it a great success. A great majority of voters abstained from voting (even
though there were strong regional variations: in Madras presidency, for
instance, there was a turnout of over 50% in some districts). But if
there were no voters, there were candidates, even if not Congress ones;
some candidates were elected unopposed, and some polling booths did not
see a single voter, but even a handful of voters could elect a candidate.
Jawaharlal and some younger members of Congress had favoured a style
of council boycott modelled on that of Sinn Fein – who had been elected
to Commons seats but then refused to enter the Commons. Accordingly,
the Congress should win seats, showing strength of popular support,
and then refuse to enter the Councils. Muhammad Ali also supported
this form of boycott, but he had been away in Europe on a Khilafat
delegation and had been unable to voice his opinion in time. Gandhi
had his way, arguing that the message of total boycott was easier for the
masses to understand. This was more consistent, of course, with Gandhi’s
proclaimed position – educational institutions, the professions, and all
things imposed by the British, should be boycotted, otherwise Swaraj
would just mean English rule without the English. Gandhi’s desire to
be a dictator on the Roman model for the duration of the struggle also
obviated the use of tactics that he did not approve of. But one of Gandhi’s
arguments made at the time was to prove prophetic more than once: he
reasoned that once people were elected to the councils they would be
drawn in by the logic of their operation, and would be unable to resist
participation.
The movement was a total transformation of formal Indian politics.
From erudite and complex constitutional and legal questions debated in
ersatzlegislatures and quasi-councils to an alliance of radical pan-Islamic
and Hindu opinion was a big jump indeed. This was an immensely
successful popular movement – the British government, unable to under-
stand its success or its driving forces, drew on official paranoia to call it a
‘Bolshevik’ movement, and Gandhi a ‘Bolshevik’. This was a complete
misunderstanding. Many Indians were indeed influenced by the Bolshevik
Revolution after 1917 – mainly the declaration of the right of self-
determination and of equality of all peoples – but they had not even
tentatively engaged with it yet. The early responses were diverse. Hindu
nationalists like Lala Lajpat Rai hailed the Russian Revolution as a great
moment in human history, while distancing themselves from its egali-
tarian goals and managing to remain fundamentally Hindu obscurantists.42 THE YOUNG GANDHIAN