THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIAstrident voice was that of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar who published his
manifesto ‘Hindutva’ in 1923. He was at that time still in prison where the
British kept him for a long time after he had been captured as a young
terrorist in London in 1909. According to Savarkar everybody was a
Hindu who considered India as his holy land (punyabhumi). He wanted to
do away with the caste system and to create a broad-based national
solidarity of the Hindus. This, of course, excluded the Muslims and was
diametrically opposed to Gandhi’s attempts at bridging the gap between
Hindus and Muslims. Savarkar’s disciples founded the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (National Self-help Association, RSS) in 1925 in the
same year when the Hindu Mahasabha was also resurrected, which then
emerged as a separate political party in 1928. At that time these circles
were still rather isolated, because Sarvarkar’s radical ideas did not appeal
to the majority of the Hindus. But this was the period when seeds were
sown which sprouted in recent times. In the 1920s the National Congress
was still the dominant force. It returned to the constitutional arena after
Gandhi’s movement had failed for the time being.
With Gandhi’s reluctant blessing, Motilal Nehru and C.R.Das
established a Swaraj Party within the Congress and quite successfully
contested the next elections. Many prominent liberals were unseated by
unknown Swarajists. In Bengal the old national hero, Surendranath
Banerjea, was defeated by a young medical doctor, BC.Roy, who later
became chief minister of Bengal; nobody had heard of him before he
achieved this first remarkable success. A new generation of Congress
politicians emerged at this time. Many of them had left college or their
profession in order to join the non-cooperation movement and had then
become full-time political workers.
Gandhi managed to support this new generation because he was not
only a great agitator, but also a very successful fund-raiser. Being himself a
member of a traders’ caste he had much better contacts with Indian
merchants and businessmen than the Brahmin intellectuals who had
dominated the Congress at an earlier stage. The Tilak Swaraj Fund, for
which Gandhi collected money during the non-cooperation campaign,
amounted to 10m rupees and this money was available for the support of
political workers. Bombay played a major role in financing the freedom
movement, as did the Marwaris who were spread all over northern India.
G.D. Birla, a leading member of this latter community and a lifetime friend
of Gandhi, donated large amounts to Gandhi’s All-India Handspinners’
Association—although he himself owned textile mills.
Birla knew that the industry did not need to be afraid of the competition
of the handspinners. This spinning was of symbolical rather than of
practical significance. Gandhi had introduced it because he wanted to add
a positive dimension to the boycott of foreign cloth and to encourage
active self-help in India. For some time even the membership fee of the