Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  On 25 December he wrote to Jack Munro: ‘This is Christmas day and I swear by the Christ you and I worship under different names that I do not desire any harm but wish all good luck to every British man, woman and child.’ In April the following year when C.F. Andrews died, C.R. remarked, ‘There was no truer friend of India, no more religious soul’ (The Hindu, 5.4.40).

  The resignation of Congress Ministries notwithstanding, Gandhi and the Raj both professed anxiety for an agreement. To Congressmen, one test of the Raj’s sincerity was its attitude towards the policies of the resigning ministries.

  Some Governors seemed to pass the test. The UP Governor, for instance, said that he regarded himself as a trustee for the Ministry that had resigned; and in the Central Provinces the Governor announced that he would extend prohibition to three new districts.

  But not Erskine, who desired real power. ‘Given a free hand,’ he wrote to Linlithgow, ‘I could run a highly popular government.’ He found the UP Governor’s statement ‘astonishing’ and the step in the Central Provinces (C.P.) objectionable. ‘I do not in any way consider myself,’ he informed the Viceroy, ‘as a trustee for my late Ministry.’

  Within a week of C.R.’s resignation, Erskine wrote to Linlithgow of wanting ‘immediately to issue a Government order making Hindi optional rather than compulsory in schools.’ Not keen to supply Congress a grievance, Linlithgow asked Erskine to obtain C.R.’s agreement first.

  On C.R. telling Erskine that he would regard the change as ‘a declaration of war’ and seeking the extension of prohibition to ‘six more non-littoral districts,’ the Governor asked Linlithgow if he was to govern the Presidency ‘by the kind permission of C.R.’ Describing C.R. as ‘a very cunning Madrasi Brahmin,’ Erskine persisted with his demand over Hindi. In March 1940, just before the Governor’s term of office ended, he obtained clearance from Zetland and Linlithgow.1

  The rebuff had to be pocketed by C.R., who knew that the Presidency could not be mobilized for defending compulsory Hindi. The conflict did not prevent C.R. from penning Erskine a letter of farewell on handmade ‘Gandhi’ paper:

  May you both have a safe return home . . . A Brahmin’s blessings may have some potency still! May your enemies be confounded into goodness, and may your people and we ever remain friends . . . Au revoir.2

  In London, the ambitious Erskine called on Zetland and told the Secretary of State that ‘he hoped in any ministerial reshuffle . . . to take over’ from him. As Zetland put it in a letter to Linlithgow, ‘so blatant a frontal attack’ seemed to be ‘a little lacking in delicacy.’3

  Erskine won a by-election in Brighton and entered the House of Commons but, scarcely a favourite of Churchill, who assumed the Premiership in 1940, he was not taken into the Cabinet. Later in 1940, he made remarks that suggested that he had forgotten his wrangle with C.R. His former Premier, Erskine said, was ‘a remarkable man’ and ‘an admirable head of a ministry,’ compromises with whom had ‘enabled the administration to be carried on with the minimum of friction.’ Erskine added that the Congress Ministry had been superior in performance to its Justice predecessor (The Hindu, 10.10.40).

  His successor as Governor of Madras was another Scotsman, Arthur Hope. Three months after his arrival, he and C.R. met in Ooty. ‘It was supposed to be a secret meeting,’ said Hope to the Viceroy, ‘but the whole of Ooty knew about it that afternoon and the whole of Madras Presidency next day.’ Added Hope:

  To my surprise at 1.30 when I asked him to stay for lunch, he said he would be delighted to do so and sat next to me, and talked without ceasing, but only drank some lemonade.4

  By this time, Congress had made up its mind to offer a restrained defiance under Gandhi’s direction. The idea was to compel Britain’s attention without embarrassing her during the War. The decision was taken at a session in Ramgarh in Bihar, presided over by Abul Kalam Azad. Defending the decision, C.R., who was included in the Working Committee, said that while Congress still stood for a settlement, it could not accept the paramountcy of one side and the dependency of the other (The Hindu, 2.3.40).

  A new sound, electrifying to some and troubling to others, was heard at this time: ‘Pakistan!’ In January 1940, the Muslim League president, Muhammad Ali Jinnah said that Hindus and Muslims were not only distinct, they were two nations. And in March the League passed a resolution in Lahore that only the creation of sovereign, Muslim-majority territories would be acceptable to Muslims.

  Addressing the Raj as well as Congress, the League hinted support for the War effort if its Pakistan demand was accepted in principle, and announced unremitting opposition to any Congress-Raj agreement that did not concede Pakistan.

  Aghast and dismayed, C.R. saw in the slogan ‘the sign of a diseased mentality.’ He accused Jinnah of wanting to ‘take India into the condition of the Balkan states.’ A sovereign Muslim state carved out of India was ‘hardly the remedy for the minority problem.’ And had not the Mahatma said that Muslims were as likely as Hindus to govern a free India? C.R. was reminded of ‘the old story when one of the two claimant mothers was quite willing to divide the baby while the other claimant proved her case by agreeing to hand over the baby.’

  Perhaps, speculated C.R., what Jinnah really wanted was ‘fuller amplitude for the Muslim provinces’ and an assurance that they would not be overborne by a Hindu-controlled centre. This ‘laudable desire’ was attainable without ‘cutting up India.’

  However, if the League insisted on ‘puncturing the tyre and stopping the progress’ of the Indian car, then Congress would have to fight both the Raj and the League (The Hindu, 4.1., 23.2. & 26.3.40).

  Gandhi spoke similarly. On his part Jinnah claimed that Hindus and Muslims ‘neither intermarried nor interdined.’ Their customs, literatures, epics and heroes were different: ‘very often the hero of one is a foe of the other.’ Added Jinnah:

  It is amazing that men like Mr Gandhi and Mr Rajagopalacharya should talk about the Lahore resolution in such terms as ‘vivisection of India’ and ‘cutting up the baby into two halves.’ . . . Where is the country which is being divided?5

  If disobedience against the Raj was called for, what shape should it take? While Gandhi cogitated, Hitler launched his blitzkrieg. Norway and Denmark, Holland and Belgium, even France collapsed before the Nazi tanks. Replacing Chamberlain as Prime Minister, Churchill faced long odds.

  C.R. felt it ‘almost impossible to turn from the international scene to our own problems.’ Yet Indians could ‘not serve civilization by forgetting our rights. We cannot help the Allies by agreeing to be a subject people.’

  He thought, too, that a deal could be struck. Britain might want to get as an ally ‘a free India when she has lost France’ (The Hindu, 9.6.40). True, Britain was tapping even an unreconciled India for soldiers, supplies and space, but would she not offer Indians a solid share in the governance of India in order to obtain their enthusiastic partnership?

  Believing that Britain might do this, C.R. persuaded Congress, for the first time in twenty years, to disobey the Mahatma. In a resolution, the Congress Working Committee said that Congress would prosecute the War as an ally if Britain declared that India would be free at its end, and if an all-party national government was formed in India right away.

  In Gandhi’s view, the resolution conflicted with nonviolence and misread the Raj’s mind. A three-hour talk with Linlithgow at the end of June had reinforced his assessment that Britain was not about to act handsomely by India, and he had smelt a Raj- League understanding to foil Congress.

  Ignoring the Mahatma’s advice, the Working Committee agreed with C.R. Some of its members thought that the fall of Paris, which occurred some days after Gandhi’s parleys with the Viceroy, was a new inducement for Britain to settle with Congress. Others yielded to C.R.’s persuasive skill. He won converts, conceded Gandhi, because of his ‘persistency, courage, skill and considerateness towards opponents’ (The Hindu, 9.7.40).

  Azad, the President, was one of the first to bac
k C.R., but, as the Mahatma put it, ‘Sardar Patel was his biggest prize.’ Jawaharlal voted against C.R., as did Ghaffar Khan, the latter resigning from the Working Committee because it rejected Gandhi’s view.

  Subhas Bose, who had no qualms about embarrassing Britain, was arrested in early July. Also detained was the youthful Congress Socialist, Jayaprakash Narayan. From jail Jayaprakash exhorted Nehru:

  Rajaji has stabbed us in the back. It was a great relief to know that you . . . opposed the infamous thing. But is that enough? . . . You should resign your seat on the Working Committee. After a settlement, i.e. if it comes about, you should leave the Congress and form another political organisation. Vallabhbhai and Rajaji have not hesitated to break with Gandhiji. Will you hesitate to fulfil your obvious historic task?6

  At the end of July 1940, C.R. triumphed again, this time with the AICC, which was meeting in Poona. Pointing out that Gandhi had recruited soldiers for World War I, C.R. argued that nonviolence, while necessary in the fight against the Raj, might not work against Hitler. Congress had never claimed that a free India would do without any army. They could not ‘fly off from reality’: there was nothing wrong or inconsistent in telling Britain that ‘if she did what they want, they would be prepared to give India’s help,’ moral as well as military.

  ‘How long will you wait for the British response?’ Nehru asked. ‘We have to trust our opponent to do the right thing,’ replied C.R., but he agreed that ‘this offer cannot be holding the field indefinitely’ (The Hindu, 29.7.40). Despite Jayaprakash’s call, Nehru changed his stand and voted for C.R.’s resolution. By 95 votes to 47, the AICC endorsed it.

  ‘Quietly and without raising his voice,’ Nehru was soon to write, referring to C.R.’s success, ‘he would argue for his viewpoint and gradually undermine the mental defences of those who disagreed with him.’7

  Though C.R. maintained that Gandhi ‘continued to be the leader,’ the latter’s views had been cast aside. The Mahatma claimed, however, that ‘Rajaji and the Sardar will again be with me.’ He would prove right; the breach would be shortlived. All the same, it disclosed significant differences. Said Gandhi:

  I differ fundamentally from [Rajaji] . . . [Not that] I am afraid of power . . . but since this office question cropped up, I saw that our thoughts were in different directions.

  As Premier, C.R. had seen the value of even limited power. If the British did ‘liquidate the Executive Council and install a national government in full control at the centre,’ Congress would have a unique opportunity to do good. The Mahatma, on the other hand, thought that ‘while some day or the other we will have to take office,’ the time was not opportune. Congressmen needed to realize that the masses were in a state of ‘smouldering discontent’ towards the British (The Hindu, 9.6., 5.8. & 14.8.40).

  It was obvious that if a settlement with the Raj led to a national government, C.R. would have a key position in it. Thus, referring to persons to whom the Raj might have to offer power at the centre, Gandhi wrote in September: ‘One day it may be Rajaji, another day it may be Jawaharlal’ (Harijan, 22.9.40).

  But C.R.’s, and Congress’s, terms were clear. ‘Mere expansion of the Viceroy’s Executive Council would satisfy none,’ said C.R. (The Hindu, 2.7.40). In practice if not in law, the Viceregal veto had to go.

  If the prospect of power elicited Congress’s ‘Poona Offer,’ as it came to be known, that offer also owed something to the sympathy for the Allies harboured by men like C.R. Yet he did not think that a Congress-Raj agreement was very likely.

  Though, as C.R. put it, ‘British businessmen [in India] had realised the gravity of the situation and appealed to the government to come to terms with the Congress,’ (The Hindu, 1.7.40) the views of the senior ICS Britons, the men advising the Viceroy and the Secretary of State, were, in C.R.’s opinion, reactionary and out of date.

  ‘I am afraid a curse of bad diplomacy and wrong judgement is operating on Britain,’ C.R. had said on 22 July (The Hindu, 23.7.40). In a letter to G.A. Natesan, written between the Working Committee and AICC meetings, he seemed to indicate the probability of a clash with the Raj:

  I am a reasonable man, a practical-minded fellow, a conservative, a lover of peace and one who dislikes gambling on poor people’s lives. But I cannot give in to Britain’s arrogance. I have gone to the point that Honour can take us, and I cannot surrender any further, and am prepared for the worst thereafter.8

  Early in August, through a Viceregal statement, Britain responded to the Congress. If the Raj, Congress, the League and the Princes reached an agreement, a certain number of politicians would be included in an expanded Viceroy’s Council. But the Viceregal veto would not be shelved. At the end of the War, a body set up ‘with the least possible delay,’ would ‘devise the framework of a new Constitution.’

  Failing, thus, to promise independence, the statement however assured Muslims and other minority ‘elements in India’s national life’ that Britain would never allow ‘their coercion into submission’ to a majority government (The Hindu, 7.8.40).

  ‘I am angry with [the statement],’ C.R. said at a public meeting, adding, ‘I want you also to feel angry.’ He thought the Raj’s reply to the Poona Offer had ‘justified Ulsterism’ (The Hindu, 12 & 13.8.40). Finding C.R. ‘completely disillusioned and disappointed,’ Nehru thought that since C.R. had ‘taken the lead’ in attempting to come to terms with Britain — ‘even at the risk of parting with Gandhiji’ — the failure ‘was felt by him probably more than by any other person.’9

  Two months after the Viceroy’s response, Jawaharlal, unable to get over C.R.’s success in influencing the Congress, referred — in an epilogue in his autobiography — to Rajaji’s ‘brilliant intellect and penetrating power of analysis’ as ‘a tremendous asset to our cause.’10 And Hope, the Governor of Madras, recommended to the Viceroy the early ‘shutting up’ of C.R., adding, ‘He is obviously angling for the Gandhi succession and is in fact leading Congress throughout India.’11

  To show that Congress was at least as anxious as the British about the position of Muslims, C.R. now addressed a proposal, via a reporter of London’s Herald, to the Raj and the League:

  Let me make a sporting offer. If HMG will agree to a provisional national government being formed at once, I undertake to persuade my colleagues in the Congress to agree to the Muslim League being invited to nominate a Prime Minister and let him form the national government as he would consider best (The Hindu, 23.8.40).

  Though a Muslim leader, the Raja of Mahmudabad, objected that the League-led cabinet envisaged by C.R. would be dependent on the Hindu majority of the central legislature. Star of India, a Muslim paper of Bengal, found C.R.’s proposal ‘electrifying’ (The Hindu, 29.8.40). The Raj, however, refused to discuss it, and Leopold Amery, Zetland’s successor as Secretary of State, told the Commons that ‘no new approach to the Indian question would be considered’ (The Hindu, 6.9.40).

  Satyagraha was now unavoidable. ‘If we do not exercise our capacity for a struggle now,’ C.R. said, ‘our spirits will die’ (The Hindu, 17.9.40). As Gandhi had predicted, C.R. was back with him, and so was Patel.

  But what sort of satyagraha would they perform? Gandhi came up with an answer. Carefully selected individuals, including C.R., Nehru, Patel and Azad, would recite the unlawful slogan, ‘It is wrong to help the British war effort with men or money.’ Anything more would hurt the Allies; anything less would suggest acceptance by India of her subject status.

  In addition, Gandhi thought of a fast but gave up the idea after C.R. demanded to know ‘why and to what purpose.’12

  As the first satyagrahi, the Mahatma chose Vinoba Bhave, then in his early forties. After Gandhi’s death, Bhave would found the land gift movement, Bhoodan. Bhave repeated the simple protest framed by the Mahatma and was arrested for sedition. Jawaharlal was arrested next. Patel followed.

  Before C.R.’s turn came, he said, ‘When the dust and din . . . dies down, the world will wonder why Britain beha
ved in this manner towards a people who were prepared to forget all past wrongs and claimed only their birthright’ (The Hindu, 18.11.40).

  On 30 November, in letters addressed to half a dozen persons including Muthiah Chettiar, the leader of the opposition in the Madras Assembly, and Abdul Hamid Khan, the leader of the League MLAs, C.R. used the Gandhi-prescribed sentence and justified it:

  The British Goverment have ordered India to be in the War without asking her legislature. Other parts of the British Commonwealth were allowed the choice of remaining neutral . . . Taxes rejected by the Legislative Assembly are being imposed by the fiat of the Viceroy . . .

  It is wrong therefore to help the British war effort with men or money. A copy of this letter is being sent to the authorities so that they may proceed against me if they desire.

  Ten minutes before 10.00 a.m. on 3 December, Assistant Commissioner of Police Yusuf Ali, accompanied by other officers and men, arrived at the Bazlulla Road house. A smiling C.R. said, ‘I am ready’ and bid family members, friends and a crowd farewell.

  Abbas Ali, chief Presidency magistrate, tried C.R. immediately. ‘Did you write the letters?’ he was asked. C.R. answered, as The Hindu was to put it, ‘in a firm tone amidst pindrop silence,’ ‘Yes.’

  Ali: ‘Do you suffer from low blood pressure?’

  C.R.: ‘I do not wish to submit myself to a medical examination.’

  Ali: ‘I feel it my duty to sentence the accused. One year.’

  Then, in a quavering voice, Ali quoted Arjuna’s famous confession — ‘My body trembles, my breath stops, my bow slips from my hands’ — and expressed the hope that as a student of the Gita C.R. would understand a magistrate’s duty. After he had apologized to Ali, ‘I am sorry I have caused you a certain amount of embarrassment,’ C.R. was taken to a place he knew well, Vellore Central Jail.13