Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  Though C.R. stayed on, he seems to have sensed risk in not resigning. In his diary he wrote (14.2.53):

  What shall I do with Jawaharlal Nehru? Whatever I might do he will not get irritated or release me. His affection and his patience have indeed become a trouble. He insists on crucifying me.

  But C.R. was nursing the crucifixion-wish himself. It was manifested in his brilliantly-conceived, and suicidal, scheme for educational reform, introduced just before Andhra’s separation.

  The Constitution had said that all children should enter primary school. In Madras only 47.8 per cent were enrolled — figures elsewhere were no better — and three out of five of these were likely to leave school before putting in the prescribed five years.

  C.R. decided that he could attack the problem by reducing a child’s time in primary school from five to three hours a day. Teachers and buildings would serve twice in a day — and therefore, in theory at least, twice the number of pupils. In addition, schoolchildren would spend the two hours gifted to them in learning creative skills from parents, relations and neighbours.

  With this single, simple, sweeping stroke, C.R. hoped to double the literacy rate at the elementary level and, simultaneously, impart creative skills to the pupil’s hands. Contemplated for long and advocated by him while he was Governor-General, the reform was influenced by his own childhood. As he told the Madras Assembly:

  When I was a little boy, I had to walk one mile to go to the primary school, go there early in the morning, come back for the midday meal, have a hurried meal and run to reach there in time, and then come back in the evening . . . I hated the six-hour school.32

  Forty-six years earlier, in art article in Patna’s Hindustan Review ( June 1907), C.R. had described village teachers as ‘angry ill- educated’ men given to ‘hammering down the human curiosity’ of the child. Not diminishing with time, this distrust of teachers was accompanied in C.R. by a romantic view of rural artisans. As Governor-General he had said:

  The food is grown, the cloth is woven, the sheep are shorn, the shoes are stitched, the scavenging is done, the cartwheels and the ploughs are built and repaired because, thank God, the respective castes are still there, and the homes are trade schools as well, and the parents are masters as well, to whom the children are automatically apprenticed.33

  Now, as Chief Minister, he was in a position to translate the vision. He argued:

  It is a mistake to imagine that the school is within the walls. The whole village is the school. The village polytechnic is there, every branch of it: the dhobi, the wheelwright, the cobbler.34

  As C.R. saw it, children would ‘observe’ rural skills in the first three years and learn them (from the community) in the remaining two. But this learning would not be compulsory, and girls would stay at home, unless their parents desired the contrary. The government reckoned that out of 32,000 primary schools in the province, over 21,000 had children only from ‘occupational’ families who would ‘automatically’ impart a creative outlook to their wards. The less than 11,000 schools left would tap craftsmen and farmers in their villages.

  In other words, the ‘polytechnic’ part of C.R.’s reform would be the village’s responsibility. No ‘experts’ were to be recruited, and to begin with at any rate no financial provision was made for the outdoor programme. C.R.’s claim that the reform would correct the Indian bias against manual work was thus based primarily on wishful expectation. Another weakness stemmed from C.R.’s haste — he had the scheme launched in June 1953, before obtaining the Assembly’s sanction.

  However, it was the scheme’s seeming validation of the caste system that invited the fiercest opposition. The reform was attacked as a Brahmin’s device to condemn boys of lower castes to their father’s occupations. Wanting to preserve and disseminate the skills of the countryside, C.R. was accused, with devastating effect, of seeking to preserve the caste system, indeed to perpetuate higher-caste domination.

  Where a nostalgic, romantic C.R. saw relief and smiles on the faces of Tamil boys, and dexterity coming to their hands, the fathers of some of the boys saw malice in C.R.’s heart. They were encouraged to do this by the fiery, bearded E.V.R., who had been a thorn to C.R.’s first ministry and who now stumped the Tamil districts, warning the Dravidas against the machinations of Rajaji, the Aryan whose forefathers had descended down the Khyber Pass to subjugate the sons of the soil.

  To K.M. Panikkar, ambassador in Cairo, who had praised a talk by C.R. on Hinduism, he wrote (16.7.53):

  I am doomed to the purgatory of a caste-hatred-ridden state like Madras. But alas I still love the southern country and its people. What is one to do?

  Though M.V. Krishna Rao held the education portfolio, the reform was C.R.’s idea and burden. C. Subramaniam took charge of education after Krishna Rao left with the other Andhra MLAs, but the scheme remained the Rajaji scheme. It had defenders. Zakir Husain, the educator who would become the President of India, approved of it. The Central Advisory Board of Education welcomed it. The state of Bihar considered adopting it and asked for details.

  But where it mattered, in Madras, resistance was strong and growing. At the end of July 1953, just before the departure of the Andhra MLAs, there was ambiguous voting. A motion for dropping the scheme was defeated by the Speaker’s casting vote, but another motion for staying the reform and referring it to a committee was passed 139 to 137.

  How was the Ministry to stay the reform without dropping it? ‘The scheme is stayed where it was was on the date on which the Assembly adopted the resolution,’ said Subramaniam.35 It would not, in other words, be extended to towns or the small percentage of rural schools still teaching for five hours a day. Opposition MLAs called it ‘a wonderful interpretation.’36

  C.R. would have invited less hostility had his defence of the scheme been confined to the adequacy and advantages of a shortened schoolday. But he got carried away by the potential he saw in ‘the village polytechnic,’ and made a gift to E.V.R. and others of the issue of caste. Some of the reform’s opponents defied laws and courted arrest. Among them was C.N. Annadurai, who had broken with E.V.R. to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

  The flow of sentiment was unmistakable. ‘My education policy has stood in the way of my general political popularity,’ C.R. admitted in the Assembly (24.12.53). But he was not going to yield. ‘I have left this undone all these years and feel I should attempt it at least now,’ he said.37 At the end of the year he claimed that in the district of Madura, scene of sustained agitation against the scheme, admissions had gone up by 40 per cent.38 And with some truth he maintained that but for his reform ‘people outside would not have taken very much interest in education.’39

  But the tide of hostility repulsed all arguments. Remarkably, however, C.R.’s personal relationship with E.V.R. survived. After a public occasion attended by both, C.R. noted in his diary (20.12.53): ‘E.V.R. and I had prophets’ meeting. Big gathering greatly happy at our being together.’

  The politician profiting from the creation of Andhra was Kamaraj. Congress’s Tamil MLAs, a majority, as we have seen, in the truncated house, owed their tickets to him. Gaining, too, from the unpopularity of Rajaji’s education scheme, Kamaraj probed C.R. in September 1953 about a change in leadership. C.R. had suspected his intentions for a while. His 4 May jotting was:

  It happens I am reading Julius Caesar III. Kamaraj is stabbing Caesar I fear just the same way. God forgive him.

  Now, in September, C.R. issued a public reply to the private challenge. Let the legislature party meet, he said in a statement, and see if it wants a new leader. From Delhi Nehru sent word that there was no occasion for such a exercise, and Kamaraj backed away very fast.

  However, in November, Varadarajulu Naidu, who had announced his readiness for the chief ministership before C.R. was drafted — and whom C.R. had defended in the celebrated 1919 sedition case — asked for a change in leadership and claimed the backing of 39 other Congress MLAs. Nehru said that Naidu’s ac
tion was ‘highly improper,’ but the revolt revealed the current. A short sentence from C.R., ‘I suspend the education scheme in view of lack of support,’ would have arrested the flow. But C.R. was, well, C.R. All Kamaraj had to do was wait.

  By the beginning of 1954, C.R. was fully 75. As always there were interesting engagements: meetings with men like Louis St. Laurent, the Canadian Prime Minister, or the scientist Julian Huxley. Or with Soviet artistes performing a ballet. To Nikolai Bespalov, the deputy minister leading the troupe, C.R. remarked with calculated indiscretion, ‘I may say, music takes us near God’ (The Hindu, 20.2.54).

  As Chief Minister he ensured a Gandhi memorial of the kind he wanted in Madras city — a simple, open, attractive place for communion with God. C.R. would explain that it was while hastening to pray that Gandhi had died. At his suggestion Sri Prakasa and the Government of India agreed that the memorial should occupy a portion of the Governor’s estate in Guindy. The only building Rajaji ever ‘built’ — he laid down its concept, raised funds for it from citizens and personally approved the stone-carvers — the Gandhi Mandapam of Guindy can be seen as an expression in stone of C.R.’s sentiment for the Mahatma.

  In February, Subramaniam found it necessary to scotch speculation that C.R. would ‘become Congress President, or rejoin the Nehru Cabinet, or retire’ (The Hindu, 10.2.54). An opposition MLA, Antony Pillai, said in the Assembly that ‘the very people who hailed Rajaji’s leadership two years ago as a godsend’ now wanted him to go, and a colleague of Pillai’s, Jivanandan, observed, ‘Rajaji speaks like a weary man’ (The Hindu, 7.3.54).

  But the most ominous words came from a former Chief Minister, O.P. Ramaswami Reddiar. Addressing C.R. in the Madras Council, Reddiar said: ‘Please give up the scheme without any more ado. It is a new handle to the blackshirts (E.V.R.’s followers). Persistence will only sound the death-knell of our party’ (Indian Express, 10.3.54).

  C.R. now fired his final round of ammunition. Answering Reddiar, he said: ‘It is wrong to give up the scheme . . . Look at the animal world. Anything that turns its face forward carries the day. That which turns its back loses the battle’ (Indian Express, 11.3.54). And Subramaniam declared that with the reform attendance was increasing — and that in June the scheme might be extended to towns.

  There was an uproar, and a meeting of the Congress MLAs was fixed for 24 March. Nature, too, was speaking — C.R. was attacked by bronchial pneumonia. Aware that he had to go, he offered his head in exchange for the scheme’s continuance. But Kamaraj was too astute to accept the deal. Calling at Bazlulla Road on 23 March, he said, ‘You stay, Rajaji, but please suspend the scheme.’ ‘My staying is now impossible,’ replied C.R. Once it was clear that C.R. would resign, Kamaraj offered a sop: the scheme would not be immediately dropped. Together they decided to put off the party meeting.

  On 25 March the papers referred to free talk of C.R. wanting to quit. Later that morning a ‘weak and pale’ Rajaji, absent from the house for a dozen days, slowly walked to the Assembly floor and delivered a five-minute statement ‘in a calm and clear tone.’ It was ‘heard in pin-drop silence.’

  Ever since I fell ill this time, I have beeen thinking of relieving myself. I do wish to be relieved and I must make the best arrangement possible (Indian Express, 26.3.54).

  He did not touch on the education scheme or indeed on anything other than his fatigue, but there was some bitterness in his remark about ‘an undue, almost indecent desire for an event to happen’ — a reference to the stories in the morning’s papers. Later in the day he met the Governor, his ministerial colleagues and the Congress MLAs, and claimed that ‘Congress will vote as a party’ in support of his scheme. For a month the scheme was not touched. In May it was dropped.

  Once more his Tamil country had rejected C.R. Kamaraj was proposed for the post of leader by Varadarajulu Naidu. In the election, C.R. presiding, Kamaraj received 93 votes as against the 41 that went to Subramaniam, who had offered himself at Rajaji’s instance. C.R. announced the result, and Kamaraj was ‘profusely garlanded and lustily cheered’ (The Hindu, 31.3.54). Wisely, he retained most of the Rajaji team, including Subramaniam. On 13 April C.R. was formally released of his charge.

  He had not consulted Jawaharlal over his decision to resign. Neither did Nehru, who knew of C.R.’s intention a week before it was publicized, make any move to prevent his departure. C.R. had thus begun, run and ended his show without involving Nehru. It had been an exercise in independence. In fact, it was because he relished independence that he much preferred the Madras job, with all the poison over caste it seemed to attract, to a comfortable post under another in New Delhi.

  They had written to each other frequently and not always on ‘business.’ Thus C.R. would want to know more about the man Vijayalakshmi’s daughter Rita was marrying. Nehru would reply (26.8.53): ‘Avatar Krishna Dar is a . . . quiet and rather shy young man. He comes from a Kashmiri Brahmin family. And so, rather accidentally, we are reverting to our community in this marriage of Rita.’ Or C.R. would send ‘blessings and good wishes’ on Nehru’s birthday.

  Visiting Madras shortly after C.R.’s resignation, Nehru spoke of C.R. in generous terms. In response, C.R. wrote (19.4.54):

  I have no words to pay you back even in slight measure for the affectionate and most gracious terms in which you referred to this sole remnant of a bygone generation.

  But there were differences. C.R. had discussed a few of them, at the end of 1952, with Louis Fischer, Gandhi’s biographer. C.R. apparently expressed the hope that with time Nehru would change some of his views. After the talk, Fischer wrote to C.R. (18.9.52):

  I believe that some straight talk to the power that is would do a lot of good, for I doubt whether time cures certain diseases . . . You are the one man who, after your achievement in the state, could appeal to his mind.

  P. Ramamurti, the Communist MLA who became the opposition leader in Madras after the separation of Andhra, thought that Nehru’s reluctance to come to C.R.’s aid over the education scheme produced ‘a sharp bitterness’ in the latter,40 but this view is not easily corroborated.

  What is certain is that C.R. had done his best to push himself off his chair. He would rather yield his head than his idea; and he would persist with the latter even when there was no hope of success. He knew he had run into a wall but claimed there was danger in turning back. In a letter to Asoka Mehta, a future member of the Indian Cabinet, he spoke, to Mehta’s distress, of ‘moving forward more or less blindly.’41

  There was some truth, therefore, in what he had himself written to Rama Rao shortly after the tide had begun to turn against him (17.8.53):

  I am having my share of trials and tests. I am not entitled to any pity, for it is all of my own making.

  A stubborn crucifixion-wish was not, however, the only feature of his Chief Ministership. He had given his province fiscal health. Just before C.R. took over, Chintaman Deshmukh, the Union Finance Minister, had said to Sri Prakasa that if things did not improve in Madras he would ‘ask the Reserve Bank to decline to honour your cheques.’42 Now the state had, in the Governor’s words, ‘very good finances.’43

  Also, as the Indian Express put it (14.4.54), ‘the tone both of public life and official administration improved.’ A judge of the High Court would say, ‘There was never even a semblance of any attempt to interfere with the administratrion of justice during Rajaji’s regime.’44

  Others noted, as in 1937-9, his attentiveness, courtesy, and good humour towards the opposition benches. After the resignation was announced, Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, opposition leader in the Council, said of C.R.: ‘No one has greater parliamentary gifts . . . and no one has maintained the traditions of parliamentary life to the extent to which he has. No one has given to the whole house the dignity and the status that he has’ (The Hindu, 31.3.54).

  In the view of the Indian Express (1.4.54), by pre-empting in 1952 a Communist role in the government, C.R. had ‘retrieved a situation that bordered on an
archy.’ The newspaper was repeating an assessment made earlier by Govind Ballabh Pant, the UP Chief Minister. In a letter to C.R. (3.9.53), Pant had said: ‘Madras was on the brink of a precipice and has been luckily saved by you.’

  But we know there was another side—above all, his refusal to get himself elected.

  21

  Wolves

  1954-8

  With Rajaji’s exit, Sri Prakasa became Chief Minister. He now made what C.R. termed ‘a most kind personal proposal.’ Whatever it was — perhaps an offer to recommend to Nehru a new position for C.R. —, the proposal was turned down. ‘I hope you will fully and freely acquit me of pride,’ C.R. wrote to the Governor (23.4.54).

  He publicly referred to Kamaraj’s ‘good sense and firmness’ (The Hindu, 20.4.54) — perhaps hoping that the new Chief Minister would retain the education reform. When the scheme was given up, C.R. expressed his regret in restrained language: ‘It did not have a fair trial . . . I had planned to find finances for the out-of-school portion of the scheme.’1

  Many had written praising his latest term in office and lamenting his departure. In a characteristic public statement, he asked them not to expect replies. ‘I have no help with writing or typing work,’ he explained, adding, ‘I cannot spare the energy to assist those with problems’ (Indian Express, 24.4.54). Clarifying, in an interview, that he was not ‘retiring from public life,’ he revealed lack of foresight when he added, ‘I might even consider myself a life member of the Congress high command’ (The Hindu, 20.4.54).