Freedom movement: India
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Not entirely non-violent
Guerrilla armies
Sugata Srinivasaraju, August 17, 2021: The Times of India
Although Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and Satyagraha have been the nucleus around which our nationalist history has been articulated, if one looks at the ignored local and provincial histories of the freedom struggle, and examine martyrdoms in these forgotten corners, a very different picture emerges. It exposes the flatness of our retelling. For instance, if one looks at the police archives of the Kannada-speaking areas from 1942 (they were scattered into four different regions and were put together as a single state in 1956), around the ‘Quit India’ movement that began in August of that year, we see that the regular Congress workers were impervious to the ideas of their party elites. The British had arrested Gandhi on August 9, 1942 and these events were taking place in the aftermath.
It is true that Congressmen were inspired by the ‘Quit India’ call of Gandhi, but what they did with that inspiration was left to local ingeniousness and circumstances. In many instances, they came across as a mob, and their strategies to counter the local administration was no different from that of a guerrilla army — they disrupted rail traffic, burnt post-offices, halted production at mills and factories, cut off communication lines, attacked policemen and even stole government money. They organised strikes and bullied those who did not buy into their ideas. They were not merely a subdued khadi wearing spiritual army singing bhajans. It is another matter that they eventually got portrayed in such a homogenous fashion. A small portion of these police records have been extracted and clumsily published in a 1964 volume (879 pages) on the freedom movement (currently out of print) by the then government of Mysore with S Nijalingappa as chief minister (he later became the national president of the Congress).
Sample these records: A report from the Belgaum area says that “cutting of telegraph and telephone lines has gone on almost from day one… the major destruction was, however, the burning of the post-office and the sub-registrar’s office at Nippani, for which government have imposed a collective fine of a lac and thirty thousand.” A similar report from Bangalore says: “The Bangalore city head post office and two branch post offices in the city were burnt, and Rs 5,000 cash removed.” The destruction of telegraph poles, wires as well as capture and burning of mail bags were being reported across Dharwar, North Kanara, Coorg, Bijapur and Bellary districts.
The railways were not spared either. On the afternoon of October 30, 1942 about 100 persons attacked Suldhal station in Belgaum district and set it on fire. On October 22, the dak bungalow in Dharwar district’s Aminbhavi had been “completely burnt”. A couple of days prior to this there was an attempt to set afire the Yamanur Dak bungalow during which the “wooden pillars in the veranda was all cut down.”
In a ‘confidential’ letter dated December 23, 1943 the district magistrate of Kanara to the home secretary in Bombay said that the pension due to one SP Gaonkar should be withheld because he was one of the “main instigators for burning the Forest Timber Depot at Hattikeri (Ankola taluk)” in November 1942, which resulted in a damage of Rs 12,000 to the government. In another confidential letter, a junior officer writes to the Assistant Deputy Director General of Police in the CID. in Poona, about the interrogation of the principal accused in the Byadgi Railway Station sabotage case conducted to ascertain the “underground activities of the Congress organisation.”
The records, some of them internal communication of the local Congress organisation but in police possession, also speak of firing incidents in Davangere, Mysore, Tumkur and Hassan: “The shooting was severe at Bangalore and Davangere. Nearly 150 persons died at Bangalore and six at Davangere. In Bangalore there was a pitched battle for hours on the August 16 and 17. When the cavalry charged the crowd, ragi [millet] was thrown on the tarred roads, so that the horses slipped and collapsed. One horse-man died of the fall”. Since rail lines were removed from the Bangalore-Hubli, Bangalore-Mysore and Bangalore-Guntakal lines, train services were disrupted for nearly a month. Milk and vegetable supplies to the military were stopped for a week. When they were restored, soldiers accompanied the suppliers in trains and buses.
Interestingly, among the records, there is also proof of subversion within the police ranks in Dharwar: “During the recent raids on the mail-bags, a letter addressed by the Dharwar DSP to a CID man sanctioning the necessary amount for his khaddar dress was found. The Dharwar Bulletin published the facsimile of that letter and broadcasted it.” In Ankola, one person from the crowd removed the hat of the inspector as well as the turban of the jamadar and burnt the same before them. In one case in Kumta, a lady student slapped a police officer when he tried to wrest the flag from her hand, and perhaps following this incident, thirty-two girls were severely beaten with lathis. In many places, Congress protestors picketed schools and colleges, and “offered bangles and kumkum [vermillion] to those who attended classes.”
One of the most fascinating stories of martyrdom from the time is of Mylara Mahadevappa, who was born in Motebennur, a “small village near Byadgi railway station on the Poona-Bangalore line” (now in Haveri district). He was apparently one of the 79 volunteers selected by Gandhi to walk along with him during the Dandi march in 1930. After the Dandi march, he established an ashram at Koradur on the banks of the Varda river. He shut it down later and restarted it, but in-between went to Bangalore to build his body at a gymnasium and understand Ayurveda.
During the Quit India movement, Mahadevappa gathered about 20 youth and started “a sort of guerrilla warfare against the government”. For nearly eight months this group “successfully carried out seventy-four exploits” and to capture government money in Hosaritti (also now in Haveri district) was their 75 th adventure. They wanted to “dedicate it to the 75 years of Gandhiji’s life.” The heavy government cash box that was being transported was kept in a temple with three policemen guarding it, while others had gone to the nearby stream to perform their ablutions. Mahadevappa and his team attacked and took possession of the box after “terrorising” the policemen on guard. But when they started moving the box the rest of the policemen surrounded and fired at them. They were killed instantly.
There are similar stories of adventure in Belgaum taluk by one Channappa Wali. There is also the epic tale of the Isoor village in Shikaripur taluk of Shimoga district from September 1942 when a government revenue officer and policemen were killed. In the retaliation that followed many villagers, including children, were killed. It had all started after the revenue officer and his party were asked to put on the khadi caps. Looking at these details from various corners that do not constitute the mainstream narrative of our freedom struggle should only nuance our understanding of our own history.
Sugata Srinivasaraju chronicles the south
