Speaker 1: Pushkin, London, the first of July nineteen o nine. It's
Speaker 1: South Kensington, a quiet but immensely wealthy neighborhood full of
Speaker 1: grand townhouses even mansions. This particular evening, a retired army officer,
Speaker 1: William Hutt Curzon Wiley, is attending a grand reception at
Speaker 1: the palatial Imperial Institute, celebrating his efforts assisting students from India.
Speaker 1: As the evening draws to a close, Curzon Wiley leaves
Speaker 1: the venue and begins to walk down the elegant steps
Speaker 1: of the Imperial Institute. Suddenly, a young Indian man in
Speaker 1: gold rimmed spectacles steps forward, raises a pistol, and shoots
Speaker 1: him twice in the face. As the old man sinks
Speaker 1: to the floor, his assailant keeps shooting. A Parsi doctor
Speaker 1: rushes to help. The young man turns, aims and kills
Speaker 1: him too. The assassin was acting alone, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: the only person to feel that the only way to
Speaker 1: break the British occupation of India was with a violent uprising.
Speaker 1: The assassin lived in a house in North London with
Speaker 1: dozens of other young Indian men. They'd been practicing violent
Speaker 1: resistance together how to fire a rifle, how to make weapons,
Speaker 1: how to evade the police. One of those housemates, a
Speaker 1: man called Byron, wrote a letter to the Times of
Speaker 1: London supporting the assassin. Barron secretly visited him in prison,
Speaker 1: then fled the country. The assassination had been senseless, no
Speaker 1: matter how passionately you opposed the British Empire. Coursin Wiley
Speaker 1: was a harmless old man. The assassin had killed him
Speaker 1: in cold blood, and a bystander who'd only tried to
Speaker 1: help and would a violent murder prompt the British to
Speaker 1: rethink their role in India or to crack down. But
Speaker 1: this cautionary tale isn't about the assassin or about his
Speaker 1: sympathizer Bern. It's about someone who found a different way
Speaker 1: to bring about revolutionary change. Barren's sister, the woman called Sorgeny.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. She's
Speaker 1: a slight woman, not even five feet tall. The long
Speaker 1: end of her sari is pulled over her head. The
Speaker 1: expression on her face is apprehensive. There's a long row
Speaker 1: of marchers behind her, all wearing white. They followed Sir
Speaker 1: Augeny Naidu to the coast to make salt, but they've
Speaker 1: stopped now outside a British controlled saltwork on the northwest
Speaker 1: coast of India. The Arabian Sea shimmers just a few
Speaker 1: hundred yards ahead, but the marcher's path is blocked by
Speaker 1: the barbed wire that's wrapped around the saltworks and by
Speaker 1: sixty policemen, all holding steel tipped clubs, and soldiers too,
Speaker 1: with heavy rifles pointed at the marchers. The year is
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, twenty one years after the assassination in South Kensington.
Speaker 1: The great campaigner for India's independence from the British Empire,
Speaker 1: Mahatma Gandhi, is in jail. The successor he's chosen to
Speaker 1: lead India's independence movement is Sir Erogeny Nidu. Naidu and
Speaker 1: her marchers want vast change against a hard opponent, and
Speaker 1: they want it without violence. Sirrogeny has decisively rejected the
Speaker 1: murderous approach that her brother Bren endorsed. India's fate, Nido
Speaker 1: believes depends on a nonviolent path to resistance. She steps forward,
Speaker 1: her marchers follow. There will be violence, to be sure,
Speaker 1: but it won't come from them. This is the final
Speaker 1: episode in our series. Inspired by the work of David Badanis.
Speaker 1: This story comes from his forthcoming book How to Change
Speaker 1: the World Lessons from Three People Who did. When David
Speaker 1: first told me Nidou's story, I was fascinated. Sirrogenny. Nidou
Speaker 1: was an unlikely revolutionary. When she was growing up in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, her family worshiped England. In her childhood
Speaker 1: home in Hyderabad, volumes of Shakespeare and Wordsworth filled their shelves.
Speaker 1: Stories of Britain's military and intellectual heroes came up frequently
Speaker 1: in conversation. Servants might speak native languages, but with her
Speaker 1: own brothers and sisters, Nidou said, it was considered the
Speaker 1: height of ignorance and misfortune not to be acquainted with English.
Speaker 1: She grew up believing it was fair for Indians to
Speaker 1: be colonized. By that time, Britain had controlled India for generations.
Speaker 1: That control was more forceful in some parts of the country,
Speaker 1: with garrisons of troops and machine guns and artillery at hand.
Speaker 1: In other areas, British control was wielded indirectly through local
Speaker 1: princes who were ostensibly in power but who knew they
Speaker 1: had to do what the local British representatives wanted, and
Speaker 1: Naido thought this was a fine thing. As one Hindu
Speaker 1: elder she looked up to explained Man for Mann the Englisher,
Speaker 1: better than ourselves. They have a higher standard of duty,
Speaker 1: higher notions of organized work and discipline. As a teenager,
Speaker 1: Nido got a scholarship to study in Cambridge. When she
Speaker 1: landed in Britain in eighteen ninety six, just seventeen years
Speaker 1: old and terribly shy, she discovered but even more reasons
Speaker 1: to look up to the British. There were underground tubes
Speaker 1: for trains that cut through the very soil beneath her feet.
Speaker 1: There were complex vehicles that propelled themselves without horses. The
Speaker 1: future had arrived. Everything seemed incredible. She took the train
Speaker 1: on to Cambridge, where she was going to study at
Speaker 1: the Women's College Girton. After her first day, she wrote
Speaker 1: to her boyfriend at home, effectively her fiancee, and told him,
Speaker 1: everybody makes a pet of me, though I've been here
Speaker 1: only a few hours. You see, I am by far
Speaker 1: the youngest and the curiosity. She was touched when the
Speaker 1: girls invited her for bicycle trips to the all male colleges.
Speaker 1: Those bicycles were a revolutionary invention, giving women a real
Speaker 1: sense of independence for the first time, even if senior
Speaker 1: faculty would ride alongside as chaperone's. Even more exciting than
Speaker 1: the bicycles was getting to meet the male students, the
Speaker 1: best of whom might rule her country. One day, she
Speaker 1: wrote to her family breathlessly about how they were so
Speaker 1: educated and so civilized. Everything might have stayed like that,
Speaker 1: with Nido remaining a proud subject of Queen Victoria's empire.
Speaker 1: But it turned out that although women at Cambridge could
Speaker 1: attend lectures and take exams, they weren't allowed to receive degrees.
Speaker 1: If a woman studied biology, for example, she might be
Speaker 1: top in the exams, but since she wouldn't get a diploma,
Speaker 1: she could never go on to become a doctor. One
Speaker 1: energetic young classics lecturer at Nidoo's College, a woman named
Speaker 1: Catherine jex Blake, was fed up with this system. She
Speaker 1: was a suffragette and she thought women should have the
Speaker 1: same rights as everyone else. She lobbied successfully to have
Speaker 1: the university vote on changing their policy. A date was
Speaker 1: set in May. Undergraduates couldn't vote, but male faculty and
Speaker 1: alumni could, and special trains were arranged to bring former
Speaker 1: students from London to Cambridge. By early afternoon on May
Speaker 1: the twenty first voting day, over a thousand voters had
Speaker 1: passed through the Senate House. There was a crush of
Speaker 1: many thousand more students pressed outside, mostly men, a few women.
Speaker 1: Just as the result was to be announced, a group
Speaker 1: of students on the roof of Keyes College across the
Speaker 1: way mockingly let out the sound of a vigorous cock crow.
Speaker 1: This was the signal, wrote one witness, for the commencement
Speaker 1: of operations. Occupants of the front rooms at Keys immediately
Speaker 1: began to hang out banners that mocked women. Other male
Speaker 1: students leaned out of an upstairs window and started a
Speaker 1: lowering a pape mache figure of a woman life size,
Speaker 1: an effigy that'd made it with bright red hair, looking
Speaker 1: silly in a cap and gown. Another group of students
Speaker 1: at another upstairs window brought out another effigy, this time
Speaker 1: of a woman straddling that symbol of female freedom, a bicycle.
Speaker 1: They'd torn her dress off so she was exposed humiliatingly
Speaker 1: in her underwear, and then painted the underwear bright blue,
Speaker 1: so no one could miss it down below. The men
Speaker 1: started jeering. When the result was announced women would not
Speaker 1: be granted degrees, pandemonium broke loose. The bicyclist effigy figure
Speaker 1: was lowered to the ground. Hundreds of undergraduate men struggled
Speaker 1: forward to attack it, tearing at its exposed body. Then
Speaker 1: they put it on top of a cow and went
Speaker 1: on a journey around the town. Crowds of male students
Speaker 1: and graduates ran alongside, blowing horns and yelling out the
Speaker 1: rest of the men at the Senate House vote started
Speaker 1: running through the town too. Women everywhere were groped or
Speaker 1: pressed up against walls. Others were tugged into the mob
Speaker 1: and flung around for fun. Seemingly every man on the
Speaker 1: street was rabid wild. These were the future rulers of
Speaker 1: Naidoo's land. Now they were humiliating every woman they could catch.
Speaker 1: A large group of men ended up outside another women's college,
Speaker 1: where they were shouting of senaties and throwing fireworks into
Speaker 1: the girl's windows. They rammed fragments of the effigy through
Speaker 1: the cottage gates. They stayed for hours, setting up a
Speaker 1: bonfire in front of the building, trapping the women inside. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: an even bigger group of students police estimates were in
Speaker 1: the thousands, brought other life sized female effiges to the
Speaker 1: main market square in Cambridge. One was of the tutor
Speaker 1: at Naidu's college, Katherine jex Blake, the one who'd dared
Speaker 1: petition for the degrees. These effiges, too, were stripped and
Speaker 1: mutilated before being burnt in another bonfire. The men kept
Speaker 1: on adding fresh fuel. The flames and the jeering went
Speaker 1: on long into the night. Cambridge's women had merely asked
Speaker 1: to be awarded the degrees their studies and examinations deserved.
Speaker 1: They hadn't even succeeded, and yet the very idea of
Speaker 1: this sparked hour after hour of harassment, humiliation and riot.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will return in just a moment. On the
Speaker 1: morning of May the twenty first, Naidoo had been polite
Speaker 1: and trusting, thinking British culture the pinnacle of civilization around
Speaker 1: the world. But by the end of the day her
Speaker 1: British idol had fallen. What right did men like that
Speaker 1: have to control her people at all? Over the next
Speaker 1: few days it became clear she had to leave Cambridge.
Speaker 1: Something deeper became clear too, she couldn't be a pawn
Speaker 1: in this empire anymore. Sir Rogereny went to London and
Speaker 1: spent time with a number of writers, including the great
Speaker 1: Irish poet Yates, who happened to be her friend's roommate.
Speaker 1: They met at home for drinks and conversation, and she
Speaker 1: was impressed with the way he was inspiring Irish nationalists
Speaker 1: with the force and eloquence of his writing. Why should
Speaker 1: Ireland be subservient to England? For that matter, why should India?
Speaker 1: Naido was inspired too, and encouraged that someone of Yates's
Speaker 1: stature would take a young Indian woman seriously. The Cambridge
Speaker 1: riots had shown her a dark truth about the alleged
Speaker 1: superiority of the British, but London reminded her that the
Speaker 1: British weren't all bad. Many Britons were open to reason,
Speaker 1: to the arguments for fairness. Sir Rogerie Naidoo was nineteen
Speaker 1: years old when she returned to India and determined to
Speaker 1: push back against British rule in Hyderabad. However, her partner
Speaker 1: Gorvindhu expected they would quickly get married and start having children,
Speaker 1: which they did soon. She was a housewife, her whole
Speaker 1: life enclosed. She started writing poetry, but with little children
Speaker 1: it was hard to find much time. There was a
Speaker 1: verandah with a swing where she could look out decorated
Speaker 1: cages with chirping songbirds inside. Everyone thinks I'm so nice
Speaker 1: and cheerful, She wrote all the banal things. But I've
Speaker 1: merely taught myself to be commonplace. Everything is slipping away.
Speaker 1: After all she had seen in England, after all that
Speaker 1: she recognized was still going on in India, it felt
Speaker 1: terrible to be passive. Right outside Hyderabad, for example, there
Speaker 1: was a large British military base. Just by their presence,
Speaker 1: they made sure that industries and rail lines were arranged
Speaker 1: to benefit investors in England, not farmers or other workers
Speaker 1: in India. She had to find another way to work
Speaker 1: toward freedom from British rule. Could politics be the answer?
Speaker 1: When her children were older, Sir Orogini Naidu immersed herself
Speaker 1: in the Indian National Congress, a group dominated by Bengali
Speaker 1: intellectuals who politely, calmly lobbied the British government for fairer treatment.
Speaker 1: It's there where. Despite her terrible shyness and slight stature,
Speaker 1: Naidou discovered that speaking out in public, she felt different.
Speaker 1: What is it that we demand, she called out from
Speaker 1: one podium, Nothing new, nothing startling, but a thing that
Speaker 1: is as old as life. You shouldn't be disinherited as
Speaker 1: exiles in your own land. The day is over when
Speaker 1: we were content to be slaves. Finally, it seemed she
Speaker 1: had found the right way forward. During the First World War,
Speaker 1: she pushed to get India to support the British cause,
Speaker 1: trusting that afterwards, in reward, the subcontinent would be awarded
Speaker 1: dominion status, that it would have more freedom from British
Speaker 1: rule as Canada in New Zealand. Had everything seemed agreed,
Speaker 1: London was on board, but at the last minute, just
Speaker 1: after the war ended, the British Empire's most senior representative
Speaker 1: in India, the Viceroy, undermined it all. There would be
Speaker 1: no relaxation of the rules and no dominion status. He
Speaker 1: wanted everything to go back to how it had been
Speaker 1: before the war. In fact, there would now be harsher rules,
Speaker 1: the rights to arrest anyone with no trial, and no
Speaker 1: controls against torture. Indians across the continent began to protest,
Speaker 1: but the protests were disconnected not especially organized. On the
Speaker 1: thirteenth of April nineteen nineteen, a large crowd gathered in
Speaker 1: the Jalianwala gardens in the center of the old city
Speaker 1: of Mritzar in the Punjab region. Many were families in
Speaker 1: town for a cattle festival. Some were meeting to discuss
Speaker 1: the new legislation, others were just enjoying the sunny day.
Speaker 1: The garden was mostly dried out and a few acres
Speaker 1: in size. Since families were large, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of children, perhaps fifteen thousand people total. To Major General
Speaker 1: Reginald Dyer, the man in charge of the city, this
Speaker 1: wasn't local citizenry at ease or even patriotism. It was fanaticism.
Speaker 1: He had put up a handful of notices that meetings
Speaker 1: weren't allowed, but he didn't know amritz so well and
Speaker 1: didn't realize that hardly anyone had seen them. Rather, he
Speaker 1: was insistent that proper order was not to be thwarted.
Speaker 1: There was a ten foot high stone and brick wall
Speaker 1: around most of the garden. At the one narrow entrance,
Speaker 1: he parked armored car sideways on, blocking any exit. Then
Speaker 1: he and his mostly Indian troops advanced inside, fifty of
Speaker 1: them carrying heavy rifles. They didn't say anything, just took
Speaker 1: up position on a slight rise. Once they were a
Speaker 1: few yards in front of the crowd, a few of
Speaker 1: the Sikhs near the front, with military training, had a
Speaker 1: sudden ominous feeling and tried to get families near them
Speaker 1: to begin walking out now, but this made no sense.
Speaker 1: Hardly anyone had moved when, without warning Dyer had all
Speaker 1: fifty of his men open fire, and they reloaded and
Speaker 1: fired again and again till the thousands of shells they
Speaker 1: had were all gone. It was the greatest massacre in
Speaker 1: the history of British India, with probably five hundred or
Speaker 1: more people dead. As one former Prime Minister Asquith called
Speaker 1: it the worst in the history of our empire. From
Speaker 1: its very inception. The Army justified its actions, arguing that
Speaker 1: soldiers had been firing in self defense faced by a
Speaker 1: violent mob. The response to the massacre from the authorities
Speaker 1: in London was half hearted criticism. There was a few
Speaker 1: weeks later that the young Indian assassin gunned down a
Speaker 1: retired army officer and a good marat and doctor outside
Speaker 1: a reception in South Kensington and to points like this
Speaker 1: rock bottom that it's at tempting to give up. Sir
Speaker 1: Rougerie Nidou had been working with the Indian National Congress
Speaker 1: for over a decade and she saw clearly that lobbying
Speaker 1: and negotiation did no good. Her brother bern had endorsed
Speaker 1: random murderous violence. That was no good either. But then
Speaker 1: what was left Nido had to find a different path,
Speaker 1: and for that she turned to Gandhi. Naido and Gandhi
Speaker 1: had first met in nineteen fourteen and quickly became friends.
Speaker 1: At the time, she was already the voice of the
Speaker 1: Indian National Congress as well as a well reviewed poet.
Speaker 1: Gandhi would later become world famous. Back then, he was
Speaker 1: a little known activist based in South Africa. Five years
Speaker 1: on after the massacred and Ritzer, Naido and Gandhi discussed
Speaker 1: their options. What if instead of violence or politics, you
Speaker 1: directly oppose the way the authorities have arranged society, not viciously,
Speaker 1: but so that it would make the injustice clear to everyone.
Speaker 1: What about civil disobedience of an emphatic sort. New concepts
Speaker 1: need new words. Setya is the Sanskrit for truth. Graha
Speaker 1: means to hold firmly. The idea behind what was now
Speaker 1: called Setyagraha is that an unjust law violates the right
Speaker 1: order of the universe, and we need to rectify that
Speaker 1: hold firmly to the truth, but in a manner that
Speaker 1: doesn't create new injustices. In short, disobey but without violence,
Speaker 1: a fair idea that, it turns out, is incredibly hard
Speaker 1: to carry out in practice. In nineteen twenty one, Gandhi
Speaker 1: and Naid targeted the visit of the Prince of Wales
Speaker 1: to Bombay. Huge piles of imported British clothing were burned,
Speaker 1: and as the Prince was welcomed into the port, he
Speaker 1: found himself surrounded by protesters, politely but firmly demonstrating their
Speaker 1: disapproval of British rule. What the protesters hadn't reckoned with
Speaker 1: was the offense taken by the locals taking part in
Speaker 1: the welcoming ceremonies. How could an honored guest be treated
Speaker 1: so As those locals left, fights broke out between them
Speaker 1: and the demonstrators, and when the police showed up, the
Speaker 1: fights got worse. Once a mob is roused, it's hard
Speaker 1: to stop. Soon almost anyone in Western clothes was being attacked,
Speaker 1: the police counterattacked. Fighting of all sorts spread and lasted
Speaker 1: for four days. By the end, dozens of innocent people
Speaker 1: were dead. It was awful, the reverse of everything I
Speaker 1: do had hoped for. The vision for Sacha Grajo was
Speaker 1: in jeopardy and with Gandhi often in jail, everyone was
Speaker 1: looking to Sir Rogereni Nidol to help them figure out
Speaker 1: what to do next. Cautionary tales will return. A few
Speaker 1: years after the debacle in Bombay, Naidu was elected head
Speaker 1: of the Indian National Congress. She was the first Indian
Speaker 1: woman to reach that position. Responsibility for Indian independence sat
Speaker 1: heavily on her shoulders. There had been little progress. The
Speaker 1: country was still run for the benefit of the British
Speaker 1: at the expense of Indians. One senior British politician was
Speaker 1: at least honest about it. I know it is said
Speaker 1: at missionary meetings that we've conquered India to raise the
Speaker 1: level of the Indians. That is Kant. We conquered India
Speaker 1: as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We
Speaker 1: conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we
Speaker 1: should hold it. In nineteen thirty the leadership of the
Speaker 1: Indian National Congress decided to try to reclaim one small
Speaker 1: piece of what Indians had lost under British rule salt.
Speaker 1: For centuries, salt had been free, with anyone able to
Speaker 1: collect whatever they needed, but when Britain took over, they
Speaker 1: also took over salt production and put a tax on it.
Speaker 1: Seventy eight members of Gandhi's Ashram walked two hundred miles
Speaker 1: to one of the big salt making regions on the
Speaker 1: coast in April. However, when the marchers reached the sea,
Speaker 1: the British Viceroy Irwin had a remarkable response. He did nothing.
Speaker 1: The marchers collected their salty mud. Press cameras caught the images.
Speaker 1: There was Naidoo in her long sard hurry, Gandhy in
Speaker 1: his usual loincloth with a shawl over his shoulders. The
Speaker 1: point of non violent resistance was to have something to resist.
Speaker 1: Without a response from the authorities, what were they supposed
Speaker 1: to do. Gandy collected more mud, so did most of
Speaker 1: the marchers. Still, Irwin did nothing. Over the next few days,
Speaker 1: journalists began to mock the marchers. All they saw were
Speaker 1: Indians milling about on a beach Soon the journalists left,
Speaker 1: and then almost everyone else left too. Irwin had made
Speaker 1: the marchers look like fools. A few weeks later, he
Speaker 1: had Gandhy arrested quickly at night, bright flashlights in the face,
Speaker 1: armed troops to the rest of the nationalist leadership was
Speaker 1: thrown into jail two. Nido clearly was next, and support
Speaker 1: for their movement was waning. Indians had had enough of
Speaker 1: British excuses, and now enough of the Indian National Congress
Speaker 1: saying there was some magical sechagaha, a third way to
Speaker 1: get the freedom they wanted. Some people were calling for
Speaker 1: more violence. Nidu was convinced that would only lead to
Speaker 1: more repression. She realized that she didn't have long to act.
Speaker 1: She sent out messages to people she trusted, trying to
Speaker 1: get journalists interested in a new protest, and then hurried
Speaker 1: back to the coast to a hamlet called d Rasana. There,
Speaker 1: Britain had built a large salt works where salt was
Speaker 1: collected from large lagoons, then purified and stacked in high
Speaker 1: pyramid The mudflats were surrounded by barbed wire and deep
Speaker 1: moat like ditches. By the time Nido got there, danger
Speaker 1: was in the air. Some nearby protesters were being led
Speaker 1: by Gandhi's son Manulal, who was excitable and prone to violence.
Speaker 1: The salt works were guarded by police with their vicious
Speaker 1: clubs and troops with rifles. They were itching for an
Speaker 1: excuse to use them. Naidoo spent long days going from
Speaker 1: one small group of protesters to another, explaining their purpose.
Speaker 1: They weren't just there to get salt. They were there
Speaker 1: to expose the unfairness of taxes paid by Indians to
Speaker 1: keep Britons in luxury. If there was violence, that violence
Speaker 1: is all the world would see. Each marcher's self control
Speaker 1: was indispensable. If even a few acted out, it would
Speaker 1: be like Amritza. It would become fair for the soldiers
Speaker 1: to shoot back. Naid warned the marchers that the police
Speaker 1: would be violent. You will be beaten, she said, but
Speaker 1: you must not resist. You must not even raise a hand.
Speaker 1: Briton's would be watching. The world would be watching. All
Speaker 1: the forces of the universe were watching this isolated hamlet
Speaker 1: and beach. It might seem to be just a speck
Speaker 1: on the Gujarak coast, but if they could remain nonviolent,
Speaker 1: they could make it the most important place on earth.
Speaker 1: If anyone wished to step back now, they should feel
Speaker 1: no shame. But for the others, they had to show
Speaker 1: the world what British rule really mean. On Wednesday, made
Speaker 1: the twenty first, they went ahead. Naidu was at the front.
Speaker 1: Gandhi's son Manuelal wasn't far behind. It was terrifying as
Speaker 1: they got close, and Naidu started a group chant Bin
Speaker 1: kilab Zindabad, Long Live the Revolution, the Peaceful Revolution. Before
Speaker 1: Nidou's marchers could reach the barbed wire, scores of Indian
Speaker 1: police rushed forward, wielding clubs. They rained down on some protesters'
Speaker 1: heads with sickening crunches, cracking skulls. Men fell bleeding, but
Speaker 1: the next row of marchers calmly continued, accepting the same beating.
Speaker 1: When they refused to fight back, the police became enraged.
Speaker 1: They kept beating people, stamping on them, leaving dozens and
Speaker 1: then hundreds writhing on the ground. It only came to
Speaker 1: an end at noon, when Naidu herself was arrested. Three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty marchers had been seriously wounded, many were
Speaker 1: still unconscious. The British government announced a few days later
Speaker 1: that nothing had happened that there had been some slight
Speaker 1: confusion at Durrasana that day, but no shots were fired
Speaker 1: and at most four people were wounded. Viceroy Irwin wrote
Speaker 1: to the King, how amusing it was, and all was peaceful, easy,
Speaker 1: just and there Perhaps the story might have ended, except
Speaker 1: that Naidou's attempts to draw journalists to Durasna had succeeded.
Speaker 1: One man, an American from the Midwest, had made it
Speaker 1: along just one, but he worked for United Press, an
Speaker 1: American wire service that sent articles to over one thousand
Speaker 1: newspapers worldwide. He had seen everything, and his reports were
Speaker 1: read by tens of millions around the globe. The heart
Speaker 1: went out of the British establishment. A few die hards
Speaker 1: said how preposterous it was that Indians thought nonviolence could
Speaker 1: make any real change. Didn't they realize it would never
Speaker 1: work in Mussolini's Italy or Stalin's Soviet Union. But that
Speaker 1: was the point. Most Britons were proud. Their nation was
Speaker 1: nothing like those dictatorships. That was what NI do was
Speaker 1: brilliantly banking on that if violence was the only way
Speaker 1: to keep India submitting to British rule, then the British
Speaker 1: didn't want it, and it worked. More and more Britons
Speaker 1: questioned what their government was doing in India, and a
Speaker 1: few years later, after the Second World War, Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Clement Atli's post war government granted India its independence. That
Speaker 1: alone would be a staggering achievement three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people finally free from colonial rule. But similar freedom
Speaker 1: campaigns spread around the world, to Martin Luther King and
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement in America, to Nelson Mandela and
Speaker 1: the end of Apartheith in South Africa, to women's rights
Speaker 1: and disability rights, and much else. Sir Rogenny Nidu and
Speaker 1: Gandhi found their third way and then they shared it.
Speaker 1: This powerful gentler path to transform nations that finishes our
Speaker 1: series of four episodes inspired by a friend, David Bidanas's
Speaker 1: book The Art of Fairness. The story of Sir Rogenny
Speaker 1: Naidu is told in his forthcoming volume How to Change
Speaker 1: the World Now. All of the stories have been grappling
Speaker 1: with the question we dealt with right at the start.
Speaker 1: With the American baseball manager Leo du Rocha. He was
Speaker 1: famous for saying, nice guys finish last well, David was
Speaker 1: watching Derochia at his prime as a manager. David is
Speaker 1: back in the studio with me now, David, nice guys
Speaker 1: finished last. What do we think about whether that statement
Speaker 1: holds up.
Speaker 2: There was a real lot of what Durocher was saying
Speaker 2: that was true through most of that summer when I
Speaker 2: was there watching them. He succeeded. Nice guys do finish
Speaker 2: last almost all the time. If you're only nice, if
Speaker 2: you're only polite, you're like a doormat. You get walked
Speaker 2: all over all the time.
Speaker 1: And so need to be a bit tougher. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean going to the other extreme.
Speaker 2: Well, see, that's the whole thing. Remember and I Do's brother,
Speaker 2: as you were talking about, in the assassination in London
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh nine, the one that he supported, he
Speaker 2: went to an extreme. It's kind of a logical opposite. Oh,
Speaker 2: being nice and polite hasn't gotten us anywhere for freedom
Speaker 2: from England.
Speaker 1: So we're going to shoot an old guy in the
Speaker 1: face and that'll work.
Speaker 2: Exactly. They're going way too far. The Indian National Congress
Speaker 2: used to begin their meetings in the eighteen nineties and
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred by singing God Save the Queen. They actually
Speaker 2: did because they thought if they were really, really, really polite,
Speaker 2: the nice people in Britain would forget the fact that
Speaker 2: they look differently and would be nice to them. This
Speaker 2: is a case where DeRosier is sort of right purely
Speaker 2: being nice. The British established in want to keep on
Speaker 2: going indefinitely. But the temptation to go to the opposite extreme,
Speaker 2: that's what we have to fight. The Russian Revolution was
Speaker 2: about as violent a revolution as you can get. The
Speaker 2: result was Lenin and Stalin. People get into that mood.
Speaker 2: It's easy to overshoot.
Speaker 1: Right, so you need to find a middle way, and
Speaker 1: that is really what these tales have been exploring. So
Speaker 1: Durochia lost to a baseball banager who knew how to
Speaker 1: keep control, but he wasn't a bully. And the Empire
Speaker 1: State Building went up faster than any other skyscraper of
Speaker 1: its time, with its builders keeping that ethos firm but fair,
Speaker 1: they trust, but verify, they checked. And I like that.
Speaker 2: But there's a problem.
Speaker 1: There's always a problem. What is the problem.
Speaker 2: The problem, Well, the thing is, the idea is a
Speaker 2: great one. I've loved writing these books that show this
Speaker 2: firm but fair in action. Your books show good ways
Speaker 2: of acting also. But the thing is your books also
Speaker 2: show the great ingenuity people need to make these principles work.
Speaker 2: We have these ideas, we know what we're supposed to do,
Speaker 2: turning it into action as hard you saw it in these.
Speaker 1: Four episodes absolutely. I mean the struggle, for example, that
Speaker 1: Naidu and Gandhi had when they organized this protest of
Speaker 1: the Prince of Wales the future king coming to India,
Speaker 1: and it just got out of control. So it's easy
Speaker 1: to say, oh, you know, we're going to protest in
Speaker 1: a non violent way, but actually those protests became incredibly violent.
Speaker 1: Or One of the stories that really explored this so
Speaker 1: elegantly was William Bligh, the captain who suffered the mutiny
Speaker 1: on the Bounty, and I found it so interesting that
Speaker 1: the challenge that he faced was that his approach worked
Speaker 1: in some contexts, but the context kept changing and he
Speaker 1: couldn't adapt to the context.
Speaker 2: He couldn't adapt. That's what happens. You vowed, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be calm. I'm okay, I'm going to be calm,
Speaker 2: and then your kids are crying at nine pm and
Speaker 2: you really want them to go to bed and come
Speaker 2: less calm. We know what we should do, but actually
Speaker 2: carrying it out as hard. So in a sense, when
Speaker 2: we do books of instructions, we need meta instructions. Also,
Speaker 2: here's the instructions, here's the principles. Now here's how to
Speaker 2: apply it when times are rough.
Speaker 1: And that links into a couple of things. We hear
Speaker 1: a lot in cautionary tales. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that people really need is this alertness to what is
Speaker 1: going on around them and this responsiveness to feedback. So
Speaker 1: rather than just setting their course and following the course
Speaker 1: that they planned all along, it's never going to be
Speaker 1: right first time. They've got to have that opportunity to
Speaker 1: spot that something's going wrong. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: disasters that happen in cautionary tales are ultimately because of
Speaker 1: broken feedback loops. Something's going wrong and the people with
Speaker 1: the ability to make change don't get told or they're
Speaker 1: not listening. And then the other thing is just preparing
Speaker 1: yourself for something going wrong mentally rehearsing that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's something that Paul Starrett, for example, who was the
Speaker 1: project manager on the Empire State Building, he did a
Speaker 1: great job of thinking through all the things that could
Speaker 1: go wrong and working out how I was going to
Speaker 1: deal with them. Whereas William Bly he never quite seemed
Speaker 1: to be able to think that through well, to think ahead,
Speaker 1: even when stuff had gone wrong and then it had
Speaker 1: started going right again, he wasn't able to go, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know I had a near miss. How am I
Speaker 1: going to make sure the things don't fall apart next time?
Speaker 2: I think that's probably our best practical solution. Practice it
Speaker 2: and imagine it going wrong. My mother used to say, David,
Speaker 2: if you want to get to know somebody, well, go
Speaker 2: on a trip, but have something go wrong. Then you'll
Speaker 2: see how people respond. It's sort of like theatrically acting
Speaker 2: out the different ways things can go wrong. If the
Speaker 2: military says do this and everything will act perfectly, you
Speaker 2: forget the enemy has a vote, the environment has a vote,
Speaker 2: chance has a vote. But if we practice it a
Speaker 2: little bit, say okay, what'll I do when I'm a
Speaker 2: bit stressed here? What will I do when I'm a
Speaker 2: bit tired, Then when it actually comes into action, you
Speaker 2: at least have a better chance.
Speaker 1: David, the amazing stories of amazing insights, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for bringing them to us. With pleasure David Bandanas's
Speaker 1: forthcoming book, including the life story of Sir Rogeny and
Speaker 1: iid is How to Change the World Lessons from Three
Speaker 1: People Who Did It is scheduled to come out in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and of course you can reserve a
Speaker 1: copy in advance. Just check out our website if you
Speaker 1: can't wait. David's many other books, including the Art of Fairness,
Speaker 1: while they're available wherever books are solved. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. This mini
Speaker 1: series is based on David Bandanas's book The Art of Fairness,
Speaker 1: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean, and
Speaker 1: it was written with David Bandanas himself. For a full
Speaker 1: list of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford
Speaker 1: dot com. The show is produced by Alice Fines, with
Speaker 1: Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music the work
Speaker 1: of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the script. Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gustridge, Stella Harford,
Speaker 1: Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Gretta Cohen,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
Speaker 1: at ward Or Studios in London by Tom Berry. If
Speaker 1: you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really make a difference to us and if
Speaker 1: you want to hear the show ad free, sign up
Speaker 1: to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot Fm, slash plus