Ever so often, we hear allegations about some or the other historical figure not finding his/her way in the history textbooks and somewhere, I am sympathetic to the authors of textbooks, who can’t include anything and everything at the school level. Then, of course, there are allegations of ideological bias, which I do not venture to discuss here.
As Maharashtra emerges as the latest epicentre of changing power equations with
political rebellions, it was, however, heartening to see Marathi
revolutionaries being honoured by the prime minister not very long ago as he
inaugurated a new museum dedicated to them in Mumbai. There is one Marathi
revolutionary, whose name did figure, even if not very significantly, in my
NCERT textbooks – Vasudev Balwant Phadke – who fought for India’s freedom after
the Revolt of 1857 and before the birth of the Indian National Congress in 1885
(after all, we usually trace the emergence of the revolutionary movement to the
partition of Bengal in 1905), and I was glad that the prime minister specifically
mentioned him by name while paying homage to our freedom fighters while
inaugurating this new museum.
While the Revolt of 1857 did prove to be a mass uprising with exemplary
Hindu-Muslim unity in many regions, also driven by the humiliation over the
colonialists’ racism and their exploitative economic policies, it sought to
restore feudal monarchy and did not embrace modern rationality, even begrudging
social reformers at whose instance the British banned some social evils like sati (and no, apologist narratives
denying its very existence or conflating it with jauhar
do
not pass muster). Thereafter, the modern-educated intelligentsia started striving
for redressal of Indian grievances, culminating in the formation of the Indian
National Congress in 1885, but it was not until 1906 that the Congress (with
great patriots like Dadabhai Naoroji, Lala Lajpat Rai, Lokmanya Tilak and
Badruddin Tyabji) demanded swaraj, but
perhaps, Phadke's name alone stands out for being a leader fighting for the freedom of the
whole of India in the period from 1860 to 1884. Therefore, ever since I
encountered Phadke’s name in my school textbooks, I was curious to find out
more about him.
What I discovered made for every interesting reading. I
would like to start with a quotation from a British historian-
“As the elite leader of a movement to mobilize India’s poor masses, which had
the sympathies of many middle-class Indians, Phadke might be said to have
inaugurated the modern history of anti-imperial protest.”
-Jon Wilson
After 1857, “(h)e was the first Indian leader to go from village to village to
preach the mantra of swaraj and to exhort the people to rebel against foreign
rule,” reads
a booklet titled Vasudev Balwant Phadke: A Profile,
released by the Lok Sabha Secretariat in 2004, when his portrait was unveiled
in the Parliament House. A postage
stamp in his honour had also been introduced by the Congress government in
1984. Indeed, all the revolutionaries with a modern outlook from Bhupendranath
Datta to Bhikaji Cama to Ashfaqullah Khan to Pritilata Wadedar to Bhagat Singh
to Udham Singh can be traced to the lineage from Phadke.
Born in a Marathi Brahmin family in 1845, Phadke had received modern education,
having graduated from Bombay University in 1862 and started serving the
colonial administration. However, he was deeply moved by the plight of the
peasantry, especially during famines, and was greatly shaken by Dadabhai
Naoroji’s astute economic analysis of the drain of Indian wealth to Britain. He
was also strongly influenced by his Dalit wrestling coach Lahuji Vastad Salve
(whom he had no compunctions in accepting as a guru while being a Brahmin
himself) about the need to rid India of colonial rule. While he initially
started out by engaging in philanthropic activities like setting up schools to
boost literacy and education (which are still functioning) and otherwise using
public platforms to raise his voice against faulty policies of the colonial
government, by 1878, he went on to abandon the comforts of a salaried job and a
regular household to go underground to launch a revolutionary outfit to fight
the British. He even trained
his wife in horse-riding and warfare for the cause of fighting imperialism.
About the sufferings of farmers during the prolonged Deccan famine between 1870
and 1878, Phadke wrote
in his diary (later used as evidence against him in his trial), “Thinking
day and night of this and a thousand other miseries, my mind was bent upon the
downfall of the British power in India. I thought of nothing else. The idea
haunted my mind. I used to rise in the dead of night and ponder over the ruin
of the British until at last I almost became mad with the idea."
He and his men conducted
raids on rich Englishmen to raise funds and on most occasions, gave the
authorities a slip. He had, in his fold, Indians of diverse castes, from tribal
communities and cutting across the Hindu-Muslim-Sikh divide, even involving
Telugus other than Marathis. Indeed, as much as I believe that Muslim extremism
is the biggest ideological threat to human rights globally today like Nazism
was once, I would also assert that just as genocidal hatred of Germans did not
lead to Nazism’s defeat, but in fact, the support of
anti-Nazism Germans did (just as Iraqi, Syrian, Kurdish and Emirati Muslims
played a major role in defeating the ISIS), liberal and moderate Muslims
valuing humanity (see, for example, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this,
nor is it the case that such Muslims are necessarily either apostates of Islam
or highly ignorant of their scriptures, as discussed here), who
need not be seen as exotic exceptions, should not be alienated, and one should
not become the monster one wishes to defeat. In our Indian context, there is no
reason to think of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam or Muslim fellow citizens risking their
lives for India in the security forces and intelligence agencies, sometimes
exhibiting amazing gallantry (as Hawaldar Abdul Hamid, Brigadier Mohammad Usman
and Captain Hanifuddin did against the Pakistani state, dying martyrs for
India, even being posthumously decorated with gallantry awards), to be
completely exotic exceptions within their community (while most Indians across
religious lines also often cannot contribute as much to the nation, there's no
reason to think of average Indian Muslims as anti-India), nor is it the case
that the Islamic scriptures cannot be interpreted in conformity with humanism
and secular national patriotism (if someone is more comfortable with 'Jai Hind'
over 'Vande Mataram' for he/she can respect, but not bow before or worship
anyone other than God, be it his/her own parents or motherland based on his/her
religious convictions, so be it, if he/she is otherwise a law-abiding citizen),
as discussed here,
here,
here
and here,
and indeed, if Indian Muslims want to be treated as any other Indian citizen,
they too should indeed be emotionally invested in India’s national security and
development, as many of them indeed are, and they must check
the religious biases of many of them from influencing India's foreign policy
with countries like Israel, just as Tamil Hindus and Christians should check
the linguistic biases of many of them from influencing India's ties with Sri
Lanka. Rest, if the BJP introduces a genuinely religion-neutral, gender-just
uniform family law (uniform civil code) across religious lines (an idea
supported by several Muslims like former president Dr.
APJ Abdul Kalam, activist Laila Tyabji,
actor Saif
Ali Khan and academician Sadaf
Munshi, none of whom has been an uncritical admirer of the BJP, and several
left-liberal Hindu commentators critical of the BJP too have supported this
idea, like historians Romila
Thapar and Ramachandra
Guha), just as criminal law, commercial law etc. are uniform across
religious lines, which, in no way, adversely affects freedom of worship, as a
citizen, I would wholeheartedly endorse it, for victims of regressive practices
violative of their constitutional rights should not be held hostage to an
elusive consensus on reform within their community, and otherwise, traditional
Hindus are justified in saying that the Indian state is not being even-handed.
I also support the idea of a legislation mandating a two-child norm for every
married couple, irrespective of religious affiliation, across India, not only
to reduce communal tensions over fears, howsoever misplaced, of the demographic balance shifting in
favour of Muslims but also to generally curb overpopulation, the need for
addressing this issue of overpopulation having even been acknowledged
by noted Congress leader Manish Tiwari in the wake of the shortage of hospital
beds even during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Rest, for Hindus
upset about all Muslims not having been packed off to Pakistan in 1947, they
would do well to read this, and
Indian Muslims entertaining melodramatic narratives of perennial victimhood
would do well to read this.
Potholed
roads (a problem no Indian political party, the BJP included, has thus
far had an exemplary track record at having solved, and you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here,
not even in Gujarat, as you can see here, here, here and here)
and air
pollution take more lives than terrorist attacks, and even among terrorist
attacks in India, Naxalites and separatist insurgents in Northeast India (often
Hindus in Assam and Manipur) have taken more lives in our country, even of
civilians, than jihadist terrorists, as you can see here and here.
And while there are indeed some Muslim extremists, there are also some inhuman
Hindus engaging in human
sacrifices, caste-based
hate crimes and so on, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was right in saying
that Hindus and Muslims in our country should together fight poverty rather
than against each other. Indians of all faiths should be weary of social media
forwards with misinformation and/or half-truths aimed at promoting communal
hatred, and Hindus need to shed regressive attitudes like killing over beef and
intercaste marriages and Muslims killing over supposed blasphemy.
Anyway, back to Phadke, the most noteworthy escapade by him and his men was to
actually take
control over the city of Pune for a few days in 1879 catching the British
off-guard, and history repeated itself when Masterda Surya Sen, with the help
of his men, women and even schoolboys, liberated Chittagong from colonial rule
for some time in 1930. Phadke was finally apprehended but given a heroes’ welcome by Indians when he
was brought to trial. He told
the court – “Day and night, there is but one prayer in my heart, Oh God, even
if my life be lost, let my country be free, let my countrymen be happy. I have
taken up arms, raised an army and rebelled against the British Government with
this single aim. I could not succeed. But, some day, someone will succeed. Oh
my countrymen, forgive me for my failure.”
What is also very interesting is how Phadke’s uprising impacted politics in
England. As the historian Jon Wilson I quoted at the outset points out in his
book ‘India Conquered’, genuinely liberal British parliamentarians like William
Gladstone (who was, in general, a critic of war and imperialism) used it to
highlight that there were genuine grievances Indians had with British rule.
Even a colonial officer like Sir William Hunter was compelled to acknowledge
that British rule was on trial in India yet again after 1857 in the wake of
Phadke’s activities, and an administrator like Sir Temple, on his return to
England, informed his countrymen of how Indians felt alienated from British
rule even after 1857, citing Phadke’s example.
While Phadke passed away in jail in 1883, in 1946, Indians in the British Armed
Forces openly revolted inspired by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s INA (these
military mutinies will be the subject of a subsequent article by me), and
unlike 1857, the British were so weakened by the Second World War that they
couldn’t battle India’s freedom struggle any longer, and though they tried to
hold on to other colonies in Africa till the 1960s, it is thanks to the
tireless efforts of our freedom fighters that we attained sovereignty much
before many other colonies. As we approach the diamond jubilee of our
independence, we must celebrate our successes since independence, like the
IITs, Green Revolution, White Revolution, space programme (even to serve
farmers), IT boom, strides in renewable energy in recent years and what not but
inspired by our freedom fighters across caste, religious and regional lines, we
must even further strive to make our country more prosperous and secure, in the
spirit of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay’s ideas of integral humanism compatible with
Indic spirituality and ecological consciousness, without allowing divisive
politics (including of going
soft on minority communalism, even of a violent nature, by some from ‘secular’
political parties trying to create vote-banks of some Hindu castes plus
religious minorities, or even of some from the BJP speaking the
language of genocidal hatred for our Muslim fellow citizens) to corrode us
from within. Jai Hind, Vande Mataram!
By:
Karmanye Thadani
Knowledge Council
