Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992

by Shahid Amin

Taking Gandhi's statements about civil disobedience to heart, in February 1922 residents from the villages around the north Indian market town of Chauri Chaura attacked the local police station, burned it to the ground and murdered twenty-three constables. Appalled that his teachings were turned to violent ends, Gandhi called off his Noncooperation Movement and fasted to bring the people back to nonviolence. In the meantime, the British government denied that the riot reflected Indian resistance to its rule and tried the rioters as common criminals. These events have taken on great symbolic importance among Indians, both in the immediate region and nationally. Amin examines the event itself, but also, more significantly, he explores the ways it has been remembered, interpreted, and used as a metaphor for the Indian struggle for independence.

The author, who was born fifteen miles from Chauri Chaura, brings to his study an empathetic knowledge of the region and a keen ear for the nuances of the culture and language of its people. In an ingenious negotiation between written and oral evidence, he combines brilliant archival work in the judicial records of the period with field interviews with local informants.

In telling this intricate story of local memory and the making of official histories, Amin probes the silences and ambivalences that contribute to a nation's narrative. He extends his boundaries well beyond Chauri Chaura itself to explore the complex relationship between peasant politics and nationalist discourse and the interplay between memory and history.

Genres: History, India, Nonfiction, Academic, Indian Literature

280 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 1995

Reviews

[Hafsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent contribution to the writing of the history of South Asia--Shahid Amin uses oral histories, memory, newspaper accounts, nationalist accounts, and judicial records to examine the events at Chauri Chaura. By doing so, he critiques broader claims about the role of violence in the nationalist movement as being constructed.

[Danya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pro-tip: this was much more engaging when I began to skim all the statistics on agricultural production in 19th and 20th century East India. Funny how that works.

[Vishal Misra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amin's historiography of Chauri Chaura is a beautifully written, short and easy to read wonder. Amin captures the local sights and sounds of Chauri Chaura, with deft use of oral history, and by retaining the original words of those he interviewed. The local Bhojpuri dialect drips from the pages and lends colour to what would be a monochrome, black and white, story without it.

Amin examines the trial records of the Chauri Chaura 'riot', and his wonderful research reveals excellent usage of trial transcripts, and the memoirs of the High Court judges who commuted the 172 death sentences passed at the Sessions Court to 19. His examination of the role of violence in the nationalist movement, alongside the role of Gandhi is sublime. He reveals how the structures of Gandhi-raj and swaraj (self-rule) were interpreted at a local level, thus imbuing the people of Chauri Chaura with agency and a degree of clarity that was heretofore lacking.

His collation of the stories of those who lost family members in the aftermath of the colonial forces' backlash in response to the burning of Chauri Chaura, alongside his interviews regarding the "approver" (defence turned prosecution witness) are simply brilliant. These stories contradict the State account, and highlight the differences between how people viewed the picketing of Chaura bazaar. It is no small feat to produce to these stories, whilst laying them aside other sources, and allowing the stories to lose and strengthen facticity as they unravel across the pages.

This is a brilliant book for anyone interested in the events of Chauri Chaura in February 1922, and also an integral read for those who wish to hear the voices of those most affected, away from the pan-nationalist narratives that have been superimposed upon Chauri Chaura, since the days Gandhi expressed his condemnation, and turned an event that challenged power (a political act), into a 'riot' (a merely criminal act).

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterful Subaltern studies work. The book is a brilliant study of the memory of an episode, that is - when there were memories alive. Written like a poem, this history gives us a relook at what history could actually be if the historian persisted and sought to include people in what was always told to be about them. Besides romanticism, besides causes and effects for the history student, and lessons for a conscientious populace, and realpolitik for the political observer, what does a movement actually mean? It apparently means to read one's culture and one's own prerogatives into the said prescriptions of historical giants - in this case Gandhi and the Congress Party. That would mean, say still drinking liquor in spite of Gandhi but quitting meat because of Gandhi, and picketing and attacking meat shops irrespective of what Gandhi says. It also means reading beyond comrades and traitors - forgetting that a compatriot in the act of violence one committed had also outed us. The movement could also involve inflating the death toll of a trial and enlarging the role of a historical figure even if he had not actually been relevant in that movement. Amin fashions a mirror before human memory.

[Chinmaya Lal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The seasoned historian, academic, and member of the Subaltern Studies group, Shahid Amin has produced a little gem of a narrative about the Chauri Chaura incident.

Notwithstanding the colonial representations of the event as having been perpetuated by criminals and its Gandhian/nationalist rebuttals as extremist and irresponsible, Amin unravels intricate details through a careful reading of colonial records, court proceedings, and testimonial statements. He supplements this perusal through conversations with the families of those who were implicated and punished in the trial.

What emerges from the endeavour is that the history of Chauri Chaura eludes any straightforward representation as the incident was inextricably linked with questions of religion, caste, volunteering, vegetarianism, 'asceticism', and political activism. Amin thus demonstrates peasant and subaltern consciousness to have been poly-vocal and multilayered and suggests that to view the same as having been only this or that would be a (deliberate) obfuscation.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceptually interesting - presents a Rashomon style presentation of different possible narratives of the Chauri Chaura massacre of 1922, which became a significant event in India's independence movement - telling each possible narrative through a different set of sources and presenting the potential issues with that source set

[Akash Dey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deserves all the praise.