Courtesy: https://twitter.com/sheshapatangi1/status/1620611881152167939?s=46&t=Z89t0KPoK7lFVnkcttIsnw
Why blame Hamid Ansari when Gandhi did the same. By the end of this thread, your blood, boils!
High ranking British officials including Viceroys Chelmsford, Linlithgow and Puckle (DG of Intelligence in 1940), would naturally find Gandhi as an “asset”.
“The best policeman the British had in India”, and “out, he might prove of great assistance to them “
THE MISSIONARIES have also commented how Gandhi aided the efforts of the govt to crush the revolutionaries and sidelined them. In the words of a prominent missionary, Stanley Jones, “He saw clearly that there were two ways that India might gain her freedom. She might take the way of the sword & bomb, the way Bengal anarchists have actually taken. The fires of rebellion were underneath. The flash of a bomb here and there let the world see in that lurid light what was there.
Gandhi brought all this hidden discontent to the open. A member of the secret police told me that it was comparatively easy for them now since Gandhi’s advent, that they simply went to the Non-Cooperation Headquarters and asked what would be the next step in their program in the fight with the govt and they told him just what they would do next. Gandhi turned the streams of discontent and rebellion into open and frank channels. (Chapter IV, Jesus Comes Through Irregular Channels-Mahatma Gandhi’s Part).
While the contempt of the missionaries for the revolutionaries (whom they disdainfully referred to as the ‘Bengal Anarchists’) is understandable, it is instructive to observe how much in consonance with the interests of the British rulers and their Christian missionaries Gandhi’s own views were.
Remember Madan Lal Dhingra?
He was a rich brat who went to England to enjoy luxuries of life, came across Savarkar, became his disciple.
Gandhi called Dhingra a coward, a traitor, childish, murderer, intoxicated & mentally deranged.
Enraged by the executions of revolutionaries like Khudiram Bose, Kanaiya lal Dutta, Satinder Pal & Pandit Kanshi Ram, Dhingra exacted revenge upon the British by assassinating the political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, Curzon Wylie, on July 1, 1909.
Gandhi, who was then in South Africa condemned Dhingra on July 16, 1909: “The assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie was a terrible thing. Sir Curzon Wyllie served as an officer at several places in India. Here he was Lord Morley’s aide-de-camp.
It is being said in defence of Sir Wyllie’s assassination that it is the British who are responsible for India’s ruin, and that, just as the British would kill every German if Germany invaded Britain, so too it is the right of any Indian to kill any Englishman.
Every Indian should reflect thoughtfully on this murder. It has done India much harm; the deputation’s efforts have also received a setback. But that need not be taken into consideration. It is the ultimate result that we must think of Dhingra’s defence is inadmissible. In my view, he has acted like a coward. All the same, one can only pity the man. He was egged on to do this act by ill-digested reading of worthless writings. His defence of himself, too, appears to have been learnt by rote. It is those who incited him to this that deserve to be punished. In my view, Mr. Dhingra himself is innocent. The murder was committed in a state of intoxication. It is not merely wine or bhang that makes one drunk; a mad idea also can do so. That was the case with Dhingra. The analogy of Germans and Englishmen is fallacious. If the Germans were to invade [Britain], the British would kill only the invaders.
They would not kill every German whom they met.
It may be said that what Mr. Dhingra did, publicly and knowing full well that he himself would have to die, argues courage of no mean order on his part. But as I have said above, men can do these things in a state of intoxication, and can also banish the fear of death. Whatever courage there is in this is the result of intoxication, not a quality of the man himself.
I must say that those who believe and argue that such murders may do good to India are ignorant men indeed. No act of treachery can ever profit a nation. Even should the British leave in consequence of such murderous acts, who will rule in their place? The only answer is: the murderers. Who will then be happy? Is the Englishman bad because he is an Englishmen? Is it that everyone with an Indian skin is good?
Who inspired Dhingra to assassinate Curzon Wyllie?
It was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at India House, London.
“He was egged on to do this act by ill-digested reading of worthless writings”
Whose writings Gandhi mentioned here?
Again, it was Savarkar and Bala Gangadhar Tilak.
“It is those who incited him to this that deserve to be punished”
With this statement Gandhi asked British to punish whom?
When this incident happened Gandhi was still at South Africa, it took another 7 years for him to come to Bharat…
INTROSPECT
