We were all taught "Gandhi won Indian independence through non-violence", but it was only non-violent for the oppressors, who then wrote our history.
For the millions of Indians jailed, tortured, killed in the freedom struggle, famines, and Partition, it was very violent indeed.
The non-violence myth was colonialism's parting gift, emasculating our nation instead of letting the blood of the fallen fertilise the soil of civilisational rebirth.
Instead of being able to say that their sacrifices were not in vain, we erased their memory to please the elite.
And who did it serve? Not the poor, not the oppressed.
Only the Anglophile, comprador bourgeoisie of the Indian National Congress who wanted to inherit the privileges and tools that their colonial masters enjoyed, in exchange for arranging a "non-violent" independence movement.
Who cravenly surrendered millions to their deaths at the hands of the feudal landowners, collaborators, and compradors behind the Muslim League, who cooperated with the British to use colonial state institutions to "free" them from having to share power with inferior "kafirs".
Did Jinnah and his handful of feudal dinosaurs, brown Englishmen, and street goons get their precious ethno-religious theocracy by begging? No, they built up a "veto through violence", which the cowardly colonial and Congress institutions were unable (or unwilling) to counter.
This fetishisation of Gandhi, Mandela, or MLK as "non-violent heroes" is bourgeois liberal propaganda, designed to degrade and demoralise.
Non-violent protests are the easiest for the establishment to ignore, undermine, or appropriate.
All power flows from the barrel of a gun.
To the original point, yes, Gandhi didn’t need a single Molotov cocktail to defeat the entire British Empire.
Because defeating them was not his aim, offering them (and his protégé) a "moral victory" was.
Defeating a colonial empire is what Algeria and Vietnam did, with arms.
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of what students at Delhi University, JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia, and AMU learn during their History and Political Science degrees, but are missing from school syllabi, since "the savage natives don't deserve the truth".
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