Waiting for Swaraj: Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaries

243 Pages·2021·2.041 MB·English

by  Aparna Vaidik

~ Waiting for Swaraj ~
Set in British India of the 1920s, Waiting for Swaraj follows the cadence and
tempo of the lives of the intrepid revolutionaries of the Hindustan Republican
Association and the Hindustan Republican Socialist Association who challenged
the British Raj. This book seeks to comprehend the revolutionaries’ self-conception:
When does a person say, ‘I am a revolutionary’? How did a revolutionary live out
the vision of revolution? What was their everyday like? Did life in revolution
transform an individual? What was their truth and how was it different from that
of others? What did they do when not thinking about the revolution?
The secret nature of the revolutionaries’ organisation and operations meant it was
the more spectacular and heroic moments of their lives when they threw a bomb,
carried out an assassination or were caught by the police or put on a conspiracy
trial that became the point of historical analysis. Their lives, however, were an
interesting interplay of visibility and invisibility, a kaleidoscope of the performance
of violence and underground subterfuge. Drawing on the revolutionaries’ memoirs,
this book locates the essence of being a revolutionary in the everyday conversations,
banter and anecdotes, and in the stray fragments of the life in underground. It
demonstrates how the time spent ‘waiting for freedom’ was the crucible that
forged a revolutionary. The waiting did not rob the young men of the romance
of resistance but coddled, nurtured and emboldened it. Waiting for Swaraj is an
exploration of the rich, variegated and intimate history of revolution as praxis.
Aparna Vaidik is Associate Professor of History at Ashoka University, Sonepat,
India. She previously taught at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and
University of Delhi. Her first monograph, Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter
and Island History (2010), was on the spatial and penal history of the Indian Ocean.
She has also written a creative non-fiction, My Son’s Inheritance: A Secret History
of Lynching and Blood Justice in India (2020), on the deep and invisible history of
violence in the Indian subcontinent. Another research monograph, Revolutionaries
on Trial: Sedition, Betrayal and Martyrdom, on the history of the infamous Lahore
Conspiracy Case Trial (1929–1931) is forthcoming in 2022.

~ Waiting for Swaraj ~
Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaries
Aparna Vaidik
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9781108838085
© Aparna Vaidik 2021
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no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2021
Printed in India
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vaidik, Aparna, 1975- author.
Title: Waiting for Swaraj : the inner lives of Indian Revolutionaries /
Aparna Vaidik.
Other titles: Inner lives of Indian Revolutionaries
Description: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021005366 (print) | LCCN 2021005367 (ebook) | ISBN
9781108838085 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108937146 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hindustan Socialist Republican Association--History. |
Hindustan Republican Association--History. |
Revolutionaries--India--History--20th century. | India--Politics and
government--1919-1947.
Classification: LCC DS480.45 .V35 2021 (print) | LCC DS480.45 (ebook) |
DDC 954.03/570922--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005366
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005367
ISBN
978-1-108-83808-5 Hardback
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of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
In
the loving memory of
my mother
Dr Vedwati Vaidik
The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
– Roland Barthes,
A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations xi
1. The Revolutionary-Who-Waits 1
2. Satyagrahi to Krantikari 28
3. Between Kranti and Inquilab 60
4. The Ascetic Kaalyoddha 95
Conclusion 127
Notes 137
Glossary 192
Bibliography 194
Index 224

Acknowledgements
his book has been long in making and I have consequently incurred a
T
debt of gratitude to several folks. I am grateful to Professor Madhavan
Palat for conversations about the Russian revolutionaries and to William
R. Pinch, Nonica Datta and Tanika Sarkar for discussions on asceticism,
martyrdom and histories of religious sects. My special thanks to Gwen
Kelly for helping me make sense of anthropological works. I am grateful to
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Johannesburg,
Witwatersrand, for a grant from their Governing Intimacies Project that
made possible the completion of this book. I remain indebted to my
friends, colleagues and students at Ashoka University for their support.
My thanks to the librarian and staff of the Nehru Memorial and
Museum Library, New Delhi, India, and its Deputy Director, Ravikant
Mishra, and the Dayal Singh Library in Lahore, Pakistan. My debt of
gratitude to Uday Khatri, son of Sh. Ramkrishan Khatri, who gave me
the Kakori commemorative volumes. I have presented chapters and
sections of this book in various conferences in the USA, UK and India
and am grateful for the comments and suggestions from the audience. My
thanks to friends who read and commented on parts of the manuscript:
Laura Goffman, Carole Sargent, Queeny Pradhan, Preeti Prasad, Bharat
Solanky, Mandavi Mehta, Pratik Chakrabarti, Amit Ahuja, Vikas Pathak
and Ravish Kumar of NDTV. I am deeply indebted to Daniel E. Elam,
Sanjukta Potdar and Aienla Ozukum for their generous feedback on
the final draft of the manuscript. My heartfelt thanks to Sohini Ghosh,
Aniruddha De and Qudsiya Ahmad, the editors of Cambridge University
x Acknowledgements
Press, for joining me on this adventure. I also wish to thank the anonymous
reviewers for their really helpful comments.
I owe these words to my fellow marauder, Vijay. This book came out of
our arguments about ngrams and microbial histories. Thanks to my sons,
Advait Vallabh and Uddhav Pratap, for giving me a reason to be. Despite
his asking for co-authorship credits, I remain immensely grateful to my
loving partner, Anil Sanweria, for being my cheerleader. I dedicate this
book to the loving memory of my mother, Dr Vedwati Vaidik, who on her
grandsons’ request agreed to keep her eyes open and smile down at them
when she became a star in the galaxy.