gandhi and nehru perceptions on indian village society

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GANDHI AND NEHRU PERCEPTIONS ON INDIAN VILLAGE

SOCIETY

Dr. B. Sudarshan

Lecturer

Dept. of Political Science

Nizam College Osmania University

Hyderabad

The formal frame for institutional arrangement for rural reconstruction was

envisaged by the Balwanta Rai Mehata committee. The recommended

arrangements were expected to bring far-reaching socio-political changes in

rural India, which was imagined by diverse trajectories of thought in pre and

post independent India. These perspectives played a role in formulating plans of

action for reconstruction of rural India. The imagined world of rural India

swung between two extremes of romanticism and rejection. Looking in to those

perspectives and arguments and contestations woven around them will be

appropriate. Dwelling on the earlier debates on the nature and structure of

village society and also on the arguments, which range from building blocks of

new India as basic units of governance to viewing them as subjects of guided

modernization by the state, will provide insights to understand the nature of

institutional building and the transformation potential of those institutions.

Before going to deep discussions of Panchayati Raj system in India, we should

know the historical understanding of village society by different scholars as

well as three main leaders of Indian freedom movement Gandhi, Nehru and

Ambedkar. This paper deals with the ideas and understanding of M. K. Gandhi

and Jawaharlal Nehru on Indian village system during independent movement

particularly and indifferent contexts generally.

PERCEPTIONS OF BRITISH RAJ ON INDIAN VILLAGE:

The colonial administrators viewed the Indian village from the perspective of

revenue administration. They saw the village as a rarely changing entity with

specified structures and roles etched into it. An old official report of the British

House of Commons on Indian affairs depicts a village (a Telugu village to

bespecific) as following. A village, geographically considered, is a tract of

country comprising some hundred or thousand acres of arable and waste lands;

politically viewed it resembles a corporation or township. Its proper

establishment of officers and servants consists of the following descriptions:

The potail, or head inhabitant, who has generally the superintendence of the

affairs of the village, settles the disputes of the inhabitants, attends to the police,

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and performs the duty of collecting the revenue within his village, a duty which

his personal influence and minute acquaintance with the situation and concerns

of the people render him the best qualified for this charge. The kurnum keeps

the accounts of cultivation, and registers everything connected with it. The

tallier and the totie, the duty of the former of which consists…. in gaining

information of crimes and offenses, and in escorting and protecting persons

travelling from one village to another; the province of the latter appearing to be

more immediately confined to the village, consisting, among other duties, in

guarding the crops and assisting in measuring them. The boundary- man, who

preserves the limits of the village, or gives evidence respecting them in cases of

dispute, The Superintendent of Tanks and Watercourses distributes the water for

the purposes of agriculture. The Brahmin, who performs the village worship, the

schoolmaster, who is seen teaching the children in a village to read and write in

the sand, the calendar-Brahmin, or astrologer, etc. These officers and servants

generally constitute the establishment of a village; but in some parts of the

country it is of less extent, some of the duties and functions above described

being united in the same person; in others it exceeds the above-named number

of individuals. Under this simple form of municipal government, the inhabitants

of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages

have been but seldom altered; and though the villages themselves have been

sometimes injured, and even desolated by war, famine or disease, the same

name, the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families have

continued for ages. The inhabitants gave themselves no trouble about the

breaking up and divisions of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they

care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves; its

internal economy remains unchanged. The potail is still the head inhabitant, and

still acts as the petty judge or magistrate, and collector or renter of the village.

It is clear from the description mentioned above that the colonial rulers tried to

understand village as a revenue unit that paid its dues systematically and never

took interest in which the ruler was to whom it gave its dues. This perspective

also understood the hierarchy of power and the social relations revolving around

it, but they view that from the point of revenue administration. The unchanging

nature of the village mentioned in the report above led to development of the

concept of self- sufficient and perennial village as bedrock of Indian reality.

Charles Metcalf praised Indian villages as “Little Republics”. Sir Henry Main,

the noted British statesman and jurist, also highlighted the civilized nature of

villages. It is evident that the village was viewed as a consistent unit of

providing revenue and also as a self- governing structure. This understanding

helped the British to extract their revenue from the village and eulogize it as a

republic undermining the hierarchy and oppression involved in the village

structure. The nationalist narrative of the village as a self-sustaining, self-

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composed entity has its roots in the colonial romantic depiction.

The image of village in the eyes of the statesmen and activists during India’s

struggle for independence are very significant to understand the evolution of

institutional arrangements for reconstruction of rural India post-independence.

Surender Jodhka aptly observes how scholars of modern Indian history have

often pointed to the continuities in the colonial constructs of Indian society and

the nationalist imaginations of India. The village was an important category

where such continuity could be easily observed. However, a closer reading of

some of the leading ideologues of nationalist movements also points to

significant variations in their views on the substantive realities characterizing

rural India. Focusing primarily on writings of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar, he

looks in to the notion of the village as a central category in the nationalist

imaginations and opines there was virtual agreement that it represented the

core of the traditional social order of India. This insight works as a

framework to analyze the thinking and practices associated with construction of

institutional arrangements for rural development.

Most of the scholars, worked on the social, economic and political position of

Indian village with a view to understand the character of the Indian state. For

most of them the real India is represented by the villages only. There is a stream

of common opinion of western scholars and Indian nationalists that the village

is a location of self-sufficiency, productive interdependence and sense of

community. It is further opined that the villages needed to be recovered,

liberated and transformed for making the Indian nation vibrant and self-

sufficient. This view was critically countered by others who viewed the village

and its ossified hierarchical nature as retrogressive and inimical to build a

modern nation.

A look at the writings and opinions of the three nationalist leaders of India,

Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar will provide a glimpse of diversity of thoughts on

Indian village vis a vis nation building. “Gandhi saw the village as a site of

authenticity, for Nehru the village was the source and site of India’s

backwardness and for Ambedkar the village was the site of oppression”

where

caste presented itself in its most brutal and inhuman form. Different opinions of

these three leaders came from their personal lives which mediated in the making

of their understanding of Indian village society. Gandhi and Nehru were born in

Hindu upper caste families in semi-urban and urban society respectively. But

the life of Ambedkar was different from Gandhi and Nehru. The three works

scripted by the three leaders provide a glimpse of their understanding and

perception of Indian village and reconstruction. Gandhi wrote a book titled

“Hindu Swaraj”

iii

(1908) and Nehru “Discovery of India” (1946), and

Ambedkar wrote the book “Annihilation of Caste”

(1936). These three works

give three different points of view.

The socio-cultural background from which

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individuals evolve influences their perceptions and perspectives, which in turn

play a major role in developing their world view. Only Ambedkar had village

life experience during his childhood days which was different from that of

Gandhi. Gandhi and Nehru had very little direct exposure to village life or to

caste based discrimination. The commonality between the three of them was

mobility of their families and their academic training in law.

Understanding and interpretation of the village India had a significant role in

designing the reconstruction of rural India. High romanticism and absolute

cynicism seems to be two opposing views regarding the rural setup which

emerged during the decades preceding Indian independence. Nationalist

movement also experimented with rural development. The three thinkers and

activists had three perspectives about the Indian village. Gandhi’s view broadly

envisaged reconstructing a self- sufficient and self-governing village with less

external intervention. Nehru had a skeptic look at the asymmetric power

relations influenced by existing inequalities and believed in using state

apparatus to modernize and democratize the village. Ambedkar located the

relationship between the hierarchical Varna system and the role it played in

asymmetry of power and exploitation in the village set up. He openly

condemned the romanticist vision of villages as harmonious self-governing

units. He was of the opinion that there needs to be a radical social

transformation to realize democracy based on dignity and equality.

Gandhi’s perception of the Indian village:

Gandhi is identified with the village and its reconstruction in modern India. His

social and political philosophy revolved around the idea of the village. He was

recognized as father of the idea of the Indian village self-rule (Grama

Swarajya). He started espousing this idea of the village as a form when he was

practicing as an advocate in South Africa and continued to do so until his death.

His entire agitation programme was designed against only the British raj, not

the landlords and upper castes in India. Though he has born in a town,

Porbandar, in a Bania (Business) community he was against city civilization.

According to Jodhka, Gandhi used three different ways to project the ideal of

the Indian village. One is to establish the equivalence of the Indian civilization

with the West. Second, he counter-posed the village to the city and as an

alternative to the modern western life and civilization. Finally, he wanted to

reform the existing villages of India.

“Our cities are not Indian. India lives in seven lakhs of villages and the cities

live upon the villages. They do not bring their wealth from other countries. The

city people are brokers and commission agents for the big houses of Europe,

America and Japan. The cities have co-operated with the latter in the bleeding

process that has gone on for the past two hundred years. It is my belief based on

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experience that India is daily growing poorer. The circulation of her feet and

legs has almost stopped. And if we do not take care, she will collapse

altogether. To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which

god can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. God created man to

work for his food, and said that those who ate without work were thieves. Eight

percent of India is compulsorily thieves half the year. Is it any wonder if India

has become vast prison? Hunger is the argument that is driving India to the

spinning wheel.”

Nehru wrote in his autobiography about Gandhi’s economic ideas as “utterly

wrong and impossible of achievement”,

vii

and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar criticized

the economic philosophy of Gandhi. There was nothing new in the Gandhian

analysis of economic ills as attributable to machinery and the civilization built

upon it. These were old and worn out arguments, a repetition of Rousseau,

Pushkin and Tolstoy. His economics was hopelessly fallacious because the evils

produced by the mechanized production system and civilization are not due to

machinery as such... They are due to the wrong social organization which has

made private property and pursuit of personal gain a matter of absolute

sanctity... The remedy therefore is not to condemn machinery and civilization

but to alter the organization of society so that the benefits will not be usurped by

the few but accrue to all.

viii

Gandhi celebrated and romanticized the Indian

village community as no one else did. “My idea of village Swaraj is that, it is a

completely republic, independent of its neighbors for its wants and yet

independence many others in which dependence is necessity. Thus every village

first concern will be to grow its own food crops and cotton for its cloth.”

Gandhi further says "My ideal village still exists only in my imagination. After

all every human being lives in the world of his own imagination. In this village

of my dreams the villager will not be dull—he will be all awareness. He will not

live like an animal in filth and darkness. Men and women will live in freedom,

prepared to face the whole world. There will be no plague, no cholera and no

smallpox. Nobody will be allowed to be idle or to wallow in luxury. Everyone

will have to do body labour. Granting all this, I can still envisage a number of

things that will have to be organized on a large scale. Perhaps there will even be

railways and also post and telegraph offices. I do not know what things there

will be or will not be. Nor am I bothered about it. If I can make sure of the

essential thing, other things will follow in due course. But if I give up the

essential thing, I give up everything."

For Gandhi the real India appeared only in villages. He suggested to the foreign

scholars, who came to study Indian society that they “see the heart of India,

should ignore big cities…. The true Indian civilization is in the Indian

villages….India does not live in its towns but in its villages… A village unit as

conceived by me is as strong as the strongest. My imaginary village consists of

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1,000 souls.”

Gandhi’s idea of the Indian village, it seems, depends more on an environmental

perspective rather than traditional. But he wanted to revive Indian traditional

social structure, through the protection of handicrafts. “I consider the four

varnas alone to be fundamental, natural and essential. The innumerable sub

castes are sometimes a convenience, often a hindrance. The sooner there is

fusion, the better. But I am completely against any attempt at destroying the

fundamental divisions…..I see very great use in considering a Brahmin to be

always a Brahmin.”

xii

In Gandhi’s future India, each village would be organized

around these four-fold divisions. Self- sustenance means that, there is no

dependency between neighboring villages.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s opinion on Indian village:

After Gandhi, Nehru was the most influential leader of the Indian nationalist

movement and post-colonial India. Before as well as after Gandhi, Nehru was

the most influential modernist ideologue of the Indian National Congress and in

post- Independence era he was the first prime minister of independent India. To

understand his views on villages we must know about his personal life profile.

He was born in Allahabad on 14

November 1889 in a rich Kashmiri Brahmin

family. His family was mobile since his grandfather. He wrote himself in his

autobiography as “bourgeois”. We do not find Nehru a village romanticist as

Gandhi and other congress nationalist leaders. His writing on the Indian village

contradicts the basic idea of the Gandhian philosophy of Gram Swaraj.

According Surinder Jodhka, to understand Indian past Nehru’s approach was

historical in nature, he apparently looked at the old social structure of Indian

society from an evolutionary perspective.

xiii

He identified the three basic

concepts of the old Indian social structure as: autonomous village community,

caste and the joint family. This is something that can be equated with the

traditional idea. The source of understanding of Indian past seems to be very

common to Nehru and Gandhi. He shared ideas with Gandhi about the “need for

a revival of handicrafts and cottage industry”, but went beyond the revivalist

tinge of the Gandhian model of reconstruction.

The following statement of Nehru on Indian villages is laced with the modernist

critique:

In his seminal work Discovery of India Jawaharlal Nehru praised the old caste

system, but he developed doubts and changed his opinion, because of the vast

changes that took place in Indian society. He wrote “The destruction of caste,

which is virtually inevitable, will lead to chaotic disruption of social life unless

something in the way of a new social structure, adapted both to the demands of

modern times and to the genius of the Indian people, were to be put in its place.

The old caste system, to be sure, had much that was good in it. It is never fell

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victim to the moribund individualism of the west. It tolerated diversity. It

produced a society, which was non-competitive and non-acquisitive.

Democracy was allowed within each caste, and although the system as a whole

was hierarchical, the internal structure of each caste was egalitarian…The

ultimate weakness and failing of the caste system and the Indian social structure

were that they degraded a mass of human beings and gave them no

opportunities to get out of that condition educationally, culturally, or

economically. In the context of society too, the caste system and much that goes

with it are wholly incompatible, reactionary, restrictive, and barriers to progress.

There can be no equality in status and opportunity within its framework, nor

there political democracy, and much less, economic democracy.”

xiv

He criticized

past structures, particularly caste based hierarchies, more and more. At the same

time, he blamed the British rulers for disturbing the old economic equilibrium

of the village. When Gandhi was glorifying the Indian “village in a populist

language” and considered it as a unit with greater economic and social values,

Nehru desired to transform the village structure in social terms rather than

economic by using modern technology, and wanted to change agrarian relations

in India.

Notes and References

Karl Marx, New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853;

see also http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.html

Surinder S. Jodhka, 2012, Village Society, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, p 5.

iii

M. K. Gandhi, 1908, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, editor & Publisher

Jitendra T. Desai, 1938, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad.

Annihilation of Caste is an undelivered speech for the conference of Jat Pat

Todak Mandal, written in 1936 by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

These three books of them are represents their idea of Indian village society.

We can understand from these books, what was the primary objective of in their

struggles.

Gandhi, 1966, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XXI. Delhi:

Government of India, P. 288-89

vii

https://www2.stetson.edu/secure/history/hy10430/nehrunonviolence.html

viii

http://www.marxists.org/rererence/archive/mishra/1994/04/x01.html

Gandhi, Harijan, 26-7-1942, 76: 308-9.

Gandhi, Letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, 5-10-1945; 81:320.

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Gandhi, Young India, 23-4-1931; 46:12.

xii

Christophe Jaffrelot, 2003 India’s silent revolution: The Rise of the Lower

Castes in North India, Hurst & Company,

xiii

Surinder S. Jodhka, ed. 2012, Nation and Village: Images of Rural India in

Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar, in Village Society, Essays from EPW, Orient

Blackswan, Hyd.

xiv

Nehru, 1948, Discovery of India, P.242 – 257