I agree. However, many Indians feel that its contribution has been deliberately overrated…history is written by the winners, etc etc…Unfortunately sometimes they go to the other extreme and deny all credit to the non-violent movement…. The truth…as someone quoted Confucius recently…is probably somewhere in between…

Y’all can hate on me and the Mahatma all you want. I can take it. Please sir, can I have another?

Funny that you should mention the naval mutiny. I was reading Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘The Age of Extremes(1914-1991)’ very recently, and it explicitly said the naval mutiny was the event that ‘convinced the British that, with the loss of control over the armed forces, their time was up in India’ (I paraphrase here). I was surprised because the mutiny plays almost no role in the official Independence movement narrative we hear in India.

Unfortunately the book gave no references for the conclusion; in fact, the remark was thrown in an offhand way, as if the fact was obvious. Also, Hobsbawm is a highly-respected non-partisan writer, so there is no reason to expect bias; so overall it just left me confused .

The nonviolent noncooperation movement was a part of the freedom movement. That’s it. A part. Not the entirety of it, nor can you necessarily imply that it was somehow the most important element of it. And by saying “that’s the attitude that kicked the British out” you keep a certain myth going.

Twice. Once barely counted, I was only in there for an hour, for driving on suspended license. But that’s another story for a meetup.

I wonder how many Mutineers have done time?

Yes and no.

The most important thing is the way British left. It did not become IndoChine or Algeria. They had figured that governing India was becoming impossible – all the crippling non-cooperation movement, and even the British Indian Army had started showing signs of being mutinous.

Clement Atlee, the post WW2 PM was committed to give India its independence, but Churchill and his followers (then out of power) were still adamant. When Mountbatten went to meet Churchill just before taking his assignment to India, he sat almost sullen for an hour.

The decolonization (freedom struggle) was not bloody for most part, sure, immediately after partition riots were. That (nonviolent freedom struggle) has had helped India to get on its feet and attempt to be a secular democracy, closely modeled after UK parliamentary system. It has had some serious hiccups but has done better than most of the countries freed at around that time.

Most important is the legacy that we seen in action even today in Myanmar.

I deliberately didn’t give any of them any kind of subjective weights. I wasn’t there. I would certainly agree that a great many factors came into play, and one was that Britain after WWII was just too damn busy rebuilding to hold India down and choke the life from her, though a few select individuals certainly did try now and again.

My point was that non-violence did have something to do with India becoming a free country, and maybe even more importantly, in attaining one of the highest points of moral high ground in all of human history.

So kudos to the cabbie. My satirical photoshopped picture not withstanding, he’s got the right idea. Unlike this bastard.