GLOSSARY - Home - Springer978-0-230-37063...Jati Hindi term for subcaste. Can be invoked for “race” also. Kahar Lower caste community. Ritually, palanquin bearers. Kabaddi A popular

GLOSSARY

Adivasi Refers to a member from a “tribal” community.

Ahimsa Nonviolence. More recently, Skaria (2002) has defined this as

“neighborliness.”

Akhada Unit of pehlwans who train together.

Ashram Commune.

Bandobast Police cordon and security “blanket” erected prior to the Rath

Yatra in Ahmedabad.

Brahmin Priestly caste may include scholars, intellectual, and commenta-

tors. The first of the four varnas positions in Hinduism.

Bandh General strike involving the closure of almost all places of work

and commerce.

Bania Merchant caste (also Vania in Gujarati)

Bhaudik “Discussion and learning” sessions during branch meetings.

Bharat India

Dalit Term meaning “oppressed.” Refers to members of the untouchable

community. Preferred to Gandhi’s use of the term “Harijan.”

Darwaza Door or gate.

Dharma Literally duty. Has come to connote “religion” and refers to the

duties and obligation borne by individuals by virtue of his/her

caste position.

Dharna Collective sit-in.

Darshan Divine sight or the act of gaining an auspicious view (usually of a

god or goddess).

Farman Decree.

Harijan Gandhi’s term for Dalit or “untouchable.”

Hatha yoga A type of “ancient” bodily conditioning prescribed by Gandhi as

pre- satyagraha training.

Hindu Rashtra Hindu nation.

Hindutva Hinduness.

Id Days of celebration for members of the Muslim community.

Jat Kuchi term for subcaste. Can be invoked for “race.”

Jati Hindi term for subcaste. Can be invoked for “race” also.

Kahar Lower caste community. Ritually, palanquin bearers.

Kabaddi A popular game.

196 GLOSSA RY

Kar Sevak Temple construction volunteer at Ram mandir (Ayodhya).

Khadi Homespun cotton cloth. Used to be the symbolic clothing of

Gandhians.

Kshatriya Warrior or courtly caste. Refers to the second of the four varna

positions in Hinduism.

Lathi Staff often made of bamboo.

Masjid Mosque.

Muharram The first month of the Muslim calendar during which the Shia

communities mourn Hussein, the death of the grandson of Ali. A

procession is usually taken out (called the Tazia ).

Mandal Council or committee.

Mohalla Neighborhood or lane along which are located residences.

Nath Gujarati term for subcaste.

Nayak Leaders.

Pehlwan Wrestler.

Pitrubhoomi Holy land.

Pols Several multistoried wooden houses built in rows on one long and

contiguous plot. Each house is accessible only through a shared

lane; this lane is usually gated at one or both ends.

Prachar Pramukh Chief organizer in the RSS.

Pramukh Local RSS figure oversees one or more shakhas.

Pracharak Full-time RSS organizer.

Prant Pracharak Full-time RSS organizer overseeing a state, province or region.

Prasad Holy food acquired from the Rath Yatra procession or a Hindu

temple.

Ramjanmabhoomi Movement to build a temple complex on the reputed birthplace

of Lord Ram on which sat the Babri Masjid (Ayodhya, Uttar

Pradesh).

Rashtrasevika Female swayamsevak.

Rath Yatra Lit. Chariot procession. The Jagannath Rath Yatra is an annual pro-

cession in Puri, Orissa and Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Sadhus Ascetic Hindu.

Samskars Ethical habits or practices that are usually privileges of priestly

figures or higher caste Hindus.

Sangh Reference to the Hindu nationalist movement.

Sangha Association or union.

Sangathan Organization.

Sarsangchalak Supreme leader of the RSS.

Satya Religious truth (according to Gandhi).

Satyagraha Lit. “holding on to truth,” “way,” or “search for truth.’ Form

of nonviolent mobilization and protest elaborated by Mohandas

Gandhi.

Satyagrahi Participant, conscript, or activist training, preparing, and partici-

pating in satyagraha.

Savarnas Gujarati term for the three upper varna positions (Brahmin,

Kshatriya, and Vanio/a) and the middle-caste Patels.

197GLOSSA RY

Seva To volunteer.

Sevika Female “volunteer” in the RSS. Also Rashtrasevika.

Shahersuba City commander.

Shakha Lit. branch. A local entity that may be affiliated to the RSS, VHP,

or Bajrang Dal among other Hindu nationalist organizations.

Shia One of two major Muslim sects.

Shiva Hindu god of destruction.

Shivaji Pre-colonial Marathi warrior.

Shuddi “Purification” and a Hindu reconversion ceremony.

Swadeshi “belonging to one’s country.” Invoked in the context of wearing

British or foreign made cotton cloth.

Swaraj Independence. For Gandhi, being self-possessed; an ideal con-

dition for independent India represented by virtues of sacrif ice,

piety, and dedication (as opposed to materialism, technological

fetishism, and indulgence).

Swayamsevak Literally “servant.” Volunteer serving in the Hindu nationalist

movement or in the satyagraha movement; a Gandhian activist.

(Also can be referred to as a sevak. )

Taluka Subdistrict.

Tapas Self-suffering or penance.

Tazia A procession in which a specific Shia communities mourn Hussein;

the death of the grandson of Ali.

Thana Station.

Tirkamada Bow and arrow.

Toufan In Gujarati, “mischief” but also “riots”.

Trishul Trident. A symbol of the god Shiva.

Tyag Renunciation.

Varna One of four Vedic caste positions.

Vedas Sacred texts of Brahmins.

Vidyarthi Gujarati for student.

Yajna Purification.

Yatra Pilgrimage.

NOTES

Introduction

1. People’s Union for Democratic Rights, “‘Maaro! Kaapo! Baalo!’: State,

Society, and Communalism in Gujarat,” (New Delhi: People’s Union for

Democratic Rights, 2002), p. 54. “Anger, Tears Spill over as Sabarmati

Express Burns,” Indian Express, February 28, 2002.

2. Amnesty International, “India: Five Years on— the Bitter and Uphill

Struggle for Justice in Gujarat,” (Amnesty International, 2007); personal

observations, March- December 2002.

3. Pralaya Kanungo, “Myth of the Monolith: The RSS Wrestles to Discipline

Its Political Progeny,” Social Scientist 34, no. 11/12 (2006): p. 54.

4. See Ami Pedahzur, Suicide Terrorism (Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity,

2005). p. 161; Joshua D Freidlich, American Militias: State- Level Variations in

Militia Activities (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003).

5. A related— albeit differently formulated and insightful— body of scholar-

ship also demonstrates how communities that become targets for ethnic

cleansing and genocide tend to be vilif ied, by perpetrators and those that

may be organizing them, and cast as “enemies,” “criminals,” “commu-

nists,” “subversives,” “guerrillas,” and so on whose power needs to be neu-

tralized through the use of collective force (Bette Denich, “Dismembering

Yugoslavia: Nationalist Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide,”

American Ethnologist 21, no. 2 (1994); Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the

Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1999); Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender

and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War” (Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 1997).

6. Insightful studies of Hindu nationalism confirm that ideological processes

indeed exist, however, they also point out that no single ideological project

has been pursued particularly by Hindu nationalist leaders and its image

makers (Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in

Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism , Westview

Special Studies on South and Southeast Asia (Boulder: Westview Press,

1987); Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu

Nationalism in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999);

Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of

200 NOTES

Collective Violence , Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu

Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996);

Kalyani Devaki Menon, Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right

in India (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Arvind

Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of

the Indian Public (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press,

2001); Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); John Zavos, The Emergence

of Hindu Nationalism in India (New Delhi; New York: Oxford University

Press, 2000); Amrita Basu, Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Modes of Women’s

Activism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)).

7. Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of


NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu

Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996);

Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conf lict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Ornit Shani, Communalism,

Caste, and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat (Cambridge ; New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Steven Wilkinson, Votes and

Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India , Cambridge Studies in

Comparative Politics (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press,

2006); John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (New Delhi;

New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

8. This event polarized the electorate and afterward it delivered a decisive

victory to the BJP at the polls. The violence began after the burning of the

Sabarmati Express train in the Gujarati town of Godhra in which fifty-

eight Hindu nationalist activists were tragically burnt to death during

an attack by perpetrators who belonged to the Muslim community. An

Amnesty International report estimates that more than 2,000 people died

as a consequence of the attack in 2002 (Amnesty International, “India: Five

Years on— the Bitter and Uphill Struggle for Justice in Gujarat,” (Amnesty

International, 2007), p. 2). The government estimated that approximately

98,000 people had been displaced by the violence immediately after the

Sabarmati train- burning incident (Manas Dasgupta, “No plan to close

camps— Modi,” The Hindu , April 1, 2002). In both cases, members of the

Muslim community have dominated the number of people who perished or

were internally displaced in Gujarat (Concerned Citizens Tribunal, “Crime

against Humanity (Report),” (Mumbai: Concerned Citizens Tribunal,

2002).

9. As with many other informants whom I interviewed, this one asked to

remain anonymous as a condition of his consent to participate in this

study.

10. Clearly, I am a not suggesting that members of the Hindu community have

never been victims of communal violence, a point that I also discuss in this

book. The overwhelming numbers of persons killed, injured, and displaced

during large episodes have been, however, highest among Gujarati Muslims

201NOTES

and Dalits (Reddy et al., Report ; Dave et al., Report ; Amnesty International,

India ).

11. I also do not interpret episodes of violence as a derivative or “uncontrolled”

aspect of modern politics, or as a purely instrumental deployment of

“mobs” by political organizations (though a visible portion of the literature

on political violence is replete with this perspective).

12. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity , Cultural

Memory in the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); Dipesh

Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical

Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Partha

Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Ref lections on Popular Politics in

Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); William

E. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1999); Veena Das, Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2000); Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of

Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

1999); Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and

Islamic Counterpublics , Cultures of History (New York: Columbia University

Press, 2006); Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, Civil Society: History

and Possibilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Saba

Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Anupama Rao, The

Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 2009); Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Militants and Citizens: The

Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 2005); Lisa Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics

in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 2009); Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy

and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1999); Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing

About Hindu- Muslim Riots in India Today,” in A Subaltern Studies Reader,

1986–1995 , ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford, 2000); Allen Feldman,

Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern

Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Paul A. Silverstein,

“An Excess of Truth: Violence, Conspiracy Theorizing and the Algerian

Civil War,” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 4 (2002); Paola Bacchetta,

Gender in the Hindu Nation: Rss Women as Ideologues , Feminist Fine Print; 1

(New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004); Rogers Brubaker, Nationalist

Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2006); Vinayak Chaturvedi, Peasant Pasts: History and

Memory in Western India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007);

James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity

in Brazil , In- Formation Series (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008);

David Hardiman, The Coming of the Devi: Adivasi Assertion in Western India

(Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Ajay Skaria, Hybrid

Histories: Forests, Frontiers, and Wildness in Western India (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1999).

202 NOTES

13. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical

Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. xiv, 254.

And even if one may personally view the deployment of violence for politi-

cal (or any) ends repugnant, as I do, I am also convinced that investigating

processes of political violence ref lexively is both intellectually productive

and of paramount importance if the normative persuasions of the investi-

gator are to be kept at a distance from— and therefore not be permitted to

narrow— programs of research as a valued tenet of free academic inquiry

and exploration.

14. Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Ref lections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism (London; New York: Verso, 2006), p. 157.

15. Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Ref lections on Popular Politics

in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 22.

16. Ibid.

17. My perspective has been inf luenced by important interventions in the study

of Hindu nationalism. Women and the Hindu Right, which was edited by

Sarkar and Butalia, is a pioneering volume in the study of Hindu national-

ism that intimated the importance of tracing the everyday life that is lived

in neighborhood based branches of the movement (see Tanika Sarkar and

Urvashi Butalia, Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays (New

Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995). Paola Bacchetta’s study among sevikas

has also inf luenced the design of this study because of the author’s sus-

tained ethnographic study with female members of the movement (Paola

Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation: Rss Women as Ideologues , Feminist Fine

Print; 1 (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004).

18. One example of this global reach was the textbook controversy that took

place in the state of California. Activists and sympathizers with a Hindu

nationalist view of history lobbied vociferously to rewrite portions of text-

books on Indian history that would form the basis of instruction in pri-

mary and secondary schools in the state. They objected that the proposed

contents of history textbook offered a skewed social vision of Hinduism.

The objections were nearly accepted by the Curriculum Commission in

the state until scholars and Dalit activists in the United States intervened.

The case in fact became an arena in which secularists, Hindu national-

ists, Dalit, and anticommunal organizations made competing claims

on what constituted a “proper” rendering of Indian history for young

American audiences. (Electronic correspondences from Indo- Eurasian

Research, my thanks to Gajendran Ayyathurai, Poornima Paidipaty, and

Nathanial Roberts for sharing this information.) Arvind Rajagopal dis-

cusses more extensively the organization of Hindu nationalists among the

Indian diaspora see: Arvind Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Religious

Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Indian Public (Cambridge, UK; New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Also consult: Purnima Bose,

Purnima, “Hindutva Abroad: The California Textbook Controversy,” The

Global South , Vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 2008).

19. Howard Spodek, “From Gandhi to Violence: Ahmedabad’s 1985 Riots in

Historical Perspective,” Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 4 (1989); Jan Breman,

203NOTES

“Ghettoisation and Communal Politics: The Dynamics of Inclusion and

Exclusion in the Hindutva Landscape,” in Institutions and Inequalities: Essays

in Honour of Andre Beteille , ed. Ramachandra and Parry Guha, Jonathan

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Tridip Shurud, “Gujarat: No

Room for Dialogue,” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 11 (2002).

20. The following are just a few examples of this inclination: Vinay Lal, “The

Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate,” Economic and Political Weekly XLIII, no.

40 (2008); Indian Express, April 10, 2007, “Gandhians to do what they

know best, ensure works on Mahatma remain error- free”; Indian Express,

February 26, 2007, “Is Gandhi ashram being hijacked by politicians,

causerati?”

21. Richard Gabriel Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston,

Mass.: Beacon Press, 1989); Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber

Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India , Midway

Reprints (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

22. Such a vein and spirit of organizing was, at once, different from while also

overlapping with Shahid Amin’s analysis of “Gandhi as Mahatma” (Shahid

Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern up, 1921–2, in

Subaltern Studies , ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1984).

23. Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1994); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its

Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1993); Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Thomas Blom Hansen, The

Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (New Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1999).

24. One very important intervention that included a study of the methods of

mobilization among Gandhians is Ranajit Guha, “Discipline and Mobilize,”

in Subaltern Studies VII, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).

25. David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District 1917–1934

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981); Douglas E. Haynes, Rhetoric

and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City,

1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

26. The important exception to this is Shirin Mehta’s detailed study of the

grievance in 1928.

27. Douglas E. Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a

Public Culture in Surat City, 1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1991); Dipesh Chakrabarty, “In the Name of Politics: Sovereignty,

Democracy and the Multitude in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 40,

no. 30 (2005).

28. Patel quoted in T. Wickenden, Quit India Movement: British Secret Report

(Faridabad: Thomson Press (India), 1976). Referred to hereafter as

Wickenden Report.

29. Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism , Critical

Histories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Richard

204 NOTES

Gabriel Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston, MA: Beacon

Press, 1989); Bhikhu C. Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical

Examination (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).

30. Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Nicholas B. Dirks, The Hollow

Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1987); Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa

and the Legacy of Late Colonialism , Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

31. Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); William J. Glover, Making

Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Joseph Andoni Massad, Colonial

Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia


32. Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial

India (Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Joseph Andoni

Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York:

Columbia University Press, 2001); Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity:

The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth

Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes

of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Chicago: Chicago


33. Sudipto Kaviraj, “The Imaginary Institution of India,” in Subaltern Studies

VII, ed. Ranajit Guha, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p 20);

Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, 1526–1750 ,

Oxford in Indian Readings. Themes in Indian History (Delhi ; New York:

Oxford University Press, 1998); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Merchant Networks

in the Early Modern World , An Expanding World (Aldershot, Great Britain ;

Brookfield, Vt., USA: Variorum, 1996); Cynthia Talbot, Precolonial India in

Practice : Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra (Oxford ; New York:


34. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial

Histories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Nicholas B. Dirks,

Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Chicago: Chicago


35. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial

Histories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Partha Chatterjee,

A Princely Impostor?: The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Nicholas B. Dirks,

Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Chicago: Chicago

University Press, 2001); Lisa Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics in South

India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 2009); Anupama Rao, The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of

Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Thomas

Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern

India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Thomas Blom Hansen,

205NOTES

Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton,

NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001); Arvind Rajagopal, Politics

after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Indian Public

(Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); David

Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Chicago: Chicago


36. In making these arguments concerning the political history of Gujarat, it

should be clear to the reader that that I am not suggesting that Gandhi openly

advocated for the collective use of violence. See my qualification below.

37. Susan Eckstein, “Community as Gift- Giving: Collectivistic Roots of

Volunteerism,” American Sociological Review 66, no. 6 (2001); James Holston,

Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil , In-

Formation Series (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

38. Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005);Charles Hirschkind,

The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics , Cultures

of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006);Susan Eckstein,

“Community as Gift- Giving: Collectivistic Roots of Volunteerism,”

American Sociological Review 66, no. 6 (2001);Norbert Elias, The Civilizing

Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations . ed. (Oxford: Blackwell

Publishers, 2000)

39. Cf. Lori Allen, “The Polyvalent Politics of Martyr Commemorations in the

Palestinian Intifada,” History & Memory 18, no. 2 (2006).

40. Nikolas S. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 178–79.

41. Jürgen Habermas, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God and

Modernity (Oxford: Polity, 2002); Vinay Lal, “The Gandhi Everyone Loves

to Hate,” Economic and Political Weekly XLIII, no. 40 (2008); A. M. Oliver

and Paul F. Steinberg, The Road to Martyrs’ Square: A Journey into the World

of the Suicide Bomber (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

42. Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of


NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Veena Das, “Official Narratives,

Rumour, and the Social Production of Hate,” Social Identities 4, no. 1 (1998);

Shah, 1970 #736; Bette Denich, “Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist

Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide,” American Ethnologist

21, no. 2 (1994); Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in

Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);

Ghanshyam Shah, “Communal Riots in Gujarat: Report of a Preliminary

Investigation,” Economic and Political Weekly 5, no. 3/5 (1970); Diana Taylor,

Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty

War” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).

43. Ram Lall Dhooria, I Was a Swayamsevak: An inside View of the Rss (New

Delhi: Sampradayta Virodhi Committee, n.d.).

44. Ami Pedahzur, Suicide Terrorism (Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity, 2005),

p. 161; Ram Lall Dhooria, I Was a Swayamsevak: An inside View of the Rss

(New Delhi: Sampradayta Virodhi Committee, n.d.), p. 51.

206 NOTES

45. Joseph S. Alter, Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism ,

Critical Histories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000);

Bhikhu C. Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination

(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); Richard

Gabriel Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston, Mass.:

Beacon Press, 1989); Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery

of Self under Colonialism (Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press,

1983).

46. Shahid Amin conceptualizes an “event” as a construct of occurrences mark-

ing a collectively transformative moment within its time frame and after-

ward (Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922–1992

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

47. Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism

in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Christophe

Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia


48. Bombay Secret Abstract(s), reprinted selections, Bombay Source Material,

Vol. II, pp. 600–601; Activities of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,

Home Department (Special), File 822, Part III, 1943, pp. 3–263. This point

is corroborated by former RSS activists and residents of Ahmedabad who

are both familiar with grassroots politics in the period (interview, Girish

Patel, July 2004; interview with Ram [pseudonym] July 1999; May 2002;

June 2004). This is not to say that the RSS was entirely absent. On the basis

of my interpretation of the available surveillance reports and oral sources

from this period, it had a minuscule political presence in Ahmedabad or at

least one that was significantly overshadowed by the Congress Party.

49. Ghanshyam Shah, “The 1975 Gujarat Assembly Election in India,” Asian

Survey 16, no. 3 (1976): p. 276.

50. Therefore readers will notice in my interpretation of the ethnographic

testimony that i collected of this book, branch members often refer to

techniques of training using colloquial Gujarati which diverges from the

formal and Hindi nomenclature that the RSS draws upon to linguisti-

cally represent the techniques and exercises of physical training. This

should not be mistaken for a mere “localization” or “personalization” of

Hindu nationalist rhetoric as previous analysts conclude (Stanley Jeyaraja

Tambiah, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conf licts and Collective Violence

in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). As I have

already argued, this process reveals how Hindu nationalist discourses and

its associated embodied disciplinary techniques have come to be medi-

ated, modified, and countered by volunteers themselves in postcolonial

Gujarat.

51. Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); David Scott, Refashioning

Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Chicago: Chicago University Press,

1999).

52. James Holston and Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Cities and Citizenship,”

in Cities and Citizenship , ed. James Holston (Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 1998).

207NOTES

53. David Scott, Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (Chicago:

Chicago University Press, 1999). pp. 212–213.

54. Habermas Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An

Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,

1989). Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (Cambridge, Mass.: Zone

Books; Distributed by MIT Press, 2002).

55. Seyla Benhabib, “Models of Public Space,” in Habermas and the Public

Sphere , ed. Craig J. Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992); Nancy Fraser,

“What’s Critical About Critical Theory?,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere ,

ed. Craig J. Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992).

56. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (Cambridge, Mass.: Zone Books;

Distributed by MIT Press, 2002), pp. 65–67.

57. Cf. Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape ; Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility:

Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge;

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

58. Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic

Counterpublics , Cultures of History (New York: Columbia University Press,

2006), p. 9.

59. Ibid. Notably, such sites are distinguished from institutionalized and techno-

cratically focused domains of public exchange that privilege policy debate.

60. Ibid.

61. Fragments in the above heading is inspired by Gyanendra Pandey, “In

Defense of the Fragment: Writing About Hindu- Muslim Riots in India

Today,” in A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986–1995 , ed. Ranajit Guha (New

Delhi: Oxford, 2000).

62. Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India

(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).

63. Hebert cited in, Ibid., pp. 37, 53.


(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

65. Warren Hastings, quoted in Ibid., p. 66. Warren Hastings was Governor-

general of the East India Company from 1772 to 1784.


Reader VII, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1992), p. 20.

67. Ibid. Such racial- cultural views of “the Indian mentality” were put in ser-

vice of British imperial project at the time since such a putative propensity

for violence was held up by colonial agents as one of many reasons why

British rule could bring “enlightenment” to what many colonial off icials

viewed as an essentially “non- modern” populace (Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes


University Press, 2001). Partha Chatterjee has called this discursive form

of recourse to an essential and racialized view of Indians that justif ied

colonial policies as “the rule of colonial difference” (Partha Chatterjee,

The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 16). Ironically, the conditions of pos-

sibility for such a view were quite unforeseen. Such a view emerged from

scholarly debates that took place at the time between colonial off icials and

208 NOTES

their counterparts in the metropolitan center in the late eighteenth century.

Agents in the imperial center leveled the charge that Indian rulers were

“despotic” and institutionally “backward” compared to their European

counterparts. Colonial officials answered such a charge by claiming that

an equivalent to the modern political constitution in fact existed in India

however it was embedded within the symbolism of Vedic texts and needed

only to be “properly” identified and translated into a modern legal code

that British company officials, judges and collectors could then consult as

they attempted to erect the structures of imperial government in the sub-

continent (Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The

British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)).

68. The importance of this point is also ref lected in the available definitions and

etymology of the term violence itself. According to the Oxford dictionary,

“violence and rapacity” is a seemingly perpetual condition that is endemic

to India. According to one entry in the word’s etymology, it is only “gov-

ernmental” intervention that can stem it (Second Edition (online), 1989,

accessed in 2005).

69. Veena Das, Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 2000); Veena Das, Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and

Recovery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Gyanendra

Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

70. Paul R. Brass, Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms, & Genocide in

Modern India (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2006); Ram Nath

Sharma, Gujarat Holocaust: Communalism in the Land of Gandhi (New Delhi:

Shubhi Publications, 2002).

71. Veena Das, “Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of

Pain,” in Social Suffering , ed. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret

M. Lock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

72. Ibid., p. 70.

73. Studies which confronted this problem include: E. Valentine Daniel,

Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence (Chicago: Chicago

University Press, 1994); Bette Denich, “Dismembering Yugoslavia:

Nationalist Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide,” American

Ethnologist 21, no. 2 (1994); Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body

Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1999); Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and

Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War” (Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 1997).

74. Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defense of the Fragment: Writing About Hindu-

Muslim Riots in India Today,” in A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986–1995 , ed.

Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford, 2000), pp. 28–29.

75. Ibid.; Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and

Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1991).

76. Rogers Brubaker and David Laitin, Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,

Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): p. 446.

209NOTES

77. Therefore, if I do not use quotes to identify such categories, it is because

I rely on the critical eye of the reader to recall that I use these terms in a

qualif ied manner.

1 Efficacies of Political Action: Physical

Culture and the Kinesthetic Politics of

Gandhian Nationalism

1. John Rosselli, “The Self- Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and

Nationalism in Nineteenth- Century Bengal,” Past and Present , no. 86

(1980).

2. Ibid.

3. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the

“Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 1995).

4. Chatterjee, quoted in “The Self- Image of Effeteness: Physical Education

and Nationalism in Nineteenth- Century Bengal,” Past and Present , no. 86

(1980); p. 123.

5. John Rosselli, “The Self- Image of Effeteness,” p. 123; Sinha, Colonial

Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late

Nineteenth Century .

6. Such a celebratory approach to history was built on a popular form of his-

torical revisionism in which Hindu mythology was interwoven with mod-

ern understandings of nationalist Indian history.



(1980).

8. Rosselli (1980) explains that Mitra claimed that his efforts reappropriated

the centuries- old institution of wrestling from lower- caste Hindus and

Muslims who dominated it at the time. Both the absence of training in gym-

nasia among privileged Bengali males and it becoming an institution that

came into the hands of lower- caste Hindus and Muslims was understood

by figures like Mitra as the consequence of Indian males being tempted by

material security and education that the British introduced, thus causing

upper- caste Bengalis to abandon the akhra (ibid). Joseph Alter’s (1992) rich

ethnographic survey of Benarsi akhadas suggests a more complex geneal-

ogy in which akhada- based wrestling was a martial art practiced by various

higher and lower castes of Hindus as well as Muslims who were located at

various social and political strata (See Joseph S. Alter, The Wrestler’s Body:

Identity and Ideology in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1992).



(1980).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.; p. 86, 137.

210 NOTES

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: Mayavati Memorial

Edition , 11th enlarged ed. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1962).

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., v. III, p. 277.

17. Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 (New Delhi:

People’s Pub. House, 1973).

18. Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: Mayavati Memorial

Edition , v. III, p. 284.

19. The following author makes similar observations: R Srivatsan, “Concept

of ‘Seva’ and the ‘Sevak’ in the Freedom Movement,” Economic and Political

Weekly , no. February 4 (2006).

20. Ajay Skaria, “Gandhi’s Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the

Ashram,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 4 (2002).

21. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Growing Distrust,” Collected Works of Mohandas

Gandhi (CWMG hereafter ), Vol. 28, p. 53; Ibid, “Speech at Arya Samaj

Annual Celebrations,” CWMG , Vol. 15, p. 123.

22. Ibid.

23. Skaria, “Gandhi’s Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the Ashram”,

p. 965. Skaria points out their internal logic and philosophical presupposi-

tions left much to be desired for Gandhi, in part, because the program

of education at the gurukul aimed to “modernize” Hinduism and in turn

transformed Hindu civilization into an object to be “idolized” (Gandhi,

quoted in Skaria, p. 965). Other differences concerned the lack of sufficient

training in the areas of agricultural production, hygiene, and trades— all

of which were vital to inculcating habits and knowledge that were ger-

mane to collectively attain self- sufficiency, as I discuss below (Mohandas

K. Gandhi, “Speech at Gurukul Anniversary,” CWMG , Vol. 15, p. 207).

24. Ibid.

25. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Speech at Gurukul Anniversary,” CWMG , Vol. 15,

p. 207.

26. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Scheme for National Education,” Collected Works

of Mohandas Gandhi (electronic edition) ( ECWMG hereafter), Vol. 16, pp.

99–105. A Boarding House that was run by Motibhai Amin in Petlad also

inf luenced Gandhi’s conception of the ashram (David Hardiman, Peasant

Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District 1917–1934 (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1981).) Residents of Amin’s Boarding house, it should be

noted, had leanings toward the Arya Samaj and terrorist societies of Bengal

(ibid). I discuss the import of this latter point in the section appearing below.

27. “Warriors of truth” in the heading appears in Gandhi, Mohandas, K., ‘“On

Non- violence’, ” in Young India, December 31, 1931.



Press, 1991), p. 205.

29. Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conf lict


211NOTES

30. Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience , Penguin Classics (New

York: Penguin Books, 1986). Such a notion of sacrifice, it should be noted,

also stemmed from Gandhi’s embracing of the Sermon on the Mount in

which followers are entreated to turn the other cheek in the face of their

enemy’s violence (ibid.).

31. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “In Confidence,” ECWMG, Vol. 21, pp. 356–360.

32. Such forms of virtuous activity could span the upliftment of subaltern com-

munities like “tribal” and Dalits (ex- Untouchables) to resisting policies of

the colonial state non- violently, discussed below (Mohandas K. Gandhi,

“Power of Ahimsa,” CWMG, Vol. 52, pp. 59–60).

33. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “In Confidence,” ECWMG, Vol. 21, pp. 356–360.

34. All Gujarati references that appear below have been translated by myself

unless noted. In the case of this specific passage, I interpret Gandhi’s use

of the gujarati term for exploration or experiment, prayog, to discuss forms

of somatic exploration that were entailed within satyagraha (Mohandas K.

Gandhi, Atmakatha (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 2007), p.

54). Gandhi’s androcentrism does not go unnoticed in this study, although

I have retained masculine passive references to subjects as Gandhi does rely-

ing on the reader’s vigilance to interpret these passages critically.

35. Gandhi amended his scheme over time and as new political events war-

ranted; one amendment followed in 1928 (discussed in the next chapter)

(Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Scheme for National Education,” ECWMG, Vol.

16, pp. 99–105; “Satyagraha Ashram,” CWMG, Vol. 42, pp. 106–120).

36. Gandhi, Mohandas, K. “Gandhi to Raojibhai Patel,” CWMG, Vol. 11,

p. 191. I am grateful to Riho Isaka for her comments on this issue.

37. Mohandas K. Gandhi, ‘“Scheme for National Education’,” ECWMG, Vol.

16, pp. 99–105.

38. Mark Thompson, Gandhi and His Ashrams (Bombay: Popular Prakashan,

1993).

39. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Ahimsa in Practice,” ECWMG, Vol. 77,

pp. 243–246.

40. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Atmakatha (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing

House, 2007) .

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., p. 288.

44. Ibid.

45. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “A Band of Vegetarian Missionaries,” ECWMG,

vol. 1, pp. 239- 244.

46. Ibid. Gandhi also blended his observations from the Trappist monastery

with perceptions of “ancient” Vedic education. According to pedagogies

associated with the latter, the pupils of Indian rishis (sages) acquired knowl-

edge by laboring in the household, or “ tapovan [lit. abode of austerities],” of

their mentors (Mark Thompson, Gandhi and His Ashrams (Bombay: Popular

Prakashan, 1993), p. 41). (A tapovan was a retreat of sorts at which both

the rishi and student lived a life of renunciation and discipline.) As Mark

Thompson explains, labor was crucial to the process of Vedic learning

212 NOTES

because it introduced the pupil to the craft of tending to cattle which was an

enterprise that brought together the pupil and a cottage craft- industry that

was grounded in Vedic symbolism (ibid.). This was the case, Thompson

suggests, because cows possessed the status of sacred symbols within the

Rig Veda (ibid.). Significantly, tending to cattle was set in an appealing and

productive pedagogical arena for Gandhi because it constituted a domain

that lent itself to “outdoor life and robust physical exercise” (Mookerji,

quoted in Ibid., p. 41).

47. Mohandas K. Gandhi, ‘“Scheme for National Education’,” ECWMG, Vol.

16, pp. 99–105.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Letter to Gangabehn Vaidya,” ECWMG, Vol. 60,

pp. 313–315.

51. Ibid.

52. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Scheme for National Education,” ECWMG, Vol.

16, pp. 99–105.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.

56. Gandhi, “General Knowledge About Health,” ECWMG, Vol. 12,

pp. 22–25.

57. Ghanshyam Shah, “Traditional Society and Political Mobilization: The

Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha (1920–1928),” Contributions to Indian

Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974).

58. Gandhi, “General Knowledge About Health,” ECWMG, Vol. 12,

pp. 22–25.

59. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism

(Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 54.

60. Shahid Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern up,

1921–2,” in Subaltern Studies , ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1984), 1.

61. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Physical Training for the Satyagrahi,” in Harijan ,

October 13, 1940.

62. Ranajit Guha, “Discipline and Mobilize,” in Subaltern Studies VII , ed.

Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1992).


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981.

64. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Speech at Scouts Rally,” CWMG, Vol. 68,

pp. 232–233; “Speech at Second Gujarat Educational Conference,” CWMG ,

Vol. 14, pp. 30–31.

65. One can also gain a fuller and comparative view of Gandhi’s more disci-

plinary view of physical training in that the kinds of drill that he advocated

were very similar to the Swedish system of gymnastics that prevailed from

the late 1890s onward in Britain ( Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Anne

Vertinsky, Physical Culture, Power, and the Body , Routledge Critical Studies in

213NOTES

Sport (Abingdon, Oxon, England; New York: Routledge, 2006). Swedish

gymnastics consisted of drills and calisthenics that were part of “a series

of specific remedial exercises [that were performed] systematically and

[in accordance with] military commands . . . by each part of the body [and

done] in turn.” ( Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Anne Vertinsky, Physical

Culture, Power, and the Body , Routledge Critical Studies in Sport (Abingdon,

Oxon, England; New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 46). In the wartime years

(World War II), and in a context that was different but still relevant to the

discussion of popular and nationalist education in colonial India, such forms

of drill and gymnastics were challenged and “increasingly nudged aside” by

early childhood educationists in Britain who advocated for the introduc-

tion of dance because “gymnastics focused on the qualitative evaluation of

bodily strength and health, [whereas] dance was seen to provide a medium

for expression and emotion.” (Hargreaves and Vertinsky, Physical Culture,

Power, and the Body , p. 34). As already discussed, Gandhi endorsed the intro-

duction of gymnastics but was critical of it when it was the sole source of

physical activity and training of the body; instead, he suggested that these

activities should be undertaken along with “useful manual work” and the

“learning of books, acquisition of intellectual knowledge” (Mohandas K.

Gandhi, “The Dilemma of a Student,” ECWMG , Vol. 39, p. 152). On the

issue of dance however Gandhi seemed to distance himself from a period

in his life when he undertook lessons in formal dance (in 1889), referring

to it in his later years as an enterprise that was supposed to enable him to

“acquire all the accomplishments that make a gentleman” but which consti-

tuted an ensemble of “manners and customs of the West” that were, in real-

ity, often “ill- digested by the East” (Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Discourses on

the ‘Gita,’” ECWMG, Vol. 37, p. 246; “Presidential Address at Kathiawar

Political Conference, Bhavanagar,” ECWMG, Vol. 30, p. 58).

66. Gandhi quoted in Narhari D. Parikh, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , vol. one

(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1996), p. 97.

67. Gandhi quoted in Ibid.

68. Gandhi quoted in Ibid.

69. Ibid.; p. 99.

70. Nostalgic accounts of Gandhian satyagraha, like Bardoli Satyagraha of

1928 (which I analyze in detail in Chapter 2), affirm this diagnosis when

they refer to the disciplined nonviolent movement in Gujarat as a “parallel

Government” (Krishan Dutt, Sardar Patel in the Bardoli Movement (Meerut,

India: Anu Books, 1986), p. 139).

71. [My emphasis] Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dakshina Africana Satyagraha Itihas

(Gujarati) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 2004), p. 15.

72. Ibid.; p. 15–16.

73. Ibid.; p. 15.

74. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Some Rules of Satyagraha,” CWMG, Vol. 42,

pp. 491–3; “Training for A Non- Violent Army,” in Harijan , May 12, 1946.


October 13, 1940.

76. Ibid.; Training for A Non- Violent Army,” in Harijan , May 12, 1946.

214 NOTES

77. The term swayansevak from the heading appears in Mohandas K. Gandhi,

Dakshina Africana Satyagraha Itihas (Gujarati) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust,

2004), p. 87.


October 13, 1940.

79. For their part, Hindu nationalist ideologues diagnosed “the weakness” of

Hindus as part of what Christophe Jaffrelot calls a strategy of “stigmatization

and emulation” (Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 19–25). According to this

strategy, Hindu nationalists within the Arya Samaj sought to unify a divided

Hindu community by casting it as the victim of “the Muslim community”

that putatively possessed propensities for violence and anti- Hindu sentiment

(Ibid.). At the same time, and ironically, Hindu nationalists strove to emulate

the Muslims’ because of their perceived capacity for internal unity and soli-

darity, in addition to the Muslims’ hypothetical perchance to unequivocally

defend its beliefs with courage and impressive physical might (Ibid.).

80. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Speech at Scouts Rally,” CWMG, Vol. 68, pp.

232–233; “Speech at Second Gujarat Educational Conference,” CWMG ,

Vol. 14, pp. 30–31;

81. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dakshina Africana Satyagraha Itihas (Gujarati)

(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 2004), p 87. Note, the consonant sounds of

“sv” and “sw” are interchangeable in Gujarati.

82. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dakshina Africana Satyagraha Itihas (Gujarati)

(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 2004), p. 138; Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar,

Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikrama Prakashan, 1966), p. 409.

83. Carey Anthony Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and

Citizenship (New Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). I am

grateful to Riho Isaka for bringing to my attention this study.

84. Bacchetta delineates similar notions of “swayam” and its differential rela-

tionship to male and female members within the Hindu nationalist move-

ment. She notes that the capacity for autonomous conduct is absent in the

term “sevika” employed for female volunteer in the Hindu nationalist

movement. (Paola Bacchetta, Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as

Ideologues , Feminist Fine Print; 1 (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004).

85. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “To Gujarati Arya Samajists,” CWMG, Vol. 24, p.

250.

86. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikrama

Prakashan, 1966).

87. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “To Gujarati Arya Samajists,” CWMG, Vol. 24,

p. 250.

88. Ibid.

89. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Physical Training for the Satyagrahi,” Harijan ,

October 13, 1940.

90. Mohandas K. Gandhi, General Knowledge About Health [XXIX],

ECWMG, Vol., 13, pp. 212–214.

91. Of course, such forms of fearlessness did not translate into a prof ligate view

on life either. Gandhi clarif ied, “You don’t throw away your lives when you

215NOTES

take up the weapon of satyagraha. But you prepare yourself to face without

retaliation the gravest danger and provocation. It gives you a chance to

surrender your life for the cause when the time comes. To be able to do

so non- violently requires previous training. If you are a believer in the

orthodox method [of the military], you go and train yourselves as soldiers.

It is the same with nonviolence.” (Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Interview

with the American Teachers,” in Harijan, January 7, 1939). Within the

nonviolent movement, developing courageous capacities among adher-

ents required preparation in the form of training similar to the conven-

tional military.

92. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikrama

Prakashan, 1966), pp. 412–413. Drill was also indispensable to engendering

moral self- awakening and wider social and political organization among

Hindus, so long as it was mastered in the technical- moral arena of the

shakha.

93. Bhikhu C. Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination

(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). This work

makes a similar suggestion: David Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours:

The Global Legacy of His Ideas (New York: Columbia University Press,

2003).

94. [Emphasis added] Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Telegram to N.R. Malkani,” ,

CWMG , Vol. 43, p. 282.

95. And it was part of his “ dharma ”(glossed as duty) and it therefore required a

satyagrahi to acquiesce to the principal of “ tapas ” which Gandhi equated

with voluntary “self- suffering” or “penance” (Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual

in Colonial India , , p. 205).

96. Cf. Amrita Basu, “Feminism Inverted: The Real Women and Gendered

Imagery of Hindu Nationalism,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 25,

no. 4 (1993).

97. Ranajit Guha, “Discipline and Mobilize,” in Subaltern Studies VII , ed. Partha

Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1992); Narhari D. Parikh, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , vol. one (Ahmedabad:

Navajivan Publishing House, 1996).



Press, 1992), p. 105.

99. Ibid.

100. Ibid. This often was accompanied by a clamor to touch his feet that was a

manner of expressing one’s reverence for a charismatic figure while also

gaining a form of blessing from being proximate to him or her.



Press, 1992).

102. Ibid.

103. Gandhi, quoted in Mehta, 2005, p. 194 (Makrand Mehta, “Gandhi and

Ahmedabad 1915–1920,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, no. 4

(2005).

216 NOTES

104. Gandhi, Mohandas, K. “Mobocracy “Versus” Democracy,” ECWMG,

Vol. 21, pp. 242–245.

105. Gandhi also connected such indiscipline to political violence which he

called “mobocracy of the Ahmedabad type” (Gandhi, Mohandas, K.

“Mobocracy “Versus” Democracy,” ECWMG, Vol. 21, pp. 242–245).

106. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Notes,” ECWMG , Vol. , pp. 156–160. Of course,

one can hardly ignore the fact— and irony— that Gandhi adopted almost

precisely the same nineteenth century British views of Indian Hindus, tak-

ing them to be undifferentiated, disorganized, and idolatrous.



Press, 1992), p. 112.

108. Gandhi, Mohandas, K. “Mobocracy “Versus” Democracy,” ECWMG, Vol.

21, pp. 242–245.

109. Ibid.

110. Ibid.

111. Ibid.

112. Ibid.

113. Ibid.

114. Ibid.

115. Ibid.

116. Ibid.

117. Ibid.

118. Ibid.

119. Ibid.

120. Ibid.

121. Ibid.

122. Ibid.

2 Preparatory Training and Disciplined

Satyagraha in Bardoli (1928)

1. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 8, 1928, p. 37.

2. Maharashtra State Archive, Home Department (Special), File 584— E, Part

I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 3, 1928, p. 27, (hereafter, File 584- E, Part

I); Times of India , February 8, 1928, p. 1. Vallabhai to Sir Leslie Wilson,

Governor, Bombay, Home Department Special, compiled in the Collected

Works of Sardar Patel (hereafter CWSP ), vol. 2, pp. 59–63.

3. L. J. Sedgwick, Census of India 1921 (Bombay Presidency) , trans. Parts 1 and

2 ed., vol. 7 (Bombay: 1922), p. 33; Government of Bombay, Gazetteer

of the Bombay Presidency: Gujarat, Surat, and Broach , vol. 2B (Bombay:

1926), p. 9.

4. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Some Rules of Satyagraha,” CWMG , Vol. 42,

pp. 491–493. I will refer to Gandhi’s followers as resisters, volunteers, protest-

ers, disciples, adherents, participants, peasants, or satyagrahis (truth seekers)

217NOTES

interchangeably to avoid repetition. For similar reasons, I will also employ

the terms: protest, agitation, grievance, and satyagraha interchangeably.


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981).

6. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 8, 1928, p. 37. (In other

citations that appear below, no page numbers are indicated in the relevant

file hence they are not included in the reference.)


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 107.

8. Birkenhead Papers, July 12, 1928, CWSP, Doc. 208, p. 242.

9. The political “fortunes” that the nonviolent movement reaped in Bardoli

positioned the satyagraha movement to launch the Civil Disobedience

Movement in 1930 during which Gandhi staged his celebrated “Salt

March.” It sought to f lout the laws that permitted the state to function as a

monopoly in the production of edible salt.



11. The Khilafat Movement was first organized by leaders among the Muslim

community in north India, which aimed to build a popular movement that

could oppose the Britons’ plans (and those of their allies from World War I)

to break up the Ottoman empire after the end of the war. The movement

sought to consolidate and then articulate the popular view that the Ottoman

sultan was the embodiment of the Caliph and therefore the dissolution of

the Ottoman empire, in addition to the idea that non- Muslims would be in

possession of territories considered holy in Islam (i.e., Arabia) which were

part of the Ottoman empire, were abhorrent to Muslims in India. (Douglas

E. Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture

in Surat City , 1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

12. The Moplah rebellion sought to establish the rule of a Khilafat which would

supplant the power of upper- caste Hindu landholders on the Malabar coast

in 1921.

13. Manu Bhagavan, “The Hindutva Underground,” Economic and Political

Weekly XLIII, no. 37 (2007).

14. David Hardiman, “Purifying the Nation: The Arya Samaj in Gujarat 1895–

1930,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 44, no. 1 (2007).

15. Ibid.

16. Anil Bhatt, “Caste and Political Mobilisation in a Gujarat District,” in Caste

in Indian Politics , ed. Rajni Kothari (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1970);

Douglas E. Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a


Press, 1991).

17. For example, Patidars from the Leva subcaste, who were ritually “higher”

than Matia Patidars, resisted dining with the latter because Matia Patidars

observed customs that were perceived to be Muslim in origin (Shirin

Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New

Delhi: Manohar, 1984).

218 NOTES

18. These endeavors were also intertwined with a curricular emphasis that

encouraged the young Patels to lead a disciplined and moral life in service

of the community. Therefore academic learning was part of the curriculum

in addition to the students being encouraged to make written contribu-

tions on topics of caste reform and Hindu unity to the publication that the

Mandal produced entitled Patel Bandhu . Students also participated in the

Seva Samaj (Society of Servants) that aimed to help the poor and needy

and they collected funds in support of Gandhi’s early experiments in satya-

graha that he was undertaking in South Africa and were closely followed in

Gujarat (Ibid.).

19. Desai, quoted in Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the

Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984), p. 70.

20. Desai began a journal in 1910, called Anavil Sevak (Anavil Servant), which

discussed political issues and the virtues of social reform. Dayalji Desai, Rao

Bahadur Khandubhai Gulabhai Desai (a high- ranking government servant

and educationalist) and the young Bombay advocate, Bulabhai Desai jointly

organized conferences in which similar issues were discussed.

21. Ibid.



23. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 , trans. 1999 reprint ed. (Madras:

Macmillan India, 1983).

24. Nagindas Sanghvi, Gujarat: A Political Analysis (Surat: Centre for Social

Studies, 1996).

25. [Emphasis added] Madho Prasad, A Gandhian Patriarch: A Political and

Spiritual Biography of Kaka Kalelkar (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1965), pp.

86–87.

26. Ibid.; John Rosselli, “The Self- Image of Effeteness: Physical Education

and Nationalism in Nineteenth- Century Bengal,” Past and Present , no. 86

(1980), pp. 131, 38–39.

27. Mehta, interviewed in Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study

of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984), p. 63.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Madho Prasad, A Gandhian Patriarch: A Political and Spiritual Biography of

Kaka Kalelkar (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1965), p. 85.

31. Ibid., p. 160; “Bombay Secret Abstracts,” reprinted selections, Source

Material for a History of the Freedom Movement in India (hereafter, Bombay

Source Material ), Vol. III, Part. I, pp. 5, 8, 72–74. Kalelkar may have become

an inmate at the ashram (ca.) 1916 although his biography and Bombay Source

Material are not in agreement of the exact year that he joined.

32. David Hardiman, “Baroda, the Structure of a Progressive State,” in People,

Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States ,

ed. Robin Jeffrey (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 125.



219NOTES

34. David Hardiman, “Purifying the Nation: The Arya Samaj in Gujarat 1895–

1930,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 44, no. 1 (2007).

35. It must also be noted that all supporters of the Arya Samaj did not throw

their support behind the Congress; furthermore the Samaj and the Hindu

Mahasabha were active rivals of the Congress Party in Gujarat particularly

from the 1920s onward. Still, the field in which political organizations like

the Congress, Hindu Mahasabha, and Arya Samaj competed for popular

support reveals the conditions under which Gandhi’s nonviolent practices

were conceptualized. In this context, nonviolent techniques had to appear

to be as efficacious and expedient as the “direct action” and more violent

forms of mobilization that were endorsed by militant outfits like the Hindu

Mahasabha and terrorist organizations (ibid.; Gandhi, Mohandas K., “Talk

With Bhai Paramanand,” CWMG, Vol. 71, p. 98).



37. Ibid.; Douglas E. Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of

a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1991).

38. Gandhi quoted in David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda

District 1917–1934 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 81.

39. Ibid.

40. Stephen Henningham, “The Social Setting of the Champaran Satyagraha:

The Challenge to an Alien Elite,” Indian Economic and Social History Review

13, no. 1 (1976).


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981). Montague was Secretary of

State for India and joint author of the Montague- Chelmsford Reforms in

India (1918–1919) that established legislative assemblies in the largest prov-

inces of British India.

42. Ibid.

43. Hardiman (1981) reports that the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee that

Gandhi and Patel would established in 1921, became a center for Congress

activities in India with more members per capita than in larger provinces

of British India (namely Bihar, United Provinces, Andhra Pradesh, and

Bengal) (ibid, p. 114). The cities of Ahmedabad, Surat District, and Kheda

District were particularly well represented according to membership fig-

ures for 1922 (ibid).



Press, 1991).

45. Howard Spodek, “Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at 100,” Economic and Political

Weekly , December 13, 1975.


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981); Douglas E. Haynes, Rhetoric

and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City,

1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Shirin Mehta,

220 NOTES

The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi:

Manohar, 1984).


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 106.

48. Ibid., p. 107.

49. Kenneth L. Gillion, “Gujarat in 1919,” in Essays on Gandhian Politics , ed.

Ravinder Kumar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

50. Ibid.


Ravinder Kumar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 126


Ravinder Kumar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).


Ravinder Kumar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 128. In fact, the

rioters seemed to be all too disciplined albeit in a manner that was intent

on committing calculated acts of violence. Reports of the violence by a

“Special Correspondent” for the government suggest that rioters included

men from Ahmedabad but also those from Kheda who had been explicitly

brought to the city to participate in the violence (Reprints from File No.

48613/1919, Government Records Office, in Bombay Source Material,

Vol. II, pp. 763–769.) The rioters were armed with swords and carefully

surveyed the targets of attack. The Electrical Company was raided for

chemicals that could be employed as fuel for arson attacks. Police chowkies

(an outpost located at a street intersection) were burnt down unless they

were too proximate to a private residence in which case the furniture from

the chowkie was removed and burnt on the street. The rioters seem to also

have made provisions for food even though many city residents could not

purchase foodstuffs due to the observance of a general strike. The culvert

on a bridge was also removed thus preventing the passing of a train that

carried European passengers. (Ibid.)

54. Narhari D. Parikh, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , vol. 1 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan

Publishing House, 1996).

55. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Atmakatha (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing

House, 2007), p. 432. Note that Madhav Desai’s English translation of

Gandhi’s autobiography employs the phrase “regular systematic training”

with which I disagree (Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story

of My Experiments with Truth , trans. Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan

Publishing House, 2002), p. 433). Given the fact that taleem khanas (cen-

ters of physical training or gyms) were one of the most common spaces in

which young men undertook bodily conditioning throughout the towns

and cities of India, especially in central Gujarat from 1918 onward, in addi-

tion to Gandhi’s emphasis on drill, physical labor and military maneuvers

as a central component of his educational program, the inclusion of the

physical element in Gandhi’s diagnosis that his satyagrahis in 1919 required

further training and education is both linguistically and historically accu-

rate (Ambi Harsha, Development of Physical Education in Madras, 1918–1948

(Madras: Published for the Institute for Development Education [by] the

221NOTES

Christian Literature Society, 1982); Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National

Biography (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972); U. M. Chokshi,

and M. R. Trivedi, Gujarat State Gazetteer (Kheda) (Ahmadabad: Published

by the Director, Govt. Print., Stationery and Publications Obtainable from

Gujarat Govt. Publications Depot, 1989).)

56. A glimpse at the writing of the second sarsangchalak of the RSS, Madhav

Sadashiv Golwalkar, on this matter reveals the alignment between his

views and those that Gandhi articulated in 1919. For Golwalkar, training

in shakhas afforded swayamsevaks with “the necessary incentive to rub away

his angularities, to behave in a spirit of oneness with the rest of his brethren

in society and fall in line with the organized and disciplined way of life . . . ”

(Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikrama

Prakashan, 1966), p. 409).

57. Vinayak Chaturvedi, Peasant Pasts: History and Memory in Western India

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); David Hardiman, Peasant

Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District 1917–1934 (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1981); Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers, and

Wildness in Western India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).




(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Ajay Skaria, Hybrid

Histories: Forests, Frontiers, and Wildness in Western India (Oxford: Oxford



(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).



62. In the 1921–1946 period he was the president of the Gujarat Pradesh

Congress Committee also.





65. Howard Spodek, “Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at 100,” Economic and Political

Weekly , December 13, 1975, p. 1929; Ghanshyam Shah, “Traditional

Society and Political Mobilization: The Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha

(1920–1928),” Contributions to Indian Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974). The

sturdy social network that was organized in the agitation at Bardoli in 1928

contributed significantly to the success of the protest and for this, Patel

earned the title “Sardar” (lion) afterward and ascended to lead the national

movement in India while retaining significant control over the Party’s

direction in Gujarat.

66. Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha

(New Delhi: Manohar, 1984), p. 81.

67. Ibid. Mehta served as vice- president of the Sangh and Keshavaji Patel was

its treasurer while Vallabhbhai Patel was appointed as its President.

222 NOTES

68. Ibid. Here, the reader should distinguish the administrative position of the

patel, to which I refer here, and the caste community of the Patidars or Patels.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid. Consult the following texts for fuller analyses of the Hali system

and the manners in which it has evolved: Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry

and Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar,

1984); Jan Breman, Footloose Labour: Working in India’s Informal Economy

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).


(New Delhi: Manohar, 1984).

73. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 3, 1928, p. 27. The reader

can consult Shirin Mehta’s (2002) Peasantry and Nationalism for an account

of the entirety of events that led up to Bardoli Satyagraha. This is beyond

the scope of this chapter.

74. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, February 14, 1928, p. 5. Although

the actuarial details are not the focus of this chapter, I will attempt to

elaborate on the issue of land revenue as it pertains to this grievance here.

Land revenue was part of a novel arrangement promoted by the British that

encouraged permanent settlement of land on which the state collected rents.

Rental rates due to the government were determined based on the total

rental value of a tract of land usually consisting of a percentage of the total

rate. Disagreements concerning the amount of land revenue that was due

began in 1924 when a Bombay Legislative Council resolution sought to raise

land revenue assessments (rates) to a maximum of 50% of the total land rental

value (File 584- E, Part I, Times of India , February 8, 1928, p. 1). However,

Gandhians leaders claimed that the resolution should have reduced the land

revenue that was due, “from the present limit [50%] to [a] thirty- three per-

cent [reduction] for a subdistrict or group of villages, sixty- six percent for

a single village, and one hundred percent for an individual holding” (ibid.).

One objection included the following details: at the budget meeting of the

Council in 1927, Mr. H. B. Shivdasani, representing Surat district (in which

Bardoli was located), claimed that the official assessment rate was supposed

to be set at 22% for Bardoli, with a maximum set at 25%, but in practice,

the state was taking up to 40% (Ibid.). Also, Gandhi, Patel, the “Publicity

Officer” the Bardoli Satyagraha, Mahadev Desai, and writers of The Bombay

Chronicle claimed in their public writing concerning the grievance at Bardoli,

that there existed no reliable figures by which to fix the land revenue rate

therefore a new survey and assessment of the subdistrict was warranted.

75. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 3, 1928, p. 27; Times of

India , February 8, 1928, p. 1.

76. File 584- E, Part I, Deshbandu, February 6, 1928, p. 13.

77. File 584- E Part VIII, Letter from H. G. Haig, Secretary to the Government

of India, Home Department (Political), to Home Department (Special),

Government of Bombay, July 31, pp. 241–245.



223NOTES

79. At least until it appeared that Patel was going to be arrested in July 1928.

80. Many members of the Dubla community, for example, worked for caste

Hindus and Patidars while other tribal communities, like Chodharas

and Gamits, lived under abject conditions and outside the social world

of caste Hindus and the Patidars (Ghanshyam Shah, “Traditional Society

and Political Mobilization: The Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha (1920–

1928),” Contributions to Indian Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974).

81. Bombay Source Material, Vol. 3, Part I, pp. 156, 461.

82. Kunvarji Mehta and his brother, Kalyanji had been politically active since

the first decade of the twentieth century beginning first with the promo-

tion of a boycott of foreign produced goods (Swaraj) and also reform efforts

within his caste community (the Patidars) in the district of Surat (detailed in

the previous section) (Ghanshyam Shah, “Traditional Society and Political

Mobilization: The Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha (1920–1928),”

Contributions to Indian Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974): p. 90). Kalyanji had

shown himself to be a capable and loyal leader to the nationalist cause.

He spent two years in prison for seditious writing and after his release he

became the Vice- President of Swaraj Ashram in Bardoli (Siba Pada Sen,

Dictionary of National Biography (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies,

1972), Vol. III, pp. 78–79). In addition, Gandhi and Patel attempted to

launch a no- revenue agitation in Bardoli in 1921 for which Kalyanji was a

key organizer however it was suspended after the burning of a police station

in Chauri Chaura (Uttar Pradesh) in 1922.

83. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, February 21, 1928. Talatis were

lower ranking officers associated with the Revenue Department, who exe-

cuted orders emanating from higher up in the Revenue Department.

84. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 30, 1928.


86. Below, I elaborate on the array of “camps” that were established in various

subregions of Bardoli to organize the agitation.

87. The ability of Gandhian leaders in Surat district to launch the protest was

not automatic. When the Assistant Settlement Officer, M. S. Jayakar pro-

posed to increase the land revenue rates in 1926, a more “moderate” group of

leaders that included Rao Bahadur Bhimbai Naik (an Honorary Magistrate,

businessman, and member of the Provincial Agricultural Research

Committee), Rao Saheb Dadubhai Desai (a government title holder), and

H. B. Shivadansani (a government servant) suggested that they cooperate

with the government to secure a revision to the revenue rate (Shirin Mehta,


Manohar, 1984).) More radical leaders from Congress, like Kunvarji and

Kalyanji Mehta, Kushalbhai Patel, Keshavji Ganeshji, Narhari Parikh, and

Dayalji Desai worked with these figures in the Bardoli Inquiry Committee

that was formed in 1926 and which was charged with the task of produc-

ing a report that inquired into the land revenue issue (Ibid.). Although

the Committee presented a petition to the Bombay Legislative Council in

1927, and also sent a delegation to meet with the Revenue member of the

Council (Mr. Rieu), the Government generally ignored the appeals and

224 NOTES

only managed to revise the revenue rate to 21.97 percent from its origi-

nal 30 percent (Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the

Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984), p. 101.) The dismissive

attitude of the state, indeed the pathetic outcome that came from lobby-

ing the Revenue Department and Assembly, afforded the Gandhians with

the opportunity to assume the leadership among peasants in Bardoli by

calling for a more radical course of action. The Gandhians were able to

squeeze out the more “moderate” leaders and convince the peasants to

undertake a full campaign of protest against the state under the banner of

the Congress (Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the

Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984).)

88. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 8, 1928. In May, villagers

of both Valod and Kadod made special efforts to join the satyagraha after

Gandhian activists had organized suff icient moral pressure on them for

resisting the agitation. When they did join, they made spectacular entries:

the conservative Baniyas of Valod publicly volunteered to be arrested by

refusing to pay the land revenue. The merchants of Kadod organized a bru-

tal boycott of Revenue personnel that required Patel to request that they

curb their enthusiasm— indeed their redeployment of technically nonvio-

lent collective action— and provide the off icers with basic necessities.


90. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, February 28, 1928.

91. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 3, 1928; Mahadev H. Desai,

The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and Its

Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929).

92. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 3, 1928.


94. Ibid..

95. Ibid.; Times of India, May 21, 1928.

96. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 17, 1928; Times of India,

May 21, 1928.

97. The state dispensed with this procedure as their campaigns grew more

aggressive in 1928.

98. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 17, 1928; Times of India,

May 21, 1928.

99. Introduction, CWSP, Vol. 2, p. xv.

100. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 21, 1928; Times of India, May

21, 1928. Unsanctioned seizures could include the confiscation of move-

able property like carts. To foil these types of seizures, Patel ordered the

peasants to dismantle their carts and hide the parts in separate locations all

the while having the protesters blockade the access point to their property

with taller and thornier hedges or reinforced and locked doorways. These

countermeasures prevented government officers from entering the com-

pounds of the peasants’ property (Mahadev H. Desai, The Story of Bardoli:

Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad:

Navajivan Press, 1929), p. 178).

225NOTES

101. Interview with Dhaniben Patel, in Krishan Dutt, Sardar Patel in the Bardoli

Movement (Meerut, India: Anu Books, 1986), p. 166.

102. In Ranajit Guha’s inventory of “peasant insurgency,” he notes that peasant

forms of rebellion tended to be episodic and territorially limited because it

was often undertaken by peasants that belonged to a single clan or commu-

nity (Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).).

103. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, February 14, 1928; File 584–E,

Part VIII, Draft of Note for the Guidance of the District Magistrate, Surat,

p. 205.

104. File 584- E, Part VIII, Extracts from Appendix A (handwritten), p. 211.

105. These divisional leaders, as they came to be known, included Balvantrai

Mehta, Darbar Gopaldas, Ambalal Patel, Ratanji Bhagabhai, Fulchand

Shah, Bhailal Amin, Dr. Champaklal Ghia, Kalyanji Patel, Narmada

Shankar Pandya, Dr. Chandulal Desai, Naranbhai Patel, Dr. Sumant

Mehta, and Mohanlal Pandya (File 584- E, Part VIII, (untitled) profiles of

Bardoli and Gandhian activists, pp. 169–179). As already mentioned above,

Dr. Chandulal Desai and Fulchand Shah had been active Gandhians who first

became organizers with the and tried for Arya Samaj activities; Mohanlal

Pandya had been a key organizer among the terrorist societies in Baroda

state. Darbar Gopaldas was a disciple of Vallabhbhai Patel and was involved

with Congress mobilization in the early 1920s in Kheda. Narmada Shankar

Pandya had also been involved in Congress activities in central and south-

ern Gujarat. Balvantrai Mehta was from Saurashtra (western Gujarat) and

had joined Gandhi’s noncooperation movement in the early 1920s. Bhailal

Amin was an entrepreneur from Kheda who became a leading political f ig-

ure in Gujarat, he also contributed to Congress activities. Dr. Champaklal

Ghia had been an active Congress volunteer particularly in Surat and was

a member of its municipal board ( Bombay Source Material, Vol. III, Part I).

Dr. Sumant Mehta had frequented the boarding house that was attached

to the Patidar Yuvak Mandal which the Mehta brothers had established in

1911. Ghia was involved in the curricular program of the house along with

other leaders who expressed an interest in national issues and social reform

(Ibid.). A sketch of his political activities would have to include the fact

that he had “radical tendencies” and had met with Madam Cama who was

sympathetic to revolutionary views of overthrowing British rule; has also

had links with two more Indian revolutionaries, Birenda Chattopadhyaya

and Syanji Krishna Vera (Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biography

(Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972), Vol. III, p. 85). Ghia is also

credited with carrying Vinayak Savarkar’s manuscript, entitled The Indian

War of Independence , when he traveled with Sayajirao Rao Gaekwad II dur-

ing the latter’s tour of Europe in 1910–1911 (ibid.).

106. Interview with Kalyanji Mehta, in Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and

Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984),

p. 115.

107. Ibid.

226 NOTES

108. Discussed in detail in the previous chapter. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “To

Gujarati Arya Samajists,” CWMG, Vol. 24, p. 250; Mohandas K. Gandhi,

“Physical Training for the Satyagrahi,” Harijan , October 13, 1940.



p. 115.

110. Interview with Kalyanji Mehta, in ibid.

111. Ibid.



p. 115.

113. Mahadev H. Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli

Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929),

p. 160.

114. Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 40.

115. This observation is based on my own visual count of the figures in the

photograph.

116. Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

117. File 584- E, Part I, Times of India , March 29, 1928, p. 61; File 584- E, Part

VIII, Minutes from a Secret Meeting within the Home Department, July

27, 1928, p. 57; File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, February 2, 1928,

p. 19.

118. Interview with Congress leader, Kalyanji Mehta, in Shirin Mehta, The

Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi:

Manohar, 1984), p. 115.


120. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, February 27, 1928, p. 19, March

21, 1928, p. 53. The seriousness of a social boycott should not be over-

looked. In one case, a Brahmin peasant in the village of Ambethi had paid

his land revenue at a rate that had not been increased under the new policy.

In turn, peasants in his village boycotted him and did not call upon him to

preside over marriages many of which took place at the beginning of the

protest since it coincided with “the marriage season” (Ibid.). The symbol-

ism behind the boycott of this upper- caste peasant is noteworthy because

it entailed a temporary stripping of his caste entitled priestly functions,

indeed that which helped to secure his place at the top of the hierarchy of

Hindu castes.

121. File 584- E, Part I, Bombay Chronicle, April 25, 1928, p. 97; interview

with Keshavji Ganeshji Patel, quoted in Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and


p. 119. Such boycotts were impressive in the manner that they could extend

to commodities, services, information, fair rates for foodstuffs and basic

necessities, suspension of family relations etc. as it concerned the targets

of the boycott. For example, the village council in Valod had resolved to

boycott Keshavlal Sheth and Harkishandas Narottamdas in March 1928

227NOTES

for paying their outstanding land revenue shortly after the satyagraha was

launched (ibid.). Not only were they deprived of access to purchase goods

from shops, the “milkman, washerman and barber refused to serve” the

two Baniyas (ibid.). In addition Harkishandas’ pregnant wife was not able to

avail herself of local midwifery support and the daughter of Keshavlal Sheth

“was refused . . . [by Sheth’s] son- in- law” (ibid.). (Mehta does not clarify if

Keshavlal Sheth’s daughter was refused in terms of a marriage commit-

ment, cohabitation, or conjugal relations.) In the end, both Harkishandas

and Keshavlal Sheth made public apologies and contributed Rs. 1,452 to

the Bardoli fund (Keshavji Ganeshji Patel, interviewed in Shirin Mehta,


Manohar, 1984), p. 119).

122. Letter, quoted in Mahadev H. Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of

the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press,

1929), pp. 88–89. Other peasant communities that did not join the agitation

at all included the Muslims at Vankaner who paid their land revenue. True

to Gandhian form and discipline that could be put in service of organizing

a boycott, Vallabhbhai Patel ensured that they were not socially boycott in

any manner as he did not want to risk sharpening any communal divisions

that already existed in Bardoli (Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism:

A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984)). Curiously,

boycotts were also employed against state agents and they certainly chal-

lenged where the nonviolent limits of satyagraha in fact lay. Once the

Gandhians convinced the Baniyas of Kadod to join the satyagraha, the lat-

ter voluntarily opted, by unanimous resolution, to boycott the talatis who

resided in the locality during which they carried out attachments (or at least

attempted them). The Baniyas who sold basic foodstuff and other necessi-

ties resolved to trade only at night and only with villagers whom they were

personally acquainted—a move that prevented the talatis from purchasing

fresh produce and household items which they routinely did during the

day (File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 23, 1928, p. 93). By

late May 1928, the Baniyas boycotts had completely closed off the access of

government agents to basic necessities (or charged them exorbitant rates for

basic commodities like foodstuffs (File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter forwarded

on August 3, 1928, from Home Department- Special to Inspector General

of Police, p. 129). In devising these new routines of trade, the satyagra-

his, in effect, embarked on a coordinated campaign to slowly starve the

government officers. It was indeed a tactic that the satyagrahis voluntarily

introduced and one that Gandhian leaders did not expect or endorse. For

Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel, the extension of the boycott in this way

was of grave concern particularly because the satyagrahis were making a

subtle use of force by directing it, however furtively, at the bodies of the

government representatives (i.e., pain induced through hunger). Patel was

dispatched to Kadod to address the protesters. During his speech to them

he “said that he had heard the people of Kadod had that day resolved not

to supply any provision to the ‘Japti’ Officer who had been posted there on

special duty and who had come to stay there from that day. He would advise

228 NOTES

them to cancel that resolution and to arrange to supply the ‘Japti’ Officer all

necessaries of life at market price” (File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle,

April 25, 1928, p. 97). Strikingly, the satyagrahis capacity for efficacious

and coordinated action surpassed the limits and particular acts that Gandhi

and Patel sanctioned. More than just consisting of an elite project of popu-

lar mobilization that was coercively imposed on the peasantry, nonviolent

satyagraha produced a vision of its objectives that was not always ref lected

in substance and form. The expertise of the discourses of satyagraha enabled

new practices of resistance that were both of an intended and unintended

nature.


(New Delhi: Manohar, 1984).


125. File 584- E, Part VIII, Untitled report on Bardoli agitation, ca. July 1928,

pp. 141–159.


Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929),

p. 160.

127. Interview with Congress leader, Kalyanji Mehta, in Shirin Mehta, The

Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi:

Manohar, 1984), p. 115.

128. Ibid. Other considerations that went into the selection of camps included

selecting sites that could facilitate moments of tactical migration to neigh-

boring Baroda state (called hijrat ), which was a princely state to which the

British could not easily deploy the colonial police and army because it was

technically an autonomous jurisdiction that was governed by the Gaekwad

(ibid.). Also, certain villages, like Kadod, Valod, and Sarbhon were selected

to be camp headquarters because talatis and patels who were employed by

the Revenue Department resided in these villages and therefore Gandhians

felt the need to closely surveil them and keep abreast of the measures that

the state devised while also appealing to these officers in an attempt to gain

their support for the agitation (which eventually happened; ibid.).


130. Interview with Kunvarji Mehta, in Ghanshyam Shah, “Traditional

Society and Political Mobilization: The Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha

(1920–1928),” Contributions to Indian Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974),

pp. 95–96.



Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974).

132. Ibid.



Sociology NS, no. 89–107 (1974): p. 160.

134. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 3, 1928, p. 27; Times of

India , February 8, 1928, p. 1; File 584- E, Part VII, Indian National Herald,

July 10, 1928, p. 75.

229NOTES

135. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Bardoli Day,” CWMG, Vol. 36, p. 386; File 584- E,

Part I, Deshbandu, February 6, 1928, p. 13; Bombay Chronicle, March 8,

1928, p. 37.

136. File 584- E, Part I, f iled translation from The Mahratta, February 19, 1928,

p. 21; File 584- E, Part I, Deshbandu, February 6, 1928, p. 13; File 584- E,

Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, March 8, 1928, p. 37. Gandhi’s own invo-

cations that were published as the satyagraha was launched and it made

similar references. In particular, Gandhi made reference toward the sacred

pantheon of upper- caste Hinduism when he stated at the beginning of

the agitation that the satyagraha was a yajna that entailed a form of “self-

purification” (Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Yajna in Bardoli,” CWMG, Vol.

36, p. 315). Gandhi invoked religious forms of virtue that were prescribed

in Vedic texts and were usually the privilege of only the most pious upper-

caste Hindus. In coupling of “purification” with the protest, the Gandhians

mobilized powerful symbols that were meaningful for landed and upper-

caste Hindus. These invocations appealed to the middle- caste Patidars who

actively embraced upper- caste Hindu symbols as a cultural effect of social

reform efforts that took place in earlier decades (discussed in the first sec-

tions of this chapter) (David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda

District 1917–1934 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981).


138. Ibid.

139. Ibid.

140. Ibid.


142. Ibid.

143. Ibid.


145. Ibid.

146. Ibid.


(New Delhi: Manohar, 1984), p. 121.

148. Ibid.

149. File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter from Home Department (Political) to W. W.

Smart, Commissioner, Northern Division, July 31, 1928, p. 259. The emer-

gence of such a postal system was proposed as a legal basis for charging the

leaders of the protest since it could have constituted a violation of the Indian

Telegraphs Act of 1885 (Ibid.). State officials did not proceed as a settlement

on the heart of the issue was later seen to be the best recourse to ending the

grievance (analyzed in the next section).



Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929).

152. Harthshorne to Smart, quoted in Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and

Nationalism: A Study of the Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984,

p. 121.

153. Ibid.

230 NOTES


Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929).

155. Ibid.

156. Ibid., p. 189.


158. Ibid.

159. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 1, 1928, p. 105.

160. Ibid.; File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 29, 1928, May 11,

1928, p. 105, 127.


162. Ibid.

163. Ibid. This was the case, in part, because were communal attacks considered

most heinous when they targeted females (and children) of the opposite

community.

164. Ibid. From the beginning of the protest, the Gandhians underscored that

leaders of the satyagraha were drawn from various religious communities

(and that they were predominantly local) a move that likely counteracted

sharp religious differences that existed at the time between Hindus and

Muslims in Bardoli. The leaders whose names were circulated included:

Dr. Chandulal, Fulchand Shah, Mohanalal Pandya, Abbas Saheb, Imam

Saheb Bavazir, Kalyanji Mehta, and Ibrahim Patel who was one of the first

Muslims to court arrest during the protest. (File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay

Chronicle, February 28, 1928, pp. 19–21; March 10, 1928, p. 41; March 20,

1928, p. 85; May 13, 1928, p. 139). In the past, members of the Muslim

community did not participate in Gandhian agitations or did so merely at a

symbolic level. The fact that a visible section of Muslims of Bardoli actively

supported and participated in the satyagraha is therefore analytically note-

worthy of the Gandhians’ organizing efforts on a communal front.


166. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 13, 1928, May 24, 1928, pp.

139, 190.

167. Ibid. Reports also circulated at the time and suggested that buffaloes that

had been seized were being been beaten by army personnel (File 584- E,

Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 21, 1928, p. 163). That violence was being

directed at the animals was repugnant to many Hindus in Bardoli; they

shared an even deeper sense of outrage when it became known that Muslim

personnel from the British army had committed these atrocities (Ibid.)

The Gandhians were particularly attentive to the issue of cow slaughter

because news that Muslims were harming cows, even if it was a false rumor,

could ignite animosities between Hindus and Muslims. The issue had in

fact sharply divided the two communities in the previous decade when the

Arya Samaj mobilized Hindus and sought to ban the slaughter of all cows

in the taluka claiming that it caused religious injury to Hindus because the

cow was a sacred Vedic symbol (Mahadev H. Desai, The Story of Bardoli:

Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad:

Navajivan Press, 1929).

168. Ibid.

231NOTES


170. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 24, 1928, p. 187; File 584- E,

Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 26, 1928, p. 209; File 584- E, Part I,

Reznama- e- Khilafat , May 17, 1928, p. 181; File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter

from Secretary to Government of India to the Secretary to the Government

of Bombay, Revenue Department, July 28, 1928, p. 101.

171. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 23, 1928; May 12, 1928.

172. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 23, 1928; May 12, 1928.

173. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 11, 1928.

174. Mahadev Desai reports that 63 Patels and 11 talatis resigned their posi-

tions (Mahadev H. Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli

Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929), p.

184.)

175. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 11, 1928; Gandhi,

“Immolation of Bardoli,” CWMG, Vol. 36, pp. 411–412.

176. Two key conditions of which included the protesters agreeing to pay the

new land revenue rates and to submit all revenues that were in arrears to the

Revenue Department.

177. File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter entitled, “To Bombay Revenue; Bardoli

Measures to Deal With Agitators,” July 7, 1928, p. 7. The pursuit of legal

measures involved lengthy correspondences, between the Secretaries and

the Revenue and Legal Departments. They discussed— and disagreed on—

the possibilities of trying Vallabhbhai Patel in court for “inciting others

to break the law . . . [or] for inciting to the theft of crops,” Patel’s role in

organizing a conspiracy, or his hand in forming an unlawful association

(i.e., the base of “operations” at Bardoli Satyagraha Ashram [File 584- E,

Part VIII, Home Department letter, marked Confidential, July 11, 1928,

pp. 13–15, 26–28]). These were put forward as possible grounds on which

to try Patel but the consensus that was reached in government circles held

that there was a lack of evidence against the leader and few pertinent laws

under which to charge him (ibid.). A legal strategy that the state consid-

ered pursuing in May 1928 consisted of arresting rank- and- file satyagrahis

under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (sections 183, 189, 393,

in particular; File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 11, 1928, p.

127). In the case of Bardoli Satyagraha, however, the state invoked these

sections and arrested protesters for “resistance to the taking of property

by the lawful authority of a public servant, threatening a public servant in

the performance of his duty and assault or using criminal force to deter a

public servant from the discharge of his duty” (ibid.). Vallabhbhai Patel and

Abbas Tyabji, both trained barristers, unsuccessfully defended the accused

who plead “not guilty” to the charges in the Resident and Special Resident

Magistrates’ courts (File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 16, 1928,

p. 143). In his public writing, Gandhi took up the details of the cases and

claimed that little evidence supported the charges or the harsh sentences

(File 584- E, Part I, Young India, May 24, 1928, p. 195). In almost all of the

cases, the accused were sentenced to six months of “rigourous imprison-

ment” (ibid.).

232 NOTES

178. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 20, 1928, p. 87; Mahadev H.

Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and

Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1957), pp. 46, 158.

179. These two votes were held in March 1927 and then again one year later

after the satyagraha was launched (File 584- E, Part I, Times of India, May

17, 1928).


Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929), pp.

46, 158. It should be noted that not all of them were regularly aligned with

Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel as many had held views of and endorsed the

more moderate and constitutional methods of reform of the Home Rule

League. They were also members of the Bardoli Inquiry Committee that

was convened by the Home Rule League in 1926 to pursue constitutional

methods of appeal on the revenue issue.

181. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 24, 1928. They also collabo-

rated with N. F. Nariman, who was an important leader within the Swaraj

Party, and B. F. Barucha, K. K. Santok, Mir Mohammed Baloch, and M.

K. Patel, and organized public gatherings during which the Parsi Rajkiya

Sabha, Mazdiasni Mandal, and Rathestar Mandal, which were prominent

social organizations in Bombay (ibid., pp. 46, 158).


183. File 584- E, Part VIII, (Untitled) profiles of Bardoli and Gandhian activ-

ists, pp. 169–179. Irwin’s full name and title was: Edward Frederick Lindley

Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax.

184. File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, May 27, 1928, June 1, 1928, June

11, 1928, June 17, 1928, June 18, 1928.

185. File 584- E, Part V, The Bombay Chronicle, July 8, 1928, July 9, 1928, July 20,

1928, pp. 1, 35.

186. File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter from H.G. Haig, Secretary to the Government

of India, Home Department (Political), to Home Department (Special),

Government of Bombay, July 31, pp. 241–245.

187. File 584- E, Part VIII, Times of India , July 16, 1928. The Education Minister,

Harilal Desai worked to head off another confrontation over land revenue

rates in June and secured a concession for the peasants of Viramgam (File

584- E, Part VIII, The Bombay Chronicle, July 20, 1928). However, this

only intensified public criticism for the state’s position on the grievance at

Bardoli because it appeared as if the Government of Bombay had adopted a

discriminatory position against the peasants at Bardoli because it granted no

concession particularly for a grievance that began before that of Viramgam

(Ibid.).

188. File 584- E, Part VIII, Confidential Letter to Home Department (Political)

from H. W. Emerson, Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab,

August 4, 1928, p. 241.

189. Ibid. Because of this widespread support, Patel opted to accept donations

to the satyagraha that originated from outside Bardoli. Before that point,

he tried to maintain the local character of the agitation and therefore only

accepted donations that were collected within the subdistrict (Mahadev H.

233NOTES

Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928

and Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929).) In May, a little over

Rs. 10,000 was collected (in addition to a donation of a total of four cars

that were used by Gandhian activists in Bardoli); more than Rs. 200,000

was collected in June, and 300,000 was collected by mid- July (Mahadev H.

Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and

Its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929), p. 186.

190. Irwin, quoted in Shirin Mehta, The Peasantry and Nationalism: A Study of the

Bardoli Satyagraha (New Delhi: Manohar, 1984, p. 162.

191. Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons., “The Parliamentary

Debates (Official Report),” (London: H.M.S.O., 1909).Series 5, Vol. 219,

session 1928, June 25 to July 13, pp. 1822–1823, 2067.; Mahadev H. Desai,

The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and Its

Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929), p. 159.

192. Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons., “The Parliamentary

Debates (Official Report),” (London: H.M.S.O., 1909).Series 5, Vol. 219,

session 1928, June 25, to July 13, pp. 1822–1823, 2067.

193. Birkenhead Papers, July 12, 1928, CWSP, Doc. 208, p. 242.

194. File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter from Secretary to Government of India to the

Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Revenue Department, July 28,

1928, p. 101.

195. Ibid.

196. Viceroy to King Justifying Cultivators’ Stand, Halifax Papers, July 18, 1928,

CWSP , Vol. 2, Doc. 211, p. 246.

197. File 584- E, Part VIII, The Bombay Chronicle, July 19, 1928.

198. File 584- E, Part VIII, Times of India , July 20, 1928.




202. File 584- E, Part VIII, Home Department letter, marked Confidential, July

11, 1928, pp. 13–15, 26–28.

203. Ibid.

204. Ibid.

205. Ibid.

206. Ibid.

207. Ibid.

208. File 584- E, Part VIII, Confidential Telegram from Assistant Secretary

to the Government of Bombay, Home Department (Special) in Poona to

General Staff Officer, Southern Command (by order of the Governor in

Council), p. 273.

209. File 584- E, Part VIII, Letter from Secretary to Government of India to the

Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Revenue Department, July 28,

1928, p. 101.

210. File 584- E, Part VIII, Times of India , July 24, 1928.

211. File 584- E, Part VIII, Times of India August 5, 1928. These lands were vir-

tually nonperforming for the new owners, in terms of their remuneration,

because the boycott stripped them of access to the labor that was required

234 NOTES

to cultivate the harvests (File 584- E, Part I, The Bombay Chronicle, April 12,

1928, p. 81).

212. File 584- E, Part VIII, Times of India , August 7, 1928.

213. File 584- E, Part VIII, Time of India, August 8, 1928.

214. File 584- E, Part VIII, Times of India , August 18, 1928; Docs.235–236, pp.

269–270; Doc. 274, pp. 330–331, CWSP , Vol. 2.

215. Docs.235–236, pp. 269–270; Doc. 274, pp. 330–331, CWSP , Vol. 2.

216. I am thankful to Bhrigu Singh who alerted me to this testimony (and event

of the riots in 2002). I pursued it through my own follow- up research in

Ahmedabad in 2002.

3 Militant Peacekeeping and Subterfugic

Violence of the Quit India Movement (1942)

1. U. M. Chokshi and M. R. Trivedi, Gujarat State Gazetteer , 2 vols.

(Ahmadabad: Published by the Director, Govt. Print., Stationery and

Publications Obtainable from Gujarat Govt. Publications Depot, 1989);

Girish Patel, “Narendra Modi’s One- Day Cricket- What and Why?,”

Economic and Political Weekly November 30, 2002; Interview, Girish Ray

Trivedi, June, 2002, Ahmedbad.

2. Ibid.; Roderick Parkes to Edmund C. Gibson, August 18, 1942, IOL,

C.R.R.R./1/1/3804, (hereafter, Parkes to Gibson ), August 18, 1942.

3. Pran Nath Chopra and T. Wickenden, Quit India Movement, British Secret

Report (Delhi, India: Thompson Press, 1976), p. 2.

4. As I suggest, these methods of popular sabotage and violence were sig-

nificant within the timeframe of 1941 and 1942 and in the discourses and

practices of popular satyagraha that followed afterward. Particularly, the

Mahagujarat Movement (1958–1960), the Navnirman agitation in 1974,

and the anti- reservation movement (1985), all of which exhibited a similar

complex intertwining of nonviolent and violent mobilization ( Commission of

Inquiry. Findings of the Appointed to Inquire into the Police Firings at Ahmedabad

in August 1958 ; Times of India, March 29, 1974; Report of the Commission

of Inquiry 1990).



Press, 1991).

6. Ibid., p. 269.

7. Ibid. p. 271. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and

Political Mobilization in India , Oxford India Paperbacks (New Delhi; New

York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

8. Siddhartha Raychaudhuri, “Indian Elites, Urban Space and the

Restructuring of Ahmedabad City, 1890–1947” (Cambridge University,

1997). Leading up to the 1930s, the Moplah rebellion that sought to estab-

lish the rule of a Khilafat as a means to supplant the power of upper- caste

Hindu landholders on the Malabar coast in 1921, the formation of the

Hindu Mahasabha a year later; and the publication of V. D. Savarkar’s book

235NOTES

Hindutva in 1923 were important events that contributed to an increase

in communal activism in various parts of India (Manu Bhagavan, “The

Hindutva Underground,” Economic and Political Weekly XLIII, no. 37

(2007). Openly communal forms of mobilization also surfaced in south

Gujarat and Nadiad (Kheda district) after Civil Disobedience and Khilafat

were suspended in 1922. This involved competitive proselytization by the

Arya Samaj and Tabligh- ul- Islam, which were accompanied by violent

communal attacks between both groups (David Hardiman, “Purifying the

Nation: The Arya Samaj in Gujarat 1895–1930,” Indian Economic and Social

History Review 44, no. 1 (2007). To add to this, Congress members in Surat

in 1928 were cross- aff iliated with the party’s rival, the Hindu Mahasabha,

and thus contributed to the staging of provocative Hindu processions at

the time. The loyalties of Gujarati activists in Surat increasingly became

divided between the Hindu Mahasabha and its more powerful rival, the

Congress Party. As such, the period saw increased communal mobiliza-

tion in parts of Gujarat while a countercurrent to this also existed in that

prominent f igures, like K. M. Munshi, for example, pledged themselves

to Gandhi’s nonviolent program after the Bardoli Satyagraha in 1928.

Munshi later renounced this pledge after 1940 when the League became

more active and rioting between the communities became a recurring

feature throughout India.

9. Siddhartha Raychaudhuri, “Indian Elites, Urban Space and the Restructuring

of Ahmedabad City, 1890–1947” (Cambridge University, 1997).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. One important element on which League and Congress leaders were

divided was the manner in which coalition ministries between them, in

Bombay and Uttar Pradesh (north India), should operate.

14. Sunil Chander, “Congress- Raj Conf lict and the Rise of the Muslim League

in the Ministry Period 1937–1939,” Modern Asian Studies 21, no. 2 (1987).

15. Ibid., p. 208. Dehlavi was conference president that year also (ibid.).

Separate electorates permitted Muslims to elect Muslim candidates in spe-

cially allotted seats in areas in which the community was concentrated.

16. Ibid., p. 214.

17. Siddhartha Raychaudhuri, “Indian Elites, Urban Space and the

Restructuring of Ahmedabad City, 1890–1947” (Cambridge University,

1997), pp. 204, 10.

18. Ibid., p. 210. Within the crucial city industry of the textile mills, Muslims

weavers were adversely affected by a wage cut that was instituted under the

Delhi Agreement in 1935 (Siddhartha Raychaudhuri, “Indian Elites, Urban

Space and the Restructuring of Ahmedabad City, 1890–1947” (Cambridge

University, 1997). The agreement was negotiated by the Majoor Mahajan

(or Textile Labor Association) of the Congress, and Muslim weavers were

the worst affected by it compared to other sections of the working class in

the city. As a consequence, many weavers withdrew their support for the

Majoor Mahajan and, therefore, the Congress (Sujata Patel, The Making

236 NOTES

of Industrial Relations: The Ahmedabad Textile Industry, 1918–1939 (Delhi:


19. Siddhartha Raychaudhuri, “Indian Elites, Urban Space and the Restruc-

turing of Ahmedabad City, 1890–1947” (Cambridge University, 1997), p. 207.

20. Fortnightly Report, December 1940, L/P & J/5/162, (hereafter, FR2

December 1940).

21. FR2 December 1940.

22. Ibid.

23. Aparna Basu, Mridula Sarabhai: Rebel with a Cause (Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1996); Sunil Chander, “Congress- Raj Conf lict and the Rise of the

Muslim League in the Ministry Period 1937–1939,” Modern Asian Studies

21, no. 2 (1987).


Press, 1996).

25. Ibid. Such random attacks involved the stabbing of a victim, in public, by

an assailant who then f led the site.

26. Fortnightly report for the first half of April 1941, from Roger Lumley,

Governor of Bombay, to the Marquess of Linlithgow, Governor- General

and Viceroy of India, India Office Records, British Library, L/P & J/5/162

(hereafter, FR1 April 1941).

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.


Press, 1996).

32. FR1 April 1941, p. 1.

33. Fortnightly report for the second half of May 1941, from Roger Lumley,



(hereafter, FR2 May 1941).

34. Ibid.; Times of India, April 19, 23, and 25, 1941. Bombay Government Report

for the first half of May 1941 from J.B. Irwin, Secretary to the Governor

of Bombay, to Mr. E. Conran- Smith, The Under Secretary of the State for

India. India Office London, L/P & J/5/162 (hereafter, GR1 May 1941).

35. The Bombay Chronicle, April 24, 1941, p. 4.

36. GR1 May 1941, p. 2. Communal tensions were reported in other Gujarati

towns as well as in Pune, as a consequence of the violence in Ahmedabad,

and retaliatory attacks by Hindus on Muslims took place in the city of

Bombay on April 20 (ibid.).

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.


Press, 1996), pp. 89–90. She did so with the help of Congressmen like

Khandubhai Desai, Chimanbhai Patel, Prabhudas Patwari, Puratan Buch,

and members of the Majoor Mahajan.

237NOTES

41. Ibid., p. 91.

42. Ibid..

43. Ibid.

44. [Emphasis added], Narhari D. Parikh, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , vol. 2

(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1996), pp. 445–446.

45. Notably, such exhortations were remarkably similar to that of the Hindu

Mahasabha, the latter of which diagnosed a lack of courage and effeteness as

a key impediment to Hindu unity (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Hindutva;

Who Is a Hindu? , trans. [5th ed. (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1969).

The Mahasabha leader, Vinayak Savarkar, endorsed programs of physical

training for Hindus, because they, when organized into local cells, were

entirely within their rights to defend the community from aggressors, as

he viewed it (Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Hindutva; Who Is a Hindu? , trans.

[5th ed.] (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1969).

46. Gandhi, Mohandas, K. “Letter to Nrisinhprasad K. Bhatt,” CWMG,

Vol. 76, June 1, 1939, pp. 4–5.

47. The Bombay Chronicle, May 15, 1941, p. 4; Aparna Basu, Mridula Sarabhai:

Rebel with a Cause (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).

48. Ibid., emphasis added.

49. FR2 May 1941, p. 1 (Governor’s report page).

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. GR1 May 1941.

53. Gandhi later extended the suspension by two months, and for all of Gujarat,

when communal violence f lared up again in the city in mid- May (ibid.).

54. Ibid., p. 4.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., p. 5.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid. The violence resumed in mid- May despite the enforcement of cur-

fews and police presence, random stabbings and stray assaults in the city also

increased.

61. FR2 May 1941, p. 1 (Governor’s report page).

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid.

66. Government of Bombay, Home Department (Special), File No. 844- H-

VIII (2)(i)/1941, pp. 139–141.



68. Fortnightly report for the second half of September 1941, from Roger

Lumley, Governor of Bombay, to the Marquess of Linlithgow, Governor-

General and Viceroy of India, India Office Records, British Library, L/P &

J/5/162 (hereafter, FR2 September 1941).

238 NOTES


(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981). As Sumit Sarkar suggests,

many of these undertakings were vague and they met with both support and

opposition particularly from upper- caste Hindus who were either within

the Congress Party or its public opponents (Sumit Sarkar, Modern India,

1885–1947 , trans. 1999 reprint ed. (Madras: Macmillan India, 1983).

70. The Bombay Chronicle, May 15, 1941, p. 4.

71. Times of India, May 30, 1941.


VIII (2)(i)/1941, pp. 139–141.

73. Ibid.



VIII (2)(i)/1941, pp. 139–141. As already mentioned, the Civic Guards

was another force that was constituted around specific forms of physical

training and bodily maneuvers (Aparna Basu, Mridula Sarabhai: Rebel with a

Cause (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).

76. Times of India, May 23, 1941; Government of Bombay, Home Department

(Special), File No. 844- H- VIII (2)(i)/1941, pp. 139–141.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.


VIII (2)(i)/1941, pp. 139–141.



VIII (2)(i)/1941, pp. 139–141.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid.

84. Strikingly, the Gandhians and the militant Hindu leader, V. D. Savarkar,

both embraced military training for Indian males, particularly Hindus,

through enlistment in the army. On the matter of the war itself, however,

they were on opposite sides. Savarkar endorsed the British war effort and

encouraged Indians to participate whereas the Gandhians, especially Patel,

opposed the involvement of the Indian army in World War II. In Savarkar’s

view, the army was in need of “Indianisation” and participation in the war

effort was “the best opportunity” for Indians to obtain training in mili-

tary matters that could enable them to defend their country when the need

arose . . . [and] make India self- reliant and free” ( Times of India, May 19, 1941).

Thus, Savarkar and Gandhi came to adopt parallel positions on the involve-

ment of Indians in British wars albeit in the context of two different con-

f licts. In chapter 1 , I discuss how Gandhi encouraged Indians, particularly

Hindus, to enlist in the Indian army to contribute to the forces required for

World War I. In Gandhi’s view at that time, enlistment was said to afford

Hindus with much needed technical training in military affairs while also

enabling them to recover from their “effeminate” condition.

85. Patel, quoted in an appendix of evidence for the Wickenden Report (1976,

Secret Evidence Appendix I, Item 69, p. 249, emphasis added).

239NOTES

86. Ibid.

87. Report of October 15, 1942, from Roger Lumley, Governor of Bombay, to

the Marquess of Linlithgow, Governor- General and Viceroy of India, India

Office Records, British Library, L/P & J/5/163 (hereafter, October report

1942). Despite the support of the spinners for the strike— something that

was a product of the fact that they belonged to the Majoor Mahajan, which

the Congress Party controlled— it eventually waned as the protest wore

on. Further evidence that Muslim leaders were not supportive of the Quit

India Movement can be seen by their request to have their political repre-

sentatives retained in municipal bodies while the Gandhians called for non-

cooperation with state institutions. In his report, the Governor expressed

his intentions to retain such potential allies and “other non- Congress per-

sons” who could assist with the administration of the municipalities that the

Government of Bombay intended to supersede (ibid., p. 7).



89. Ibid., pp. 440, 52–53.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid., p. 432.

92. Ibid.

93. Fortnightly report for the second half of June 1940, from Roger Lumley,



(hereafter, FR2 June 1940).

94. Ibid.

95. Ibid.

96. Fortnightly report for the first half of July 1940, from Roger Lumley,



(hereafter, FR1 July 1940).

97. Ibid.

98. FR2 June 1940.

99. Ibid.

100. Ibid.

101. A related point here is the Governor’s decision to place “put all Civic

Guards” in Bombay and the districts, in government issued uniforms, iden-

tifying competition from other volunteer armies as the reason for clearly

demarcating the Civic Guards (FR July 1940).

102. FR2 September 1941, p. 1–2. In the Governor’s report that followed, the

issue of the rejection of enlistees came up again. Curiously, he reported

that “the educated classes,” consisting mainly of upper- caste Hindus, were

concerned that most of the commissions were going to non- Brahmins. The

same complaint, albeit from an opposite position, was articulated by the

Ambedkar, the icon and leader of the Dalit movement, who alleged that

commissions were disproportionately being awarded to the upper castes

(Fortnightly report for the first half of October 1941, from Roger Lumley,


240 NOTES


[hereafter, FR1 October 1941]).

103. Ibid., p. 195.

104. Fortnightly report for the last half of February 1942, from Roger Lumley,



(hereafter, FR2 February 1942).

105. FR2 February 1942.

106. Ibid., p. 1.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid.

109. Ibid.

110. Ibid.; Parkes to Gibson, August 18, 1942, IOL, C.R.R.R./1/1/3804.



112. Reprint of Cripps’s proposal in The Indian Nationalist Movement 1885–1947,

Select Documents, 1979, p. 178; ibid. 1996.

113. Ibid. Congress leaders were ambitious about organizing civil defense and

gaining control over an enlarged volunteer force, which the party hoped

would first be mobilized by the state, at least according to the govern-

ment. In a discussion with the governor, the Congress politician, Bhalubhai

Desai, proposed to place the People’s Volunteer Brigade, which the

Congress would sponsor, under a single Army Reserve Police organiza-

tion. However, the price for the cooperation of the Congress Party with

the state entailed handing over the command of such a volunteer outfit to

a Citizens’ Civil Defence Committee that would oversee all civil defense.

The governor declined the offer remarking in his report that Congress

leaders were strategically attempting to gain authority over a “controlling

body, to which everyone will look for help and guidance,” something from

which the Congress Party would surely profit (FR2 February 1942, p. 3).

114. I focus on the unfolding of the Quit India Movement specifically in the

city of Ahmedabad, primarily in 1942, although a parallel movement was

organized in the city of Baroda and the movement as a whole continued for

some time into 1943 in Kheda district and south Gujarat. Including devel-

opments in Baroda, Kheda district and south Gujarat are beyond the scope

of this chapter which focuses on two key moments in which the satya-

graha movement took on more militant anti- colonial tones with members

of physical culture and underground revolutionary movements playing an

important role.


Publishing House, 1996), p. 476.

116. Patel, quoted in an appendix of evidence for the Wickenden Report (1976,

Secret Evidence Appendix I, Item 69, p. 249, emphasis added). The inci-

dent at Viramgam to which Patel referred was the immolation of a senior

government officer in the Gujarati town of Viramgam during the violent

protest that erupted during the Rowlatt Satyagraha in 1919 (discussed in

chapter 2).

241NOTES

117. Ibid.

118. Report covering late July and August 1942, from Roger Lumley, Governor

of Bombay, to the Marquess of Linlithgow, Governor- General and Viceroy

of India, India Office Records, British Library, L/P & J/5/163 (hereafter,

August report 1942).

119. U. M. Chokshi and M. R. Trivedi, Gujarat State Gazetteer (Kheda)


Publications Obtainable from Gujarat Govt. Publications Depot, 1989);

Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biography (Calcutta: Institute of

Historical Studies, 1972). Ambubhai Purani started one of the first akha-

das in Nadiad in 1917 after which Motibhai Amin started a gymnasium

in Anand; this was a time in which Amin was also instrumental in mak-

ing physical training compulsory in the boarding house he oversaw and

a secondary school (referred to as D.N. High School in the Gujarat State

Gazetteer ) (U. M. Chokshi and M. R. Trivedi, Gujarat State Gazetteer

(Kheda) (Ahmadabad: Published by the Director, Govt. Print., Stationery

and Publications Obtainable from Gujarat Govt. Publications Depot, 1989).

Chhotubhai Purani, his brother and Ravajibhai Patel were instrumental in

popularizing akhadas and sports competitions began to be regularly held

in Gujarat from 1925. In this period, a number of akhadas were formed in

these years in Kapadvanj, Bhadran, Sojitra, Dharmaj, and Virsad among

other places. Ravajibhai Patel also organized “summer camps” for physical

education from 1927 onward, with the support of the Charotar Education

Society (U. M. Chokshi and M. R. Trivedi, Gujarat State Gazetteer (Kheda)


Publications Obtainable from Gujarat Govt. Publications Depot, 1989),

p. 657.

120. U. M. Chokshi and M. R. Trivedi, Gujarat State Gazetteer (Kheda)


Publications Obtainable from Gujarat Govt. Publications Depot, 1989); Siba

Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biography (Calcutta: Institute of Historical

Studies, 1972).



(1980): p. 86.


Studies, 1995), p. 119.

123. David Hardiman, “The Quit India Movement in Gujarat,” in The Indian

Nation in 1942 , ed. Gyanendra Pandey (Calcutta: Published for Centre for

Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta by K.P. Bagchi, 1988).

124. B. N. Pandey, The Indian Nationalist Movement, 1885–1947: Select Documents

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979).



Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta by K.P. Bagchi, 1988), p. 80.

126. Purani was a product of an experiment with revolutionary nationalism in

Gujarat, some might also suggest early Hindu nationalism also, which first

242 NOTES

emerged in Baroda during the first decade of the twentieth century (south

Gujarat) prior to Gandhi and Sardar Patel’s popularity (David Hardiman,

“Baroda, the Structure of a Progressive State,” in People, Princes and Paramount

Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States , ed. Robin Jeffrey (Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1978)). As discussed in the previous chapter,

Aurobindo Ghose espoused the idea that Hindus should recuperate their

“ancient” martial practices, beginning first with the upper castes, and thus

strengthen them. In so doing, they would be more unified and could throw

off the yoke of colonial rule. Ghose and K. G. Deshpande organized ado-

lescent Marathi and Gujarati men into “terrorist societies” (similar to those

in Bengal) in addition to starting a “nationalist school” in 1907 (meaning

one that embraced a curriculum of nationalist- focused instruction in lan-

guages, history, and science) (David Hardiman, “Baroda, the Structure of a

Progressive State,” in People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in

the Indian Princely States , ed. Robin Jeffrey (Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1978).) Although the terrorist societies focused mainly on producing sedi-

tious literature, one was allegedly involved in the attempted assassination of

Lord and Lady Minto in Ahmedabad in 1909 (David Hardiman, “Baroda,

the Structure of a Progressive State,” in People, Princes and Paramount Power:

Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States , ed. Robin Jeffrey (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1978). This event and the trial that followed shone a light

on the presence of radical anti- British activism in Baroda, which was fol-

lowed by the state forcing the Gaekwad to shut down the group’s press and

force Deshpande out of his administration (which he did) (ibid.). Although

figures like Sardar Patel had relations with members of this more openly

radical group, they were eventually marginalized with the rising popular-

ity of the Gandhian movement from 1910 to 1920. In south Gujarat, former

members of Ghose and Deshpande’s company of extremists later threw their

support behind the Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj and they opposed the

Congress and Gandhi’s commitment to nonviolence (ibid.).

127. CWMG, Vol. 24, pp. 249–251.

128. Ibid., addressed in more detail in chapter 1 .



130. Ibid. Narayan had studied in the United States and had been ideologically

seduced by the revolutionary orientation of socialism that he encoun-

tered there (Yusuf Meherally, “Introduction,” in Towards Struggle: Selected

Manifestoes, Speeches & Writings , ed. Yusuf Meherally (Bombay: Padma

Publications, 1946), p. 11.). He was appointed as Acting General Secretary

of the Congress during the Civil Disobedience movement in 1932, and

later jailed for his participation. In jail, he met Achyut Patwardhan, Ashok

Mehta, N. G. Gore, S. M. Joshi, and Professor M. L. Dantwala. Together

they formulated plans to establish the Socialist Party as part of a response

to “the decay” that had set into Congress. These young leaders yearned for

“a more dynamic orientation and outlook and programme of the Congress

[Party]” and the Quit India Movement seemed to offer them the opportu-

nity to effect such a shift (ibid., p 10).

243NOTES

131. Narendra Deva, “Presidential Address, the First Gujarat Congress Socialist

Conference” (Ahmedabad, June 23, 1935), Nehru Memorial Museum and

Library, Document GI–3196, hereafter Deva Address 1935 ).

132. David Hardiman, The Quit India Movement in Gujarat, in The Indian





134. Ibid., p. 333.

135. Morarji Desai, The Story of My Life (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1974)[AQ:

Please clarify whether this is Desai 1929 Mahadev H. Desai, The Story

of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and Its Sequel

(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1929) if not then provide complete details

for Desai 1979]; Wickenden Report, 1976, pp.53–54.

136. Morarji Desai, The Story of My Life (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1974).

137. Ibid., p. 192.

138. Yusuf Meherally, “Introduction,” in Towards Struggle: Selected Manifestoes,

Speeches & Writings , ed. Yusuf Meherally (Bombay: Padma Publications,

1946), p. 11).

139. Wickenden Report, 1976, p. 41.

140. Ibid., items 73 and 91, Secret Evidence Part II, pp. 288–289.

141. Ibid.

142. Ibid.

143. Ibid.




145. Ibid.

146. August Report 1942.

147. Ibid., p. 158.

148. Ibid.

149. Ibid.

150. Ibid.; Report from 24 August to 24 September 1942, from Roger Lumley,



(hereafter, September report 1942), p. 3.

151. Ibid.

152. Ibid.

153. September report 1942, p. 3.

154. Ibid.

155. Ibid.; August report 1942; October report 1942. Molestation refers to physi-

cally roughing up of individuals (usually males).

156. September report 1942.


158. October report 1942, pp. 4–5.

159. Ibid.

160. Ibid., pp. 4–5.

244 NOTES

161. Ibid., p. 4.

162. October report 1942, p. 1.

163. Ibid.

164. Ibid., p. 4.

165. Interview with Girish Patel, Ahmedabad, January 2008.

166. Jaykumar Ranchhodbhai Shukla, “1942 Ni ‘Hind Chhodo’ Ni Ladat Ma

Amadavad Nu Pradan” (Gujarat University, n.d.); Harish Doshi, Traditional

Neighbourhood in a Modern City , trans. 1st ed. (New Delhi: Abhinav

Publications, 1974).

167. Harish Doshi, Traditional Neighbourhood in a Modern City , trans. 1st ed. (New

Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1974).


Amadavad Nu Pradan” (Gujarat University, n.d.).



Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta by K. P. Bagchi, 1988), pp. 87–88.


Amadavad Nu Pradan” (Gujarat University, n.d.).


172. Ibid.

173. Ibid.; Jaykumar Ranchhodbhai Shukla, “1942 Ni ‘Hind Chhodo’ Ni Ladat

Ma Amadavad Nu Pradan” (Gujarat University, n.d.).


175. Ibid., p. 3.

176. IOL R/A/A/3797 Note on Pro- Congress Agitation. Gujarat States Agency,

August 17, 1942 (hereafter, August 1942 note).

177. August 1942 note.

178. Ibid., p. 20.

179. Ibid.

180. Ibid., p. 19.

181. Secret Congress Broadcasts and Storming the Railway Tracks during Quit

India Movement, 1988, pp. 100–103.

182. September report 1942. Hardiman (1988) concludes this also.

183. September report 1942, p. 4.

184. Ibid. Despite these claims to the government, the mill owners were also

trying to appease Congress by making large donations, which were used to

pay to striking workers. It is reported that Sardar Patel himself oversaw the

collection a large fund to pay striking workers (Documents 7, 23, and 66 in

Quit India, British Secret Documents [1986]).

185. September report 1942 p. 5.

186. Fortnightly report for the last half of October 1942, from Roger Lumley,


and Viceroy of India, India Office Records, British Library, L/P & J/5/163,

FR2 October 1942.

187. Ibid.

188. Fortnightly report for the first half of November 1942, from Roger Lumley,


245NOTES

and Viceroy of India, India Office Records, British Library, L/P & J/5/163,

p. 2 (hereafter, FR1 November 1942).

189. FR1 November 1942.

4 Physical Culture, Civic Activism, and

Hindu Nationalism in the City

1. Paul R. Brass, The Production of Hindu- Muslim Violence in Contemporary

India , Jackson School Publications in International Studies (Seattle: University

of Washington Press, 2003); Asgharali Engineer, “Communal Riots in

2002” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 4 (2003); Ghanshyam Shah,

“Contestation and Negotiations: Hindutva Sentiments and Temporal

Interests in Gujarat Elections,” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 48

(2002).

2. Interviews with Mukundra Bhatt (pracharak), June 2003, Ahmedabad.

3. As such, the reader should understand that I am not offering a “compre-

hensive” political biography of RSS branches that maps out their location

within a wider network of the organization.

4. Interviews with Mukundra Bhatt (pracharak), June 2003, Ahmedabad;

Ashutosh, former swayamsevak, June 2003, Ahmedabad.

5. The Bombay Chronicle, “Country- Wide Arrests of R.S.S Men,” December

10, 1948.

6. The Bombay Chronicle : “2,000 R.S.S. Workers Taken in Custody,” December

11, 1948; “Arrest of RSS Workers in City Continues,” December 13,

1948.

7. Jean Alonzo Curran and Nayar N. Damodaran, Militant Hinduism in

Indian Politics: A Study of the R.S.S (New Delhi: All India Quami Ekta

Sammelan, 1951), p. 44; “Notes on the Volunteer Movement in India,”

Intelligence Bureau, January 27, 1940, cited in Christophe Jaffrelot, The

Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press,

1996), pp. 68, 74–75.

8. Consult the following for interpretations of Hindu nationalist shakhas,

which emphasize obedience: Joseph S. Alter, Somatic Nationalism: Indian

Wrestling and Militant Hinduism, Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (1994);

Pralaya Kanungo, Myth of the Monolith: The RSS Wrestles to Discipline

Its Political Progeny, Social Scientist 34, no. 11/12 (2006).

9. Readers may notice how the notions of civic solidarity that I discuss inf lect

modern understandings of volunteerism and free association. This is the

case because they emerged in the context of encounters with the colonial

state in South Asia, religious reform, and the emergence of Indian national-

ism (as already discussed). Therefore, classifying these physical practices and

performances of controlled violence as “non- secular” or “non- liberal” is

problematic because they have thrived in postcolonial India precisely under

the constitutional auspices of a liberal state that sanctions “free associa-

tion” and freedoms accorded to religious observance (nominally referred

to as freedom of religion ). Furthermore, the RSS has historically claimed that

246 NOTES

physical training is largely a religious observance while it has also explained

that it has been observed on “private grounds” and is therefore not a prac-

tice that ought to be regulated by the state (Home Department [Special],

Activities of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, File No. 822, part III,

Ban on the Drill of a Military Nature, report from W. N. Bakhtiyar, District

Magistrate, Sholapur to Secretary to the Government of Bombay, Home

Department [Political], Bombay, September 2, 1941, pp. 243–247, 255).

10. The reader will recall in chapter 2 , I reviewed the manner in which

Gandhian activists struck up relations with the peasant communities

in Bardoli prior to the satyagraha of 1928. This entailed a cadre of elite

Gandhian activists who took up residence in an ashram situated near to

them. In the process, they managed to recruit a community member into

the Gandhian movement through which the community was inducted into

a program of social reform along Gandhian lines. In some respect, the RSS

method has been virtually identical in that it sought to anchor itself deep

within local neighborhoods and cultivate potential leaders within it (i.e.,

volunteers) who would carry the RSS message to members of the commu-

nity from “within.”

11. Confirming that the modest footing that shakhas secured in the city was

not ref lected by gains for the Jana Sangh the following election data should

be noted. In the Gujarat Legislative Elections that occurred in 1952, 1957,

and 1962, Jana Sangh won no seats and earned from less than a half percent

to one percent of the votes. The party won its f irst seat in 1967 (earning 2%

of the votes) and three seats in 1972 (earning 9% of the votes) (Ghanshyam

Shah, “The 1975 Gujarat Assembly Election in India,” Asian Survey 16, no.

3 (1976): p. 276).

12. Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

2004).

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ram Lall Dhooria, I Was a Swayamsevak: An inside View of the RSS (New

Delhi: Sampradayta Virodhi Committee, n.d.); V.M Sirsikar, “My Years in

the RSS,” in The Experience of Hinduism: Essays on Religion in Maharashtra ,

Eleanor Zelliot and Maxine Berntsen, eds. (Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1988).

16. Public representations of shakhas, however, tend to emphasize the discipline

of its activists. Scholars, journalist, and filmmakers who visit shakhas or

training camps that the RSS organizes periodically have often been invited

to observe displays of collective obedience and group discipline of RSS

members. Such spectacles often entail the performance of drill by activists

in tandem with the commands of a drill master (Anand Patwardhan, Ram

Ke Nam (Bombay: Anand Patwardhan, 1992); cf. Joseph S. Alter, “Somatic

Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism,” Modern Asian

Studies 28, no. 3 (1994). In the course of my research, these performances

seemed to be orchestrated as public relations opportunities that exhibited

rigid kinds of obedience-they were markedly different than the tenor of

physical training that characterized bodily conditioning in shakhas that was

247NOTES

undertaken on an everyday basis, which I analyze below. This point is theo-

retically supported by observations of theorists and historians of subaltern

movements who underscore the complex manners in which subordinate

groups may exercise their agency in face of elite projects that are located

within the state or in political organizations (Ranajit Guha, “Historiography

of Colonial India,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History

and Society , Guha Ranajit (New Delhi: Oxford University, 1999). These

scholars suggest that the effects of projects of popular mobilization neces-

sarily vary for elites and subalterns. Within this analytical view of power,

subaltern groups may often be subject to the ideological inf luence of elites

but its effects are far from “uniform in quality and density in all instances”

as Ranajit Guha has eloquently stated (Ranajit Guha, “Historiography of

Colonial India,” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and

Society , Guha Ranajit (New Delhi: Oxford University, 1999): 3). Therefore

physical training cannot be reduced to–nor did it deliver–an intended

course of outcomes within the field in which such discursive practices were

introduced. In my view, being vigilant and ref lexive of this is crucial to

understanding how physical training that was, and continues to be, enacted

within shakhas constitutes an historical and increasingly widely observed

mode of civic involvement and membership in Gujarati publics.

17. The textual references to which I refer are the documents of the Home and

Political departments, in addition to the surveillance that is available in

written form in the Secret Abstracts of the police, which constitute a major

source of archival evidence pertaining to the colonial era (or greater parts

of it). These kinds of primary sources are not available or held in accessible

public archives for much of the postcolonial period, thus making the study

of RSS activities in neighborhoods of Ahmedabad an enterprise that drew

on ethnographic methods that I outlined in the Introduction.

18. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004; Interview, Ashutosh Bhatt, June 2004. I

conducted these interviews, mostly in Ahmedabad, during my research in

the 1999–2007 period. In cases in which I interviewed former members of

this RSS shakha who requested that I keep their identities anonymous, I use

a pseudonym.

19. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004.

20. Although the local history of Khadia is a narrative of complexity, shift-

ing communities and industry, architecture, and emplaced practices, it

increasingly became viewed as the center of political life in the city and is

popularly remembered, not without historical error, as a privileged local-

ity in the city since its inception in 1411 (Interview, Ashutosh Bhatt, June

2004, Ahmedabad). Congress rallies were often staged in the Badhra area,

which was almost immediately adjacent to Khadia (Narhari D. Parikh,

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , vol. 1 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House,

1996). The neighborhood has also increasingly been seen as a stronghold for

Hindus, which contributed to it becoming a target of attack by Muslims in

the communal violence that took place in 1941 (discussed in chapter 3).

21. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004; Rita Kothari, “RSS in Sindh: 1942–

1948,” Economic and Political Weekly 21, no. July 8–15 (2006).

248 NOTES

22. Jean Alonzo Curran and Nayar N. Damodaran, Militant Hinduism in Indian

Politics: A Study of the R.S.S (New Delhi: All India Quami Ekta Sammelan,

1951).

23. Ibid. Informants that I interviewed confirmed that there were a handful

of branches in Khadia, but they could not confirm exactly how many

existed in the city at the time. No accurate count is available because the

RSS is very secretive about releasing this kind of information. Hindu

nationalist organizations have been increasingly scrutinized by federal

bodies and NGOs that are based outside Gujarat, particularly after the

violence of 2002 and after the Congress Party and a coalition of politi-

cal parties were able to form the government in 2004 and 2009. In fact,

such questions are often explicitly not permitted to be asked by observ-

ers of the movement, and this partly characterizes my experience of

interviewing senior RSS off icials. Former members also attest to the

need to observe this code of silence. What evidence that is available

indicates that at an all- India level the movement has grown tremen-

dously since its inception with 40,000 volunteers in 1938 and, accord-

ing an RSS spokesperson, 100,000 by 1940 (Tapan Basu et al., Khaki

Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right , vol. 1, Tracts for

the Times (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993), p. 24; Jean Alonzo

Curran and Nayar N. Damodaran, Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A

Study of the R.S.S (New Delhi: All India Quami Ekta Sammelan, 1951),

p. 14. A Government of India report, published in 1981, estimated that

one million regular volunteers participate in the RSS with f inancial con-

tributions from them totaling Rs. 10 million annually (Tapan Basu et al.,

Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right , vol. 1, Tracts for

the Times (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993), p. 53.) Bacchetta counted,

in 1994, 2.5 million volunteers in the RSS alone (Paola Bacchetta, Gender

in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues , Feminist Fine Print; 1 (New

Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2004), p. 95.) Although these f igures may

be somewhat useful, they are unreliable because the movement does

not publish a census of its active volunteers, something that is always

f luctuating.


25. Undertaking such forms of social assistance as a means to nurture a sup-

portive political community was a strategy that the Congress had also

employed in an earlier period. After the f lood of 1927, Vallabhbhai Patel

mobilized relief with nakedly instrumental purposes to win over middle-

class Ahmedabadis. In doing so, he excluded mill workers from any relief

and only extended assistance to them after Gandhi compelled him to do so

(Howard Spodek, “Struggle and Development: A History of Coping with

Poverty,” in Poverty and Vulnerability in a Globalising Metropolis: Ahmedabad ,

Amitabh Kundu and Darshini Mahadevia (New Delhi: Manak Publications,

2002).


27. Girish Patel, “Narendra Modi’s One- Day Cricket- What and Why?,”

Economic and Political Weekly November 30, 2002.

249NOTES

28. Harish Khare, “An Unending Struggle for Gujarat’s Political Soul,” Seminar ,

October 1998.

29. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, “Justice on Trial; a Collection of the Historic

Letters between Sri Guruji and the Government, 1948–49,” (Bangalore:

Prakashan Vibhag Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; sole distributors:

Rashtrotthana Sahitya, 1969); Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist

Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Therefore,

it can be said that at the federal level the growth of shakhas and RSS activi-

ties has been the subject of government monitoring, engagement, and even

forms of regulation.

30. Harish Khare, “An Unending Struggle for Gujarat’s Political Soul,” Seminar ,

October 1998; Girish Patel, “Narendra Modi’s One- Day Cricket- What and

Why?,” Economic and Political Weekly November 30, 2002.

31. Interview, Sambhav Nath, September 2002, Ahmedabad.

32. Howard Spodek, “Sardar Vallabhai Patel at 100,” Economic and Political

Weekly , December 13, 1975. Patel and the RSS also shared a disdain for

communist organizations (Girish Patel, “Narendra Modi’s One- Day

Cricket- What and Why?,” Economic and Political Weekly November 30,

2002.

33. Patel’s views on communalism evolved over the first three decades of the

twentieth century. As a “lieutenant” of Gandhi, he tended to refrain from

publicly castigating Muslim leaders Rafiq Zakaria, Sardar Patel and Indian

Muslims: An Analysis of His Relations with Muslims, before and after India’s

Partition (New Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1996). He grew more hostile

to the Muslim League, something that he displayed openly during Partition

(Parita Mukta, “Gender, Community, Nation: The Myth of Innocence,” in

States of Conf lict : Gender, Violence and Resistance , Susie M. Jacobs, Jacobson,

Ruth and Jen Marchbank, eds. (London; New York: Zed Books Ltd., 2000).

The reader will recall from chapter 3 that Patel also publicly reprimanded

Hindus of Ahmedabad for their inability to mount self- defense when

Muslims attacked members of the community in a severe attack in 1941.

That Hindus of the city resorted to asking the colonial police for protection

fueled his anger, because he viewed it as evidence of the cowardice of Hindu

men in the city. Congress leaders also viewed the request for assistance from

the colonial police in 1941 as an admission of weakness by Indians, which

was articulated precisely at a moment when nationalist leaders like Patel

sought to wrest political control of India from the British. Patel was also

viewed as a more natural leader of the Congress Party and, later, an inde-

pendent India, particularly by “Hindu traditionalists” within the Congress

Party (Bruce D. Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins

and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh , Cambridge South Asian Studies

(Cambridge England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990),

p. 6). This constituency of leaders, many of whom hailed from Gujarat (but

also north India), was opposed to the partitioning of India or reluctantly

accepted it. They were also convinced that a modern Indian society should

be guided by Hindu principals, rather than Western ones, and therefore

aligned with views of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha.

250 NOTES

34. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History

in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Vazira Fazila-

Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South

Asia , Cultures of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

35. Rita Kothari, “RSS in Sindh: 1942–1948,” Economic and Political Weekly 21,

no. July 8–15 (2006).

36. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, Justice on Trial; a Collection of the Historic

Letters between Sri Guruji and the Government, 1948–49, (Bangalore:

Prakashan Vibhag Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; sole distributors:

Rashtrotthana Sahitya, 1969); Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist

Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).


in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 93.

38. Ibid.


40. Interview, Ibid.

41. T. Wickenden, Quit India Movement: British Secret Report (Faridabad:

Thomson Press (India), 1976).

42. In the assembly election for Bombay state in 1952, the Congress won

141 seats (combining Gujarat and Saurashtra together), and the Socialist

Party secured four seats. In the Lok Sabha elections in 1941, Congress

won twenty seats for Gujarat, Saurashtra, and Kutch, and the Socialist

Party secured one seat in Gujarat (Devavrat N. Pathak, M.G. Parekh, and

Kirtidev D. Desai, Three General Elections in Gujarat: Development of a Decade

1952–1962 (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University Press, 1966), pp. 28–30; Pran

Nath Chopra and T. Wickenden, Quit India Movement, British Secret Report

(Delhi, India: Thompson Press, 1976), pp. 28–30.


44. B. V. Deshpande, S. R. Ramaswamy, and H. V. Seshadri, Dr. Hedgewar, the

Epoch- Maker: A Biography , trans. 1st ed. (Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu: sole

distributors Rashtrotthana Sahitya, 1981).

45. Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party

(Philadelphia: 1969).

46. Ibid.

47. Bruce D. Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and

Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh , Cambridge South Asian Studies

(Cambridge England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

48. Ibid.


in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

50. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 128.

51. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004; S.P. Kotval, “Report on the Cases of Police

Firing at Ahmedabad on the 12th, 13th, and 14th August 1958,” (Bombay:

Government of Bombay, Home Department (Special). 1959); Indulal Yagnik,

Atmakatha , ed., Dhanvant Oza, vol. VI (Ahmedabad: Gnanprachar, 1986).

251NOTES

52. Interview, John Momin, June 2004, Ahmedabad. Ashok Bhatt, a figure

who was touted as being indispensable to the BJP’s control over Ahmedabad

politics before he died, was a former member of the Socialist Party who

gained a reputation for being an able activist and supporter of Gujarati

causes through his participation in the Mahagujarat Movement. His con-

tributions to the Mahagujarat agitations enabled him to establish himself

as an able political operator, pressing into service as he did so, the cultural

and social capital of his mother, Shardaben Bhatt, who was a satyagrahi in

Gandhi’s Dandi March in 1930, then member of the Socialist Party in 1950,

and later a representative in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (ibid.;

Interview, Ashok Bhatt, July 2002, Ahmedabad).

53. IBNLive, “RSS Gets a New Captain,” http://ibnlive.in.com/electionblogs

/vinay- sahasrabuddhe/2422/53287/rss- gets- a- new- captain.html, accessed

March 19, 2011.

54. The Indian Express (North American edition), “RSS Names Bhagwat Its New

Chief: ‘Pragmatist’ and Friend of Advani,” https://www.iexpressusa.com

/new/articles/archive_news.php?id=4236&from=news, accessed March 19,

2011; The Times of India, “Call In BJP For Narendra Modi As PM Grows

Louder,” http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FEWQ

CLrwwUsJ:timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Call- in- BJP- for- Narendra

- Modi- as- PM- grows- louder/articleshow/4448765.cms+madhukar+rao

+bhagwat&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com,

accessed March 19, 2011; News Today, “Radiant Resplendent Symbol of

Cultural Nationalism,” http://www.newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20

&catid=33&id=18784, accessed on March 19, 2011.

55. Perhaps ironically, f lag hoisting and the RSS uniform (khaki shorts) were

adopted from a “foreign” source of inf luence: the colonial police (V. M

Sirsikar, “My Years in the RSS,” in The Experience of Hinduism: Essays on

Religion in Maharashtra , Eleanor Zelliot and Maxine Berntsen, eds. (Albany:

State University of New York Press, 1988)).

56. Interview, Girish, December 2002, Ahmedabad.

57. Ibid.

58. Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan ,

Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 2004).

59. The case of iterative ludicism that I describe here resonates with

Foucault’s notion of discontinuous practice in which discursive practices

do not engender practices that, in their specif icity, conform to perfectly

to such discourses. Rather, these discourses shape conduct to produce

effects that modulate subtly through every iteration of enactment (Michel

Foucault, “Réponse À Une Question,” Esprit May, no. 371 (1968). In the

case of playing of hututu that I describe here, such spontaneous and micro

extemporizations of the protocols of the game animated the exercise and

the arena in which it was observed (i.e. the shakha). An important con-

sequence of this unforeseen deployment of the protocols of the game,

which was often recognized by the volunteers on an affective register,

http://ibnlive.in.com/electionblogs/vinay- sahasrabuddhe/2422/53287/rss- gets- a- new- captain.html

https://www.iexpressusa.com/new/articles/archive_news.php?id=4236&from=news

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FEWQ

http://www.google.com

http://www.newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20&catid=33&id=18784

http://ibnlive.in.com/electionblogs/vinay- sahasrabuddhe/2422/53287/rss- gets- a- new- captain.html

https://www.iexpressusa.com/new/articles/archive_news.php?id=4236&from=news

http://www.newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20&catid=33&id=18784

252 NOTES

was the surer mooring of the physical enterprise of the shakha for branch

members.

60. Interview, Satish, September 2002, Ahmedabad.

61. Interview, Anil Shah, June 2003, Ahmedabad.

62. Ibid.

63. Interview, Amit, July 2002, Ahmedabad.

64. Ibid.; Interview, Anil Shah, June 2003, Ahmedabad.

65. Interview, Ashutosh Patel, July 2004, Ahmedabad.

66. Interview, Amit, July 2002, Ahmedabad.

67. Therefore, when members opted to don the RSS uniform, they did so as a

public statement of their commitment to the RSS, its strictures, and— most

importantly— its ethical methods of training and discipline.

68. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1996).

69. Interview, Shailesh, June 2002, Ahmedabad.

70. Ibid.

71. Interview, Shankar, November 2002, Ahmedabad.

72. Ibid.

73. Interview, Atul, October 2002, Ahmedabad.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial

Bombay (Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001); Angana

P. Chatterji, Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India’s Present: Narratives

from Orissa , trans. 1st ed. (Gurgaon, India: Three Essays Collective, 2009);

Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1996); Kalyani Devaki Menon, Everyday

Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

5 Physical Training, Ethical Discipline, and

Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery

in the Hindu Nationalist Movement

1. Times of India, Ahmedabad edition, February 3, 1974; March 28, 1974.

2. Ghanshyam Shah, “Middle Class Politics: Case of Anti- Reservation

Agitations in Gujarat,” Economic and Political Weekly XXII, nos. 19–21,

Annual Number, May (1987); John Wood, “On the Periphery but in the

Thick of It: Some Recent Indian Political Crises Viewed from Gujarat,”

India Briefing 1995–1996, ed. Philip Oldenburg, (Boulder, CO: Westview

Press, 1996).


Studies, 1996). One participant in this movement who would go on to be a

253NOTES

career politician in the BJP and important civic figure for Hindus in Khadia

was Ashok Bhatt (speaker of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly at the time of

press).

4. Ibid.

5. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004, Ahmedabad; S. P. Kotval, “Report

on the Cases of Police Firing at Ahmedabad on the 12th, 13th, and 14th

August 1958” (Bombay: Government of Bombay, Home Department

[Special], 1959); Indulal Yagnik, Atmakatha, vol. VI, ed. Dhanvant Oza,

(Ahmedabad: Gnanprachar, 1986).

6. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004, Ahmedabad.

7. Ibid.


Studies, 1996), p. 65. Pakistan officials stated that international conventions

on seaways that were contiguous with territory accorded it rights to the area

that it claimed (ibid.).

9. An international court adjudicated on the matter and three years later and

ordered a minor redrawing of the frontier that awarded three hundred

square miles to Pakistan while India retained the remaining area of this

desert- marsh area, especially points of strategic importance (ibid.).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid. The totality of these events severely weakened the Congress in Gujarat,

which was considered to be unshakable in its bases of support, a consequence

of which included the emergence of a more militant political organization:

The Swatantra Party, made up of former princes of Saurashtra, rich farmers

in northern and central Gujarat, industrialists, bureaucrats, and backward-

caste communities (Ibid.). Although Swatantra did not gain a majority in the

assembly elections in 1967, its electoral successes helped to form an opposi-

tion to the Congress, by gaining seventy- four assembly seats, leaving the

latter with only ninety- two which was an all- time low for the Congress

(Ghanshyam Shah, “Communal Riots in Gujarat: Report of a Preliminary

Investigation,” Economic and Political Weekly 5, no. 3/5 (1970).

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid. Among politicians, the communal divide widened also. Many Hindu

Congressmen were outraged by various Muslim leaders within the Majlis-

e- Mushawarat that threw its support behind the Swatantra Party before

the upcoming general election in 1967. The alliance was fortuitous for the

election but turned out to be short- lived afterward. Muslim candidates of

the Swatantra Party unseated those from Congress and the latter secured

only three seats (ibid., p. 189).

14. The Reddy report counts 1,600 volunteers in attendance ( Justice

P. Jaganmohan Reddy, Justice Nusserwanji K. Vakil, and Justice Akbar

S. Sarela, “Commission of Enquiry into the Communal Disturbances in the

City of Ahmedabad and Other Places in Gujarat on and after 18th September

1969” (Gandhinagar: Home Department [Gujarat], 1971), Part I, p. 51).

15. Ghanshyam Shah, “Communal Riots in Gujarat: Report of a Preliminary

Investigation,” Economic and Political Weekly 5, no. 3/5 (1970).

16. Ibid.

254 NOTES

17. Ibid. During these processions, it was rumored that “Pakistan Zindabad”

(Victory to Pakistan) was chanted and that Muslims were planning to

attack Hindus in the city (Ghanshyam Shah, “Communal Riots in Gujarat:

Report of a Preliminary Investigation,” Economic and Political Weekly 5,

no. 3/5 (1970), p. 189).

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid. The direct forms of action that were taken on behalf of all Hindus,

according to Madhok, involved members of the RSS and Jana Sangh form-

ing the Hindu Dharma Raksha Samaj (HDRS [Committee Defending the

Hindu Religion]) in 1969 after it was alleged that a Muslim police officer

had insulted Hindus and Hinduism (ibid.). The claim was that the offi-

cer abused his authority when he forced a group of Hindus to end their

observance of Ram Lila (a popular reenactment of the battle between Lord

Ram and Ravana which is narrated in the Ramayana). During this encoun-

ter, a copy of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, was allegedly kicked by the

officer. The Committee publicly demanded that the officer be dismissed

in response to which the government agreed to inquire into the incident.

Leaders involved with this incident accused the state of appeasing Muslims

because it did not dismiss the officer in question (ibid.).

21. In the 1967 election, the party secured thirty- five seats in the Lok Sabha,

amounting to more than nine percent of the total vote (Bruce D. Graham,

Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the

Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Cambridge South Asian Studies [Cambridge, New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1990]), p. 262.

22. Madhok sought to exploit the split in the Congress Party, one in which

the organization was broken into the Congress (I) and Congress (O), in

1968 which he viewed as consisting of a split between Congress politicians

committed to Nehru’s secular vision and that of Sardar Patel (Christophe

Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India [New York: Columbia

University Press, 1996). Madhok intended to incorporate those from the

latter group, who were led by Morarji Desai, into the Jana Sangh to form

a conservative party that had close affiliations with middle- and higher-

caste Hindus, business interests, and groups that were generally receptive to

Hindu nationalism (ibid.).

23. Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Westview Special Studies

on South and Southeast Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), p. 182;

Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 235.

24. Times of India, Ahmedabad edition, February 3, 1974 and March 28, 1974.

25. Ibid.; Asgharali Engineer, The Gujarat Carnage (New Delhi: Orient

Longman, 2003).

26. Asgharali Engineer, The Gujarat Carnage (New Delhi: Orient Longman,

2003), p. 15.



255NOTES

Annual Number, May 1987. Shah also demonstrates how such reservations

have historically been underutilized (ibid.).



Annual Number, May 1987.

29. J. Wood, “Reservations in Doubt: The Backlash against Affirmative Action

in Gujarat, India,” Pacific Affairs 60, no. 3 (1987).

30. For a full treatment of the contentions, movement, and countermovements

to this claim, consult Sarvepalli Gopal, Anatomy of a Confrontation: The Rise

of Communal Politics in India (London, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books,

1993).

31. People’s Union for Democratic Rights, “Maaro! Kaapo! Baalo!”: State, Society,

and Communalism in Gujarat (New Delhi: People’s Union for Democratic

Rights, 2002).

32. Ashis Nandy, Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear

of the Self (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Shantaram Hari Ketkar,

Amruta- Kumbha (Reservoir of Nectar of Service Streams) (Pune: Ekata

Prakashan, 1995).

33. Ashis Nandy, Creating a Nationality : The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and Fear

of the Self (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).

34. Ibid., pp. 104–107.

35. Ibid.

36. Interview, Rameshbhai Parmar, July 2003, Ahmedabad.

37. Francine R. Frankel, India’s Political Economy, 1947–2004: The Gradual

Revolution , trans. 2nd ed. (New Delhi ; New York: Oxford University

Press, 2005), p. 760.

38. Interviews with Anand Pathak, Hina Trivedi, Harish Patel, July 2002,

Ahmedabad. Published in 1993, Ashish Nandy made a similar general

proposition for parts of north India, see Ashis Nandy, “Three Propositions,”

Seminar , no. 402 (1993); Christophe Jaffrelot observes a similar dynamic in

Ayhodhya (Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Paradox of the Ramjanmabhoomi

Movement” in The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India [New York:

Columbia University Press, 1996]).

39. Interview, Girish Patel, July 2004, Ahmedabad.

40. In some instances below, I do not cite the informant although I employ

quoted dialogue. In these cases, no formal interview with the speaker

took place. The following four organizations form the more visible parts

of “the family” of institutional entities of the Hindu nationalist move-

ment, also called the Sangh Parivar or the Sangh, although the move-

ment has produced an array of formal and ad-hoc organizations at the

national, regional, and local levels that are too numerous to list here. A

division of labor is supposed to separate the organizational responsibilities

of the VHP, Bajrang Dal, and BJP, although they achieved high degrees of

internal coordination particularly with the parent organization, the RSS

(discussed below). Formed in 1964 to contribute to a unif ied interpreta-

tion of Hindu doctrines, the VHP concerns itself with “cultural” activism

(and protection) around issues pertaining to the public representation of

256 NOTES

Hinduism. The Bajrang Dal was formed as a youth wing of the VHP in

1984 and, in name, organizes the Hindu community’s military training

and defenses. Despite claims to organizational autonomy and separation,

the reader should keep in mind that such a portioning of “political” and

“social- cultural” domains is more subtle, overlapping, and, often, rhetori-

cal. Importantly, although the RSS certainly played a role in forming the

VHP, the former struggled significantly at crucial moments to reign in and

control VHP and Bajrang Dal cadres as I illustrate in this chapter. Scholars

of Hindu nationalism observe similar general trends in terms of Hindu

nationalist mobilization in other parts of India, although their foci do not

explore its effects in various interrelated domains of branch physical cul-

ture and episodes of communal violence as I do (Cf. Christophe Jaffrelot,

The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India [New York: Columbia University

Press, 1996; Ashis Nandy, “Three Propositions,” Seminar, no. 402; Peter

van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India [Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1994]).

41. The Government of India Act of 1935 lists approximately 100 million

people and considered them to belong to a Scheduled Class in India (now

Dalits) and these communities are, in theory, supposed to be given direct

access to a set of positions that are “reserved” for them in government

employment and postsecondary institutions. The expansion of this form

of affirmative action in the 1980s proposed to extend the policy so that

“socially or educationally backward” communities, called Other Backward

Classes, could take advantage of these special provisions.

42. Chetan met with a pramukh (sectoral leader) who was responsible for the

shakhas located in his suba (area). These meetings took place roughly twice

a month at the pramukh’s home, roughly, although I was not permitted

to attend them nor was it wise to ask about them, I eventually learned.

(In the first and only time that I inquired, it seemed to invoke suspicion

and awkward silences.) Details of organizational dimension of the VHP

and the RSS in the city and region was not public knowledge, something

that became only a more closely guarded secret after the devastating anti-

Muslim attacks of 2002, in which more than 2,000 women, children, and

Muslim men were killed and 250,000 individuals were internally displaced,

brought intense scrutiny on the movement in Gujarat, particularly from

the English press (Amnesty International, “Five Years on— The Bitter and

Uphill Struggle for Justice in Gujarat [Report],” 2007), p 2) (interview,

Rameshbhai Parmar, July 2003, Ahmedabad).


in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

44. The reader will note that many members of this branch were not caste

Hindus even though the symbolism of branches, physical training, and

the activities–festivals in which they were invested are deeply ensconced

in a middle- class and caste Hindu worldview. It marked little dissonance,

and I never observed any hesitation toward the caste Hindu referents of

the branch and its activities by the informants with whom I worked. As

explained to me by the Dalit activist, Rameshbhai Parmar, it has been

257NOTES

precisely savarna symbols that have in fact facilitated the entry of non- caste

Hindus into the Hindu nationalist fold as an opportunity to ascend into

privileged spaces of caste Hindu life (interview, Rameshbhai Parmar, July

2003, Ahmedabad).

45. Calisthenics were also incorporated into the routines of daily branch ses-

sions, often at the very end of the physical portion of the meeting just before

“lessons and instruction” began (described at the outset).

46. The symbolism behind these instruments should be noted. Swords emu-

late the weapon carried by Lord Shiva, the god of destruction. Bamboo

staffs were carried historically by lathials (rural police) and although it

became a weapon of the colonial police, it retains an association with

akhadas (gymnasium) also. Weapons used in branches are cared for by

teachers who, in the case of the branch I trained in, stored them in his

residence.

47. Another point of divergence between wrestling and shakhas involved the

more elaborate health regime to which wrestlers adhered ( Joseph S. Alter,

The Wrestler’s Body: Identity and Ideology in North India (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1992). Branch members did not conform to the strict

diet of the wrestler (milk, ghee, and almonds). Also, the issue of balancing

semen within the body was less pronounced in contrast to the wrestlers

Alter discusses.

48. Joseph S. Alter, The Wrestler’s Body: Identity and Ideology in North India

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

49. Interview Chetan, July 1999, Ahmedabad. Among all of the volunteers and

the teacher, there existed a common understanding of who was “fast” and

who was “ ave che ” (coming along), the latter of which was a euphemism

often encouragingly applied to me because of my poor physical skills.

50. Such supplementary training, it should be noted, was enacted in an increas-

ingly unwelcoming space that became dustier and hotter as the morning

wore on, with the resumption of nearby vehicular traffic that had receded

during the night.

51. Therefore, I am drawing the reader’s attention to the manner in which

exploratory practice evolved out of the disciplinary routines that were ini-

tially practiced within the confines of the branch.

52. Interview, Ram, June 2007, Ahmedabad.

53. Ibid.

54. Amnesty International, “Five Years on— The Bitter and Uphill Struggle for

Justice in Gujarat [Report],” 2007), p 2.

55. Ibid.; Concerned Citizens Tribunal, “Crime against Humanity [Report]”

(Mumbai: Concerned Citizens Tribunal, 2002).

56. Though communal disturbances also took place between 1963 and 1968

in Gujarat, the violence of 1969 stands out as a significant signpost in the

career of communal politics in the state followed by the pogrom of 2002

( Times of India, September 24, 1969; Amnesty International, “India: Five

Years on–the Bitter and Uphill Struggle for Justice in Gujarat,” (Amnesty

International, 2007).

57. Times of India, September 24, 1969.

258 NOTES

58. Concerned Citizens Tribunal, “Crime against Humanity [Report]”

(Mumbai: Concerned Citizens Tribunal, 2002); Times of India, September

24, 1969.

59. Times of India, September 21, 1969. A commission report that inquired into

the violence in 1969 named as participants who contributed to various dimen-

sions of protest (i.e. fasting) and/or provocation for the violence at the time:

Ratanlal Gupta, Premnarayan Mishra, Govindrawo Amritrao, Ambalal S.

Kota, Rashiklal M. Shah, Ashok Bhatt, Vasantrao Gajendrakar, Jayendra

Pandit, Jagdishchandra Yadav, Harishchandra Panchal, and Chinubhai

Patel ( Times of India, September 24, 1969; Justice P. Jaganmohan Reddy,

Justice Nusserwanji K. Vakil, and Justice Akbar S. Sarela, “Commission of

Enquiry into the Communal Disturbances in the City of Ahmedabad and

Other Places in Gujarat on and after 18th September 1969” (Gandhinagar:

Home Department [Gujarat], 1971), Part I, p. 52). The Reddy report did

not implicate these figures in causing the violence, however, and in fact

the report cleared them of any involvement that was supported by admis-

sible evidence ( Justice P. Jaganmohan Reddy, Justice Nusserwanji K. Vakil,

and Justice Akbar S. Sarela, “Commission of Enquiry into the Communal

Disturbances in the City of Ahmedabad and Other Places in Gujarat on and

after 18th September 1969” (Gandhinagar: Home Department [Gujarat],

1971), Part I, p. 52).



62. Ibid.



65. Justice P. Jaganmohan Reddy, Justice Nusserwanji K. Vakil, and Justice

Akbar S. Sarela, “Commission of Enquiry into the Communal Disturbances

in the City of Ahmedabad and Other Places in Gujarat on and after 18th

September 1969” (Gandhinagar: Home Department [Gujarat], 1971), Part

III, p 27.


67. Ibid.

68. Ghanshyam Shah, “Communal Riots in Gujarat: Report of a Preliminary

Investigation,” Economic and Political Weekly 5, no. 3/5 (1970), p. 195.


70. Human Rights Watch, “‘We Have No Orders to Save You’: State

Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat [Report]”

(New York: Human Rights Watch- Asia Division, 2002); Amnesty

International, “Five Years on— The Bitter and Uphill Struggle for Justice

in Gujarat [Report],” 2007).

71. Concerned Citizens Tribunal, “Crime against Humanity [Report]”

(Mumbai: Concerned Citizens Tribunal, 2002).

72. Anonymous informant within the ranks of the police.

73. Interview, Ragu, September 2002, Ahmedabad.

74. Interview, Ragu, September 2002, Ahmedabad.

259NOTES

75. E. Valentine Daniel, Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence

(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994); Bette Denich, “Dismembering


American Ethnologist 21, no. 2 (1994); Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound:

Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1999); Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism

in Argentina’s “Dirty War” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).

76. Variations in the format of Hindu nationalist shakhas has also been

endorsed at the higher echelons of the RSS and indeed accommo-

dated. In the postcolonial period, branches have continued to be framed

as informal arenas for Hindus to learn branch based physical culture.

Meeting times were made more f lexible such that members could attend

in the evening and night ( Indian Express, “RSS Members, ‘Shakhas

Shoot Up in Gujarat,’” http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory

.php?newsid=9070, accessed April 11, 2002). Furthermore, the cur-

rent sarsangchalak, Mohanrao Bhagwat, has encouraged the existence

of shakhas that meet on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis ( India Today,

“Moment of the Moderniser,” http://indiatoday.intoday.in/content_mail

.php?option=com_content&name=print&id=34084#, accessed March

22, 2011). The standard uniform of swayamsevaks, khaki shorts and white

shirts, which was more or less mandatory for regular members to wear

during branch meetings has also been relaxed in recent years. The uniform

is only required during special occasions, and a new code of dress, referred

to as “supravesh” (all white), is permitted and it allows for various kinds of

dress, which include a kurta pajama or dhoti and shirt (ibid.).

77. After the violence of 2002, the BJP was brought back to power in the leg-

islative elections that took place in December 2002. In addition, the RSS

augmented the number of shakhas in India to 30,053 and 43,535 upshakhas

(secondary branches) with the organization reporting that 800 shakhas

existed in Gujarat, consisting of 100,000 members, with approximately

400 existing within Ahmedabad alone and the size of each one expand-

ing from the usual 12 member complement to 40 (Christophe Jaffrelot,

The Sangh Parivar: A Reader, Critical Issues in Indian Politics [Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2005], p. 4; Indian Express, “RSS Members, ‘Shakhas

Shoot Up in Gujarat,’” http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory

.php?newsid=9070, accessed April 11, 2002). In 2003, the RSS sought to

further expand the network of branches in Gujarat, stating that it would

open “900 new units” in the state and increase the total number of shakhas

to “around 1,700 in the next three years . . . [and that] membership of the

RSS in Gujarat could swell to 1.8 lakh [180 000]” ( Times of India, “RSS to

Double Its Presence in Gujarat in Three Years,” http://articles.timesofindia

.indiatimes.com/2003- 08- 22/ahmedabad/27191295_1_rss- rashtriya-

swayamsevak- sangh- guru- golwalkar, accessed August 23, 2003). Dr.

Amrutlal Kadiwala, Prant Sanghchalak for Gujarat, stated that “the plan is

aimed at having presence of our ‘shakhas’ in almost every village of Gujarat

by 2006” (ibid.).

http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=9070

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/content_mail.php?option=com_content&name=print&id=34084#


http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003- 08- 22/ahmedabad/27191295_1_rss- rashtriyaswayamsevak-sangh- guru- golwalkar


http://indiatoday.intoday.in/content_mail.php?option=com_content&name=print&id=34084#




260 NOTES

Epilogue


in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 134.

2. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes


University Press, 2001); Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism

in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990); Radhika

Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi,

New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Anand A. Yang, Crime and

Criminality in British India (Tucson: Published for the Association for Asian

Studies by the University of Arizona Press, 1985).

3. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative

Discourse? The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1986); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of

Modern India (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001).



5. Ibid.

6. As part of this enterprise, disparate Vedic textual fragments, monuments, and

objects from Hindu temples were collected and made subject to taxonomic

classification in relation to fixed analytical categories of “religion”. These

objects were taken to be a set of historical artifacts that defined the eviden-

tiary contours within which authoritative representations of “Hindu tradi-

tion” could be made (ibid.; Nicholas B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory

of an Indian Kingdom [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987]) .

7. This is a reduction of a complex set of overlapping processes spanning almost

a century and a half, beginning after the East India Company acquired

diwani (the right to collect taxes) shortly after The Battle of Plassey in 1757.

These projects of codification were initially employed by the British East

India Company and then directly by the British government from 1857

onward (Bernard S Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British

in India [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996]; Nicholas B. Dirks,

The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom [Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1987]; Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the

Making of Modern India [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001] William

J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City

[Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008]; Lata Mani, Contentious

Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India [Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1998]; Thomas R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian

Architecture and Britain’s Raj [Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 1989];

Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial

India [Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998]; Mrinalini Sinha,

Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in

the Late Nineteenth Century [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995]; Anand A.

Yang, Crime and Criminality in British India [Tucson, AZ.: Published for the

Association for Asian Studies by the University of Arizona Press, 1985].)

261NOTES


VII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 20.

9. Ranajit Guha provided seminal work on the origins of such modalities of

popular mobilization (Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency

in Colonial India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). This list

also includes (among others): Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the

Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986); David Scott, Refashioning Futures:

Criticism after Postcoloniality [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999]) .

10. Nikolas S. Rose, Powers of Freedom Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge,

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 94.

11. Ranajit Guha, “Discipline and Mobilize,” in Subaltern Studies VII, ed. Partha

Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey(New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1992); Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

12. Although 1991 is taken to be the first year of significant reform, prepara-

tions for it actually began in 1989 with Rajiv Gandhi.

13. Indian Express, “Gujarat to get Asia FDI award, not Modi,”, http://

w w w.goog le .com /se a r ch?h l=&q=Guja r a t+ to+ge t+A s i a+F DI

+award%2C+not+Mod i&sourceid=navcl ient- f f&r l z=1B7GGLL

_enUS391US391&ie=UTF- 8, accessed December 13, 2009.

14. Gurcharan Das, India Unbound (New York: A.A. Knopf, 2001); J. N.

Tripathi, India Unbound (New Delhi: Books India International, 2000).

15. Jan Breman and Parthiv Shah, Working in the Mill No More (New Delhi,


16. Scholars have also noted that members of the business community and

merchant castes have historically supported the Hindu nationalist move-

ment as members and as contributors to its f inancial resources (Walter K.

Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya

Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism , Westview Special Studies on

South and Southeast Asia, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987)).

17. Jan Breman and Parthiv Shah, Working in the Mill No More (New Delhi,


18. Karl Marx, Ben Fowkes, and David Fernbach, Capital: A Critique of Political

Economy , vol. 1 (London, New York: Penguin Books in association with

New Left Review, 1990), p. 549.

19. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical

Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 57, 59,

66–67.

20. Ibid.

21. Times of India, “VHP, BD Hooliganism Needs to Be Countered”, November

3, 2003 . Confirming my point about the continued importance of physical

training and shakhas, informants that I spoke with during a field visit in

2007 acknowledged that the BJP had encountered problems in recent times

but they were reassured by the leadership of the Chief Minister, Narendra

Modi, because they perceived his moral commitment to and solidarity with

Hindus as unwavering . “He is the paragon of a swayamsevak,” I was told

by one informant who did not belong to a shakha. In the state elections that

http://www.google.com/sea rch?hl=&q=Guja r at+to+get+As ia+FDI+award%2C+not+Mod i&sourceid=navcl ient- f f&rlz=1B7GGLL_enUS391US391&ie=UTF- 8



262 NOTES

were held in 2007, the BJP was returned to power, and Modi became the

longest- serving Chief Minister of Gujarat. He is serving a third term at the

helm of the state government.

22. Kaushik Basu, The Retreat of Democracy and other Itinerant Essays on

Globalization, Economics, and India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, Distributed

by Orient Longman, 2007), p. 16.

23. Thomas Blom Hansen and Partha Chatterjee offer similar ref lections ( The

Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India [New Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1999]; The Politics of the Governed: Ref lections

on Popular Politics in Most of the World [New York: Columbia University

Press, 2004]). For the militia movement see Bette Denich, “Dismembering


American Ethnologist 21, no. 2 (1994).

24. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious

Violence , Comparative Studies in Religion and Society; 13 (Berkeley, London:

University of California Press, 2000), pp. 10–12.

25. Seyla Benhabib, “Models of Public Space,” in Habermas and the Public

Sphere, ed. Craig J. Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Patricia

Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and Politics

of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1991); Nancy Fraser, “What’s

Critical About Critical Theory,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed.

Craig J. Calhoun, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Arafaat A. Valiani,

“Processions as Publics: Religious Ceremonials and Modes of Public

Sphere Intervention in Western India,” Under review (n.d.). In some respect,

the colonization of the Indian subcontinent was justif ied on precisely these

grounds because a dominant section of British officials argued that Indians

lacked the refined capacities to recognize, debate, and peaceably arrive at

a consensus on their collective future and interests (Uday Singh Mehta,

Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth- Century British Liberal Thought

[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999]). Thus, in various different

contexts and for multiple strategic purposes, they justif ied imperial rule as

a “ mission civilisatrice” that worked toward conferring political sovereignty

in the subcontinent after its peoples adopted and demonstrated British stric-

tures of liberal self- government.

26. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity , Cultural

Memory in the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); The

Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (New Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1999]; The Politics of the Governed: Ref lections on

Popular Politics in Most of the World [New York: Columbia University Press,

2004]); Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); Saba Mahmood, Politics of

Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 2005); Brian Silverstein, “Disciplines of Presence in

Modern Turkey: Discourse, Companionship, and the Mass Mediation of

Islamic Practice,” Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 1 (2008).

Advani, Lal Krishna, 150 , 167 , 169

affirmative action see ( under BJP and

reservations)

Alter, Joseph, 203n27

Amin, Shahid, 23

Anderson, Benedict, 11

Arya Samaj

and cow protection, 230n167

and Hindu Mahasabha, 70, 108,

219n35, 235n8, 242n126

and physical culture, 71

shuddhi, 70

Asad, Talal, 12 , 201

Babri Masjid see ( under

Ramjanmabhoomi movement)

Bacchetta, Paola, 201n12

Baiocchi, Gianpaolo, 201n12

Bardoli Satyagraha

as an event, 13 , 68

leadership, 87

organization of, 83 , 91–96

physical training during, 85

precursor to, 223n87

rental/tax rates, 222n74

settlement, 98–103

state suppression, 96–98, 231n177

Basu, Amrita, 200n6

baudhik, 26–27

Besant, Annie, 76

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

and Dalits, 170

and reservations, 169

and violence in Ahmedabad, 180

and yatras, 169

as Bharatiya Jana Sangh, 23 , 144 ,

148

ideology and indoctrination, 6

Bhatt, Ashok, 251n52

Blom Hansen, Thomas, 199n6

Brass, Paul, 199n6

Brubaker, Rogers, 201n12

Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 191

Chatterjee, Partha, 11 , 201n12

Chaturvedi, Vinayak, 201n12

civil society

and models of leadership, 153

and religion, 18

and violence, 19–20, 156 , 245n9

and volunteer service, 159

Congress Party

alliances with Muslims, 111–112

Hindu nationalism within, 113

Khilafat Movement, 70 , 112

split (Congress (O) and Congress

(I)), 254n22

volunteerism within, 248n25

Congress Socialist Party

and Bharatiya Jana Sangh, 147

and leaders, 129 , 242n130

and militancy, 129

Connolly, William, 201n12

Das, Veena, 30

decolonization, 188

INDEX

264 IN DEX

elections

1952, 250n42

1967, 16n , 253n11, 254n21

Fascism, 21

Hitler Youth, 144

Feldman, Allan, 208n75

Fox, Richard, 203n21

“freedom” see also (publics)

and nationalist mobilization, 188

Gandhi, Mohandas K.

and Henry David Thoreau, 42

and John Ruskin, 41

and Leo Tolstoy, 41

and Non-Cooperation/Civil

Disobedience, 42

and physical culture, 12 ,

see also (satyagraha)

and Swedish gymnastics, 212n65

as a political strategist, 13

in South Africa, 41 , 45

Ghose, Aurobindo, 72

Golwalkar, Madhav, 54 , 148 , 167

Guha, Ranajit, 201n12 , 247n16

Habermas, Jurgen, 25

Hardiman, 201n12

Haynes, Douglas, 203n27

Hedgewar, Keshavrao, 54 , 147

Hindu Mahasabha, 70 , 115

and Arya Samaj, 219n35

Hirschkind, Charles, 26

Holocaust, 30

Holsten, James, 201n12

identity

precolonial, 16

ideology

and militant movements, 6

Jaffrelot, Christophe, 200n6

Kaviraj, Sudipto, 188

Khilafat Movement, 70

liberal humanism,

see ( under publics)

Madhok, Balraj, 167

Mahagujarat Movement, 149 , 166

Mahmood, Saba, 205n38

Marx, Karl, 191

Menon, Kalyani Devaki, 200n6

Modi, Narendra, 150

Moplah Rebellion, 70

Munshi, K. M., 70

Muslim League, 113–114, 118

Nandy, Ashish, 49

Narayanan, Jayprakash

and Navnirman movement, 168

and Quit India Movement, 129

Other Backward Classes, 169

Pakistan

India’s war with (1965), 166

Pandey, Gyan, 29

Patel, Vallabhbhai (Sardar)

and Arya Samaj, 73

and revolutionary nationalists, 73

and RSS, 145

and violence in Ahmedabad (1941),

116

as a satyagraha organizer, 80

militancy/communalism, 15 , 17 ,

116 , 126–130, 249n33

physical culture

and Arya Samaj, 41

and economic reform in India, 191

and ethnic cleansing, 7–9

and health, 175

and origins, 37–39

and publics, 25–26 , 191

and satyagraha see ( under satyagraha)

and self-discipline, 179

and self-mastery, 171

and sociability, 9 , 26


and violence, 180

265IN DEX

and volunteer service, 159

as knowledge, 160

experimentation with, 4 , 7 , 176

in branches, 3 , 150 , 171 , 191

movement in colonial Gujarat,

128 , 241n119

physical training

see physical culture

political community, 19–21

and neoliberal economic reform in

India, 189

publics (and Militant Publics)

and capitalism in India, 190

and physical culture, 25

and rational deliberation, 192–193

vs. Public Sphere, 24–25

Quit India Movement (1942–1943)

and guerillas, 132

and leaders, 128–130

and World War II, 123–127

violence during, 127 , 131 , 132–135

Rajagopal, Arvind, 199n6

Rao, Anupama, 201n12

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

and affect in shakhas,

144 , 147 , 150

and concept of swayamsevak , 55

and exemplary leadership, 153

and festivals, 172

and “fun” in shakhas, 152

and Navnirman movement, 168

and Partition, 159

and popular resistance within, 176

and Sardar Patel, 145

and self-mastery, 171

and volunteer service, 159 , 171

ideologies of, 199n6

in Ahmedabad, 23 , 145 , 150 , 167

shakhas (statistics), 248n23 , 259n77

rational deliberation see ( under publics)

Rose, Nikolas

ethics, 19

and the study of freedom, 188

Sarabhai, Mridula, 115

Sarkar, Tanika, 202n17

satyagraha,

and ashram life, 45

and Bardoli see ( under

Bardoli)

and Boer War, 52

and concept of “bread labor”, 45

and Congress Party, 69

and Constructive Programme, 119

and Dalits and Adivasis, 81

and Dandi March, 119

and decolonization/“freedom”

(1940s), 15 , 17 , 193

and drill, 48–51

and “fearlessness” (or death), 56

and Hatha yoga, 50

and leadership, 58–61, 71 , 73–74,

225n105

and liberal humanism, 193

and military training, 50–52

and physical discipline, 43 , 45 ,

49 , 79

and physical labor, 46

and rallies, 59

and revolutionary nationalists/

terrorist societies, 72

and swayansevaks, 55


and violence, 13

and violence in Ahmedabad (1941),

115 , 118 , 120–122

during Quit India Movement

see ( under Quit India Movement)

efficacy of, 54

in Borsad, 78

in Champaran, 76

in Kheda, 76

“independent” (satyagraha) (1940),

124

movement, impediments to

(i.e. peasant insurgency), 51 , 67 ,

75 , 79

movement, organization of, 53 , 59 ,

67 , 75 , 77 , 81

266 IN DEX

satyagraha— Continued

pedagogy of, 44–47

Rowlatt, 78 , 220n53

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar, 70

Scott, David, 24

Sinha, Mrinalini, 204n32

Skaria, Ajay, 201n12

Spodek, Howard, 202n19

state (colonial)

and knowledge, 16 , 187 , 207n67

“terrorism”

and ideology, 6 , 21

Togadia, Pravin, 170

Trivedi, Lisa, 226n114

Upadhyaya, Deendayal, 167

Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 167

van der Veer, Peter, 200n6

Varshney, Ashutosh, 200n6

Verkaaik, Oskar, 152

violence

and civil society, 156

and nationalism, 11

and rational deliberation, 192

and the public sphere, 10

etymology of the term, 208n68

in Ahmedabad see also

(satyagraha and violence in

Ahmedabad and Quit India

Movement) 180

in Gujarat in 1969, 180 , 257n56

in Gujarat in 2002, 7 , 180 , 200n7 ,

256n42

representation of, 29–31

Vishwa Hindu Parishad

and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi

Parishad (ABVP), 168

and Bajrang Dal, 24 , 169

and Dalits, 170 , 256n41 and n44

and shakhas (numbers), 170

and yatras, 170

Ramjanmabhoomi movement,

23 , 169

shakhas (statistics), 170

Warner, Michael

publics, 25

Wilkinson, Steven, 200n6

Yagnik, Indulal, 166

Zavos, John, 200n6