One wonders how can the historians – both Indian and Western – project Gandhi as the champion of Indian resistance when he had himself established beyond doubt his obedience to the foreign masters. Back in India, his collaboration with the British continued in the garb of ‘passive resistance’.

In order to wean away the natives from opposing the unjust imperial rule, the British intelligently laid a trap to lure the willing collaborators. This trap was in the form of representative institutions, distribution of power, bureaucratic positions, business, contracts, etc, and those who were willing to play this game under the devious rules set by the colonists were rewarded for their cooperation and those who tried to scuttle the game were brutally punished. In the latter category fell the Ghadarites, the communists and the likes of Bhagat Singh who were either silenced by long incarceration or simply hanged whereas Gandhi and his Congress party willingly played the game according to the rules set by the British.

In fact, when the oppressed sections of the society – the poor peasants and workers – tried to rebel against their exploitation, Gandhi and his types hastened to pacify such bloody resistance movements which directly stunted their growth and indirectly prolonged the British occupation. A typical example was the peasant movement in the district of Bardoli in Bengal. When the peasants refused to pay the rents and taxes to the Indian landlords and the imperial government, Gandhi sent a Congress committee, which ‘liquidated’ the conflict and assured the zamindars that Congress had ‘no intention of encroaching on the legal rights’.