would not do justice to its
complaints or grievances. Thus the
British Officer was the ultimate
dispenser of justice and the ma-
baap. It was the VCO, however,
who advised the ma-baap, and
carried out all the unpleasant
disciplinary measures.
There would have been no
more effective way of keeping the
Indian soldier isolated from the
people. To them the Indian armed
forces always remained a
mercenary force of occupation.
The immense hatred against the
army found expression at peak
periods of the national movement.
This isolation was further
strengthened by the very pattern
of development of our national
consciousness and the main form
of struggle ultimately adopted.
Individual terrorism was
presented as an act designed to
inspire armed uprising. On the first
anniversary of the attempted
assassination of Lord Hardinge in
Delhi, a pamphlet Shabash,
appeared in Delhi, on 23 December
1919. Referring to the bomb
thrown at Viceroy the pamphlet
maintained that the “roar of the
bomb” represented the voice of the
nation. It helped convey the
message of freedom to the Indian
soldiers, as it was difficult to
approach them physically, confined
as they were in cantonments. The
message was that the British
Government could be destroyed
and the brave men of India should
come out into the field of battle.
The First World War presented
a great opportunity for the Indian
revolutionaries to spread disaffe-
ction in the armed forces. Major
attempts were made in 1914 and
1915 to trigger a military uprising.
The Ghadr party was very active
in Punjab. In November 1914 an
attempted mutiny on the 23 th
Cavalry, stationed at Main Mir near
Lahore, was foiled by premature
leakage of information. Vishnu
Ganesh Pingley came to Punjab at
10
this time. He was joined by
Rashbehari Bose and Sacha
Singh, a student from Ludhiana.
Sacha Singh succeeded in
recruiting a retired Havildar of the
9 th Bengal Infantry, who later
became a ‘choudari’’ of the
regimental bazar. He helped
establish links with the soldiers.
Secret meetings were held at
Meerut, Kanpur, Allahabad,
Banaras, Fyzabad and Lucknow.
Ghadr served as the organizer and
was circulated widely among the
solidiers of the 23 th Cavalry at
Lahore, the 26 th Punjab at
Ferozpur, the 42 nd Deoli Regiment,
the 7 th Rajput at Banaras, and the
89 th Punjab at Dinepur and so on.
A general uprising was planned.
Lahore was to give the signal on
21 February 1915. Fear of
discovery led to pushing the date
forward by two days. In the
confusion the news leaked out and
many leaders were arrested. In
Burma too, in January 1915 the
130 th Baluch regiment was ready to
revolt, under the influence of
Ghadr. A mountain battery and the
military police also attempted a
mutiny. Many were punished.
The revolutionaries, however,
did not give up easily. Their efforts
continued. With a provisional
government set up in exile by
Barketullah, work started among
Indian prisoners of war captured by
Germans. Leaflets published in
different languages were smuggled
into the country and circulated
widely among the armed forces.
On 23 March 1915; Pingley was
arrested in the lines of the 12 th
Cavalry. In June, in the 8 th Cavalry,
some Indian soldiers killed a
number of British officers and men.
Ultimately all these efforts failed. In
the trials and court-martials that
followed many patriots, civilians and
military, suffered imprisonment and
martyrdom, unhonoured and
unsung by their countrymen.
One of the main reasons for
the failure of these attempts at an
armed uprising was the inability to
link them up with militant mass
movements. This opportunity
opened up when Gandhi gave the
national liberation struggle a new
dimension in the post-war years
through mass mobilization. At the
same time he circumscribed the
action of the masses by choosing
as the form of struggles, non-
violence and non-cooperation. He
recongnised the role of military
personnel in the struggle. It was
confined only to refusal “to offer
themselves for service in
Mesopotamia” (Mahatma, D.G.
Tendulkar, Volume 2, page 10).
During the civil disobedience
Gandhi described the state under
the British as corrupt and evil and
preached the doctrine of disloyalty.
He declared:
“Indeed loyalty to a state so
corrupt is a sin, disloyalty a virtue.”
He went even further and said:
“It is the duty of those who have
realized the evil nature of the
system, however attractive some of
its features may, torn from their
context, appear to be, to destroy it
without delay”.
At the same time Gandhi
insisted on non-violence as the
only form of struggle. He said:
“Non-violence, that is, civil
disobedience is the only and the
most successful remedy and is
obligatory upon him who would
dissociate himself from evil”.
(Mahatma, Volume 3, pages 25 to
27).
What was more, as far as the
armed forces were concerned,
Gandhi did not advocate disloyalty
to that extent. He made this very
clear when he explained his attitude
towards the RIN revolt. He referred
back to his statements during the
non-cooperation movement and
said:
“The soldiers should declare
what they will do soldiering, not for
their bellies, but to make India free
and to keep her free. I do not want
them to be disloyal to the
Class Struggle