GANDHI AND THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 5 in a sense themselves created the myth of Gandhi with their actions, both constitutional and political. Those who are familiar with Seal's work would remember that, according to him, the nationalist appeal did not acquire any popular support till the elections of 1937, because it was the Government of India Act 1935 rather than Gandhi's and other nationalist mobilisations which gave Indian politicians the necessary impetus to reach out to the Indian masses. As for those who in the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1930-31, risked their lives and property for Indian freedom at Gandhi's call, Judith Brown has already put them in their place: they were merely Gandhi's 'sub-contractors' or 'intermediaries'. Their's was a business enterprise, no real movement. So, not Gandhism, nor any other strand in the National Movement, Left or any other, but the constitutional measures of the British government, particularly the Government of India Act 1935, created that massive nationalist following among the Indian people. The application of the Namierist method by the Cambridge School -Seal, Judith Brown and others - results, as has been said about its application to English history, in an extensive loss of the wood for the trees. I particularly remember the fact that Seal tells you about Dadabhai Naoroji's personal financial problems, but you will never realise from Seal that Dadabhai Naoroji wrote papers over time which, collected together, became almost the nationalist bible on the economic role of imperialism. He has no explanation why Dadabhai Naoroji continued to be supported by Bombay mill-owners even when he supported and urged the passage of industrial labour legislation. That ideas have a momentum of their own is a fact which the Cambridge school and its supporters so easily overlook. There are thus obvious imperfections in their approach to Gandhi on which I need not dilate further with the general imperialist approach to the National Movement. We are then favoured also by the psychoanalysis of Gandhi, e.g. undertaken by Erikson and Kakar, where particularly his relations with his .pnother are emphasised, and for some reason Indian culture is itself described as feminine. I have not been able to see how this gender characterisation of any culture is possible. Such an approach, which is Eurocentric, and psychological, results in an obvious depreciation and belittling of Gandhi's importance. The literature containing the Gandhian or nationalist adulation of Gandhiji, is considerable; some of it is also academically important and contains criticism here and there. Tarachand's book on the Freedom Movement has certain criticisms for example, on Gandhi's role in the Second Round Table Conference. So one can not dismiss this entire body of literature as mere adulation. But by emphasising Gandhi's immense achievement as a person and not relating it, I think, to the social environment and the historical situation, this body of literature though important (and one must remember that most of the massive literature on Gandhi comes from this large body of literature) is not very satisfying to me in its total perception. Partly this is because its conception of social development is not one which I share. But essentially I think one has an inward reservation about it, because the focus is so much on Gandhi that the people of India whom he worked and died for, appear merely as obedient admirers.