The Revolutionary Movement in India
Hồ Chí Minh toàn tập, Tập 1, Chính trị Quốc gia - Sự thật, Hanoi, 2011, pp. 55-60.
Translation: Foreign Languages Press, Paris, 2021.
The Greco-Kemalist, or rather Anglo-Turkish, conflict is in full swing. The Malabar revolts seriously occupy public attention. English imperialism is on the breach. It is therefore necessary to recall the history of the revolutionary movement in India.
After the insurrection of 1857, English imperialism thought to have drowned the revolutionary spirit of the Indians through the bloodiest of repressions, and so established on the banks of the Ganges the barbarity of Western exploitation and oppression for eternity. This was a wrong impression.
In 1880, the philosopher Ramakrishna preached revolution by preaching religion. He advised his adored countrymen to worship the goddess Kali, mother of destruction and reconstruction.28
Damodar and Balkrishna succeeded him and courageously and openly taught the revolutionary doctrine. They were of course arrested and deported.29
In 1897 the newspaper Kesari, owned by Tilak, was published for the first time. Its opening article was the famous “Siogi’s Lament.”30 The former king, awakened from the depths of his grave, returned to visit his beloved kingdom.
His sadness was great when he saw his people subjected to the worst of slavery. He called upon all Indians to rise up and unite to shake off the foreign yoke and regain the independence they had inherited from him.
The newspaper informed its daily readers using the Russian method. Until the newspaper was suspended and the editor was deported, it coura-geously conducted a campaign for emancipation.
It is worth mentioning that journalistic honesty and virtue are different-ly conceived in Asia and in Europe. Bourgeois journalists in the West would laugh if we told them that most articles published in socialist newspapers, such as Kesari, Vihari, etc., are written for free, and often the authors only receive months or even years in prison as payment. This was the case of the Vihari newspaper, three of whose editors were arrested and sentenced, one after the other. But this did not change their attitude or their way of thinking. How many “employees” can say the same?
There has been a great deal of unrest since the Russo-Japanese War. Two significant facts mark the state of mind of the native people. First of all, the statue of Queen Victoria was disfigured on the eve of her birthday.
The “Vande Mataram”—the Indian Marseillaise—became widespread in a very short time and was sung in all the dialects of India.
“Amsilam Samites”—associations for moral and physical training—were set up everywhere, as if by magic. The boycott of English goods and the recruit-ment of the native troops are carefully studied.
These tireless efforts produced results. In January 1915, several regiments mutinied and, because of the disruption of Anglo-Indian trade, the colonial banks of the City (of London) estimated the loss of unpaid commercial bills for the year 1920 at one billion francs.
The misfortune of the country made the difference of castes and religion disappear. Rich and poor, aristocrats and peasants, Mohammedans and Bud-dhists, all united in the same effort.
Prominent, educated people such as Har Dayal 31 and others sacrificed their wealth, refused the highest offices that the colonial government wanted to give them in order to tame them, and went from village to village preaching the cause of independence. Students and schoolchildren carry out the work of spreading propaganda.
The partisans of direct action do not remain inactive either; they are in charge of liquidating and expelling the corrupt magistrates, the traitors, and the overzealous members of the political police. They do not fear viceroys and governors with fancy titles, as have shown in the events of 1907, 1908 and 1909. In 1911, a 16-year-old boy dropped bombs in the car of a well-known head of the Department of Investigation, in the middle of the street and in broad daylight. Courage has no age.
The list of martyrs is painfully long. In ten years, not counting collective massacres, no less than 200 people have watered the tree of the revolution and its ideals with their blood. Among these martyrs, there are 70 students, 16 teachers, 20 landlords, 23 or 25 shopkeepers, 7 doctors, and 20 civil servants; 50 of these victims were only 16 to 20 years old!
This is why most teachers are worried, almost panic-stricken. As one gentleman said: “If this continues, our respectable men will be frightened away from this country.”
Then, alongside the machine of ruthless repression, there is the strategy of total obfuscation.
The “Samiti”32 is dissolved, their members arrested, meetings and political associations banned. The “Emergency measures” grow like mushrooms. This wave of repressive measures only made the revolutionary flowers bloom more strongly.
A general uprising was prepared in 1914 and 1915. Unfortunately, it failed. Several hundreds of expatriates returned to their country, determined to break the yoke weighing on their homeland with a single blow. They were reported and arrested before they could set foot in their motherland, which they prom-ised to liberate or die. Once again, the odds were in favor of the thieves!
But the fire is lit, and nothing can suppress it anymore. Messages are being passed from person to person. The “Samiti” continues to meet clandestinely. Loans to support the independence movement are rapidly taken out, either by voluntary subscriptions, and sometimes by “daïcots.”
We believe it is our duty to clarify the meaning of the word “daïcot,” which has been misinterpreted by Westerners. The English use the word “daïcot” in the same way as the French use the word “pirate.” They make no distinction between acts of banditry and the sometimes-mandatory subscription to a com-mon cause, just as they make no distinction between patriots fighting for their country and inner-city scum.
In order to achieve a goal, one obviously needs the funds to do so, and in order to find funds, one has to go and look for them where they can be found.
To demonstrate the honesty of the “Samiti” members in charge of the Rev-olutionary Committee’s finances, we need only cite the following examples:
One of the articles of the “Samiti” statutes states that all members must bear in mind that they are working for the Revolution, which has as its goal the restoration of the violated rights of the people, and not the personal happiness of a few—that all members must abstain from alcoholic beverages, luxuries, and unnecessary possessions.
After each mandatory subscription or daïcot is paid, a receipt is sent to the subscriber. The following is an excerpt from such a receipt:
You have to understand, dear countryman, that in order to free our beloved country from slavery, it takes sacrifice, trust, and the sympathy of all our compatriots. If everyone like you, who has resources, understood the difficulties of our work and contributed voluntarily to our work, we would not be obliged to bother you in this way.
The independence and prosperity of Japan are due to the sacrifice and self-sacrifice of all her children. May the soul of our homeland strengthen the hearts and enlighten the minds of our brothers! Etc.
Signed: I. B., Financial Secretary of Section B of the Indian Independence Society.
As the movement spreads, it consolidates. As the movement grew stronger, it emerged from the shadows and came back into the light, under the wor-ried eyes of the officials. A Congress was convened, attended by twenty thou-sand delegates. Some English “socialists” took part in it, but they were rather unpleasantly received because of their “light pink” doctrine.33
Mahatma Gandhi laid the foundations of the strategy of non-cooperation and non-violence. This policy continued to be successful. Children desert the English school system. Lawyers leave the English court. Employees and workers are no longer active in offices or workshops where the employers are English. There are no more relations, no more trade between the English and the Indians. Emergency funds are required to support the movement. In three months’ time, more than sixty million francs were collected. Wealthy Indians turned their homes into schools. Disagreements are settled before the newly constituted native Courts. Some Indians offered to pay up to thirty million a year, “until complete independence.”
In the face of such an upsurge, the flag that had never seen sunset risked disappearing in the moonlight. English imperialism no longer knows what to do. It had assumed that by handing over a (single) page of a commercial treaty to the Russian Republic, it could prevent the revolutionary spirit from pene-trating the Indies, just like a blotter on a drop of ink!
English imperialism makes use of Constantine34 as a damper to suppress the outbreak of pan-Islamism. It takes advantage of King Faisal I35 to sustain the crumbling edifice of its imperialism in the East. What’s next? At least it can console itself by saying that at the time it will have to leave India, it will inevi-tably drag down French imperialism, which is just as abhorrent, and which is operating in Indochina.
Nguyen Ai Quac
28 Ramakrishna (1836-1886) was an Indian religious leader. He claimed to have seen Goddess Kali, whom he called his mother. While he was not advocating for revolution, the cult he built around himself and Goddess Kali was in opposition with the hegemonic post-Enlightment colonial culture of the British.
29 Damodar Hari Chapekar (1869-1898) and Balkrishna Hari Chapekar (1873-1899), also known with their third brother Vasudeo Hari Chapekar (1880-1899) as the Chapekar Broth-ers, were nationalist revolutionaries. They are known for having assassinated the British Plague Commissioner of Pune. All three were hanged.
30 Kesari was actually founded in 1881 by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920), an important leader of the Indian independence movement. He wrote Shivaji’s Utterances, a poem that criticized the government. He was charged with sedition after reading it aloud during the Shivaji festival of 1897.
31 Lala Har Dayal Singh Mathur (1884-1939) was an Indian revolutionary and anarchist. He was a member of the Ghadar Party, who opposed Gandhi’s non-violence and attempted a mutiny in 1915. After it failed, Har Dayal exiled himself to the US. A fact that probably wasn’t known to Hồ Chí Minh when he wrote this article is that in 1919, Har Dayal actually betrayed the cause he had defended by writing a public letter saying he had been wrong and glorifying the British Empire. Originally an independentist, he became convinced that India should become a part of the British Empire in the same way as Ireland was and wrote books and pamphlets on the topic that were translated and distributed free of charge by the British administration to demoralize the nationalist movement.
32 Anushilan Samiti, or “bodybuilding society,” was a nationalist Indian organization formed in 1902. Its names comes from its cover, as its members gathered in gymnasiums. While in the beginning they advocated for violence, they aligned with Gandhi and his non-violence movement in the 1920s.
33 Reformist, social-democratic doctrine.
34 The “British Constantine” was a flattering concept applied to both Elizabeth I and James I of England, implying a comparison with the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great.
35 Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933.
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