Gandhi and his critics 9780195633634, 0195633636

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G A NDH I AND H IS C R IT IC S

By the same author Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India In Gandhi's Footsteps: The Life and Times o f Jamnalal Bajaj Jaw aharlal Nehru: Rebel and Statesman M ahatma Gandhi: A Biography The Nehrus Gokhale: The Indian M oderates and the British Raj The M oderate Era in Indian Politics Socialism in India (editor)

GANDHI

AND HIS CRITICS

B. R . N A N D A

O X JO R D U N I V E R S I T Y P RE S S

OXPORD U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS

YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001 Oxford University Press is a departm ent of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paolo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade m ark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in India By Oxford University Press, New Delhi © Oxford University Press 1985 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1985 Oxford India Paperbacks 1993 Fifth impression 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transm itted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly perm itted by law, or under terms agreed w ith the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Departm ent, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquiror ISBN 019 563363 6

Printed in India by Ram Printograph, New Delhi 110020 Published by Manzar Khan, Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Preface

vii

T h e G an d h i Film ‘A H in d u o f H in d u s’ T h e M aking o f the M ah atm a G an d h i an d the C aste System T h e F ight A gainst Racialism A m ritsar, 1919 T h e T w o Faces o f Im perialism T h e 1917 D eclaration G a n d h i an d the Raj R eligion an d Politics G a n d h i an d the Partition o f In d ia T h e P artition M assacres G a n d h i a n d Non-V iolence M ^ n versus M achine A R eactionary? T he M an

1 4 8 18 27 34 42 49 57 72 77 98 115 123 131 142

Epilogue: T h e M essage N otes In d ex

153 161 173

T o B aba

Preface

‘T h e m an who becam e one with the Universal Being’— this was the sub-title of Rom ain R olland’s book, Mahatma Gandhi, published in 1924. ‘O ne thing is certain’, Rolland wrote, ‘either G a n d h i’s spirit will trium ph, or it will manifest itself again, as were m anifested centuries before, the Messiah and the B uddha.’ T w enty years later A lbert Einstein could write of Gandhi: ‘G enerations to come, it m ay be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.’ M agnificent as such tributes were, they would be misleading if they created the impression that G andhi’s career was a triu m p h al procession. Indeed from the day he plunged into the vortex o f the racial politics of N atal until his assassination fifty-four years later, he was continually in the centre of one storm o r other. In South Africa he was flayed in the European press a n d jailed by the colonial government; in 1897 he was nearly lynched by a white m ob in the streets of D urban. After his retu rn to India he incurred the inveterate suspicion and hatred o f the British authorities. ‘It is very necessary throughout’, L ord W illingdon, the Viceroy, wrote in 1933, ‘to view Gandhi as he is and not w hat he poses to be.’ A s ja te as 1946 Lord W avell confided to his journal th at G andhi was an ‘exceedingly shrew d, obstinate, double-tongued, single-minded-politician.’ T h e British rulers of India tended to see in him an irreconciliable enem y o f the Raj, to suspect a trap in every word he uttered and a trick in his every action. G a n d h i had to contend not only with the guardians of the B ritish em pire. H e never lacked opponents in his own country a n d indeed in his own party. H e was the bete noire of orthodox H in d u s who were infuriated by his denunciation of caste exclu­ siveness and untouchability and by his advocacy of secular politics. In the course of his H arijan tour he narrowly escaped a b om b attack in Poona in 1934; fourteen years later he fell a

Vlll

Rrejace

victim to the bullets of a Poona Brahm in who charged him with betrayal o f the H indu cause. Curiously enough, for years Gandhi h ad been branded by protagonists of Pakistan as ‘the Enemy N u m b e r O n e of Islam ’. W ithin the Congress Party G andhi had continually to cope w ith rum blings of discontent. He was repu­ diated by the older leadership o f the Congress in 1919. In the nineteen-tw enties and thirties young radicals in the Congress such as Jaw ah arlal N ehru, Subhas Bose and Jayaprakash N aray an were straining at the leash: they fretted at the patient an d peaceful m ethods of the M ahatm a. T he Indian communists d u b b e d him a charism atic bu t calculating leader who knew how to rOuse the masses but deliberately contained and diverted th eir revolutionary ardour so as not to h urt the interests of B ritish im perialists and Indian capitalists. G an d h i was patient w ith his critics. T hrough his weekly jo u rn a ls an d innum erable letters to his correspondents (ninety volum es o f his writings have already been published) he kept up a continual dialogue with them . In Novem ber 1929 when Ja w a h a rla l N ehru regretted his signatures to the manifesto issued by Indian leaders on Lord Irwin’s declaration on dominion statu s, G andhi wrote to him: ‘Let this incident be a lesson. R esist me always when my suggestion does not appeal to your head o r heart. I shall not love you the less for that resistance.’ G an d h i encouraged his critics to come out in opposition so that he could attem pt to carry conviction to them or, alternatively, change his own stand. In the first chapter I have referred to certain comments on G an d h i m ade in the wake of the A ttenborough film, but in this book I am not responding only to these comments. Indeed m uch o f the criticism is a repetition of w hat was said earlier ab o u t G andhi, even in his lifetime. Nearly four decades after his d e ath it should be possible to see G andhi and his times in better perspective. I have posed in this work some m ajor issues which have been brought up and tried to exam ine them in the bio­ g rap h ical and historical contexts. T hough my approach is broadly them atic I have not been oblivious of chronology. I shall feel am ply rew arded if this book helps those who wish to delve a little deeper into G andhi’s life and thought, and at the sam e time w ant to steer clear of deification as well as denigration. T h ey are likely to discover in him a degree o f rationality,

Preface

ix

radicalism an d relevance to our times which they may not have suspected. I w ould like to thank D r S. R. M ehrotra and my son, Naren, for taking the trouble of going through the whole m anuscript a n d m aking useful suggestions. Professor T . N. M adan was k in d enough to read two chapters. I am indebted to my wife for read in g an d com m enting helpfully on every chapter as it was bein g w ritten; w ithout h er encouragem ent and support I could h ard ly have started m uch less completed this book. B. R. N anda

CH A PTER 1

The Gandhi Film

T h e m ystique of a box office hit is probably as elusive in the w orld o f films as the m ystique of a best-seller in the world of publishing: W ho could have predicted th at a film on Gandhi, thirty-five yearss^fter his death, would run for weeks in theatres p ack ed to capacity from one end of the world to the other? I shall nofdiscuss A ttenborough’s film here, but it is possible th a t its extraordinary popularity was due to the fact that its release h ap p en ed to coincide w ith one of those periodical spurts o f the ‘peace m ovem ent’ w hich the growing m enace of a nuclear holocaust has triggered in recent years. But this very coincidence h as provoked a sharp reaction from those who dislike and d istru st the peace m ovem ent and fear that it will weaken the will o f the ‘free w orld’ to fight the cold, and probably the hot, w ar. F or som e o f A ttenborough’s critics the eight-O scar award proved the last straw. T hey reacted by assailing not only the film b u t also its hero, and there has been a spate of articles rid icu lin g an d belittling G andhi. Perhaps the most virulent a tta c k ap p eared in an A m erican m agazine, Commentary, by the m agazine’s film critic, R ichard G renier.1 As a film critic Grenier w as perfectly w ithin his rights to differ from the film juries who d isp en sed a whole series of aw ards to A ttenborough and his team . B u t G renier’s qualifications for pontificating on G andhi a n d the In d ian nationalist m ovem ent are not clear. T h e In d ian revolution which culm inated in the independence o f th e su b co n tin ent in 1947 is likely to be as richly docum ented as th e F rench and A m erican revolutions. T he records bearing on B ritish rule and m odern Indian history are almost an in ex h au stib le quarry for historians. T he Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi run into ninety volumes. T he papers of the In d ia n N ational Congress and other political parties, the cor-

2

Gandhi and » his Critics

respondence o f Indian leaders, the back-files o f newspapers and jo u rn als, and the reminiscences of m en and women who m ade history (which are available in the N ehru M em orial M useum an d L ibrary in New Delhi) constitute a massive collection. T h en there are governm ent records in New Delhi and the capitals o f the states of the Indian Union. In Britain the India Office Library, a vast repository of official printed and manuscript m aterials, also houses the private papers of viceroys, secretaries o f state, governors and senior British officers who served the In d ian empire. T h e au th o r of the article in Commentary is blissfully ignorant of these source m aterials; for his indictm ent against G andhi and the In d ian national m ovem ent he seems to have draw n on a couple o f secondary works and travelogues. T he article teems w ith half-truths, quarter-truths and untruths. From criticism of the film its author passes on to an attack on Gandhi, on Hinduism an d on India. W hat shall we think of an Indian film critic who, after seeing a film on A braham Lincoln, fired ofT a broadside against Lincoln, C hristianity and the U nited States w ithout know ing very m uch about them? W e discover the cause of G ren ier’s indignation when, in the last p art of his article, he ridicules A ttenborough for his ‘m uddled pacifism’ and for ‘scram bling his w ay’ to ‘the heights am ongst high-minded Utopians, equalitarians and deliverers of the oppressed’. Evidently, G renier is worried lest, thanks to the G andhi film, peace m ay break out! It is surprising that this astringent m ixture of pique, prejudice a n d ignorance should have been eagerly lapped up by scores of new spapers and journals in the U nited States, Britain, Canada, A ustralia, the M iddle East and the Far East. ‘Responsible’ new spapers and journals which would hesitate to accept an article on Tojstoy, Roosevelt, Churchill or M ao Zedong, except from a recognized authority, readily opened their columns to alm ost anyone—novelists, short-story writers and free-lancers— who cared to cock a snook at G andhi. T he certitude of these com m entators seems to have been directly proportional to their ignorance o f the subject. For most, it was perhaps their first and last piece on G andhi, but they merrily joined in denigrating him a n d in suggesting that the real G andhi was not a great m an at all, th a t his ideas were im practicable, his m ethods ineffective, his achievem ents non-existent.

The Gandhi Film

3

W h atev er the motives for this cam paign, it has done one good thing: it has after m any years renewed the debate on Gandhi, a n d this tim e the debate will not be confined to a coterie of scholars. C uriously enough m ost of the criticisms, the doubts and d istortions provoked by the film, are repetitions of w hat was said ab o u t G andhi in his lifetime. It was only natural that in the h e a t o f controversy his political opponents should have painted him in the w orst possible colours. H e never lacked critics even in his own p arty who chafed under his moral straitjacket and g ru m b led against his patient, peaceful methods. E very im p o rtant figure in history, be it Cromwell, Napoleon o r B ism arck, has been subjected to periodical assessments and reassessm ents. T his is a game which historians and biographers play a n d which their elitist readers in every generation watch. N o p ractical harm is done to the world around us by a distorted im age o f Crom w ell’s Irish policy or Bism arck’s diplomacy. But it is different w ith G andhi. His life, his thought and his methods have, as we shall see in the succeeding pages, a contemporary significance which we can ignore only at our peril. It is important, therefore, to set the record straight, not only to do justice to the m em ory o f an extraordinary m an, but to see if it has any insights for beleagured hum anity today.

C H A PTER 2

‘A H indu of H indus’

G a n d h i’s critics have had a field day, sneering at his ‘saintliness’ an d his p u rsu it of ‘personal holiness, at the expense of public good’.1 W e are told th at he was ‘a H indu of H indus’, that his religious ideas are of little real relevance to the world of today. W h at is the' tru th in this picture of G andhi? W hat kind of religion did he profess and practise? A nd w hat effect did it have on his public life? C uriously enough, though G andhi grew up in Porbandar and R ajkot in western India in a devout H indu household steeped in V aishnavism and was exposed to strong Ja in influences, his a cq u ain tan ce with religion, even with the religion of his birth, w as o f the meagrest, when in 1888 at the age of nineteen he arrived in London to study law. It was with some embarrassm ent th a t he confessed to some English theosophist friends, who invited him to read Sir Edwin A rnold’s The Song Celestial, that he had never read the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit, or even in Gujarati, his m other tongue. This was his introduction to a book which was to become his ‘spiritual reference book’. Another book of Sir E dw in’s, The Light o f Asia, also fascinated him; the story of the B u ddha’s life, renunciation and teaching stirred him to his depths. W hile the literature of the Theosophical Society was quicken­ ing G a n d h i’s interest in religion, a fellow vegetarian enthusiast in tro d u ced him to the Bible. T he New T estam ent, particularly the Serm on on the M ount, w ent straight to the young G andhi’s h eart. T h e verses, ‘But I say unto you that Ye resist not evil; but w hosoever shall sm ite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the o th er also. A nd if any m an will sue thee at the law, and take aw ay thy coat, let him have thy cloke also’, rem inded him of the lines of the G ujarati poet Sham al B hatt, which he used to hum as a child:

‘A Hindu o f Hindus’

5

For a bowl of water give a goodly meal For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal; For a simple penny pay thou back with gold; If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold. Thus the words and actions of the wise regard; Every little service tenfold they reward. But the truly noble know all men as one, And return with gladness good for evil done. T h e teachings of the Bible, the B uddha and B hatt fused in the young G a n d h i’s m ind. T he idea of returning love for hatred an d good for evil captivated him; he did not yet comprehend it fully, b u t it continued to ferm ent in his impressionable mind. Before he left England in 1891, he had already outgrown the phase o f atheism into which he had strayed in early adolescence. D u rin g his first year in South Africa in 1893, G andhi came across som e ard en t Q uakers, who perceived his religious bent, a n d decided to annex him to C hristianity. They loaded him w ith books on C hristian theology and history; they preached at him , a n d prayed with him and for him. Finally, they took him to a P ro te stan t C onvention in the hope th at mass emotion would sw eep him offhis feet. It appeared to G andhi’s C hristian friends th a t he had been on the brink of conversion, but, for some unknow n reasons, had stepped back. T he first im pact of Q uaker proselytizing in a strange country was doubtless strong on him, b u t he was in no greater hurry to become a C hristian in Pretoria th a n he h ad been to become a Theosophist in London. His know ledge of H induism was yet superficial. W hile books on C h ristia n ity and Islam were easily available in South Africa, he h a d to send for books on H induism from India. H e sought the advice o f his friend and m entor, R aychandbhai, a Ja in savant of B om bay, who counselled him to be patient and to seek in H in d u ism ‘its unique subtlety and profundity of thought, its visio n o f the soul an d its c la rity ’. H is scholarly exposition reinforced G an d h i’s own sentim ental bond with the religion of his b irth , and proved decisive during the period when his C h ristia n friends believed him to be on the way to baptism. Y ears later, G andhi confided to a group of C hristian mission­ aries: ‘H induism as I know it entirely satisfies my soul, fills my w hole being and I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita which I miss even in the Serm on on the M ount.’ H e did not, however, accept

6

Gandhi and his Critics

every H indu tenet or practice. He applied the ‘acid test of reaso n ’ to every formula of every religion. W hen scriptural sanction was cited for inhum ane or unjust practices, his reaction was one of frank disbelief. T he oft-quoted text, ‘for women there can be no freedom’, ascribed to M anu, the ancient H indu law-giver, he regarded as an interpolation, and if not, then he could only say that in M an u ’s time women did not receive the statu s they deserved. Similarly, he lashed out against orthodox H ind u s who supported untouchability with verses from the V edas. ‘Every living faith’, he wrote, ‘m ust have within itself the pow er o f rejuvenation.’2 G a n d h i’s H induism was ultim ately reduced to a few funda­ m ental beliefs: the suprem e reality of God, the unity of all life an d the value of love (ahim sa) as a m eans of realizing God. In this bedrock -religion there was no scope for exclusiveness or narrow ness. It was in his view a beauty of H induism that ‘in it there is a room for the worship of all the prophets of the world. It is not a m issionary religion in the ordinary sense of the w o rd . . . . H ind u ism tells every one to worship God according to his own faith o r Dharma and so it lives at peace with all religions’. T he study of comparative religion, the browsing on theological works, the conversations and correspondence with the learned, b ro u g h t G andhi to the conclusion that true religion was more a m a tte r o f the heart than of the intellect, and th at genuine beliefs w ere those which were literally lived. T his was something beyond the grasp of those who had acquired, in the words of Swift, enough religion to hate one another, but not enough to love one another. G andhi’s first biographer, the Reverend J . J . Doke, w rote in 1909 that G andhi’s views were too closely allied to C hristianity to be entirely H indu; and too deeply saturated w ith H induism to be called C hristian, ‘while his sympathies are so wide and Catholic that one would imagine he has reached a point w here the formulae of sects are m eaningless’. In his lifetime G andhi was variously labelled: a Sanatanist (drthodox) Hindu, a renegade Hindu, a Buddhist, a Theosophist, a C h ristian and ‘a C hristian-M oham m edan’. He was all these an d more; he saw an underlying unity in the clash of doctrines and forms.3 He chided Christian missionaries for their ‘irreligious g am b le’ for converts. It was the way a m an lived, not the recital o f a verse, or the form of a prayer, which m ade him a good

‘A Hindu o f Hindus’

7

C h ristia n , a good M uslim , or a good H indu. T he missionaries’ bid to save souls struck him as presum ptuous. O f the aborigines a n d hillm en of Assam he said: ‘W hat have I to take to [them] except to go in m y nakedness to them? R ather than ask them to jo in m y prayer, I would join their prayer’. T o a correspondent, w ho h ad urged him to save his soul by conversion to Christianity, G a n d h i w rote, ‘God is not encased in a safe to be approached only th ro u g h a little hole in it, bu t H e is open to be approached th ro u g h billions of openings by those who are hum ble and pure o f h e a rt’. G a n d h i’s religious quest did not lead him— as sometimes h ap p en s in In d ia— to a cave in the H im alayas. H e did not know , he said, any religion ap art from hum an activity; the sp iritu a l law did not work in a vacuum , but expressed itself th ro u g h the ordinary activities of life. T his aspiration to relate th e sp irit, not the forms of religion to the problem s of everyday life runs like a thread through G andhi’s career: the slow unfolding a n d the n e ar failure of his youth, the reluctant plunge into the politics o f N atal, the long battle against racialism in South A frica, a n d the vicissitudes of the three decades of the struggle ag ain st B ritish im perialism .

CHA PTER 3

The Making of the M ahatm a

In his late twenties and early thirties, while Gandhi was engaged in his religious quest in South Africa, his life had undergone a rem arkable transformation. From the H indu scripture, the Gita, he had im bibed two ideals: ‘non-possession’, which set him on the road to voluntary poverty, and ‘selfless action’, which eq u ip p ed him with an extraordinary stam ina for public life. He train ed him self as a dispenser in a charitable hospital in order to be able to attend on ‘indentured’ labourers, the poorest Indians in South Africa. At Phoneix near D urban (and later, at Tolstoy F arm , near Johannesburg) he set up little colonies where he and a few friends, who shared his ideals, could find a haven from the heat an d dust of towns, away from m en’s greed and hatred. T hese changes in G andhi’s mode of life entailed m uch strain on his wife, K asturba. W ith her husband’s increasing involve­ m ent in public life, she found herself running a veritable boarding house for his professional and political associates. T he family savings were sunk in public causes! T he household itself was shifted across two continents in response to the calls of public duty: a cablegram could send K asturba and the children voyaging down to D urban from Bombay. G andhi was out­ grow ing, ‘private’ life. Already in South Africa, his family came to include, besides his wife and children, num erous co-workers an d followers, who had cast in their lot with him. As a practising In d ia n barrister, he could perhaps have secured the admission o f his children to E uropean schools. But he would not accept for him self as a favour w hat was denied as a right to his countrym en in South Africa. His children had to content themselves with such scraps o f instruction as they could get from their father as they w alked with him the ten miles to and from his office in Jo h a n n esb u rg . T hese peripatetic lessons were often interrupted

The Making o f the Mahatma

9

by clients or colleagues; but despite their m other’s protests, G a n d h i refused to send his children to E uropean schools. In ev itab ly , the education o f the children suffered. T he worst sufferer was the eldest son, H arilal, who later turned alcoholic. G a n d h i’s o th er sons, R am das, M anilal and Devdas, led normal lives, alth o u g h they did not draw the spotlight of publicity, w hich from tim e to time fell upon H arilal and m ade him a life-long em barrassm ent to his parents. G andhi publicly assu m ed responsibility for the m ental and moral disintegration o f H arilal. O ne wonders w hat to make of this parental guilt; th ere have been other em inent m en whose children went astray a n d it never occurred to them to take all the blame for this m isfortune on themselves. II W e m ay now come to a subject on which m uch ignorant and even m alicious com m ent has been m ade— G andhi’s concept of brahmachaiya (self-control). N ot only has this concept been ridi­ culed, b u t doubts cast on his own practice ofit. T o understand the evolution o f G an d h i’s ideas on this subject it is necessary to see it in the context of his own life. G a n d h i was m arried at the age of thirteen in accordance w ith, w h at he described as ‘the cruel custom of child m arriage’. T h e custom was alm ost universal am ong H indus in the nine­ te e n th century. T he Autobiography records with a m ixture of c a n d o u r an d regret the story of the boy-bridegroom. Gandhi w as in his late fifties when he wrote this book; it is evident that the record o f his teens seem ed to him unedifying in retrospect. T h e frankness o f the Autobiography has, however, helped to foster a n exaggerated im pression th at in those early years he had let h im self go. As George Orw ell rem inds us in a perceptive essay w ritte n in 1949, G andhi offered in his autobiography a full confession o f the m isdeeds in his youth, bu t in fact there was not m u c h to confess: ‘a few cigarettes, a few m outhfuls of meat, a few a n n as pilfered in childhood from the m aid-servant, two visits to a brothel (on each occasion, he got away “without doing an y th in g ” ), one narrow ly escaped lapse with his landlady in P lym outh, one o utburst o f tem per— th at is about the whole collection’.1

10

Gandhi and his Critics

T h e autobiography takes the readers into confidence on a few escapades into which the young G andhi was pitchforked in his youth. M ehtab, a school-mate, responsible for most of G andhi’s youthful m isadventures, took him to a brothel. ‘I was’, he recalls, ‘alm ost struck blind and dum b in this den of vice. She lost patience with me and showed me the door with abuses and in su lts’. Again, one evening as a student in England, he fled from a bridge party in Plym outh to his room, ‘quaking, trem bling with beating heart like a quarry escaped from its p u rsu e r’. O n his first voyage to South Africa, he was taken by the captain of the ship to an ‘outing’, which included a visit to N egro w om en’s quarters; he recalled later that he came out as he h ad gone in. It is significant that in all these incidents, while he allowed him self to be led into the very jaw s of ‘sin’, he came out unscathed. It appeared to him that the grace of God— or good luck— had saved him. In fact, the odds were always heavy against his succum bing. As he trem bled on the brink of tem pta­ tion, there were powerful influences tugging at him. O ne was the m onogam ous ideal he had cherished since his childhood, the oth er was the vow to avoid me; t, wine and women, a vow he had taken to obtain his m other’s consent for his trip to England; a n d finally, his own shyness. ‘If I did not talk’, he wrote about his life as a student in England, ‘no girl would think it worth her while to enter into conversation or go out with m e’. All the sins of his boyhood and youth, which filled G andhi w ith rem orse in later life, were thus com m itted within the bonds o f m atrim ony. Here, too, the cycle of his sex life appears to have com pleted itself too soon. Between the age of thirteen, when he was m arried, and eighteen, when he left for England, his wife was w ith him for scarcely three years, having spent the rest of the tim e, as was the custom, with her parents. And when he retu rn e d to India after qualifying as a barrister in 1891, he was continually on the move in search of a living. H e had scarcely sp en t six m onths w ith his family, before circum stances com­ pelled him to leave in 1893 for South Africa on his own. ‘T he call from South Africa’, he records, ‘found me already free from the carn al ap p etite’; he was then only twenty-four. Not until 1896 did his wife and two sons join him in N atal. T hree years later, he h ad already m ade up his m ind to limit the size of his family.

The Making o f the Mahatma

11

Since he h ad already been opposed to the use of contraceptives, the decision am ounted to the adoption of a virtually continent life. In 1906 he took the formal vow of celibacy {brahmacharya). H enceforth G andhi and his wife were bound by m any bonds b u t excluding the characteristic one of m arriage. They were at this tim e a w ell-adjusted couple; in their thirties they had o utgrow n the bickerings of their teens. T heir life came to be less an d less o f a ‘private life’ and shaded into community life. K a stu rb a stood beside her husband as he courted insults and im p riso n m en t during his struggle in South Africa; without her courage an d support he could hardly have withstood the storms o f public life. B ut it was not easy for her to accept the austere life he im posed on him self and those nearest to him. In 1901, as the fam ily was ab o u t to leave for India, G andhi was loaded with gifts o f jew ellery from his grateful countrym en. The idea of accep tin g valuable gifts for public service was repugnant to him , an d he decided to pu t the jewels in a trust fund for the service o f the Indian com m unity in N atal. K asturba, not yet free from the feminine fascination for jewellery, pleaded in vain w ith h er h u sb an d to let her keep at least one necklace which she p articu la rly fancied, bu t G andhi would not budge an inch on, w h a t w as to him , a point of principle. O n e evening in 1904, while G andhi was taking a train from Jo h a n n e s b u rg to D urban, a friend gave him Ruskin’s Unto This Last. H e sat through the night and read the book from cover to cover. W hen the train reached D urban next morning, he had alre ad y decided to reduce R uskin’s theories on the simple life to p ractice. A few m onths later when K asturba arrived at Phoneix F arm , her h u sb a n d ’s blueprint for an idyllic life, her surprise a n d irritatio n were obvious. She had long since reconciled h erself to dispensing w ith gold necklaces and diam ond rings, b u t it required some effort to give up even a modicum of com fort, an d to turn herself overnight from the wife of a barrister in to th a t o f a peasant. G andhi records that when he told her in 1906 th a t he w anted to take the vow of life-long brahmachaiya she did not object. She had already consented to the metamorphosis of their external surroundings; she also accepted the renunciation o f the sexual bond betw een m an and wife. T he occasion for the brahmacharya vow was the Zulu Rebellion in 1906 in which G a n d h i led an In d ian volunteer am bulance unit. D uring the

12

Gandhi and his Critics

stren u o u s m arches through the ‘solemn solitudes’ of the kraals o f Z u lu lan d , it was borne in upon him th at if he was to devote him self to public work, he would find him self unequal to they task if he rem ained engaged in the pleasures of family life and in the propagation and rearing of children; in a word, he could not live both after the flesh and the spirit. T he life of the flesh had in fact already dim inished to zero. N ever again did G andhi seek privacy w ith his wife or with any o th er wom an. H is life .henceforth was an open book. H e had no bedroom of his own; he lived am idst his secretaries, disciples a n d colleagues; their beds or m attresses were spread next to his. T h e re is no reason to doubt his claim that he had attained full control over his conscious thoughts and actions. His rare ‘lapses’, to w hich he occasionally refers in his letters or articles, occurred in his sleep. He was deeply distressed if he had an erotic dream , a n d insisted on publicly expressing his feelings of shock and guilt. It was his am bition to banish carnal thoughts not only from his conscious, but from his unconscious m ind. He regarded this total ‘self-purification’ essential if he was to keep himself a fit in stru m en t for spiritual progress or for the service of his fellow m en. • Forty years after he had vowed him self to abstinence from sex, G an d h i asserted th at his wife and he had ‘tasted the real bliss o f m arried life’ w hen they renounced sexual contact, ‘It w as th en th at our com panionship blossomed and both of us w ere enabled to render real service to India and hum anity in general. Indeed, this self-denial was born out of our great desire for service’.2 Ill G a n d h i w ould have agreed w ith the Pauline dictum that it is b e tte r to m arry than to burn, but he regarded m arriage as a sacram en t in which sex was the least im portant factor. He advised continence even to those who were m arried, and consi­ d ered sexual life ‘physically harm ful and m orally sinful’, unless it w as for the express purpose of procreation. A fam ous contem porary and one of the form ative influences o f G a n d h i’s youth, Tolstoy had preached sim ilar views about the place o f sex in hum an life. ‘M en survive earthquakes’,

The Making o f the Mahatma

13

T o lsto y w rote, ‘epidemics, illness and every kind of suffering b u t alw ays the most poignant tragedy was, is, and will be, the trag ed y o f the bedroom ’. After the publication o f Kreutzer Sonata, T olstoy affirmed that the C hristian ideal of love of God and o n e’s fellow men was incom patible with sexual love or marriage, w hich am ounted to serving oneself. U ncharitable critics said th a t the au th o r o f Kreutzer Sonata, the father of thirteen children, w as g ettin g old, and that the grapes had turned sour. In fact, for m any years after he pledged him self to continence, Tolstoy was to rn by an inner struggle of which there is plenty of evidence in his diaries. N ot until he was eighty-one— a year before his d e a th — did he feel free from sexual desires. T o lsto y ’s struggle for continence not only strained his own m oral an d spiritual reserves, but shattered the already weakened vessel o f his m arriage. His wife was hysterical. ‘I w ant to kill myself, to run somewhere, to fall in love with some one’, moaned Sonya. T h e ir life became a round of recrim inations and recon­ ciliations. Tolstoy’s diaries round off the story of one of these q u arrels w ith the terrible judgem ent: ‘Between us there is a struggle to the death. E ither God or no G od’. His wife was totally unable to appreciate, m uch less to adopt, the ideals of h e r h u sb an d . T h e changes which G andhi brought into his life were no less rad ical, the ideals which he form ulated for his family were no less revolutionary than those of Tolstoy. T h a t the Gandhi household bore the stress better was due as m uch to the skill of th e h u sb an d as to the sacrifice of the wife; she followed in the ‘footsteps o f her husb an d ’, however m uch it went against the grain. T o her husband’s ‘reforms’, her reactions were successively those o f bew ilderm ent, opposition, acceptance, conversion and cham pionship. W hether it was the removal of untouchability or the w earing o f hom espun ‘cloth’, it was not at first easy for her to a d a p t h erself to her hu sb an d ’s views, bu t when she did, it was done thoroughly, and she even preached them to others. T o lsto y ’s wife called her husb an d ’s disciples ‘dark, dark people, pharisees, cheats, dissem blers’. K asturba was able to treat her h u s b a n d ’s disciples like her own children. IV G a n d h i held th at the true purpose of m arriage was intimate

14

Gandhi and his Critics

friendship and com panionship between m en and women, but sexual contact was perm issible only when a couple desired to have a child. M argaret Sanger, the leader of the birth-control m overhent, who cam e to see him at W ardha, failed to win his a p p ro v a l to the use o f contraceptives. G andhi argued that if m en a n d women could indulge in sex w ithout having to suffer the consequences o f their action, it would rob them of the faculty o f self-restraint. G a n d h i’s concept of brahmacharya presum ed a certain ap p ro a ch to life. A m an who had ‘killed the sexual urge in h im self, he wrote, ‘w ould never be guilty of it in any shape or form. H ow ever attractive a wom an m ay be, her attraction will p ro d u ce no effect on the m an . . . . T he sam e rule applies to w o m a n ’.3 H e conceded th at such self-control called for constant vigilance an d effort: The vast majority of us would want to marry, to have children and generally to enjoy ourselves . . . but there are . . . exceptions to the general rule. [Some] men have wanted to live a life wholly dedicated to the service of humanity, which is the same thing as serving God. They will not divide their time between the rearing of a special family and the tending of the general human family . . . . [They] will be celibates for the sake of God and . . . renounce the laxities of life and find their enjoyment in its austere rigours. They may be ‘in the world’, but ‘not of it’. Their food, their business . . . their recreation, their outlook on life must therefore be different from the general. T h u s, for G andhi, the control o f the sex instinct was part of a larg er discipline of body and mind; it included not only freedom from desire, but from thoughts of desire. Brahmacharya, in the n arro w er sense of sexual restraint, was im practicable without bramacharya in the w ider sense— the control in ‘deed, word and th o u g h t’ o f all the senses. It was not a question of disciplining one ap p etite, but o f all appetites; it was a rule of life, a Weltan­ schauung. . T h e connection between personal renunciation and service of m an k in d m ay not be obvious to m ost people, but men and w om en o f G od think otherwise. ‘Som ebody asked m e’, M other T eresa, the Nobel L aureate saint of our time rem arked, ‘Are you m arried ?’ I said w ith a smile, ‘Yes, to Jesus C hrist’.4 T h e idea th at the sublim ation of sexual desire is a sine qua non for those who wish to a ttain a high spiritual state has been part

The Making o f the Mahatma

15

o f H in d u religious thought for centuries. It figures in the writings o f all th e g re a t In d ia n saints, Jn a n e sh w a r, N anak, K abir, T u k ara m , Ram akrishna, V ivekananda, R am ana M aharshi and M u k ta n a n d a .5 It is accepted w ithout dem ur by the common people as a n ideal, w hich is realized but rarely. M ost people in th e W est an d W estern-educated Indians, however, find it diffi­ cu lt to g rasp this idea. Scholarly interpretations of G andhi’s concept o f brahmacharya are usually in psychological terms, seeking its roots in his home influences and childhood experi­ ences. ‘Essentially, this [G andhi’s] a ttitu d e ’, Jaw aharlal Nehru w rote in his autobiography, ‘is that of an ascetic who has turned his back to this world and its ways . . . but it seems far-fetched to ap p ly it to m en and wom en of the w orld’. Psychologists have tended to see G andhi’s attitude to sex as a p e c u lia r personal phenom enon. His sexuality is seen as having been m arred by, w hat to him was, ‘juvenile excess’, and charged w ith feelings o f guilt. They also see certain extreme circumstances in G a n d h i’s life: ‘his precocious sexual life, combined with his m o ral scruplosity’, his aspirations, and gifts ‘aided by the h isto rical situ ation’ which led him to a life of public service, and finally K a stu rb a ’s own extraordinary capacity for renunciation. N evertheless, as the em inent H arvard psychologist Erikson rem in d s us, G a n d h i’s a ttitu d e m ade ‘suprem e sense’, in the way h e resolved his sexual conflicts, by m aking it ‘a m atter of will, sealed by a vow’.6 I t is im p o rtan t to add th at G an d h i’s personality did not lose in tenderness, nor his attitu d e to women suffer from a perverted p u rita n ism . W om en, some of the m ost intelligent and noblest in In d ia , were in his entourage, and in the vanguard of his move­ m en ts. H e becam e a cham pion of the political and social em ancipation o f women; his voice was raised against the tyranny o f th e purdah (the veil), the iniquity of child m arriage, the ban on w idow rem arriage, and indeed against everything which cramped In d ia n w om anhood. H e roused In d ia ’s women to a sense of th e ir ow n dignity an d power. O f one thing there is no doubt. T he transform ation in G a n d h i’s life in South Africa, the snapping of the bonds of m oney, p ro p erty an d sex, and his conversion into, what C h u rc h ill w as later to describe, as a ‘naked faqir’, enhanced G a n d h i’s capacity for single-m inded devotion to public causes.

16

Gandhi and his Critics

In an alm ost prophetic vein, G ilbert M urray had warned ‘persons in pow er’ in the Hibbert Journal in 1918 to be ‘very careful how they deal w ith a m an who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise, or prom otion, but is simply determ ined to do w hat he believes to be right. H e is a dangerous and uncom fortable enemy because his body which you can always conquer gives you so little p u rch ase upon his soul’.7 G ilbert M u rray ’s w arning was to be vindicated by the British dilem m a in handling G andhi during the following three decades. I f the governm ent found it impossible to bend or break the M a h atm a, he was also im m une to the erratic pressures of his own following. ‘T hose who claim to lead the m asses’, he wrote, ‘m ust resolutely refuse to be led by them , if we w ant to avoid m ob law an d desire orderly progress for the country.’ Gandhi was able to act on this principle because, as Lloyd and Susanne R ud o lp h point out, the ‘serenity he achieved by his asceticism was . . . among his strongest assets as a leader of a mass movement th a t som etim es aroused strong feelings and evoked violent h atred s . . . . It lay at the root of his capacity to act sensibly in a crisis, to keep him self from being throw n off stride by other p eople’s hysteria.’8 Finally, we come to the wild allegations in some of the more recent w ritings on G andhi th at during his Naokhali tour in East B engal in 1948 ‘the M ahatm a took young H indu women to b e d ’. It is a grotesque distortion of the facts. D uring his stay in In d ia, Erikson w ent into the details and put the story in per­ spective in his Gandhi’s Truth.9 In 1943, when G andhi’s wife was dying, she told her 74-year-old husband ‘to take her place as a m o th e r’ to an orphaned young relative, M anu G andhi. ‘G andhi took this role rather seriously’, Erikson writes, ‘being concerned, for exam ple, with the girl’s physical d evelopm ent. . . and having h er sleep on a m at at the foot-end of his own m at and later, on occasions, “ in his bed”— w hatever that designation may mean in sleeping arrangem ents which included neither bedstead nor doors. T h e m arked m atem alism governing this relationship w as later acknowledged in the very title of the young wom an’s m em oir: “ Bapu, M y M other” .’10 Erikson doubts w hether there has ever been another political leader, who prided himself on being ‘h a lf m an and half-woman . . . more m otherly than women

The Making o f the Mahatma

17

b o rn to the jo b . C om m enting on G andhi’s ‘public, private life’, E rikson refers to an unusual quality in G andhi, that of living a n d thinking aloud about inclinations which other men try to hide. G andhi shared his passing thoughts and even embarrassing d ream s w ith the readers of his weekly journals, thus making h im self an easy target for m alicious critics. E rik so n ’s ju d g em ent is confirmed by the considered opinion o f N. K . Bose, the Indian anthropologist, G andhi’s secretary in 1946, who had initially raised this controversy. In an unpublished letter w ritten in 1955,11 Bose affirmed that there was no question o f im m orality on G an d h i’s part, as he ‘never slept in any room o f his own. H e used, generally, to sleep in the open verandah on a cot. O r even if he slept in a room, if there was no verandah in the house, there were others like Parsuram etc. (G andhi’s sten o g rap h er) who slept in beds beside him. Moreover, Gandhi tried to conquer the feeling of sex by consciously endeavouring to convert him self into a “ m other” of those who were under his care, w h eth er m en or w om en’. . Bose refers to G an d h i’s violent reaction against any physical m an ifestatio n o f sex, and his psychological effort ‘to become as p u re as his m o th er’, which led him into a ‘profoundly significant a ttitu d e in public life’. G andhi came to regard woman as the in c a rn a tio n o f ahimsa (non-violence). Ahimsa [Gandhi wrote] means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. Who but woman the mother of man shows this capacity in the largest measure? She shows it as she carries the infant and feeds it during nine months and derives joy in the suffering involved. What can beat the suffering caused by the pangs of labour:—who again suffers daily so that her babe may wax from day to day? Let her transfer that love to the whole of humanity. Let her forget she ever was or can be the object of man’s lust. And she will occupy her proud position by the side of man as his mother, maker, and silent leader. It is given to her to teach the arts of peace to the warring world . . . 12 Progress in civilization,13 from this viewpoint, consisted in th e in tro d u ctio n into hum an life and social institutions of a larger m easure o f ‘the law of love or self-suffering’, which woman rep resen ted best in h er own person. ‘This w as’, Bose writes, ‘a p rofo u n d ly transform ed projection on the broad canvas of social life o f an attitu d e which had come into being in the p riv acy o f G a n d h i’s personal life’.14

CH A PTER 4

G andhi and the Caste System

O n e o f the charges levelled against G andhi is th at he acted as an apologist for the caste system, and in 1932, resorted to a fast ‘to block an affirmative action’ planned by the British government in favour o f the outcastes, the so-called ‘untouchables’. T he fact is th a t no one did m ore than G andhi to underm ine the centuries-old caste system and to remove the blot of untouchability from H induism . T h e significance o f his 1932 fast can best be ap p reciated in the historical perspective— the origins of the caste system , its uses and abuses, G an d h i’s lifelong struggle a g ain st untouchability and the im perialist attem p t in 1932 to tu rn a social problem of the H indu com m unity into a political w eapon against In d ian nationalism . T h e origins of the caste system have been a m atter of contro­ versy am ong scholars, b u t it is generally accepted that its f6ur m ain divisions were originally occupational, not essentially h e red itary n o r im m utable. T h e system seems to have served a historic purpose. T h e Indo-A ryans, unlike the conquerors in som e o th er continents, did not exterm inate or enslave the indi­ genous populations. W hile m aintaining their own superiority they so u g h t to incorporate the original inhabitants in the social organization; thanks to the caste system, successive waves of in v ad ers or im m igrants from, the north-w est found a place w ithin the In d ian social fabric w ithout losing their distinct identities. D uring periods of political upheavals, the caste system len t a certain resilience to the H indu society, by providing a fram ew ork w ithin w hich millions of people could live their lives irrespective 6 f w h at happened to the ruling dynasties and their clans. H ow ever, w ith the passage of time, the system cam e to a cq u ire excessive rigidity; it becam e wholly hereditary, and was b u rd e n e d w ith all kinds o f taboos and notions o f ceremonial

Gandhi and the Caste System

19

/ p u rity w hich condem ned those at the bottom of the social Nj>yram id to petty tyranny and discrim ination. Particularly hard w as the lot o f the ‘outcastes’, engaged in m enial tasks ranging from scavenging to craftsmanship, which drew the compassionate advocacy o f saints like N anak, K ab ir and C haitanya in the m ediaeval period, and o f social reformers like M. G. Ranade a n d J y o tib a Phule in the nineteenth century. T he forces of o rth o d o x y were, however, too deeply entrenched to be easily dislodged. It was left to G andhi to shake H induism out of the c e n tu rie s-o ld grooves o f caste rigidity and the evil of unto u ch ab ility . II G a n d h i has n arrated in his autobiography how he came face to face w ith untouchability in his home. His m other shared the caste prejudices which were common among Vaishnava Hindus. T h e children had orders not to defile themselves by touching th e fam ily sw eeper U ka or by playing w ith ‘untouchable’ class­ m ates. G an d h i was an obedient child, but he visibly chafed at these restraints; even at an early age, he sensed the inconsistency betw een the practice o f untouchability and the beautiful an ecd o te o f the epic Ramayana, in which he had heard of the hero R am a being ferried across the Ganges by a low-caste b o a tm an . As he grew up, this fellow-feeling with the lowliest of the low grew. In South Africa, G an d h i’s associates belonged to all classes an d communities. T o the first ashram at Ahmedabad, w hich he founded after his return to India in 1915, he welcomed a n u n to u ch ab le family; this action outraged the rich m erchants o f A h m ed ab ad , who were contributing to the upkeep of the a sh ra m . Several associates deserted him in protest. Starved of funds, a n d w ith the few inm ates at the ashram , who still stood by him, G andhi thought of moving into the slums of Ahmedabad. A n anonym ous donor, however, rendered this course un­ necessary. D u rin g the first four years after his return from South Africa, w hile G a n d h i was on the periphery of nationalist politics, he carried on ceaseless propaganda against the evils of untoucha­ bility. H e even m ade this reform a plank in his political campaign in 1920-2. U ntouchability was a recurrent theme in his speeches

20

Gandhi and his Critics

d u rin g his country-wide tours in the tv.enties. At the Round T ab le Conference in Londop in 1931, it h u rt him to see the representatives of the untouchables play into the hands of reactionary, com m unal an d political elements. H e opposed the segregation o f the untouchables into a separate electoral group as h ad been done in the case of M uslims, Sikhs and Christians. H ow strongly he felt on this subject was revealed in a speech he delivered at the m eeting of the M inorities Com m ittee on 13 N ovem ber 1931: I claim myself in my own person to represent the vast mass of the untouchables. Here I speak not merely on behalf of the [Indian National] Congress, but I speak on my own behalf, and I claim that I would get, if there was a referendum of the untouchables, their vote and that I would top the poll. We do not want on our register and on our census ‘untouchables’ classified as a separate class. Sikhs may remain as such in perpetuity, so may Muslims, so may Europeans. Would untouchables remain untouchables in perpetuity? In M arch 1932, while G andhi was in jail, he wrote to Sir Sam uel Hoare, the Secretary of State for India on the ‘Communal A w ard ’, which the British governm ent were to give on the q u a n tu m an d mode of representation in legislatures under the new constitution. H e told H oare that separate electorates would divide the H indu com m unity w ithout doing any good to the untouchables. H e recalled w hat he had said at the London conference, that he would resist with his life the grant of separate electorates to the depressed classes. ‘T his was not said’, G andhi w rote, ‘in the heat of the m om ent or by way of rhetoric’. W h en the C om m unal Aw ard was published on 17 August 1932, it confirm ed G an d h i’s worst fears. In spite of the double vote given to the ‘depressed classes’ (untouchables) for their ow n sep arate constituencies as well for the general (Hindu) constituencies, the fact rem ained th at separate electorates were to be set up for these classes. G andhi im m ediately wrote to R am say M acD onald, the British Prem ier, that he proposed to u n d ertak e ‘a perpetual fast unto d eath ’ which could only end, ‘if d u rin g its progress, the British G overnm ent, of its motion or u n d e r pressure of public opinion, revised their decision, and w ith d rew their schem e of com m unal (separate) electorates for the depressed classes’. T h e fast was to continue even if he was

Gandhi and the Caste System

21

released. T hree weeks later, Ram say M acD onald acknowledged G a n d h i’s letter and defended the decision of the government as a n effort to ju stly weigh conflicting claims. T he British Premier a n d his advisers could not understand G andhi’s emotional and religious approach to the problem. They even scented a political m otive in his fast; it seemed to them that G andhi was trying a stu n t to recover the prestige he had lost through the decline of civil disobedience. I f the B ritish m inisters failed to fathom the depth of G andhi’s feeling on this subject, they were even less able to see the ethics o f fasting for the solution of, w hat was to them, a political problem . Fasting struck them as a thinly-disguised method of coercion. T h e British reaction to G andhi’s fasts was well exem plified in David Low’s cartoon as a ‘Prophecy for 1933’ in w hich L ord W illingdon, the then Viceroy of India, was shown going o n h u n g er strike at the instance of 10 Downing Street, ‘to force M r. G andhi to adm it the new constitution’. W as fasting a form of coercion? G andhi was aware that his fasts exercised a m oral pressure, but the pressure was directed n o t against those who disagreed with him, but against those w ho loved him and believed in him; he sought to prick the conscience o f the latter and to convey to them something of his ow n in n er anguish at a m onstrous social tyranny. He did not expect his critics to react in the same way as his friends and co-workers; if his self-crucifixion could dem onstrate his sincerity to the teem ing millions o f In d ia with whom he had identified him self, the battle would be more than half-won. E. Stanley Jo n e s, the A m erican missionary, asked G andhi in Yeravda Jail: ‘I s n ’t y o u r fasting a species of coercion?’ ‘Yes,’ G andhi replied, ‘the sam e kind o f coercion which Jesus exercises upon you from the C ro ss’.1 T he fast dram atized the issue at stake; ostensibly it su p p ressed reason, but in fact it was designed to free reason from th a t m ixture o f inertia and prejudice which had perm itted a gross social injustice to be tolerated by the H indu society for centuries. T h e news th at G andhi was about to fast shook India from one end to the other. 20 Septem ber 1932, when the fast began, was observed in the country as a day of fasting and prayer. At S an tin ik etan , the poet R ab in d ran ath Tagore, dressed in black, spoke to a large gathering on the significance of the fast, and the

22

Gandhi and his Critics

urgency of fighting an age-old evil. T here was a spontaneous upsurge o f feeling; temples, wells and public places were thrown open to the untouchables. A conference of the leaders of caste H indus and untouchables was convened at Poona to devise alternative electoral arrangem ents to replace those provisions o f the British Com m unal Award which had provoked G andhi to offer the suprem e sacrifice. An agreem ent was reached, and none too soon. T he alternative electoral arrangem ent for depressed classes, which was hammered out at Gandhi’s bedside, provided th at voters from the depressed classes would hold a prelim inary election and choose a panel of four candidates for each seat; these candidates were to subm it for election to a joint election by caste H indus and depressed classes. T he num ber of seats for depressed classes in provincial legislatures was raised from 71 in the British Award to 148. Reservation of seats was to continue until it was ended by m utual agreem ent. T he new electoral arrangem ent, which came to be known as the Poona Pactj was accepted by the British governm ent, and Gandhi broke his fast on 26 Septem ber 1932 in the presence of R ab in d ra n ath Tagore. G andhi was later criticized by some H indu leaders, especially in Bengal, for yielding too m uch to the depressed classes; but he h ated this constitutional arithm etic. H e felt that, for all the w rongs they had done to their weaker brethren in the past, caste H in d u s could never be too generous. T he fast had at least one good result; it did away with separate electorates for the depressed classes. T h e insidious influence of this mode of repre­ sentation as a wedge in Indian politics was to become fully visible in the next decade. In 1909 the introduction of separate electorates in the M into-M orley scheme of reforms had created an institutional base for the growth of M uslim separatism; tw enty-three years later, a sim ilar attem pt to make a mighty hole in the nationalist front was foiled by G andhi’s fast. If the C om m unal Aw ard had not been am ended by the Poona Pact in 1932, the solution of the Indian political problem during the years 1945—7 would have become infinitely more difficult than even it actually was. D u rin g the negotiations for the transfer of power A m bedkar staked out a claim that his Scheduled Caste Federation repre­ sented all the ‘sixty million’ scheduled castes and he was their

Gandhi and the Caste System

23

sole, a u th e n tic spokesm an. H e argued th at the scheduled castes needed special safeguards and recognition as a m inority such as h a d been accorded to the M uslim com m unity; he almost spoke in J in n a h ’s idiom , denouncing ‘caste H indu dom ination’.2 H e called for separate electorates and even ‘separate settlem ents’ for scheduled castes. T h e British had a soft corner for Ambedkar. H e h ad been a m em ber of the Viceroy’s Executive Council since 1942. L ord W avell had included his nam e in the list for the In terim G overnm ent during the discussions at Simla Conference in 1945. T h e situation, however, changed after the general elections to provincial legislatures early in 1946. Am bedkar’s p a rty was routed by the Congress. It then becam e impossible for the governm ent to recognize him as a spokesman of the sch ed u led castes. A m bedkar questioned the results of the 1946 election held u n d er jo in t electorates; he railed against ‘caste H in d u ty ran n y ’ and threatened ‘direct action’.3 H e appealed to Prim e M in ister A ttlee to intervene. A ttlee was advised not to take an y notice of A m bedkar’s protests.4 I f G a n d h i had not fasted in 1932 and the separate electorates for scheduled castes in the C om m unal Aw ard had not been m odified by the Poona Pact, it is likely th at the problem of sch ed u led castes would have added to the complexity of the negotiations in 1946-7, already bedevilled by Muslim separatism a n d princely intransigence. M o re im p o rtan t than the constitutional arrangem ents— w hich incidentally did not come into operation for the next th ree years— was the em otional catharsis through which the H in d u com m unity passed. T h e fast was intended,- as Gandhi avow ed, ‘to sting the conscience of the H indu comm unity into rig h t religious actio n’. T h e scrapping of the separate electorates for the depressed classes was to be the beginning of the end of un to u ch ab ility . O n e o f the greatest cam paigns of social reform in history was lau n c h ed by a state prisoner. G andhi issued a series of press sta te m e n ts a n d a stream of letters to his num erous corres­ p o n d e n ts to educate the people on the evil of untouchability. He a rra n g e d for the publication of a weekly paper, Harijan, to p ro m o te his cam paign. ‘H a rija n ’ m eans ‘children of G od’; it w as G a n d h i’s nam e for the outcastes, the untouchables. ‘All the religions o f the world [Gandhi wrote] describe God pre-eminently

24

Gandhi and his Critics

the friend of the friendless and help of the helpless, and the pro tecto r o f the weak. W ho can be more friendless, or helpless or w eaker than the forty million or more H indus of India, classified as untouchables?’ G andhi doubted w hether there was any support for untouchability in the H indu scriptures. But even if it were possible to cite a sanction for this tyranny from any ancient m anuscript, G andhi did not feel bound by it. E tern al tru th , he asserted, could not be confined within the covers of a book, however sacred it m ight be. Every scripture h ad contained certain universal truths, but it also included injunctions relevant to the contem porary society; the latter, if they did violence to hum an dignity, could be ignored. A good chunk of the Harijan was w ritten by G andhi himself. He took the lead in pulling out the skeleton of untouchability from the H in d u cupboard and publishing graphic pen-pictures of the m iserable condition in which the ‘outcastes’ lived. A fter his release from jail, G andhi em barked on a tour, which covered 12,500 miles, to purge H induism of the evil of un­ touchability. He pleaded with the H indus to shed their prejudice against the H arijans; he urged the H arijans to shake off the vices— drugs and drink— which hindered their absorption into H in d u society. He ridiculed the superstition that anybody could be unclean by birth, or the shadow or touch of one hum an being could defile another. H e wore him self out in making collections for the ‘H arijan F u n d ’. In ten m onths, he received eight lakhs of rupees. H e could have obtained this am ount as a gift from a single M ah araja or a millionaire, but he did not set m uch store by m oney as such. T he millions of men, women and children, w ho contributed to his begging bowl, became fellow-soldiers in the fight against untouchability. T h e H arijan tour was by no m eans a trium phal progress. G an d h i was attacking an age-old tyranny and long-established vested interests which did not stick at anything to preserve them selves. T he orthodox H indus accused him of a dangerous heresy; they organized black-flag dem onstrations; they heckled him , an d tried to disrupt his meetings. O n 25 Ju n e 1934, while he was on his way to the m unicipal hall in Poona, a bomb was throw n at his party; seven persons were injured, though Gandhi was unhurt. He expressed his deep pity for the unknown thrower o f the bom b. ‘I am not aching for m artyrdom ’, he said, 'but if it

Gandhi and the Caste System

25

cam e in m y way in the prosecution of, w hat I consider to be, the su p rem e d u ty in defence of the faith I hold in common with m illions o f H indus, I shall have well earned it’. E ven though the opposition of the orthodox H indus died h a rd , a n d even though m ilitant H arijan leaders were critical, G an d h i succeeded in piercing an ancient sore. Rajagopalachari, one o f the front-rank nationalist leaders, in an article entitled, ‘T h e R evolution is O v er’, wrote: ‘W hat rem ains is but the rem oval o f the debris’. This was an optim istic verdict, but there is no d o u b t th at the reformists had m ade a good beginning. The C ongress m inistries in 1937-9 removed some of the legal dis­ abilities o f the H arijans, and untouchability itself became illegal in the constitution of the In d ian Republic which came into force in 1952. A social tyranny, which had deep roots, needed a co n tin u o u s w ar for m any years on all fronts— legal, social and econom ic— but,there is no doubt that G andhi’s cam paign dealt it a heavy blow. Ill W hile G a n d h i’s opposition to untouchability was consistent a n d uncom prom ising, his attitude to the caste system— of w hich untouchability was a m orbid growth— seemed to be m ark ed by a certain am bivalence in the early years after his re tu rn from South Africa. T he H indu epics had given him a ro m an tic image of the vamashrama, in ancient India, the funda­ m en tal four-fold division, in which castes were the equivalent of / tra d e guilds, and birth was not the sole determ inant of status \an d privilege. It seemed to G andhi that the system, despite its obvious faults, had served as a cushion against external pressures d u rin g tu rb u len t periods; he w ondered w hether it could be resto red to its pristine purity and adapted to the changing needs o f H in d u society. T his was the background of some compli­ m en tary references he m ade to the caste system, which are often q u o ted against him. It m ust, however, be borne in mind that all the kind words he ever said about the caste system were about w h a t he believed it to have been in the hoary past and not about w h a t it was in his own time. Closer acquaintance with the In d ia n social scene convinced him that the system was so flaw ed by superstition, ‘touch-m e-not-ism ’, social inequality a n d discrim ination, th at it was past m ending

26

Gandhi and his Critics

W e can see a progressive hardening of G andhi’s attitude to the caste system. In D ecem ber 1920, he wrote, ‘I consider the four divisions alone to be fundam ental, natural and essential. T h e innum erable sub-castes are sometimes a convenience, often a hindrance. T he sooner there is fusion, the better’.5 Fifteen years later he declared th at ‘the vamashrama of the shastras [scriptures] is to-day non-existent in practice. T h e present caste system is the very antithesis of vamashrama. T h e sooner public opinion abolishes it, the b etter’.6 H e suggested th at all H indus should voluntarily call themselves shudras, who were supposed to be the lowest in the social scale.7 H e rejected the notion that untouchability was an essential p a rt of H induism ; it was, he said, a ‘plague which it is the bounden duty of every H indu to co m b at’.8 In the 1920s, he had been prepared to defend taboos on inter-dining and inter-m arriage between members of different castes as exercises in self-restraint. In the 1930s, he was denouncing any exclusiveness which stem m ed from caste or local prejudice. ‘It m ust be left to the unfettered choice of the in d iv id u al’, he wrote, ‘as to where he or she will m arry or dine. . . . 9 I f In d ia is one and indivisible, surely there should be no artificial divisions creating innum erable little groups, which w ould neither inter-dine nor inter-m arry.’10 In 1946, Gandhi m ade the startling announcem ent that no m arriage would be celebrated in his ashram at Sevagram, unless one of the parties was an ‘untouchable’ by birth. G a n d h i’s reluctance to m ake a frontal assault on the caste system in the early years m ay have been a m atter of tactics. In a conversation with the H ungarian journalist, T ibor M ende, in 1956, Ja w ah arlal N ehru recalled: I spoke to Gandhi repeatedly: why don’t you hit out at the caste system directly? He said that he did not believe in the caste system except in some idealized form of occupations and all that; but that the present caste system is thoroughly bad and must go. ‘I am undermining it completely’, he said, ‘by my tackling untouchability’. You see . . . he had a way of seizing one thing and concentrating on it. ‘If untouchability goes’, he said, ‘the caste system goes’.11

C H A PTER 5

T he Fight Against Racialism

G a n d h i was in South Africa for nearly twenty years between 1893 an d 1914. T hese were the formative years of his life in w hich he developed ideas and m ethods which were to have a profound effect upon the history of India, and indeed of the w orld. D oubts have, however, been cast on G andhi’s South A frican record: it is argued that since he cham pioned the cause o f the In d ia n im m igrants, and did not take up cudgels on behalf o f the black population of Africa, he was not really against rac ialism .1 T o ap p reciate the scope and significance of G andhi’s struggle • in South Africa, it would be useful to briefly racapitulate the situ atio n w ith which he was confronted. W hen he arrived in N atal in 1893 at the age of tw enty-three, to serve as counsel of a n In d ia n firm in a civil suit, he knew next to nothing about the ‘In d ia n problem ’ in South Africa. T his problem had its origins nearly th irty years earlier with the im port of ‘indentured’ lab o u rers from India to work sugar, tea and coffee plantations in N atal; th eir condition was, to use Sir W. W. H u n ter’s phrase, a ‘condition of sem i-slavery’. T hey had been recruited from som e o f the poorest and m ost congested districts of India; a free passage, board and lodging; a wage of ten shillings a m onth for th e first year rising by one shilling every year, and the right to a free re tu rn passage to In d ia after five years’ indenture (or altern ativ ely , the option to settle in the land of their adoption) h a d lu r e d thousands of poor and illiterate Indians to distant N atal. By 1890 nearly forty thousand had been imported as in d en tu red labourers. N ot all the European employers were cruel, b u t it was difficult to change employers on the plea of ill-treatm en t, and if a labourer did not renew his ‘indenture’ after five years, he was hem m ed in by all sorts of restrictions.

28

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N evertheless, m any of these labourers, having lost their roots in In d ia, preferred to settle in N atal. T hey bought small plots of lan d , grew vegetables, m ade a decent living and educated their children. T his aroused the jealousy o f the E uropean traders, w ho began to agitate for the repatriation of every Indian labourer, who did not renew his indenture. In other words the In d ia n was w anted in N atal as a ‘semi-slave’, or not at all. T h e In d ian m erchant followed the Indian labourer to South Africa an d found a ready m arket am ong Indian labourers as well as the blacks. T his naturally roused the opposition of the E u ro p ean trader; a law passed by the N atal legislature in 1894 w as specially designed to disfranchise the two hundred-odd In d ia n m erchants who had become entitled to vote. Indian tra d e and im m igration were placed under galling restrictions; no one could trade in N atal w ithout a licence, which a European could have for the asking, and an Indian could have only after m uch effort and expense, if at all. And since an educational test in a E uropean language was m ade a sine qua non for entering the country, the door was barred and bolted against the majority of p otential im m igrants from India except, of course, the semi­ slave ‘in d en tu red ’ labourers who c o f equality. G an d h i’s ideas and m ethods were a strong formative influence in the history of African nationalism and Black militancy. The W est African Congress was established in 1920; its founders w ere inspired by the exam ple of the Indian N ational Congress. In the 1930s the course of the Indian nationalist struggle under G a n d h i’s leadership was being closely followed in other parts of the B ritish empire. In the 1940s K w am e N krum ah of the Gold C o ast (later G hana) was ‘toying with G an d h i’s ideas on non­ violent cam paigns and dream ing about translating them into a ctio n ’.8 In 1958, when the All-Africa People’s Conference met

The Fight Against Racialism

33

in the newly independent state of G hana, the G andhian ideas w ere still relatively so popular in Africa that the Algerian N a tio n a l L iberation Front, engaged in a revolt against the F ren ch , h ad m uch difficulty in securing for their arm ed struggle legitim acy an d support. T h e m ost distinguished and enthusiastic exponent of G a n d h i’s ideas in Africa was K enneth K aunda of what was th en N o rth ern Rhodesia (now Z am bia). ‘G andhi and Jesu s’, w rites K a u n d a ’s biographer, ‘had a special magnetism for tw enty-four-year old K aunda. H e saw them as realists with a vision a n d rejected the popular notion that this was a contradic­ tion in term s.’9 W hen K aunda visited India in 1975, he recalled: ‘M a h a tm a G andhi and Pandit N ehru were heroes not only of th e In d ia n people but of the entire oppressed peoples of the w orld. A t least th at is how we saw them in that part of the w o rld ’.10 It is tru e th at since the 1960s G andhism has declined in much o f A frica, especially after the revolutionary struggles in Angola a n d G u in ea Bissan under the influence of M arxism , but then this seem s to be not only p a rt of the world-wide escalation of tension a n d violence, b u t the result of the peculiar poweralig n m en ts an d rivalries w ithin and outside the continent of A frica. T h e re is no doubt th at the m ovem ent for civil rights and racial equality in the U nited States of Am erica was influenced by G a n d h i’s ideas o f which M artin L uther K ing was an ardent ch am p io n . In his Stride Toward Freedom he tells us how he found in G a n d h i’s philosophy of non-violent resistance the satisfaction w hich he h ad m issed ‘in the utilitarianism of Bentham and M ill, th e revolutionary m ethods of M arx and Lenin, the social c o n tra cts theory of H obbes, the “ back to n a tu re ” optim ism of R o u sseau a n d the superhum an philosophy of Nietzsche.’11 M a rtin L u th e r K ing cam e to the conclusion th at G andhi’s was ‘th e only m orally an d practically sound m ethod open to o p p resse d people in their struggle for freedom ’.

CHA PTER 6

Amritsar, 1919

T h e sequence of the A m ritsar m assacre of 1919 in the G andhi film has been Criticized as a ‘m isrepresentation’ of w hat actually happ en ed . T he fact is that it is one of the very few episodes of w hich an authentic visual reconstruction was possible, because Jallian w ala Bagji, the site of the tragedy at A m ritsar, has been preserved as a ‘m em orial’. In view of-the enorm ous docum entation available on the events o f 1919, it seems incredible th at efforts should be m ade to explain away G eneral D yer’s crime. A British journalist has posed the question: ‘W hen a lot of people get killed in a riot, who is m ost to blam e, a clumsy com m ander like Dyer, or a consum m ate sorcerer’s apprentice like G andhi?’1 T he fact is th a t th ere was no riot in A m ritsar on the day the massacre took place, and the events in th at town had very little to do with G an d h i, who had never visited the Punjab, and whose name was not yet one to conjure w ith in that province. T h e tradegy of Jallianw ala Bagh hastened the process of G a n d h i’s alienation from the British Raj and dram atically altered the course of Indian politics. T o see it in perspective, it is necessary to briefly recapitulate the events in A m ritsar during the preceding week. O n 6 April 1919, like m any other towns in In d ia, A m ritsar witnessed a hartal (cessation of business) as a p rotest against the passage of the Row latt Bills, which had been enacted in the teeth of the unanim ous opposition of all Indian m em bers o f the Im perial Legislative Council including those nom inated by the governm ent. Four days later, on 10 April, the a rrest o f two local leaders, Satya Pal and S. D. Kitchlew, triggered a melancholy chain of incidents. A crowd of mourners, b are-headed, bare-footed and unarm ed, m arched towards the residence o f the British D eputy Com m issioner to plead for the

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release o f the two leaders. T he procession was stopped and fired u p o n by a m ilitary picket. T he crowd fell back, bu t it was no lon g er a peaceful crowd. T h e sight of the dead and the injured in fu riated som e hot-heads, who ran amuck, b u rn t down a post office, a bank and a su b u rb an railway station, and killed four in n o ce n t E uropeans. O rd e r was restored by drafting troops into th e tow n u n d er B rigadier-G eneral Dyer. For the next two days th e city was quiet, and there was no untow ard incident. T h e th irtee n th o f April was the annual Baisakhi festival when A m ritsa r attracted peasants from surrounding villages for a visit to the G olden T em ple in the m orning, and for a little fun a n d sh o p p in g d uring the day. T h a t afternoon, a public meeting w as held a t 4.30 p.m . in Jallianw ala Bagh, an irregular square o f w aste land surrounded by houses on all sides. T he attendance a t this m eeting has been variously estim ated between 6000 and 20,000. G eneral D yer heard about this m eeting and resolved to b rea k it up. H e took w ith him two arm oured cars and 75 G u rk h a a n d B aluchi troops. T he entrance to the Jallianw ala B ag h being too narrow to perm it the arm oured cars, Dyer m a rc h e d in w ith fifty riflemen, and found him self on a raised g ro u n d overlooking a hollow field full o f people. T o his heated im agina tion it appeared to be an assembly o f ‘agitators’, potential ‘reb e ls’; in fact, it was a holiday crowd of peasants from sur­ ro u n d in g villages and local residents, some of whom had infants in th eir arm s. T hey were all hugely enjoying themselves, listen in g to a h arangue from a speaker on a raised platform. Few o f th em knew th a t public m eetings had been banned in the city by the orders o f the m ilitary com m ander. It turned out later th a t notices im posing the ban had not been pasted on the walls o f the city, a n d th e town-criers, who had been sent to make the a n n o u n c e m e n t w ith the b eat o f the drum , had done their jo b perfunctorily. G en eral D yer deployed his fifty G urkha and Baluchi soldiers alo n g th e w hole length o f the rising ground. W h at followed m ay b est be n a rra te d in his own words in answ er to the questions from the H u n te r C om m ittee: Q. When you got into the [Jallianwala] Bagh, what did you do? A. I opened fire. Q. At once?

36

Gandhi and his Critics A. Immediately. I had thought about the matter and don’t imagine it took me more than 10 seconds to make up my mind what my duty was. Q. . . . On the assumption that there was . . . risk of people being in the crowd who were not aware of the proclamation [banning all meetings in Amritsar], did it not occur to you that it was a proper measure to ask the crowd to disperse before you took that step of actually firing? A. No, at the time I did not. I merely felt that my orders had not been obeyed, that Martial Law was flouted, and that it was my duty to fire immediately by rifle. Q. Before you dispersed the crowd, had the crowd taken any action at all? A. No Sir. They had run away, a few of them. Q. Did they start to run away? A. Yes. When I began to fire, the big mob in the centre [of the Bagh] began to run almost towards the right. Q. Martial Law had not been proclaimed. Before you took that step which was a serious step, did you not consider as to the propriety of consulting the Deputy Commissioner, who was the civil authority responsible for the order of the city? A. There was no Deputy Commissioner to consult at the time . . . . I considered it from the Military point of view that I ought to fire . immediately. Q. In firing, was it your object to disperse? A. No, sir. I was going to fire until they dispersed. Q. Did the crowd at once start to disperse as soon asyou fired? A. Immediately. Q. Did you continue firing? A. Yes. Q. After the crowd indicated that it was going to disperse, why did you not stop? A. I thought it was my duty to go on until it dispersed. If I fired a little, I should be wrong in firing at all.

D yer stated th at from tim e to time he ‘checked his fire and directed it upon places w here the crowd was the thickest’. T he firing stopped w hen all the am m unition— 1650 rounds—with his fifty riflemen had been expended. H e adm itted that he m ade no provision for aiding or rem oving the wounded; it was not his d u ty to render aid. ‘T h a t w as’, he said, ‘a medical question’. As soon as the firing ceased, he retired with his soldiers. T h e P unjab governm ent estim ated th at 379 persons were

Amritsar, 1919

37

killed a n d 1200 injured. However, according to its own version, the governm ent did not start investigating the figures of casualties u n til 24 A ugust— four m onths after the tragedy. T he Congress E n q u iry C om m ittee, which included some of the most eminent law yers in India, M otilal N ehru, C. R. Das and M. R. Jayakar, a n d the rep o rt o f which was drafted by G andhi, estimated that 1200 lives were lost and three times as m any were wounded. . T h e day after the m assacre, Dyer addressed a meeting of p ro m in en t citizens in the local police station. He directed them to ensure th at the shops, which had been closed as a protest ag ain st the firing, were reopened. ‘Do you w ant war or peace?’ he asked. ‘For m e the battlefield of France or A m ritsar is the sam e. I am a m ilitary m an and I will go straight. Neither shall I m ove to the right, nor to the left. Speak up, if you w ant war . . . . In case there is to be peace, my order is to open all shops at once . . . otherw ise the shops will be opened by force and by rifles’. W orse was to follow. O n 15 April, m artial law was clamped not only on A m ritsar but on several other towns in the Punjab. It is not necessary to recount in detail this draconian regime w hich lasted for nearly two m onths. In A m ritsar the most notorious order of G eneral Dyer required Indians to crawl on th eir bellies in a street where a European wom an had been assau lted . But alm ost everywhere the people were subjected to needless hum iliations. Indians were m ade to alight from vehicles if a E u ro p ean passed on the road, and salute him, motor cars ow ned by them were requisitioned. In Lahore a thousand college students were m ade to m arch in the scorching heat of M ay four times daily, sixteen miles a day, to answer a roll call. W h en a notice pasted on the outer wall of a college building was found torn, every m ale in the precincts of the college, including the teachers, was arrested. T he military officers, who committed these b arb arities and heaped insults on the Indians, believed th a t they were holding the bastion of the British empire at a critical m om ent. M any of them had recently returned from E u ro p ea n an d M iddle E astern battlefields, and were im patient o f half-hearted methods. R abindranath Tagore, who renounced his knighthood as a protest against the events in the Punjab, rightly diagnosed the root o f the trouble: ‘W hat happened at Ja llia n w a la Bagh was itself a m onstrous progeny ofa monstrous w a r’.

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Gandhi and his Critics %

T h e Punjab governm ent headed by Sir M ichael O ’Dwyer p ersuaded itself th at there was a dangerous conspiracy to over­ throw the Raj. W hen the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, advised Sir M ichael to avoid dram atic punishm ents, his reply was that m artial law could not be adm inistered with kid gloves.2 Sir M ichael later claimed to have nipped the ‘Punjab Rebellion’ in the bud. T he theory of a conspiracy was, however, not accepted even by the official intelligence agencies. W hen Robertson, B om bay’s Inspector-General of Police, wrote to C. R. Cleveland, D irector, Intelligence Bureau of the Governm ent of India, en quiring if he had been able to trace any organized conspiracy, C leveland’s reply (23 M ay 1919) was: ‘So far no traces of organized conspiracy have been found in the Punjab. There was organized agitation and then in particular places the people went m a d ’.3 G eneral Dyer was not quite consistent in his defence in his successive explanations to General Beynon, his immediate superior, to the H u n ter Com m ittee, to the Army Council and to the press after his return to England. T he plea that he was confused by cross-exam ination conducted by clever Indian law yers is untenable; some of the statem ents which most dam aged his case were m ade by him before the H unter C om m ittee and in reply to questions from its British members. D yer adm itted th at he had ordered firing w ithout w arning and th a t he continued to fire for ten m inutes even while the crowd was trying to disperse. H e m ight have used machine-guns if he could have got them in. H e also adm itted that his force was not really in danger; he could have dispersed the mob without firing, b u t then they m ight have laughed at him and m ade him feel a fool. H e had fired ‘to teach them a lesson’, to strike terror, to create a moral effect. And having exhausted his am m unition, he h ad m arched away, leaving the w ounded to take care of them selves. Initially, there was m uch sym pathy for Dyer in the army circles in India. T he A djutant General, Sir Havelock Hudson, defended his action in the Indian Legislative Assembly during the discussion on the Indem nity Bill. Dyer was even promoted to officiate as a Divisional C om m ander in a tem porary vacancy. H ow ever, after his evidence before the H u n ter Com m ittee and the growing public criticism of the m artial law regime in the

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39

P u n ja b , it becam e impossible for the governm ent to defend his actio n . C u rio u sly enough, it was not so m uch the brutality of Dyer a n d the rigour o f the m artial law regime in the Punjab, as the B ritish reaction to them during the next twelve m onths which alien a ted G an d h i an d nationalist India from the Raj. T he first im pulse o f the G overnm ent of India was to defend the action of ‘th e m en on the spot’. T he P unjab was practically sealed from the rest o f the country; even lawyers from the neighbouring provinces w ere not allowed to defend the accused being tried by m artia l law tribunals. T h e official enquiry committee, presided over by L ord H u n ter, divided on racial lines; the three Indian m em b ers dissented from the m ajority report signed by their B ritish colleagues. O ne of the Indian m em bers, the eminent ju r is t a n d m oderate politician, Sir C. H. Setalvad, tells in his m em oirs, how in the course of a discussion, Lord H unter lost his te m p e r w ith him and exclaimed: ‘You people w ant to drive the B ritish o u t o f the country’. After this, according to Setalvad, the In d ia n m em bers and Lord H unter, though under the same roof, alm ost ceased to speak to each other.4 T h e English-ow ned new spapers in India, with the exception o f the Times o f India, gave varying degrees of support to General D yer, w ho was lionized as the ‘Saviour of the P unjab’. T h e m ajority report o f the H u n te r C om m ittee signed by the E u ro p ea n m em bers held D yer guilty on two counts: that he had fired w ith o u t w arning, and th at he had gone on firing even after • the crow d had begun to disperse. T he Com m ittee felt that Dyer’s in te n tio n to create a m oral effect was a m istaken conception of his d u ty . T h e C om m ittee did not accept the view that by his actio n D yer h ad saved the situation in the Punjab and avoided a rebellion on a scale sim ilar to the M utiny of 1857. As the tru th about the happenings in the Punjab came out, E dw in M ontagu, the Secretary of State for India, who had been gallan tly defending his subordinates in India, was shocked and em b arrassed . H e saw th at the alienation of Indian opinion was likely to ru in the success of the constitutional reforms for which he h ad laboured for two years. H e suggested the immediate suspension o f Dyer, and enquired from the Viceroy w hether Sir M ichael O ’Dwyer, the Lt. G overnor of the Punjab, could be im p u g n ed for approval of D yer’s action. A nother m em ber of the

40

Gandhi and his Critics

B ritish C abinet, W inston Churchill, who was Secretary of State for W ar, also took a serious view of D yer’s conduct. However, n e ith er M ontagu nor C hurchill could have their way. T he V iceroy did not favour drastic action against Dyer or the cen­ su rin g o f Sir M ichael O ’Dwyer, and the Arm y Council in E ngland agreed only to the m ildest possible action against Dyer w ho was retired on h alf pay with no prospect of future employ­ m en t for com m itting ‘an error ofju d g m en t’. In the House o f Com m ons, C hurchill pooh-poohed the idea th a t D yer had saved India. H e said there were m ore British troops in In d ia than at the time of the M utiny, and they were ‘su p p o rted by appliances’ which did not exist in 1857: ‘the aeroplanes, the railways, and wireless’, which gave increased m eans o f concentrating the troops where they were required. C h u rch ill criticized D yer’s declared intention to teach a m oral lesson as ‘terrorism , frightfulness’, and referred to the Ja llia n w a la Bagh tragedy as a ‘m onstrous event’, that stood ‘in sin g u lar an d sinister isolation’. Some L abour M .P.s were even m ore em phatic in their denunciation of Dyer. Colonel Wedgwood said th a t it was the gravest blot on English history' since the b u rn in g o f Jo a n of Arc. U nfortunately for the governm ent, these words of M ontagu, C h u rch ill and W edgwood were drow ned in the din raised by the ad m irers of D yer in England and India. In the House of C om m ons as m any as 129 m em bers voted against the govern­ m e n t’s m otion censuring D yer’s action. M ontagu was shouted dow n for encouraging lawlessness in India and asked to resign. A p etitio n signed by 93 m em bers o f Parliam ent was presented to Prim e M inister Lloyd George calling for M ontagu’s resigna­ tion from the C abinet.5 T he T ory back-benchers were so angry w ith M ontagu for his criticism of Dyer th at some of them could have even physically assaulted him. In the H ouse of Lords, the g o v ern m en t suffered a defeat on this issue. T h e Morning Post set u p a fund to support Dyer. In D ecem ber 1920, D yer received a ch eq u e for £26317 w ith a letter from the editor of the Morning Post: ‘Y our conduct has m et w ith the approval of a large num ber o f y o u r countrym en although no sum s of money can possibly rep ay the d ebt the Em pire owes you’. T hose who hailed D yer as the ‘saviour of In d ia ’ were a vociferous m inority in Britain; by their acclam ation of Dyer

Amritsar, 1919

41

they w ere m erely dem onstrating their belief th at a European life w as o f greater value than an In d ian ’s and th at the British h a d the divine right to rule the natives. T his belief had been b u ttre ssed by a century of Pax B ritannica and confirmed by B rita in ’s victory in the First W orld W ar. As a British writer p u ts it: ‘T h e retired m ajors of C heltenham and the blood-thirsty spinsters of Pimlico were drunk with victory. Dyer became a sym bol o f their belief in the overwhelm ing m ight and righteous­ ness o f B ritain’.6 G andhi, who had spent three m onths in personally collecting a n d sifting evidence for the enquiry committee appointed by the In d ia n N ational Congress, was shocked by the obstinate refusal o f the governm ent to m ake am ends for the excesses committed in the Punjab. W h at disturbed him and other nationalist leaders w as not so m uch the action of British officers in panic, but the cold-blooded reaction of the British ruling class after the event T h e deepJeeling aroused by the Punjab affair powerfully contri­ buted to the anti-British feeling which fuelled the non-cooperation m ovem ent. A letter w ritten by Sir V alentine Chirol (of The Times) w ho toured India at the end of 1920 sum m ed up the tra u m a tic effect of the events in the Punjab even on m oderate In d ia n opinion: ‘T he conviction has been forced upon me that the P u n ja b issue still dom inates the whole situation & that the inten se bitterness has been produced by m any of the methods of repression, by the long delay in investigating the facts, by the m ildness o f the ultim ate official censure & penalties & by the a ttitu d e o f P arliam ent & the glorification of Dyer in certain E u ro p e a n circles a t hom e an d out here . . .’7 T h e D uke of C o n n a u g h t, w ho visited In d ia in February 1921 to inaugurate the new central legislature set up under the Reforms Act of 1919, rem arked: ‘T h e shadow of A m ritsar has lengthened over th e fair face o f In d ia ’.

CH A PTER 7

The Two Faces of Imperialism

Is it fair, some critics of G andhi ask, to judge the British record in In d ia by an aberration, the m assacre of A m ritsar in 1919? T h a t m assacre was, we are told, ‘not typical’; if British rule for a cen tu ry h ad only one serious blot, it was not doing badly’.1 It is fu rth er claimed that British rule in India was ju st and beneficial, inspired by the highest motives, and th at ‘the vast m ajority of those w ho served in the governm ent of India were devoted to ju stic e an d welfare of the people’. It is certainly true th at terrorism a n d 'b ru tality did not form p a rt o f the norm al m ethods of British adm inistration in India. T h e E ast In dia C om pany was able to extend its rule over the In d ia n subcontinent, w ith a rem arkable economy of British blood an d treasure, by skilfully exploiting the weaknesses and rivalries o f the In d ian princes; it kept up the fiction of M ughal su zerain ty for m any years, and then gradually, alm ost im per­ ceptibly, tightened its grip^on the country. However, the rebellion o f 1857 revealed th at the British could be as vindictive and b arb a ro u s as any other conqueror, when their position was challenged. W h en the British troops shelled their way back into Delhi in the a u tu m n of 1857, the afterm ath of the M utiny was (in the words of a British historian) ‘a case of the scorpians of Rehoboam following the whips of Solom on’.2 No m an ’s life was safe in the city; all able-bodied m en were taken for rebels and shot at sight. T h re e M ughal princes were killed in cold blood by C aptain H odson; twenty-one m ore were hanged shortly afterwards. ‘It is a g reat p ity’, w rote Sir J o h n Lawrence, the Lt. Governor of the P u n jab , about B ah ad u r Shah, the aged M ughal King of D elhi, who had been taken prisoner, th at ‘the old rascal was not sh o t directly he was seen’. As late as 12 D ecem ber 1857, Sir

The Two Faces o f Imperialism

43

J o h n was enquiring: ‘Is private plundering still allowed? Do officers go about shooting natives?’3 After the city had been ransacked and looted, the ‘prize agents’ of the victorious arm y w ere still busy, digging up the floors and walls of deserted houses in search o f buried treasures. G. O. Trevelyan, the nephew an d biographer of M acaulay, described, how after the cap tu re o f Delhi, ‘every m em ber of a class of religious enthusiasts nam ed “ G hazis” was hung, as it were, ex-officio; and it is to be feared th at a vindictive and an irresponsible judge, who plumed h im self upon having a good eye for a “ G hazi” , sent to the gallows m ore th an one individual, whose guilt consisted in looking as if he belonged to a sect which, probably was hostile to o u r religion’.4 T h ere had been a m assacre of European women a n d children at Caw npore; it was am ply avenged by General N eill’s victorious arm y by the wholesale slaughter of the inhabi­ tan ts o f the town. According to Trevelyan, m any people in E n g lan d ‘chuckled to hear how G eneral Neill had forced high caste B rahm ins to sweep up the blood of Europeans m urdered a t C aw npore, an d then strung them in a row w ithout giving th em the tim e requisite for purification’.5 T h e holocaust in the wake of the capture of Lucknow was no less indiscrim inate. A ccording to an eye-witness— a British a rm y officer— ‘any unfortunate who fell into the hands of our troops w as m ade short work of—sepoy or O udh villager, it m attered not— no questions were asked; his skin was black, and did not th at suffice? A piece of rope and the branch of a tree or a rifle bullet through his brain soon term inated the poor devil’s existence’.6 T h e rebellion o f 1857 was a rem inder, if a rem inder was needed, th at the ultim ate sanction for the rule of one country over an o th er, was force. H enceforth the idea of ‘division’ and ‘coun terp o ise’ dom inated British m ilitary policy in India. By 1863 the n u m b er o f E uropean troops was increased to 65,000; the In d ia n troops were reduced to 140,000 and came to be d raw n from areas and com m unities whose loyalty had stood the test o f 1857. T h e report of the commission on reorganization of th e In d ia n arm y in 1879 m entioned the lessons taught by the M u tin y (which had) led to the m aintenance of two ‘great prin­ ciples’ o f retaining in In d ia an irresistible force of British troops a n d keeping the artillery in their hands. T he m ain functions of

Gandhi and his Critics

44

%

th e arm y were to be the protection of the frontier, and (what was euphem istically described as) ‘internal security’. S ir H enry C otton, a m em ber of the Indian Civil Service, who cam e o u t to India in 1867, wrote in his memoirs that the mutiny was then ‘a living m em ory in the minds of all’.7 Forty years later, M alcolm Darling, a young I.C.S. officer, fresh from E ngland, noted in his diary th at the m em ory of 1857 was like a ‘p h a n to m standing behind official chairs’.8 T he British in India rem ained prone to periodical attacks of ‘m utiny-phobia’. In 1907 the Punjab governm ent worked itself into a panic which proved to be wholly unjustified. T he following year, in the wake o f some terrorist outrages, there was a clam our for the imposition o f m artial law in Bengal. O n such occasions, every Briton in In d ia, from the Viceroy dow nw ards, liked to think that he was defending an im perial outpost. ‘T he Raj will not disappear in In d ia ’, L ord M in to, the Viceroy, wrote to Jo h n Morley, the Secretary o f State for India, ‘so long as the British race remains w h a t it is, because we shall fight for the Raj as hard as we have ever fought, if it cam e to fighting, and we shall win as we have alw ays w on’. , Ja w a h a rla l N ehru tells us in his autobiography about the p an ic w hich seized the European com m unity in A llahabad w hen a num ber of Congress leaders, including G andhi, visited A llah ab ad in M ay 1921 to atten d the w edding of Jaw ah arlal’s sister, Vijayalakshm i: I

l e a r n t o n e d a y t h r o u g h a b a r r i s t e r fr ie n d t h a t m a n y E n g l is h

p e o p le w e r e th o r o u g h ly u p se t a n d e x p e c te d so m e s u d d e n u p h e a v a l in th e c it y . T h e y d is t r u s t e d th e ir I n d i a n s e r v a n t s , a n d c a r r ie d a b o u t r e v o l v e r s in t h e ir p o c k e ts . I t w a s e v e n s a i d p r i v a t e l y th a t th e A l l a h a b a d F o r t w a s k e p t in r e a d in e s s fo r th e E n g l i s h c o lo n y to r e t ir e th e r e in c a s e o f n e e d . . . .

I t w a s s a id M a y 1 0 t h (th e d a y

a c c i d e n t a l l y f ix e d fo r m y s i s t e r ’ s m a r r i a g e ) w a s th e a n n i v e r s a r y o f th e o u t b r e a k o f th e m u t i n y a t M e e r u t in 1 8 5 7 a n d th is w a s g o in g to b e c e le b r a te d !9

In fairness to the British, it m ust be acknowledged that the m ore far-seeing am ong them recognized th at they could do an y th in g with bayonets, except sit on them . In 1899, Lord Elgin, the outgoing Viceroy, in an indiscreet o utburst declared th a t ‘In d ia had been won by the sword and, if necessary, m ust

The Two Faces o f Imperialism

45

be held by the sw ord’. H e was soon corrected by Lord Curzon w ho h a d been designated to succeed him. ‘T he mission of the B ritish ’, C urzon said, ‘was to m aintain with justice w hat has been won by the sw ord’.10 W ith no m ore than 1200 Britons in the l.C .S. and 700 in the c ad re o f the In d ian Police, in a country peopled by 250 million, ‘m ass acquiescence’ was a necessary buttress of the Raj. ‘E m p ire ’, as a British historian rem inds us, ‘was impossible w ith o u t In d ian collaborators’.11 T he princes, the titled gentry, the landlords, the caste leaders, and some of the religious m inorities were only too willing to play the part of collaborators. T h e m ajority o f the m em bers of the l.C .S. were hardworking a n d conscientious m en, who were proud of their role in a system of p atern alistic despotism . T he district officer on horseback, touring the countryside, suppressing crime, dispensing impartial ju stic e, visiting schools and dispensaries, was conscious of the aw e a n d even the affection he inspired. W . M . T hackeray, the novelist, wrote in 1844, that ‘upon the w hole a m ore hum ane, considerate and equitable government th an th a t o f the East India Com pany has seldom been witnessed in an y co u n try ’.12 Forty-two years later Sir Richard Tem ple, a form er G overnor of Bombay, was writing in a similar vein: ‘In rec titu d e of pujrpose, in purity of motive, the Government of In d ia can n o t be surpassed’.13 T his habit of self-congratulation w as p a rt o f the ethos of the British rulers of India. T here were of course som e who frankly viewed India ‘as a distant station for troops, as a provision for the younger sons of Scottish Directors, as an investm ent of stock or as a last resource of aspiring lawyers a n d despairing m aids’.14 But Pax B rittanica was not wholly a B ritish conceit; it was appreciated by the rising class of Englishe d u ca te d Indians. W hen Q ueen V ictoria ascended the throne, they n u m b ered a few thousand, and were largely confined to the presidencies o f Bombay, C alcutta and M adras. W hen she died, they w ere h a lf a million and found over the whole country. They believed th a t British rule had evolved order out of the political a n a rc h y o f the eighteenth century; th at it had united the co u n try , an d linked it w ith a network of roads, railways, post offices a n d telegraph; th at it had established a system of law and a d m in istratio n which recognized individual liberty, private p ro p erty , freedom of thought an d worship.

46

Gandhi and his Critics %

II T h e response of the English-educated Indians to the Raj in the la tte r h a lf of the nineteenth century could perhaps be best expressed in the words of M. G. Rariade, judge, historian, econom ist, educationist, social and religious reformer, who was one of the founding fathers of the Indian N ational Congress. T h e British nation, R anade wrote, had its ‘faults and foibles’, b u t it had a m oral elem ent ‘which inspires hope and confidence in colonies and dependencies of G reat Britain, that whatever tem p o rary perturbation may cloud their judgm ent, the reign of law will assert itself in the end’.15 R anade believed that under the im pact of forces released by British rule, India had been roused from the stupor of ages, and there were forces at work w hich were assisting in her social, economic and political reconstruction. W estern learning and science would liberate the In d ian m ind from the thraldom of old world ideas, and In d ia w ould go forward along the road which England herself had traversed— th at of constitutional and peaceful evolution. T h is interaction between the new and the olcj ideas, stim ulated by contact with the W est, was well sum m ed up by R anade’s young friend and disciple, Gokhale: A n a n c ie n t r a c e h a d c o m e in c o n t a c t w i t h a n o t h e r , p o s s e s s in g a m o r e v ig o r o u s , i f a s o m e w h a t m o r e m a t e r ia l is t ic c iv iliz a t io n , a n d i f w e d id n o t w a n t to b e a lt o g e t h e r s u b m e r g e d o r o v e r w h e lm e d , it w a s n e c e s s a r y fo r u s to a s s im ila t e w h a t w a s n o b le a n d w h a t w a s v i g o r o u s in th e n e w in flu e n c e s o p e r a t i n g u p o n u s , p r e s e r v in g a t th e s a m e t im e w h a t w a s g o o d a n d n o b le in o u r o w n s y s t e m . 16

T hese tributes to B ritain and her influence are the more rem arkable because R anade and Gokhale were m en of the h ighest ability, integrity and courage of conviction. They were no favourites of the Raj. A high officer of the Bombay govern­ m en t had once described R anade as the ‘H am pden of the D eccan ’.17 O f Gokhale, Lord H ardinge, the Viceroy, wrote in 1912 t h a t ‘I m istrust him m ore alm ost th an any m an in India’.18 A d m iratio n for the British did not, however, prevent Indian p atrio ts from seeing the seam y side of imperialism. The in eq u itab le allocation of the financial arrangem ents between B ritain and India, and the fallacies in British economic and fiscal policies were exposed by D adabhai Naoroji, Ranade,

The Two Faces o f Imperialism

47

R om esh C h u n d e r D u tt and Gokhale. India was the biggest single foreign m arket for British exports, and the payments for ‘hom e ch arg es’, the profits on British investm ents in India and In d ia n exports to h ard currency areas provided ‘the critical b a la n cin g item in the current balance of paym ents of the British E m p ire an d m ore particularly of B ritain with the rest of the w o rld ’.19 A p a rt from this economic and financial exploitation, there w as p erh ap s no feature of British rule, which was more deeply resented th an the virtual exclusion of the people of India from responsible positions in the civil and military services. No Indian could aspire to a higher rank in the arm y than that of a non­ com m issioned officer, a Subedar, who was ju n io r to the freshest su b a lte rn from England. Indians were perm itted to sit for the e n tra n ce exam ination to the l.C .S. in London, but the dice were heavily loaded against them . T hey had to go to England to com pete w ith the pick of English schools and colleges in subjects o f stu d y peculiarly English. T o cap it all, the age limit was kept delib erately low; the candidates had to be below 19 years. The resu lt was th at the higher echelons of the adm inistration were a v irtu a l B ritish monopoly. In 1897 Gokhale told the Welby C om m ission in London, that the result of this policy of discri­ m in a tio n was th at ‘we m ust live all the days of our life in an a tm o sp h ere o f inferiority and the tallest of us m ust bend in o rd e r th a t the exigencies of the system m ust be satisfied. O u r ad m in istrativ e and m ilitary talents m ust gradually disappear ow ing to sheer disuse, till at last our lot as hewers of wood and draw ers o f w ater in o u r country is stereotyped’.20 T h e l.C .S . included some rem arkable Englishmen whose careers have been lovingly delineated by Philip M ason. But there is no d o u b t that the l.C .S. had grown into a close corpora­ tion o f professional adm inistrators who conducted themselves, a n d often really felt as if they were, in the words of W. S. Blunt, ‘p ractical owners of India, irrem ovable, irresponsible and am en ab le to no authority than that of their fellow m em bers’. T h e y lived in a narrow , circum scribed world of their own— A n g lo -In d ia— which was neither England nor India. They claim ed to be the trustees and guardians of the people of India, b u t they knew little about the comm on people and less about th e rising educated class which aspired to a share in the

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governance of their country. Fleetwood Wilson, the Finance M em b er of Lord H ardinge’s Executive Council, who did not belong to the I.C .S., noticed with the perceptive eye of an o utsider, th at the A nglo-Indian society in Simla and C alcutta was out o f touch with the country over which it ruled: E x t r a v a g a n t , s e lf-c e n t r e d , a r t ific ia l, it s e e m e d b lis s f u lly u n a w a r e o f th e m o u n t a in o f m is e r y o n w h ic h it s a t ; it w a s h a r d l y c o n s c io u s t h a t th e s ta te r e v e n u e w a s w r u n g fro m a p e o p le w h o a re p e r p e tu a lly o n th e b o r d e r l a n d o f s t a r v a t i o n & w h o a t th e b e s t o f tim e s h a v e no l u x u r i e s & n o t m u c h c o m f o r t .21

As the historian of the I.C.S. recognizes, however defensible the system m ay have been in the early years, India had outgrown it in the tw entieth century. It was ‘the despotism of a foreign caste’.22 However benevolent it might try to be, it was a despotism all the sam e, ‘as any system m ust be in which people are given w h at w as good for them instead of w hat they w ant’.23

C H A PTER 8

The 1917 Declaration

Incredible as it may seem, G andhi’s contribution to the political lib eratio n o f In d ia is being questioned. Paul Johnson, a British jo u rn a list, a form er editor of the New Statesman, asserts that ‘it is m isleading to suggest th at G andhi was responsible for the B ritish decision to leave India, th at decision had already been tak en before he began his cam paign’.1 Sir Algernon Rumbold, th e a u th o r o f a m onograph on Indian politics during the years 1915—22, claim s that ‘it was not G andhi’s gimmicks which led to the B ritish w ithdraw al, bu t the declaration of 20 August 1917 fore-shadow ed the end of the British em pire’.2 I f the B ritish governm ent or its agents in India had decided to liq u id ate the Indian em pire before the advent of Gandhi on the political stage, they were rem arkably successful in keeping it a secret, for there is no evidence of such an intention even in th eir confidential records and correspondence. I n the last q u arter of the nineteenth century, the leaders of In d ia n nationalism had looked forward to the day when their c o u n try w ould become a self-governing dom inion within the B ritish empire. A. O. H um e, a friend and confidant of Dadabhai N aoroji, W . C. Bonneijee and Pherozeshah M ehta— whose role in the foundation of the In d ian N ational Congress was crucial— expressed the hope in 1888 that ‘fifty or seventy years hence . . . the G overnm ent of India will be precisely similar to th a t o f the D om inion of C anada; when, as there, each province an d presidency will have its local Parliam ent for provincial affairs, an d the whole country will have its Dominion Parliament for n atio n al affairs, and w hen the only officials sent out to India from E ngland would be the Viceroy and the Governor-General o f In d ia ’.3 T o the educated Indians who took an interest in politics, it

50

Gandhi and his Critics %

was axiom atic that the road to Indian self-government lay th ro u g h the gradual developm ent o f legislatures, with more elected m em bers and larger powers. T o British politicians and officials this seemed an impossible proposition. Lord Dufferin, d u rin g whose viceroyalty the Congress was founded, frankly d o u b ted the feasibility of constitutional reforms in a conquered country ‘in as m uch as self-government and submission to a foreign sovereign are incom patible term s’. T h e stark tru th was that at the turn of the century India was the linchpin of the commercial and defensive organization of the em pire w ith which no m inistry in Britain could dare to tinker. T hese were the days when imperialism was not a dirty w ord, an d British statesm en could speak frankly about w hat B ritain gained from the Indian connection. Lord Curzon, speaking in 1909 as an ex-Viceroy at Edinburgh, asserted that In d ia was not merely a ‘magnificent jewelled pendant, hanging from the Im perial collar, capable of being detached there from w ithout m aking any particular difference to its symmetry or stre n g th ’, but ‘the strategic centre of im perial defence, the g ran ary o f Britain, the source of plantation labour for the colonies, and of raw m aterials for the home industries, and an outlet for British capital and manufactures and a training ground for young Britons in the arts of peace and w ar’.4 It was only n atural that the talk of constitutional reforms and self-governm ent should have disconcerted the British rulers. George H am ilton, the Secretary of State for India, was of the opinion th at the principle of racial equality between Europeans an d In d ian s should never have found a m ention in Queen V ictoria’s Proclamation o f 1858. T he introduction of the English legal system , literary education, competitive exam inations and a free press in India— all these seemed to him in retrospect a series o f blunders. T h e agitation against the Ilbert Bill in the early 1880s had revealed the w idth of the gulf between the ruling race and the people o f India. An attem pt by Lord R ipon’s government to rectify some anomalies in the trial of Europeans by Indian ju d g es, nearly provoked a ‘white m utiny’. Seton-K err, a former Foreign Secretary to the G overnm ent of India, declared that the Ilb e rt Bill outraged the ‘cherished conviction which was sh ared by every Englishm an in India from the highest to the

The 1917 Declaration

51

low est, by the p lan ter’s assistant in his lowly bungalow, and the ed ito r in the full light of the presidency towns— from these to th e C h ief Com m issioner in charge of an im portant province and to the V iceroy on his throne— the conviction in every m an that he belongs to a race whom God had destined to govern and su b d u e ’.5 T h e B ritish officials questioned the fitness of the Indian people for self-governing institutions. But in fairness to them it m u st be conceded th at some of them were not sure that the B ritish parliam entary system was w orth emulating. Jam esFitzjam es Stephen, a form er Law M em ber of the Government o f In d ia , argued in his book, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, that the English parliam entary system paralyzed executive government, an d was a hindrance to good government even in his homeland.6 M o st B ritish officials disputed the right of the rising class of ed u cated Indians to speak for the masses. They saw no need to appease this class, which was in any case a ‘microscopic minority’. ‘T h e real guarantees of our stay in In d ia’, Lord Lamington, the G o v ern o r o f Bombay, wrote, ‘rem ain as strong as ever viz., the caste system , the diversity of nationalities and creeds and the lack o f confidence and trust of one native for another’.7 ‘We m u st realize’, B. Fuller, a form er m em ber of the I.C.S. and a retired Governor, w rote in 1910, ‘that we are foreigners in this co u n try an d a foreign governm ent in the nature of things cannot co m m an d m uch po pular sym pathy’.8 R. H. Craddock, the C h ief C om m issioner of the C entral Provinces, later, the Home M em b er o f the G overnm ent of India, w anted to pu t a stop to all talk o f parliam entary governm ent for In d ia. ‘T here was no q u estio n o f India being on a p a r with British Dominions at any tim e ’, he wrote, ‘the N ational Congress m ust either drop its colonial [Dominion] swaraj creed or cease to e x ist. . . . How long are we to listen to this nonsense about swaraj on the colonial system , w hich is an impossible ideal? . . . Any toying with these people is toying with crim inals and rebels’.9 It is n o t surprising th at the Morley—M into Reforms of 1909 fell far sh o rt of the hopes of In d ian nationalists. Jo h n Morley, the L iberal Secretary of State for India, ruled out parliamentary in stitu tio n s for India. H e was assured by the Viceroy, Lord M in to , th a t w hat galled the educated Indian was not the hum i­ liatio n o f foreign subjection, bu t the frustration of personal

52

Gandhi and his Critics

am bition; a judicious distribution of m ore and better-paid jobs could, therefore, tu rn m alcontents into loyal adherents!10 T he B ritish bureaucrats in Simla and London used all their skill to concede as little as possible, and to hedge, w hat was conceded, w ith safeguards for the Raj. T h e elections to the ‘reformed’ legislatures were indirect, except in the case of the M uslims and th e landlords. O f the twenty-seven elected m em bers of the Im p erial Legislative Councils, thirteen were elected by non­ official m em bers of the provincial legislative councils, six by M uslim s and two by C ham bers of Com merce. T he franchise w as narrow . For example, only eight electors chose the M uslim representative from Bombay. T h e reform s were the handiw ork of a Liberal government, b u t they belied the hopes of the m ost m oderate of Indian nationalists. T he tru th was th at neither the leadership nor the ran k an d file of .the British Liberal Party were prepared for a rad ical change in India. Soon after taking office ^n 1905 the L iberal Prim e M inister, Sir H enry Cam pbell-B annerm an, had declared: ‘It has been a pretty unbroken rule, a wise rule that we assuredly shall not be the first to break, to keep questions of the in tern al adm inistration of In d ia outside the arena of party politics’.11 T h e fact was that the attitude of the Liberal and C onservative parties tow ards In d ia did not really differ in fundam entals. T hey were all for strong and im partial govern­ m ent, for justice betw een In d ian and In d ian and even between In d ia n an d Briton. T he Liberals were perhaps m ore willing th a n the Conservatives to agree to the widening of the base of the legislatures or to the appointm ent of Indians to a few high executive posts, but their object was not to transfer power to In d ia n hands bu t m erely to provide safety-valves for political discontent. T o a generation, w hich bitterly disputed the Irish claim th a t Ireland was a nation, self-government for India could hardly m ake sense. 'Both M orley and M into disclaimed any intention oflaunching In d ia on the p ath to parliam entary democracy. T heir suc­ cessors— Lords Crewe and H ardinge— were equally em phatic th a t In d ia m ust always rem ain a British dependency. Crewe, w ho succeeded M orley at the India Office, in a speech in the H ouse o f Lords in 1912 ridiculed the school of political thought in In d ia which dream t of dom inion self-government: ‘I say

The 1917 Declaration

53

q u ite frankly, th at I see no future for India on those lines. I do not believe, th at the experim ent of attem pting to confer a m easure o f real self-government, with practical freedom from [B ritish] parliam entary control upon a race which is not our ow n . . . is one which could be tried’.12 In the same year, in a confidential m inute circulated to the m em bers of his executive council, the Viceroy, Lord H ardinge, wrote: W h a t e v e r m a y b e th e fu tu re p o lit ic a l d e v e lo p m e n t o f I n d ia , co lo n ia l s e l f - g o v e r n m e n t o n th e lin e s o f B r it is h D o m in io n s is a b s o lu t e ly o u t o f th e q u e s t io n . W e h a v e u n d e r t a k e n th e s e r io u s a n d d iffic u lt ta sk o f g u i d i n g th e d e s t in ie s o f I n d i a a n d o f d e v e l o p i n g h e r c iv iliz a t io n . O u r ta s k is n o t y e t h a lf - c o m p le t e d ; a n d h a v i n g p u t o u r h a n d s to th e p l o u g h , w e c a n n o t tu r n b a c k . T h e p a c e h a s b e e n q u it e fa st e n o u g h o f l a t e — it w o u ld b e w ic k e d to a c c e le r a te it a t th e p re se n t m o m e n t.13

T o H ardinge, a non-official m ajority in his legislative council w as inconceivable. ‘O nce we have a non-official majority in the V iceroy’s Legislative Council’, he wrote, ‘the Viceroy had better pack up his traps and leave the country. His position would be lacking in dignity’.14 H ard in g e and Crewe echoed the thoughts not only of the B ritish policy-makers in London and Simla, bu t of the whole of A nglo-India. T he proposal to appoint Sir S. P. Sinha, an Indian, to the V iceroy’s Executive Council (which Morley initiated, w ith M in to ’s concurrence) m et with fierce opposition. Every m em b er of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, except one, was ag ain st it. T he provincial governm ents were unanim ous in their disapproval. T h e English-owned press in India was highly critical. In London, the Secretary of S tate’s own Council was up in arm s, an d former Viceroys, Curzon, Lansdowne, Elgin and even R ipon, shook their heads. T he Prince of Wales was scandalized, an d K ing George V put on record his vehement pro test against the decision of the C abinet which was ‘fraught w ith the greatest danger to the m aintenance of the Indian E m pire u n d er British rule’.15 N eith er the British governm ent nor the G overnm ent of India h a d any intention of m aking a further move after the MintoM orley reforms. But the outbreak of the First W orld W ar created a new situation; the economic and political ferment g e n erated by the w ar could not be ignored. T he Home Rule

54

Gandhi and his Critics

M ovem ent launched in 1916 by T ilak and M rs Besant m ade a swift a n d strong im pression on the country. M rs Besant set up a b ran c h of her H om e Rule League in England. T he comment of The Times was characteristic: W e h a v e r e c e iv e d c o p ie s o f a l e a f l e t . . . b y a n o b s c u r e a g e n c y c a llin g i t s e l f ‘ H o m e R u l e fo r I n d i a L e a g u e ’ , w h i c h a p p e a r s to h a v e o p e n e d o ff ic e s in L o n d o n . T h e m o s t o m in o u s f e a t u r e is c o n c is e ly in th e d e c l a r a t i o n t h a t ‘ th e G o v e r n m e n t o f I n d i a m u s t c e a s e to b e fo r e ig n and

m u st beco m e In d ia n ’ . A

m o v e m e n t o f th is k in d n e e d n o t

p e r h a p s b e ta k e n s e r io u s ly . C r a n k y p e o p le in th is c o u n t r y d o m a n y m a d t h in g s , b u t s u r e ly th e m a d d e s t is to e n c o u r a g e a H o m e R u l e a g i t a t i o n in I n d i a . 16

T h e Hom e M em ber of the Governm ent of India, Sir Reginald C raddock, who was responsible for law and order in the country, described M rs B esant as ‘a vain old lady influenced by a passionate desire to be a leader of m ovem ents’. Before long the g o v ern m en t’s reaction changed from derision to bewilderment, an d from bew ilderm ent to alarm . T he objective of the Home R ulers, self-governm ent for India w ithin the British empire, m ay seem m odest today, but in 1916 it alarm ed the authorities. T h e m ovem ent deeply stirred the W estern-educated classes an d students; in some provinces it affected the countryside. ‘Sedition in In d ia ’, C raddock w arned, ‘is like the tides which erode a coastline as the sea encroaches . . . . W'e m ust have our dam in order lest it inundate sound lan d ’. T he projected dam against the seditious flood was a declaration o f B ritish policy tow ards India. In a series of ‘C lear-the-Line’ telegram s the Viceroy, Lord Chelm sford, urged the Secretary of S tate, Sir Austen C ham berlain, to hasten an announcem ent by H is M ajesty’s G overnm ent on post-w ar constitutional and adm inistrative changes in India, so as to win over ‘the influential, though timid, unorganized and comparatively inarticulate body o f o pinion which is opposed to and afraid of any sudden and violent changes in the constitution’. T h a t the Viceroy did not envisage any radical changes in the im m ediate future was clear from his telegram of 11 Ju n e 1917: ‘It seems to me th at once we u n d ertak e to define our goal, we can say nothing but that it is the developm ent of free institutions w ith a view to ultim ate self-governm ent. If such a declaration is m ade, then I think it

The 1917 Declaration

55

should be accom panied by a very clear declaration that this is a d ista n t goal and th at anyone who pretends that it is realizable to d ay o r in the early future is no friend to G overnm ent and no friend to In d ia herself. Clearly the Viceroy and his advisers w an ted a statem ent w hich would have a soothing effect on In d ia n opinion, w ithout com m itting the governm ent to any su b sta n tia l constitutional or adm inistrative changes in the near future. T h e B ritish C abinet was too preoccupied with the conduct of the w a r to spare m uch tim e for the niceties of the constitutional a rran g em e n ts in India. Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, asked C urzon, a m em ber of the W ar C abinet and an ex-Viceroy, to take a h an d in drafting the declaration of British policy the term s o f w hich were being telegraphically discussed by the G o v ern m en t o f In d ia and the Secretary of State. Curzon’s a n tip a th y to In d ian nationalism was known, but none of the B ritish m inisters was thinking in term s of a radical change in In d ia. O n 14 A ugust 1917, when the m atter was discussed by the C ab in et, C urzon explained his objections to the word ‘self­ g o v ern m en t’, because Indians would expect it to happen within a generation, ‘while the C abinet probably contemplated an in terv en in g period which m ight extend to 500 years’. He, there­ fore, p u t forward his alternative formula about ‘the full realization o f responsible governm ent’.17 Six days later, Edwin M ontagu, who had recently succeeded A usten C ham berlain, as Secretary of State for India, read the long-aw aited declaration in the H ouse of Commons ‘that the policy o f H is M ajesty’s G overnm ent in India was that of increasin g association o f Indians in every branch of the adm in­ istration, and gradual development of self-governing institutions w ith a view to the progressive realization of responsible govern­ m en t in In d ia as an integral p art of the British Em pire’. T h e d eclaration was enthusiastically received in India. If it raised hopes o f the establishm ent o f a W estm inster style demo­ cracy in In d ia, it was not the fault of those who had drafted it, a n d certainly not o f C urzon, who had approved it. It has been suggested th at w ith all his vaunted m astery of the English language, C urzon m ay have m eant ‘responsible governm ent’ to m ean only ‘governm ent by responsible m en’, and not 'an executive responsible to the legislature’. ‘For once’, writes

56

Gandhi and his Critics «

C u rz o n ’s biographer, ‘his power of setting forth in precise language exactly w hat he had in m ind seems to have deserted h im .’18 Peter R obb, the historian of Chelm sford’s viceroyalty, says th a t the responsible governm ent prom ised in 1917 m eant ‘in fact the devolution of self-governm ent upon the provinces but u n d e r an enduring British C entral G overnm ent: neither full freedom nor a single Indian Dom inion was envisaged. No official h ad the courage to envisage complete [British] w ith­ draw al, and later attem pts were to be m ade to repudiate or re-in terp ret these decisions’.19 Edw in M ontagu sum m ed up the British dilem m a when he recorded in his diary on 10 N ovem ber 1917 th at he was racking his ‘brains as to how I am going to get som ething which India will accept and the House of Com m ons will allow me to do w ith o u t w hittling it dow n’.20 H istorians m ay differ on the exact date on which the British decided to liquidate their Indian em pire, but it certainly was not in 1917, nor indeed, at any time before G andhi assum ed the lead ersh ip of the Indian nationalist movem ent.

C H A PTER 9

Gandhi and the Raj

L ord C u rzo n , who h ad taken a hand in drafting the declaration o f 1917, thought it would take India five hundred years to qualify for self-government. In 1906 D adabhai Naoroji, the m ost v enerated In d ian politician of the day, exhorted Indian n atio n alists to persevere in the face of difficulties. ‘T he Irish have been struggling for 800 years’, he wrote, ‘and here they are stru g g lin g all the same!\A>few years later S. P. Sinha, a brilliant law yer an d the first Indian m em ber of the Viceroy’s Executive C ouncil, estim ated th at In d ia would become a dominion in th ree h u n d red years. T h e em ergence o f G andhi on the political stage in 1919 upset all these calculations o f British statesm en and Indian leaders. H e rem ain ed the dom inant factor in Indian politics for the next th ree decades; his confrontation w ith im perialism was to cul­ m in ate in its liquidation not only in India but in the rest of the w orld. T h e final result was, however, obvious neither to the B ritish n o r to the Indians, while the struggle lasted. G a n d h i’s emergence as the leading actor on the political stag e w as a phenom enon which was as bewildering to the India/i political elite of the day as it was to the British authorities.1 H e h ad retu rn ed to In d ia early in 1915 after twenty years’ ab sen ce in South Africa. For the first few years he seemed to be on the p eriphery of nationalist politics, strangely out of tune w ith the leaders o f the day. A t the annual sessions of the Indian N atio n al C ongress, he was invited to speak on the problems of In d ia n s overseas, b u t he was not in the inner group which sh ap ed C ongress policy. In 1917 he struck Edwin M ontagu, the S ecretary o f State for In d ia, as ‘a social reform er with a real desire to find grievances and to cure them , not for any reasons of self-advertisem ent, but to im prove the conditions of his fellow-

58

Gandhi and his Critics

m en. H e dresses like a coolie, forswears all personal advance­ m en t, lives practically on the air and is a pure visionary’. T his im age of a starry-eyed idealist was strengthened by G a n d h i’s studied abstention from the H om e Rule M ovem ent on the plea th at it was wrong to em barrass B ritain while she was engaged in a life-and-death struggle during the W orld W ar. His broadsides against the m aterialistic civilization of the W est and the use o f English as a m edium of instruction in Indian schools g rated on the ears of the In d ian educated classes, who had le a rn t to adm ire English literature, English history and English politics. ‘W e have been engaged during the last sixty years’, G a n d h i said, ‘in m em orizing strange words and their pronun­ ciation instead o f assim ilating facts’. In the In d ian N ational Congress G andhi found him self out of sy m p ath y w ith both the M oderate and Extrem ist factions. W h a t dism ayed him was their virtual insulation from rural In d ia , w here 90 per cent of the population lived. Both the p arties shared the belief th a t the gam e of politics could best be played in town-halls and council cham bers by the educated, especially the W estern-educated, classes. W h at really divided G a n d h i from parties and politicians in the hom eland was his S o u th A frican experience. Am ong the discoveries he had m ade in the course of those tw enty-odd years was th at constitutional politics for a subject people had definite limits. H e realized that a political contest was a conflict not merely of argum ents, but of interests, th a t a stage could be reached w hen som ething more th a n reasoning was required to redress injustice and to shake off oppression. In South Africa he had evolved his m ethod of sa ty ag ra h a, o f non-violent resistance as an alternative to the use o f force. I t was as the au th o r and practitioner of this m ethod th a t he was to come into a head-on collision w ith the British Raj. D u rin g the First W orld W ar, both G andhi and the Govern­ m en t o f In d ia seemed to be consciously trying to avoid a con­ fro n tatio n . H ardinge had taken a hand, a t the instance of G okhale, in resolving the deadlock between G andhi and Smuts in the final phase of the South African struggle. High British officials in the G overnm ent of In d ia seemed to be aw are that G a n d h i was not a m an to be trifled with. T hey took pains to an sw er his letters and, w hen necessary, to explain things to him

Gandhi and the Raj

59

in person. T hey hoped that his reforming zeal would drain off in the innocuous channels of religious and social reform. Some of them m ay even have hoped to enlist him as an ally, if he cast in his lot w ith the M oderates. But they soon discovered that he w as m uch too independent, candid and unpredictable for their taste. H e seem ed to them capable of conjuring a crisis out of now here. H e could draw the masses like a m agnet, he could m ake high dignitaries look foolish. Even while he criticized the acts o f British officials, he claimed to be their friend. After his arrival in C h am p aran district in Bihar in 1917 had triggered a first class agrarian crisis between the E uropean indigo planters a n d their In d ian tenants, G andhi wrote to the local magistrate th at my

m is s io n is t o t a lly o f p e a c e . T h e g o v e r n m e n t m a c h in e r y is

d e s ig n e d ly

s lo w .

It

m oves

a lo n g

th e

lin e

o f le a s t re s is ta n c e .

R e f o r m e r s lik e m y s e l f w h o h a v e n o o th e r a x e to g r in d , b u t th a t o f r e f o r m t h e y a r e h a n d l i n g fo r th e tim e b e in g , s p e c ia lis e a n d c r e a te a f o r c e w h i c h th e G o v e r n m e n t m u s t r e c k o n w it h .

T h e G overnm ent of India went some way towards placating G an d h i on the crisis in C ham paran, and on such non-controversial subjects as the em igration of indentured labour to the B ritish colonies. But they did not accept his claim that he was a d isinterested bridge-builder between the people and an irres­ ponsible executive. T hey did not like his intervention on behalf o f the Ali Brothers, who had been interned for their Pan-Islamist sym pathies, or on behalf of the drought-stricken peasants in G u ja ra t, who were pleading for a remission of land revenue. T h e a ttitu d e of the G overnm ent of India towards G andhi h a rd e n ed w hen he denounced the Rowlatt Bills. Lord C helm sford’s reaction to G an d h i’s call for satyagraha was to ‘call his blufF. T he governm ent thought of clapping him into prison. O n 11 April 1919 Sir George Lloyd, the Governor of B om bay, m et the Viceroy at K alka near Simla to discuss a proposal to deport G andhi along with five other political leaders to B u rm a. An idea of the official hostility to G andhi may be form ed from a telegram sent by Sir W illiam V incent, the Home M em b er, to the M oderate leader Surendranath Banerjee on 13 A pril in w hich he described G andhi as having ‘put himself entirely beyond the pale. No one disputes M r. G andhi’s sincerity

60

Gandhi and his Critics

a n d we all regret his w rong-headedness, bu t I think you will agree he has crossed the boundary . . . . It is quite impossible to tre a t w ith h im ’.2 T hree days earlier, on 10 April, G andhi had in fact been arrested while he was on his way to Delhi and brought back by train to Bom bay. T h e disturbances in Bombay, A h m ed ab ad and other places provoked by his arrest, however, forced the governm ent to retrace their steps. G andhi himself w as taken aback by the popular reaction to his arrest in his hom e province and helped in restoring peace quickly. M ean­ w hile, a terrible tragedy had been enacted a t A m ritsar and m artia l law proclaim ed in the Punjab. L ord Chelm sford’s gov­ ern m en t h ad b u rn t its firigers in the initial stage of G andhi’s R ow latt Bills Satyagraha; if in the ensuing m onths it was re lu c ta n t to lay its hands on G andhi, it was not because it had discovered the virtues of ‘non-intervention’, but because the risks o f intervention seemed too great. II W hile launching satyagraha in 1919 G andhi posed the issue betw een him and the authorities ‘T h e G overnm ent w ant to show th a t they can disregard public opinion. W e m ust show th a t they cannot do so’.3 D uring the next twelve m onths, other p o p u la r grievances, such as the attitu d e of the governm ent to the P u n jab tragedy and the T urkish peace treaty, were added to the R ow latt laws. By the end of 1920 it was a straight fight for ‘sw ara j’ (self-government) for India. G andhi called for ‘swaraj w ith in a y e ar’; constitutional reforms doled out in instalm ents w ere no longer acceptable. T his dem and seem ed wholly un­ realistic to the British rulers of India. T h e declaration of 1917 h a d never been intended as a prom ise of self-governm ent in the n e a r future; at best it was a will-o’-the wisp to beguile Indian natio n alists for decades, if not for centuries. In February 1922, w h en G an d h i was planning a cam paign of m ass civil dis­ obedience, Lord Reading, the Viceroy, was pulled up by his superiors in London for vacillation and weakness in handling the m ovem ent. W e learn from the British C abinet papers that W in sto n C hurchill expressed his ‘strong opposition to the p rev alen t idea th at the B ritish Raj was doom ed’, and insisted th a t B ritain ‘m ust strengthen her position in In d ia ’.4 Lloyd

Gandhi and the Raj

61

G eorge, the British Premier, assured his colleagues that if there w as an a tte m p t to challenge the British position in India, ‘the w hole stren g th o f B ritain would be put forward to m aintain B ritish ascendancy in India. Every section of the population of G re a t B ritain shared th at view: a challenge to our position and rule in In d ia w ould be taken up by the whole country with a stre n g th an d resolution that would am aze the w orld’.5 L loyd George headed a coalition governm ent. The Conser­ vatives an d the Liberals did not, however, differ on the essentials o f the In d ia n policy. N or did the L abour governm ent during its b rie f ten u re in 1924 show the will, or even the desire, to strike o u t a new line in its Indian policy. In 1929, when the Labour P arty was voted back to office, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, with the ap p ro v al o f W edgwood Benn, the Secretary of State for In d ia , issued a statem ent that ‘the natural issue of India’s co nstitu tio n al progress’, as contem plated in the M ontagu’s d e clara tio n o f A ugust 1917, was ‘the attainm ent of dominion s ta tu s ’. T h e statem ent raised a storm in England. All the ‘e x p erts’ on In d ia including former Viceroys and Secretaries of S tate— R eading, Birkenhead, Peel, W interton, Simon, Austen C h a m b e rla in and Crewe— were scandalized by the specific reference to Dom inion Status for India. T he Labour government w as on the defensive, and explained away the Viceroy’s decla­ ratio n as m erely a re-statem ent o f w hat had been said earlier. It is significant th at the Simon Commission, in its report published in 1930, fought shy of the phrase ‘Dom inion S tatus’, and never once used it. T h e L ab o u r governm ent’s brief experim ent in political con­ ciliation in 1930-1, which received a tem porary boost from the G a n d h i-Irw in Pact in 1931, came to an ab ru p t end with the o nset o f an econom ic crisis in Britain, and the formation of a C onservative-dom inated ‘N ational governm ent’ in the autum n o f 1931. T h e British policy ‘veered from the way of experi­ m en tin g w ith p artn ersh ip tow ards the old imperial ways of p a te rn alism , collaboration and repression’.6 Since British public opinion was not ready for a real devolution o f a u th o rity to Indian hands, it was necessary— as the Manchester Guardian once p u t it— to ‘devise a constitution that seems like self-governm ent in In d ia and at W estm inster like British R aj’. T h e arch itects o f the Act o f 1935 seized on the concept of an

62

Gandhi and his Critics %

A ll-In d ia Federation, incorporating British In d ian provinces a n d princely states, to weaken the nationalist element in the new constitution. As Sir Sam uel H oare, who piloted the reforms th ro u g h the H ouse of Com m ons, confided to his Conservative colleagues, the federal structure could be a handy instrum ent to yield ‘a sem blance of responsible governm ent and yet retain in o u r h an d s the realities and verities of British control’.7 Four years after the passage of the Act of 1935, the Viceroy, Linlithgow (who h ad been the C hairm an of the Jo in t Select Com m ittee of th e B ritish Parliam ent for constitutional reforms), rem inded Z etlan d , the Secretary of State for India: A f t e r a ll w e f r a m e d th e c o n s t it u t io n , a s it s t a n d s in th e A c t o f l 9 3 5 , b e c a u s e w e t h o u g h t t h a t w a s th e b e s t w a y — g i v e n th e p o lit ic a l p o s it io n in b o t h c o u n t r ie s — o f m a i n t a i n i n g B r i t i s h in flu e n c e in I n d i a . I t is n o p a r t o f o u r p o l i c y , I ta k e it, to e x p e d it e th e c o n s t it u ­ t io n a l c h a n g e s f o r t h e ir o w n s a k e , o r g r a t u i t o u s l y to h u r r y th e h a n d i n g o v e r o f c o n tr o ls to I n d i a n h a n d s a t a n y f a s t e r p a c e t h a n w e reg ard

a s b e s t c a l c u l a t e d o n a l o n g v i e w to h o ld I n d i a to th e

E m p ir e .8

It w as Linlithgow who, w ith C hurchill’s backing, spiked the gu n s o f Sir Stafford C ripps, w hen he cam e out to India in April 1942. T h e following year, he told his successor Field M arshal W avell th a t British rule in In d ia w ould last for another thirty years.9 As for C hurchill, alm ost till the end, he rem ained the relentless opponent of G andhi an d In d ian nationalism . W e have it on good authority th at he hoped for a solution of the In d ia n problem w hereby the ‘British m ight sit on top of a trip o s-P a k h ista n , Princely In d ia an d the H in d u s’.10 I f he h ad been retu rn ed to power in 1945, it is not unlikely th at he would have stalled a solution indefinitely, or attem pted the balkaniza­ tion o f In d ia so as to ensure B ritain’s position as the suprem e a rb ite r in the subcontinent. » T h e B ritish policy tow ards India thus grew out of the funda­ m en tal fact th at there was an unbridgeable gap between w hat the B ritish were prepared to offer and w hat nationalist India, led by G andhi, was prepared to accept. It was only natural for th e B ritish to try to rally all those who were bound to them by the ties o f self-interest— the princes, the landlords, the titled gen try , the religious m inorities. It was also inevitable th at when

Gandhi and the Raj

63

G a n d h i launched civil disobedience in 1919—22, 1930-1 or in 1940-2, the governm ent used all its resources for the repression o f the m ovem ent. Ill

It has been suggested th at G andhi and the Indian National C ongress were fortunate in being pitted against the British, ‘a civilized an d hum ane n atio n ’. However, as the m utiny of 1857 h a d show n, w hen their pow er was challenged, the British could also be ruthless. T here was no equivalent of Siberia in the In d ia n subcontinent, b u t hundreds of young m en accused of terro rist conspiracies were deported to the far-ofT, dreaded islan d s, the A ndam ans. T h e British were careful not to repeat the A m ritsa r m assacre of 1919, but when it cam e to repressing sedition, they were not held back by any ‘m isplaced’ hum anity. I f the governm ent took its time in arresting G andhi in 1922u or in 1930, it was because it was uncertain of the popular reaction. T h e tim ing and the q u an tu m of force used against the satya­ g ra h a struggles were intended to ensure the most favourable resu lts from the official point of view. Lord Irw in did not in terfere w ith G an d h i’s m arch to D andi for the breach of the Salt Law s, because the very idea of unseating the King-Emperor by boiling sea-w ater in a kettle was considered absurd and im p ractical. W hen the m ovem ent gathered m om entum , the ‘C h ristia n V iceroy’ struck hard, and issued a series of drastic o rd in an c es to arm the executive w ith vast powers to suppress the m ovem ent; Congress processions and meetings were forcibly broken up, and more than 60,000 m en and women were clapped in to prison. T h e G a n d h i film includes a scene of the barbarous beatingu p o f G a n d h i’s adherents by the police at D harsana Salt Works in 1930. T h e authenticity of this scene has been questioned by som e critics, b u t it was actually witnessed by an Am erican c o rresp o n d en t, W ebb M iller of the New York Telegram, who recalled: In

e i g h t e e n y e a r s o f r e p o r t i n g in t w e n t y - t w o

w h ic h

I

h a v e w itn e sse d

in n u m e r a b l e

c o u n t r ie s d u r i n g

c iv il d is t u r b a n c e s , rio ts,

s t r e e t - f i g h t s a n d r e b e llio n s , I h a v e n e v e r w it n e s s e d s u c h h a r r o w i n g s c e n e s a s a t D h a r s a n a . T h e W e s t e r n m in d c a n g r a s p v io le n c e

64

Gandhi and his Critics •

r e t u r n e d b y v io le n c e , c a n u n d e r s t a n d a fig h t, b u t it is, I fin d , p e r p l e x e d a n d b a ffle d b y th e s ig h t o f m e n a d v a n c i n g c o ld ly a n d d e lib e r a t e l y a n d s u b m it t in g to b e a tin g s w it h o u t d e fe n c e . S o m e tim e s th e s c e n e s w e r e so p a in f u l, I h a d to tu rn a w a y m o m e n t a r ily . O n e s u r p r i s i n g fe a t u r e w a s th e d is c ip lin e o f th e v o lu n te e r s . I t s e e m e d t h e y w e r e t h o r o u g h ly im b u e d w it h G a n d h i ’ s n o n -v io le n t c r e e d . . . . D u rin g

th e m o r n in g I s a w

h u n d r e d s o f b lo w s in flic te d b y th e

p o lic e , b u t n o t a s in g le b lo w r e t u r n e d b y th e v o lu n t e e r s .12

T h e D h arsan a raid was not an isolated episode. W illiam L. Shirer, a well-known journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of A d olf Hitler, who covered the Salt Satyagraha for the Chicago Tribune in 1930 has borne testim ony to police beatings in .Bom bay, C alcutta, Delhi, Lahore and other places. ‘It was a sickening sight’, he writes in his memoirs. ‘I had marvelled, at the m agnificent discipline of non-violence which the genius of G an d h i had taught them. They had not struck back, they had not even defended themselves, except to try to shield their faces a n d heads from lathi blows’.13 W illingdon, who succeeded Irwin as Viceroy, had even fewer q u alm s in sanctioning sledge-ham m er tactics against Gandhi an d the Congress when he goaded them into a resum ption of civil disobedience in 1932. T he mood of the authorities in India is reflected in a letter written by Sir Frederick Sykes, the Governor o f Bom bay, to the Viceroy in N ovem ber 1931, in which he urged ‘a really rapid, organized and weighty handling’ of civil disobedience. Sir Frederick wrote: T h e la s t th in g I c a n c o n c e iv e , is th a t w e s h o u ld b e ju s t if ie d in g o in g s lo w

u n til th e m o v e m e n t g a in e d s t r e n g t h . A b o v e a ll, w e m u st

s e l e c t o u r w e a p o n s to fig h t th e C o n g r e s s , a n d n o t fa ll in to the m is t a k e o f d o in g w h a t o u r o p p o n e n t s e x p e c t . I c a n n o t d o b e tte r t h a n q u o t e th e v i e w s w h i c h th e C o m m i s s i o n e r o f P o lic e , B o m b a y , h a s r e c e n t ly e x p r e s s e d o n th e s u b je c t : ‘ T h e y [th e C o n g r e s s ] r e ly o n t h e t r a d it io n a l h u m a n i t y o f th e B r it is h c o m b i n e d w it h th e ir fe a r o f i n t e r n a t i o n a l c r it ic is m

to p r o t e c t th e m

fr o m

a n y r e a lly d r a s t ic

^ a c tio n , a n d t h e y th u s p e r s u a d e u s to fig h t th is re b e llio n o n th e ir t e r m s , a n d w it h m e t h o d s c h o s e n b y th e m . W e c a n n o t p o s s ib ly e m b a r k o n a n o t h e r c a m p a i g n o f th is k in d o f w a r f a r e . It p r o lo n g s th e a g o n y , a n d is u n d ig n ifie d . I n s t e a d o f fe a r , w h ic h is th e ro o t o f a ll d e c e n t g o v e r n m e n t , it b e g e t s c o n t e m p t . It is in m y o p in io n e s s e n t ia l th a t th e fa c t t h a t th e G o v e r n m e n t in t e n d s to tre a t a r e n e w a l o f c iv il d is o b e d ie n c e m o v e m e n t w it h th e s e v e r it y w h ic h a r e b e l lio n d e m a n d s s h o u ld b e c le a r ly d e m o n s t r a t e d .’

Gandhi and the Raj

65

T h e opinion expressed by some w riters th at the British deli­ b erately handled G andhi and the Congress softly has no basis in fact. T h e repression unleashed by W illingdon early in 1932 w as all-em bracing. T hrough a series of ordinances the central a n d provincial governm ents assum ed every conceivable power. T h e C ongress W orking Com m ittee, the Provincial Committees a n d in n u m erab le local com m ittees were declared illegal; h u n d re d s o f organizations allied with or sym pathetic to the C ongress, such as Y outh Leagues, national schools, Congress libraries and even Congress hospitals were outlawed. Buildings, p ro p erty , autom obiles, bank accounts were seized; public g ath erin g s an d processions were forbidden, and newspaper and p rin tin g presses were fully controlled. M eetings were forcibly disp ersed . Punitive police was posted in refractory villages at the cost o f the inhabitants. L ands and houses seized for non­ p a y m e n t o f taxes were sold irrevocably for a song. Ja il adm in­ istratio n h ardened. G a n d h i’s English discipline, Miss Slade, th e d a u g h te r o f an A dm iral of the British Fleet, gave an eye­ w itness acco u n t o f the conditions in a wom en’s prison in B om bay. H e r neighbours in this gaol were three criminals, two thieves a n d a prostitute; these crim inals were not locked up for the night, while the political prisoners were. W omen political priso n ers w ere allowed to interview their children only through iron b a rs .14 T h e governm ent systematically choked the publicity channels o f the C ongress. In the first six m onths of 1932, according to a sta te m e n t in the British Parliam ent, securities had been d e m a n d e d from 98 printing presses and action taken under the Press L aw s against 109 jo u rn alists.15 In Bengal even the pro­ ceedings o f the provincial legislative council could not be pub­ lished if they contained criticism of the governm ent. In some provinces it was an offence for a new spaper to publish photo­ g ra p h s o f G an d h i and other Congress leaders. T he Government o f In d ia w ent so far as to seek the assistance of the authorities in L o n d o n to stop the royalties to the A ll-India Spinners’ Associa­ tion from the sale o f C olum bia G ram ophone C om pany’s record c o n ta in in g a talk by G andhi on the existence o f God. T h o se who w an t to get a feel of this period would do well to re a d Ja w a h a rla l N e h ru ’s autobiography. He gives a glimpse of th e ‘terrib le occurrences’ in Bengal and N orth-W est Frontier

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Province where the conditions resembled m artial law, of the o rdinances, of the hunger strikes and other sufferings in prison. S c o r e s o f t h o u s a n d s w e r e r e f u s i n g to b e n d b e fo r e th e p h y s ic a l m i g h t o f a p r o u d e m p ir e , a n d p r e f e r r e d to se e th e ir b o d ie s c r u s h e d , t h e ir h o m e s b r o k e n , th e ir d e a r o n e s s u ffe r , r a t h e r th a n y ie ld th e ir s o u ls . . . .

In o u r c o u n tr y , w e m o v e a b o u t a s su sp e c ts, sh a d o w e d

a n d w a t c h e d , o u r w o r d s re c o rd e d lest th e y in frin g e th e a ll-p e r v a d in g l a w o f s e d it io n , o u r c o r r e s p o n d e n c e o p e n e d , th e p o s s ib ilit y o f s o m e e x e c u t i v e p r o h ib i t io n o r a r r e s t a l w a y s f a c in g u s.

In A pril 1932, N eh ru ’s old m other Sw arup Rani, the widow of the great M otilal N ehru, joined a Congress procession in A llah ab ad , which was stopped and beaten up by the police. She was knocked down and hit repeatedly on the head. T h e British officials in India m ay have taken even harsher m easures for the suppression of G andhi’s m ovements, but for two constraints under which they had to function. O ne was the fear of criticism in the British press and Parliam ent, which alw ays had a few doughty cham pions of freedom for India. T he o th er constraint was the fact th at G an d h i’s cam paigns by and large rem ained non-violent, and barbarous treatm ent of men an d wom en who had consciously renounced violence was likely to alienate even those who stood outside the political arena. IV G andhi had his own constraints. Satyagraha required the severest self-discipline, the p ractice of non-co-operation w ith the o p p o n en t w ithout hatred, and of resistance w ithout retaliation. T h e ad h eren t of satyagraha could invite suffering at the hands o f the oppressor, but not inflict it on him. G andhi deliberately discouraged the involvement of the peasantry and the industrial w orkers in his cam paigns; he also excluded the princely states from the purview of his m ovem ent. All these self-denying ordi­ n ances w ere intended for better regulation of the m ovement and keeping it free from violence. In April 1919 while he was lau n ch in g his first satyagraha struggle, G andhi told C. R. Das, the natio n alist leader of Bengal, that ‘in Satyagraha there was no d a n g er from outside, bu t only from within; if there was dep artu re from truth and non-violence, whatever the provocation,

Gandhi and the Raj

67

the m ovem ent would be dam ned. Satyagraha adm its of no com prom ise w ith itselP.16 H e advised Das to avoid processions a n d large gatherings until it was certain that the crowds could be controlled. W hen violence broke out at A hm edabad and B om bay in the wake of his arrest in April 1919, he immediately su sp en d ed satyagraha. T hree years later, in February 1922, he b ru sh e d aside the protests of his close colleagues, and called off m ass civil disobedience after a riot in a rem ote village in the U n ited Provinces, because he cam e to the conclusion that the a tm o sp h ere in the country was not favourable for a non-violent m ass m ovem ent. Som e o f G a n d h i’s colleagues chafed under the moral straitja c k e t o f satyagraha. It seem ed to them that he expected too high a sta n d a rd o f conduct from a mass m ovem ent, that if all his instructions were fully observed the movement would be reduced to pious futility. T h eir scepticism was m irrored in a letter w ritte n in the early thirties to Jaw ah arlal N ehru by Rafi Ahmed K id w ai, a staunch Congress leader from the U .P. ‘If we w ant to m ake fu rth er progress, we will have to make an attem pt to destroy the m entality created by the C.D. [civil disobedience],. . . W e will have to give up the present standards of scrupulousness, p erso n al integrity, honesty and political am iability’.17 Ironically, G andhi got no credit from the British for the re stra in ts he im posed on his followers. T he British rulers of In d ia ten d ed to see in G andhi only a M achiavellian politician, w ith the C ongress as his pliant tool, who was exploiting men a n d situ atio n s for his own ends. T he political problem in India struck them prim arily as an adm inistrative one, requiring timely a n d ju d ic io u s use of force. T hey could hardly see the intellectual a n d ethical roots o f the m ovem ent for political liberation: the e n th u sia sm it evoked struck them as a variant of ignorant fanaticism . T o G andhi the non-violent basis of the movement w as its m ost significant feature; to the British the conscious m o ral superiority o f G andhi and his followers was simply an a d d itio n a l irritation. As W illingdon pu t it in a speech to the C en tra l Legislative Assembly on 5 Septem ber 1932: ‘The leaders o f the C ongress believe in w hat is generally known as direct a ctio n , w hich is an exam ple of the application of force to the p ro b lem s o f politics. T h e fact th at the force applied is as a rule n o t physical force in no way alters the essential characteristics

68

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o f the attitu d e which at the present m om ent inspires Congress policy’. T hose who had grown grey in the service of the Indian em pire were not taken in by the language of non-violence, how ever m uch it was flavoured with m orality and religion. T h ey did not like the idea of being evicted from India even non-violently. A nd in fairness to them , it m ust be conceded that m any o f them sincerely believed that India, with its welter of races an d languages and internal divisions and defencelessness ag ain st foreign invasion, was not ripe for self-government. T h e guardians of the Raj had thus entrenched themselves behind a wall of prejudice. G andhi’s satyagraha struggles were designed to penetrate this wall. W hen reasoning failed, v oluntary suffering at the hands of the opponent might melt his h eart and release the springs which hindered understanding. In practice this m ethod of ‘attack’ on the opponent was neither easy nor quick in producing results. G andhi found that there was a lim it to the num ber of patriots who could be persuaded to plunge in the non-violent fight for freedom, and open themselves to the risks of broken limbs, broken homes and broken careers. T hose who took up satyagraha were enjoined to do their duty, irrespective of the chances of success or failure. There were, however, m elancholy periods— such as during the years 1933-4 an d 1943-4—w hen it was difficult to stem despondency' and dem oralization in nationalist ranks. D uring his South African struggle and his visits to England in the years before the First W orld W ar, G andhi had formed his ow n im age of the British character. ‘T he British are said to love liberty for themselves and for others’, he said, ‘but they have a faculty for self-delusion that no other nation has’.18 T he British h ad , however, a quality, which G andhi greatly adm ired. ‘I have found E nglishm en’, he wrote, ‘am enable to reason and per­ suasion, and as they always wish to appear ju st, it is easier to sham e them than others into doing the right thing’.19 T h e confrontation between G andhi and the British lasted for a q u a rte r o f a century. G andhi’s civil disobedience campaigns w ere a source of great anxiety and tension to the British author­ ities, while they lasted. But each cam paign seemed to peter out after some time when the torrent of satyagrahi prisoners became a trickle. After each cam paign, the governm ent felt it had won a

Gandhi and the Raj

69

victory over the Congress and G andhi was finished as a political leader. T his was a delusion. Ip 1934 W illingdon was shocked, w hen the Congress, despite the ruthless repression of the pre­ ceding two years, swept the polls in the election to the Central L egislative Assembly. Linlithgow ’s ostensibly successful blitz­ krieg against G andhi and the Congress in 1942 similarly proved a P y rrhic victory: the British had to pay heavily for it in the total liq u id a tio n o f the Raj. '

V

In retrospect it seems that the ding-dong battle between Gandhi a n d the governm ent had results the significance of which was no t recognized at the time. G andhi removed the spell of fear and thus knocked off an im portant pillar of imperialism. He stemmed th e tide o f political terrorism 20 which, starting from Bengal after the p a rtitio n o f th at province, had been rising throughout the years o f the First W orld W ar. D uring the next quarter century in w hich the Congress was engaged in a fight with the govern­ m en t, it was able to throw up a cadre of political leaders capable o f taking over the reins of the governm ent after the British d e p a rtu re . G a n d h i’s m ethod created a dilem m a for the British. If the n atio n alist upsurge in In d ia had been violent, the problem w ould have been relatively simple. As it was, they found that n e ith er indifference, nor repression really worked against G a n d h i. N on-intervention allowed the agitation to snowball; repression o f unarm ed m en and women, who refused to retaliate, w on the sym pathy o f the m ultitude and deepened its alienation from the Raj. T h e im perial base for collaboration was eroded over the years. T he princes, the landlords and the titled gentry lost th eir influence and were of little use in bolstering the prestig e o f the Raj. As the tensions between the political parties sh a rp e n e d com m unal antagonism and economic discontent a n d increased turbulence in the towns and the countryside, the th o u sa n d -o d d British civil servants in India found the task of go v ern in g the country unm anageable. T h e Second W orld W ar changed the m ap of the world. T he U n ite d States o f A m erica and the Soviet U nion emerged as the tw o su p e r powers, a n d B ritain was left with neither the means

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n o r the will for a global, strategic and im perial role. T he intel­ lectual and social ferm ent in Britain, of which the Labour P a rty ’s trium ph in 1945 was an expression, helped in reassessing the m erits o f traditional British policies towards India. Ideo­ logically, the L abour Party had been moving towards a new o rien tatio n for quite some time; as far back as J u n e 1938, Attlee an d C rip p s had discussed w ith Ja w ah arlal N ehru possibilities o f early independence for India and of participation of the In d ia n N ational Congress in the G overnm ent of India.21 But the facts o f the Indian situation after the Second W orld W ar also drove the L abour Party in the sam e direction. Speaking on 6 M arch 1947 in the H ouse of Com m ons on the condition of In d ia in N ovem ber and D ecem ber 1945, A. V. Alexander, who h ad been a m em ber o f the C abinet Mission to India, recalled: ‘I t m ig h t be said th at the Indian authorities were literally sittin g on the top of a volcano, and as a result of the situation w hich h ad arisen after the w ar, the out-break of revolution m ig h t be expected at any tim e’. Such was the irascibility of the p o p u lar tem per th at early in 1946 there were violent outbreaks a t the slightest provocation, and som etim esw ithout any provo­ cation. T h ere were incidents of indiscipline in the Air Force and a m ajo r naval m utiny in Bombay. In several provinces there w ere signs of disaffection spreading to the police. T h e instru­ m ents o f law and order, on which the British rule ultimately d ep en d ed , were proving broken reeds. ' It was, however, not merely the compulsion of events, but a m easure o f idealism which inspired the policy which Prime M in ister A ttlee initiated and carried through during the years 1946—7. A nd in so far as the British governm ent was impelled by this idealism , by a desire to open a fresh chapter in Indo-British relations, it was a victory for G andhi, who had pleaded for nearly th irty years for a transform ation of the relationship betw een the two countries. *M alcolm M uggeridge, who spent a year in C alcutta in the m id-th irties as A ssistant E ditor of the C alcutta Statesman, writes in his m em oirs th at he could not recall m eeting ‘a single British businessm an or official, soldier or even missionary, who consi­ d e re d it possible th at the British Em pire in India was to end before the tw entieth century had h a lf run its course’. T he B ritish belief was th at ‘the Raj, in one form or another would go

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on for centuries yet’.22 T en years later, when the Labour govern­ m en t decided to transfer power to Indian hands, many British politicians, officials and non-officials regarded it nothing short o f a scu ttle.23 T h eir feelings are graphically reflected by the novelist Jo h n M asters, who came of a family that had served in In d ia for five generations: ‘G lam ourous Dickie [M ountbatten] a n d A ttlee w ith their three m onths’ knowledge between them, breaking up in half a year w hat it took us centuries to build’. T h e d esp air and rage of the ‘colonials’, unable to reconcile them selves to decolonization in 1947, comes out in the words of J o h n M a ste rs’ hero Rodney Savage: ‘But it’s time to go. T h a t’s the whole sad story. Tim e to go. But I ’m not going. Never, see? It is not your country. It is mine. I m ade it for a hundred centuries. I and my great grand-father . . .’ It is doubtful, if w ithout ‘G andhi’s gimmicks’24— to borrow Sir A lgernon R um bold’s phrase— the British would have wound u p the In d ian empire in 1947. T he British historian Arnold T oy n b ee has therefore a point when he says that G andhi was as m u ch a benefactor of Britain as of his own country: ‘He m ade it im possible for the British to go on ruling India, but a t the same tim e he m ade it possible for us to abdicate w ithout rancour and w ith o u t dishonour . . . . In helping the British to extricate them ­ selves from this [imperial] entanglem ent G andhi did them a signal service for it is easier to acquire an empire than to disengage from one’.25 As G an d h i had hoped and predicted, the liberation of India in 1947 tu rn ed out to be a prelude to the liquidation of imperial­ ism in Asia and Africa. In this process of voluntary decolonization an d tran sm u tatio n of their all-white empire into a multi-racial C om m onw ealth the British were guided by a sound political instinct. As Q ueen Elizabeth in her speech at Philadelphia on 6 J u ly 1976 on the occasion of the U nited States Bicentennial said, ‘th e B ritish lost the Am erican colonies in the eighteenth, cen tu ry because we lacked th at statesm anship to know the right tim e, and m an n er of yielding w hat is impossible to keep’.26

CHA PTER 10

Religion and Politics

‘M r. G an d h i’s religious and moral views are, I believe admirable an d indeed are on a rem arkably high altitu d e’, wrote Reading, soon after his first m eeting with the M ahatm a, ‘but I m ust confess th a t I find it difficult to understand his practice of them in politics.’1 Reading was not the only Viceroy in feeling the difficulty; his predecessors and successors had the same com plaint. Indeed, some of G andhi’s own colleagues and followers grum bled th at he tended to mix religion with politics. M u ch o f the confusion arose from the fact that G andhi’s concept o f religion had little in cOmmon with w hat commonly passes for organized religion: dogmas, rituals, superstition and bigotry. Shorn of these accretions, G andhi’s religion was simply an ethical framework for the conduct of daily life. M an y people, who are prepared to concede the value of an ethical framework in dom estic and social spheres, question its feasibility in politics, which are proverbially ‘the a rt of the possible’. For most politicians politics is a gam e which they m ust play, and play to win; w hat is expedient takes precedence over w h at is m oral. Tilak, the most influential nationalist leader in In d ia at the time, told G andhi in 1918: ‘Politics are not for sadhus (holy m en)’.2 C uriously enough, it was Gokhale, the M oderate leader, w hom G andhi hailed as his ‘political m entor’, who first talked o f ‘spiritualising politics’. Gokhale was far from being a m an of religion; not even his worst enemies questioned his secular credentials. But his com m itm ent to the nationalist cause was total, an d his personal life was noted for its simplicity and au sterity . He was convinced th at In d ia’s dire need was of men who could give all their talents and all their time to her service. For centuries, India had her bands of sanyasins (ascetics) who

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73

had tu rn ed their backs upon worldly ambitions, and consecrated them selves to the service of God and m an. Gokhale wondered w h eth er this reserve of self-sacrifice could be tapped for the social an d political regeneration of the country. In his farewell address to Fergusson College in 1904 he had said that ‘the prin cip al m oral interest of this institution is in the fact that it rep resen ts an idea an d embodies an ideal. T he idea is that In d ia n s o f the present day can bind themselves together, and p u ttin g aside all thoughts o f worldly interest, work fora secular p urp o se w ith the zeal an d enthusiasm which we generally find in the sphere o f religion alone’.3 T h is idea of ‘spiritualising politics’, of evoking abnegation a n d self-denial for secular causes, which inspired Gokhale to establish the Servants of India Society, also appealed to Gandhi; he ap p lied it to the various ashram s he set up in South Africa an d In d ia. B ut he went further, and extended the application of this idea to the political field. Satyagraha, his method of resolving conflicts, drew its dynam ic from his deeply-held reli­ gious an d philosophical beliefs, which were not exclusively H in d u . H e acknowledged his debt not only to the Gita and the Upanishads, b u t to ‘the Serm on on the M ount’, and the writings o f T olstoy an d T horeau. O ne can be an atheist or agnostic, and still practise satyagraha. But it is easier for men of religion to accep t the assum ptions on which satyagraha rests: that it is w orthw hile fighting, and even dying, for causes which transcend o n e ’s personal interests, th at the body perishes, but the soul lives, th a t no oppressor can crush the im perishable spirit of m an , th a t every hum an being, however wicked he may appear to be, has a hidden nobility, a ‘divine spark’ which can be ‘ig n ited ’. F o r G an d h i satyagraha was a way of life, but to m any of those in the Congress Party, whom he led, it was ju st a m ethod for w aging the battle against the Raj. This divergence of approach betw een G andhi and his following came out at critical junctures. In F eb ru ary 1922, when he decided not to proceed with mass civil disobedience after receiving the news of the C hauri C haura riot, m an y o f his colleagues protested that his emphasis on non-violence was overdone. In M arch 1931, his decision to call off civil disobedience and to atten d a Round T able Conference in L ondon cam e as a shock to his radical colleagues, especially

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to Ja w a h a rla l N ehru. ‘T here comes a stage’, G andhi said, ‘w hen a Satyagrahi m ay no longer refuse to negotiate with his opponents. His object is always to convert his opponent by love’. T his talk of converting the enemy through love ruffled the ‘realists’ in his party; satyagraha seemed to have ethical and religious overtones which grated on their ears. G a n d h i’s use of such words as ‘sw araj’ (self-government), ‘sarv o d ay a’ (uplift o f all), ‘ahim sa’ (non-violence) and ‘satya­ g ra h a ’ was exploited by the M uslim League to estrange Muslims from the nationalist struggle. T he fact is th at these expressions w hen used by G andhi had little religious significance. They were derived from Sanskrit, but since m ost of the Indian languages are derived from Sanskrit, this m ade them more easily intelligible to the masses. T he English translation of these words, o r a {Purely legal or constitutional terminology, may have sounded more ‘m odern’ and ‘secular’, bu t it would have passed over th^ heads of all but a tiny urbanized Englishe d u cated m inority. T h e protagonists of Pakistan m ade m uch play with the phrase ‘R am R ajy a’ which G andhi occasi jnally employed to describe the goal o f the Indian freedom struggle. T his was G andhi’s eq u iv alen t for the English term ‘utopia’. G andhi was employing (w h at Professor M orris-Jones has aptly described) the ‘saintly id io m ’; the masses whom he addressed instinctively knew that he was not referring to the m onarchial form of government described in the ancient epic Ramayana, but to an ideal polity, free from inequality, injustice and exploitation. It is a rem arkable fact that G andhi adapted traditional ideas an d sym bols to m odern needs, and transform ed them in the process. H e transm uted the centuries-old idea of an ashram as a haven from worldly life for pursuit of personal salvation: his ash ram s a t Sabarm ati, and Sevagram were not merely places for spiritual seeking, but offered training in social service, rural \ uplift, elem entary education, removal of untouchability and the practice o f non-violence. Pray er m eetings have been a p art of the daily life of the people in In d ia from times imm emorial; H indus, M uslim s and Sikhs daily g ath er in their temples, mosques and gurdw aras. These congregations are, however, sectarian affairs. G andhi turned his p ray e r meetings, which were held not in a temple, but under

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the open sky, into a symbol of religious harm ony by including recitatio n s from H indu, M uslim , C hristian, Parsi and Buddhist texts. W h en the prayers and hym ns had been recited, he spoke on the problem s which faced the country. In the last m onths of his life, at a tim e of bitter religious controversy, his prayer m eetings becam e a defiant symbol of tolerance, and his post­ p ray e r talk served the purpose of a daily press conference. T h u s the symbols used by G andhi in his political campaigns h a d ceased to be exclusively H indu symbols. T he ‘saintly id io m ' rem ained, but its content had changed; this is something w hich often escaped the attention of G andhi’s critics. One of them , M . N. Roy, who in his com m unist as well as Radical H um an ist phases, had been sharply critical of Gandhi’s ‘religious a p p ro a c h to politics’, confessed later th at he had failed to detect the secular approach of the M ahatm a beneath the religious term inology and th at essentially G andhi’s message had been ‘m oral, h u m an ist, cosm opolitan’.4 D eeply religious as he wras, G andhi said th at he would have o pposed any proposal for a state religion, even if the whole p o p u latio n o f In d ia had professed the sam e religion. He looked u p o n religion as a ‘personal m atter’. f)e told'a missionary who asked w h eth er there would be complete religious freedom in in d e p e n d e n t In d ia, ‘T he State would look after your secular welfare, health , com m unications, foreign relations, currency a n d so on, b u t not your or my religion. T h a t is everybody’s personal concern.’5 The resolution on fundam ental rights, which th e K a ra c h i session of the In d ian N ational Congress passed in 1931, w ith G a n d h i’s cordial approval, avowed the principle of religious freedom and adequate protection for minorities; it d eclared th a t the ‘State shall observe neutrality in regard to all relig io n s.’- T his doctrine was em bodied in the constitution of in d e p e n d e n t In d ia even after the M uslim League waged and w on the cam paign for the partition of the country on the basis of religion. Louis Fischer noted the strange paradox that Jin n ah , w ho h a d grow n up as a secular nationalist in his younger days, a n d w ho ap p aren tly had little interest in religion, founded a sta te based on religion, while G andhi, wholly religious, worked to estab lish a secular state.6 T h o se w ho charged G andhi with im porting religion into politics pointed to his fasts as an exam ple of this aberration.

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»

T h ey questioned the ethics of fasting as a political tactic. Were G a n d h i’s fasts not a form of m oral coercion? Did they not detract from rational discussion of complex issues? C. F. Andrews, the C h ristian missionary, who was a friend of both G andhi and T agore, once wrote to the M ahatm a from England: ‘I hardly think you realize how very strong here is the moral repulsion ag ain st fasting unto death. I confess as a C hristian I should do it, and it is only with the greatest difficulty th at I find myself able to justify it under any circum stances’.7 Even though fasting had a place in the religious life of the H in d u s for centuries, G andhi’s genius lay in creatively using it as a tool for social action. H e described fasting as the ‘most p o ten t o f the w eapons’ in his arm oury of satyagraha. But he also described it as ‘a fiery w eapon’, to be used sparingly, and as a last resort, when all other avenues of redress had been closed. H ow ever, he took care to use it against those who adm ired and loved him, never against his opponents. H e did not, for example, fast to compel the M uslim League to give up its dem and for Pakistan. H e fasted to awaken the conscience of the H indu com m unity against untouchability, and to bring rioting mobs back to sanity. W e learn from Jaw ah arlal N ehru’s autobiography that his first reaction to G andhi’s fast in jail in Septem ber 1932 was one o f an g er at his ‘religious and sentim ental approach to a political q u estio n ’. And yet, a few days later, when there was an upsurge in the country against untouchability, N ehru could not help feeling ‘w hat a m agician . . . was this little m an sitting in Y ervada Prison and how well he knew to pull the strings that move people’s hearts’.8 O f G a n d h i’s capacity to pull strings in the hum an heart, the g reatest examples were to come in the last m onths of his life in the wake o f the com m unal disturbances which preceded and followed the partition of the country.

C H A PTER 11

Gandhi and the Partition of India

J o h n V incent, R eader in M odem History at Bristol University, holds G a n d h i responsible for the ‘shedding of innocent blood d u rin g the m assacres’, which occurred in the afterm ath of the p a rtitio n o f In d ia in 1947. H e calls this the ‘climax of G andhi’s life’ an d adds: ‘T h e British foresaw this danger; G andhi did not; o r shut his eyes to it . . . . Better the stuffiest of British officers, I w ould say th an a skilled politician, who unleashes terrible passions a n d who brings w ar into a previously peaceful and u nd iv id ed In d ia ’.1 W h a t was the genesis of the m ovem ent for Pakistan? Could G a n d h i have done anything to stave off tiie partition of India? W h a t led to the terrible m assacres and the mass migration of the m inorities in 1947? H istorians have been seeking answers to these questions; and though there can be no finality about the answ ers yet, we know enough to be able to form a reasonably clear p ictu re o f the course of events. For a ju st appraisal of these events, it is necessary to see them in the historical perspective. T h e H indu-M uslim problem, which culminated in the division o f the subcontinent in 1947, long antedated G andhi’s advent on the In d ian political scene. T he Muslims, who constituted nearly one-fourth o f the total population, differed from the H indus in th eir religious tenets, usage, laws and customs; however, these differences were accepted and taken for granted by the two com m unities. D uring the M uslim rule, non-M uslim s may have suffered a t the hands of a whim sical or a fanatical ruler but, on th e w hole, the masses had learnt to live in a spirit o f‘live and let live’. T h e evolution of a common language, dress and ceremonial in different parts of the country had assisted the process of a d ju stm en t. In fact, the cultural and social life of the two

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com m unities differed not along com m unal but regional lines; a B engali H in d u was in m any ways nearer a Bengali M uslim than a P u n jab i H indu, and a G ujarati M uslim had more in common w ith a G ujarati H indu than with a M uslim from the South. T h e British conquest of India placed the two communities on a level— o f common subjection— but as the process of conquest had proceeded from the sea-coast inwards, it affected the Muslim m ajority provinces o f north-w estern India last of all. This accid en t o f history gave a start to the H indus in acquiring W estern education and taking to m odern commerce, and con­ trib u te d to the emergence of a H indu m iddle class subsisting on governm ent service, the professions and trade. T he growth of the M uslim m iddle class was slower. M uslim theologians, by throw ing their weight against W estern education, further h an d icap p ed M uslim youth in com peting for governm ent jobs. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century the attitude o f the governm ent to the M uslim com m unity began to change. T h e dem and of the m iddle class, then necessarily H indu in com position, through the Indian N ational Congress for a larger share in the governm ent of the country brought about a new orien tatio n in the policy of the governm ent. Muslims were henceforth seen not as potential rebels but as probable allies. T o this reorientation, the M uslim leader who m ade the greatest contribution was Syed A hm ad K han. H e tried to correct the view o f the M utiny of 1857 as a M uslim revolt by recording the services of M uslim nobles who had served the British govern­ m en t faithfully and well. H e founded the Aligarh College and the M u h am m adan Educational Conference, and exhorted M uslim s to take advantage of W estern education. T here were occasions when he criticized the governm ent, but his criticisms w ere discreet, and cam e from one whose loyalty was above suspicion, and whose services were well rewarded by the govern­ m ent. Syed A hm ad K han was nom inated to the Im perial Legis­ lative C ouncil and the Public Service Commission, and granted d knighthood. Syed A hm ad K h a n ’s m ain concern was the raising of his com m unity in the social and economic spheres. H e did not want In d ian M uslim s to be caught in the m aelstrom of politics; this was not only because he wished to cultivate British goodwill, b u t also because he was afraid that a dem ocratic system would

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h a n d ic ap M uslim s. H e exhorted them to keep away from the In d ian N ational Congress. T hus he threw his powerful influence in favour o f the isolation of his com m unity from the nationalist m ovem ent ju s t when this m ovem ent started on its career. He also raised the great question m ark which was to shadow Indian politics for the next sixty years; w hat would be the position of th e M uslim com m unity in a free India? If British autocracy w ere to be replaced by an Indian democracy, would it give a p erm an en t advantage to the H indus, who heavily outnumbered the M uslim s? W as it (as Syed Ahm ad put it) a game of dice in w hich one m an had four dice and the other only one? H ad M uslim s anything to gain from the w ithdraw al of British rule? N aw ab Viqar-ul-M ulk, another eminent M uslim educationist a n d politician, in opposing the setting up of elective institutions d rew the stark m oral for his co-religionists: ‘W e are numerically one-fifth of the other com m unity. If at any time, the British G o v ernm en t ceases to exist in India we shall have to live as subjects o f the H indus . . . . If there is any device by which we can escape this, it is by the continuance of the British Raj, and ou r interests can be safeguarded only if we ensure the continuance o f the B ritish governm ent’.2 T h e re was only one possible answer which nationalists could give to the question as to how M uslims would fare in a free In d ia: they would fare no better or no worse than the other com m unities. T here was no reason to assum e that in a free In d ia political parties would follow com m unal affiliations, and th a t social or economic issues would not cut across religious divisions. A dem ocratic system could embody the fullest g u a ra n tee s of religious liberty, cultural autonom y and equal o p p o rtu n ity for all. U nfortunately, this line of thought could not be ap p reciated by those who were unable to visualize India of th e fu ture in any term s except those of the sordid present. II W h en , u n d er the im pact of the growing nationalist ferment in the country, the adoption of the elective principle became a live issue, a d eputation of M uslim leaders, led by the Aga K han, w aited on the Viceroy, Lord M into, in O ctober 1906 and. p resen ted a m em orial.

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M ost o f the thirty-odd signatories to the m em orial came from the titled an d landed gentry, the Naw abs, the K han Bahadurs a n d the C ,I.E .s (‘Com panions of the Indian E m pire’). The m em orial included alm ost every dem and th at could possibly be m ade at th at time upon the British governm ent on behalf of the M uslim com m unity vis-a-vis the H indus. However, its prim ary object was to prevent the extension of the elective principle to the legislatures, and if th at was not possible, to find some means o f n eutralizing the num erical inferiority of the M uslims. It was urged in the m em orial th at M uslim electors should form a sep arate electoral college of their own, and the M uslim com­ m u n ity should be aw arded more seats in expanded legislative councils th an its num bers w arranted. M into, the Viceroy, in his reply appreciated ‘the representative character of the deputation’, a n d hailed his'guests as ‘the descendants of a conquering and ruling race’. He. readily endorsed the thesis th at representative in stitu tio n s of the ‘European type’ were entirely new to the people o f India, and their introduction required- great care, forethought and caution. Above all, with unusual alacrity he conceded the m ajor dem ands of the m em orialists. T h e p it h o f y o u r a d d r e s s , a s I u n d e r s t a n d it, is a c la im , th a t , in a n y sy ste m

o f r e p r e s e n t a t io n , w h e t h e r it a ff e c t s a M u n i c i p a l i t y , a

D i s t r i c t B o a r d , o r a L e g is la t u r e , in w h ic h it is p r o p o s e d to in tro d u c e o r i n c r e a s e a n e le c to r a l o r g a n is a t io n , th e M o h a m m e d a n c o m m u n ity s h o u l d b e r e p r e s e n t e d a s a c o m m u n i t y . . . . Y o u j u s t l y c la im th a t y o u r p o s it io n b e e s t im a t e d n o t m e r e l y o n y o u r n u m e r ic a l s tr e n g t h , b u t in r e s p e c t to th e p o lit ic a l im p o r t a n c e o f y o u r c o m m u n i t y a n d th e s e r v i c e it h a s r e n d e r e d to th e E m p i r e . I a m e n t ir e ly in a c c o r d w ith y o u .3

T h e leaders of the M uslim D eputation received encourage­ m en t a n d advice from H arcourt Butler, the Commissioner of L ucknow , who was soon to become a m em ber of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.4 Principal A rchbold of Aligarh College was alread y a t Simla and had easy access to the private secretary to the Viceroy. It is difficult to guess Lord M into’s motives in giving w ide-ranging assurances so hastily on constitutional issues, the full im plications of which had yet to be worked out by the G overnm ent of India. T h e fact was th at the Viceroy was u n d e r pressure from the nationalist elements in India and from the L iberal Secretary of State in London to initiate a scheme of

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co n stitu tio n al reforms. H e was not really convinced of the w isdom o f such a scheme, but felt he could not stall it indefinitely. H e a n d his advisers were thinking hard on how to offset any concession they m ight be compelled to make to nationalist opinion. O bviously it was in their interest to strengthen elements on w hose loyalty they could count. T he British policy-makers th u s cam e to view the M uslim com m unity in the same light as th e princes an d the landed class— as a possible ‘counterpoise’ to th e C ongress. T h e Sim la D eputation had m ore far-reaching consequences th a n its sponsors had dared to hope. W ithin three m onths of its m eetin g w ith the V iceroy the A ll-India M uslim League had been form ed. Prom otion of loyalty to the British government a n d p ro tectio n and advancem ent of M uslim interests were the m ain objects o f the new organization. T h e political dividends of the Simla D eputation duly came in 1909 w hen separate electorates were incorporated in the MintoM orley Reforms. The dangers o f a separate register for a religious c o m m u n ity were recognized by the authors of the M ontaguC helm sford Reforms in their report nine years later: D iv is io n

b y c r e e d s a n d c la s s e s m e a n s th e c r e a t io n o f p o lit ic a l

c a m p s o r g a n i z e d a g a i n s t e a c h o t h e r , a n d t e a c h e s m e n to th in k a s p a r t i s a n s a n d n o t a s c it iz e n s ; it is d if f ic u lt to se e h o w th e c h a n g e f r o m t h is s y s t e m to n a t io n a l r e p r e s e n t a t io n is e v e r to o c c u r . T h e B r i t i s h G o v e r n m e n t is o ft e n a c c u s e d o f d i v i d i n g m e n to g o v e r n t h e m . B u t i f it u n n e c e s s a r i ly d i v i d e d th e m a t th e v e r y m o m e n t w h e n it p r o p o s e s to s t a r t th e m o n th e r o a d to g o v e r n in g th e m se lv e s, it w i l l f in d it d if f ic u lt to m e e t th e c h a r g e o f b e in g h y p o c r i t ic a l o r s h o rt-s ig h te d .

N evertheless, separate electorates for the M uslim community cam e to stay; indeed they were extended to other communities, Sikhs, C h ristian s, E uropeans and A nglo-Indians. In 1916 they w ere em bodied in the Lucknow Pact between the Indian N a tio n a l C ongress an d the M uslim League. Ill T h e B alkan W ars and the travail o f Turkey in the years imme­ d iately preceding the First W orld W ar aroused anti-British feeling am o n g In d ian M uslim s, an d for a few years the M uslim

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L eague cam e to be controlled by a Lucknow-based faction, with n ationalist proclivities. T his H indu-M uslim rapproachem ent received a further boost after the w ar, when G andhi lent his su p p o rt to the Indian M uslim s’ dem ands for preserving the territo rial integrity o f T urkey and the preservatipn of the insti­ tu tio n o f the C aliphate. In 1919-20, H indu-M uslim unity reached its high watermark; the K hilafat m ovem ent becam e an integral p a rt o f G andhi’s cam paign o f non-co-operation with the governm ent. It was not n atio n alist sentim ent, bu t the concern for T urkey and the Holy Places o f Islam , which provided the m ain impulse for this concordat between Muslims and H indus. A common leadership could not m ake up for the essential divergence o f ideals; while the H in d u s thought in political term s o f achieving self-govern­ m en t for In d ia, the K hilafatists were preoccupied with the fate o f T urkey. M uslim leaders denounced British imperialism, but based th eir denunciations on edicts issued by their ulema, the religious leaders. D eep an d sincere as this religious emotion m ay have been, it was harnessed to a rom antic cause, which w as b ro u g h t to an inglorious end by the T urks themselves when they abolished the institution o f Sultan-C aliph. G andhi’s hope th at the H indus’ spontaneous and altruistic gesture in supporting the cause o f the K hilafat w ould perm anently win the gratitude o f the M uslim com m unity was not to be realized. T hus the one successful experim ent in bringing the M uslim com m unity into th e h e art o f the nationalist m ovem ent failed to break its psychological isolation, and indeed confirmed its tendency to view political problem s from a religious angle. W h en G andhi cam e out o f jail in 1924, he was shocked to see th a t the fabric of H indu-M uslim unity, at which he had laboured so h a rd , h ad gone to pieces. T here was an exceptional bitterness in com m unal controversies. His m ovem ent in 1919-23 had sw ept the lower m iddle class into the political vortex; communal politicians began to pan d er to this new audience. In this vulgar­ ization o f politics a section o f the press, particularly the Indian language press took a notorious part. It was during this period th a t G an d h i described the new spaperm an as ‘a walking plague w ho spreads contagion of lies and calum nies’. H e denounced com m unal m adness; he appealed for hum an decency and tolerance; he fasted; he prayed. But it was all in vain. His voice,

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once so powerful, was drow ned in a din o f com m unal recrimi­ n atio n s by bigots on both sides. A fav o u rite solution in the nineteen-tw enties was a com­ m u n a l p a c t th ro u g h a n ‘A ll-P arties C onference’. T here had been a precedent in the Lucknow Pact of 1916. T he argum ent w as th a t com m unal unity, once attained by the leaders, would p erco late to the masses. T he sequence of these conferences p a rto o k o f the nature o f a comic opera. Leaders of a num ber of political parties and religious organizations would meet to the acco m p an im en t o f sentim ental effusions of goodwill. As they sat do w n to allocate jobs u nder the governm ent and seats in legis­ latu res— the spoils of swaraj,, as it were— they found it difficult to reconcile their antagonistic claims. T h a t such heterogeneous gro u p s should have been able to agree on anything was incon­ ceivable, b u t there was a basic unreality about these discussions. A ll th e p a tro n a g e an d pow er w hich these leaders set out to sh are w as in fact controlled by the British governm ent. Gandhi disliked this pettifogging politics; he would have liked to disarm M u slim fears by generosity on the p a rt of the H indus. U n ­ fortu n ately , some H indu politicians were as incapable of generosity as the M uslim politicians were of trust. Moreover, w h a t w as perhaps an insurance against future risk to the M u slim , was seen as the thin end of the wedge by the H indu. T h e p a tte rn o f the unity conferences was nearly repeated at the R o u n d T able Conference in the early 1930s. Even the second session in 1931, which was attended by G andhi, failed to b rin g off a solution acceptable to the motley group o f delegates w hom the governm ent had assembled in London. T he squabbles o f the R o u n d T able delegates were encouraged, if not wholly m an ip u lated , by the vested interests from India and the diehard elem ents from B ritain to prove to the world th at it was Indian disu n ity , an d not B ritish reluctance w hich barred the p ath to In d ia n self-governm ent. M uslim leaders, such as the Aga K han a n d Sir M u h am m ad Shafi, were in close touch with Tory politicians. Fazl-i H usain, the M uslim m em ber of the Viceroy’s E xecutive Council, pulled all the wires he could from Delhi to p re v e n t a com prom ise.5 Since constitution-m aking seem ed to have foundered on the lack o f a n agreem ent, the British governm ent offered to impose a solution. R am say M acD onald, the British Prem ier, issued a

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C o m m u n al Aw ard in 1933, laying down the quantum and m ode o f representation in legislatures. T he perpetuation of sep arate electorates in the C om m unal Award was repugnant to the In d ian N ational Congress; nevertheless, with G andhi’s approval, it was decided not to reject it until an alternative solution, acceptable to all the comm unities, could emerge. IV Even though the C om m unal Award had conceded almost all the political dem ands of the M uslim com m unity, vis-a-vis the H in d u s, M uslim politics continued to run in the old grooves. F ar from being suppressed, the com m unal controversy raged like a hurricane during the next decade when M uslim separatism d o m in ated and distorted the course of Indian politics. T he central figure in M uslim politics during this crucial period was a b rillian t lawyer and politician, M. A. Jin n a h . He was six years younger th an G andhi, but was already a front-rank politician a n d parliam entarian when G andhi came on the Indian scene. Like m any other able and seasoned leaders of the M oderate E ra, J in n a h found him self in the shade when G andhi stole the limelight. In the mid-twenties, Jin n ah led an independent group in the C en tral Legislative Assembly, where he held the balance betw een the governm ent and the Swaraj Party of the Congress: this was a role which he could play with m asterly skill. His opposition to the solution of the com m unal problem proposed in the N ehru Report w ent a long way to kill it in 1928. To G a n d h i’s civil disobedience m ovem ent in 1930 he took no more kindly th an he had done ten years earlier to the non-co-operation m ovem ent. At the Round T able Conference he ploughed a lonely furrow, and when it was over, he was so disgusted that he bade good-bye to politics and settled down in London to practise a t the English Bar. But when the time came for the general elections under the new constitution, he returned to India and led the M uslim League to the polls. T he results of the elections in 1937 cam e as a great blow to him. His party secured less than 5 per cent o f the M uslim votes. It won thirty-nine out of 117 M uslim seats in Bengal (where there was no chance of a Congress m inistry), b u t only one seat in the Punjab out of eighty-four M uslim seats, and three in Sind out of thirty-three M uslim

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seats. It did not win a single M uslim seat in the provincial legislatures o f Bihar, C entral Provinces and Orissa. In M adras, it won ten seats, in Bombay twenty. In the U .P. it won twentyseven o f the sixty-four M uslim seats in a H ouse'of228 members, w hile the Congress won 133 seats. It is obvious that with this poor showing, the League hardly qualified for a coalition in most of the provinces. Only in one province, th at is, the U nited Provinces, there were serious negotiations for a coalition. It has been suggested that the C ongress com m itted a great blunder by refusing a coalition, w hich fanned the fires of M uslim frustration, which in turn fuelled the m ovem ent for Pakistan. M aulana A zad’s assertion in his autobiography th at if the Congress had been generous enough to offer two seats (instead of one) to the M uslim League in the U .P . cabinet, the M uslim League party in the provinces w ould have disintegrated, and the dem and for Pakistan would not have arisen ‘is too naive to m erit consideration’.6 It is certain ly true that a few M uslim Leaguers in U.P., such as K h aliq u zzam an and N aw ab Ism ail K han, who were eager fora p a rtn e rsh ip w ith the Congress, and felt affronted in these nego­ tiations, later becam e J in n a h ’s right-hand men in his anti­ C ongress cam paign. But the question of a coalition in 1937 was not as sim ple a m atter as it has been m ade out. Some of the C ongress leaders in U .P. feared that if the M uslim League, with its feudal an d landlord support, was brought into the ministry, the C ongress agrarian program m e, particularly the abolition of lan d lo rd ism , would be in jeopardy. T h a t this fear was not groundless was proved by the stubborn opposition of the Muslim L eague p arty to land reforms in the U .P. legislature during the years 1937-16. N o one could say in the sum m er of 1937 how the Congress w ould h it it off with the British bureaucracy, which until recently h a d been its arch enemy. T he Congress approach to office accep tan ce in 1937 was m arked by a m easure of caution and reserve. A very im portant consideration for the Congress was w h eth er the provincial cabinet, after the induction of the League m em bers, w ould be able to m aintain its cohesion. T he Congress a n d the League represented two contradictory urges. The C ongress stood for dem ocracy, socialism and a common Indian n atio n ality ; the League existed to prom ote the interests of

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M uslim s in India as a separate political entity. Jin n a h spoke of his desire for a settlement with the Congress, but on his own terms: a w eak centre, complete autonom y for the provinces, shares of the M uslim s in the services, elected bodies and cabinets to be fixed by statute, and recognition of the M uslim League as the sole representative of the M uslim com m unity. H e w anted the C ongress to keep its hands off the M uslim s and adm it itself as a H in d u bpdy. Even if the U .P. League leaders had been able to reach an agreem ent with the Congress, they would have been rep u d iated by Jin n a h , who was the president of the All-India M uslim League, and was determ ined to keep the reins of the L eague firmly in his hands. Jin n a h had indeed threatened K h aliq u zzam an, the m ain League negotiator in the U nited Provinces, with disciplinary action if he persisted in an isolated a n d piecem eal agreem ent with the Congress. It is im possible to understand the history of the com m unal problem d uring the next ten years w ithout taking into account J in n a h ’s personality and methods. As Professor Khalid B. Sayeed says, J in n a h was a ‘superb tactician’ and the various moves that he m ade were all p arts o f a ‘m aster plan, the suprem e objective o f w hich was the accum ulation and concentration of enormous pow er in his hands, an objective, which he could rationalize in term s o f the well-being and social goals of the M uslim nation a n d P ak istan ’.7 Jin n a h had m et with an electoral disaster of the first magnitude in 1937. N ot only had the M uslim electorate failed to vote his p a rty to office in the M uslim -m ajority provinces, bu t even in the M uslim -m inority provinces, his party had been routed. It seem ed he could do little to im prove his position until the next ro u n d o f elections. Jin n a h was, however, not the m an to let history pass over his head. H e set out to achieve through a p ro p ag a n d a blast w hat the ballot box had denied him. J in n a h , who was 61 in 1937, had his roots in the V ictorian age &nd h ad been trained as a nationalist and constitutionalist in the school o f D adabhai N aoroji and Gokhale. B ut he decided to use the dynam ite of religious em otion to acquire political influ­ ence a n d power. Ja w a h arlal N ehru was horrified w hen during a bye-election in U .P . in 1937, Jin n a h appealed in the nam e of A llah a n d the H oly K o ran for support of the M uslim League c an d id ate. ‘T o exploit the nam e of God and religion in an

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election context’, N ehru declared, ‘is an extraordinary' th in g . . . even for a hum ble canvasser. For M r. Jin n a h to do so is inexpli­ cable. I would beg him to consider this aspect of the question . . . . It m eans rousing religious and com m unal passions in political m atters; it m eans working for the D ark Age in In d ia’.8 N e h ru ’s appeal was in vain. T he Congress ministries had not been in office even for a few weeks, when Jin n a h was proclaiming th a t M uslim s could not expect any justice or fair-play at their h a n d s. N early h a lf the m em bers of the I.C.S. were still British; they occupied the key positions in the provincial secretariat, besides holding charge of im portant districts. Almost all the Insp ecto rs-G en eral of Police were British, and so were most of th e district superintendents of police. T here was a fair sprinkling o f M uslim s and C hristians in the I.C.S., and Muslims were ra th e r well represented in the m iddle and lower ranks of the police. Law and order was a provincial subject, but the channels o f com m unication between the Viceroy and his colleagues in the executive council of the one hand, and the British Governors a n d ch ief secretaries in the provinces on the other, had not dried up. A nd yet there is no evidence in the records of the Government o f In d ia of a concerted tyranny against Muslims in the Congressgoverned provinces. T he Congress suggested an inquiry by Sir M a u rice Gwyer, the C hief Justice of the Federal Court, but the pro po sal was turned down by the M uslim League. T he fact is th a t th e bogey o f a Congress tyranny was raised not to convince th e B ritish governm ent or the H indus, but to work upon the feelings o f the M uslim masses. W h a t was this Congress tyranny against which Jin n ah was protesting? O ne o f the grievances was th at excessive reverence w as paid to G andhi, and th at his birthday had been declared a holiday. ‘T o declare my birthday as a holiday’, commented G a n d h i, ‘should be classified as a cognisable offence’. Another griev an ce was the use of the Congress flag on government buildings. T h e Congress flag was born during the days of the K h ilafat m ovem ent, and its colours had been determ ined to rep resen t the various comm unities: saffron for the Hindus, green for M uslim s and w hite for other minorities. Objections w ere raised by the League to the Baride Mataram song on the gro u n d th a t its original context in a novel by the nineteenthcen tu ry Bengali novelist, Bankim C h andra Chatterji, had

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com m unal overtones. T he song had first become popular during the agitation against the partition of Bengal, when it came to be regarded by the British as a symbol of sedition. From 1905 to 1920, the song had been sung at innum erable Congress meetings a t w hich Jin n a h him self had been present. Nevertheless, out of deference to M uslim susceptibilities, the Congress W orking C om m ittee decided that only the first two stanzas should be sun g on cerem onial occasions. G andhi’s advice to Congressmen was not to sing the Bande Mataram b r hoist the Congress flag if a single M uslim objected. O ne of the targets of the League criticism was the W ardha Schem e o f Basic Education which had been devised largely by tw o em inent M uslim educationists, Zakir H usain and K. G. Saiyid^in, to substitute a coordinated training in the use of the h a n d an d the eye for a notoriously bookish and volatile learning w hich village children unlearned after leaving school. The com plaint th at the scheme did not provide for religious instruc­ tion o f M uslim children had little m eaning, because the curri­ culum did not include such instruction for any community. W hen N ehru returned after a brief visit to Europe in 1938, he was struck by the sim ilarity between the propaganda methods of the M uslim League in India and of the Nazis in Germany: ‘T h e League leaders had begun to echo the Fascist tirade ag ain st democracy . . . Nazis were wedded to a negative policy. So also was the League. T he League was anti-H indu, anti­ C ongress, a n ti-n a tio n a l. . . . T he Nazis raised the cry o f hatred ag ain st the Jew s, the League [had] raised [its] cry against the H in d u s.’ V T h e cry of Islam in danger, the reiteration o f ‘Congress tyranny’, an d the spectre o f ‘H indu R aj’ widened the com m unal gulf and created the climate in which the proposal for the partition of the ^country could be m ooted. Jin n a h propounded his two-nation theory. H e argued that the differences between H indus and M uslim s were not only confined to religion, but. covered the whole range of their social, cultural arid economic life. H e asserted th at India was not one nation, th at the Muslims of In d ia constituted a separate nation, and were, therefore, entitled

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to a se p ara te hom eland o f their own where they could work out th e ir destiny. In M arch 1940, this theory was embodied in the fam ous Pakistan resolution o f the A ll-India M uslim League, w hich declared th at no constitutional plan for India would be w orkable o r acceptable to M uslim s unless it was based on a d em a rca tio n o f M uslim m ajority areas in the north-west and th e east as independent states. T h e rationale o f the two-nation theory was dubious. If religion w as th e criterion o f nationality, and each nationality was to be allow ed a hom eland for itself, would it not m ean the ‘balkaniza­ tio n ’ o f India? I f non-M uslim s were to continue staying in the fu tu re Pakistan— as the League leaders assured they would— how w ould the new state be different? If H indus and Muslims w ere two sep arate nations, which could not live peacefully in In d ia , how w ould they become a peaceful nation in Pakistan? If dem ocracy did not suit India, how would it become suitable for P akistan? W ould not partition o f the country further weaken th e position o f the m inority vis-a-vis the m ajority irreaeh o f the successor states? G a n d h i’s first reaction to the two-nation theory and the d e m a n d for Pakistan was one- o f bewilderm ent, almost of incred u lity . W as i f the function of religion to separate men or to un ite them ? H e described the two-nation theory as an untruth; in his dictionary there was no stronger word. H e discussed the a ttrib u te s o f nationality. T h e vast m ajority of Muslims of India w ere converts to Islam , o r were the descendants of converts. A chan g e o f religion did not change nationality; the religious divisions did not coincide with cultural differences. A Bengali M uslim , he w rote, ‘speaks the sam e tongue th at a Bengali H in d u does, eats the sam e food, has the same amusem ents as his H in d u neighbour. T hey dress a lik e . . . . His [Jinnah’s] name could be th a t o f any H indu. W hen I first m et him, I did not know he was a M uslim ’. T o divide In d ia was to undo the centuries of work done by H in d u s an d M uslim s; G an d h i’s soul rebelled against the idea th a t H in d u ism and Islam represented antagonistic cultures a n d doctrines, and th at eighty million M uslim s had really n o th in g in com m on w ith their H indu neighbours. And even if th ere w ere religious and cultural differences, w hat clash of in terests could there be on such m atters as revenue, industry,

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san itatio n or justice? T h e differences could only be in religious d octrine and observances with which a secular state should have no concern. U n til alm ost the last stage, Jin n a h did not define the boundaries nor fill in the outlines of his Pakistan proposal; each o f his followers was thus free to see Pakistan in his own image. T h e orthodox dream t of a state reproducing the purity of pristine Islam . T hose w ith a secular outlook hoped for tangible benefits from their ‘own’ state. T he Pakistan idea sold fast with the M uslim com m unity. T he M uslim m iddle class, which for historical reasons had been left behind in the race for the plums o f governm ent service, trade and industry in certain areas, was a ttra c te d by the idea of a sovereign M uslim state. Muslim landlords in Bengal and Punjab saw the prospect of deliverance from ‘progressive politicians’ like Jaw aharlal Nehru who indulged in the dangerous talk of abolishing zam indari. M uslim officials were glad of the new vistas which were expected to open to them in a new state, w ithout the H indu seniors hovering over their heads. M uslim traders and industrialists began to cherish visions o f free fields for their prosperous' ventures without the intru sio n o f H indu competitors. E ver since the days of Syed A hm ad K han the M uslim com­ m u n ity had been exhorted by its prom inent leaders to keep aw ay from anti-British m ovements. T hose who gave and those w ho followed this advice had a guilty feeling in the deeper recesses, of their hearts. T he Pakistan idea for the first time seem ed to satisfy the religious emotions as well as the political instincts of the M uslim middle class. T he vision of a sovereign M uslim state in India was rem iniscent of the past glories of M uslim rule; it was too fascinating a prospect not to catch the p o p u lar im agination.9 T he M uslim intellectual felt a new exhilaration for a program m e which prom ised independence from both the British and the H indus; the fact that it brought fhis com m unity into collision w ith the m ajority com m unity and not w ith the British only m ade the m ovem ent somewhat less hazardous. T h e outbreak of the W orld W ar in 1939 helped the propaga­ tion o f the separatist ideology. T he resignation of the Congress m inistries in eight out of eleven provinces came as a god-send to the M uslim League. If the Congress m inistries had rem ained in

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office, the atrocity stories against them could not have been re p e ate d w ithout being challenged. As it was, the Viceroy and th e B ritish Governors o f the various provinces could hardly be expected to give a ‘clearance certificate’ to those who had now becom e their political opponents. T he war itself was an important co n sid eratio n for not alienating the M uslim League. T he V iceroy an d his advisers, anticipating a show-down with the C ongress, were in search of friends. T he dem and for Pakistan p ro b ab ly surprised them as m uch as it had surprised the C ongress. Initially, its significance in British eyes was that it confirm ed their stock thesis that the constitutional progress of In d ia w as im peded not by British hesitation but by Indian disu n ity . L inlithgow ’s declaration in August 1940 that kit goes w ith o u t saying t h a t . . . [the British governm ent] could not con­ tem p late transfer o f their present responsibilities for the peace a n d welfare o f India to any system of governm ent whose a u th o rity is directly denied by large and powerful elements in In d ia ’s national life’ was the first tacit recognition that the B ritish w ere p repared to consider even such drastic solutions as J in n a h h ad propounded. T he Pakistan resolution of the AllIn d ia M uslim League had only been passed in M arch 1940; but for the w ar, it is doubtful if even an indirect official acknowledge­ m en t o f the Pakistan proposal would have been m ade within five m onths. VI In a perceptive analysis o fjin n a h ’s ‘chess-board-like strategy’,10 K h a lid B. Sayeed shows how the League leader strengthened his own position and th at of his party by the ‘tactical moves’ he m ad e, an d by exploiting the ‘wrong moves’ m ade by his o p p o n e n ts ." H e kept Congress leaders on tenterhooks by pre­ ten d in g to negotiate with them when he had no intention of d oin g so. H e was careful not to embroil him self with the British, b u t he did not offer his full co-operation to them either. He outw itted and outm anoeuvred such seasoned Muslim politicians as S ik an d er H y at K han and Fazl-ul-H aq. W hen the Congress w ent into the political wilderness with the Q uit India movement in 1942 a n d m ost o f the Congress m em bers of provincial legis­ latures were in jail, Jinnah, with the help of the British Governors,

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succeeded in installing M uslim League m inistries in Assam, N orth-W est Frontier Province, Sind and Bengal. From every a tte m p t at a solution of the constitutional deadlock between 1939 and 1946, he was able to extract political gains for himself an d his party. T he C ripps Mission in 1942 m attered to him only in so far as the provision for the non-accession of provinces signified an indirect endorsem ent of the ‘principle’ of partition. T h e ill-fated B hulabhai-L iaqat Ali Pact was repudiated by him , b u t it introduced the idea of parity between the Congress an d the League in the Interim Government. T he G andhi-Jinnah talks in 1944 were useful to the League leader only in so far as they raised his prestige w ith his own following. It was his veto w hich m ade the Simla Conference in 1945 a futile exercise. In 1946 he played a crucial role in the negotiations conducted by the C ab in et Mission; in 1947 his consent was essential for the J u n e 3 plan which decided in favour of the division of the country. T h ere is n o 'd c u b t that Jin n a h played his game of political chess w ith great skill. By arousing deep emotions, by avoiding the elucidation of his dem and for P?kistan, and by concentrating on a tirad e against ‘H indu R aj’ ant I ‘Congress tyranny’, he was able to create and sustain a large consensus in his own com­ m unity. By keeping his cards close to his chest, he was able to keep his following in good order. Such was the magical effect of his insistence on ‘the full, six provinces Pakistan’ that large num bers of his adherents in Bengal and the Punjab failed to see th a t the division of India would also m ean the division of these two provinces. Even Suhraw ardy, an astute politician, who headed the League M inistry in Bengal, confessed later that he h ad not expected the partition of Bengal.12 As for Muslims in the H indu-m ajority provinces, they had in any case little to gain from the secession of the M uslim -m ajority provinces in the east an d west; the two-nation theory and the theory of hostages could do them no good at all. From near political elipse in 1935 Jin n a h had, within a decade, brought his party to a position where it could decisively influence events. T h e final result, the partition of India, was doubdess a personal trium ph for him. His success was, however, d u e not only to his own skill and tenacity, bu t to the tension betw een the Congress and the governm ent. It is not surprising

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th a t in th eir long-draw n-out struggle with the Indian National C ongress, the British cam e to have a soft corner for the M uslim L eague. T h ey were glad to use M uslim separatism:—-just as they used the princely order— to spike the nationalist guns. As P e ter H a rd y points out in his scholarly study of M uslim politics in In d ia , ‘to expect them [the British] to encourage the ideals a n d the grow th of non-com m unal nationalism and thus to h a sten th eir own demise as the rulers of India, with all that w ould m ean for the British political and economic position in the w orld, was to expect a degree not m erely of altruism , but also o f pro p h etic insight out of the world of the history of g o v e rn m e n ts’.13 T h e antagonism betw een the Congress an d the British governm ent helped the M uslim League in two ways, in securing it a t crucial m om ents the support of certain British politicians a n d civil servants, and in ensuring to the League the exclusive possession o f the In d ian political stage w hen the Congress was outlaw ed . T h e b ru n t of the struggle for liberation of India was b o rn e by the Congress. T he M uslim League had no lot or part in this struggle, o f which the establishm ent of Pakistan was a b y -p ro d u ct. O th ers forced open the door through which Jin n ah w alked to his goal. V II H o w far w ere the In d ian N ational Congress and G andhi res­ ponsible for the partition of the country? As we have seen, M uslim sep aratism cam e into existence alm ost simultaneously w ith the b irth o f the Congress. T h e question of safeguards for m inorities, an d especially for the M uslim com m unity, dom i­ n a te d In d ia n politics for decades. G andhi and his adherents in th e C ongress believed th at religion is not a satisfactory basis for n a tio n ality in the m odern w orld, th at multi-religious, m ulti­ lingu al a n d m ulti-racial societies should seek political solutions for co-existence w ithin the fram ework of a federal structure. T h is w as w h at h ad been done under widely different conditions by the U .S .A ., U .S.S.R . a n d C anada. B ut the Congress position w as far from inflexible on this issue; indeed from the acceptance o f se p a ra te electorates in the Lucknow Pact in 1916 to the acqu iescen ce in the C om m unal A w ard in 1933, and finally to

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the C ab in et Mission Plan in 1946, it was a continual retreat in the face o f M uslim pressure. Some of the H indu leaders tended to be niggardly, yielding to M uslim dem ands step by step, but there was no fixity in M uslim claims either. J in n a h ’s price for a com m unal settlem ent rose progressively. Beginning with sep arate electorates in 1916, it went up to Fourteen Points in 1929, to composite ministries in 1937, and finally to the partition o f the country in 1940. T he six provinces he claimed for Pakistan included Assam, where the M uslim population was 33 per cent, a n d the whole of the Punjab and Bengal, where the- Muslim m ajority was slight indeed. And when the partition of the •country had been agreed to, he claimed a land corridor to connect the eastern and western arm s of P akistan.14 As we have seen, G andhi opposed the tw o-nation theory and the division of India, but he had w ritten as early as April 1940: ‘I know no non-violent m ethod of compelling the obedience of eight crores o f M uslim s to the will of the rest of India, however powerful a m ajority the rest m ay represent. T he M uslims m ust have the same right of self-determ ination th at the rest of India lias. W e are at present a jo in t family. Any m em ber may claim a division’.15 T his was a perfectly logical position for a leader, w ho was com m itted to non-violence to adopt, but another leader, following the exam ple of A braham Lincoln, m ay have insisted th a t there could be no comprom ise on the unity of the country. In 1942, the Congress W orking Com m ittee, in its resolution on the C ripps M ission affirmed th at ‘it could not think in terms o f com pelling the people of any territorial unit to rem ain in the In d ia n U nion against their declared and established will’. Two years later, in his talks w ith Jin n a h , G andhi not only accepted the principle of Pakistan, but even discussed the mechanism for the dem arcation of the boundaries between the two successor states. In 1946, after m uch heart-searching, the Congress accepted the C abinet M ission Plan with a three-tier structure a n d a central governm ent limited to control over defence, foreign affairs an d com m unications. It was a delicate constitutional fram ew ork with num erous checks and balances; unless the two m ajo r parties entered the C onstituent Assembly with goodwill it w as im possible to draft a workable constitution, m uch less to w ork it. O f this goodwill there was no sign.

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I t h as been suggested th a t the last chance o f m aintaining the u n ity o f In d ia was lost in J u ly 1946 when Jaw aharlal N ehru ad d re ssed the A ll-India Congress C om m ittee and a press con­ ference a t Bom bay. H is ‘intem perate rem arks’ are alleged to hav e led to the w ithdraw al o f the M uslim League from the C a b in e t M ission P lan .16 A careful study of Ja w a h arlal N eh ru ’s speech at the meeting o f th e C ongress Party shows th at N ehru was replying to the criticism levelled by left-wing critics in the party who had q u estio n ed the status an d power of the C onstituent Assembly, on th e g ro u n d th a t it was being convened by the British gov­ e rn m e n t a n d could exist only on its sufferance. T h e oft-quoted sen ten ce from this speech, ‘W e are not bound by a single thing except th a t we have decided to go to the C onstituent Assembly’, w as n o t the m ost im portant p a rt o f it; it was intended to parry th e critics w ithin the Congress Party an d not to provoke the M u slim League. T he whole tenor of N eh ru ’s long speech was a ju stificatio n o f the Congress acceptance o f the C abinet Mission P lan . H e refuted the charge th at the C onstituent Assembly w ould be a sham , or a nursery gam e at which Indian politicians w ould play while the British governm ent supervised them. And a t his press conference three days later, while N ehru emphasized th e sovereign ch aracter o f the C onstituent Assembly; he also affirm ed th a t the C ongress was determ ined to m ake a success of th e constitutional m echanism outlined by the C abinet Mission. W hile N eh ru h ad em phasized th at the form ation of groups in th e C a b in e t M ission Plan was not compulsory, he had not re p u d ia te d the procedure laid down in the P lan.17 T h e M uslim League professed fo be offended by N ehru’s rem ark s, an d passed a resolution w ithdraw ing its acceptance of th e C a b in e t M ission Plan. As Pethick-Lawrence, the Secretary o f S ta te for In d ia, told an In d ian visitor, ‘these remarks gave J in n a h the excuse he was looking for to get out of the Constituent A ssem bly an d the C abinet M ission P lan’.18 T h e fact is that the L eague h ad never really accepted the Plan; its resolution affirmed th a t ‘the M uslim League agreed to cooperate w ith the consti­ tu tio n -m ak in g m achinery proposed in the schem e outlined by th e M ission in the hope th at it would ultim ately result in the estab lish m en t o f a com plete sovereign Pakistan’. Clearly, the L eague did not treat the Cabinet Mission Plan, with its three-tier

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stru ctu re, as a final compromise between the Congress ideal of a strong, united India, and the League objective of two separate sovereign states. Jin n a h and other League leaders m ade no secret of their design to make the groups of provinces (which included large contiguous Hindii-m ajority areas in W est Bengal, in E ast Punjab and Assam) as a prelude to secession and form ation of an independent state. T he Congress leaders had, of course, no intention of letting the M uslim League get away with the ‘full six province Pakistan’ of its conception by disguising them in the first instance as ‘groups of provinces’. It is doubtful if the C abinet Mission Plan could have preserved the unity of India; it would have only given to the M uslim League ‘a “ big” Pakistan through the back door, and left India with a weak m inim al centre’.19 R ecent research has tended to confirm the view th at Jin n a h ’s d em and for Pakistan was no bargaining counter,20 that he was bent upon the creation of sovereign states in the west and the east, and th at he would have treated any compromise w ith the C ongress only as a stepping-stone to further dem ands. The lim it o f constitutional concessions had long since been reached; any further concessions would have handicapped the future In d ian state, without preventing the secession of the Muslimm ajority regions. T h e Interim G overnm ent in 1946-7 at the centre revealed the u tter incom patibility of the Congress and the M uslim League. T h e com m unal riots, which began at C alcutta on 16 A ugust 1946, spread like a prairie fire from C alcutta to East Bengal, from East Bengal to Bihar, and from Bihar to the Punjab. In d ia seemed to be sliding into an undeclared civil war w ith battle lines passing through alm ost every town and village. Split from top to bottom , the Interim G overnm ent was unable to set an example of cohesion or firmness. T he Viceroy seemed to have been outplayed in the face of divergent pressures which he could neither reconcile nor control; he suggested to his superiors in London the desperate expedient of a British evacuation of India, province by province. T o check the drift to chaos, Prim e M inister Attlee came to the conclusion that what was needed was a new policy and a new Viceroy to carry it out. J u n e 1948 was announced as the latest date for term ination of British rule in India, and M ountbatten was appointed to succeed

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W avell in M arch 1947. M o u n tb a tten ’s task was facilitated by the fact th a t by M arch 1947, m ost Congress leaders, including N e h ru an d Patel, had reconciled themselves to the partition of In d ia . T h ey had been chastened by their experience of working w ith the M uslim League in the Interim G overnm ent as well as by the grow ing lawlessness in the country. T he choice seemed to them to be between anarchy and partition; they resigned them selves to the latter in order to salvage three-fourths of In d ia from the chaos which threatened the whole. T he decision in favour o f the partition was not th at of only N ehru and Patel; in the A ll-In d ia Congress C om m ittee 157 voted for and only fifteen ag ain st it. G a n d h i took little p a rt in the final negotiations, but his opposition to partition was an open secret. ‘W e are unable to th in k coherently’, he declared, ‘whilst the British power is still fu n ctio nin g in India. Its function is not to change the m ap of In d ia. All it has to do is to w ithdraw and leave India, carrying o u t the w ithdraw al, if possible, in an orderly m anner, may be even in chaos, on or before the promised d ate’. T he very violence, w hich in the opinion of his Congress colleagues and that of the B ritish governm ent provided a compelling motive for partition, w as for him an irresistible argum ent against it; to accept parti­ tion because o f the fear of civil w ar was to acknowledge that ‘ev ery th in g was to be got if m ad violence was perpetrated in sufficient m easure’. G a n d h i was convinced th at the com m unal tension however serious it seem ed in 1947 was a tem porary phase, and that the B ritish h ad no right to impose partition ‘on an India temporarily gone m a d ’. His plea th at there should be ‘peace before Pakistan’ w as n o t acceptable to the M uslim League. In fact the League’s case w as th a t there could be no peace until Pakistan was e stab lish ed . H aving declared their resolve to quit India by Ju n e 1948, the B ritish did not w ant to— and perhaps could not— an ta g o n iz e the M uslim League. T hree or four years earlier they could have exercised a m oderating influence on the League; in 1947, th e scope for this influence was strictly limited. T he sins of L in lith g o w an d C hurchill were visited on M ountbatten and A ttlee.

C H A PTER 12

The Partition Massacres

T h e M uslim League had insisted th at there could be no peace in In d ia until its dem and for the creation of a separate M uslim state w as conceded. T h e M ountbatten Plan o fju n e 1947, which provided for two new D om inions to come into existence from 15 A ugust 1947, conceded this dem and. After its acceptance by the B ritish governm ent, the Indian N ational Congress and the A ll-In d ia M uslim League, the plan was expected to usher in an era o f com m unal amity in the subcontinent. To the consternation o f the B ritish governm ent and the Indian political leaders, what actu ally ensued was violence on an unprecedented scale, com­ pelling the m inorities— the H indus in W est Pakistan and the M uslim s in East Punjab— to flee for safety across the newly created border between the two states. T h e comm unal violence, which flared up in August-September 1947, w as p a rt of the chain-reaction which had begun a year earlier w ith the terrible riot in C alcutta on 16 August 1946, w hich h ad been observed by the M uslim League as the Direct A ction D ay. T h e provocation for this observance had been the decision o f the Viceroy, Lord W avell, to form an Interim G ov ern m en t w ith the representatives of the Congress, even th o u g h the M uslim League was not prepared to join it. N ehru w ent to see Jin n ah , but the League leader declined to co-operate. J in n a h thundered against ‘the caste H indu, Fascist Congress . . . w ho w an t to be installed in pow er and authority of the Govern­ m en t o f In d ia to dom inate an d rule over the M ussalm ans . . . w ith the aid of B ritish bayonets’.1 H e held out the threat of ‘d irect actio n ’. ‘T his day ’, said Jin n a h , ‘we bid good-bye to constitutional m ethods . . . . T oday we have also forged a pistol a n d are in a position to use it’.2 T h e Congress had resorted to ‘d irect actio n ’ on a num ber of occasions against the governm ent

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in th e p ast, b u t in each case it had been under G andhi’s d irectio n , an d G an d h i’s adherence to non-violence was clear b eyond any doubt. No other Congress leader had ever ventured to launch a mass movement. Evidently, Jinnah and his colleagues in th e M uslim League did not realize the implications of a cam p aig n o f ‘direct action’; it needed som ething more than a n g ry w ords an d m enacing gestures. O n th e ‘D irect Action D ay’, 16 A ugust 1946, C alcutta wit­ nessed a com m unal riot to which the Statesman gave the grim e p ith e t o f ‘T h e G reat C alcutta K illing’. For four days, bands of hooligans arm ed with sticks, spears, hatchets and even fire­ arm s roam ed the town, robbing an d killing at will. More than five th o u san d lives were lost and the num ber of injured was e stim ated a t fifteen thousand. Bengal was at this time ruled by a M uslim L eague m inistry headed by H. S. Suhrawardy. It was alleged th a t he had deliberately prevented the police from a c tin g prom ptly and im partially. If—as was suggested at the tim e— the outbreak was intended to serve as a dem onstration of th e stre n g th o f the M uslim feeling on the dem and for Pakistan, it tu rn e d o u t to be'a double-edged weapon. T he non-M uslims of C a lc u tta reeled under the initial blow, but then, taking a d v a n ta g e o f their num erical superiority, hit back savagely. T h e im pression w ent abroad that, in spite of a M uslim League m in istry in Bengal, the H indus had won in the trial of strength a t C a lc u tta . Tw o m onths later reprisals followed in the Muslimm ajo rity districts o f N oakhali in E ast Bengal where, exploiting poo r com m unications, an d encouraged by fanatical mullahs a n d am b itio u s politicians, local hooligans b u rnt the H indus’ property, looted their crops, desecrated their temples, kidnapped H in d u w om en an d m ade forcible conversions. Thousands of H in d u s fled from their homes. G a n d h i was in Delhi when the news from East Bengal came through. H e was particularly h urt by the crimes against women. H e cancelled all his plans and decided to leave for East Bengal. F rien d s tried to dissuade him. His health was poor; im portant political developm ents, on which his advice would be required, w ere im m inent. ‘I do not know ’, he said, ‘w hat I shall be able to do th ere [in E ast Bengal]. All th at I know is that I won’t be at peace unless I go’. A t C alcutta he saw the ravages of the August riot and confessed

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to ‘a sinking feeling at the m ass m adness which can turn a m an in to a b ru te ’. H e m ade a courtesy call on the British Governor, an d talked to Prem ier Suhraw ardy and his colleagues and to H in d u an d M uslim leaders. H e m ade it clear that he was interested not in finding out which com m unity was to blame, b u t in creating conditions which would enable the two com­ m u n ities to resum e their peaceful life. T o Professor N. K. Bose, w ho acted as his secretary during his stay in East Bengal, G an d h i confided his strategy: ‘T he first thing is that politics have divided India today into H indus and M uslims. I w ant to rescue people from this quagm ire and m ake them work on solid g ro u n d w here people are people. Therefore my appeal here is not to the M uslim s as M uslim s, nor to H indus as H indus, but to o rd in ary hum an beings who have to keep their villages clean, to b u ild schools for their children and take m any other steps so th a t they can m ake life better. II T h e atm osphere in E ast Bengal was charged w ith suspicion, fear, hatred and violence. G andhi took his residence in Srirampur, one o f the worst hit villages. H e saw gaping walls, gutted roofs, ch arred ruins and rem nants of skeletons in the debris, the handiw ork of religious frenzy. H e em barked on a village'-tovillage tour. H e discarded his sandals and, like the pilgrims of old, w alked barefoot. T h e village tracks were slippery and som etim es m aliciously strew n w ith bram bles and broken glass; the fragile bam boo bridges were tricky to negotiate. H is presence acted as a soothing balm on the countryside; it eased tension, assuaged anger and softened tempers. His success would have been more spectacular were it not for the propaganda ag ain st him in the M uslim press, alleging a ‘deep political g a m e ’ behind his mission. U n d er pressure from local party bosses— an d perhaps from the League H igh Com m and— P rem ier Suhraw ardy becam e critical of G andhi’s tour and jo in e d in the outcry th at he should quit Bengal. G andhi was not dism ayed by this perverse opposition; he argued that, if he could not com m and the confidence of the M uslim League leaders, the responsibility was his own. An entry in his diary, d a te d 2 J a n u a ry 1947, reads: ‘H ave been awake since 2 a.m.

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G o d ’s grace alone is sustaining me . . . . All round me is utter darkness. W hen will God take me out of this darkness into His light?’4 M eanw hile the H indu peasantry of Bihar wreaked a terrible vengeance on the M uslim m inority in that province for the events in E ast Bengal. Early in M arch G andhi moved over to B ih ar w here his refrain was the same as in East Bengal: the m ajority m ust repent and make amends; the minority must forget a n d forgive and make a fresh start. He would not accept an y apology for com m unal m adness, and chided those who sought in the misdeeds of the rioters in East Bengal a justification for reprisals in Bihar. Civilized conduct, he insisted, was the d u ty of every individual irrespective of what others did. In M arch 1947 news of serious disturbances came from the P u n jab . T h e M uslim League’s ‘direct action’ cam paign to dis­ lodge the Unionist-Akali-Congress coalition sparked off a con­ flagration in th at province; the H indu and Sikh minorities in its w estern districts went through the same horrors as the Muslim m inority in B ihar and the H indu m inority in East Bengal. A sem blance of order was restored with the help of the army, but tension continued. T he first two towns of the Punjab, Lahore a n d A m ritsar, were caught up in a strange guerilla warfare in w hich shooting, stabbing and arson went on in the midst of police patrols and curfew orders. Ill G a n d h i was in Bihar when he received the news of the trouble in the Punjab. Since O ctober 1946 he had been wandering from one province to another in a vain attem pt to stem the tide of violence. For G andhi this violence was a shocking, and even a bew ildering phenom enon. All his life he had worked for the day w hen In d ia w ould set an example of non-violence to the world. T h e chasm between w hat he had cherished in his heart and w h at he saw was so great that he could not help feeling a deep sense of failure. His first impulse was to blam e himself. H ad he been unobservant, careless, indifferent, impatient? H ad he failed to d etect in tim e th at while the people on the whole refrained from overt violence in the struggle against foreign rule, they co n tin u ed to harbour ill-feeling against the British? Was

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com m unal violence only an expression of the violence which h a d sm ouldered in the breasts o f those who had paid lip-service to non-violence? In retrospect it would ap p ear th at G andhi was exaggerating his own responsibility and the failure of non-violence. It was rem ark ab le enough th at in the several satyagraha cam paigns he h ad led, violence had been reduced to negligible proportions, a n d In d ia ’s millions received a political awakening w ithout that heavy dose of hatred against B ritain and the British people that is com m only associated with resurgent nationalism . T h e real explanation for the violence of 1946—7 is to be sought in the tensions which the M uslim L eague’s seven-year-long cam paign for Pakistan aroused in its protagonists as well as opponents. T he basic premise of this cam paign was that Hindus a n d M uslim s had nothing in common in the past or the present. M illions o f people were seized with vague hopes and fears. No one could say w ith certainty w hether India would survive as one country, or would be divided into two or m ore states, w h eth er the Punjab or Bengal would be split, w hether the princely states would be integrated into an independent India, o r becom e autonom ous units. T h e adivasis of C entral India and the .N ag as o f Assam suddenly found cham pions for an in­ d ep en d en ce which they had never claim ed before; there was talk of a D ravidistan in the South, and a thousand-m ile corridor to link the two wings of the future Pakistan. W e now know that the N izam of H yderabad with the backing of some Conservative politicians in London was intriguing with the Portuguese to secure an access to the sea-port of G oa,5 so as to be able to set him self up as an independent sultan after the British withdrawal. T h e rulers of several other states such as T ravancore and B hopal entertained sim ilar, grandiose am bitions. All this could not b.ut excite popular fantasy; the turbulent elements began to see in the coming transfer of power a period of power vacuum such as h ad occurred in the twilight of the M ughal empire. In the face of these perils the G overnm ent of India was an uneasy coalition of the Congress and the M uslim League—and th e provincial governm ents faced increasing demoralization. B ritish officers, with the im m inent term ination of their careers, h a d n eith er the ability nor perhaps the will to cope with the volcanic violence which was erupting. Indian officers, when

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they w ere themselves free from the com m unal virus, found it difficult to restrain their subordinates. T he growth of private arm ies, the M uslim League N ational G uards, the Rashtriya Sw ayam Sevak Sangh and others, showed that popular faith in the im p artiality o f the instrum ents of law and order was at a discount. Since O cto b er 1946 G andhi had m ade the assuaging of com m u n al fanaticism his prim ary mission. His tours of Bengal a n d B ihar succeeded in re-educating the masses to some extent, b u t he w as handicapped by the fact that his voice did not carry the w eight w ith the M uslim intelligentsia which it had once done. I f his efforts at restoring com m unal peace had been su p p lem en ted by someone who com m anded the alle^'.ance of the M uslim com m unity, his task would not have been half so difficult. I f J in n a h had toured East Bengal or West Punjab, he m ig h t have helped in stopping the rot. Such a suggestion would, how ever, have been simply laughed away by the League leader; con su m m ate politician as he was, his political instincts rebelled against fasts and walking tours. After the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’ and the disturbances in Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab, communal violence becam e the strongest argum ent in the Muslim League’s b rieffo r Pakistan. Its leaders insisted that the choice lay between ‘a divided or a destroyed In d ia’. IV T h e M o u n tb a tten Plan had fixed 15 August as the date for the sim u ltan eo u s transfer of power from Britain to India a^d the p a rtitio n o f the country. Tw o and a half m onths were obviously too sh o rt a period for such a vast and complex undertaking. The V iceroy an d his advisers worked overtime to deal with the n u m ero u s constitutional and adm inistrative issues. The C ongress a n d the League leaders were confronted with the prodigious task o f dividing the assets o f a state apparatus which h a d been built up foi a century and a half as a unitary govern­ m ent. T h e integration o f 562 Indian states in the new political fram ew ork was itself a formidable problem. But the most critical decision, o f w hich the full im plications do not seem to have been realized a t the time, was to divide the civil services and the arm e d forces betw een the two successor-states.

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E arly in April 1947 G eneral A uchinleck, the British C om m ander-in-C hief, w rote th a t it would take five to ten years to divide the Indian arm y.6 M ountbatten w arned Jin n a h that the su d d en w ithdraw al of British officers from the Indian arm y w as a serious enough step, b u t to further synchronize it with the sp littin g o f the arm y on a religious basis was to subject it to an im possible strain. T his dual reorganization was fraught with g rea t risks, as the arm y was likely to be out of action for at least som e tim e. Jin n a h did not heed M o u n tb a tten ’s w arning and insisted on the division of the arm ed forces and the adm inistra­ tive services. T h e final decision to split the arm y was taken on 30June, ju st six weeks before the transfer of power.7 T h e division was to be on the basis of domicile, although M uslim personnel of Indian dom icile could opt for the Pakistan arm y and H indu personnel o f P akistan domicile could opt for the In d ian arm y. As the M uslim com ponent of the arm ed forces, other than the navy, w as d raw n largely from W est Pakistan districts, in effect the division of the forces was on com m unal lines. Pending the com plete reshuffling of the arm ed forces, it was decided to effect a rough an d ready division, th a t is, to ensure im m ediate move­ m en t o f all M uslim -m ajority m ilitary units to Pakistan and of all non-M uslim m ajority units to India. Sim ultaneously, steps were taken to.divide the administrative services on a religious basis. T h e civilian officials of the central gov ern m en t were given the option to select the governm ent they w ished to serve. This option was later extended to the employees o f the provincial governm ents of the Punjab, Bengal and Assam. A n overw helm ing m ajority of H indu and Sikh officials opted for In d ia a t the.central level and for W est Bengal, E ast Punjab and A ssam a t the provincial level; the vast m ajority of M uslim officials opted for Pakistan. In Ju ly 1947 orders were issued to a rran g e, as far as possible, transfers in accordance with the op tio n s of the employees before 15 A ugust. T h is total ‘com m unalization’ of the services, including the police a n d the m ilitary, w hich was in a sense the concom itant of th e tw o nation-theory and the establishm ent of a sovereign Pakistan, was a catastrophic decision. If governm ent employees, w ith their guaranteed term s and conditions of service, felt unsafe in a D om inion in w hich they belonged to the m inority

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com m unity, how could that com m unity feel safe and stay on u n d e r the new regime?8 T h e m em ories of the riots in West P u n ja b a n d E ast Bengal were still fresh in the minds of the n on -M u slim minorities; they knew that Pakistan had been c reated as a hom eland for M uslim s; they wondered if they could have a safe a n d honourable niche in it. M o u n tb a tte n had taken the precaution of forming a ‘neutral b o d y ’ o f troops, a ‘boundary force’ o f55,000 m en under MajorG en eral Rees to m aintain law and order during the period of transition. B ut General Rees felt utterly helpless, when communal disturbances broke out over a wide area in the Punjab, N.W .F.P. a n d Sind. T h e problem of suppressing communal riots suddenly becam e m ore difficult than it had ever been before. D uring the w orst riots, in Bengal and B ihar in 1946 and in the Punjab in M a rc h 1947, it had been possible to restore order within a few days, because the police and the arm y were composite forces recru ited from all com m unities. T here were individual acts of p a rtisa n sh ip , b u t they could always be rectified. After the parti­ tion o f the country and the ‘com m unal’ reshuffling of the civil a n d arm ed forces, the safeguard of a composite police and arm y w as no longer available. W hen the next round of rioting started in J u ly —A ugust 1947, it becam e impossible to halt it. The H indu an d Sikh m inorities in W est Pakistan, and the M uslim minority in E ast P u n jab became helpless victims of atrocities; they could n o t d e p en d upon the protection of the local authorities, which cam e to be infected with com m unalism . In W est Punjab even w hen senior M uslim officers tried to stop the persecution of the m inorities, they were unable to discipline the police, which was now w holly M uslim in composition. A sim ilar difficulty faced those w ho led the police force in East Punjab. Anti-social elem ents took full advantage of the new situation; there were orgies o f looting, arson and killing. Millions of terror-stricken H in d u s a n d Sikhs fled w estwards by rail and road to India. Sim ilarly, long convoys o f M uslim refugees from East Punjab a n d D elhi form ed to w end their weary way to Pakistan. T h e com m unal holocaust and the mass m igration of m inori­ ties w ere not foreseen by those who form ulated, accepted, and executed the plan for the partition of the country. But they were a n inevitable consequence of the com m unal division of the civil a n d m ilitary services. T hree years earlier, Jin n a h had declined

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to heed G andhi’s plea against a total separation between the two successor-states.9 T he M ahatm a had w arned that it would bring untold misery to the minorities in both countries and result in perpetual hatred, bitterness and wars between them. H is w orst fears were tragically confirmed even while the ink on the M o u n tb atten Plan had not yet quite dried. V G an d h i was not present at Delhi to take p art in the pageantry w hich was to m ark the transfer of power from Britain to India on 15 A ugust 1947. H e was in no mood to think of bands and b an n ers. T he day for which he had longed and laboured had com e, b u t he felt no joy in his h eah . N ot only was India’s freedom being ushered in at the cost of her unity, but large sections o f the population were uneasy about their future. E arly in A ugust 1947, G andhi left for East Bengal, where the H in d u s o f Noakhali feared a fresh wave o f disturbances after the establishm ent of Pakistan. O n arrival at C alcutta he found the tow n in the grip of com m unal lawlessness which had been its lot for a year. W ith the exit of the M us lim League ministry and the transfer o f the majority of M uslim o ficials and police to Pakistan, the> tables had been turned. It seemed as if the H indus of C a lc u tta were determ ined to pay olf old scores. Suhrawardy, now no longer Prem ier, and therefore som ewhat chastened, m et G an d h i and urged him to pacify C alcutta before proceeding to N oakhali. G andhi agreed on the condition that Suhrawardy w ould stay with him under the same roof in C alcutta, and also use his influence w ith M uslim opinion in East Bengal to protect the H in d u minority. G a n d h i’s choice fell upon a M uslim w orkm an’s house in B elighata, a p art of C alcutta, which was considered unsafe for M uslim s. H ardly had he m oved ipto his new quarters, when on 13 A ugust, a group of young H indus staged a dem onstration ag ain st his peace mission. He explained to them how he had been trying to end the fratricidal strife, and how hate and violence would lead them nowhere. His words fell like gentle rain on parched earth, and the youngm en returned to their hom es converted. C alcutta was transform ed overnight. Rioting ceased. O n 14 August, the eve-of-independence was jointly

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celeb rated by the two comm unities. H indus and Muslims collected in the streets and danced and sang together. The in cu b u s w hich had pressed down upon the heart of the town since A ugust 1946 was suddenly lifted. T hree to four thousand people atten d ed G an d h i’s prayer meetings, where the flags of In d ia an d Pakistan flew together. G andhi was pleased. ‘We have d ru n k the poison of h a tre d ’, he said, ‘and so this nectar of fratern izatio n tastes all the sw eeter’. T h is cordiality had hardly lasted for a fortnight when the news o f the m assacres in Pakistan and the mass migrations from W est P u n jab caused a fresh flare-up in C alcutta. A H indu mob raid ed G a n d h i’s residence in Belighata on 31 August; it was an g ry , abusive, violent; it sm ashed the windows and forced its w ay in to the house. T h e M ah atm a’s .vords were drowned in a violent din; a brick flew past him; a lathi blow ju st missed him. C a lc u tta relapsed into rioting. T h is w as a serious setback to G andhi’s efforts for peace. His an sw er was the announcem ent of a fast from 1 September, to be broken only when peace returned to C alcutta. ‘W hat my word in person could not do’, he said, ‘my fast m ay’. T he announce: m en t electrified the town; the M uslim s were moved, the H indus sham ed. N ot even the hooligans of C alcutta could bear the th o u g h t o f having the M a h atm a ’s blood on their conscience; truck-loads of contraband arm s were voluntarily surrendered by the com m unal underground. T h e leaders of all communities pledged them selves to peace and begged G andhi to break the fast. G an d h i consented, but w ith the w arning th at if the pledge was n o t honoured he w ould em bark on an irrevocable fast. T h e C alcu tta fast was universally acclaim ed as a miracle; in the oft-quoted words of the correspondent of London Times, it did w h at several divisions of troops could not have done. Hence­ forth C a lc u tta an d Bengal were to rem ain calm; the fever of com m unal strife had subsided. T h e finest tribute to G an d h i’s work in C alcutta was paid by M o u n tb a tte n in a telegram on 26 August: ‘M y dear Gandhiji, in the P u n jab we have 55 thousand soldiers and large-scale rioting on o u r hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one m an an d th ere is no rioting. As a serving officer, as well as an ad m in istra to r m ay I be allowed to pay my tribute to the O ne M a n B oundary Force’.10

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T h e sum of hum an m isery involved in the m ovem ent of six m illion H indus and Sikhs from W est Punjab to East Punjab, a n d of an equal num ber of M uslim s in the opposite direction was appalling. T h e danger, however, was th at as the refugees w ith th eir tales of woe continued to pour in, violence might spread. Indeed, this was exactly w hat happened in Delhi. W hen G a n d h i arrived there in Septem ber 1947 he found the capital of In d ia paralyzed by one of the worst com m unal riots in its long history. H e felt there was no point in his proceeding to the P u n jab when Delhi was aflame. T h e G overnm ent of In d ia had taken prom pt and energetic action. Prim e M inister N ehru had declared th at violence would be suppressed sternly; an emergency com m ittee of the cabinet h ad been formed and troops had been moved into the town. But G a n d h i was not cpntent with a peace imposed by the police and the m ilitary,violence had to be purged from the hearts of the people. It was an uphill task. Delhi had a num ber of refugee cam ps, some of which housed H indus and Sikhs from W est Pakistan, while others sheltered M uslim s fleeing from Delhi for a passage across the border. T h e H indu and Sikh refugees were in a difficult mood. M any of them , uprooted from their homes, lands and occupations, were going through the unfamiliar pangs o f poverty; some had been bereaved in the riots, and all were bitter. T hey could not understand the M ah atm a’s advice to ‘forget an d forgive’ and to bear no malice in their hearts towards those at whose hands they had suffered. T hey even blam ed him for the division of India; his non-violence, they said, had been outclassed by violence. T h e tales of woe G andhi heard b u rn t themselves into his soul, b u t he did not falter in his conviction th at only non­ violence could end this spiral of hate and violence. In his prayer speech every evening, he touched on the com m unal problem. H e stressed the futility of retaliation. H e wore him self out in an effort to re-educate the people of Delhi; he heard grievances, suggested solutions, encouraged or adm onished his num erous interview ers, visited refugee cam ps, rem ained in touch with local officials. It was an exhausting and heart-breaking routine. O n 13 Ja n u a ry 1948, G andhi began a fast. ‘M y greatest fast’,

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he w rote to one o f his disciples. It was also to be his last; it was no t to be broken until Delhi becam e peaceful. T he town was ostensibly quiet; thanks to the stern m easures taken by the governm ent, the killings had stopped. But the peace for which G a n d h i h ad been working for four and a half months was not the peace o f the grave, bu t a peace symbolizing the reunion of h earts. O f the latter there was no sign. M uslims did not dare to m ove a b o u t freely in the town; reports reached G andhi that the refugees from W est Pakistan were applying subtle methods to o u st local M uslim s from their shops and houses. T he argum ent th a t H in d u s an d Sikhs were equally unsafe throughout the w hole o f W est Pakistan struck him as irrelevant. G a n d h i’s fast shook the country. It compelled people to think afresh on the problem on the solution of which he had staked his life. T h ere was & sense of urgency; som ething had to be done quickly to create conditions to end his fast. T he Government of In d ia paid o u t to Pakistan, at his instance, and as a gesture of goodwill, Rs 55 crores (£ 44 million) which were due as a share o f u n ited In d ia ’s assets, but had been withheld on account of the conflict in K ashm ir. O n 18 Ja n u a ry 1948, representatives of th e various com m unities and parties in Delhi signed a pledge in G a n d h i’s presence th at they would guarantee peace in Delhi. Before breaking the fast, the M ahatm a told them, w hat he had told the signatories of the peace pledge at C alcutta in September 1947, th a t if they did not honour the pledge, he would fast unto d eath . G a n d h i’s fast had a refreshing effect upon Pakistan; it p u n c tu re d the subtle web of M uslim League propaganda which for ten years h ad painted him as an enemy of Islam. T he tide of com m u nal violence showed definite signs of ebbing in the sub­ co n tin en t. G andhi felt freer to m ake his plans for the future. He h a d prom ised the refugees from W est Pakistan that he would n o t rest until every family had been rehabilitated in its native tow n o r village. But he felt he could not go to Pakistan without the perm ission o f the governm ent of th at country. M eanwhile he th o u g h t o f returning to his ashram at Sevagram. His mind w as sw itching over m ore and m ore to social and economic problem s, an d to the refurbishing of his non-violent technique. H ow ever, he was destined neither to go to Pakistan nor to pick u p the th read s o f his constructive, socio-economic programme.

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O n the afternoon of 30 Ja n u ary , while he was on his way to his p ray er meeting, he was shot down by a H indu fanatic, who belonged to the school of thought which believed that G andhi was m uch too soft towards M uslims and Pakistan, and had b etrayed the interests of his own com m unity and country. V II It is clear th at Jin n a h had not thought out the full implications o f his two-nation theory. W hile a substantial portion of the M uslim population lived in the provinces he claimed for Pakistan, alm ost an equal num ber lived in the rest of India. T he secession o f the M uslim -m ajority provinces in the west and the east in 1947, far from solving the m inority problem , only aggravated it. T h e position of the H indu m inority in Pakistan and the M uslim m inority in India became im m easurably weaker than before. If it was J in n a h ’s object—as he professed for nearly four decades— to contribute to the solidarity of Indian Islam, he p ursued a course which was to defeat this very purpose. In the event the M uslim com m unity in the subcontinent was split in two states in 1947, and in three states after 1971. T he emergence of Bangladesh, within a quarter of a century of the establishment of Pakistan, showed that religion by itself could not be a sufficient bond for nationhood. As a w riter pu t it recently, ‘the “ twon a tio n ” theory, form ulated in the m iddle class living rooms of U tta r Pradesh was buried in the Bengali countryside’.11 Today there are alm ost as m any M uslim s in India as in Pakistan, or in B angladesh. And if Pakistan has no ‘m inority’ problem it is because it has hardly any religious m inorities left within its borders. J in n a h ’s trium ph in 1947 was the trium ph of superior tactics ra th e r th an that of a sound strategy. His unswerving goal was the cap tu re of power. However, the will and the desire for power alone would not have m ade him the Qaid-i-Azam. He succeeded t because there was, in psychological parlance, a ‘congruence th a t existed between his needs and characteristics and the needs o f his people’.12 ‘T his power-conscious m an’, in the words o f K halid B. Sayeed, prom ised to Indian M uslims, ‘the political pow er w hich the Q u ran had prom ised to them and which their forbears had wielded in In d ia ’.13 Pride in the past, and fear of

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th e fu tu re m ade Indian M uslim s susceptible to the cries of religion in danger. T h a t J in n a h was a superb tactician nobody can deny. But those w ho shape the destiny of nations need to be good strategists as well. H e turned the conflict between the Congress and the g ov ern m en t to good account for his aims, and in the last phase o f the political tug-of-war, he was able to stall the Indian N atio n al C ongress as well as the British. But he does not seem to have foreseen the long-term consequences of his campaign. T h e resu lt was th at he m anaged to achieve ju st the opposite of his professed aims. H e had stressed the need for M uslim unity; in fact, he was destined to split Indian M uslims. T he partition d id not solve the com m unal problem ; it only internationalized it. W h a t h ad been a political debate between rival communities a n d political parties becam e an issue between two ‘sovereign’ states, w hich after three w ars since 1947, are still debating the possibilities o f a ‘no-w ar p act’. J in n a h had concentrated on the alleged iniquity of the C ongress and the H in d u ‘tyranny’ during his campaign for P ak istan . T h e new state had hardly any guidelines from its founder, w ho unfortunately passed away a year after it came in to existence. W h at was to be the political structure of the new state? W h a t were to be its social and economic policies? T he Q aid -i-A zam left no blueprint, and thirty-five years after his d e a th , Pakistan is in the m idst o f an anguished struggle to seek answ ers to these questions. A recent w riter, in his analysis of the causes of the upheaval w hich accom pained the partition, has argued that the ‘holocaust th a t a tte n d e d the partition and the mass m igration that took place w ere not inherent in the partition [of India], but were a consequence o f the com m unal division of the services’.14 T he com m u n al division o f the civil and m ilitary services was, how ever, inherent in J in n a h ’s concept of the division of the c o u n try , a n d his refusal to have any formal links between the tw o states. T h e causes o f the disturbances which rocked the su b c o n tin e n t are thus to be sought not only in the sequence of events in the sum m er and au tu m n of 1947, b u t in the way the seven-year-long cam paign for Pakistan was waged and won. T h e cam paign had begun in M arch 1940 on a strident note, w hen J in n a h called for a ‘hom eland’ for In dian Muslims in the

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east an d the west, to save them , after the British departure, from ‘H in d u R aj’ in an independent and dem ocratic India. He overcam e opposition w ithin his com m unity by appeals to reli­ gious em otion;15 any M uslim politician who differed with him ran the risk of being dubbed a stooge of the H indus and a traitor to Islam . It was on a wave of religious frenzy that the M uslim L eague rode to victory in the 1946 elections.16 J in n a h had been initiated into politics in the early years of the tw entieth century in the m odern, secular tradition of D adabhai N aoroji an d Gokhale, and was far from being a religious fanatic. B ut he was not averse from using religious passion to build up his following and to achieve his political aims. ‘In politics’, he once rem arked, ‘one has to play one’s game as on the chess b o a rd ’. Almost till the end he kept his opponents as well as his ad h eren ts guessing; he deliberately refrained from spelling out the political, social and even geographical implications of Pakistan. T h e very argum ents on which he based his case for the separation of M uslim -m ajority areas in the west and the east from the rest of the country m ade the partition of the P u n jab an d Bengal inevitable. It is doubtful if the Muslims of W est Bengal and East Punjab would have voted for Pakistan in the general elections to the provincial legislatures in 1946 if the prospect o f the partition of these provinces had been brought hom e to them. T h e unceasing tirades against the Congress and the Hindus, an d the dem and for a M uslim ‘hom eland’ in the subcontinent m ade it difficult for the non-M uslim inhabitants of the provinces claim ed for Pakistan, to believe that they could have an honourable place in the new set-up. I t is true that on 14 August 1947, in his address to the Pakistan C onstituent Assembly, J in n a h declared that there would be no discrim ination between M uslim s and non-M uslim s, and religious differences would vanish in course of time. T he assurance, however, came too late to reassure the non-M uslim minorities, and too early to convince the M uslim majority, which was justifiably elated at the estab­ lishm ent of an Islam ic state. T h e com m unal disturbances in August 1947 unfortunately occurred too soon after the transfer of power; there was no time for the purging of old hatreds. It required courage and patience to fight against mass m adness. G andhi had foreseen this

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m adness and gone to Bengal well in time. In the Punjab there was no one to do a sim ilar exercise; if a Pakistani leader had done in L ahore w hat G andhi was doing in C alcutta, the course o f events m ight have been reversed. But almost by reflex action, th e L eague leaders reverted to their policy of putting all the blam e on the H indus; the old slanging m atch between the L eague an d the Congress became a slanging m atch between In d ia a n d Pakistan. V III T h e M uslim League’s insistence on the division of the British In d ia n arm y on a com m unal basis m ay have been a logical ap p licatio n of the two-nation theory and two sovereign states, b u t its inevitable result was the holocaust in north-western In d ia in 1947, which led to a terrible loss of life and the migration o f m inorities. W ere it not for the determ ined stand taken by G andhi and Nehru against communal madness, its consequences in 1947 could have been even more catastrophic. It was their total com m itm ent to secularism and religious tolerance, and th eir insistence that independent India did not subscribe to the tw o-nation theory (even after accepting the division of the co u n try ), which prevented the comm unal contagion from sp read in g beyond East Punjab and Delhi into the interior of the su b co n tin en t. G a n d h i’s influence was throughout cast against violence. His saty ag rah a movements had helped to sterilize political terrorism; b u t for him , the Indian nationalist movement might have developed into a violent struggle against the colonial power, w aged w ith bombs and rifles, as in most other countries. D espite British propaganda to the contrary at the time, G a n d h i’s efforts to keep his civil disobedience movement non­ violent w ere largely successful in 1920-2,1931-4 and in 1940-1. I f th ere were violent outbreaks, they were few and far between. G a n d h i knew how to stop them , if necessary by undertaking fasts. T h e ‘Q u it In d ia’ m ovem ent was a case apart; its context has been explained in the next chapter; and it needs only to be stressed th at even its unregulated violence (‘spontaneous rev o lu tio n ’ as an Am erican scholar describes it)17 was directed n o t so m uch against British soldiers or civilians as against the

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sym bols o f foreign rule. G andhi was, of course, opposed to all violence; by im m ediately im prisoning him, the governm ent prev en ted him from exercising his restraining influence. No serious student o f G an d h i’s life and the nationalist move­ m en t can deny th at G an d h i’s weight was all along thrown ag ain st all violence, and especially against com m unal violence. In 1924 he undertook a 21 -day fast in Delhi to stop riots. His last two fasts in C alcutta and Delhi in 1947—8 were intended to end the violence which the partition of the country had triggered. H is efforts m et with success though they cost him his life at.the h an d s of a H indu fanatic, who thought him too indulgent to M uslim s an d Pakistan. T h e responsibility for the violence which accom panied and im m ediately followed the transfer of power cannot be fairly laid on G an d h i. N either the British governm ent nor the Congress a n d L eague leaders, who accepted the partition plan, w anted violence. M ountbatten, who hurried the process for the transfer o f pow er and reduced the transition period from twelve to a m ere tw o-and-a half m onths, failed to envisage fully the possi­ bilities o f disorder. H e believed he had taken enough precautions by raising a ‘Boundary Force’ of 55,000 m en under a British general to keep the peace. In the event, this action proved in ad eq u ate. T he governm ents of the two new Dominions, even before they were able to start functioning, were confronted with a critical situation. O f one thing, however, there is no doubt: no one in the Indian subcontinent did m ore th an G andhi to warn a g a in st the dangers of its p artitio n on a religious basis, or did m ore to quench the flames of h atred an d violence which fol­ low ed it.

C H A P T E R 13

G andhi and Non-Violence

Som e com m entators on G andhi have questioned the sincerity a n d consistency of his belief in non-violence. ‘And w hat of his pacifism ’, asks a w riter in the Washington Post, ‘the quality that supposedly makes him a m an for our time. G andhi was Singularly bellicose u n til th e age of 50. N ot only was he eager to kill ofF the Z ulus, b u t also the Boers and all B ritain’s W orld W ar enemies’.1 W ith a m alicious pleasure some critics refer to the ‘m ilitary’ reco rd o f ‘Sergeant-M ajor G an d h i’ in the Zulu Rebellion, the B oer W a r an d the First W orld W ar. Curiously, the same critics, w ho accuse G andhi o f‘bellicosity’, cite the Q uit India movement o f 1942 as evidence of his purblind pacifism and pro-Fascist sym p ath ies in the Second W orld W ar. W h a t is the truth in this picture of G andhi as a war-monger, a trig g er-h ap p y Sergeant, in his youth and m iddle age, and as a sy m p ath izer of the Axis Powers during the Second W orld War? N one a t all. In 1906 while G andhi was practising as a barrister a t Jo h a n n e sb u rg , he had led— with the rank of SergeantM ajo r— a group of twenty Indian stretcher-bearers to nurse A fricans w ounded during the operations against ‘the Zulu R eb ellio n ’ in N atal; it was a mission of mercy, all the more v alu ab le because the British soldiers and doctors were reluctant to a tte n d on the unfortunate victims of the m ilitary expedition. Seven years earlier, in 1899 during the Boer W ar, G andhi raised a 1200-strong am bulance corps from am ong Indian residents of N atal. O n both these occasions, he had argued that since the In d ian com m unity claimed equality in rights with the Europeans in N a ta l an d T ransvaal, it m ust also accept equal obligations; an d one o f the obligations of citizenship was participation in the defence o f the country. T o eq u ate G an d h i’s am bulance work with ‘war-m ongering’

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is ab su rd , but it m ust be adm itted th at in these early years G a n d h i’s views on non-violence had not yet fully crystallized. In his im m ediate dom estic and social circles, and even in his political work,' he was talking of overcom ing opposition by persuasion, and hatred by love. However, not until the end of 1906 a n d the enactm ent of the hum iliating Asiatic Registration law, did he evolve satyagraha, his non-violent m ethod of redressing social and political injustice. D uring the next eight years he tried this m ethod with a m easure of success on behalf of the hard-pressed Indian m inority in South Africa. But he had not yet thought out all the implications of non-violence, especially in its application to conflicts between nation-states. W hen the First W orld W ar broke out, G andhi was on his way to In d ia from South Africa via London. Im m ediately after arriv al in England, he conferred with the Indian residents, most o f w hom were students. H e gave them the sam e advice as he had given to his com patriots in N atal and T ransvaal; if they claim ed equal rights as citizens of the British empire, they m ust do their bit for Britain, their adopted country, in its hour of trial. H e took the initiative in organizing an Indian Am bulance C orps in England, and would him self have served in it in the battle-fronts of Europe, if an attack of pleurisy had not compelled him to leave for India in Decem ber 1914. By 1914 G andhi’s views on non-violence had reached the stage w here it was unthinkable for him personally to engage in killing an d war, but he recognized th at most of his countrym en did n o t share this attitude. Indeed, Indian political leaders, ‘m o d erate’ as well as ‘extrem ist’, were unanim ous that the people o f India should support the British cause against the G erm ans, b u t only for a price the prom ise of home rule after the w ar. G andhi was alm ost alone in rejecting the idea of a political bargain with the British; he cherished the hope that in retu rn for unconditional support, a grateful and victorious B ritain w ould give India her due when the w ar was over. T h e First W orld W ar created a m oral dilem m a for G andhi. H is own ideas on non-violence had advanced to the point that he could not personally participate in any act of violence; the utm o st he could do was to nurse the w ounded. W hile he was personally opposed to violence and to war, those who looked up to him for guidance were not. His faith in the British empire and

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in the possibility o f In d ia attaining within it an autonomous sta tu s sim ilar to th at of C an ad a or A ustralia was undimmed. H e a rg u ed th at since the people of India claimed equal rights as citizens o f the empire, they had also to accept the duties of this sta tu s in tim es o f war. T he Indians whom G andhi led in am bu­ lance units in the battle-fields of South Africa or whom he exh o rted to jo in the British In d ian arm y in the First W orld W ar did not believe in non-violence. It was not repugnance to violence b u t indifference .or cowardice which held them back from parti­ cip atin g in the war. A nd since the people of India were not read y for non-violent resistance, (G andhi argued) it was their d u ty to su p p o rt B ritain in her war-effort. So intense, however, w as G a n d h i’s hatred of all violence and war, that it was not w ithout m uch heart-searching and inner anguish that he reached this conclusion. T o a colleague who had expressed his surprise a t G a n d h i’s offer to associate him self with the w ar even for a m b u lan ce work, he replied: ‘I m yself could not shoot, but could nurse the w ounded. I m ight even get G erm ans to nurse. I could n u rse them w ithout any partisan spirit. T h at would be no violation o f the spirit of compassion then’.2 D u rin g the two decades, which spanned the First and the Second W orld W ars, G andhi’s belief in the potentialities of non-violence grew with greater reflection and experience. Such w as the em phasis which he began to place on non-violence that it seem ed th at the m eans were m ore im portant to him than the goal. In N ovem ber 1931 he w ent so far as to say: ‘And I would like to rep eat to the world times w ithout num ber, that I will not p u rch a se my country’s freedom, at the cost of non-violence. My m arriag e to non-violence is such an absolute thing that I would ra th e r com m it suicide than be deflected from my position’. B ecause o f his ‘absolute’ com m itm ent to non-violence, the Second W orld W ar created a situation for G andhi which was in som e ways even m ore difficult than the one he had faced in the 1914 w ar. H e had sim ultaneously to play the role of the leader of the n ationalist m ovem ent in India and the prophet of non­ violence in the w ar-torn world; this brought out two independent an d occasionally contradictory strands in his position. He had publicly hailed N ehru as his ‘guide’ on international affairs. At N e h ru ’s instance, the Indian National Congress had denounced every act o f aggression by the fascist powers in M anchuria,

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A byssinia, Spain and Czechoslovakia, and taken the W estern pow ers to task for their policy of ‘appeasem ent’ towards the dictators. G andhi’s dislike of H itler and Mussolini was as intense as N e h ru ’s. H e defined H itlerism as a ‘naked ruthless force reduced to an exact science worked w ith scientific precision’, a n d N azism and Fascism ‘as sym ptom s of a deep-seated disease— the cult of violence’. As the th reat of w ar grew in the late 1930s and the forces of violence gathered m om entum , G andhi re-asserted his faith in the efficacy of non-violence. H e felt more strongly than ever that a t th a t m om ent of crisis in world history he had a message for In d ia, an d th at India had a message for bewildered hum anity. T h ro u g h the pages of his weekly paper, the Harijan, he expounded his non-violent approach to political tyranny and m ilitary aggression. H e advised the weaker nations to defend them selves not by seeking protection from better arm ed states, n o r by increasing their own fighting potential, but by non­ violent resistance to the aggressor. A non-violent Abyssinia, he arg u ed , needed no arm s and no succour from the League of N ations; if every Abyssinian m an, wom an and child refused cooperation w ith the Italians, willing or forced, the latter would have to walk to victory over the dead bodies of their victims and to occupy the country w ithout the people. G andhi was obviously m aking a heavy overdraft upon hum an en d u ran ce. It required suprem e courage for a whole people to die to the last m an, wom an and child, rath er than surrender to th e enem y. N on-violent resistance was, how ever, not a soft doctrine— a convenient refuge from a dangerous situation; nor w as it an offer on a platter to the dictators of w hat they plotted to w rest by force. G an d h i was aw are of the apotheosis of violence which Nazi an d Fascist regimes represented, bu t he did not accept that H itle r an d M ussolini were beyond redem ption. A fundam ental assu m p tio n in his philosophy was that hum an n ature in essence w as one and m ust ultim ately respond to love. ‘If the enemy realized’, wrote G andhi, ‘that you have not the remotest thought in your m ind of raising your h and against him even for the sake o f y o u r life, he will lack the zest to kill you. Every h unter has had this experience. No one had heard o f anyone hunting cows’. T h u s at an early stage in the Second W orld W ar G andhi’s

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ow n position was anchored to his pacifism. It soon became clear th a t few o f his colleagues shared his faith in the efficacy of non-violence in arm ed conflicts. N ehru, Azad, Rajagopalachari, a n d indeed the m ajority of the Congress leaders, did not view th e w a r as an occasion for testing the potentialities of non­ violence; the really im portant point was w hether the monstrous w ar-m ach in e built by H itler could be destroyed before it enslaved m ankind. T h e In d ian N ational Congress, as N ehru p u t it, ‘h a d accepted the principle and practices of non-violence in its application to the struggle for freedom [against the British]. A t no tim e h ad it gone beyond that position, or applied the principle to defence from external aggression or internal disorder’. T h e differences betw een G andhi and his colleagues would have sh arp ly come into focus, if the British governm ent had not been short-sighted enough to freeze the constitutional issue for th e d u ra tio n o f the war. So long as there was no prospect of an effective C ongress participation in the central government, the q u estio n w h eth er In d ia ’s support of the Allied cause was to be m oral (as G an d h i advocated) or m ilitary (as N ehru proposed), rem a in e d purely academ ic. T here were two occasions on which the vicissitudes o f w ar seemed to bring a rapprochement between th e C ongress an d the governm ent w ithin the realm of practical politics, in 1940 after the French collapse, and in 1941-2 after the Ja p an e se advance in Southeast Asia. O n both these occasions G a n d h i found th a t the m ajority of his colleagues were ready to sw itch to a w hole-hearted participation in the Allied w ar effort in re tu rn for a reciprocal gesture by the British government. It is significant th a t in April 1942 the Congress leaders’ parleys w ith Sir Stafford C ripps broke dow n not on the issue of violence versus non-violence, b u t on the composition and powers of a provisional n atio n al governm ent for the effective prosecution of war* F o r n early three years after the outbreak of the w ar G andhi successfully contained the frustration o f nationalist India at the lack o f a n a d eq u a te response from the British governm ent. H e tried h a rd to balance his passion for Indian freedom with his d esire n o t to em barrass the governm ent during the war. In 1940-1, he conducted an ‘individual’ civil disobedience move­ m en t, as a sym bolic protest, which (despite the im prisonm ent o f n e a rly 30,000 persons) w as designed to cause the least

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dislocation to the w'ar-effort. Paradoxically, even the ‘Q uit In d ia ’ m ovem ent, which G andhi contem plated after the failure o f the C ripps Mission, was intended by him to strengthen the forces o f resistance against the Japanese, who were advancing all along the line in Southeast Asia. G andhi yielded to the pleas of N ehru (whose m ind was full of thoughts of citizen armies, hom e guards and guerilla warfare to beat off the Japanese invaders) that, after the British power from India, was withdrawn, Allied forces should continue to use India as a base against the Fascist powers. I n the sum m er of 1942 G andhi’s hand was on the pulse of the people. H e had observed that their mood in the face of the Ja p a n e se peril was not one of resolute defiance, but of panic, frustration and helplessness. G andhi felt that if India was not to go the way of M alaya and Burm a, where the people had put up little resistance and the British forces had w ithdraw n or been an n ih ilated , som ething had to be done and done quickly. He declared that only an im m ediate declaration of Indian inde­ pendence by the British governm ent could give the people of In d ia a stake in the defence of their country. As he told G eneralissim o Chiang Kai-shek, the British had effected w i t h d r a w a l s fro m M a l a y a , S i n g a p o r e a n d B u r m a . . . . W e m u s t le a r n th e le sso n fr o m th e se t r a g ic e v e n t s a n d p r e v e n t b y a ll m e a n s at

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a n d th e s a m e p r o c e s s m ig h t w e ll o c c u r a g a i n , c r ip p lin g I n d ia a n d C h i n a d is a s t r o u s l y . I d o n o t w a n t a r e p e t itio n o f th is t r a g ic ta le o f w o e .3

In this line of thinking G andhi had been influenced by the feeling th at the British in India were losing their nerve. H e had seen reports of a broadcast over the All India Radio by M ajorG eneral M olesworth in February 1942, in which he had said th a t In d ia ’s eastern coastline was some two thousand miles in ’length, an d it was not easy to locate a raider on so vast a sea b oard . Speaking to the Rotary C lub o f Delhi the General said: E v e r y b o d y in I n d i a is a s k in g w h a t a r e w e g o i n g to d o to k e e p th e J a p a n e s e o u t. F r o m th e p o in t o f v i e w o f th e a r m y , in th is e n o r m o u s b a t t le fr o n t w e s h a ll h o ld v it a l p la c e s w h i c h it is n e c e s s a r y to h o ld in o r d e r to m a k e I n d ia sa fe , b u t w e c a n n o t h o ld e v e r y o n e . T h e r e fo r e

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w h a t is t o b e d o n e fo r th e re s t o f I n d ia w h e r e w e a r e u n a b le to p u t t r o o p s o r a i r o r n a v a l a i r f o r c e s ? W e c a n n o t a r m a ll. O n th e o th e r h a n d , w e c a n d o a g r e a t deall to e d u c a t e th e m a s s e s to g iv e th e J a p a n e s e a g r e a t d e a l o f tr o u b le . T h i s m u s t b e d o n e b y th e c iv il p e o p l e lik e y o u . T h e a r m y c a n n o t d o it. T h e p e o p le c a n w o r k in b a n d s a n d g i v e t r o u b le a n d d e l a y a n d d e s t r o y in v a s io n . I t m a y b e t h e r e is n o p r o p e r le a d fr o m th e t o p a n d n o p r o p e r le a d e r s h ip d o w n b e l o w . S t i l l , I feel th e J a p a n e s e in v a s io n c a n b e b e a te n , i f w e e d u c a t e th e p e o p le o n th e lin e s o f ‘ T h e y s h a ll n o t p a s s ’ . P s y c h o ­ l o g i c a l l y it c a n o n ly b e d o n e b y th e in te llig e n ts ia , w o r k in g d e fin ite ly s h o u l d e r to s h o u l d e r to w o r k u p th e p e a s a n t .4

T h is indeed was G an d h i’s aim in the sum m er of 1942, when he asked the British to transfer pow er to Indian hands to let the people defend their own country. Some m onths earlier, he had sent his English disciple, M irabehn (Miss Slade), to Orissa to p rep a re the people for a non-violent resistance to the Japanese if they m an ag ed to land on the eastern coast. R e m e m b e r , [h e to ld h e r ] t h a t o u r a t t it u d e is th a t o f c o m p le te n o n - c o o p e r a t i o n w it h th e J a p a n e s e a r m y , th e r e fo r e , w e m a y n o t h e l p t h e m in a n y w a y n o r m a y w e p r o fit b y a n y d e a lin g s w it h th e m . . . . I f , h o w e v e r , th e p e o p le h a v e n o t th e c o u r a g e to r e s i s t . . . . O n e t h in g t h e y [th e p e o p le ] s h o u ld n e v e r d o — to y ie ld w illin g su b m issio n to t h e J a p a n e s e . T h a t w ill b e a c o w a r d l y a c t , a n d u n w o r t h y o f f r e e d o m - l o v i n g p e o p le . T h e y m u s t n o t e s c a p e fr o m o n e fire to fall in t o a n o t h e r a n d p r o b a b l y m o r e t e r r ib le .5

C learly, if the Axis Powers had any collaborators in India, actu al o r potential, G andhi was not one of them. There is no d o u b t th a t if in A ugust 1942 he had not been arrested, his w eight w ould have been throw n against violent outbreaks. He knew how to bring unruly m obs to order; when appeals failed, he could bring them back to sanity by undertaking a fast. T h e G overnm ent of India headed by Linlithgow, and backed by Prim e M inister C hurchill, acted in accordance with the view com m on am ong British adm inistrators, that the best way of cru sh in g G a n d h i’s m ovem ents was to deliver telling blows at the initial stage. In 1942 the governm ent struck before Gandhi h a d a chance to launch his m ovem ent. For a few m onths India w as cau g h t in the vicious circle of popular terrorism and official counter-terrorism . Linlithgow, the Viceroy, who had conducted the stern est repression against the nationalist movement in

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In d ia n history, persuaded him self th at he had won a-decisive victory over G andhi. A nd yet two years later, his successor, L ord W avell, w rote to Prim e M inister Churchill: T h e r e r e m a in s a d e e p s e n s e o f f r u s t r a t io n a n d d is c o n t e n t a m o n g s t p r a c tic a lly

a ll

e d u ca te d

In d ia n s ,

w h ic h

ren d ers

th e

p resen t

a r r a n g e m e n t fo r g o v e r n m e n t in s e c u r e a n d i m p e r m a n e n t . . . . T h e p r e s e n t G o v e r n m e n t o f I n d i a c a n n o t c o n t in u e in d e fin it e ly , o r e v e n f o r l o n g . I f o u r a im is to r e t a in I n d i a a s a w i l l i n g m e m b e r o f th e B ritis h

C o m m o n w e a l t h , w e m u s t m a k e s o m e im a g in a t iv e a n d

c o n s t r u c t i v e m o v e w it h o u t d e l a y . 6

T h e British governm ent and the G overnm ent of India used the m assive resources of their w ar publicity m achines to paint G a n d h i and. the Congress as ‘Q uislings’ and saboteurs of the A llied struggle against the Axis Powers. T his propaganda held the field for some time, bu t not for long. ‘It is sheer nonsense’, Field M arshal Sm uts told a press conference in London in N ovem ber 1942, ‘to talk of M ahatm a G andhi as a fifth colum nist. H e is a great m an. H e is one of the great m en of the w o rld ’. ' F orty years after Sm uts spoke and with the enorm ous docu­ m en tatio n of th at period which is available in official and non-official sources, the reiteration of the charge that G andhi w as pro-Axis, or pro-Japanese during the Second W orld W ar can only be attributed to ignorance of the facts or an unreasoning prejudice.

C H A PTER 14

M an versus Machine

Several critics who recognize G an d h i’s historic role as the lead er o f a revolutionary m ovem ent against imperialism find his social oudook reactionary. They cite Hind Swaraj, a pamphlet w ritte n by G an d h i in 1909, as proof of his ‘back-to-nature’ philosophy— a nostalgic throw -back to a prim itive, pre-modern eco n o m y .1 T h e G overnm ent o f India proscribed Hind Swaraj for its strictu res on B ritish rule an d the advocacy o f non-violent resist­ ance. B ut it was his denunciation of W estern civilization, especially o f industrialism , which disconcerted the Indian intel­ ligentsia, w ho h ad taken their political as well as economic m odels from the W est. G a n d h i’s anti-W estern stance in Hind Swaraj m ay have been p a rtly a reaction to W estern-educated In d ian s’ proclivity to ‘in d iscrim in ate and thoughtless im itation on the assum ption th a t A siatics are only fit to copy everything th at comes from the W est’. B ut the fact remains that G andhi took an extreme position on the use o f m achinery in Hind Swaraj; it seems to have stemmed from an ascetic streak in his own character, and was strengthened by his stu d y o f the nineteenth-century C hristian moralists— T olstoy, C arlyle, Ruskin, C arpenter and others— who had dwelt on th e seam y side o f the industrial revolution in Europe. But th e re w as a specific In d ian context in which industrialism b ecam e a n a th e m a to G andhi. H e had w ept w hen he first read in R. C . D u tt’s Economic History o f India, how thriving village crafts a n d in d u stries h ad been destroyed under the rule of the East In d ia C o m p an y in the interest o f British m anufacturers. W hat p a in e d him m ore th an anything else was th at the centre of g rav ity h a d shifted from seven hundred thousand villages, w h ere th e vast m ajority o f the population lived, to a few cities

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d o m in ated by a parasitic class of brokers between the colonial rulers and the Indian people— the landlords, the millowners, th e m oneyed m en, the professional classes and the government servants. ‘T h e half a dozen m odern cities’, G andhi lamented, ‘are an excrescence and serve at the present m om ent the evil purpose o f draw ing the life-blood of the villages’. T he pressure on the land had grown; alternative occupations were practically non-existent, millions of landless labourers had no gainful em ploym ent at all, and even the farm ers who worked on the lan d w ere under-em ployed for several m onths in the year. U rb a n industrialization, rural de-industrialization, widespread unem ploym ent and massive poverty, especially in the villages, w ere the characteristic features of the Indian economy. II A fter his return to India, and with closer knowledge of the condition o f the country, G andhi’s economic thought outgrew th e uncom prom ising vehem ence of Hind Swaraj and he came to a d o p t a m ore flexible and pragm atic position on the use of m achinery. I n th e s p a r s e l y p o p u la t e d U n i t e d S t a t e s m a c h i n e r y is o b v io u s ly n e c e s s a r y . B u t in I n d i a th e r e a r e m illio n s a n d m illio n s o f p e o p le w h o a r e u n e m p lo y e d o r u n d e r - e m p l o y e d . M e c h a n i z a t i o n is g o o d , w h e n th e h a n d s a r e to o fe w fo r th e w o r k in t e n d e d to b e a c c o m ­ p li s h e d . I t is a n e v il w h e n th e r e a r e m o r e h a n d s th a n a r e r e q u ir e d f o r t h e w o r k , a s is th e c a s e in I n d i a . 2

H e welcomed the prospect of rural electrification and the in tro d u ctio n of tools and instrum ents in village crafts which could lighten the burden of work and fatigue. H e did not, how ever, support technological innovation for its own sake; m echanization was acceptable to him only if it did not displace useful labour, and did not lead to the concentration of production a n d distribution in a few hands. W here m achinery was essential, he w as all for establishm ent of factories in which workers were assu red not only of a living wage, but of a task which was not m ere drudgery. T h e fundam ental problem of the Indian economy, as G andhi saw it, was chronic unem ploym ent and under-em ploym ent in

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th e villages. ‘T he problem with us’, he wrote, ‘is not to find a leisure for teeming millions inhabiting our country. The problem is how to utilize their idle hours which are equal to the working days o f six m onths in the year. Dead m achinery m ust not be p itte d ag ain st the millions of living m achines represented by the villagers scattered in the seven hundred thousand villages of In d ia . M achinery to be well-used has to help and ease hum an effort.’3 G a n d h i’s attitu d e to m echanization was thus not based on blind prejudice; he was not an Indian Luddite. His eyes were riveted on the long-suffering population of the villages of the In d ia n subcontinent, which had suffered neglect for centuries. H is th in k in g had a pronounced rural bias. H e looked upon urbanization as an evil, and the cities as the agents of exploitation, w hich h ad ‘sapped the lifeblood of the villages’. U rban-based crafts, especially those catering to luxury tastes and export m ark ets, did not interest him. N or did he feel m uch sym pathy for th e m igrants from the villages who eked out a precarious living th rough trade or personal service in large cities; he felt they should never have left their villages. T he common im pression th at G andhi was opposed in principle to technology is erroneous; he only asked for an appropriate technology. Ja w a h a rla l N ehru, who had once been a critic of G andhi’s sta n c e on m echanization, learnt to see the rationale behind it. R eferring to the large experim ental mechanized farm at S u ra tg a rh in R ajasthan, N ehru rem arked: A h u n d r e d S u r a t g a r h s w o u l d n a t u r a l l y m u l t i p l y th e p r o d u c tio n o f o n e S u r a t g a r h a h u n d r e d t im e s , b u t w h a t y o u fo r g e t is th e v a s t h u m a n e le m e n t in v o l v e d in a n y c o n s id e r a t io n o f r u r a l I n d ia . W e d o n ’ t l a c k p e o p le . T h e y c o n s t it u t e o u r b ig g e s t m a c h in e o r le v e r o r w h a t e v e r y o u lik e t o c a ll it. A s G a n d h i j i u s e d to str e s s to u s a ll th e t im e : Y o u

t a lk a b o u t th e m a c h in e , w e ll, I a m

n o t a g a in s t th e

m a c h i n e , h e w o u l d s a y , b u t w e h a p p e n to h a v e t h ir t y c r o r e s (th re e h u n d r e d m illio n ) m a c h i n e s in I n d i a . W h y s h o u ld w e n o t u se th e m ? T h e y a r e th e h u m a n b e in g s w h o w o r k . P e a s a n t s w it h tr e m e n d o u s c a p a c i t y fo r w o r k . N o w y o u m a y g e t a b e t te r m a c h in e p e r m a n o r h u n d r e d m e n o r o v e r a t h o u s a n d m e n , b u t y o u a r e w a s t in g th ir ty c r o r e s , o r t w e n t y c r o r e s o r te n c r o r e s o f m a c h in e s , a n d t h e y a r e n o t m e r e l y m a c h i n e s , t h e y a r e h u m a n b e in g s , w h o h a v e to b e fe d , l o o k e d a f t e r . . . . S o c o m i n g to th e p o in t, i f w e p u t S u r a t g a r h s a ll o v e r t h e p l a c e , w h a t is o n e to d o w i t h o u r l a b o u r p o te n t ia l? 4

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W h at was true o f agriculture was truer of industry. India could n o t brush m echanization aside; b u t it had to be adopted discrim inately, if the large an d growing labour force was not to swell the ranks o f the unem ployed. M ere grow th of G.N.P. w ould avail the country little, if millions of m en rem ained in enforced idleness and destitution. ‘I do visualise*, G andhi wrote, ‘electricity, ship-building, iron works, m achine-m aking and the like existing side by side w ith village handicrafts. But the order o f dependence will be reversed. H itherto the industrialization has been so planned as to destroy the villages an d village crafts. In the S tate o f the future, it will subserve the villages and their crafts’. I t was not G andhi’s h ab it to preach w hat he did not practise. In 1936 he decided to settle in a village. His choice fell upon a sm all village, Segaon near W ardha in central India, which had a p o p u latio n o f six hundred, b u t was devoid of such basic am enities as a road, a shop and a post office. H ere, on land ow ned by his friend and disciple, Ja m n alal Bajaj, G andhi occupied a one-room hut. W hen D r J o h n M ott interviewed him in 1937, G an d h i’s was the solitary hut, b u t before long a colony o f m ud an d bam boo houses grew up, and Segaon, renam ed Sevagram , becam e the centre of G andhi’s schem e of village welfare. A num ber o f institutions grew up in and around Sevagram . T he A ll-India Village Industries Association su p p o rte d and developed such industries as could easily be fostered in the villages, required little capital and did not need h elp from outside the village. T h e Association set up a school for train in g village workers and published a periodical. Among o th e r organizations were those which sought to improve the breed o f the cows and the system of school education. T h e re was hardly an aspect of village life— w hether it was housing, sanitation, m edical aid, fertilizers, cattle care or m ark etin g — which did not engage G an d h i’s attention. O ne of the problem s, to w hich he gave m uch thought, was nutrition. H e discovered w ith som ething o f a shock that, a p art from their poverty, food habits of the people in the villages were responsible for th eir under-nourishm ent. T h e deficiency in vitam ins was inexcusable w hen green leaves wefe available for the picking. ‘As a practised cook’, G andhi w rote on m ethods of cooking w hich did not destroy the nutritive value of foods. H e appealed

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to In d ia n scientists to carry out research on Indian diets. ‘It is for y o u ’, he told them , ‘to m ake these experiments. Don’t say off-hand th a t Bengalis need half a pound of rice everyday and m u st digest h alf a pound. Devise a scientifically perfect diet for them . D eterm ine the quality of starch required for an average h u m a n constitution. I would not be satisfied until I have been ab le to a d d some milk fat and greens to the diet of our common village folk. I w ant chem ists who would starve in order to find a n ideal diet for our comm on village folk. Unfortunately, our doctors have never approached the question from the hum ani­ ta ria n stan d p o in t, at any rate from the poor m an’s standpoint’. G a n d h i did not consider hum an welfare only in material term s. N or did he accept that the test of civilization was endless m u ltip licatio n of wants. A t the same time, he did not idealize poverty. Deeply religious as he was, he rem arked that ‘to a people fam ishing and idle, the only acceptable form of God that can d a re ap p ear is work and promise of food as wages’. Never­ theless, he p u t first things first: food, clothing, shelter, health care, an d education for the masses had to take precedence over lu x u ry goods such as washing m achines and m otor cars. He set u p the ideal o f voluntary poverty before the Indian elite as ‘the concrete expression of identification with the cause of daridranarayana [the poor]’. In other words, ‘the non-material motivation h ad to be the driving force of any genuine programme of national d e v elo p m en t’.5 T h e revival and revitalization of India’s villages was G andhi’s c o n sta n t concern: ‘W e m ust m entally go back to the villages, a n d tre a t them as our pattern, instead of putting up the city life before them for im itation’. T he cities, he said, were capable of tak in g care o f themselves. ‘It is the villages we have to turn to. W e h ave to disabuse them of their prejudices, their superstition, th e ir narrow outlook, and we can do so in no other m anner than th a t o f staying am ongst them and sharing their joys and sorrows a n d sp read in g education and intelligent information among th e m .’ L iving in a village, constantly thinking about the problems of th e village, G andhi was seeking solutions with the hum an and m ateria l resources o f the village. H e talked of ‘village swaraj’ (village self-governm ent) which would ensure that each village w as self-sufficient for its vital requirem ents, growing its own

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food an d its own cotton for its cloth, with its own school, theatre a n d public hall, and its own local officials supervised by a locally elected panchayat. Ill It m ust be adm itted that G andhi’s views on the ‘self-sufficiency o f the village’ and on lim ited industrialization did not commend them selves to the Indian intelligentsia, not even to m ost of his own colleagues in the Congress Party. T hey saw no alternative to In d ia treading the road traversed by Europe, Am erica and J a p a n . Indeed, they felt India had to accelerate the pace to m ake up for lost time. T hey considered a strong and diversified in d u strial base im perative for India if she was to fit into the w orld as it was in the m iddle of the tw entieth century. In d ep en d en t India under N ehru did not adopt the G andhian m odel o f economic developm ent. But the successive Five-Year Plans have recognized the value of some of G an d h i’s ideas, and have included program m es for the uplift of rural India, cottage industries and village self-government. But the basic structure o f the plans was based on the concept of ‘m odernization’— large-scale industrialization. Economists m ay have laughed at G andhi’s ideas in his lifetime; they do so no longer.6 T heir conceit has taken a heavy battering; th eir calculations have gone awry, and they m ay now be in a m ore chastened mood to benefit from some of G andhi’s insights. M an y o f them had hoped th at industrialization would trigger in th e newly liberated countries o f Asia and Africa processes of social change, such as Europe and A m erica had witnessed in th e eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, the results have not been quite w hat they had expected them to be. It is tru e th a t there has been a sizeable expansion of agricultural and in d u stria l production in some developing countries, including In d ia, b u t the gap betw een the rich and the poor, the urban and the ru ral, the educated and the illiterate has been widening. C learly, there are dangers o f social unrest, conflict and violence in a situ atio n in which growing production goes hand in hand w ith increasing unem ploym ent and poverty in the countryside. G a n d h i was not an econom ist, but he intuitively stum bled upon som e basic tru th s about the socio-economic conditions in

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his own country, which m ay also be relevant to several other T h ird W orld countries. In the first place, he recognized the p red o m in an ce o f the self-employed producer, agriculturist and a rtisa n , engaged in producing for his basic requirem ents and not for the p ursuit o f w ealth for its own sake. These small p ro d u cers are a social category, fundam entally different from th e m ediaeval surfs as well as the m odern proletariat of the M arx ist analysis. N or do these small, self-employed producers, w orking an d living w ithin the constraints of community life in th e village, correspond to the individual-based capitalist model, so beloved o f the W estern liberal-rationalist school. T he dis­ in teg ratio n o f the small peasant and the artisan economy, and th e grow th o f large-scale enterprises, based on m odem tech­ nology, form a comm on ground between the advocates of the c ap italist a n d the com m unist models of development. But G a n d h i sensed the difficulties and dangers of alienating millions o f sm all producers, who formed the bulk of the population, from th e m ean s o f production. His perception that ‘the participation o f this vast force in economic developm ent calls for a new a p p ro a c h an d exploration outside the bounds of W estern or Soviet m odels has been fully borne out by recent Indian ex p erien ce’.7 Secondly, G andhi saw th at poverty in India was primarily a consequence o f a neglected rural economy and enforced un­ em ploym ent. T his unem ploym ent was not associated— as in industrialized countries—with a deficiency of aggregate demand; it w as stru c tu ra l in n atu re and could only be tackled by the re stru c tu rin g o f the economy. G andhi suggested dispersal of in d u stries in the villages, and the creation of viable rural econom ies. H e also challenged some of the basic postulates of th e econom ists. H e did not assess economic progress merely in term s o f p er capita income. His concept of economic progress w as a com posite one, partly economic, partly m oral and partly sp iritu al.8 F o r him there could be no ethically neutral economics. I f a low er rate o f econom ic grow th was the price to be paid for a w id er diffusion o f technology and productive capacity and for g re a te r social justice and lesser depredation of environment, G a n d h i w ould have gladly paid it. T h e G a n d h ian concept of developm ent thus relates to m an as a w hole, not ju s t to the ‘economic m an ’; it seeks to avoid

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distortions in the relationship between m an and his environment, betw een m an and m achine, between labour and capital, and betw een village and town. G an d h i’s economic thinking was m ainly done for India— and indirectly for other T hird W orld countries, which were struggling to free themselves from colonial rule. B ut some of his insights can now be seen to be especially relev an t to the m alaise th at afflicts the developed world today. A p a rt from the environm ental degradation, which is the by­ p ro d u c t o f a runaw ay technology, there is the social frag­ m en tatio n which breaks up families and com m unities, fosters crim e and corruption, creates a vacuum in all forms of authority, a n d prom otes a m anipulative form of authoritarianism , rooted n o t only in the transitional processes o f production, bu t in a closer integration between Big Business and Big Governm ent. G a n d h i had w arned against the technological determ inism in w hich the world seems to have already landed itself. H e had no use for technological innovations which dehum anized m an, alien ated him from his work or from his fellow workers, and created a civilization o f hum an robots in which one group of m en could easily m anipulate others. G a n d h i’s warnings against the unrestricted growth of the m achine civilization, sounded well before the First W orld W ar, w ere laughed ,out of court. But in 1949, a year after G andhi’s d e ath , George Orw ell published his celebrated novel 1984. I t w as a grim fantasy, w hich th rea te n s to tu rn out to be a b rillian t forecast. Some of O rw ell’s prognostications in the scientific, social and political spheres have already been realized. T eam s o f experts are already planning the logistics of future w ars; there is a ‘siege m entality’, beginnings of a political hysteria, o f unbridled terrorism , and counter-terrorism . The nem esis o f the ‘m achine civilization’ m ay be closer at hand than m an y o f us imagine.

C H A PTER 15

A Reactionary?

T h e eighteen accused in the M eerut Conspiracy Case, who in clu d ed som e o f the founding fathers of the Com m unist Party o f In d ia , in their long statem ent before the court declared that G a n d h i’s civil disobedience cam paigns were a means of ‘sabotaging revolutionary m ovem ents’, that the Indian National C ongress under his leadership shied away from violence, as it d id not w an t to overthrow foreign rule, that G andhi was really w orking for a com prom ise with British imperialism in the interests o f the Indian bourgeoisie. This statem ent was in accord w ith the thesis propounded to the Second Com m unist Inter­ n atio n al in 1920 by M . N. Roy;1 it continued to colour the th in k in g o f In d ian com m unists for a q uarter of a century; it p re v e n ted them even from recognizing the fact of Indian inde­ p en d en ce for some years after 1947. It is not surprising that G a n d h i figures in com m unist— and even in some of the socialist w ritin gs o f the period— not only as a half-hearted rebel, but as a defen d er o f the status quo2 and the protector of the vested in terests o f the In d ian princes, the landlords and the capitalists. C u rio u sly enough this im age of G andhi has been recently p ro m o ted by a section o f the ultra-conservative capitalist press in the W est. ‘G andhi was . . . in the highest degree reactionary’, we a re told, ‘perm itting in India no change in the relationship betw een the feudal lord and his peasants or servants, the rich a n d the p o o r’.3 It is an untenable thesis, but it acquired some plausibility from G a n d h i’s unorthodox approach to the phenom ena of social change. From the days o f Hind Swaraj, he had been advocating th e reo rd erin g o f social relationships, but w ithout resort to violence. His approach to social transformation was diametrically opposed to that o f the Marxists. H e read Karl M arx’s Das Kapital

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ra th e r late in life, in his seventy-fifth year. H e adm ired M arx’s vision an d dynam ism and his identification ‘with the poor, oppressed toilers of the w orld’, and would have agreed with him th a t philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. But he rejected m uch of the M arx ist doctrine. H e did not accept th at economic factors were the source o f all the evils in the world, th at wars were necessarily caused by economic factors, th at the state is wholly evil under a cap italist system, and th at it would autom atically w ither away w hen state socialism emerged through a violent revolution. He did not think that class struggle was inevitable; he affirmed that his non-violent technique could be invoked for social transfor­ m atio n as well as for anti-colonial struggles. W hen G andhi talked of basing socialism and communism on non-violence, it seemed to his critics th at he was being totally unrealistic. W as it not wishful thinking to exhort the rulers of princely states in India to convert themselves from despots into trustees o f the people’s welfare, to expect landlords voluntarily to give a new deal to their tenants, or to urge the capitalists to place th eir responsibilities to society above the profit motive? G an d h i was the target of m uch criticism and even ridicule for his ‘u to p ia n ’ beliefs. W hat his critics failed to see was that while he was dead earnest about m aking drastic changes in the existing social relationships, he w anted to effect them only a t the o p p o rtu n e m om ent, an d in a m anner w hich accorded w ith his non-violent strategy. G a n d h i h ad good reasons to be cautious in raising the ‘social q u e stio n ’ in the early twenties. T he launching of a non-violent m ass m ovem ent against the British Raj in 1921 was itself a trem en d o u s step, fraught w ith great risks. T he cam paigns he h ad led in South Africa had involved a few thousand Indians in a lim ited area whom he could personally guide. In India the scale o f the cam paign was continental, the num bers involved directly an d indirectly were in millions. G an d h i’s constant cdncern was how to arouse these millions, and yet to prevent his m ovem ent from dissolving into disorder and anarchy. H e never forgot the terrible sequel in the P unjab in April 1919 soon after he h ad launched the R ow latt Bills satyagraha. All his energies w ere, therefore, directed to keeping a firm rein on the movement. H e deliberately decided not to induct the industrial workers

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in to his cam paign; w ithout adequate training they were m uch too prone to lose their heads. H e advised the mill workers not to a b sen t them selves w ithout perm ission from their employers, if they w ished to jo in any satyagraha dem onstration. H e would not p erm it the peasants to withhold rent from the landlords. H e excluded the despotic princely states from his civil disobedience cam paigns. All these self-denying ordinances baffled and infu­ riated G a n d h i’s radical colleagues, who protested that he was th ro w in g aw ay valuable opportunities of widening the anti­ im p erialist front. They chafed under the restrictions imposed by him . W hy not call out the industrial workers in the streets? W h y not launch a no-rent and no-tax cam paign simultaneously in the countryside? W hy not rouse the subjects of the Indian princes against autocracy and oppression? W hy not synchronize th e assau lt on the privileged classes in India with the battle ag ain st foreign rule? T h e critics who asked these questions could not see that the basic strategy of a non-violent struggle m ust necessarily be different from th at of a violent one. For G andhi it was not a questio n o f capturing a particular outpost by superior force, or o f overw helm ing the enemy by sheer num bers. T he purpose of sa ty a g ra h a was to generate those processes of introspection and reth in k in g w hich would m ake it possible to arrive at a readjust­ m en t o f relationships, and all this had to be done without g e n eratin g h atred and violence. For G andhi non-violence was th e cen tral issue; on this he would accept no compromise. ‘I w ould w elcom e’, he said, ‘even u tter failure with non-violence u n im p aired , rath er than d epart from it by a hair’s breadth to achieve a doubtful success’. It was because of his supreme anx iety to keep the m ovem ent firmly under control that he in v ariab ly began his cam paigns cautiously, and only gradually exten d ed them in range and intensity. II ‘A n able general’, wrote G andhi, ‘always gives battle in his own tim e on the ground of his choice’.4 In retrospect it seems that he d elib erately did not open the fissures in In d ian society while the m ain b a ttle against the British Raj was in progress. H e was criticized for his policy of non-intervention in the Indian states.

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B ut G an d h i rea liz ed 'th a t the people o f the states had little experience o f political agitation, and there was a great danger of processions and meetings ending up in a vicious chain of popular violence an d official repression. In 1931, when an American jo u rn alist, W illiam Shirer, asked him why he h ad not organized the subjects o f the Indian states against their ‘princely tyrants’, G an d h i told him that his struggle was prim arily directed against B ritish rule; when th at rule came to an end, and India became self-governing, ‘the pam pered princes would have to fall inline. T h ey w ould no longer have the British around to prop up their shaky th ro n es’.5 Sixteen years later, when the transfer of power cam e, things happened exactly as G andhi had foreseen; the princes, w ithout the im perial power to uphold them , had no legs to stan d on; ^heir territories were integrated into the Indian U n io n w ithout m uch fuss, and they were turned overnight into pensioners of-the Indian Republic. As for landlords and tenants, G andhi argued that-there was no irreconcilable antagonism between them . H e acknowledged th a t there was m uch exploitation of the tenants and industrial w orkers, b u t this exploitation could not be removed simply by the liquidation of landlords an d millowners; w hat was needed w as the rem oval of the ignorance of the victims of exploitation. N o exploitation was possible, G andhi said, w ithout the willing o r forced cooperation of the exploited. ‘T h e m om ent the culti­ v ato rs o f the soil realize their pow er’, G andhi wrote, ‘the z am in d ari [landlordism] evil will be sterilized. W hat can the p oo r zam in d ar do when the tenants say they will simply not w ork the land unless they are paid enough to feed and clothe a n d educate themselves and their children in a decent m anner? . . . I f the toilers intelligently combine, they will become an irresistible pow er’.6 O n the landlord—tenant relationship G an d h i’s views seemed to h arden progressively. ‘I do not w ant to destroy the zam indar’, he w rote in 1936, ‘bu t neither do I feel th at the zam indar is in e v ita b le ’.7 At first he clung to the hope th at it might be possible to regulate the relations between landlords and tenants on a new basis. By 1937 he was less optim istic and was affirming th a t ‘lan d and all property is his who will work it’.8 Five years later, he was even visualizing a situation in which the peasants m ight refuse to pay taxes an d seize the land. H e told Louis

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F ischer, the Am erican journalist,, who questioned him on this su b ject on the eve of the Q u it India movement, that the ‘peasan ts will stop paying taxes; they will make salt despite official p ro h ib itio n ---- T h eir next step will be'to seize the land’. ‘W ith violence?’ Fischer asked. ‘T here may be violence’, Gandhi said, ‘b u t, then again, the landlords m ay cooperate’. ‘You are a n o p tim ist’, said Fischer. G andhi said: ‘They might cooperate by fleeing’. ‘O r they [the landlords] m ight organize violent resistan ce’, Fischer put in. ‘T here m ay be fifteen days of chaos’, G a n d h i speculated, ‘bu t I think we could soon bring that under co n tro l’.9 T h e re was no d oubt in G andhi’s mind about his social priorities. H e said: ‘T he kisan or peasant comes first. He is the salt o f the earth which belongs or should belong to him, not to th e absentee landlord. B ut in a non-violent way, the labourer can n o t forcibly eject the absentee landlord. H e has so to work as to m ake it im possible for the landlord to exploit him .’10 T h e re is no d oubt th at during the twenties and thirties G a n d h i deliberately opposed m ilitant action designed to keep th e p e asa n try in perpetual excitem ent, and to raise hopes which could not be fulfilled w ithout a violent conflict. Instead, through his. ‘constructive program m e’, he sought to increase the peasant’s econom ic viability, strengthen his will to be efficient, to teach him the advantages of organized action and to fight any exploiter, w h e th er it was the landlord, the m oneylender or a petty official. H e suggested cooperative farm ing of holdings which had been sliced an d fragm ented t)y the inexorable operation of the laws of in h eritan ce. ‘Does it not stand to reason’, he asked, ‘that it is far b e tte r for a h u n d red families in a village to cultivate their lands collectively an d divide the income therefrom than to divide the la n d anyhow into a h u ndred parts? A nd w hat applies to land app lies to cattle’.11 W e m u st rem em ber th at the first steps towards the abolition o f lan d lo rd ism in India were taken before the Second W orld W a r, w hile the Congress m inistries were in office, and their policies were being supervised by the Congress High Com m and w ith G a n d h i’s approval. T he process received an impetus after th e a tta in m e n t o f independence. T he land legislation broke the pow er o f the feudal landlords, and established the rights to the la n d o f th e better-off tenants, though they did not materially

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im prove the position of the interm ediary tenants nor strictly enforce ceilings on lan d .12 If G andhi had lived a few years longer, his weight would beyond d oubt have been thrown in favour o f the landless agriculturist and labourer, and the land reform legislation in India would have had m ore teeth in it. Ill G an d h i had no illusion about the m otivation of the Indian capitalists. T he com m on impression— which the British helped to sp read — th at G an d h i’s political m ovem ents were largely financed by the capitalists is erroneous. W hen G andhi launched his non-cooperation m ovem ent against the British in 1920, the In d ia n millowners alm ost as a class opposed him. An ‘A nti-' non-cooperation Society’ cam e up in Bom bay in 1920 with Purshotam das Thakurdas and Chimanlal Setalvad as secretaries; its financiers included the T atas. T his society sought to combat non-cooperation through ‘counter-propaganda’, an d worked in close cooperation with the M oderate leaders who were opposing G an d h i. It is significant th at not a single industrialist signed the sa ty ag ra h a pledge in M arch—April 1919, and w ith a few excep­ tions (such as those of U m a r Sobhani and A. D. Godrej) they did n o t contribute anything to the T ilak Swaraj Fund. G andhi trea te d the industrialists— as everybody else— with courtesy, b u t he had no illusions about them. In an ‘open letter’ published in J u ly 1921, he told them th at the m erchants whom he was asking to boycott the sale of foreign cloth were sure that the In d ia n millowners w ould exploit the situation arising out of the sh o rtag e o f cloth. ‘M any friends have told m e’, G andhi wrote, ‘th a t the nation is not to expect anything from you [millowners]. T h ey po in t out the fact th at you have not, with one or two honourable exceptions, paid anything to the Tilak Swaraj Fund. . . . T h e m erchants who deal in foreign cloth, and with whom I am pleading [for the boycott o f foreign cloth] frightened me by saying th a t the result o f their response will sim ply m ean that you will im m ediately send up the prices and fling u p in the face o f the nation the law o f supply and dem and in support of the inflation o f price’.13 G andhi appealed to the industrialists to conduct their business on n atio n al rath er th an purely selfish lines. T h eir response to

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his a p p ea l was tepid during the non-cooperation movement. So it was ten years later d uring the Salt ^atyagraha movement. In 1942 d u rin g the Q uit In d ia m ovem ent, they m ade huge profits from w ar-con tracts while the entire Congress leadership was in prison. C om pared with them , the m erchants almost throughout In d ia show ed a greater spirit of self-sacrifice, by closing their shops a n d establishm ents when the Congress called for a hartal, a n d often (even furtively) contributing to Congress funds. T he In d ia n capitalists were cautious in taking any steps which m ig h t bring down on them the w rath of the authorities, and th o u g h th eir association w ith the nationalist struggle was peri­ p h eral, G an d h i did not encourage a ‘hate-cam paign’ against them . W ith some of them , such as Jam n alal Bajaj, G. D. Birla a n d A m b alal Sarabhai, he had cordial personal relations. He em ployed some between capital and labour w ere peculiarly his own, and not qu ite palatable to Birla and his class. G andhi called on the capitalists to consider themselves trustees o f w hat they owned, using for themselves and their families only w hat was essential; they were not to use force ag ain st their employees in any circum stances. T he workers’ unions w ere also not to use threats of strikes to intim idate the m illowners; nor were they to coerce blacklegs. O n the distribu­ tion o f wealth, G andhi also held radical views. ‘T he possession o f in o rd in ate wealth by individuals’, he wrote, ‘should be held as .a crim e against Indian hum anity’. H e did not see why a m illow ner, a lawyer, a doctor, a factory worker, or a scavenger should not get the sam e wages for an honest day’s work.15 The ideal was equal distribution, bu t if this was difficult to achieve, G an d h i called for an equitable distribution.16 G a n d h i’s theory o f trusteeship was offered as an alternative to b o th capitalism and comm unism . It was not a convenient cloak u n d er w h ic h th e existing system could be justified; on the contrary, it was intended to non-violently redress inequalities a n d , if necessary, to dispossess recalcitrant owners of wealth.

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T h e trusteesh ip formula, which G andhi drafted during his im prisonm ent in the Aga K han Palace during the Second World W a r ,17 did not exclude legislative regulation of the ownership, a n d th e use o f w ealth for social purposes, and was avowedly a m ean s o f transform ing the capitalist order into an egalitarian one. I f G an d h i did not agree to the forcible expropriation of the rich, it w as not because he accepted inequalities as necessary or inev itab le, b u t because he w anted to effect social changes non­ violently. O f the ap p aratu s o f the m odern state he had a deep d istru st; ‘the really significant choice, as he saw it, lay not betw een capitalism and socialism, bu t between centralization a n d d ecen tralizatio n’.18 H is was essentially the standpoint of th e h u m an ist; he hated privilege and monopoly, but he also h a te d the regim entation and suppression of individual liberty. T h ro u g h his ‘trusteeship’ theory, he sought an escape from the dilem m a: ‘M ake m en free and they become unequal; make th em equal a n d they cease to be free’. ‘I have a vision’, G andhi w rote in 1942, ‘that the end of the [Second W orld] w ar will also m ean the end of capitalism ’. ‘We m ay not be deceived’, he w rote in 1944, ‘by the wealth to be seen in the cities of India . . . . It comes from the blood of the poorest. . . I know village economics . . . I tell you that the pressure from the top crushes those at the bottom . All that is necessary is to get off th e ir b ack s’.19 Tw o years later, he w arned th at the rich would have to m ake their choice, ‘between a class w ar and voluntarily c on v ertin g themselves into trustees of their w ealth’.20 In O c to b e r 1947, two m onths after India attained independence, G a n d h i declared th at the Congress stood for a democratic rule o f the p easan t, workers and people (kisan-mazdoor-praja raj) \ 21 T h e following m onth, when J . B. K ripalani resigned from the C ongress presidency, G andhi suggested that the socialist leader, A ch ary a N aren d ra Deva should succeed him. O f one thing, there is no doubt: G andhi considered political freedom as a prelude to radical social and economic reforms in In d ia , a n d was furiously thinking of ways to am eliorate the lot o f the long-sufTering rural masses. D uring the struggle against th e Raj he deliberately soft-pedalled the social issue, but was clear in his m ind th at the balance had to be redressed in favour o f those a t the bottom of the social pyram id. ‘For years to come’, he observed, ‘In d ia would be engaged in passing legislation to

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raise the down-trodden. If the landlords, the zamindars, moneyed m en, an d those who are enjoying privileges— I do not care w h eth er they are Europeans or Indians— if they find that they are discrim inated against, I shall sym pathise w ith them, but I will not help them. It will be a battle between the haves and the have-nots’.22 I f a ttitu d e to property relations is a test of radicalism , G andhi w ould not fail the test. H e was, however, a radical in the original m eaning o f that m uch misused word: he w ent to the root of every problem . T here was hardly any aspect of the hum an condition on which he did not think for himself, and come out w ith his own, often unconventional, ideas. His approach to his own profession, th at of law, was alm ost th at of a dissident. He w as shocked by the unconscionable delays, the m ounting costs an d deep bitterness which litigation generated, and which most people concerned with the administration of justice, just accepted as p a rt o f the natural scheme of things. W hile lawyers enriched them selves, their litigants often faced economic ruin. As a practising barrister in South Africa, G andhi encouraged his clients, wherever possible, to negotiate with their rivals outside the court. A t the same time he did not think it was his duty to defend a client w hether he was right or wrong. H e exhorted the professional classes ‘not to make your pro­ fessions subservient to the interests of your purse . . . . Put your talen ts in the service of the country instead of £.s.d. If you are a m edical m an, there is disease enough in India to need all your m edical skill. If you are a lawyer, there are differences and q u arrels enough in India. Instead of fom enting more troubles, p atch up those quarrels and stop litigation. If you are an engineer, build model houses suited to the m eans and needs of your people and yet full of health and fresh air’.23 Equally unorthodox was the code of conduct which G andhi evolved for him self as a political leader in South Africa. Politics ,were not for the pursuit of power. H e ruled out any personal gain from public service; he insisted on scrupulous probity in accounts; he rejected the use of secrecy or questionable means for even good ends. G an d h i was a prolific w riter and edited journals both in South Africa and India w ithout commercializing them. H e accepted no advertisem ents and held that journalism was a vocation rath er than a professionl.

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D eeply religious as he was, G andhi rejected the idea of a state religion for India, even though the H indus formed an over­ w helm ing m ajority of the population. He was opposed to state aid to religious bodies. ‘Religion is a personal m atter’, he affirm ed, ‘an d if we succeed in confining it to the persona! p lan e, all would be well in our political life’.24 A gainst the abuses of caste and untouchability Gandhi waged an u n relen tin g war. And on the position of women, G andhi’s views were rem arkably sim ilar to those o fth e leading women reform ers. ‘W om an is the com panion of m an ’, G andhi wrote as early as 1918, ‘w ith equal m ental capacities . . . and she has the sam e rig h t o f freedom and liberty’. His denunciation of such social evils, as child m arriage, dowry and purdah, was unequi­ vocal. H e advocated equal legal status and the right of vote for w om en. H e would have agreed with the present-day feminists th a t w om en m ust not be treated m erely as sexual objects. He believed th a t wom en were individuals who should have the freedom to m ake their own moral choices. It is interesting to recall his com m ents on the choice of the m arriage partner: N o r has the society or relatives of parties concerned any right to im pose their will upon and forcibly curtail the liberty of action of the young people . . . . M arriage taboos are not universal and are largely based on social usage.25

H e was prepared to concede the right to divorce to either p a rtn e r. O nly on one point he adopted a position which seemed to his contem poraries, and seems even today impracticable: he opposed the use of contraceptives, and suggested lim itation of b irth s th rough deliberate restraint of m arried partners. G a n d h i’s capacity for creative experim ents found expression in 'th e sphere o f educational reform. He had always been inte­ rested in the teaching of children and had run schools in his ash ram s. B ut in 1937, when he was 67 years old, he was stim ulated by A rm strong’s book Education For Life, and especially its ch ap ter on the ‘Education of the H a n d ’, to initiate systematic researches an d experim ents which culm inated in the concept of ‘N ew E ducation’ (Nai Talim). O ne of the im portant components in this schem e was th at of Basic Education, which was designed to im p a rt instruction in schools through useful handicrafts, to h arm o n ize intellectual and m anual training and to inculcate dig n ity o f lab o u r and self-reliance.

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M argaret Bourke-White, the correspondent of the Life magazine, who was in India during the years 1946—8, and whose last interview with G andhi took place ju st a few hours before his a ssassin atio n confesses in her book, Half-way To Freedom that it took her ‘the better part of two years to respond to the undeniable greatness of this m an’.1 T o successive Viceroys, Secretaries of State an d other British officials, G andhi rem ained till the end an enigm atic figure. P art of their difficulty was the ‘cultural shock’ epitomized in the epithet ‘half-naked fa q tf which Winston C hurchill once applied to G andhi.2 After all, w hat were W esterners to m ake of a political leader, who wore a loin-cloth, d ran k g oat’s milk, heard ‘inner voices’ and announced fasts to solve political problems? Syed H ossain, an O xford-trained Indian nationalist, who lived in Am erica in the inter-w ar years, tells us about a lecture he delivered on G andhi. After the lecture was over, some one from the audience got up and said: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we o f the W estern world cannot follow the leadership of a m an who goes ab o u t half-naked’. ‘T he most im portant thing about M ah atm a G andhi’, Syed Hossain replied, ‘is not w hat he wears; the m ost im portant thing about M ahatm a G andhi is not even his body; the m ost im portant thing about M ahatm a G andhi is h is soul. As for the alleged inability of the W estern peoples to accep t the leadership of someone not conventionally clad, I am rem in d ed th at the one whom they call their M aster was also clad in nothing m ore than a loin-cloth at a crucial m om ent in the history of hum anity’.3 C uriously enough, some thing of this cultural block, which choked the lines of com m unication between G andhi and the people o f the W est in his lifetime also stood between him and

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th e E nglish-educated classes in India. Lala L ajpat Rai, the fiery n a tio n alist leader from the Punjab, who h ad joined the non-co­ o p eratio n m ovem ent in 1920, noted th at ‘such of G andhi’s co n tem p o raries as have drunk deep from the fountains of E uropean history and European politics, and who have developed a deep love for E uropean m anners and European culture, n e ith e r u n d erstan d nor like him. In their eyes he is a barbarian, a n d a visionary and a dream er, H e has probably something of all these qualities because he is nearest to the verities of life and can look a t things with plain eyes without the glasses of civilization a n d so p h istry ’.4 In d ian radicals, socialists and communists d u rin g the nineteen thirties and forties were sharply critical of G a n d h i’s patient and peaceful m ethods and visibly chafed under the m oral straitjacket th at he w rapped upon his followers in the an ti-im p erialist struggle. II D espite his austere life and the saintly halo that he had acquired, G a n d h i did not conform to the conventional image of a saint in th e H in d u tradition. R aychandbhai, the J a in savant of Bom bay a n d the spiritual m entor o f G andhi during his South African days, h ad w arned him — for the good of his soul— not to involve h im self too deeply in the politics of N atal.5 M any years later, R a m a n a M aharishi, one of the most venerated Indian saints of this century, rem arked th at G andhi was a good m an who had sacrificed his spiritual developm ent by taking too great burdens u p o n him self.6 Saints are traditionally other-worldly; they help in d iv id u al ‘seekers’; they abhor evil, but leave the problem of coping w ith it to the ingenuity of the adm inistrators and social reform ers. T hough G a n d h i’s deepest strivings were spiritual, he n ev er professed to be a saint. H e was not absorbed in philosophical speculation or m editation on the Absolute. Nor d id he set m uch store by cloistered virtue; one had to live and a c t in the challenging context of social and political life. Horace A lexander, the British Quaker, who saw Gandhi at close quarters, p o in ts o u t th a t if G andhi was a mystic, he was ‘a very matter-offact m ystic;7 no d ream er o f heavenly dream s, no visionary, who saw things u n u tterable w hen in a state of trance’. W hen the in n e r voice spoke to G andhi, it was only ‘to tell him, w hat to do

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tom orrow — how to act more effectively to unite warring com­ m unities or how to hasten the end of untouchability’. T hose who accused G andhi of other-worldliness— and there w ere not a few in his own cam p, who did so— failed to look b en eath his spiritual idiom. T he saintly idiom contained a hard core o f common sense and deep insight into the social realities. T h ere was m uch in his cultural heritage, which appealed to him , b u t there was also m uch which repelled him. He had a strong sceptical streak; even at the age of twenty when, as a stu d e n t in England, he was attracted to theosophy, he rejected its occult lore. As he tells us in his autobiography, he was given to introspection, and ‘at every step carried out the process of rejection and acceptance’. G an d h i once described him self as ‘an average m an with less th an an average ability’. ‘I adm it’, he wrote, ‘that I am not sh arp intellectually. But I don’t mind. T here is a limit to the developm ent of the intellect, but none to that of the h eart’. One can n o t resist the impression that in exalting the goodness of the h eart at the expense of intellectual brilliance, he was fostering the idea of his own intellectual mediocrity. H e was, he said, ‘not built for academ ic writings. Action is my dom ain’. H e did not care m uch for book-learning, but his im prisonm ents in South Africa an d India enabled him to catch up w ith his reading, and w h at he read, he turned to good account. Even though his reading was not system atic or regular, it covered a fairly wide range. A p art from the religious and philosophical works such as the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Bible, the K oran, he studied the writings of Plato, Carlyle, Ruskin, W illiam Jam es, G ibbon, A dam Sm ith, Goethe, Buckle, Lecky, G eddes, B ernard Shaw, Wells,- Kipling, K arl M arx and num erous other writers. H e m ade it a point to acknowledge his debt to Tolstoy, Ruskin and T horeau, but these great W estern writers seemed only to have encouraged him along the path he had already chosen for himself. And in any case he did not merely borrow o th er people’s ideas; he transm uted them in a creative fashion. For exam ple, non-resistance, which to Tolstoy and T horeau had been only a m eans of self-affirmation o f the individual, becam e in G andhi’s hands an instrum ent for national self­ affirm ation. Ruskin in his Unto Tt\is Last had expressed inspiring

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th o u g h ts w hich had no relation to the a u th o r’s life but, which w ro u g h t a m etam orphosis in G an d h i’s life. It w as this capacity for rejection, acceptance, and synthesis w hich enabled G andhi to blend the compassionate, intuitive a n d self-denying elements in his own religious tradition with th e constitutional, dem ocratic and secular elements in the W estern political tradition. At the sam e time he discarded the a u th o rita ria n an d obscurantist elements in his native heritage as firm ly as he rejected W estern m aterialism , competitiveness a n d m ilitarism . G a n d h i did not lay any claim to originality. ‘I represent no new tru th s ’, he said, ‘I do claim to throw a new light on m any an old tr u th ’. N or did he m ake any pretence to infallibility. Indeed, he described hi^iself simply as one ‘who claims to be a hum ble se arc h er after T ru th , knows his lim itations, makes mistakes, never hesitates to adm it them ’. T hough he expounded his ideas on alm ost every conceivable subject in thousands of articles and letters over a period of m ore than fifty years, he never tried to build them into a system. W hat is called G andhism is, therefore, only a distinctive attitu d e to society and politics rather than an ideology, ‘a p articu lar ethical standpoint rath er than fixed form ulae o r a definitive system ’. D u rin g his conversations w ith G andhi, Louis Fischer, G a n d h i’s A m erican biographer, felt that the M ahatm a was th in k in g aloud. ‘H e did not attem pt to express his ideas in a finished form ’, writes Fischer. ‘You heard not only words, but also his thoughts. You could, therefore, follow him as he moved to a conclusion . . . . H e was interested in an exchange of views, b u t m u ch m ore in the establishm ent of a personal relationship. E ven w hen evasive G andhi was frank . . . . His brain had no blue p en cil’.8 G a n d h i w as continually developing and outgrowing his own ideas. I t was not difficult to confront him w ith his earlier views on, say, the caste system and the place of m achinery in the In d ian economy, and point out the discrepancies. W hen accused o f inconsistency, he retorted th at he was consistent with truth, not w ith the past. Scholars and politicians who detect contra­ dictions an d paradoxes in G andhi’s views do not make sufficient allow ance for the fact th at he was engaged in a ceaseless effort to m atch his deeds with his thoughts and beliefs. W hether or not

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he succeeded in integrating his insights into his basic beliefs, t ‘tru th to him would have to be revealed in action and in conflict, n o t in text books’. H e had not merely to discover the tru th for himself, b u t to discover the term s— w ithin his ethical frame­ work— on which he could cooperate w ith others. A nd since the only au th o rity he could com m and was m oral, and the only m eans he h ad was an appeal to the head and the heart, he had to be p atien t and accept compromises on details in order to achieve his ultim ate political and social objectives. ‘Life’, he said, ‘is not one straight road. T here are so m any com plexities in it. I t is not like a train which once started, keeps on ru n n in g ’.9 O n another occasion, he said: ‘O ne cannot climb the H im alayas in a straight line’.10 G an d h i advised N. K. Bose, the em inent Indian anthro­ pologist, not to depend m erely on his writings, bu t to live with him for sometime, if he w anted to understand him. Bose followed the advice w ith m uch profit, and acquired a new insight into G a n d h i’s hum anity and dynam ism : th e s e c r e t o f G a n d h i ’ s g r e a t n e s s l a y n o t in th e a b s e n c e o f h u m a n f a il in g s a n d fo ib le s , b u t in h is in n e r r e s tle s s n e s s , c e a s e le s s s t r iv in g a n d in t e n s e i n v o l v e m e n t in th e p r o b le m s o f m a n k in d . H e w a s n o t a s l a v e to id e a s a n d c o n c e p t s , [ w h ic h ] w e r e fo r h im a id s in g r a p p l i n g w i t h h u m a n p r o b l e m s , a n d w e r e to b e r e c o n s id e r e d i f t h e y d id n o t w o r k . 11

Ill G an d h i h ad entered politics in 1894 a t the age of twenty-four an d for the next fifty-odd years, there was hardly any time in his life, w hen he was not in the centre of a storm . H e seemed,, how ever, to follow G autam B uddha’s dictum th at ‘by rousing himself, by earnestness the wise m an m ay m ake for himself an island w hich no flood can overwhelm ’. H e acted as his reason an dictated,* bu t was not over-anxious about the ^ d conscience _ results. Even when he was struggling against heavy odds, he w ould not throw up the sponge. ‘Satisfaction lies in the effort’, he w ould say, ‘not in the attainm ent. Full effort is full victory’. U nlike m ost politicians, G andhi did not allow politics to swallow his hum anity. Even in the m idst of momentous develop­ m ents, he could find time to w ash the sores of a resident leper in

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his a sh ram , to dissect the m eaning of a verse from the Gita, or to an sw er a letter from an unknown correspondent in a remote co rn er o f In d ia. As a barrister in South Africa he gave not only legal advice to his clients, but instructed them in the best way of w ean in g a baby or curing chronic asthm a. D uring his first im p riso n m en t in In d ia when a fellow prisoner, an African, was b itte n by a scorpian, G andhi im m ediately washed his wound, w iped it, sucked off the poison, and treated him until he was cured. G a n d h i’s punctuality was proverbial; it was said that he was a slave only to his watch. H e rigorously rationed his time, but as A m iya C hakravarty, who was T agore’s secretary for some years, recalls, ‘even if G andhi gave you five m inutes, he gave you all of himself: “ H ow is your sister?” H e would rem em ber that your sister w as ill when you saw him last, perhaps m onths ago, or “ W h a t research studies are you doing now?” He was ju st as deeply interested in you as your own family’.12 In his dealings with his opponents, G andhi’s effort was to b reak th ro u g h the ‘thought barrier’, and to establish a rapport w ith them . T his was not easy; the colonial statesm en in South A frica a n d the British pro-consuls in India were not free to ch an g e the basic policies on racial an d im perial issues; it was difficult for them to overcome inherited prejudices, or to act ag ain st th eir own ‘constituencies’. G andhi carried on an eightyear-long ding-dong battle with G eneral Sm uts, and when he Jeft S o u th Africa in 1914, Sm uts wrote to a friend:13 ‘T he saint has left o u r shores, I sincerely hope for ever’. A nd yet twentyfive years later, Sm uts could write that it had been his ‘fate to be th e an tag o n ist o f a m an for whom even then I had the highest re s p e c t. . . . Gandhi himself received what no doubt he desired—r a sh o rt period o f rest and quiet in jail. For him everything went a cco rd in g to plan. For me— the defender of law and order— th ere was the usual trying situation, the odium of carrying out a law w hich h ad not.strong public support, and finally the dis­ com fiture w hen the law had to be repealed’.14 In jail, Gandhi h a d p rep a red a p air of sandals for Sm uts, who recalled that th ere w as no hatred and personal ill-feeling, and when the fight w as over, ‘there was the atm osphere in which a decent peace could be concluded’. A n o th e r im perial statesm an, Lord Irw in, later Lord Halifax,

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who collided head-on with G andhi during the civil disobedience o f 1930, lived long enough to see the leader of the non-violent rebellion against the Raj in a gentler light. In his memoirs, he pays a tribute to G andhi’s courage, hum our and sense of fairness: ‘H e was the natural knight-errant, fighting always the battle of the weak against suffering w hat he judged injustice. T he claims o f In d ian s in South Africa, the treatm ent of the Indian labourers in the indigo fields in India, the thousands rendered homeless by the floods of O rissa, and above everything the suffering arising from com m unal hatreds . . . all these were in turn a battlefield in which he fought w ith all his strength for w hat was to him the cause of hum anity and the right’.15 G a n d h i’s graciousness was not reserved for im portant people. In D ecem ber 1931 as his three-m onth stay in London was draw in g to an end, he found time to have tea w ith the Scotland Y ard detective who had been attached to him. Next day, the detective rem arked: ‘M r. G andhi m ust be the hardest worked m an I have ever had to look after, unless perhaps- M r. Lloyd G eorge, when he was Prim e M inister during the war; but he is the first one who has ever found time to visit me in my home’. D espite his asceticism and the aura of saintliness, G andhi was no killjoy. A globe-trotter and a hard-bitten American jo u rn alist, who had rubbed shoulders with political leaders in m any countries, found G andhi a ‘very sweet, gentle, informal, relaxed, happy, wise, highly civilized m an ’.16 O f his indefinable charm there is a glimpse even in a little book written by G andhi’s first biographer, the Reverend Joseph J . Doke ofjohannesburg: T o m y s u r p r is e , a s m a ll , lith e s p a r e f ig u r e s to o d b e fo r e m e , a n d a r e fin e d e a r n e s t fa c e lo o k e d in to m in e . T h e sk in w a s d a r k , b u t th e s m il e w h i c h lig h t e d u p th e f a c e , a n d th a t d ir e c t fe a r le s s g la n c e , s i m p l y to o k o n e ’ s h e a r t b y s t o r m . I j u d g e d h im to b e s o m e t h ir t y e ig h t y e a r s o f a g e , w h ic h p ro v e d c o rre c t . . . .

T h e r e w a s a q u ie t

a s s u r e d s t r e n g t h a b o u t h im , a g r e a t n e s s o f h e a r t , a t r a n s p a r e n t

f

s i n c e r i t y , t h a t a t t r a c t e d m e a t o n c e to th e I n d i a n le a d e r . W e p a r t e d f r ie n d s . . . I7

T w o years later, in D ecem ber 1909, Gokhale, G andhi’s friend a n d political m entor, told the Lahore m eeting of one Indian N atio n al Congress: G e n t l e m e n , it is o n e o f th e p r iv ile g e s o f m y life th a t I k n o w M r . G a n d h i in t im a t e ly ; a n d I c a n tell y o u t h a t a p u r e r , a n o b le r , a

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b r a v e r a n d a m o r e e x a lt e d s p ir it h a s n e v e r m o v e d o n th is e a rth . M r . G a n d h i is o n e o f th o s e m e n w h o to u c h th e e y e s o f th e ir w e a k e r b r e t h r e n a s w it h m a g i c a n d g i v e th e m a n e w v is io n . H e is a m a n a m o n g m e n , a h e r o a m o n g s t h e r o e s , a p a t r io t a m o n g p a tr io ts , a n d w e m a y w e l l s a y th a t in h im I n d ia n h u m a n i t y a t th e p re s e n t tim e h a s r e a l l y r e a c h e d its h ig h w a t e r - m a r k . 18

G okhale was not given to hyperbole, and was known to choose his words carefully. Among those who were to immediately su ccu m b to G an d hi’s charm was the young Jaw aharlal Nehru, the only son o f an agnostic, affluent and extrovert father, and a p ro d u c t o f H arrow and Cam bridge. N ehru’s autobiography m akes no secret of the intellectual and tem peram ental gulf between him and Gandhi, but he gives some fascinating vignettes o f the M ah atm a: H i s s m il e is d e lig h t fu l, h is la u g h t e r in fe c tio u s a n d h e ra d ia te s lig h t - h e a r t e d n e s s . T h e r e is s o m e t h in g c h ild lik e a b o u t h im w h ic h is fu ll o f c h a r m . W h e n h e e n t e r s a r o o m h e b r in g s a b r e a t h o f fre sh a ir w i t h h im w h i c h lig h te n s th e a tm o s p h e r e .

G a n d h i h ad his foibles and fads, and had developed his own pecu liar ideas on celibacy, diet, health and nature-cure. His a sh ra m was a hum an laboratory to which he adm itted scholars, social workers, budding politicians, young radicals and some cranks. Sometimes he took in even atheists, bigots, former political terrorists, and m en and women who did not seem quite sane. Q uestioned why he wasted his time on these people, G a n d h i replied, ‘M ine is a m ad house, and I am the m addest of the lot. B ut those th at cannot see the good in these mad people should have their eyes exam ined’. IV R a b in d ra n a th Tagore once described G andhi as essentially a lover o f m en and not of ideas. G andhi did not ram his ideas dow n the throats of other people and m ade allowances for h u m a n frailties. R ichard Gregg, one of his Am erican disciples, n a rra te s an interesting conversation with him: W e w e r e t a l k in g a b o u t s im p le l iv in g a n d I s a id it w a s e a s y fo r m e to g i v e u p m o s t th in g s , b u t t h a t I h a d a g r e e d y m in d a n d w a n t e d to k e e p m y b o o k s . H e s a id : ‘ T h e n d o n ’ t g i v e th e m u p . A s lo n g a s y o u d e s i r e in n e r h e lp a n d c o m f o r t fr o m a n y t h in g , y o u s h o u ld k e e p it. I f

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y o u a r e to g i v e it u p in a m o o d o f s e l f- s a c r if ic e , o r o u t o f a s t e m sen se o f d u ty , y o u

w o u ld

c o n t in u e to w a n t it b a c k , a n d t h a t

u n s a t is f i e d w a n t w o u l d m a k e t r o u b le f o r y o u . O n l y g i v e u p a th in g w h e n y o u w a n t s o m e o t h e r c o n d it io n , s o m u c h t h a t th e th in g

iio

l o n g e r h a s a n y a t t r a c t i o n fo r y o u , o r w h e n it s e e m s to in te rfe re w it h t h a t w h i c h is m o r e g r e a t l y d e s i r e d ’ . 19

C om passionate and compromising as he was, G andhi’s family did not seem to have been the beneficiary of these qualities. In S outh Africa, as we have seen, his wife found th at overnight she h ad to give u p m uch o f the privacy and comfort she had enjoyed as the wife o f an affluent barrister, and to assum e the role of a farm er’s wife and a house-keeper for G an d h i’s fellow workers an d disciples. She was driven to despair by her husband’s refusal to give to their children regular education. H e refused to send his sons to m issionary schools; he insisted that they learn in th eir m other-tongue rath er than in English even though that w ould han d icap them in their careers; he rated characterbuilding higher than book learning, and had no use for an ed u catio n al system geared to money-m aking. His sons had to b e ar the b ru n t o f his educational ideas; three of them , Ram das, M an ilal an d Devdas, survived them , m arried, and led normal, useful lives, but the eldest, H arilal, rebelled, led an erratic and u n h a p p y existence, bringing m uch em barrassm ent and sorrow to his parents. G a n d h i has been called a ‘cruel’ husband and an exacting father. ‘H e w as’, A rth u r K oestler wrote, ‘as near a saint as an yb o d y can be in the tw entieth century; as a father he came as n e a r to the Dem on K ing of the Bhagavatam as any westerned u cated H indu could be’.20 T here is no doubt that G andhi’s fam ily h ad to do w ithout m uch th at is taken for granted in u p p e r m iddle class homes. T his was due to the transform ation w hich took place in his life-style in South Africa. H e had turned his back on dom estic and professional am bitions. H is family h a d also to fit in with the stern code which he had devised for h im self as a politician. W e have already seen how he had, despite the protests o f his wife, declined expensive gifts from his grateful com patriots in N atal. His austerity— like m uch else w h at he advocated— began at hom e, an d his family had willynilly to subm it to it. Indeed, he widened his family circle to include his colleagues and co-workers: he ‘belonged to all, and to no one in particular,'like a m other in a jo in t family’.21

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T h is explanation o f G an d h i’s severity towards his family may seem superficial in this post-Freudian age, though it will easily m ake sense to those acquainted with the cultural milieu in w hich G an d h i had grown up. Luckily for us, Erikson, the em in en t H a rv ard psycho-analyst, and a pioneer of ‘psycho­ h isto ry ’ an d ‘psycho-biography’ has probed this theme in some d e p th . H e points to an am bivalence in G andhi’s attitude to sex a n d fam ily life. ‘Clinically, so to speak’, Erikson writes, ‘there can be little d oubt th at the idea of basic sin m ay be m uch a g g rav ated by personal factors and historical circumstances’, a n d refers to thr&e strands in G andhi’s ‘am bivalence’. The first w as his early m arriage and ‘precocipus sex life combined with his m oral scruplosity, which could not contain and in fact a g g rav ated a sense of sadism in his sexuality’. The second stra n d was G an d h i’s ‘aspirations and gifts’ which led him into ‘a life o f service to hum anity on a level which called for self­ discipline o f a high order.’ And finally, there was his wife, K a s tu rb a ’s extraordinary capacity for renunciation which enab led G an d h i to achieve a high degree of self-discipline. Erikson lays his finger on ‘a moral absolutism ’, which G a n d h i' used ‘as a weapon against his own instinctuality’.22 He also refers to G a n d h i’s preoccupation with ‘sinfulness’, and refusal to recognize the drive behind instinctual satisfaction. Neverthe­ less, the fact remains— and Erikson underscores it— that Gandhi g ain ed in vigour and agility from these inner struggles and becam e b etter equipped for the role he was to play on the political stage. Erikson’s clinical analysis of G andhi’s emotional c o n u n d ru m s and crises is merciless, but he cannot withhold his ad m iratio n for the end-product of the whole process, and describes G andhi as ‘the wholest of men and one of the most m iraculously energetic— m ost energetic, in fact, when inspired by th e very m om entum of recovery from tem porary self-doubt an d inactivation.’23 ‘G a n d h i solved for his period in history and for his own p eo p le’, Erikson says, ‘w hat he could not resolve in his private life’. G an d h i m ay not have been the most enviable of husbands or fathers, b u t he ‘turned into the father of his nation’, and ‘extended his p aternal feelings to m ankind’.24 To quote an epig ram , attrib u ted to Princess George of Greece, an analyst train ed by Freud, ‘the norm al m an has yet to be found— and, when found, cured. G andhi was certainly not ‘normal by

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conventional standards. W e can well imagine a ‘norm al’ Gandhi, a prosperous E ngland-returned barrister, living in a bungalow in S an ta C ruz in Bom bay, educating his children in English schools, dividing his time between the H igh C ourt and the G y m k h an a Club, playing his ru b b er of bridge, or his occasional gam e o f golf, w riting letters to the E ditor of the Times o f India on vegetarianism , and addressing the R otary C lub on ‘naturec u re ’, an d attending—w ith the K aiser-H ind m edal on his chest— receptions given by His Excellency the G overnor of B om bay. G andhi’s wife and children m ay have had an easier life, b u t In d ia and the world would certainly have been the p o o rer for it.

E P IL O G U E

T he Message

G a n d h i instigated, if he did not initiate, three m ajor revolutions o f o u r tim e, the revolution against racialism , the revolution ag ain st colonialism , and the revolution against violence. H e lived long enough to see the success of his efforts in the first two revolutions, b u t the revolution against violence was hardly u n d e r way, w hen an assassin’s bullet removed him from the scene. G a n d h i h ad worked for the day w hen violence would be o u tlaw ed in inter-state conflicts ju st as it had been outlawed w ithin the borders of the nation-states. Paradoxically, the stoutest cham p io n o f nationalism against imperialism was also an ardent in tern atio n alist. As far back as 1924, he had declared that ‘the better m ind o f the world desires today not absolutely independent states, w arrin g against one another, but a federation of friendly, in te r-d ep e n d en t states’.1 . G a n d h i’s public life was wholly taken up by the struggles he w aged on b eh alf of his countrym en in South Africa and India. H e h a d tu rn ed down proposals to visit other countries; he felt he could not really recom m end his m ethod to the world, until he h a d show n its efficacy in his own country. In 1934, when his n a m e w as suggested for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Christian Century, his com m ent was characteristic: ‘Do you know of a d re a m e r who won attention by adventitious aids?’2 G a n d h i h ad no illusions about the ready acceptance of his m e th o d by nation-states, arm ed to the teeth. Even in his own co u n try , a n d in his party there w ere sceptics, who insisted that force w ould only yield to force. H e was asked again and again w h e th e r there was any precedent in history of love conquering h a tre d , a n d o f non-violence trium phing over violence. His an sw er was th at ‘History was only a record of every interruption o f th e even working of the force of love’:

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T w o b r o t h e r s q u a r r e l; o n e o f th e m r e p e n ts a n d r e - a w a k e n s th e lo v e t h a t w a s l y in g d o r m a n t in h im ; th e tw o a g a i n b e g in to liv e in p e a c e ; n o b o d y ta k e s n o te o f th is. B u t i f th e t w o b r o t h e r s , th r o u g h th e in t e r v e n t io n o f s o lic ito r s o r s o m e o th e r r e a s o n s , ta k e u p a r m s o r g o to l a w . . . th e ir d o in g s w o u l d b e i m m e d ia t e l y n o tic e d in th e p re s s , t h e y w o u l d b e th e ta lk o f th e ir n e ig h b o u r s a n d w o u l d p r o b a b ly g o d o w n to h is t o r y . A n d w h a t is tr u e o f fa m ilie s a n d c o m m u n itie s is t r u e o f n a t io n s . T h e r e is n o r e a s o n to b e lie v e th a t th e re is o n e la w fo r f a m ilie s a n d a n o t h e r fo r n a t io n s .3

T h ere were periods, when G andhi was unable to sustain his cam paign against the Raj at a high pitch because of the massive repression launched by the British authorities. But he neither a b an d o n ed his goal, nor his m ethod. He rem arked once that his saty ag rah a cam paigns usually passed through five stages: indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression and respect. And when a cam paign survived repression, it ‘invariably commanded respect, which is another nam e for success’.4 T h e initial acceptance of G andhi’s m ethod in India had been due to the fact th at he offered an alternative to constitutional ag itatio n and terrorism , both of which had failed to make a real d e n t on the im perialist structure in India. T hough G andhi believed his m ethod was capable of universal application, he used it sparingly. H e did not dispense satyagraha as a panacea for quick relief; it was a drastic rem edy for the resolution of social a n d political conflicts; it took into account hum an greed, passion an d irrationality; it did not elim inate possibilities of in ju ry o r death; it did not guarantee a successful conclusion. T h ere could be loss of life am ong those who dared to plunge into the non-violent battle; in th at case it did not follow that non­ violence did not work. Millions of lives had been lost in world w ars, an d yet the rulers of nations had not come to the conclusion th a t violence had failed to work. It is easy to forget th at w ar has been the lot of m ankind ♦throughout recorded history; even the last century was no exception. Between 1861 and 1965, it has been estim ated, there were no less than 50 wars between nation-states, and 43 imperial a n d colonial wars, and 27 million com batants were killed. And th ro u g h o u t this period (except for some 25 years) some sort of in te r-state w ar was in progress. In m ost of these wars, the aggressor tended to have an edge over his opponents because he

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could choose when and w here to strike; he could also get away w ith fewer casualties and some territorial gains. T he develop­ m en t o f nu clear weapons has, however, altered the conditions of w ar. It has m ade nonsense of C lausew itz’s dictum that w ar is a c o n tin u atio n o f diplom acy by other m eans. W ars in the past m ay have helped in the aggrandisem ent o f the victors, but as thin g s are today, there are going to be no victors. For the A m erican s or for the Russians, to dream of a world empire th ro u g h conquest is absurd. T o attack another nation would a m o u n t to attacking oneself, and the right of retaliation would m ean no m ore than the right to com pound the catastrophe. T h e re will not be m uch o f a world for the w inner—if there is any— to enjoy; the price o f victory would be intolerably high. II T h e S u p er Powers are not unaw are of the risks of an all-out confrontation; as J . K. G albraith puts it, the word ‘detente’ has sim ply com e to m ean a ‘no suicide p act’. Nevertheless, nuclear d isa rm a m e n t is nowhere in sight, and the huge arsenals of conventional and nuclear weapons have failed to give a sense of security to the m ain antagonists. D isarm am ent conferences hav e been p a rt o f the international scene since 1932— having been in te rru p te d only during the Second W orld W ar. T he negotiations, w hich have alternately raised and belied hopes, have been concerned w ith tem porary reduction of a particular a rm a m e n t, such as bom bers, naval ships or nuclear missiles. A greem en t has been difficult to attain because of m utual suspicion an d distrust. E ach country has its own perception of its vulnerability; it is not easy to balance a particular weapon a g a in st another. H ow m any tanks are to be set off against bom b ers, or w hat conventional forces would be considered a q u id p ro quo for nuclear w ar-heads? T h en there is always the fear, th a t the ‘enem y’ m ay succeed in evading the curbs em b o d ied in the agreem ent. A biological convention, which p erm its research, or a nuclear-test-ban treaty, which perm its u n d e rg ro u n d tests, are poor safeguards against disaster. T he fact is th a t there are no technical solutions for psychological prob lem s. In a clim ate o f suspicion and fear, nations seem to be inexorably

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sw ept along a tide which their rulers are unable to control. Einstein, who as a physicist, and as a correspondent of President Roosevelt, had been indirectly associated with the making of the nuclear bomb, recalled later ‘the ghost-like character of this developm ent, in its apparently compulsory trend. Every step ap p ears as the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one’. J . R obert O ppenheim er, the distinguished Am erican physicist, said in 1956: ‘We did the devil’s work’. W hen he was asked as to why he had first opposed and then agreed to the production of the hydrogen bom b, O ppenheim er’s answer was characteristic: ‘W hen you see som ething that is technically sweet, you go ah ead , and you argue about it only when you have had your technical success’. In his Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud had argued that civilization was a socially necessary framework for repressing the instinctual life of man; out of this repression flowed dis­ contents which gave scope to m an’s aggressive, destructive ‘d e ath instinct’ to erupt into the barbarism of war. Freud was not very optim istic about the possibilities of controlling this self-destructive instinct. ‘T here is no likelihood of our being able to suppress hum anity’s a g g re sive tendencies’, he wrote in an open letter to Einstein who had asked him publicly whether there was ‘any way of delivering m ankind from the menace of w a r.’ In an earlier book, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Freud had w ritten th a t the deepest instinctual drive in every form of life w as the drive to revert to the original state of inorganic m atter— o f nothingness. H e w ent so far as to suggest that the purpose of all life.was death. G an d h i would not have accepted this dism al view of hum an destiny. H e conceded th at ‘in our present state we are partly m en an d partly beasts’, bu t he affirmed that m an’s nature was not essentially evil, th at ‘brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love’. His was a doctrine of original goodness. H e did not divide m ankind into good and bad; there were only evil acts, no wholly evil men. For him the ‘m oral solidarity of m an k in d ’ was an ever-present fact: ‘We are all tarred with the sam e brush, and the children o f one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers w ithin us are infinite’.5 It was on these premises th at G andhi evolved his m ethod of saty ag rah a. In his hands it was a sophisticated weapon, rich in

The Message

157

m oral overtones. H e paved the way for his non-violent campaigns carefully, im provised his tactics to suit the changing situation, a n d kept the door open for conciliation and settlem ent with the ad v ersary . H e chose men of high intellect and moral calibre as his lieu ten an ts, and enforced a stern discipline on his followers. T h ese elem ents have been missing in m any of the campaigns lau n ch ed since his death. Strident propaganda, massive strikes a n d dem onstrations by themselves do not add up to satyagraha; to o b stru c t o r thw art the opponent w ithout the complex and com passionate approaches of G andhi is to miss the spirit of his m ethod. T h e critical issue today is w hether G andhi’s m ethod can be a d o p te d for resisting external aggression. G andhi affirmed that it could be. D uring the Second W orld W ar, he wrote articles recom m ending it to the Abyssinians, the Czechs and the Poles. A fter the w ar he lived for less than three years, and these were exceptionally tu rb ulent years in India, whch taxed his energies to the utm ost. H e had thus no opportunity of experimenting w ith his m ethod in international conflicts. However, the record o f his struggles on the national stage contains useful insights for those w ho would like to pull m ankind back from the edge of d isaster. In 1957 Sir Stephen K ing-H all, a noted military strateg ist, took a leaf out of G andhi’s book, when he suggested in a lecture to the Royal U nited Service Institute of England, th a t the possibilities o f non-violent resistance should be officially investigated as p a rt o f a viable defence of G reat Britain. Sir S te p h e n ’s book Defence in the Nuclear Age sold well, and was tra n sla te d into several languages. H e recognized that Gandhi h a d left no readym ade strategies for defence against external aggression, an d the theoretical bases for non-violent resistance w ould have to be sought in his experience in India and South Africa: ‘T h ere were broad ideas and principles which could help in developing defence m ethods and techniques’. The object w as n o t to defend particu lar buildings or borders, but the whole society w ith its own way of life. T his m ight need total non-co­ o p e ra tio n w ith the aggressors by the civil service, industry, trade unions, schools, universities, the press, radio and television, a n d the church o f the nation which was attacked. ‘Civil Defence’ has come to be recognized in recent years as a serious, if unorthodox, proposal in the field of national defence

158

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alternatives. Interest by individual military strategists has grown, a n d the defence departm ents of some of the sm aller countries, especially in Scandinavia, have begun to consider possibilities o f non-violent resistance, bu t these ideas are still in the stage of exploration, and have not yet become the strategies of nations a n d th eir rulers. Ill A serious com plication in the struggle for world peace is (in the w ords o f H a n n ah A rendt) th at ‘the problem s of m odem w ar a n d o f m odem tyranny m ust, if either is to be solved, be faced sim ultaneously’. B ut this aspect of the fight for peace further stren g th en s the case for the non-violent m ethod, as it can be invoked equally against tyranny at home and aggression abroad. T h e solutions for these problem s in term s of non-violent tech­ niques w ould have to be found by each country according to its c u ltu ral an d political conditions. G andhi never claimed finality for his ideas; he did not have all the answers. In his struggle for h u m an rights and the political liberation d f his country, he was ceaselessly experim enting. H e once described satyagraha as ‘a science in the m aking’. It is possible that the theory and practice o f non-violence are today at the sam e stage of development as electricity was in the days of M arconi and Edison. W hen G andhi denounced industrialism and militarism before the F irst W orld W ar few people took him seriously. Indeed, rig h t th ro u g h the Second W orld W ar, his pleas for renunciation o f violence were dism issed as the outpourings of a visionary. It w as only when the atom bom b revealed the Frankenstein that th e very perfection of industrialism and m ilitarism had created, th a t G a n d h i’s m essage acquired a new relevance and urgency. — Soon after the bom bing of H iroshim a and Nagasaki in 1945, w hen Ja w a h arlal N ehru w ent to see him, G andhi closely q u estio n ed him about the atom bom b; its m anufacture, its cap acity to kill and poison, its toll of Jap an ese cities. G andhi listened to N ehru silently, an d then (in N eh ru ’s words) ‘with deep h u m an com passion loading his gentle eyes’, rem arked th a t this w anton destruction had confirmed his faith in God and non-violence, and th at ‘now he [G andhi] realised the full signi­ ficance o f the holy mission for w hich G od had created him and

The Message

159

arm ed him w ith the mantra of non-violence’. N ehru recalled la te r6 th at, as G andhi uttered these words, he had a ‘look of revelation about his eyes’, and that he resolved then and there to m ake it his mission to fight and outlaw the bomb. G a n d h i was not destined to launch a crusade against nuclear w arfare. H e was assassinated in Ja n u a ry 1948. In the following year, w hen N ehru visited the U nited States he related his conversation with G andhi to Einstein. W ith a twinkle in his eyes, E instein took a pad and pencil, and wrote down a num ber o f d ates on one side, and events on the other, to show the parallel evolution of the nuclear bomb and G andhi’s satyagraha respectively— alm ost from decade to decade— since the beginning o f the tw entieth century. It turned out that by a stran g e coincidence while Einstein and his fellow scientists w ere engaged in researches which m ade the fission of the atom possible, G andhi was em barking on his experiments in peaceful, non-violent satyagraha in South Africa; indeed, the Q uit India Struggle alm ost coincided w ith the Am erican project for the m an u factu re o f the atom bomb. T h e choice between these two opposite and parallel strategies, epitom ized by the atom bom b and G andhian non-violence, w hich E instein noted in 1949, has become even more critical today. O n e wonders w hether the instinctive death-wish of our species (which Freud perceived) would trium ph over the ‘soulforce’ w hich G andhi sought to evoke in the hum an breast. G a n d h i him self had no d oubt that peace ‘will not come out of a clash o f arm s, but out of justice lived and done by unarm ed natio n s in the face of odds’.7

t

Notes

C H A PT E R 1 T H E G A N D H I F IL M

1

R ichard G renier, ‘T he G andhi Nobody Knows’, Commentary, M arch 1983, p. 71.

C H A PT E R 2 ‘A H I N D U O F H I N D U S ’

1

R ichard G renier, op. cit., pp. 12—13.

2

Harijan, 28 Septem ber 1935.

3

‘W h at G an d h i’s religious thought offers is by no means an eclectic package, but a challenge to think through and live through the breadth and depth of opportunities for sharin g whatever worldly goods or those deepest intimations which are the w arp and woof of life. So understood religion can once more become a binding force which goes beyond national frontiers and which sees no barrier between one com m unity and another.’ M argaret Chatteijee, Gandhi’s Religious Thoughts (London, 1983), p. 181.

C H A PT E R 3 T H E M A K IN G O F T H E M A H A T M A

1

G eorge O rw ell, Collected Essays: Journalism and Letters o f George Orwell (London, 1978 ed n ), p. 523.

2

Harijan, 7 Ju ly 1946.

3

Ib id ., 15June 1947.

4

Q u o ted in India Today, 31 M ay 1983.

5

‘In Mundaka Upanishad it is said that we can attain the self by truth, control, sp iritu al fervour and absolute extinction o f all sex desires. Only the sages who have purged themselves of all m oral defects and faults are capable of perceiving this holy sp iritual light within themselves.’ S. N. Das G upta, Hindu Mysticism (Delhi, 1976 edn), p. 56.

162

Gandhi and his Critics ‘H ow infinitely superior is the joy of God to the pleasures of “woman” and “gold” ! T o one who thinks of the beauty of God, the beauty of even Ram bha and T ilottam a (two celestial dancing girls of exquisite beauty) appears as but the ashes o f a funeral pyre. No spiritual progress is possible without the renunciation of “ w om an” an d gold.’ R am akrishna, quoted in The Gospel o f Ramakrishna (M adras, 1957), pp. 334-5. ‘W ithout having Sannayasa none can really be the knower of Brahman— this is w hat the Vedas and V edanta proclaim. D on’t listen to the words of those who say, “ W e shall both live the worldly life and be knowers of B rahm an.” T h at is the flattering self-consolation o f crypto pleasure-seekers . . . . Highest love for God can never be achieved w ithout renunciation . . .’ Vivekananda, The Complete Works (M ayavati Memorial edn, C alcutta, 1956), Vol. 6, pp. 504—5.

6

Erik H . Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth (New York, 1969), p. 237.

7

G ilbert M urray, ‘T he Soul as it is, and How to deal with it’, The Hibbert Journal, J a n u a ry 1918, pp. 191-205.

8

Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, The Modernity o f Tradition (London, 1967), p. 249.

9

Erikson, op. cit., p. 403.

10

Ib id ., pp. 404—5.

11

N. K . Bose to H. D. Sharm a, unpublished letter, 26 Ju n e 1956.

12

Harijan, 24 February 1940.

13

‘T h e ideal towards which I believe we should move is best described by the term “ androgyny” . The ancient Greek word andro (male) 'and gyn (female) defines a condition under which the characteristics of sexes and the hum an impulses expressed by men and women are not rigidly assigned.Androgyny seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate.’ Carolyn G. Heilbum , Toward a Recognition,ofAndrogyny (New York, 1974), p. x.

14 N. K . Bose My Days with Gandhi (Calcutta, 1974), p. 175.

C H A PT E R 4

GANDHI AND THE CASTE SYSTEM 1 E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi (London, 1948), p. 143. 2 N. M ansergh and P. Moon (eds), Transfer o f Power (London, 1977), Vol. V II, pp. 144-7. 3 Ib id ., Vol. V III, p. 170. 4 Ib id ., pp. 466-8. 5

Young India, 8 December 1920.

6

Harijan, 16 Novem ber 1935.

7 Ib id ., 25 M arch 1933. 8 Yervada Mandir (A hm edabad, 1945), p. 32. 9

Harijan, 16 Novem ber 1935.

Notes 10

Ib id ., 25 J u ly 1936.

11

T ib o r M ende, Conversations with Nehru (Bombay, 1958), p. 25.

163

CHAPTER 5 T H E F IG H T A G A IN S T R A C IA L IS M

1 Washington Post, 18 April 1983. 2

Q uoted in G andhi’s O pen L etter of December 1894 to members of the Natal legislature, Collected Works o f Mahatma Gandhi (Ahm edabad, 1969), Vol.I, p. 185.

3

E xtract from despatch of 6 Novem ber 1913 to Colonial Office by GovernorG eneral o f South Africa, Collected Works o f Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. X II, p. 593.

4

Young India, 12 Ja n u a ry 1928.

5

T hom as K aris and Gwendolen M. C arter (eds), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History o f African Politics in South Africa 1882—1964 (Stanford, 1972), Vol. II , p. 62.

6

Ib id ., Vol. I, p. 268.

7

Ib id ., Vol. II, p. 69.

8

Ali A. M azrui, ‘G andhi, M arx and the W arrior T radition’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. X II, 1977, pp. 193-4.

9

Fergus M acpherson, Kenneth Kaunda o f Zambia: The Times and the Man (Lusaka and London, 1974), p, 105.

10

Interview w ith the author on 26 Ja n u a ry 1975, O ral History Transcript, Nehru M em orial M useum and Library.

11

M artin L u th er King, Stride Toward Freedom (London, 1959), p. 91.

C H A PT E R 6 A M R IT S A R , 1919

1

Paul Jo h n so n , ‘G andhi Isn ’t Good For You’, Daily Telegraph, 16 April 1983; A lgernon R um bold, ‘Film, Facts & H istory’, Encounter, M arch 1983.

2

O ’D w yer to Chelmsford, 23 April 1919, Chelmsford Papers.

3

H om e Political A, A ugust 1919, No. 261-72, N ational Archives oflndia.

4

C . H . Setalvad, Recollections and Reflections (Bombay, 1946), p. 311.

5

A lgernon R um bold, Watershed in India 1914—1922 (London, 1979), p. 203.

6

R u p ert F um eaux, Massacre at Amritsar (London, 1963), p. 179.

7

V alentine C hirol to Chelmsford, 5 Ja n u a ry 1921, Chelmsford Papers.

Gandhi and his Critics

164

C H A PT E R 7 T H E T W O F A C E S O F IM P E R IA L IS M

1 J o h n Vincent, ‘We M ust Not Feel Guilty O ver G andhi’, Sun, 21 April 1983. 2

Percival Spear, Twilight o f the Mughals (Cambridge, 1951), p. 218.

3 4

Ibid., p. 219. E dw ard Thom pson and G. T. G arratt, Rise and Fulfilment o f British Rule in India (London, 1934), p. 462.

5

Ibid., pp. 454—5.

6

Ibid.

7

H enry C otton, Indian and Home Memories (London, 1911), p. 65.

8

M . D arling, Apprentice To Power (London, 1966), p. 116.

9

Jaw ah arlal Nehru, An Autobiography (London, 1958 edn), p. 71.

10

B. R. N anda, Gokhale, Indian Moderates and the British Raj (Delhi, 1977), p. 178..

11

J u d ith Brown, ‘W ar and Colonial Relationship’ in D. W. C. Ellinwood and S. D. P rad h an (eds), India and World War I (Delhi, 1978), p. 25.

12

Foreign Quarterly Review, April 1844, p. 217.

13

Sir R ichard Temple, Cosmopolitan Essays (London, 1886), p. 187.

14

Edinburgh Review, Ja n u ary 1858, quoted in George D. Bearce, British Attitude Towards India (London, 1961), pp. 242—3. ■

15

The Mahratta, 4 Ju ly 1897.

16

D . G. K arve and D. V. Am bekar (eds), Speeches and Writings o f Gopal Krishna Gokhale (Bom bay, 1967), Vol. I l l , pp. 295-6.

'

17

H om e D epartm ent, Judicial, A ugust 1880, 203—5, N ational Archives oflndia.

18

H ardinge to Carmichael, 2 August 1912, H ardinge Papers.

19

A m iya K um ar Bagchi, Private Investment in India 1900-1939 (New Delhi, 1980), p. 420.

20

F or G okhale’s evidence, see Indian Expenditure Commission, Vol. 3; Minutes o f Evidence taken before the Commission on the Administration of India (London, 1900).

21

Fleetwood Wilson to C. Dilke, 9 November 1909. Fleetwood Wilson Papers. In a letter to the Bishop of Calcutta, dated 22 Ju n e 1913, Wilson wrote: ‘Surely, G od never turned Ind ia into a grazing ground for the overflow of the middle class o f E ngland with no thought o f lifting up o f those committed to our charge’.

22

Philip Woodruff, The Men Who Ruled India, The Guardians (London, 1955), p. 20.

23

Ib id ., p. 17.

C H A PT E R 8 T H E 1917 D E C L A R A T IO N

1

Daily Telegraph, 6 April 1983.

Notes

165

2

A lgernon R um bold, Watershed in India 1914—1922 (London, 1979), p. 100.

3

L etter o f 17 M ay 1888 to the editor o f Morning Post, A llahabad, quoted in S. R. M eh ro tra, India and the Commonwealth (London, 1965), p. 33.

4

L ord C urzon, The Place o f India in the Empire: Being an Address presented before the Philosophical Institute o f Edinburgh on 19 October 1909 (London, 1909).

5 E dw ard T hom pson and G. T. G arratt, Rise and Fulfilment o f British Rule in India (L ondon, 1934), p. ^36. 6

G . T . Searle, The Questfo r National Efficiency (Oxford, 1971), pp. 30-1.

7

L am ington to M orley, 6 A pril 1906, Lam ington Papers.

8

B. F uller, Studies o f Indian Life and Sentiment (London, 1910), p. 339.

9

H om e Political, Deposit, J u n e 1909, No. 3, N ational Archives o f India.

10

M into to M orley, 27 February 1907, M orley Papers.

11

Q u o ted in India, 29 Decem ber 1906.

12

12 H .L . Deb. 5s., Coll. 155-6.

13

H ard in g e ’s m inute, 1 J u ly 1912, comm enting on the secret memorandum of R. C raddock, H ardinge Papers.

14

H ard in g e to C larke, 27 M arch 1913, H ardinge Papers.

15

S. Lee, King Edward VII: A Biography (London, 1927), Vol. II, p. 385.

16

Q u o ted in New India, 14July 1916.

17 A lgernon R um bold, op. cit., pp. 96-7. 18 E arl ofR onaldshay, The Life o f Lord Curzon (London, 1928), Vol. I l l , p.

166.

19

P. R obb, ‘T h e British C abinet and Indian Reform 1917—19’,Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 4 ,3 (1976), p. 331.

20

Edw in S. M ontagu, An Indian Diary (London, 1930), p. 10.

CHA PTER 9 G AND H I AN D TH E R AJ

1 2

H om e Political, B, 141-147, M ay J919. As im plied in D! A. Low, T h e Governm ent of India and the First Non-Cooperation M ovem ent 1920-1922’ in R. K u m ar (ed.), Essays on Gandkian Politics (New Delhi, 1971), p. 298.

3

G an d h i to H . S. L. Polak, 30 M ay 1919, G andhi Papers.

4

A lgernon R um bold, Watershed in India, 1914—1922 (London, 1979), p. 294.

5 6

Ib id . R. J . M oore, The Crisis o f Indian Unity (Delhi, 1974), p. 315.

7 8

Ib id ., 154. R. J . M oore, Churchill, Cripps and India, 1939-45 (Oxford, 1979), p. 26.

9

P enderal M oon (ed.) Wavell, The Viceroy’s Journal (Delhi, 1977), p. 33.

10 R. J . M oore, op. cit., p. 138.

Gandhi and his Critics

166 11

Sir William Vincent, the Home M ember, on 20 Ju n e 1919 wrote: ‘I have discussed this m atter with Sir William M arris [Home Secretary] and the Director of Central Intelligence. My own feeling is that G andhi is losing influence, and he knows it, and th at may make him in a moment of despair to secure martyrdom and public sym pathy. We should as far as possible give him no opportunity of attaining his object.’ Home Political A 261-272, August 1919.

12

Q uoted in Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi (London, 1948), pp. 127-8.

13

W illiam L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir (London, 1981), p. 16.

14

B. R. N anda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (London, 1958), p. 335.

15

Ibid., p. 336.

16

G andhi to C. R. Das, telegram, 8 April 1919, G andhi Papers.

17

Rafi Ahmed Kidwai toJaw aharlal (undated), Nehru Papers.

18

W illiam L. Shirer, op. cit., p. 62.

19

‘It is its [the British G overnm ent’s] great secret and character that when it does wrong, it seems to justify itself before the world on moral grounds.’ Gandhi to Private Secretary to the Viceroy, 7 Ju ly 1917, G andhi Papers.

20

‘It was during these years that the issue was settled, whether India’s independence was to be trodden in argum ent or in blood.’ Algernon Rumbold, op. cit., p. 317.

21

R .J . Moore, op. cit., p. 4.

22

Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. II: The Infernal Grove (London, 1973), p. 25.

23

O n 8 O ctober 1943, Wavell, who was coming out to 'India as Viceroy to succeed Linlithgow, called upon Prime M inister Churchill and recorded in his diary, ‘P.M . was menacing and unpleasant when I saw him at 3 p.m. . . . and indicated th a t only over his dead body would any approach to Gandhi take place. I think . . . he is determ ined to block it [any political advance] so long as he is in power.’ Penderal Moon, op. cit., p. 23.

24 Encounter, M arch 1983, p. 63. 25 A. J . Toynbee, ‘A T rib u te’ in Mahatma Gandhi: 100 Years (New Delhi, 1968), pp. 375-6. 26 Q uoted in William L. Shirer, op. cit., p. 71.

C H A PT E R 10 R E L IG IO N A N D P O L IT IC S

* 1 H. M ontgom ery Hyde, Lord Reading (London, 1967), p. 352. 2 B. R. N anda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (London, 1958), p. 211. Tilak’s letter reproduced in Young India, 2 8 Jan u ary 1920. 3 B. R. N anda, Gokhale, Indian Moderates and the British Raj (Delhi, 1977), p. 170. 4 Dennis Dalton, ‘G andhi and Roy: The Interaction of Ideologies in India' in S ibnarayan Ray (ed.), Gandhi, India and the World (M elbourne, 1970), p. 166.

Notes 5

Harijan, 22 Septem ber 1946.

6

Louis Fischer, Life o f Mahatma Gandhi (London, 1951), p. 430.

7

C. F. A ndrew s to Gandhi, 12 M arch 1933, Gandhi Papers.

8

Ja w a h a rla l N ehru, An Autobiography (London, 1958 edn), pp. 370-1.

167

C H A PT E R 11 G A N D H I A N D T H E P A R T IT IO N O F IN D IA

1

Sun, 21 April 1983.

2

Q uoted in A. H. Albiruni, Makers of Pakistan, p. 109.

3

E arl o f M into, Speeches (C alcutta, 1910), pp. 65-70.

4

H a rc o u rt B utler to Erie Richards, 16 September 1906, Buder Papers.

5

T h ere is plenty of evidence of this in the Fazl-i-Husain Papers in India Office Library. Also see R. J . Moore, The Crisis o f Indian Unity (Delhi, 1974), pp. 192-3.

6

S. R. M ehrotra, Towards India’s Freedom and Partition (New Delhi, 1979), p. 226. Also see B. R. N anda, Gokhale, Gandhi and the Nehrus, Studies in Indian Nationalism (London; 1974), pp. 136-41, P. H ardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 224-5.

7

K halid B. Sayeed, ‘T he Personality o fjin n a h and the Political Strategy’ in C. H. Philips and M. D. W ainw right (eds), The Partition o f India (London, 1970), p. 276.

8

Tribune, 2 J u ly 1937.

9

‘T h e idea o f Pakistan has set the M uslim imagination afire. They see strange, undream ed of, limidess possibilities in it. They imagine Pakistan to be a state in w hich m en shall be free from oppression, injustice and exploitation, and free from selfish greeds, covetness and fear of poverty.’ F. K. K han Durrani, The Meaning of Pakistan (Lahore, 1946), p. 117.

10

In the annua] session of the M uslim League in 1938, there was a reference to the prom otion of M uslim interests through an alliance with the British.Jin n ah ’s com m ent was characteristic: ‘I say the M uslim League is not going to be an ally of anyone, b u t would be the ally of even the devil, if need be in the interests of M uslim s’. A pin-drop silence suddenly appeared to seize the House at this stage. M r. J in n a h paused fo ra moment, and then continued: ‘It is not because we are in love w ith imperialism; but in politics one has to play one’s game as on the chess-board.’ Jam il-ud-din A hm ad, Speeches and Writings o f Mr. Jinnah (Lahore, 1946), Vol. I, p. 78.

11

K h alid B. Sayeed, op. cit., p. 283.

12

K haliquzzam an, Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore, 1961), p. 397.

13

P. H ard y , The Muslims o f British India (Cambridge, 1972), p. 164.

14' R. J . M oore, Escapefrom Empire (London, 1983), p. 284. 15

Harijan, 6 April 1940.

16

Ia n Stephen, Pakistan (London, 1964), p. 101.

168 17

Gandhi and his Critics R .J . M oore, op. cit., p. 159.

18

S u d h ir Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissaiy (London, 1967), p. 180.

19 20

S. R. M ehrotra, op. cit., p. 232 R. J . M oore, ‘Jin n a h and the Pakistan D em and’, Modem Asian Studies, 1983, pp. 560-1.

C H A PT E R 12 T H E P A R T IT IO N M A S S A C R E S

1

Indian Annual Register, Ju ly —December 1946, p. 226.

2

Ibid., p. 178.

3

N. K. Bose and P. H. Patw ardhan, Gandhi in Indian Politics (Bombay, 1967), p. 7.

4

Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (A hm edabad, 1956), Vol. I, p. 470.

5

W . H. M orris-Jones, ‘T h e T ransfer of Power, 1947— A View from the Sidelines’, Modem Asian Studies, 16, 1 (1982), pp. 1-32.

6

N. M ansergh and P. M oon (eds), India, The Transfer o f Power, 1942-47 (London, 1980), Vol. IX , Docum ent No. 138.

7

Partition Proceedings (Expert Com m ittee No. 1), Government of India, Vol. I ,p .81.

8

Y. K rishan, ‘M ountbatten and the Partition of India’,Journal o f Historical Association, U niversity of Glasgow, February 1983, p. 35.

9

Collected Works o f Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. L X X V III (A hm edabad, 1979), p. 414.

10

Pyarelal, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 382.

11

T a riq Ali, Can Pakistan Survive? (London, 1983), p. 96.

12

K halid B. Sayeed, ‘T h e Personality of Jin n ah and the Political Strategy’ in C. H. Philips and M. D. W ainw right (eds), The Partition o f India (London, 1970), p. 293.

13

Ibid.

14

Y. K rishan, op. cit., p. 36.

15

‘As in M ediaeval Europe, the feelings of the masses were fed almost exclusively by religious food; that is why to provoke a strong movement it was necessary to present to the masses their own interests in religious clothes.’ M arietta Stepaniants, ‘D evelopm ent o f the Concept o f Nationalism — T he Case o f the Muslims in the In d ian Sub-C ontinent’, The Muslim World, Vol. L X IX , Ja n u a ry 1979, p. 36.

16

Sir Francis Wylie, the G overnor of U .P., wrote to the Viceroy on 29 August 1946 th a t ‘the most ominous feature o f the [M uslim League] dem onstrations was the notable tendency to give the whole movement a religious flavour. M any of the m eetings took place in and around mosques ju st after the usual Friday prayers. I am told too that m em bers of the M uslim League party are making vigorous efforts to obtain support o f M aulvis and Im am s everywhere in the province. You might have noticed that Dawn recently started quoting extracts from the Q uran every day on its leader page . . . . There has been some shouting of slogans about “Jehad” in various towns h e re . . . ’ N. Mansergh and P. Moon, op. cit., Vol. V III, pp. 342—3.

169

Notes

S ir K h izr H yat K han, Prim e M inister of the Punjab, told the Viceroy in April 1946: ‘T h e M uslim League had liked to keep the idea [of Pakistan] vague, so that every M uslim m ight interpret it as a sort of utopia where his own ambitions would be satisfied. A t the elections [in February 1946], they had identified it [Pakistan] with Islam , the K oran and the Holy Prophet.’ N. M ansergh and P. Moon, op. cit., Vol. V I I , p. 148. 17 Francis G. H utchins, Spontaneous Revolution: The Quit India Movement (New Delhi, 1971).

C H A PT E R 13

'

G A N D H I A N D N O N -V IO L E N C E

1

Washington Post, 18 April 1983.

2

M . K . G andhi to P. Desai, 15 Novem ber 1914, G andhi Papers.

3

N. M ansergh and E. W. R. Lum by (eds), Transfer o f Power (London, 1971), Vol. II, p. 346.

4

B. Shiva Rao, ‘India 1923—4-7’ in. C. H. Philips and M ary Doreen Wainwright (eds), The Partition o f India (London, 1970), p. 429.

5

M . K . G andhi to M iraben, 31 M ay 1942, in Bapu’s Letters to Mira (Ahmedabad, 1949), pp . 360-1.

6

N . M ansergh and P. M oon (eds), Transfer o f Power, Vol. V, p. 64.

C H A PT E R 14 M AN

versu s M A C H I N E

1

R. Palm e D u tt, India Today (Bombay, 1947), pp. 506-7.

2

B. N . G anguli, Gandhi’s Social Philosophy (Delhi, 1973), p. 312.

3

Harijan, 16 N ovem ber 1934.

4

R. K . K aranjia, The Mind o f Mr. Nehru (London, 1960), p. 52.

5

P. C . Jo sh i, ‘G andhi and N ehru’ in B. R. N anda and V. C. Joshi (eds), Studies in Modem Indian History (New Delhi, 1972), p. 123.

6

See G u n n a r M yrdal, Asian Drama (London, 1968), Vol. II; B. N. Ganguli, op. cit.; P. C . Jo sh i, op. cit.; A m ritananda Das, Foundations o f Gandhian Economics (New D elhi, 1979); Raj K rishna, ‘T he N ehru-G andhi Polarity and Economic Policy’ in B. R. N an d a e ta l., Gandhi and Nehru (New Delhi, 1979).

7

P. C. Jo sh i, op. cit., p. 132.

8

A. H . H u q , ‘Economics o f G row th and Employment: T he Gandhian Approach’, Gandhi Marg, Ja n u a ry 1981, p. 576.

Gandhi and his Critics

170

CHAPTER 15

A REACTIONARY 1

Roy blam ed the failure of the non-co-operation movement on the ‘class character o f G an d h i’s leadership . . . as he sacrificed the movement to the two forces of landlordism and industrialism ’. In Ju ly 1924, Roy wrote that ‘the defeat o f orthodox Gandhism is complete and final . . . and M r. G andhi as leader of Indian national struggle has sung his sw ansong . . . ’ Documents.of the History o f the Communist Party o f India, Vol. 2 : 1923-5, p. 411.

2

In his Social Background o f Indian Nationalism (first published in 1943), A. R. Desai w rote th a t ‘G andhism had m et both the needs o f the national bourgeoisie viz., that o f exerting pressure on imperialism through mass struggle, and second, that of lim iting th a t struggle, diverting it in those channels which also would [«cj make it harm ful for Indian propertied classes.’

3

Richard Grenier, ‘T h e G andhi Nobody Knows’, Commentary, M arch 1983, p. 62.

4

Harijan, 27 M ay 1939.

5

W illiam L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir (London, 1981), p. 60.

6 . Harijan, 5 December 1936. 7

Ibid.

8

Harijan, 2 Ja n u a ry 1937.

9: Louis Fischer, A Week With Gandhi (Bombay, 1944)( pp. 72-3. Jaw aharlal Nehru was present during this conversation between G andhi and Fischer. 10

B. N. G anguli, Gandhi’s Social Philosophy (New Delhi, 1973), p. 245.

11

N. K . Bose, Studies in Gandhism (Calcutta, 1962 edn), p. 36.

12

P. C. Jo sh i, ‘G andhi and N ehru’ in B. R. N anda and V. C. Joshi (eds), Studies in Modem Indian History (Delhi, 1972), p. 131.

13

Bombay Chronicle, 6 Ju ly 1921.

14

G u n n a r M yrdal, Asian Drama (London, 1968), Vol. 2, p. 754.

15 N. K . Bose, op. cit., p. 88. 16 Ib id ., p. 86. 17

S hrim an N arayan, India Needs Gandhi (New Delhi, 1976), pp. 12-3.

18

A m lan D atta, ‘Aspects of G andhian Economic T hought’ in Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Gandhi, India and the World (M elbourne, 1970), p. 257.

19

Amrita Bazar Patrika, 30 Ju n e 1944.

20 D. G. T endulkar, Mahatma (Delhi,n.d.), Vol. 7, p. 47. 21

M . K . G andhi, Delhi Diary (A hm edabad, 1948), p. 69.

22 B. N. G anguli, op. cit., pp. 261—2. 23

Young India, 15 N ovem ber 1931.

24 Harijan, 31 A ugust 1947. 25 Ib id ., 29 M ay 1937.

Notes

171

C H A PT E R 16 TH E M AN

1

M arg aret Bourke-W hite, Halfway to Freedom (Bombay, 1950), p. 184.

2

‘It is alarm ing and also nauseating to see M r. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a faqir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps o f the Viceroy’s palace while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant cam paign of d v il disobedience to parley with the representative of the K ing-E m peror . . .’ R. R. Jam es (ed.), Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches (London, 1974), Vol. V, p. 4985.

3

Syed H ossain, Gandhi, The Saint as Statesman (Los Angeles, 1937), p. 44.

4

R aghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought o f Mahatma Gandhi (New York,

5

D . K . Bedekar, Towards Understanding Gandhi (Bombay, 1975), p. 86.

1978), pp. 6-7. 6

R aghavan Iyer, op. cit., p. 380.

7

H orace Alexander, Consider India (London, 1961), p. 75.

8

Louis Fischer, The Life o f Mahatma Gandhi (London, 1951), p. 406.

9

C. Shukla, Conversations o f Gandhi (Bombay, 1949), p. 10.

10

Collected Works o f Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. X IV , pp. 515-16.

11

P. C. Jo sh i, ‘G andhi and Nehru: T he Challenge o f a New Society’ in B. R. Nanda et al., Gandhi and Nehru (Delhi, 1979), p. 41.

12

Interview w ith Amiya C hakravarty, O ral History Transcript, Nehru Memorial M useum and Library, New Delhi, p. 15.

13

W . K. H ancock, Smuts: The Sanguine Years 1870-1919 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 345.

14

S. R adhakrishnan (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections (London, 1939), p. 278.

15

L ord H alifax, Fulness o f Days (London, 1959), pp. 148-9.

16

Louis Fischer, op. cit., p. 397.

17

Jo se p h J . Doke, M . K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa (M adras, 1959), p. 9.

18

Report o f the Twenty-Fourth Indian National Congress, 1909, pp. 88-9.

19

R ichard Gregg, quoted in Manas, Septem ber 1981, p. 7.

20

A rth u r K oestler, The Lotus and the Robot (London, 1960), p. 145.

21

Erikson, ‘In Search o f G andhi’ in Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership (Bom bay, 1968), p. 35.

22

Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth (New York, 1969), p. 250.

23

Ib id ., p. 378.

24

Interview w ith Erikson, Span Magazine, New Delhi, November 1983, p. 13.

172

Gandhi and his Critics '

E PIL O G U E TH E

1

M ESSAG E

G an d h i’s presidential address at the Belgaum Congress in Congress Presidential Addresses, From the Silver to the GoldenJubilee, Second Series (M adras, 1934), p. 745.

2

Paul F. Power, Gandhi on World AJJairs (London, 1961), p. 132.

3

M . K. G andhi, Indian Home Rule (Ahmedabad, 1938), p. 79.

4

R aghavan Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought o f Mahatma Gandhi (New York, 1978), p. 308.

5

M . K. G andhi, An Autobiography (Ahm edabad, 1945 edn), p. 337.

6

R. K. K aranjia, Thf Philosophy o f Mr. Nehru (London, 1966), pp. 60-1.

7

Roy W alker, The Wisdom o f Gandhi {London, 1943), p. 57.

Index

Abyssinia, 118 African N ational Congress, 32 Aga K han, the, 79, 139 A hm edabad, 19, 60, 67 A lexander, A. V ., 70 A lexander, H orace, 143 Ali Brothers, M oham ed Ali and Shaukat Ali, 59 A ligarh, M . A. O. College, 78 A ll-India Congress Committee, 97 A ll-India Spinners’ Association, 65 A m bedkar, B. R., 23 A m ritsar, 34, 37, 42 A ndam ans, the, 63 Andrews, C. F., 76 Angola, 33 . A nti Non-Cooperation Society, 136 Archbold, W . A. J ., 80 A rendt, H annah, 158 A rm strong, 141 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 4 Asian Drama, 138 A siatic Registration legislation, 116 Assam, 7 A ttenborough, Richard, 1 Attlee, Earl, 23, 70, 96, 97 Auchinleck, General, 104 A zad, Abul K alam , 85, 119 Bajaj, Jam nalal, 137 Baneijea, Surendranath, 59 Bannerm an Campbell, Sir H enry, 52 Basic Education, W ardha Scheme of, 88, 141 Belighata, 107 Besant, Annie, 54 Bhagavatam, 150

Bhatt, Shamal, 4 Bhopal, 102 B hulabhai D esai-Liaqat Ali Pact, 92 Bible, the, 5, 144 Birkenhead, Lord, 61 Birla, G. D., 137 Bismarck, 3 Blunt, W. S., 47 Boer W ar, 115 Bombay, 60, 67 Bonneijee, W. C., 49 Bose, N. K., 17, 100, 146 Bose, Subhas C handra, viii Botha, General Louis, 30 Bourke-W hite, M argaret, 142 British Imperialism, 44—8 ^uddha, viii, 146 Burma, 120 Butler, Sir H arcourt, 80 C abinet Mission, 92, 94, 95, 96 C am bridge, 149 C anada, 93 Carlyle, Thom as, 144 C arpenter, Edward, 123 Caw npore, 43 C haitanya, 19 C hakravarty, Amiya, 147 C ham berlain, Austen, 54, 61 C ham paran, 59 C hatteijee, Bankim C handra, 87 C hatterjee, M argaret, 160 C hauri C haura, 73 Chelm sford, Lord, 38, 54, 56 C hiang Kai-shek, 120 Chicago Tribune, 64 Chirol, Sir Valentine, 41

174

Index »

Christian Century, 153 Churchill, W inston, 2, 15, 40, 60, 62, 97, 121, 122, 142, 165 Civilization and Its Discontents, 156 Clausewitz, K arl von, 155 Cleveland, C. R., 38 Commentary, 1 Com m unal Award, the, 20, 84, 93 C om m unist International, Second, 130 Congress Socialist Party, 137 C o n n a u g h t,'th e Duke of, 41 C otton, Sir Henry, 44 Craddock, R. H., 51 Crewe, Earl, 52, 53, 61 C ripps Mission, 92 Cripps, Sir Stafford, 62, 70, 119 Cromwell, Oliver, 3 Curzon, Lord, 45, Sty, 53, 55, 56, 57 Czechoslovakia, 118 Dandi, 63 Darling, Malcolm, 44 Das, C. R., 37, 66, 67 Das Kapital, 131 Dawn, 167 Defence in the Nuclear Age, 157 Desai, A. R., 169 Dharsana Salt Works, 63 Disarmament, 155 Doke, the Rev. J ., 6, 148 Dufferin, Lord, 50 D urban, vi, 8, 11, 29 Durrani, F. K. K han, 166 Dutt,, Romesh Chunder, 47, 123 Dyer, Brigadier-General, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 East India Company, 42 Edison, 158 Education For Life, 141 Einstein, Albert,-viii, 156, 159 Elgin, Lord, 44, 53 Elizabeth II, Queen, 71 Erikson, Erik H., 15, 16, 17, 151 Fazl-ul-Haq, 91 Fazl-i-Husain, 83 Fergusson College, Poona, 73

Fischer, Louis, 75, 135, 145, 169 Freud, Sigmund, 151, 159 Fuller, B., 51 G albraith, J . K., 155 G andhi, Devdas, 9, 150 G andhi film, the, 63 G andhi, H arilal, 9, 150 G andhi-Irw in Pact, 61 G andhi, K asturba, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 151 G andhi, M anilal, 9, 32, 150 G andhi, M anu, 16 G andhi, M ohandas K aram chand (2 O ctober 1869—30 Jan u a ry 1948) Evolution o f personality in South Afri­ ca, 8—9 brahmacharya ideal in H indu thought, 15, 160-1 sex and family life, 9—13, 16, 17, 150-2 attitu d e to m arriage and divorce, 141 views on caste system and fight against untouchability, 18-25 struggle against racial discrimination, 27-33 reaction to Punjab Tragedy, 41 and the British Raj, 57—71 appproach to religion, 2—7 H indu-M uslim unity, 82—4, 89— 90, 100, 101, 108-9, 113-14 and Partition of India, 82—97 fasts, 2 1 -2 , 75-6, 107-9 views on education, 141 and secularism, 141 and socialism, 131-4 and Princely States, 134 and landlords, 134-6 and capitalists, 137-8 and industrialization, 126 Trusteeship, theory of, 138-9 village uplift, 126-8 concept o f development, 129 and status of women, 141 on profession o f law, 140 on w ar and peace, 115-21 non-violence and future o f m an­ kind, 154—9

Index Gandhi, Ram das, 9, 150 Gandhi’s Truth, 16, 161 George V, King, 53 George, Lloyd, 55, 61, 148 Ghana, 32, 33 Gibbon, Edward, 144 Gita, Bhagavad, 4, 5, 8, 73, 144, 147 Goa, 102 Godrej, A. D., 136 Goethe, J . W. von, 144 Gokhale, G. K ., 46, 47, 72, 73, 86 Gregg, Richard, 149 Gwyer, Sir M aurice, 87 Half-way to Freedom, 142 Hamilton, George, 50 Hardinge, Lord, 48, 52, 53 Harijan, 23—4 Harrow, 149 Heilbum , Carolyn G., 161 Hibbert Journal, 16 Hind Swaraj, 123-4, 130 Hiroshima, 158 Hitler, Adolf, 119 Hoare, Sir Samuel, 20, 62 Hodson, Captain, 42 Home Rule League, 54 Home Rule movement, 58 Hossain, Syed, 142 Hudson, Sir Havelock, 38 Hume, A. O., 49 H unter Committee, 35, 38 H unter, Sir W. W ., 27 Ilbert Bill, 50 In d ian N ational Congress, 57, 58, 70, 78, 79, 93, 98, 119, 131, 148 Interim G overnm ent, 96 Ireland, .52 Irw in, Lord, viii, 61, 63, 147 Ism ail K han, Nawab, 85 Jallianw ala Bagh, 34, 35 Jam es, W illiams, 144 Jam il-ud-din, A hm ad, 166 J a p a n , 120—21 Ja y a k a r, M. R., 37

175

Jin n a h , M. A., 23, 75, 84, 86-96, 98-9, 103-5, 110-12 Jn an esh w ar, 15 Jo h annesburg, 8, 11, 115, 148 Jones, E. Stanley, 21 K abir, 15, 19 Kaiser-i-Hind medal, 152 Karachi Congress (1931), 75 K aunda, Kenneth, 33 Kerr, Seton, 50 Khaliquzzaman, Chaudhry, 85, 86 Khilafat movement, the, 82, 87 K hizr H yat Khan, Sir, 168 Kidwai, R. A., 67 King-Hall, Sir Stephen, 157 King, M artin Luther, 33 K ipling, R udyard, 144 Kitchlew, S. D., 34 Koran, the, 144 Koestler, A rthur, 150 Kripalani, J . B., 139 Labour Party, The British, 61, 70 L ajpat Rai, 143 Lamington, Lord, 51 Lansdowne, Lord,. 53 Lawrence, Sir John, 42—3 Life, 142 . Light o f Asia, 4 Lincoln, Abraham, 2, 94 Linlithgow, Lord, 62, 69, 91, 97, 121, 165 Lloyd, Sir George, 59 Low, David, 21 Lucknow Pact, the, 81, 83, 93 Luthuli, Chief, 32 M acD onald, Ramsay, 20, 21, 83 Mahabharata, 144 M alaya, 120 Manchester Guardian, 61 M anchuria, 117 M andela, Nelson, 32 M anu, 6 M ao Zedong, 2 M arconi, 158

176

'Index

M arris, Sir William, 165 M arx, K arl, 131, 132, 144 M ason, Philip, 47 M asters, Jo h n , 71 Meaning o f Pakistan, 166 M eerut Conspiracy Case, 131 M ehtab, Sheikh, 10 M ehta, Pherozeshah, 49 M ende, T ibor, 26 M iller, W ebb, 63 M into, Lord, 44, 51,i52, 79, 80 M into-M orley Reforms, 22 M irabehn (M adeleine Slade), 121 M olesworth, M ajor-General, 120 M ontagu, Edwin, 39, 55, 56, 57 M ontagu-Chelm sford Reforms, 81 M orley, Jo h n , 44, 51, 52 M orley-M into Reforms, 51, 81 Morning Post, 40 M orris-Jones, W. H., 74 M ott, D r Jo h n , 126 M ountbatten, Lord, 71, 97, 104, 107, 114 . M o untbatten Plan, 99, 103 M uggeridge, M alcolm, 70 M uktananda, 15 Mundaka Upanishad, 160 M urray, G ilbert, 16 M uslim League, A ll-India, 74, 75, 76, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 98, 101 , 102

M uslim League N ational G uards, 103 M ussolini, Benito, 119 M utiny (Revolt) of 1857, 4 2 -4 M yrdal, G unnar, 138

Nagasaki, 158 Nanais, G uru, 15, 19 Naoroji, D adabhai, 46, 49, 57, 86, 112 Napoleon, 3 N arayan, Jayaprakash, viii N arendra Deva, 139 Natal, 10 N ehru, Jaw ah arlal, viii, 26, 44, 65, 67, 70, 74, 76, 86-8, 90, 95, 97, 108, 117, 119-20, 128, 137, 149, 158-9 \

Nehru, M otilal, 37, 66 Nehru Report, 84 Nehru, Swarup Rani, 66 Neill, General, 43 New Statesman, 49 New York Telegram, 63 Nizam of H yderabad, 102 Nkrumah, Kwame, 32 Noakhali, 16, 99 Nobel Prize, 153 O ’ Dwyer, Sir Michael, 38-40 Oppenheim er, Robert, 156 O range Free State, 28 Orwell, George, 9, 130 Pakistan, viii, 74, 7 6 -7, 85, 88, 91—2, 109-10, 112 P arsuram , 17 P artition of Bengal, 88 Patel, V allabhbhai, 97 Peel, Viscount, 61 Pethick-Lawrence, Lord, 95 Philadelphia, 71 Phoenix, 8, 11 Phula, Jy o tib a, 19 Plato, 144 Plym outh, 10 Poona, viii, 24 Poona Pact, the, 22—3 Pretoria, 14 Q uakers, 5 Q u it India M ovement, 91, 113, 115, 120, 135, 137, 159 R ajagopalachari, C., 25, 119 R am akrishna, 15, 161 R am ana M aharshi, 15, 143 Ramayana, the, 19, 74 R anade, M . G., 19, 46 R ashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, 103 R aychandbhai, 5, 143 R eading, Lord, 6 0 -1 , 72 Rees, M ajor-G eneral, 105 Ripon, Lord, 50, 53

Index R obb, P. G., 56 R obertson, M . L., 38 R olland, R om ain, viii Roosevelt, Franklin D., 2, 156 R ound T able Conference, 72, 8 3 -4 , 137 Row latt Bills; 59, 132 Roy, M . N., 75, 131, 169 R udolph, Lloyd and Susanne, 16 R um bold, Algernon, 49, 71 Ruskin, Jo h n , 11, 123, 144

Sabarm ati, 74 Saiyidain, K. G., 88 Sanger, M argaret, 14 Santa Cruz, 152 Santiniketan, 21 Sarabhai, Ambalal, 137 Satyapal, Dr, 34 Sayeed, K halid B., 86, 91, 110 Scandinavia, 158 Scotland Yard, 148 Segaon, 126 Servants of India Society, 73 Serm on on the M ount, 5, 73 Setalvad, C. H., 39, 136 Sevagram, 26, 74, 109, 126 Shafi, Sir M uham m ad, 83 Shaw, George Bernard, 144 Shirer, William L., 64, 134 Sikander H yat K han, 91 Simon, Sir George, 61 Simla Conference, 92 Simla Deputation, 81 Singapore, 120 Sinha, Sir S. P., 53, 57 Slade, M adeleine (M irabehn), 65 Smith, Adam, 144 Smuts, General J a n Christian, 122, 147 Sobhani, U m ar, 136 Song Celestial, The, 4 Spain, 118 Statesman, 99 Stepaniants, M arietta, 167 Stephen, Fitzjames Stephen' 51 Suhrawardy, H. S., 92, 99, 100, 106 Suratgarh, 125 Swaraj Party, 84

177

Syed Ahmad K han, 78-9, 90 Sykes, Sir Frederick, 64 Tagore, R abindranath, 21, 37, 76, 147, 149 Tem ple, Sir Richard, 45 T eresa, M other, 14 T hackeray, W. M., 45 T hakurdas, Purshotam das, 136 T horeau, H enry David, 73, 144 T ilak, B. G., 54, 72 T ilak Swaraj Fund, 136 Times o f India, 39, 152 Times, The, 41, 54 Tolstoy Farm , 8 Tolstoy, Leo, 2, 12, 13, 73, 123, 144 Tolstoy, Sonya, 13 Toynbee, Arnold, 71 T rav arco re, 102 Trevelyan, G. O ., 43 T ukaram , 15 T urkey, 82 Tw o-N ation Theory, 89, 110 United States, 93, 124, 159 Unto This Last, 11, 144 Upanishads, 73, 144 U. S. S. R., 93 Vedas, 6 Victoria, Queen, 45, 50 Viqar-ul-M ulk, Nawab, 79 Vincent, John, 77 Vincent, Sir William, 59, 165 Vivekananda, Swami, 15, 161 W ardha, 14 W ard h a Scheme, see Basic Education Wavell, Lord, 23, 165 Washington Post, 115 Wedgwood, J . Colonel, 40 Week with Gandhi, A, 169 Welby Commission, 47 Wells, H. G., 144 Willingdon, Lord, vii, 21, 64, 65, 67, 69 Wilson, Fleetwood, 48

178 W intcrton, Earl, 61 Wylie, Sir Francis, 167 Ycravda prison, 21, 76

% Index Zakir Husain, 38 Zam indars, 134 Zetland, Lord, 62 Zulu Rebellion, 11-12, 115

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_______________________ G A N D H I A N D H I S C R I T I C S _______________________ B. R . N anda

The continuing interest in Mahatma Gandhi has generated some severe critical comments on his life and ideas. B . R . Nanda, an eminent historian and biographer of Gandhi, examines these criticisms and clarifies misunderstandings, particularly in the West, about G andhi’s thoughts and deeds. The author analyses the evolution of Gandhi’s personality and thought, his approach to religion, the caste system and the racial problem, his struggle against colonial rule, his attitude to events leading to the partition of India, his social and economic thought, and his doctrine of non-violence. The London Tim es’ comment on Nanda’s biography of Mahatma Gandhi, that it ‘rescues Gandhi both from the sentimentalists and from debunkers’, would equally apply to this book. Not only does it do justice to the memory of an extraordinary man, but also shows his relevance for India and the world today. books include Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography, The Nehrus , and Gokhale: The Indian M oderates and the British Raj.

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