What Gave India its Political Independence?

Regarding a debate going on in India presently about what could be given the credit for getting India its independence from Britain—armed resistance versus Gandhi’s non-violent, non-cooperation movement—here is my opinion:

I am convinced that Gandhi’s non-violent, non-cooperation mass civil disobedience movement mainly deserves the credit for India’s success in gaining independence from Britain.  Here are my reasons:

(1) The gap between the military hardware or weapons the British possessed and the primitive arms the Indians could muster was so wide that defeating the British in an armed struggle would have been a pipe dream.  As one example, we may bear in mind the very high number of casualties the Marathas suffered in their battle against the Portuguese when they laid siege to Vasai and conquered it.  One may note that Portugal was a tiny power compared to Britain.

 (2) In fact, during the late 18^th century and the first half of the 19^th century, even though Indians did not have to suffer under a ban on bearing arms (I’m referring to the Maratha, Mysore, and Sikh wars against the British when Indians, obviously, had a more unrestricted access to weapons), the British gained total victories against the Indians.  Ironically, the British forces were really Indian soldiers under British command.  To me, therefore, hoping that Indians could have defeated the British in an armed struggle in the 20^th century would be absurd and unrealistic.  An issue of practicality or feasibility is also involved in fighting violent wars:  Could Indians have afforded to buy arms?  Who would have supplied them during the colonial period?  Today, Muslim insurgents are provided weapons by other wealthy Muslim countries because, irrespective of national distinctions, Muslims hold on to the concept of the Umma, the brotherhood of all Islam. 

(3) Besides, the use of violence by the oppressed always gives empire builders a good excuse to use even more violence to suppress the freedom fighters. 

(4) Violence used even by the aggrieved or even by those suffering under slavery ironically kills the world’s sympathy for their cause.  The victims of colonization may thus lose their moral high ground vis-à-vis the oppressors.  We know that ignoring world opinion has a high cost. 

(5) Mahatma Gandhi also deployed successfully the weapon of economic boycott, a weapon that South Africans also used successfully against the apartheid.  To cite some U.S. examples, if African-Americans had resorted to an armed and violent struggle against white supremacy or against discrimination by the whites toward them to gain equal rights, would they have succeeded?  Not likely!  An armed insurrection would have been crushed.  Similarly, women suffragists would have had no success in gaining the right to vote if they had organized militias to achieve their goal.  In all these cases, none has made a convincing case for violent resistance as likely to have succeeded.  

(6) One advantage in the 20^th century the Indians had (which was absent in prior centuries) was that they had begun to think of themselves as one nation. Nationalistic feeling was the asset Gandhi employed to its fullest and created a mass movement by taking it to the lowest castes and classes of India.  Resistance or fighting, thus, ceased to be the work or domain only of the professional warrior caste (the Kshatriyas) as in the past but became the duty of all who called themselves Indian and found a stake in the freedom struggle.  If a united India had succeeded in an armed conflict against the British, I would have attributed that success to the unity, the commitment, and the tenacity of the newly awakened Indians rather than to the power of their arms.  In recent times, the example of the Vietnam War demonstrates that the resolve of the people is more forceful than weapons.