There is no god higher than truth
This book, published by Harper Collins India in 2023, is an enlarged edition of his 1982 book titled ‘Indian Idea of Freedom’. In it he had focused on Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi & Rabindranath Tagore. In this book he has included B.R. Ambedkar, M.N.Roy & Jayaprakash Narayan.
Renowned historian Ramachandra Guha, in his Foreword to this book, has written “Indian Ideas of Freedom is a work of great scholarship. Dennis Dalton is a scholar of compassion whose moral orientation was shaped by his firsthand encounters with the American civil rights movement. His work demonstrates that Indian political thought was anything but a derivative discourse.”
In his introduction to the enlarged edition Dalton has written “The title is only slightly changed but the previous four Indian political thinkers have become the ‘group of seven’. These seven have been chosen because they have written extensively about how democratic societies should be constituted and equality, justice and social harmony established. They were not philosophers, yet triggered an unprecedented renaissance of political thought and an extraordinary nationalist movement”
In dealing with ‘Vivekananda’s Philosophy of Freedom’ Dalton avers “Vivekananda’s considerable achievement as a political thinker rests largely on his synthesis of divergent nineteenth century currents of Indian thought which Aurobindo, Gandhi & Tagore drew upon. Vivekananda, as a student, lived in the midst of a remarkable flowering of intellectual, literary, and artistic achievement which has been well termed ‘The Renaissance of Hinduism’. However, the most decisive influence on his thought came neither from Europe’s philosophers, nor the Prophet of Nazareth nor the Brahmo sages of Calcutta but from the priest of a small Hindu temple on the Ganges, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, an uneducated mystic who often plunged into ecstatic visions of Kali, the Mother Goddess, who became Vivekananda’s guru and transformed him”.
In dealing with Aurobindo Ghose (AG)and his ideas of Individual Freedom & Social Harmony, Dalton points out that AG had spent 14 years of his youth in England and “had achieved a brilliant academic record at Cambridge in European classical studies”. However, it was also at Cambridge that he decided that he would not suffer the ‘bondage of government service’ in the ICS but devote himself to the “cause of Indian Independence” Soon after his return to India in Feb. 1893 he began publishing a series of articles titled ‘New Lamps for Old’ in the Anglo-Marathi paper Indu Prakash. The new lights were to be brighter & bolder replacements of the “old and faint reformist lights of the Congress”
In 1906, soon after the partition of Bengal, AG moved to Calcutta and joined B. C. Pal as co-editor of the strongly nationalistic Bande Mataram English weekly. Its impact was “dramatic and effective” and AG lauded it as “almost unique in journalistic history in converting the mind of the people and preparing it for revolution”
Dalton has averred that “The Indian Philosophy of nationalism reached its apogee in the early political thought of Aurobindo. It combined Vivekananda’s views about the spiritual nature of freedom with his firm belief in the sacred nature of national political service. Yet by 1909, after his one year imprisonment for involvement in the Alipore Conspiracy case, his thought had been so transformed & spiritualized that he decided to withdraw form political life. The crux of this transformation was the realization that God must be found not in a distant heaven but within ourselves. This new concept is most fully enunciated in his magnum opus The Life Divine. Its most significant sentence is :“A perfected community can emerge only by perfection of its individuals and this can come only by the affirmation by each individual of his own spiritual being “
Dalton has also pointed out that AG’s education and many years of stay in England had brought him in close contact with Christian teachings and British Liberal political thought. However, even as a Cambridge under graduate he was more enthused by “Paris as the modern Athens” rather than Cambridge. His later writings often extol French revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality & fraternity and are peppered with French expressions as he was fluent in that language. The place he later chose to spend the rest of his life was the French colony of Pondicherry, and the close spiritual relationship he established there was with a French woman disciple, who came to be revered as “The Mother”. She succeeded him as head of the Pondicherry Ashram.
Dalton concludes his two chapters on AG in the following words : “The task he undertook at Pondicherry was dominated by a keen desire to fulfill the ideals and spirit of Indian Civilization as personified by Ramakrishna & Vivekananda. These were imbibed, developed and given other dimensions by Mahatma Gandhi.
Dalton commences his two chapters on Gandhi thus : “Vivekananda had told a California audience in 1900 ‘if you want to enter politics in India you must speak the language of religion. The truth of this remark was already clear in Bengal where AG had begun to formulate a theology of Nationalism. In Maharashtra Tilak had found in Shivaji the symbol of a regenerated Hindu Raj. But in 1900, the future political leadership of India was not being decided either in Bengal or Maharashtra but in far away South Africa where religious precepts were being applied in the political field. Few, if any, foresaw their ultimate significance nor perceived what was ahead for the man behind them, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.”
The main ideas which emerged from Gandhi’s South African Experiments with Truth are contained in his Hind Swaraj book, which according to him was written “in answer to the Indian school of violence and its prototype in South Africa. …. It teaches the gospel of love in place of that of hate. It replaces violence with self-sacrifice. It pits soul-force against brute-force.
Dalton points out that during the 1915 -1920 period, not only did Gandhi believe that the political ideas he had developed in South Africa were compatible with British rule in that country but also in India where he undertook satyagraha in several instances most notably in Champaran in 1917, without unduly alienating the government. The April 13, 1919 Amritsar Massacre uprooted this belief and as his close friend Charlie Andrews pointed out “Amritsar was the critical event which changed Mahatma Gandhi from a supporter of the British Empire into is pronounced opponent”
Tilak and Gandhi shared several objectives in common yet the differences between them remained fundamental and Gandhi admitted this in Young India of 13 July 1921 by writing in it "I am conscious that my method is not that of Mr.Tilak" The difference was not only in method but also in their views on morality in politics and what Swaraj meant. For Tilak politics had no place for morality and Swaraj meant political independence or at least Dominion status within the British Empire. For Gandhi, Swaraj had "Three Pillars" : Hindu Muslim unity, the abolition of untouchability and uplift of Indian villages. These objectives were to be secured through the 'Constructive Programme' and through the use of satyagraha to attain them. Gandhi wanted to create an "organic Swaraj' in which the three great divides in Indian society between the Hindus & Muslims, between the Hindus & untouchables and urban, educated & westernized Indians and the rural, traditional largely illiterate villagers.
Chapter 8: Tagore Freedom & Nationalism. Dalton points out that Tagore’s abhorrence for nationalistic ideologies was gestated by brutalities of the 1899 -1902 Boer war in South Africa. In a sonnet he wrote on December 31, 1899, the first two stanzas were as under :
The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood red clouds And the whirlwind of hatred The naked self love of nations in a drunken delirium of greed, Is dancing to the clash of steel and howling verses of vengeance”
In the three lectures he delivered in 1916 on Nationalism in the West, in Japan and in India he expresses great concern that the “cult of nationalism has led to the suppression of individual freedom and like a cruel epidemic of evil is sweeping the entire world and eating into its moral vitality”. Tagore strongly felt that nationalism cannot gestate the social & moral reform that India much needs but will only “whet the political appetite for political warfare”. Tagore found Gandhi’s ‘dicta” on spinning, foreign textile burning and simple living as negative and destructive and urged that “Swaraj in this country has to be secured through the mind’s unfoldment, in knowledge, in scientific thinking and not in shallow, medieval gestures”
However, by the early 1930’s Tagore critical views of Gandhi had changed to deep admiration and he lauded him thus “He stopped at the threshold of the huts of the disposed, dressed like them and spoke to them in their own language. Here was living truth at last and not quotations from books. At Gandhi’s call India has blossomed to new greatness like once before in earlier times when the Buddha proclaimed the gospel of compassion among all living creatures”. He was the first to laud Gandhi as ‘The Mahatma’
Dalton concludes his chapters on Gandhi with the following sentences. “None of Vivekananda’s disciples followed his teaching more dutifully than Gandhi, who conceived swaraj and satyagraha in such a way as to embody a vast spectrum of traditional beliefs & symbols. Together they comprise the essence of the Indian idea of freedom”
Dalton introduces Ambedkar in Chapter 9 as follows: : “One of the most brilliant and original thinkers, statesmen and reformers of twentieth century India, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891- 1956) was born into the Untouchable Mahar caste of Maharashtra. He was the fourteenth child of his father who had given us the traditional Mahar (Village servants) duties to join the British army. The key to his rise was education. At a time when less than 1 per cent of his caste was literate, he secured a BA from Bombay University,an MA & PhD from Colombia University a DSC from London University and qualified as a Barrister from Gray’s Inn London. This extraordinary education enabled him to improve the status of all of India’s lowest castes.
Dalton then draws attention to Ambedakr’s ’s political & social ideas which are first formally enunciated in his essay on Buddha or Karl Marx written in 1956 but which he had he had thought about deeply for atleast prior twenty years. In this essay he evaluates the merits & demerits of both these creeds and finds twenty five merits in the former & only ten in the latter. He then reveals his ideas about the purpose & role of religion. “A religion must relate to the facts of life and not to speculations about God, Soul, Heaven & earth, Man & Morality must be the core of Religion and its role should be to reconstruct society, ensure equality for all its members with emphasis placed on high ideals and not noble birth”.
The three prime Buddhist tenets which Ambedkar extoled were ‘ Pramana’ ( Rationalism & logical analysis) , ‘Maitri’ ( fellowship towards all, even to ones enemy ) & Abhaya (fearlessness). He wanted these these to be practiced by all Buddhists and all those who agreed with his concept of an ideal religion. He also wanted a clear distinction to be made between ends & means because the use of wrong means vitiates even the most noble ends.
The granting of separate electorates for Untouchables was unacceptable to Gandhi who began a ‘fast unto death’ against the in 1932. Ambedkar reluctantly accepted Gandhi’s offer os separate electorates for primary elections and increased number of reserved seats for Untouchables and joint electorates for assembly elections. This necessitated drawing up a schedule of those castes needing special representations and these came to be called the ‘Scheduled Castes’ which included the former untouchables.
Though Gandhi & Ambedkar pursued alternate paths political paths to Indian Independence, it was Gandhi who advised Nehru to include Ambedkar in his post Independence Cabinet despite his not being a member of the Congress Party. He thus became India’s first Law Minister and chairman of the Constitution Committee, a task he performed with distinction and enabled him to include many benefits & safeguards for the Scheduled castes in the Constitution.
In Chapter 10 Dalton examines “the thought of M.N.Roy as it evolved from his Marxist to radical Humanist phases, with a focus on his idea of freedom”. He points out that Roy was born into an orthodox Brahmin family in Arbelia village near Calcutta in 1886, when Bengal had become the centre of what historians would later laud as the “Indiaan Renaissance. His father was a school teacher who, according to Roy, “spent his life teaching Sanskrit to would be clerks or prospective lawyers”. Roy studied in his village school and at the AG founded National University at Calcutta, from which he soon withdrew, while still in his teens, to join the Bengal Revolutionaries. From 1906 – 1914 he was implicated in various revolutionary acts the most major of which was the 1910 Howrah conspiracy case. AG having retired from politics in 1909 and moved to Pondicherry, Roy became close with one of his close associates Jatin Mukerjee, “Commander in Chief of the Bengal Revolutionaries”. Though Jatin was convicted & hanged by the British authorities in 1915, he left a permanent impact on Roy. In his Memoirs he has written : I admired Jatinda because he personified the best of mankind. He was the only man I ever obeyed almost blindly” Shortly before he was hanged Jatin advised him to leave India on a “revolutionary mission” (which was to secure arms for India’s revolutionaries and took him from Indonesia to Japan, Germany, USA & Mexico) He left India in early 1915 and did not return until 1930.
Amazingly, by 1919, Roy who met Russian Comintern Member Michael Borodin in Mexico, had found a new, foreign faith, Marxism and had all the zeal of a new convert for it. He lauded it thus : “Marxism is a wonderful philosophy. It has made history into an exact science. It is only Marxism, historic materialism and socialism that can show us the way out”. In a 1926 tract Roy envisaged the “inevitability of a communist conquest of India” through the adoption of class struggle, proletarian revolution & dialectical materialism strategies. Because of all this. Roy who had been admitted to Communist International (Comintern) in 1921 acquired a high rank in it. However, in 1926 after a failed mission to China on behalf of Comintern, he was expelled from it. Nonetheless upto 1931, when he entered the “quiet country town jail in Cawnpore” Roy remained an orthodox and dedicated Marxist. But the six years he spent in jail in solitary confinement had a deep effect on him. He began to move away from Marxism to ‘radical Humanism’ .In the first article, titled ‘Marxism is not a Dogma’’ he wrote after his release, he averred “ New scientific discoveries and historical developments unforeseen by Marx establish the need to revise certain fundamental conceptions of classical materialism. We cannot aver that that developments here in India will necessarily follow the same pattern as Marx predicted for European developments.”
Dalton states that from then on, Roy’s, message for India was that it needed a “philosophical revolution”. The following year he enunciated his philosophy of Radical Humanism in which incorporated ‘material and spiritual emancipation” In his ‘Problem of Freedom’ essay he averred “ Freedom is not a beautiful castle built in the air of imagination. It rests on the triple pillar of humanism, individualism and rationalism. Freedom is the condition for self realization. Only on that foundation can collective freedom be secured by the dedicated efforts of spiritually liberated individuals who realize that Freedom is far greater than mere national independence”
In 1937 Roy launched the Radical Democratic Party. It fared poorly in the 1937 elections. He therefore converted it into the Radical Humanist movement in 1948 & led until his death in 1954.
Dalton has described Jayaprakash Narayan (JP)’s “Intellectual Journey” as under : India’s most popular post independence political leader next to Nehru, he joined the Congres Party in 1930 but left it in 1948, In 1954 he abandoned politics in favour of Gandhian Constructive work at the grass roots level. He played a major role in opposing Indira Gandhi’s 1975 – 1977 ‘Emergency’ and in defeating her in the March 1977 elections. However the coalition Govt. which assumed power collapsed in 1979 and JP died soon thereafter . Nonetheless his political thought inspires those who seek to infuse greater political, economic & social justice, and equality for the individual and the local community”
Dalton has also indicated that JP studied at the Colllegiate School in Patna, then at Patna College & Bihar Vidyapit before going to the , University of Wisconsin (UW) in 1924 for “higher studies”. At UW he “discovered Marx and the “inevitable solution to the problem of poverty.” and regularly read M.N.Roy’s ‘New Masses’ magazine and US Communist Party’s ‘Daily Worker’. He also switched from UW to Ohio State University and from Natural Science to Sociology and secured his BA & Ma degrees in this subject in 1928 & 1929 , Though keen on also securing a PhD also in it he returned to India in mid 1929 as his mother was seriously ill. In early 1930 he met Gandhi & Nehru and become quite close to the latter who shared his socialist ideas. In 1934, he founded the Socialist Group within the Congress Party with some former Marxists like himself as its members.In 1936 he induced some “newly legalized communists” to enroll os Congress Socialists but later regretted this as they constantly changed their stands on vital issues “in obedience to Soviet dictates, 1948 onwards he steadily gravitated towards Gandhian “Constructive work” at village level and Vinobha Bhave;s Bhoodam Movement.
Dalton States “At the core of JP’s vision lay a blend of Marx’s & Gandhi’s dreams : unselfish and altruistic individuals living in self supporting communities, undisturbed either by centralized government or exploitative capitalism. He thought much about these issues and consolidated / publicised them in his ‘A Plea for Reconstruction of India Polity”. In it he highlights the need to “avoid competitiveness because it is necessarily exploitative” and establish a “cooperative, co-sharing, integrated social order in which there would be true harmonization of interests, s deliberate and bold bevolution and decentralization”, which would be gradualy brought about by “ hundreds of thousands of voluntary workers who are aware that the basic task is “moral regeneration by example, service, sacrifice & love”
The mini epitome of this amazingly expansive & erudite book authored by Dennis Dalton is contained in the following sentences “In this group of seven, Narendranath Datta, following his encounter with Sri Ramakrishna became the legendary Swami Viivekananda, Aurobindo a Bengali extremist was transformed into the sage of Pondicherry, Gandhi from an anglicized lawyer into a Satyagrahi and Ambedar, M.N.Roy and J.P.Narayan, each commited to the doctrine of Marxism renouncing it for Indian ideas of freedom:
In authoring my Gandhi’s Outstanding Leadership and Gandhi : The Soul Force Warrior who Revolutionized Revolution & Spiritualized it. I read almost a hundred books on Gandhi and those closely associated with him in the Indian Freedom Struggle. None of them had as many pages, footnotes on very page and as much information than in Dennis Dalton’s Indian Ideas of Freedom. However, a fair quantum of the information is repetitive. If it had been contained in 400 rather than 518 pages it would quite likely have had many more readers. Besides, Subhas Chandra Bose and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad would, in my view, have been better choices than M.N.Roy and J.P. Narayan in the ‘ Group of Seven”