“Ahimsa” (in ironic quotes) was the title of a pen-and-wash study created by my grandfather in 1947.
His sienna-faded drawing depicts Ghandi hunkered down before his famous spinning wheel, the image of harmless non-violent Hindu civil resistance. In the background, two violent mobs are tearing each other to pieces. His point was precisely that Ghandi refused to confront the terrible things his people would do in pursuit of their objectives.
The British soldiers had and used numerous non-violent ways of suppressing civil unrest; I suggest you read Masters’ book, “Bhowani Junction”, depicting Partition and Independence struggles from the point of view of a Eurasian with a foot in both camps. Just one example: Nepalese soldiers pissing on Hindu protesters, thereby very effectively causing the crowds to scatter. Not only was such liquid disgusting, it comes from out-caste mercenaries. Better than CS gas for crowd control.
Only rarely did the Raj have to resort to Reading the Riot Act followed by gunfire, as at Allahabad; and the Indians have found to their cost that their own Indian army has had to resort to similar methods, or worse, when a lathi-charge fails.
Grandfather admired Ghandi, though he was a railway engineer for the Raj (also a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army). He was awarded the OBE for service to the empire. And yet his “Ahimsa” cartoon was a protest work, if you can imagine such a thing from a member of the elite. That drawing reflected his view of Ghandi’s responsibility for the deaths of millions during the Partition riots.
Like a great many Raj officers, Grandfather took the view that although Indian independence was inevitable, no good could come from an early breakup of the empire; that the non-violence principles of Ghandi would always fail in the face of political violence sanctioned by religious leaders and other would-be asiatic fuhrers; and that only the disinterested civil administration of the Raj could effectively oppose those who would use violence for political ends.
Time has shown that Grandfather was only partly right; the continued existence of democratic processes like the Lok Sabha in India (but not Pakistan!) shows that for the Hindu portion of India, at least, the time was propitious for independence.
However, it came with extreme sectarian violence between islamic and hindu faithful, encouraged by the largely atheistic intellectual leadership of the Muslim majority in the Punjab, to help persuade the Brits to partition India.
That secession worked: but today, the existence of Pakistan as a nation is in doubt. The most plangent irony? Jinnah and his associates would long since have been put to death either by what passes for government there, or the criminal warlords who really rule the major port of Karachi, or any of various flavours of islamic extremist.
