The revolutionary impulse

Serious writing on the history of India is always welcome because so many myths and mythologies are in vogue. If popular culture is to be cleared of a mythical construction of the past, the task has to be performed by professional historians who painstakingly collect facts to refute non-historical received knowledge that is made popular by social and cultural pretenders. This process applies as much to the role and contribution of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) founded by Bhagat Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad.

The mainstream "official" and sometimes "nationalist" history, whether academic or political, has simplified the debate on the role of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Chandra Shekhar Azad and other dedicated revolutionaries to a question of "practitioners of violence" versus the Gandhi-led mass movement based on non-violence. This book shows that the revolutionaries of the HSRA played a significant role in the inter-war period in north India, and their significance in the anti-colonial struggle was noticed and noted by the British, who ruthlessly tried to suppress the movement.

Kama Maclean, the author of this important study, has set for herself the goal of probing a larger question: to demonstrate "the important role that the revolutionaries played in influencing Congress policy and provoking colonial responses in the process bringing India closer to independence". In fact, Ms Maclean says, the interaction between Gandhi's Congress and the revolutionary movement of north India is much deeper than routinely understood.

If a section of Indian and foreign historians had tried to downplay the contribution of the revolutionary martyrs (shaheeds), the British colonisers were clear that those who has killed John Poyantz Saunders or those who threw a bomb at the Legislative Assembly were "terrorists" and "conspirators". For them, the Lahore conspiracy cases under the Sedition Act were the appropriate responses for which, on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged.

The first issue the study examines is the role of Gandhi and his studied and widely unpopular silence when the shaheeds were hanged. This did not go down well because of the widespread popular sympathy for the revolutionaries. But the immediate impact of the hanging was the Gandhi-Irwin pact of 1931, which raised the issue of Dominion Status for India.

The message of this study is that history cannot be seen in black and white. The revolutionaries evolved a strategy of making lengthy statements against the colonisers during the Assembly Bomb Case trial, and all of India read with great interest the rationale behind their acts. Their acts were a response to the death of the popular Punjabi leader Lala Lajpat Rai after being assaulted by the police. The idea of personal sacrifice for freedom carried weight with Indians. The revolutionaries, thus, cannot be reduced to the status of bombers or mindless killers, she argues. She quotes Bhagat Singh's views on the "limits of violence" and how violence can never become the mainstream political line but could be used to "lift people out of their torpor".A REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF INTERWAR INDIA
Violence, Image, Voice and Text
Kama Maclean
Penguin
305 pages; Rs 599

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The revolutionary impulse