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chapter 6 Indulal Yagnik Challenges the Gandhian Consensus From 1963 till the end of 1966 Indubhai became the heartbeat of the common people of Gujarat and especially of the agitation of the revolutionary workers of Ahmedabad. —DHANVANT OZA, introduction to Indulal Yagnik’s Autobiography E ven during Gandhi’s time, Indulal Yagnik had fought against establishments . He lost these early battles. Despite Indulal’s objections, Gandhi continued to call for daily quotas of spinning on the charkha (spinning wheel), and Vallabhbhai Patel continued to set the direction of the Congress.1 In 1924, at the age of thirty-two, Indulal left Ahmedabad for Bombay feeling “as if my past was obliterated, my political prestige lost, my social service wiped out” (3:266).2 Indulal’s friend, Bhogilal Gandhi, later remarked to him that “every five or seven years you have changed your entire ideology” (1:2), and Indulal’s transformations in Bombay illustrate the point. He quickly found a job as a journalist with the Bombay Chronicle and later with the Gujarati daily, Hindustan. He gave up khadi and dressed in European-style clothing. He began to read seriously the literature of communism and socialism and became increasingly disillusioned with nationalist politics altogether. He began making films. He entered the world of cinema by translating titles of a film on the life of the Buddha, then prepared a script for a film on the fortress and temples at Pavagadh in eastern Gujarat. He bought a film studio and a motorcar, but a partnership venture with a German filmmaker lost so much money that Indulal had to declare bankruptcy. Once again, he had to search for new worlds. In 1930, Gandhi launched the Salt March and was arrested. After receiving the news in Bombay, Indulal broke down in tears. He realized that “whatever rebellion my intelligence had proclaimed against Gandhiji in the intervening period of six years, my heart was perfectly united with him” (5:4). He joined old Indulal Yagnik Challenges the Gandhian Consensus 141 friends in Congress House, Bombay, and they suggested that he travel in Europe to publicize the Congress goals and programs. Vallabhbhai wished him well in the venture, and in the fall of 1930, Indulal sailed for London and Berlin. In March 1931, however, Gandhi signed a pact with the viceroy, Lord Irwin, suspending civil disobedience in exchange for the release of political prisoners and promises of constitutional reform. Indulal felt betrayed: “Gandhi had compromised with the Viceroy” (5:4). He resumed his criticism of the Mahatma. He wrote Gandhi as I Know Him, one of the most bitter of the early socialist critiques of Gandhi. In Europe Indulal grew more radical. During a half-year visit in Ireland in 1932, he met leaders of the Irish independence movement and started an Indian-Irish Independence League: “I became a true advocate of a socialist republican state” (5:5). He returned to London in 1933, continued his radical and revolutionary reading, and in 1934–35, he wrote a biography in English of the militant, violent Indian revolutionary Shyamaji Krishnavarma, which remains a standard work.3 In 1935, he returned to India and to the struggles at ground level. Indulal went directly to organizing peasants to protest their triple oppression by the British, the landlords, and the moneylenders. Responding sharply, the government externed Indulal from the five districts of British Gujarat in February 1936. He shifted his headquarters to Bombay and continued to organize peasants in the fields of western India. Together with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati of Bihar and Professor N. G. Ranga of Andhra, in 1936 he founded and led the All India Kisan Sabha (Peasant Association) (AIKS). Under India’s new constitution of 1935, elections were held in 1937, and a Congress government took office in the Bombay presidency. The new home minister lifted the externment order on Indulal, and he returned to Gujarat. But he did not return to the Congress. Indulal wrote, “In the new age the Congress started running after power and wealth while we of the Kisan Sabha started formulating a program to obtain as much relief as possible by giving the new ministers [in the Congress government of Bombay] an idea of the new power of the kisan” (5:96). Indulal, however, recognized the power of the Congress and of Vallabhbhai, who had by now won his designation as Sardar (commander). Indulal reflected on the Sardar’s power to control the press, an area Indulal knew well: the Gujarat Samachar, an...

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