Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  The proclamation had stirred him. Offering sacred ash to 40 young Harijan boys, he took them to the famed Sri Padmanabhaswami temple, which had not seen ‘untouchables’ for a thousand years.

  ‘God be thanked,’ C.R. said, ‘and may your Maharaja live long. This is the happiest moment of my life.’

  If Congress won the elections in Madras and accepted office, who would head its government? Satyamurti was a candidate but in a party election Muthuranga Mudaliar had defeated him, and there was a question whether Prakasam, who led Congressmen in the Telugu districts, would serve under Satyamurti.

  Perturbed by the possibility of a bitter rivalry among Madras’s Congressmen, Patel saw C.R. as the answer. So did many in the South, including The Hindu’s Kasturi Srinivasan, the Liberal leader, T.R. Venkatarama Sastri, P. Subbaroyan, the former First Minister who had recently joined Congress, and Kala Venkata Rao of Andhra. A bid was launched to enlist C.R.

  In the middle of December 1936, Patel, visiting the South, talked with C.R. during the short stretch between Renigunta station, where C.R. had joined him, and Madras. The talk obviously had some effect, for on the following day C.R. said at a Madras meeting that his retirement did not mean that he would ‘continue to sit at home’ if he found ‘that [he] should resume active work’ (The Hindu, 15.12.36).

  At Trichy, Patel told local Congressmen that if ‘they had not forced him to resign, Mr C. Rajagopalachari would have been unanimously elected President of the Congress long since’ (The Hindu, 16.12.36). After delivering the rebuke, Patel proceeded to Faizpur in Maharashtra for Congress’s annual session. C.R. returned to the Gita, on which he lectured in Madras on 24 December.

  On 16 January The Hindu announced that C.R. would ‘come out of his retirement’ and enter the Assembly elections. ‘Leading Congressmen both in this province and elsewhere have long been pressing him,’ the newspaper added. In Bombay, Patel declared that C.R. would stand from the University constituency. Satyamurti, who had hoped to represent that seat, had stepped aside, Patel added (The Hindu, 17.1.37).

  Five days earlier, C.R. had said to Gandhi, who changed trains at Madras station en route to Travancore: ‘I am under pressure.’ The two met again on 22 January when Gandhi stopped in Madras on his way back from Travancore. ‘Ah,’ said Gandhi, ‘now I know what you meant by pressure.’ ‘What do you think of my decision?’ C.R. asked, ‘You are free to do as you like,’ replied the Mahatma.20

  C.R. liked the idea of entering the Assembly, but he had only recently, and categorically, ‘retired.’ For some days he was embarrassed. ‘I am glad I have not got any communication from you making fun of my sudden fall,’ he said in a letter (21.1.37) to Devadas, adding: ‘I have been rushed into it and I have hardly four weeks to win all the elections . . . ’

  The ‘fall’ was welcomed all over the South and beyond. ‘Arjuna resumes the bow,’ said the Mahratia of Poona. On 19 January he filed his nomination. Two came forward to oppose him, P. Narayana Kurup and S. Rajagopalan, the latter promising to prevent the Harijan reform that C.R. had sponsored.

  The seat had 8,109 voters. C.R.’s canvassing consisted of a single press statement, in which he asked his voters to ‘bless an experiment in poor man’s electioneering’ and pardon his not sending even a letter to all of them, for that ‘would mean nearly a thousand rupees’ (The Hindu, 25.1.37).

  C.R. conducted the Congress campaign from the bare floor of his son Krishnaswami’s modest new house in Tyagarajanagar. Prakasam and Satyamurti ably backed him. The main opposition was from the Justice Party, which had been in office for years.

  But this time the franchise was wider than it had ever been, and Congress was in the fray for the first time. In speeches across the province, C.R. said that votes against Congress were votes for national dishonour.

  Votes for Congress went into yellow boxes, votes for Justice into red ones. When all ballots were counted, Congress had won 159 seats, Justice 16, the Muslim League 10. C.R. received 5,326 votes, Kurup 372, Rajagopalan 270. The Raja of Bobbili, the outgoing Chief Minister, lost to V.V. Giri of Congress by a margin of over 5,000 votes.

  ‘The magnitude of the Congress victory was greater than I or anyone else expected,’ Lord Erskine, the Governor, wrote to George V.21 C.R. spoke of ‘the irresistibility of a just cause’ (The Hindu, 2.3.37).

  Congress had won in most parts of India, not just in the South.

  Madras’s Congress legislators met on 10 March to elect their leader. Prakasam, chairing the meeting, proposed C.R.’s name. Loud and prolonged applause broke out. ‘I take it that you are for electing Mr Rajagopalachari unanimously,’ Prakasam said.

  ‘Yes,’ said voices from everywhere. When Prakasam formally put the proposal to vote, cries of ‘All’ rent the air.

  Addressing the legislators, C.R. said that he would break down if he recalled ‘the adventurous days when Mr Prakasam and he first conversed together about the great and wonderful programme laid down by Mahatma Gandhi,’ and added:

  Anybody who is anxious for any office proves that he is unfit for that office. It is easy to fast on an Ekadasi day sitting on a plank; it is difficult to fast sitting in the Modern Cafe. (The Hindu, 11.3.37)

  The MLAs wanted to know whether Congress would accept office. ‘The chances are fifty-fifty,’ C.R. told them, adding that they should obey the AICC’s decision. But they could make their recommendation to the AICC. The MLAs voted in favour of taking office. So did the TNCC and the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee. Most of the South’s taluk and district committees of Congress had done so already.

  However, Nehru, the Congress President, had said at Faizpur in December that ‘the only logical consequence of the Congress policy . . . is to have nothing to do with ofice or ministry.’22 Thinking differently, the Mahatma was ready to counsel acceptance provided the Raj gave an assurance that Governors would not use their special powers against the advice of Ministers.

  Meeting in Delhi in the third week of March, the AICC disagreed with Nehru and authorized office-acceptance if Gandhi’s conditon was met.

  At meetings with Erskine, C.R. probed the Raj’s willingness to satisfy Gandhi. The Governor, who was of aristocratic Scots lineage, independent, hopeful of a rising career in British politics, and head of the presidency since 1935, probed C.R. He had heard of him as ‘a wholehearted disciple of Gandhi’ with ‘a visionary and impractical turn of mind.’

  However, after their third meeting, which Erskine found ‘very amicable,’ he wrote to Linlithgow, the Viceroy, that he ‘liked the old boy.’23 C.R. asked if the Governor would give a written assurance that his special powers would not be used unless orders were issued by the Viceroy or the Secretary of State.

  The Viceroy, whose advice Erskine sought, ruled that out. Instead he asked the Governor to find out from C.R. if Congress would be satisfied by a statement from Erskine that he would be ‘ready to work with any party taking up office.’ C.R.’s reply, given after consulting Gandhi, was that this would not be enough.

  In Madras and six other provinces, Governors formally invited the leader of the Congress legislature party to form a government. C.R. and his counterparts formally sought the assurance that Gandhi had stipulated. When it was not forthcoming, they said they could not accept office.

  In Madras, Erskine asked Srinivasa Sastri, the Liberal leader, if he would form a caretaker government. Saying that he was old and ill and that accepting the offer would make him unpopular, Sastri refused. However, Sir K.V. Reddi, asked next by the Governor, agreed.

  The caretaker ministries satisfied no one. Ready to settle with the Raj for somewhat less than Gandhi’s minimum, C.R. went to the village of Tithal on the Gujarat coast to confer with the Mahatma. Gandhi said he wanted a sign from Britain that it would cooperate.

  The Raj showed movement. In the House of Commons, Zetland, the Secretary of State, uttered encouraging words, Then the Viceroy gave Britain’s formal response to Gandhi’s demand:

  There is no foundation for
any suggestion that the Governor is free, or entitled, or would have the power to interfere with the day-to-day administration of a province outside the limited range of the responsibilities specially confided to him.

  This sufficed for Gandhi. When the Working Committee conferred in Wardha, C.R. argued for taking office. No one opposed him, not even Nehru. Gandhi had convinced Jawaharlal against defying the rest. On 5 July 1937 the Working Committee sanctioned the formation of ministries.

  Two days later, C.R., five times a prisoner of the Raj, was sent for by Erskine and asked to form a cabinet. C.R. agreed and became Prime Minister (that was the designation used) of Madras. His life had entered a new phase. Now he would govern. Interrupted during the War and enriched, in 1947, by freedom, the phase would last until 1954.

  For the present he was launched into an unusual experiment of a dual relationship with the Raj, combining trust and struggle, participation and opposition.

  ‘You know how my hope is centred in you,’ said the Mahatma to him in a telegram. ‘May God bless your effort.’24

  11

  Premier

  1937-39

  He was 58, five-foot-five and wholly bald except at the back of his oval, bespectacled eagle-nosed head. The eyes — if you saw them — were serious and sad-looking but were protected from scrutiny by thick dark glasses. The face was hard and austere except when it broke out in a grin. The baritone voice was always calm, the speech always distinct, the words always interesting. Each day this Iyengar Brahmin widower wore exactly the same dress: a kurta, dhoti and folded shawl of clean white khadi, the fabric of revolt and reform.

  Now, in July 1937, after nearly two decades of a struggle that had earned him five spells in prison and a reputation for unpredictable actions and a quick keen mind, C.R. was Premier of Madras Presidency, which extended to Mangalore and Calicut on the Arabian Sea, and Vizag on the Bay of Bengal.

  Though the Act of 1935, under which he had become Premier, reserved some key areas (e.g., the appointment of judges to the High Court) for the Governor and the Viceroy, C.R. possessed powers that no Indian had held in Madras for a century or more. He and his Ministers could borrow and tax, release and imprison, hire and fire. His new status was understood by the liveried peons of Fort St. George, the Raj’s southern headquarters, when they saw Sir Charles Cunningham, the head of the Presidency’s police that had arrested C.R. in the past, waiting in an ante-room for an interview with him.

  A Premier’s prestige surrounded C.R. but he and his colleagues in government and the legislature refused to take the emoluments set by the Raj. Instead of the Rs 56,000 per annum specified for a Premier, C.R. drew in all Rs 9,000 a year, inclusive of allowances for rent and transport. His government did not provide Ministers with houses, but he had the use of an official car, one of six bought at Rs 3,000 a vehicle. C.R. was ‘a miser’ over public funds, Erskine, the Governor, wrote to Linlithgow, the Viceroy.1

  The Congress-Raj compact was tricky. It required former victims of the Raj to rule a province through officials who had been their masters in the past (and were quite likely to be their masters again in the future), and in conjunction with a Governor who could, on certain grounds, veto their measures. While Congress wished to use the compact to weaken the Raj, the Raj hoped that ‘the gulf between us and Nationalist India [would] diminish as the cooperators become absorbed in the problems of administration,’ as the Marquess of Zetland, Secretary of State for India, said in a letter to the Viceroy.2

  Congress Premiers had to prove themselves impervious to the charms of office — hence the low salaries — but equal to its demands. And they needed to be moderate and bold at the same time, the former to obtain the cooperation of officialdom, the latter to keep faith with the Indian masses.

  When C.R. announced, in his first measure, that buttermilk would be added to the diet of prisoners, the thousands of activists who remembered the inadequate rations of their prison terms were pleased, and the Raj was not specially bothered. But officials tried to block C.R. when he said he would release political prisoners, including some convicted for violent deeds but now disavowing violence. The Viceroy murmured misgivings to the Governor, but C.R. had his way. In his first month in office, 38 political prisoners were discharged.3

  In early utterances as Premier, C.R. referred to the Raj’s officials as ‘my comrades in the permanent public service’ (The Hindu, 20.8.37), and renounced ‘rancour or prejudice against any group or class or individuals for anything done or suffered in the past.’ ‘I want the entire service, including the police, to look upon me as a friend,’ he added (Indian Review, Aug. 1937).

  In speaking in this vein C.R. was alone among the country’s popular leaders, but his words placated the Raj’s white officials who had the capacity to cripple the transition. ‘I am the snake- charmer of British Imperialism,’ C.R. told Erskine.4 With Sir Charles Brackenbury, the Chief Secretary, he hit it off particularly well. The Governor reported to Linlithgow that C.R. ‘has struck up a great friendship with the Chief Secretary, which is certainly reciprocated.’

  Soon after assuming office, C.R. made Brackenbury a gift of a length of khadi: the Chief Secretary wore a suit made of it. ‘The news tickled the imagination of the people . . . In homes, in buses and trams, in clubs and cafes, people discussed nothing else’ (Triveni, Oct. 1937).

  C.R. took trouble also over J.B.L. Munro, the under secretary in the public department, which was in the Premier’s direct care, as were home and finance. Munro would later recall:

  Everything seemed to be going nicely until I read the report of a speech by a Minister attacking the I.C.S. . . . I wrote a hot-blooded little minute to the Prime Minister through the Chief Secretary . . . I was told that the P.M. wanted me. He said that . . . the Minister would make a speech which would put things right (and he did so the same evening) but that I must remember that an express train full of steam might occasionally run past the platform. Then he gave me a grin and said, ‘Next time you feel like that, Munro, go and have a cold bath!’5

  C.R. saw Munro in his home when he was running a high fever and arranged a spell for him in Ooty’s cool climate.

  Both Gandhi and the Viceroy seemed concerned about the long hours that C.R. was putting in. Linlithgow wrote to the Governor that ‘he hoped sincerely that Rajagopalachariar will not overdo things,’6 and the Mahatma told C.R., ‘The world won’t go wrong if you took an hour’s rest during the day.’7 ‘Make your father rest,’ Gandhi advised C.R.’s children. As in the past C.R, countered by urging ‘a definite plan of compulsory rest’ on the Mahatma. In a letter to Mahadev Desai which was also meant for Gandhi, C.R. admitted that he was ill: ‘my fingers tremble and often I get wearied and at night I go to bed with a feeling of fever.’ Rest, however, was ‘simply impossible.’

  Yet, being at long last in a paid job, even the arduous one of a Premier, removed some of the worries of his widowed daughter Namagiri and son Narasimhan, who lived with him. C.R. could say to Desai: ‘I have never had a happier atmosphere and peace at home, these many years.’8

  Relations feeling their way with C.R. about possible jobs were rebuffed. When one of them called on him in Madras, the Premier greeted him with the question, ‘Have you come for jobs for your sons?’ ‘No, no,’ the relative lied, ‘I just came to see you.’ Returning to Bangalore, he told his family, ‘I have come back without opening my mouth.’9

  Bal Gangadhar Kher, the Premier of Bombay, asked C.R. about a disagreeable rule that said that Governors, who were all British, should preside at cabinet meetings. Replied C.R.: ‘It is too early to judge. I am on the saddle but my feet are not in the stirrups yet.’10 Soon afterwards the solution suggested itself: while the Governor presided over formal meetings lasting five or ten minutes, the real cabinet would take place in the Premier’s office.

  C.R.’s ingenuity was also tested by a popular demand for the removal from Mount Road in Madras, of an 1861 statue of General Neill. A hero of the 1857 Mutiny in British eyes, Ne
ill was remembered as heartless by Indians. Minuting, ‘There are more ways than one of keeping a historic monument or memorial,’ C.R. ordered the statue’s removal and, simultaneously, its preservation within the precincts of the Government Museum; the order was quietly carried out in the darkness of a November night.11

  A circular drafted by C.R. informed district magistrates that the release of prisoners who had been guilty of violence did not mean that violence was to be condoned. An impressed Erskine wrote to the Viceroy that C.R.’s wording was ‘in substitution for a considerably milder draft that had been put up by the Chief Secretary.’12

  Neither C.R.’s conciliatory tone towards the British nor his concern with law and order was liked by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose, at this stage the heroes of the Congress Left. Nehru protested about C.R.’s style to the Mahatma. The latter replied: ‘I fear that often when the Congress is in power it will use language which its predecessors have used and yet the motive will be different.’13 C.R. had a better equation with Patel, who found it natural on occasion to travel to Madras ‘to consult [Rajaji] on several matters,’ as he put it (The Hindu, 1.1.38).

  Soon after assuming office, C.R. barred employees of local authorities from joining the Congress or any other party. Nehru, who was the Congress President, objected. ‘Is the Congress organisation going to become a camp follower of the government?’ he asked C.R. ‘It was impossible,’ replied C.R., ‘conscientiously to permit the employees of the local boards to become members of the Congress party simply because we were in office. It would be a scandal.’14

  In November 1937, S.S. Batlivala, a Bombay socialist, was given a six-month sentence in Vellore for incitement to violence. Leftists in Congress and outside were indignant. Nehru, it seems, asked C.R.: ‘Do you mean to say that if I come to Madras and make a similar speech you would arrest me?’ ‘I would,’ C.R. apparently replied.15