Anarchism in India

Anarchism in India has never taken the name anarchism, and is relevant primarily its effects on movements for national and social liberation.

Non-government philosophy in ancient Hindu thought

In ancient Hindu thought, there are predecessors to the concept of a stateless society; for example, the Satya Yuga is often described as a possible anarchist society in which people govern themselves based on the universal law of dharma. But, at the same time while a stateless society is seen as a possibility, much of Hindu political thought focuses on the inherently mixed nature of man (benign and malign) and therefore of the divine right of kings to govern so long as they protect the people from harm; in the event that kings do not govern on the basis of dharma, Chanakya sutras allow that it is better not to have a king than have one who is wanting in discipline. This contrasts with the Western notion of a universal divine right of kings regardless of the consequences.

Vedic Anarchism

Unlike the modern Western Anarchist theories, the Vedic Anarchism is a time tested and successfully established anarchist model of the ancients. The rishis who have given Vedas are the first founders of Vedic anarchist societies. They dwelled in forests outside the control of any state or governments, and enforced a values based living through the knowledge on Rta and dharma. Unlike the Western anarchism that emphasises priority to anti-state and anti-rulers policies, Vedic Anarchism deals with balance of powers, non-hierarchical and decentralised polity, community living, and ecologically sustainable lifestyles through its varna, ashrama, dharma, and Janapada systems.

The Janapada system created a non-hierarchical and decentralised polity of root-level democracy.

The dharma system is wisdom in action. The wisdom that brought awareness about natural and social powers is known as Rta. This system attempted values based living, and brought ecologically sustainable lifestyles.

The ashrama system empowered individual freedom and independent expressions. Based on the biological age, the needs and behavior of individuals are categorised as Student life (Brahmacharya), Householder life (Grahastha), Retiring life (Vanaprastha), and Renouncing life (Sannyasa).

The Vedic varna system ensured swadharma (natural attitude and developed aptitude) based entitlements that brought flexibility, non-hierarchical and decentralised distribution of powers among all the communities for a balanced society, smooth inter-dependency, as well as deals with social responsibilities.

From these Vedic systems, arose the Mahajanapada system that formed the basis of all kingdoms and republics of India. This system administered the root-level distribution of political, technological, economical, and social powers. The term "Janapada" literally means the foothold of the people. In Pāṇini, Janapada stands for country and Janapadin for its citizenry.

Each of these Janapadas was named after the Kshatriya tribe (or the Kshatriya Jana) who had settled therein. Within each Janapadas existed the Varna system distributing the socioeconomic powers, creating village communities that are completely independent from the state and completely inter-dependent within itself. All of the ancient Vedic period states followed grass-root democracy raising from the village communities.

The Vedic polity of root-level democracy has turned the entire India as a community and village based society. These villages are completely self-sufficient, self-governing (swaraj), cooperative, nature bound, and ensured complete independence from the state and its politics. Thomas Munroe, Charles Metcalfe, and Mark Wilks are a few of the Orientalists who have eloquently described this importance village communities held in India.

The village communities [in India] are little republics, having nearly everything they can want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations.....Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution;....but the village community remains the same....nearly everything that they want within themselves and [are] almost independent of any foreign relations.

These communities contain in miniature all the materials of a State within themselves, and are almost sufficient to protect their members, if all governments are withdrawn.

Because of the Janapada system, anarchism ruled the roots and roosts of India irrespective of kings and other types of rulers. C.F. W. Hegel finds that this system ensured the whole of India and her societies not yielding to despotism, subjection, or subjugation of any rulers. Its influence is very strong and far reaching, even in the colonial period, the colonialists found that the establishment of Vedic anarchism through its village communities as the most difficult barrier to break and could not completely enforce their hegemony.

Gandhi and anarchism

See also: Anarcho-pacifism

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

The local conditions were pertinent to the development of the heavily anarchic Satyagraha movement in India. George Woodcock claimed Mohandas Gandhi self-identified as an anarchist. Anarchism in India finds its first well-known expression with a statement by Gandhi:

The state evil is not the cause but the effect of social evil, just as the sea-waves are the effect not the cause of the storm. The only way of curing the disease is by removing the cause itself.

In Gandhi's view, violence is the source of social problems, and the state is the manifestation of this violence. Hence he concluded that "[t]hat state is perfect and non-violent where the people are governed the least. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on nonviolence." For Gandhi, the way to achieve such a state of total nonviolence (ahimsa) was changing of the people's minds rather than changing the state which governs people. Self-governance (swaraj) is the principle behind his theory of satyagraha. This swaraj starts from the individual, then moves outward to the village level, and then to the national level; the basic principle is the moral autonomy of the individual is above all other considerations.

Gandhi’s admiration for collective liberation started from the very anarchic notion of individualism. According to Gandhi, the conscience of the individual is the only legitimate form of government. Gandhi averred that "Swaraj will be an absurdity if individuals have to surrender their judgment to a majority." He opined that a single good opinion is far better and beneficial than that of the majority of the population if the majority opinion is unsound. Due to this swaraj individualism, he rejected both parliamentary politics and their instrument of legitimisation, political parties. According to swaraj individualism the notion that the individual exists for the good of the larger organisation had to be discarded in favour of the notion that the larger organisation exists for the good of the individual, and one must always be free to leave and to dissent. Gandhi also considered Leo Tolstoy's book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, a book about practical anarchist organisation, as the text to have the most influence in his life.

Bhagat Singh

Before 1920, an anarchist movement was represented by one of the most famous revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement, Bhagat Singh. Singh was attracted to anarchism. Western anarchism and communism had influence on him. He studied the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Singh wrote in an article:

The ultimate goal of Anarchism is complete independence, according to which no one will be ... crazy for money ... There will be no chains on the body or control by the state. This means that they want to eliminate ... the state; private property.

Singh was involved in the Hindustan Republican Association and Naujawan Bharat Sabha (Translated to 'Youth Society of India'). By the mid-1920s Singh began arming of the general population and organised people’s militias against the British. From May 1928 to September 1928, Singh published several articles on anarchism in Punjabi periodical "Kirti", a pro-independence paper, on which he equated the traditional Indian idea of "universal brotherhood" to the anarchist principle of "no rulers". Despite being influenced by the writings of Lenin and Trotsky, Singh never joined the Communist Party of India because of the anarchist influence on him. Anarchist ideas played a major role in both Gandhian and Singhian movements for swaraj.

Har Dayal's anarchist activism in US

See also: Buddhist anarchism

Indian revolutionary and the founder of the Ghadar Party Lala Har Dayal was involved in the anarchist movement in United States. He moved to the United States in 1911, where he became involved in industrial unionism. In Oakland, he founded the Bakunin Institute of California which he described as "the first monastery of anarchism". The organisation aligned itself with the Regeneracion movement founded by the exiled Mexicans Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón. Har Dayal understood the realisation of ancient Aryan culture as anarchism, which he also saw as the goal of Buddhism. The Ghadar Party attempted to overthrow the British in India by reconciling western concepts of social revolution - particularly those stemming from Mikhail Bakunin - with Buddhism.

MPT Acharya

Main article: MPT Acharya

MPT Acharya was a contemporary of Har Dayal in London and fellow revolutionary in India House. Like a number of other Indin revolutionaries of the time, Acharya turned to socialism at the end of first world war to aid the Indian cause. However he was disillusioned by the communist movement and by early 1920s had turned towards Anarchism, along with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya. He took an active role in promoting Anarchist works in and was contributed at this time to the Russian Anarchist publication Rabotchi Put. In 1931, he lived in Amsterdam working with the school of Anarcho-syndicalism. Acharya came to be acquainted in early 1930s acquainted with Marxist-leaning Indian industrialist from Bombay, Ranchoddas Bhavan Lotvala. Lotvala had financed The Socialist, one of the first Marxist periodicals in India. Lotvala also financed the translation and publication of many leftist literature including the Communist manifesto. The British-Indian ban on Acharya was lifted in 1935 and he returned to Bombay that same year, where he managed a living as a journalist. During this time, Acharya wrote eight articles during this time which would later be collated to be published as a book called Reminesces of a Revolutionary. From Bombay, Acharya established correspondence with Japanese anarchist Taiji Yamaga and Chinese anarchist Lu Jinbao. The result of the correspondences led to the three establishing contacts with Commission de Relations de l’Internationale Anarchiste (Liaison Commission of the Anarchist International). In the following years, Acharya contributed to anarchist publications such as Freedom in London, Tierra y Libertad in Mexico and Contre Courant in Paris. He also remained in correspondence with Albert Meltzer for more than fifteen years.

In the following years Acharya was appointed secretary of the Indian Institute of Sociology, established under Lotvala's patronage in 1930s. In later years, Acharya's influence on the institute saw it adopts a number of statutes in 1947 and subsequently the institute adopted the name of Libertarian Socialist Institute. His views on economic matters were profound and in 1951, Free Society Group of Chicago published his work How Long Can Capitalism Survive? in 1951.

Dave Andrews

Australian Christian anarchist Dave Andrews lived in India between 1972 and 1984. In 1975, He and his wife founded and developed a residential community in India called Aashiana (out of which grew Sahara, Sharan and Sahasee – three well-known Christian community organisations working with slum dwellers, sex workers, drug addicts, and people with HIV/AIDS). When Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, thousands of Sikhs were murdered by violent mobs. Andrews resisted this through non-violent methods of intervention. The Andrews' were forced to flee India soon thereafter.

See also

• Socialism in India
• Indian independence movement

Further reading

• The Libertarian. (quarterly,1951- ) Bombay: Bombay Socialist Institute.
• The gentle anarchists : a study of the leaders of the Sarvodaya movement for non-violent revolution in India by Geoffrey Ostergaard and Melville Currell, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1971
• "The Perennial Appeal of Anarchism" in Polity, Vol. 7, No. 2. (Winter, 1974), pp. 234–247 by Michael R. Dillon