Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  I shall not fly only at the throat of the British magistrate but also at Gandhiji’s. If you give me room I shall fly at my brother’s and sister’s also (The Hindu, 29.6.34).

  Before Willingdon’s crackdown, C.R. and Prasad had both been nominated for the Congress Presidentship by provincial committees; each had urged the other to accept the post. Now, in 1934, Gandhi offered Prasad the crown, telling him (18.9.34) that C.R. ‘cannot now be chosen.’30 One reason was that C.R. was shouldering the parliamentary programme.

  When in October 1934 Congress met in Bombay under Prasad’s chairmanship, Gandhi formally withdrew, but the vast gathering rose to signify loyalty to him. In substance if not in form, the link between Congress and the Mahatma was to continue.

  Twice during this session C.R. and the Mahatma found themselves on opposite sides. From prison Jawaharlal had suggested that the UP be named Hind in Congress’s discourse, and Gandhi endorsed the proposal. Yet Hind was India to many, and C.R. pointed out that ‘if Hind was adopted as the name for [the] UP many changes would have to be made in songs and national cries’ (Bombay Chronicle, 29.10.34). The suggestion was defeated.

  Jayaprakash Narayan and Minoo Masani asked for proportional representation in committees of Congress for groups such as the one the Socialists had formed. C.R. opposed them. So did Patel. But the Mahatma surprised his close colleagues by supporting the J.P.-Masani proposal, which was carried.

  Yet the Gandhi-C.R. relationship was intact. In a letter to B.C. Roy of Bengal, who was unhappy at not being included in the new Working Committee, the Mahatma said (30.10.34):

  You know how I have three times suppressed Rajagopalachari, or rather how Rajagopalachari has allowed himself to be suppressed. Rajagopalachari has certainly gained, and if today he is most useful in the parliamentary struggle in the south, . . . it is due to this self-denial.31

  C.R. had grudged the days that had to be given to the Bombay session — he was immersed body and soul in the November elections. He had had a part in writing Congress’s national manifesto and composed the individual manifestos of some candidates; he was raising money, organizing publicity and teaching candidates to fill out forms; and he was attacking and counter-attacking the opponents of Congress.

  Madras had 16 seats in the Assembly, but since three were reserved for Muslims and one each for the Depressed Classes and landholders, only 11 general seats were available for Congress to contest. Its principal foe was the Justice Party, which was in office in the province and preferred by the Raj, and which attacked Congress as pro-Brahmin.

  Orthodoxy was another Congress foe. A leaflet on its behalf said:

  Do not yield to the siren voice of Mr Rajagopalachari . . . In the name of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva . . . we exhort you to teach those who wish to interfere with our religion a lesson they will never forget . . . Will you vote for God or for Mr Rajagopalachari and his Congress nominees?32

  Whatever God thought of it, the public voted for C.R. and his candidates, who won all the eleven seats. ‘You have reason to be proud of your marvellous achievement,’ Patel wired C.R.33

  The fear of C.R. that the Mahatma’s withdrawal would hurt Congress fortunes at the hustings had been falsified, and in a letter to an English friend a rejoicing Gandhi referred to ‘the wonders [Congress] has worked during the elections with the least amount of expenses.’34

  C.R.’s response to the triumph was businesslike. He asked the winning candidates to send him the names, with addresses, of all those who had assisted their effort, and to remember that ‘our success is no disgrace for our opponents.’35

  Including a dozen or so Nationalists of the Malaviya school, Congress had 61 members in the 146-strong Assembly. What C.R. described as the ENO group (Europeans plus Nominated plus Officials) had 47; these were backed by 16 or so loyalists, representing landholding or other privileged interests.

  Pro-Government and Congress votes were thus more or less evenly balanced. The result of a division generally turned on the attitude of a bloc of 16 Muslims legislators led by M.A. Jinnah.

  In 1935 C.R. spent several weeks in Delhi, along with Prasad, in a bid to enlist Jinnah in a united front. However, the League leader’s terms were termed ‘impossible’ by C.R.36 In a letter to C.R., Jinnah had stated (19.3.35):

  The Congress should accept the Communal Award by an express declaration till a substitute is agreed upon by the communities concerned. On this basis I think a solid united front can be secured.37

  This Congress could not do, though it was prepared, despite objections from Malaviya and his friends, to withhold ‘rejection’ of the Award. The result was that often the Jinnah group either abstained or voted with the Government against Congress. Still, there were times when a defeat was inflicted on the Raj.

  10

  ‘Fall’

  1935-37

  The first quarter of 1935 saw an edgy C.R. He had his reasons. He had been questioned on his Ashram’s financial health by Kishorelal Mashruwala, president of the Gandhi Seva Sangh, to which C.R.’s Ashram was affiliated. Mashruwala implied that the Ashram was likely to face a Rs 28,000 loss, and C.R. was asked about a loan the Sangh had given to the Ashram.

  Claiming that the Rs 28,000 figure was an ‘unfounded estimate,’ C.R. wrote to Mashruwala:

  If it is not possible to let the Ashram function autonomously and if it becomes necessary to withdraw the loan given for khadi work, I am quite prepared to let the institution be wound up . . . [Or,] you could run the Ashram directly . . . The time has come when I should be relieved of the charge.1

  This correspondence was followed by a letter from Gandhi. Because of his involvement with three by-elections to the Madras legislature, all won by Congress candidates, C.R. had missed a Wardha meeting of the Seva Sangh trustees, of whom he was one. The Mahatma wrote to him:

  You must attend these meetings regularly or not be in these bodies at all. I feel sore about it. (2.3.35)2

  The letter burst a dam. C.R. sent in his resignation as a trustee — and asked for Gandhi’s leave to quit the AICC, the Working Committee, the All-India Parliamentary Board, the presidentship of the TNCC, and the charge of the Ashram, the lot! He was weary and longed for rest, he explained.

  ‘Not so fast, nor so cheap,’ replied the Mahatma (9.3.35), adding, ‘There can be no weariness, no rest for you or me. Our rest has to come in the life hereafter, if at all.’ When C.R. repeated his yearning, Gandhi wrote back (24.3.35):

  You may give up posts of responsibility, but you dare not give up responsibility so long as there is breath in you.3

  Obviously C.R. had been feeling aggrieved. Making a guess, K.M. Munshi asked Gandhi whether not being made Congress President could have upset C.R. After directly questioning C.R., Gandhi wrote to Munshi that there was ‘no such reason as you suspect’ (2.5.35)4. However, it is possible that disappointment on the score was felt by C.R. — and then quickly slapped down.

  Besides, C.R.’s heart was increasingly in the legislature. We have no evidence that in early 1935 he harboured a wish to play a role there himself, but his zeal was unmistakable in the elections of 1934 and the by-elections of 1935, and we will shortly see what happened in 1937.

  In any case, he was genuinely tired. To Prasad he wrote of a ‘weariness of flesh and spirit’ and a desire to be relieved ‘for a good long time if not once and for all,’ and to Patel of ‘a chronic mood of disappointment,’; it was ‘an irresistible mental craving for a holiday,’ he said in a letter to Agatha Harrison, a friend of India in England.5

  His colleagues protested. ‘Do not imagine,’ Prasad wrote to C.R., ‘that it is a matter of form with us when we insist on your continuing.’ Patel used stronger language:

  You have done us a great injustice. We all have frail bodies, but none of us has the right to leave others in the lurch. What right have we . . . to seek solitude . . . after having made several young men in the country to sacrifice their all? I do not understand you, but I know you are very obstinate. (15.3.35)
6

  To talk with Gandhi, Patel and Prasad, C.R. went to Wardha. After eliciting a promise that C.R.’s help ‘would be available whenever needed,’7 Gandhi and the others yielded to C.R.’s request.

  He was permitted to shed, for a period, all his positions, but Patel extracted C.R.’s consent to being retained on the Parliamentary Board — after assuring him exemption from meetings until he felt restored. The Mahatma and Patel had desired that C.R. should follow Dr Ansari, who had resigned for health reasons, as the Board’s chairman; the burden now went to Vallabhbhai.

  Describing C.R. as ‘the leader of the Congress fight for freedom,’ the TNCC accepted, on 11 May 1935, C.R.’s resignation as its president. An editorial in The Hindu (13.5.35) regretted the withdrawal of one who ‘in the public estimation stands second only to Gandhiji among the nation’s leaders.’

  Feeling ‘as free as a bird,’ (The Hindu, 13.5.35) C.R. sought his strength back, resting with his son Krishnaswami in Madras, or in his Ashram, where he tried his hand at bee-keeping. Part of the ‘vacation’ was devoted to writing a commentary on the Gita.

  In three months, however, he was obliged to spend some weeks in Delhi, where Lakshmi had just given birth and Devadas was laid low with typhoid. Accompanied by Lakshmi and her two children, C.R. stopped in Wardha on his way back.

  By this time Patel had thought up a plan: C.R. should succeed Prasad as Congress President. At Wardha, the Mahatma put the plan to C.R., who turned it down as impossible. To Patel, Gandhi wrote (13.9.35) that C.R. was ‘in no condition just now to accept the crown,’ being still ‘extremely tired.’8

  With C.R.’s consent the Mahatma made the offer of the Presidentship to Jawaharlal, who was in Europe, where his wife Kamala lay ill. ‘Jawaharlal is willing,’ Gandhi wrote to C.R. at the end of September.9

  By the second week of October C.R. was willing to involve himself politically again. He wrote to Gandhi (8.10.35):

  I was and I am still doubtful about Jawaharlal’s fitting in with the parliamentary programme and policy. While I readily agreed, and had in fact anticipated you in my own mind, that . . . we could not pitch on a better choice for the Congress president’s place this year, . . . I could not but feel very doubtful about his dealing with the parliamentary policy in the right way.10

  Congress, C.R. added, should be ready to take office and prevent ‘reactionaries and anti-nationalists’ from continuing in power.

  Visiting Madras for an AICC meeting in October that C.R. did not attend, Prasad, calling himself ‘an usurper of the place which is rightly [C.R.’s],’ said that C.R.’s judgement was ‘faultless’: in 1922 he had courageously opposed the councils; now he was equally courageously advocating office-acceptance (The Hindu, 18.10.35).

  At the end of January 1936, C.R. attended a Congress meeting in Karaikudi and proposed that the TNCC recommend Nehru’s name for the Congress chair. This was agreed to. Other provinces also suggesting his name, Nehru was formally elected.

  Though back in action, C.R. was reluctant to resume charge of the TNCC. He supported the re-election of Satyamurti, who had become president on C.R.’s retirement. The re-election was not entirely smooth; reporting to Delhi, the Madras Chief Secretary referred to the possibility of ‘a breach between the Brahman and non-Brahman elements of Congress.’11

  Division was feared at the Lucknow session of the Congress. Jawaharlal, presiding, favoured socialism and opposed the idea of acceptance of office in provinces. The reverse was the inclination of C.R., Patel and Prasad. But unity prevailed, aided by the presence of Gandhi. Though formally out of Congress, Gandhi was willing to guide.

  Prudently, a decision on the issue of office acceptance was put off. Nehru named a Working Committee in which the non- socialists — or the Gandhi-ites, conservatives, or the right wing, as they were variously called — predominated. It included C.R., Patel and Prasad.

  Two months after Lucknow, C.R. said: ‘The British perhaps hope for a quarrel among Congressmen . . . But we hope to disappoint them’ (The Hindu, 19.6.36). ‘Independence first’ was C.R.’s simple formula for unity, and, in fact, Nehru’s as well.

  An open letter that Kasturba Gandhi wrote in the autumn of 1936 to her son Harilal, following an announcement that he was embracing Islam (the conversion was to prove temporary), touched C.R. ‘It is liquid Mother-lava,’ C.R. commented to Mahadev Desai, ‘ancient pathos pouring out from the volcano of maternal anguish.’12

  By declaring that they would stay out of it, the princes of India blocked a federation at the centre envisaged by the Raj in the 1935 Government of India Act. The abortion of the federation, which was to be British-controlled, did not distress C.R., but he resented the princes’ opposition to an all-India entity. ‘The only solution is to wipe out the yellow patches,’ he is supposed to have said, referring to the princely states, which were coloured yellow in maps of the period.13

  Provincial elections were due at the end of 1936 or early in 1937. Congress was all set to contest them, but C.R. wanted a further step. With his approval, the TNCC urged the AICC to declare that Congress would accept office.

  Then a sensitive nerve in C.R. was touched. Despite an appeal by him, his friend and Congress colleague, T.S.S. Rajan, who represented Trichy in the Central Assembly, organized the defeat of Congress’s official candidate in an election for the chairmanship of the Trichy municipality.

  To this indiscipline C.R.’s response was nothing less than to resign — from the national Working Committee, from the Parliamentary Board, and from the TNCC. He even wanted to resign his membership of Congress, but Patel persuaded him against severing that primary link.

  Duni Chand of the Punjab Congress welcomed C.R.’s step as ‘shock treatment’ against indiscipline, but everyone else protested. Kripalani, the AICC General Secretary, said that C.R.’s action was ‘in excess of what the situation required,’ and a correspondent wrote in The Hindu that it was ‘not right for a general to flee from his post on account of slight defections in the camp.’

  Patel spoke of ‘a serious blow to the whole nation.’ Censured by the Working Committee, Rajan resigned his Assembly seat and regretted that for the first time ‘in over 20 years’ he had disobeyed ‘the greatest Congress leader of South India’; but he defended his role in the local election.

  Patel, Prasad and Nehru remonstrated with C.R. at a Working Committee meeting in Bombay, following efforts that Prakasam and Satyamurti had made in Madras, but C.R. insisted that though he would ‘remain a Congressman,’ he would ‘cease to participate in Congress politics.’14

  Following this decision, he was, by turns, both troubled and calm. To Bhulabhai Desai he wrote that an ‘ugly crisis’ had affected him. Though feeling he could have done nothing else, he had let colleagues down. He asked Desai to ‘make up’ for his ‘naughtiness’ (22.8.36).15

  ‘What will you do?’ he was asked. ‘I have some interests in life other than politics,’ C.R. replied. ‘I have immediately some sick people to attend to (his second son Ramaswami was among them) . . . I shall not die of ennui. In fact politics left me no time for many things for which my soul craved’ (The Hindu, 24.8.36).

  He completed the commentary on the Gita begun a year earlier, observing that Krishna’s words in the Gita were not ‘a recruiting sergeant’s declamation.’16 He wrote short stories. And he turned to the Upanishads, finding their ancient authors ‘as much inspired by constructive doubt as the most modern men of science.’ To C.R. the heart of the Upanishads’ teaching was that ‘the good is one thing, the pleasant another.’17 In a letter to Mahadev Desai, he wrote:

  I believe with Bapu that most of our mythological stories are allegories, including the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Only I don’t believe in the attempts sometimes made to weave a systematic allegory running throughout a book. I think it is a wild collection of isolated and valuable allegories.18

  Congress needed a President for the coming year. Nehru indicated that he was willing to be chosen again, but two men wer
e extremely keen for C.R. to wear the crown. One was Patel, who saw that a C.R. nomination, overdue in any case, would lead to a withdrawal of Jawaharlal’s. The other was Satyamurti, who thought that with C.R. as President Congress was bound to accept office, a policy Satyamurti had long been advocating.

  Primary membership of Congress sufficed for elevation to its chair, which is why Patel had insisted that C.R. retain it. He urged Gandhi to draft C.R. In a letter to the Mahatma, Satyamurti did likewise. Enclosing what Satyamurti had penned, the Mahatma wrote to C.R. (21.11.36):

  My dear C.R., . . . Read Satyamurti’s letter and give me your decision. Needless to tell you that Sardar is desperately anxious for you to wear the thorny crown.

  I shall be pleased if you will, but I have no heart to press it on you.19

  However, C.R. could not say, within three months of having ‘retired,’ that he was willing; and there is no evidence that he was.

  Though urged by supporters, Patel declined to be a candidate himself. After consultations with Gandhi, he asked Congressmen to re-elect Nehru. Patel added, however:

  The Congress does not part with its ample power by electing any individual no matter who he is . . . I can visualise that office-acceptance may be desirable. There may then be a sharp division of opinion between Pandit Jawaharlal and myself.

  So Nehru, who clarified that his re-election would not necessarily be a vote for socialism, was given the crown for the third time.

  C.R. went to Travancore, where the young Maharaja, encouraged by his Dewan, C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, had by a proclamation thrown open all the temples in the state’s charge to the Harijans.

  At a meeting in Trivandrum, C.R. was described as ‘the author of the temple entry movement’ (The Hindu, 30.11.36).