There has been a growing trend of people becoming doubtful and cynical of our status as an independent country. While such questions might be met with either ridicule or outright hostility, it is essential to seek the answer to the question of our Independence and its nature. For my part, I have every reason to believe that we have been betrayed of our Independence, and the “independence” that we are told to celebrate every year is nothing more than a ghastly parody of what so many of our freedom fighters had fought and died for.
To understand the nature and sheer magnitude of this betrayal of the Indian people, it is necessary to dispel some of the myths that have been taught as history in our schools and colleges over the past 7 decades. It is my hope that debunking these myths would enable you to analyse and evaluate our situation critically.
The first myth is that it is Gandhi and his method of satyagraha that made it possible for us to win our Independence. I believe that this has become a very pervasive myth, even after so many attempts to debunk it. The truth is that the Indian anti-imperialist movement against British colonialism had numerous movements and techniques that were aimed at overthrowing the British and establishing an independent Indian government.
On one side, there were revolutionary societies like Jugantar and the Anushilan Samiti. Then, there were revolutionary parties like the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) to which Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru belonged to. Then there was the Indian Republican Army led by Surya Sen. Therefore, neither Gandhi, the Congress nor the method of non-violence had any decisive role to play in getting the British to quit India.
Moreover, many — especially those belonging to the left-wing of Indian political discourse — have characterised Gandhi’s method of non-violence as class collaborationist. This means that the Congress had no direct antagonistic role to play in championing the end of British imperialist rule over India. One only needs to see the shift of the Congress’s stance from wanting Dominion Status to complete Independence as a response to the activities of the HSRA and the Indian Republican Army, which inspired the masses and won their unconditional support.
However, the British didn’t leave India in response to the methods that Gandhi or the Congress employed. It has to be kept in mind that the British always relied on the Police and the Armed Forces to maintain their rule through the use of brute violence against the Indian people. Therefore, when the British — to their horror — found out about the Indian National Army and had to put down the Royal Indian Naval mutiny in 1946, they had come to realise that they could no longer rely on the Armed Forces to maintain its control over the country.
Furthermore, the Second World War had made Britain economically weak and the United States and the Soviet Union had emerged as superpowers, both of whom were pressing for decolonisation. Hence, the British left out of saving its economy and its resources.
The second myth is that India became independent in 1947. I understand that debunking this myth is a bit counter-intuitive, considering that the Indian State has hitherto celebrated the fact of our apparent Independence since that year. However, the Independence that we achieved in 1947 was only formal and superficial. The British never talked about granting Independence to India; they always considered it as a “transfer of power” to “friendly and reliable hands”.
Who were these “friendly and reliable hands” that the British were keen on conducting the “transfer of power” to? It turns out that it was the same Congress to whom the cause of our Independence is often credited to. As I said previously, the Congress or its methods hardly posed a threat to British imperial dominion over India. The Congress had remained what Lord Dufferin had called it in 1887: a safety valve.
The British knew that if they withdrew from India but somehow managed to keep groups like the Congress in power, they had a better chance of maintaining their economic interests and influence even after India became formally independent. This was achieved in various ways, and this neatly segues into the next myth.
The third myth states that the Constituent Assembly was a sovereign body that was elected by the people. Again, this is a pervasive myth and it has attained the currency that it has owing to it being taught in schools and colleges for a long time. The Constituent Assembly was not a sovereign body; it was created with the use of legislation that was enacted by the British.
At the time, British India was a patchwork of 17 Provinces directly governed by the Viceroy’s Executive Council and about 600 or so Princely States. The British Indian Provinces were being governed under the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935, which was enacted and passed by the British Parliament. The Viceroy had the power to modify the provisions of the Act to govern the country, and this is exactly what Lord Wavell did in 1946 when creating the necessary provisions for the Constitution of the Constituent Assembly.
Moreover, the Constituent Assembly was not elected directly by the masses. As the British Indian provinces were subject to the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935, each Province had its own Legislative Assembly. While each Legislative Assembly was directly elected through the people, the size of the electorate was very small. The franchise that elected these Assemblies was never more than 10% of the entire Indian population — and this population included people who resided in areas that became Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively.
Therefore, it was only the rich and the privileged who elected these Legislative Assemblies to power, and it was these Assemblies that elected the Constituent Assembly. Hence, almost 90% of the population of undivided India had no say in who should be in the Assembly and what it should do, and no one elected to the Constituent Assembly had any idea or desire to speak in the interests of the masses (barring people like Hasrat Mohani and Babasaheb Ambedkar). Finally, representatives sent from the numerous Princely States were not elected by its people; they were nominated by their rulers.
The fourth myth is that the British ceased to have any control over India from 1947. However, the debunking of the myth has a bit of nuance to it. While it is true that the British Parliament and the Secretary of State for India ceased to have any significant power over India in terms of being able to formulate legislation, the basic structure of Indian colonial administration remained unchanged.
For example, the so-called “Interim Government” was nothing more than a modified version of the Viceroy’s Executive Council; all of the Council’s members were now Indians, but the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief remained British. Moreover, the Viceroy ceased being the Viceroy but retained the title and office of Governor-General. Most significantly, King George VI merely changed his title from “King-Emperor” to “King of India”, therefore, we were British subjects between 1947 and 1950 and the British still had significant political, economic and military control over our country.
The fifth and last myth is that the Constitution drafted by the Constituent Assembly in 1950 was an original document. However, of the 395 Articles that made the cut, 250 Articles of the Constitution were copied and pasted from the Government of India Act 1935. That means, close to 63% of the Constitution bore (and continues to bear) the imprints of law that institutionalised our colonial servitude.
I can write a whole list of things that the Indian State has done since our normative and formal Independence, which would suitably justify the expectations of the British in selecting the leaders who were to lead us and our country in the future. And our apparent leaders and the British imperialists had colluded so well together that we ended up with an independence that is superficial, compromised and a creation of sheer betrayal.
To this day, the rich are getting richer and the poor are being pushed to the brink. Our lands and resources are being sold off to foreign MNCs and domestic businesspeople at throwaway prices, leaving our Indigenous (Adivasi) population impoverished and helpless. And now, we are witnessing the rise of Hindutva fascism that had made use of the same mechanisms and laws that the British left the Congress to use against us and the masses.
Today, I hope that you’d think about these myths. I hope you will contemplate and reassess the position of our country and the nature of our country’s Independence. The desire of our freedom fighters and the desire of many of our finest revolutionaries isn’t just about maintaining this moth-eaten notion of freedom or Independence that we are expected to celebrate and observe.
The desire is and has always been about national liberation and the end of exploitation of humans by humans.