nonetheless, too much religious emphasis had kept a particular section of the society away from the mainstream.

The Marxist historians hold that India’s freedom struggle was nothing but the struggle of the Indian bourgeoisie. By the time of Gandhi’s entry, the discontent from the capitalist and colonial exploitation had percolated to lower levels of the petty bourgeoisie. In order to save their class interest, the various sections of this upstart bourgeoisie had united themselves under the leadership of Gandhi. Thus, it was a bourgeois struggle, manned and organized by the bourgeoisie themselves.

R.P. Dutt states that Gandhi’s entry and his subsequent achievements as a mass leader were mainly because the Indian bourgeoisie found in him a sort of mascot. Bipin Chandra is of the opinion that Gandhi was successful mainly because he brought about a broader democratization of the basically bourgeois movement.

However, it is difficult to accept the Marxist historians’ interpretation in its totality since it does not give an adequate answer to the spontaneous response and participation of the masses.

The Indian public life was undergoing a change at a speed, much faster than ever before, under the impact of the West. Different groups in the social set-up began to reassert and realign in order to make place for themselves in the fast changing life. Those changes, in the balance of power, were manifested in various ways and one such way was institutional politics.

The middle class in India was essentially different from its European counterpart, in being virtually unconnected with the capitalist forms of trade, industry, or agriculture. The process of broadening of the national base from 1919 onwards necessitated the spread of political consciousness among different sections of the masses. In the broader Indian context, social classes, based on economic categories, had not yet come into existence. It would, therefore, be lopsided to interpret this particular phase of Indian history from the point of view of one class of the society.

The Cambridge historians maintain that Gandhi’s entry in Indian politics and his techniques of mass mobilization and struggle may be understood from the perspective material interests of a certain section of the society, i.e., the English-educated Indians. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, they had joined the institutional politics in order to register their grievances and problems. By 1915, the politics of institutionalism had reached its limit. It was imperative to reach and wake up the millions, who had lived far beyond the political camp, in order to rescue the style of institutional politics. That was the task, which Gandhi was destined to undertake.

It was possible that Gandhi had remained a public worker in a small world, but World War I served as a watershed in Gandhi’s own career in Indian politics. The war reacted directly as an agent of change due to its economic impact on India. It forced up prices, caused economic dislocation, and precipitated government controls on trade and prices, creating a situation whereby people outside the political field started feeling the pinch of hardship.

As a result, the masses became favorably inclined to participation in the new form of public activity in order to protect themselves in the changing environment. Indirectly, the war caused deeper changes in the society due to its pressure on the Raj. The war in Europe needed to secure India as the backdoor of the British Empire and a major source of troops. To do so, they planned a further devolution of power to contain growing public discontent and to attract collaborators, who would provide a stable foundation to their rule.

To start with, Gandhi got involved in fighting the local wrongs at Champaran, Kheda, and Ahmedabad. But there was a prospect of working on a larger scale and coming face to face with the established politicians and the Raj. Only when wrongs occurred, which were not confined to a particular locality and yet appeared to be within his compass, or when opportunity offered ‘to spread his vision of true Swaraj before a large audience, an incentive was provided to Gandhi by the relationship between the Raj at war and the members of a political nation.’ When the Raj had created certain issues on far wider a scale than those confined to particular localities, which were considered to be wrong, Gandhi was bound to try to redress them.

In the beginning, a sort of ambivalence was apparent in his relationship with other politicians. He pitted himself into a single political camp because of his new ideology and method of work. He did not want to confront other politicians on their own ground. The other politicians could not afford to overlook Gandhi because he came to be recognized as a leader of a big following, having a potential for a new leadership.

Gandhi chose to enter the world of politics in which there were many occasions for transition from local to national leadership and one such occasion was Satyagraha against the Rowlatt Bills. The Rowlatt Satyagraha projected Gandhi as an all-India leader with immense potential. His personality, his novel approach to politics, and his new techniques of struggle enabled him to become the focus of multifarious local grievances, and gave him an access to the power, which they had generated. If he were to realize this potential, he had to lead and be the mastermind of his campaigns, instead of acting as a figurehead for local struggles. To achieve this, Gandhi had to create a strong and organized following, which he did in the non-cooperation and Khilafat movements; thereby, he could circumvent the established political leaders and alternatively, make it worthwhile for them to ally with him as disciplined sub-contractors. In no time, Gandhi reinforced his claim to the all-India leadership by his decision to champion the Khilafat issue and seek redress of the Punjab wrongs.

The Khilafat movement gave Gandhi the most ardent adherents in the form of pan-Islamic journalists with their allies among the ulema. They were precisely the leaders, who could provide him access to a big reservoir of support and power far beyond the existing political nation. If Gandhi could harness this group of sub-contractors, which had a tremendous potential and influence in the network of the mullahs, he would automatically get a host of local men to spread his message and act as intermediaries between him and the Muslim masses.

Gandhi’s Muslim support was significant not merely because of the actual number of people, who could be induced to observe hartals on a particular day, attend Khilafat meetings, and sign a petition to the viceroy. The impact of Gandhi was also seen in the politicization of Hindus in the far and wider corners of India. This was especially seen in the wake of the Punjab wrongs, ‘when government took resort to force, betraying a total neglect of the democratic process’. Gandhi showed the way out of this dilemma.

Namboodiripad, in his The Mahatma and the Ism, sums up that it was a combination of three factors, viz., his independent organization of a band of satyagrahis around himself, his successful affiliation with the living political issues, such as Rowlatt Bills and the Punjab wrongs, which were uppermost in the minds of the people and his reliance on the Muslim divines on the issue of Khilafat enabled Gandhi to assume the reigns of all-India leadership and emerge as the undisputed leader in the political field.

Namboodiripad and the Congress historians interpret Gandhi’s leadership in monolithic terms. According to Judith Brown, ‘Gandhi’s all-India leadership and his appeal were not monolithic’, instead, it should be seen in terms of the three-tier response from public life. At the top, there was a group of western educated leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, C. R. Das, Lajpat Rai, and N.C. Kelkar, who deliberately chose to follow Gandhi and withdrew themselves from their own compatriots like Surendra Nath Banerjee, who had a similar educational background. From among these educated followers of Gandhi, a few were converted to his ideology and ‘novel but untested’⁹ methods of political advance, while others temporarily followed him and continued speculating as to when Gandhi would show a way out of the political impasse. Nehru was perhaps the first to realize the commanding position of Gandhi in the country as well as in the Congress.

Below these three tiers of followers, Gandhi secured support of the middle brand in public life, especially from men, who were educated either in the vernacular or in English in small towns. Lawyers, traders, moneylenders, village officials, village priests, ulema, prosperous cultivators, marwaris of Calcutta and Bihar, and patidars of Gujrat comprised this layer.

Beneath this wide middle sector of public life were the real masses of India, the illiterate workers and peasants in towns and the countryside. With their support, Gandhi was able to muster a mass movement unheard of in the annals of world history.

There was one more factor of mass mobilization, that is, the rumors, which helped create a special image of Gandhi, i.e., the image of Mahatma and Saint, who would redeem masses from their sufferings.

Even the Marxist historians like Namboodiripad could not afford to overlook this point. He conceded that Gandhi completely identified himself with the life and problems, sentiments, and aspirations of the people. He associated himself with everything that was of the people. Politics for Gandhi was a matter of selfless service to the people. This is a clue to understanding his techniques of mass mobilization and struggle.

All leaders are not alike. Some of them are great because of the environment that shapes them and imprints itself on them and makes them its symbols. Others are great because they are all that their environment is not. Some leaders are made by the Age in which they live, while others make the age what it is. Gandhi belongs to the latter category. He possessed a unique will power, vision, and creative genius. Therefore, an understanding of the moral force, intellectual insight, and the social purpose, which worked through this outstanding leader of humanity, is essential for a proper appreciation of his techniques.

Gandhi’s style claimed a new status in politics—a style which could not be ignored but was difficult to comprehend. It transformed the freedom movement and from that point of view it may be said that the Gandhian confrontation with the British Raj was unprecedented in historical importance and global significance. Gandhi had a living faith in the superiority of his technique and not merely an intellectual grasp.¹⁰

Gandhi had a message for the Indians, nay, for the whole mankind. Although the principles of Christianity provide the basis for modern European civilization, yet it was believed that these principles were more faithfully followed by this ‘half-naked fakir’ of the East than by any other individual of the western world.

Gandhi held that governments are neither infallible nor do they have an absolute right to misgovern.