Next day, Amritsar was taken over by General Reginald Dyer, a professional soldier born in Simla. He prohibited meetings but the ban was proclaimed only in English. On the afternoon of 13 April, over 10,000 people, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, a public ground enclosed on three sides by five-foot-high walls. Speakers sat on a platform on the open side. Not many in the audience were aware of Dyer’s ban, and none had firearms.
Suddenly, the meeting barely begun, Dyer appeared with 50 rifle-carrying Gurkha and Baluchi soldiers, occupied the speakers’ platform, and — without asking the audience to disperse — ordered fire. His men obeyed, for ten death-filled minutes. The trapped gathering could only shriek and fall in heaps. Almost every bullet got a man; according to official figures, 379 were killed and over 1,100 injured.
O’Dwyer imposed martial law throughout the Punjab. In Amritsar, Dyer decreed that any Indian passing along the street where Miss Sherwood was attacked would crawl, Indians on vehicles or horses would dismount at the sight of a British officer and salaam him, and hundreds of students would walk 16 miles a day for roll-calls. Violators were flogged at a public whipping post. Elsewhere in the province men were stripped and beaten, and in two places groups of peasants were bombed from the air. A non-existent revolutionary plot was crushed.
Two days before the Jallianwala killing, C.R. had assailed the bar against Gandhi and said that if anyone could ‘keep the satyagraha movement true to its principles it is Mr Gandhi’(The Hindu, 11.4.19). Later, he claimed that the Punjab violence would have been averted had the Mahatma been allowed to enter the province.
The Mahatma, however, divided the blame between the Raj and his countrymen. The latter had rioted in Bombay and Ahmedabad because he was forcibly turned back at the Punjab border. Shocked at their violence, Gandhi fasted in Ahmedabad for three days and restored peace.
As for the Punjab, though sharing the view that his visit there might have averted the tragedy, Gandhi was disturbed by the province’s two-sided violence. He concluded that he had committed a ‘Himalayan blunder’ in launching his campaign without disciplining the masses. The satyagraha was suspended.
In a letter to C.R., Gandhi explained that ‘the spiritual cause of the temporary setback’ was the satyagraha’s impurity. In a subsequent letter Gandhi revealed his reliance on C.R. and the closeness established between the two:
I have written so much in order to share with you my inmost thoughts as they came to me this morning. It is now 6.30 a.m. For on you and the few we are will be the burden.1
Though C.R. noted that ‘ardent spirits’ were ‘disappointed and dispirited’2 by the suspension, his regard for Gandhi had increased: the Mahatma was plainly interested in his struggle’s integrity. However, Willingdon, Pentland’s successor as Governor of Madras, called Gandhi a ‘Bolshevik.’3
In London some tried to take a balanced view. In a private cable to the Viceroy, Montagu, Secretary of State for India, said:
I have never heard of a case in which the appearance of Gandhi has not had a tranquillising effect. It certainly had in Ahmedabad and Bombay during the recent riots . . . So far as I can hear, Gandhi is a man who has always kept his word.4
But the sahibs in India saw things differently. According to a later British view, they had ‘stiffened into amoral solidarity: Englishmen backed each other right or wrong.’5
Indians sympathetic to the Raj were horrified by Jallianwala. Tagore renounced his knighthood. In July, the Raj formed a commission under Lord Hunter to sift the Punjab evidence. Congress set up an inquiry of its own, to be conducted by Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, the successful Allahabad lawyer, and C.R. Das of Bengal.
First Rowlatt, then the Punjab and finally Khilafat struck at the concept of Empire. The Allies were considering the terms to be imposed on Turkey, defeated in the War along with Germany. The Sultan of Turkey was the Khalifa, or head, of the faithful; the vast majority of Indian Muslims gave him allegiance and recognized his suzerainty over the Arab lands that contained Islam’s holiest sites.
David Lloyd George, the British Premier, had said that the Allies were not ‘fighting to deprive Turkey of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor.’6 Depending on this assurance, a number of Indian Muslims had swallowed their reluctance and soldiered for the Empire against Turkey.
Now, in August 1919, it transpired that Britain meant to end the Khalifa’s suzerainty and give control over the holy places to Arab chieftains. To Indian Muslims this was a betrayal and a sacrilege. Seeking to undo the wrong, they found a champion in Gandhi — and also in C.R.
A believer in Hindu-Muslim partnership from his South African days if not earlier, Gandhi had been heartened by signs of entente during the anti-Rowlatt agitation. To him the chance that the Khilafat question offered for cementing the Hindu- Muslim relationship and weakening if not ousting the Raj was ‘not going to recur for the next hundred years’ (Collected Works 18:180).
As over Rowlatt, the Congress was slow to respond to Gandhi. C.R., however, was once more on the Mahatma’s wavelength. Later he would recall a conversation that took place at the start of the Khilafat stir. ‘Is it not a beautiful thing,’ he said to Gandhi, ‘that India could present the spectacle of one religion not merely tolerating but actually fighting for a sister religion?’ Apparently Gandhi’s ‘eyes flashed’ as he replied, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’7
In August 1919 C.R. made his first Khilafat move by initiating a resolution at the Madras Provincial Conference in Trichy, demanding that Islam’s holy places remain with the Khalifa. Reminding the audience that some Muslim leaders arrested during the War for alleged pro-Turkish sympathies were still in jail, including the outspoken brothers Shaukat and Muhammad Ali, C.R. warned that many Muslim newspapers ‘had been gagged’ and that ‘Muslim feeling in India ran high’ (The Hindu, 22.8.19).
His doings were not all political — the mathematician, Ramanujam, as yet insufficiently recognized and struggling, was his house guest for a month. But C.R. was being watched, and in November the Government of Madras informed Delhi that C.R., still described as ‘a Salem vakil,’ had persuaded the Hindus ‘with the result that on the 17th [of October] most of the shops and the Bazaar were closed.’8
To the Raj a Hindu-Muslim alliance was neither natural nor welcome. But it began to take shape. The Khilafatists met in Delhi towards the end of November to consider steps if their fears materialized. Gandhi was asked to preside. Searching for a suitable riposte on behalf of Hindu and Muslim India, Gandhi came up with ‘non-cooperation.’
Not yet spelt out, non-cooperation seemed a weapon of sharp edge. However, Britain’s terms for Turkey were not final as yet and Gandhi was prepared to wait for a revision.
In December 1919 Congress met in Amritsar, the venue reminding people that Jallianwala remained to be redressed. Gandhi noted two positive signs — the Ali brothers were released while the Congress was meeting, and the Rowlatt Act, while not repealed, was not being used.
For the Amritsar session, C.R. made his first journey to North India. Motilal Nehru presided but Gandhi was the central figure. The Ali brothers arrived straight from prison, Muhammad Ali announcing that he was holding ‘a return ticket.’ The phrase would be repeated by thousands in the years to follow.
The resolution on Jallianwala proposed at Amritsar called for the removal of Dyer from his command, the resignation of O’Dwyer, and the recall of the Viceroy; it also expressed hope that the Hunter Commission would recommend justice.
For Gandhi this was not enough. He asked the session to include a condemnation of the Indian excesses of April. This was a hard pill and Gandhi had to fight for its acceptance. It was true, he said, that ‘the Government went mad at the time.’ But, he added, ‘we went mad also.’
Then, in a sentence, he defined successful satyagraha: ‘Do not return madness with madness but return madness with sanity, and the whole situation will be yours.’ The pill was swallowed.
Congress agreed to work the [Mo
ntford] Reforms Act, which had just come into force, while expressing disappointment at its inadequacies. The sword of non-cooperation, bared for a
brief moment over Khilafat, lay quiet and unnoticed in its sheath in Amritsar.
C.R. played no part in shaping the resolutions. For him Amritsar was an opportunity to meet men who would be colleagues in the future — among them the Nehrus, father and son, Das, whose friendship he had made the previous year, and Rajendra Prasad of Bihar.
Invited by Prasad to Patna, C.R. visited Benares on the way, buying a sari there for Papa. He was accompanied to Patna by Devadas, the Mahatma’s nineteen-year-old son. On returning to Madras, C.R. posted twenty-three books to Devadas — on literature, science, geography, and Greek, Roman, English and Indian history. Writing what he himself described as ‘a schoolmaster’s letter’ to Devadas, C.R. said: ‘Remember that the last one or two letters in a word have the same right to be legible as the rest.’
Before his trip North, C.R. had shifted, with his children and father, to a smaller house, ‘Venkata Vilas’ on Luz Church Road in Mylapore. They were living on his savings, and economies were called for.
Early in 1920, an explanation of Jallianwala prepared by the Punjab Government — the accused party, in Congress eyes — was released in Britain. C.R. urged the Congress to publish its findings speedily.
Drafted by the Mahatma and published on March 25, the Congress Report concluded that there was no Indian conspiracy, that Martial Law was unjustified, and that Jallianwala was a ‘calculated’ and ‘unparalleled’ piece of inhumanity. It was later claimed that ‘not a single fact’ stated in the Congress Report ‘was ever disproved.’9
All over India the demand for redress grew. Appointed Convener for Madras Presidency of the Congress’s Jallianwala committee, C.R. strove to mobilize southern opinion over the Punjab.
His task was aided by the Hunter Commission’s Report, published at the end of May, which confirmed the grim facts but drew weak conclusions. Indian resentment was roused on both counts. Dyer was relieved of his command after the Report, but O’Dwyer and other Punjab officials emerged unscathed. The justice for which Gandhi and the Congress had nursed a hope was missing.
Shocks followed the disillusionment. The House of Lords passed a resolution justifying Dyer, and British admirers gave him a sword of honour and 20,000 pounds. On the Khilafat front, a Muslim deputation was reminded by the Viceroy that Turkey had drawn the sword for Germany.
Muhammad Ali went to London and called on Lloyd George. ‘Germany,’ he was told by the British Premier, ‘has had justice, pretty terrible justice. Why should Turkey escape?’ Young India, Gandhi’s journal, replied that ‘the terrible, stern justice for Turkey must be tempered with the pledged word . . . of the British Empire’ (31.3.20).
A month earlier, C.R., conveying to Gandhi his assessment that ‘the Khilafat question is assuming most serious proportions,’ had advocated ‘a big agitation in India.’10 On 19 March, Gandhi, C.R. and several Muslim leaders addressed a meeting in Bombay.
At this meeting Gandhi declared that his loyalty to the Empire was evaporating. If adverse decisions over Khilafat were not corrected, he would unsheath non-cooperation. Some Indians broke with the Raj even before Gandhi gave the signal. The first to do so was Hakim Ajmal Khan, Delhi’s noted physician and leading figure, who returned his medals at the end of March.
C.R. pushed the agitation in the South, pledging Hindu support to the Muslims at a 9 April meeting in Madras. Muslim businessmen gave him blank cheques.
India learnt on 14 May the final terms imposed on Turkey and the Khilafat by the Treaty of Sevres. They were as harsh as feared. Later in the month the Hunter Report came out, followed by the House of Lords’ approbation of Dyer. Simultaneously repelling Muslim and non-Muslim India, the Raj had generated a tide that Gandhi would ride.
An all-India Khilafat committee voted for non-cooperation under Gandhi’s guidance, but a Congress committee meeting in Benares at the end of May was more cautious. It shifted the onus to a special session in Calcutta in September. Gandhi decided that he would not wait for the Congress’s approval: preceded by a day of fasting and prayer, nonviolent non-cooperation would be launched on 1 August by him and his Khilafat friends.
In all his bids, the Mahatma received C.R.’s instant understanding and wholehearted loyalty. At times, as we saw over Rowlatt, C.R. seemed to anticipate if not to prod Gandhi. And if a disciple, he was frank with his master, who seemed to treat C.R.’s views with respect. The text of Gandhi’s telegram referred to in the following letter of 12.6.20 from C.R. to the Mahatma is not on record, but we may surmise that it indicated acceptance of ‘out-of-turn,’ candid advice given by C.R.:
My dearest Master, Had your telegram. Words fail me altogether. I hope you have pardoned me. Yours most sincerely, Rajagopalachar.
Acknowledging C.R.’s concern for his integrity, the Mahatma would call him ‘my conscience-keeper.’
In July, in a private report to Delhi, the Madras Government described C.R. as ‘conspicuous’ among ‘the most energetic public advocates of noncooperation.’ A Madras Provincial Conference had recommended non-cooperation; the Government informed Delhi that ‘this result is regarded as due to the exertions of C.R. Achari.’11
C.R. needed to exert himself, for non-cooperation had influential opponents in the South. Some Hindus held that a Muslim cause was not necessarily an Indian cause. The Moderates and Mrs Besant were opposed in principle to the new policy. Other prominent intellectuals had been looking forward to the Councils spelt out by the Reform Act of 1919.
C.R. himself had been ready to see some usefulness in the Councils. He had signed, and probably helped draft, an election manifesto of the Congress’ Nationalist party, of which he was a secretary. But by the time the manifesto was published, he was well on the way to non-cooperation.
Under Gandhi the country’s politics, and the nature of Congress, was being changed. An elite debating society, doubtless patriotic and often brilliant, was being converted into a mass movement just when it could have taken over the gleaming Councils. Not all liked the conversion.
Besides being unexciting in comparison with elections, non- cooperation carried a risk of discomfort and prison terms. A secret report that went on 1 July from Madras to Delhi said that some leaders opposed non-cooperation for ‘fear of the logical results with regard to themselves.’12
Then there was caste. South India was in fact witnessing two struggles, one against the Raj and the other against Brahmin influence. C.R. sought to convince the South’s non-Brahmin majority that the struggle against the Raj included a fight for social justice.
At the end of March he had urged a conference of schoolteachers ‘to fight the caste spirit and work for the removal of untouchability so that the nation would achieve Brahmin/ non-Brahmin and Hindu-Muslim unity’ (The Hindu, 1.4.20).
On 6 April, at a meeting to remember the previous year’s hartal, C.R. asked that the chair be given to the non-Brahmin writer, T.V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar, even though the latter had shortly before backed a resolution ‘not to return any Brahmins to the Legislative Council’ (The Hindu, 8.4.20).
Hitherto, Congress leadership in Madras, Moderate or Nationalist, had mainly come from Brahmins. Founded in 1917, the Justice Party attacked Brahmin domination and Congress in the same breath. Supporting the Montford Scheme, the Justice Party hoped to capture power in the 1920 elections. Since a Congress boycott of elections would suit the Justice Party, Madras’s Congressmen were chary of non-cooperation.
Finally, there was opposition to C.R. from a quarter of another kind. His old teacher, John Tait, called C.R. to College House in Madras on 31 July, on the eve of non-cooperation. He was surprised, Tait said, that C.R. should get mixed up in an
‘unconstitutional and superstitious’ movement like Khilafat.
The former pupil heard Tait with respect but was unrepentant.13
Forty minutes after zero hour on 1 August 1
920, Lokamanya Tilak died in Bombay, his health sapped by diabetes and years in prison. Stirred by his death, all of Bombay seemed to turn out for the final procession. Gandhi and Shaukat Ali were among those shouldering the bier. To C.R., Tilak’s passing came as a personal blow.
On 1 August the Mahatma returned, not without a pang, the medals the Empire had given him for organizing ambulances in South Africa and London. Now, he said, he harboured ‘neither respect nor affection’ for the Government. In reply the Viceroy called non-cooperation ‘the most foolish of all foolish schemes,’ but the Indian people rallied round Gandhi in unprecedented numbers.
C.R. invited him to Madras and Salem. Over 50,000 heard Gandhi on the beach. While in Madras he called on C.R.’s ailing father at ‘Venkata Vilas.’ C.R.’s children were curious and also anxious about the encounter, for their grandfather had promised that if Gandhi ever met him, he would hear a mouthful for having ‘ruined the entire family by mesmerizing my son.’
However, when Gandhi arrived, the ex-munsiff, dressed in his best and rising with an effort, joined his palms in a courteous welcome and told the Mahatma, who had bowed before him, that he was happy with what his son was doing. As soon as Gandhi left, the youngsters demanded an explanation from grandfather. ‘He mesmerized my son and today he mesmerized me,’ said the ex-munsiff, adding, ‘Let him come again, I will have it out with him.’14
Banter apart, two anxieties remained. In obedience to the non-cooperation call, Krishnaswami and Ramaswami had been removed from the Raj’s colleges and Narasimhan from his school; how were these grandsons going to be educated? Secondly, the ex-munsiff feared that non-cooperation would bring the shame of a prison term to his son.
Arresting C.R. was considered by the Government of Madras, but Delhi advised that ‘a premature prosecution of the leaders could result in making martyrs of them.’ It clarified, however, that ‘association with Mr Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolence, will not confer immunity from prosecution on even the most prominent of his co-workers.’15
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