Decolonizing Anarchism. Maia Ramnath
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and horseback and bicycle riding. Students also received lectures on political and military history including such topics as the Sikh Khalsa, the French Revolution, and the Italian Resorgimento. Anglo-Irish transplant Sister Nivedita (born Margaret Noble) lectured on “patriotic feelings and a sense of duty to the country,” and donated her library, including a well-known Mazzini biography, whose chapter on guerrilla warfare was extensively copied and circulated.[2]
Nivedita also introduced a conscious connection with ideological anarchism. She had followed the famous sage Swami Vivekananda to India intending to work at the Ramakrishna Mission, but once there threw herself into the cause of Indian national liberation, eventually separating herself from the mission in order to pursue her political commitments without compromise. But Vivekananda was not her only philosophical inspiration; she had also discovered Peter Kropotkin en route, becoming fiercely excited about his ideas, which she claimed “confirm[ed] me in my determination toward Anarchy.” When she met Kropotkin in London in 1902 after some correspondence, she decided that he knew “more than any other man of what India needs.”[3] Given her close association with Aurobindo’s circle, it seems likely that Kropotkin’s ideas entered the mix.
The group’s militancy soon intensified in a program of targeted assassinations, bombings, sabotage, and political dacoity (social banditry) to obtain weapons and funds. There were raids on police stations, armories, British treasuries, tax collections, and even expropriations of wealthy Indians, some of whom were presented with certificates declaring them holders of a debt to be repaid after the revolution by the treasurers of a Free India. Besides arms and ammunition, funding went toward printing costs and legal expenses. Bande Mataram was founded in 1906 as an English-language daily paper targeting the educated elite, as companion to the Yugantar, “the paper for the masses” in colloquial Bengali.[4]
The revolutionary headquarters was an empty house and grounds on Calcutta’s outskirts, known as Maniktola Garden. There in idyllic seclusion, they set up bomb-making and arms-storage facilities along with a library, on the principle of revolutionizing minds in order to achieve revolutionary goals. Bullets and bombs, they knew, were only a quick fix; deeper, lasting change would require the education of consciousness through integrated physical, political, and spiritual training.
The curriculum included economics, history, geography, and the philosophy of revolution. There was also technical training in departments such as that “referred to in Upen’s notebooks as ‘Ex+Mech+An,’” which historian Peter Heehs interprets as “explosives, mechanics and anarchism.” Heehs reports that one fifteen-year-old recruit recalled, “‘In the garden Upen Babu used to teach us Upanishads and politics and Barindra Babu [taught Bhagavad] Gita and History of Russo-Japanese war and Ullas Babu delivered lectures on explosives.’ Indu Bhusan Roy spent his time ‘studying Gita and preparing shells.’”[5]
What they took from this text, Krishna’s prebattle advice to the warrior Arjuna, was that one should act in accordance with dharma without overly worrying about the results. If the actions themselves were righteous, then the results could not be otherwise. Karma yoga—the way of action in the world of material causality—was one of the recognized paths to liberation, as much as the ways of meditation or devotion.
Among the other incendiary texts that the Criminal Investigation Department found when it raided the Maniktola Garden library were Ananda Math, Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s famous novel of warrior monks that later became part of the Hindu nationalist canon; Aurobindo’s Bhawani Mandir (“temple of the goddess,” or Kali, manifest as pure shakti, force, or power), a blueprint for a utopian community; Sikher Balidan, extolling Sikh martyrdom; and Raja ke, questioning the institution of monarchy.[6] Many of these texts expressed the pursuit of national liberation in the idiom of intense religiosity. Others combined pragmatic how-to instructions with philosophical justifications for militant activity.
Mukti Kon Pathe (“which way lies salvation?”) mainly contained excerpts from the Yugantar on topics such as “Battalion Drill Made Easy” and “Field Exercises.” Its author noted that particularly for Bengalis, cultivating muscular development was important, referring to the British colonial taxonomy that classified them as a feeble “non-martial race.” Yet even if they were not able to achieve the requisite physical training by the time action became imperative, they nevertheless might find “consolation in the thought that not much muscle is required to kill a European with a revolver or a rifle, or to kill many Europeans with a Maxim gun. It does not take much strength to pull a trigger; even a Bengali can do that.”[7]
The author also systematically outlined the other items required for organizing insurrection. Under the heading “Revolution” were subtopics such as “Building Up Public Opinion,” which listed newspapers, music, literature, and “secret meetings and associations.” On the matter of clandestinity, he observed: “Secret societies are necessary since it is impossible to talk of freedom openly because of bayonets and guns. If one wants to talk of freedom publicly, he must necessarily do so in a roundabout way. It is precisely for this reason that a secret place is necessary where people may discuss ‘What is truth?’ without having recourse to hypocrisy. But it must be a place that the tyrant cannot see.” As examples of models for good covert practice, the author pointed to the Russian revolutionists and the militant ascetics of Ananda Math.[8]
The text listed three ways to obtain arms:
1. By preparing weapons silently in some secret place. In this way, the Russian nihilists prepare the bombs. Indians will be sent to foreign countries to learn the art of making weapons. On their return to India they will manufacture cannon, guns, etc., with the help of enthusiastic youths.
2. By importing weapons of all kinds from foreign countries.
3. Through the assistance of native soldiers.
In August 1907, the Yugantar suggested that “much work can be done by the revolutionists very cautiously spreading the gospel of independence among the native troops,” thereby at once gaining both weapons and mutineers. The textbook assured the revolutionist that soldiers too were human beings, despite their role as mercenaries to a tyrant, and would therefore surely join their arms with the revolution once the situation was fully explained to them by “the clever Bengali.”[9]
The Yugantar often published on the justification and need for violence in resisting the systemic violence of colonial oppression. In other words, it was not the revolutionists who had introduced force into the dialogue. “The laws of the English are based on brute force. If we want to liberate ourselves from those laws, it is brute force that is necessary. . . . There is no other door of admission into life but death.”[10] An article headed “Away with Fear” declared that British supremacy was an illusion, which if once challenged, must crumble away. If Indians would conquer their own fear and take initiative, victory and liberation would be easy.
What we want now is a number of men who will take the lead in giving a push and thus encourage the masses and infuse hope in the minds of those who are almost dead with fear and dread. . . . They must be shown by deeds done before their eyes that the work is not impossible exactly to the extent that they think it to be.[11]
Hence, the Yugantar strengthened the perception of anarchism by its emphasis on taking a complete antigovernment stance, as opposed to collaboration or participation of any kind. Bande Mataram too came under frequent attack for its “seditious” content as well as plain “intention of bringing the Government into hatred and contempt.”[12] This was a misreading, though, of such statements as this one:
[Indian secretary of state] Mr. Morley has said that we [Indians] cannot work the machinery of our Government for a week if England generously walks out of our country. . . . [But] did it not strike Mr. Morley that if, instead of walking out the English were by force driven out of India, the Government will go on perhaps better than before, for the simple reason that the exercise of power and organisation necessary to drive out so organised an enemy will in the struggle that would ensue teach us to arrange our own affairs sufficiently well.[13]
This passage called for the takeover, not the abolition, of government, while suggesting that it was in the crucible of revolutionary action that people learned autonomy—a foreshadowing