Defying the Crown

A Force More Powerful: Defying the Crown 

The following are excerpted quotes from the segment Defying the Crown from the Documentary Series, A Force More Powerful 

“Gandhi led his fellow Indians in a non-violent struggle against racial oppression for eight years. They marched into forbidden territory; they burned their registration papers. They expected to be arrested and they were not disappointed. ” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

Gandhi said, “nonviolence refusal to cooperate with injustice is the way to defeat it.”

“Gandhi understands that control of India depends on Indian cooperation, not British coercion” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“How can 100 thousand British troupes control at that time 350 million Indians?” (Alyque Padamsee, Indian film maker)

“Some said he is a very clever man he doesn’t want the British government to know what strategy he is going to use. But he said no. “I am just waiting for the call and I know I will hear the inner voice.” (Naarian Dassai)

“In February he decides. He will begin by challenging the British tax and monopoly on salt. He writes the Viceroy, Lord Irwin on March the second. He explains the injustice of the salt law and says he will go to the beach to make salt illegally. He will invite all Indians to do the same. He pleads with Irwin to do the same.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“He knows that salt will be a powerful symbol.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“Every human being needs salt. Without salt you and I can’t exist. So, he wanted to touch a chord in every Indian heart. That here is something that you and I and everyone needs, why should that be taxed?” (Dr. Aloo Daastur, Department of Civics and Politics, Bombay University)

“With a sharp instinct for political theater, Gandhi charts a route from his ashram to the sea. He and his volunteers will walk 240 miles. Being on the road for nearly a month, he believes, will build suspense and a bigger audience for his message. He expects to be arrested before he reaches the coast…At 60 Gandhi is the oldest of 78 marchers.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“Thousands join the procession, including police observers. But the government makes no attempt to interfere.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“They feared that he was so popular that there may be violent outbreak. So they weighed the advantages and disadvantages of arresting him and they also underrated this movement of salt satyagraha. They felt it might fizzle out, and Gandhi would look ridiculous. If he goes on marching and does not commit any breach of the laws, they cannot arrest him. What would they arrest him for?” (Professor B.R. Nanda, Gandhi Biographer)

Gandhi insists in his speeches “we must not hate the British. They have not taken India from us, we have given it to them.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“Gandhiji, as I knew him as a schoolboy, was someone you admired, someone you looked up to, someone who was a saint. He was a saint because a) he dressed like a saint and b) the things he said he seemed to be very saintly. On the other side, as I grew up, I began to see that he was a shrew student of human history. He was a man who absolutely understood human psychology. He understood the British idea of fair play, and he knew how to play on that sentiment.” (Alyque Padamsee, Indian film maker)

“Although the crown never hesitates to use force, British administrators pride themselves on their enlightenment and the cooperation they receive from Indian officials. Gandhi intends to remove Indian consent to foreign rule.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“The salt march will create a dilemma. If they arrest him, all India will rise up in protest. If he is permitted to openly defy the law, British control will be lost perhaps irretrievably.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“He asks local leaders to quit their jobs. “When everyone refuses to cooperate,” he said, “the British will be able to do nothing.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

He was asking the village headman to resign their posts. And I think under 40 or so did resign. And why did he ask them to resign. It is a foreign government running this country for their own benefit, and why should you serve it. (Professor B.R. Nanda, Gandhi Biographer)

“Gandhi tells Indians not to buy imported cloth. He spins cotton for two hours everyday to dramatize the millions of jobs lost to imported British cloth. Gandhi says, “If every Indian will spin at the same time, the song of the spinning wheel will be come the song of freedom.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“Here was a man who understood how to get the maximum exposure for his message and, in a sense you could say, he was one of India’s greatest “advertisers”. And as marched, long before Martin Luther Kings arch on Washington, Gandhiji was the originator of this. And as he marched people began to spread the word. “He’s on the march. He is going to defy the law. Lets join him. This is our chance to show the British without having to hit them that we stand for something; that we are not just slaves!” And by god, even I who was only a schoolboy at the time, my hair stood on end when I realized that he was slowly reaching his goal. And we all knew that once he picked up that handful of salt he would be arrested.” (Alyque Padamsee, Indian film maker)

An American newspaper editorialized, “as Britain lost America through tea, it is about to lose India through salt.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“It seems as though a spring had been release. All of a sudden salt manufacturing was the topic of the day. It was immaterial whether the stuff was good or bad, the main thing was to commit a breach of the obnoxious slat law and we were successful in that.” (Jarwahul Nehru, India’s future prime minister)

This tremendous success of salt satyagrah was not foreseen by the British there were many skeptics who thought that you can’t unseat the King emperor by boiling sea water in a kettle… in a nonviolent struggle, it is the insight of the leader that matters, what will mobilize the people? What will make them feel that they have a cause to fight for? And what will make them fight it non-violently? (Professor B.R. Nanda, Gandhi Biographer)

When you are non violent, how do we tackle you? How do we meet your challenge?

At the most we can imprison you, and then again if we imprison you become more popular. We can’t use arms against you, we can’t use violence against you. So here is a person who has evolved a technique, which overpowers the British.

(Professor Devarat Pathak, Guarat University)

“The personal influence of Gandhi threatens to embarrass the administration and in some areas he has already undermined government authority.” (Lord Irwin, Viceroy in India)

A well-known poet, Sarojini Naidu, leads the siege. She instructs her army: “You must not use violence under any circumstances. You will be beaten, but you must not resist. You must not even raise a hand to ward off the blows.” (Sarojini Naidu)

“250, 000 demonstrators confront the guards head on. Police attacked the satyagrahis with steel tipped clubs called lathis, United Press Reporter, Webb Miller witnessed the scene:

“They went down like ten pines. I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs n unprotected skulls. Those struck down fell, sprawling unconscious writhing with pain with broken skulls or fractured shoulders. ”

Millers report is published in nearly 2,000 newspapers and read aloud in the US Senate.

One Satyagrahi explained, “Our object was to show the world at large the fangs and claws of the government in all of its ugliness and ferocity. In this we have succeeded beyond measure.”

Press reports of police brutality damage the cause almost as much as the resistance campaign. (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

Irwin cables the governor of Bombay “I am sure these lathis charges are exactly what our enemies want. We should be racking our brains for a way to deny them this advantage.”

“If an authority enjoys power, he enjoys power to the extent to which obedience is rendered, but the moment the obedience goes off. The moment the laws are disobeyed. Moment the command of the powerful are not obeyed. Your power vanishes. ”

“British trade with India drops 25 percent and in December 3 out 4 foreign cloth shops are closed. By January, British Prime Minister Ramsey McDonald see that negotiations are the only way to end the stand off. He orders Gandhi and the other leaders released.” (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

At the Viceroys palace in New Dehli, Gandhi is the first Indian ever to meet with a British ruler as an equal. Negotiations last three weeks. Irwin refuses to give ground on the salt laws and cloth imports; concessions that would alienate his Indian collaborators. Gandhi secures the release of political prisoners and the lifting of repressive ordinances. He calls off civil disobedience. Constitutional issues are pushed back for later talks in London. (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“There were many people who were not satisfied. They thought perhaps that Gandhi compromised and perhaps went out of his way. But Gandhi’s argument always was that, this movement was not in vain, because it is through such movements that is training people, that you cant have everything at one stroke. You compromise, you gather your strength, you clean yourself, and then take the next step ”

A year after the salt march, India remains under British rule. But Gandhi has ended the pretense of British legitimacy in India by exposing injustice and ending Indians consent to foreign rule. He has awakened the people to their own power and set India on the road to independence. (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

Britain grants Indian Independence 16 years later, in 1947. Within a year Gandhi is dead of an assassin’s bullet. (Ben Kingsley, narrator)

“My technique of non violent struggle is in the same stage as electricity in Edison’s time, to be refined and developed” (Gandhi)