The comparison Ramachandra Guha made in Scroll.in between the farmer’s movement going on now and a similar campaign in India’s colonial pa...
The comparison Ramachandra Guha made in Scroll.in between the farmer’s movement going on now and a similar campaign in India’s colonial past has, of course, momentous relevance (What today’s farm protests share with Vallabhbhai Patel’s Bardoli satyagraha). More so, because the Bardoli satyagraha in 1928 ended with a glowing victory for the rich peasantry. As is his wont, Guha wrote a good and well-documented story on how Sardar Patel rallied and led the major landowners in their successful resistance against the dictates and whims of the colonial state.
The message is clear: the outcome then could and should boost the cause of today’s agrarian elite courageously standing up against the political and bureaucratic injustice of the current state. However, the account of events leading up to the strike against colonial rule – based on Mahadev Desai’s hagiography The Story of Bardoli– is more complicated than Guha has told. Its dark underside needs to be addressed.
My critique concerns in the first place the laudatory role he ascribes to Vallabhbhai Patel. No doubt, he was an indomitable figure who already ranked high in the Congress leadership, and in Gujarat, as Mohandas Gandhi, he was seen as a son of the soil. The pair operated in tandem and this might have...