Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  Antibiotics clearing his lungs, he had plunged into the Ramayana rendering that he had put off in favour of the Chief Ministership. The Ramayana took him over, exercising his intellect, refreshing his spirit, cooling his resentment. Week by week he retold the tale in Kalki; in July the Sunday Standard started serializing it in English. He loved the labour and the public loved his direct, heartfelt pieces. But C.R. could not forgive the hero his ultimate hardness towards Sita. At the end of 18 months’ toil, he wrote to Rama Rao, who had assisted with the English version:

  Yesterday I finished the last chapter of the Tamil series of Valmiki and sent Rama back to Ayodhya after his disgraceful performance on the battlefield with Sita (20.10.55).

  The English series continued for another year. Then, as a paperback, C.R.’s Ramayana, along with his earlier Mahabharata, achieved virtually unmatched sales.

  On 15 August it was announced that C.R. would be the first recipient of free India’s highest award, the Bharat Ratna. It was, at bottom, Nehru’s decision, though President Prasad made the actual presentation on 26 January 1955. C.R. was moved and delighted. ‘I cannot pretend not to find pleasure in the token of affection received from friends and colleagues,’ he wrote (21.8.54) to V.T. Krishnamachari, who had grown up not far from him and at the same time, and was now deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.

  To many the Bharat Ratna seemed a hint that despite his disclaimer he had in fact retired. He certainly read like one who had, returning again and again to Shakespeare, coping with Paradises Lost and Regained, re-reading Samuel Johnson, and finding Jack London’s White Fang, to which Rama Rao had introduced him, ‘a deep book.’ Once (24.3.50) he had written to Rama Rao, ‘I always felt it was a bad thing to read books and be absorbed in that pleasure.’ Now the sin was being daily committed.

  Apart from books there were the journals sent by their owners or by embassies and consulates. Now, with time on his hands, he could do justice to them.

  He tried to compose verses, often on the atom bomb, which was worrying him more and more. Coming across a set in Bhavan’s Journal, Rama Rao wrote to C.R.: ‘Your talent for English versification is a pleasant surprise for me.’ C.R. also put into English verse a long chapter from the Ramayana of Kamban, the Tulsidas of the South — a respectable, moving rendering.

  Most evenings he would go to the house of his friend for forty years, A.V. Raman, the ex-engineer and scholar whose dictionary scheme he had refused to finance when he had been Chief Minister. Though confined to his room, Raman had immense vitality, and C.R. enjoyed his frankness.

  Leaves were falling, would always fall. T.K. Chidambaram Mudaliar had died early in 1954. At the end of the year, Krishnamurti, the editor of Kalki, suddenly went. He had helped with Vimochanam during the faith-filled Ashram days in the twenties, and remained close ever since. Through Kalki, he carried C.R.’s thoughts and works to the Tamil country.

  C.R.’s reputation had travelled far, and many a visitor to Madras hoped to enter a meeting with Rajaji in his or her diary. A young American applying for an interview wrote to C.R.:

  Mr Casey (the Australian Foreign Minister at the time), who is a very close friend of my mother’s, urged her to tell me to drop you a note because — I hope I am not telling tales out of school — ‘you are the wisest man in India.’2

  C.R. would put off some and meet others. In the view of Henry Ramsey, the American Consul-General in Madras from 1953 to 1957, C.R. ‘had an uncanny ability to choose to meet only with the more interesting ones.’3 C.R. liked the Ramseys, turned up often at their home, prescribed medicines for them and, in an unusual gesture, went to Central Station to see them off when they left Madras.

  A couple like the Ramseys evoked his warmth, but America did not. Her refusal to put to sleep her ‘new monsters,’ as C.R. called the nuclear weapons, was depressing and embittering him. At the end of 1954 he had sent a 1300-word letter on the subject to the New York Times, which published it in full. In it C.R. advocated what some Americans and Europeans would campaign for a quarter-century later, a unilateral abjuring of the nuclear bomb:

  Let either America or Russia begin . . . Indeed she who committed the mistake first is duty bound to begin now; not as a penalty, but as a noble privilege. I believe that America can do it. She is morally big enough . . . We speak the truth irrespective of others not doing it; we are kind and honourable irrespective of the conduct of others. Let each not wait for the other.

  Did he really think that America’s leaders would listen to this appeal sent, as he put it, ‘from an obscure corner of this busy world’? We do not know. But he was being egged on by his depths. The anxiety was old. Though more opposed to Japan’s war aims than any other Congress leader, he had attacked the nuclear flattening of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ‘Let us hope that oblivion will rest on this latest invention,’ he had said at the time.4

  Now, his mind free to rove, read and worry as it had not been for twenty years, he felt he must sound an alarm — and keep sounding it.

  The battle against the Bomb became, and stayed, a passion; but at this stage it also reflected C.R.’s search for a new role. Rich books, banter with visitors and with grandchildren, the imminent prospect of great-grandchildren jostling on his yet- firm knees, letting mellow wisdom, his own as well as that of the Epics, percolate to a still-ardent public — these gave him pleasure, even thrilled him at times, but did not satisfy his whole being.

  He turned 76, then 77, and then 78. An old dog was growing older. Perhaps, one of these days, it would be found crumpled and lifeless on the floor. It was easily ill or tired, often long-faced and seeming very ancient, the back unshapely and weak, the legs burdened and deliberate in movement. Mind you, it was still capable of tricks. Given an audience of young intelligent dogs, its face would brighten, the limbs would find energy, and with a frisk or a bounce it would arouse admiration.

  But that was nothing compared to when grandpa dog smelt a wolf! Suddenly it was taut, gleaming and agile, the guide of the neighbourhood pack — the dog that had found its role.

  To be wise, even to be sparklingly wise, was not good enough for C.R. as he journeyed past his late seventies. He needed wolves.

  Would a juicy bone have been similarly transforming? If sent for by Jawaharlal to collaborate in the running of India, would C.R. have found satisfaction? No bone was offered. Had C.R. asked for one he would have got it. ‘If I had written to Mr Nehru and said I had a nostalgia for Delhi, he would certainly have invited me to return,’ C.R. would say in 1959.5

  He was too proud to ask. Also, his experience in 1951 had told him that Nehru, while liking C.R. as an adviser or a showpiece on call, did not really want a partner. On his part Nehru did not invite him because he may have felt that a 75- year-old should in fact retire, or feared that a C.R. at his elbow would cramp his style.

  C.R.’s buoyancy would thus depend largely on wolves. The Bomb was one of them. It seemed to restore muscle’ to his spirits. In letters and statements to the Press, and in conversation with men like Ramsey, he would castigate America, but not the Soviet Union, and reject the doctrine of deterrence. ‘God help the next generation! I am ashamed of my century,’ C.R. told Ramsey (23.12.54).

  He argued that in atomic warfare the Soviet Union’s ruthlessness would give her an advantage. American rulers would hesitate, but not the Kremlin. America, and the world, would therefore be safer in a world without atomic weapons. American initiative could lead to such a world. Weaker in nuclear weapons (even if more callous), the Soviets would agree to their banishment.

  But what if the Soviets secretly retained their nuclear weapons? Even if they did not, would not their great superiority in conventional weapons enable them to rule the world? ‘Despite hours devoted to the subject,’ Ramsey would say later, ‘neither side persuaded the other.’6

  Not all his Indian public agreed with C.R.’s campaign. That his ‘tearing and tempestuous’ propaganda was beamed only at atomic weapons, not at war in general, wa
s one criticism; another was that he was interfering in America’s right to decide her defence. Going ahead regardless, C.R. also embarrassed Nehru somewhat by saying that if America did not renounce the Bomb, India should renounce American aid.

  Then, at the end of 1955, he had the chance to focus on the Soviet Union. Bulganin and Krushchev, Russia’s joint rulers at the time, were visiting India and coming to Madras. Just before their arrival in the city, word came of the detonation in the Soviet Union of ‘the biggest bomb ever.’

  C.R.’s comment that Russia and America were polluting the world’s atmosphere was in the papers the day Bulganin and Krushchev landed in Madras. Bulganin, the Soviet Premier, had been assigned Raj Bhavan’s ‘Rajaji Suite.’ Seated next to him at a banquet, Rajaji first told Bulganin that Krushchev and he had been ‘absolutely wrong’ in their assertion that slave labour had built India’s ancient monuments.

  Then he asked Bulganin if Russia would forsake the Bomb unilaterally. To this the Premier replied in the negative. But to the question whether he would agree unreservedly to a joint renunciation and its supervision, Bulganin’s answer was, yes.

  With Krushchev C.R. had two conversations. One took place at a cultural evening while Chandralekha danced and Vasanthakumari sang. Krushchev confirmed what his colleague had said, and as directly.7

  Though people might disagree on how to chain it, the Bomb was unmistakably a wolf. But when C.R. cried in 1956 that Hindi or, to be precise, its imposition on the South, was a danger, some of his friends in the North were dismayed. And Congressmen in the South thought he was embarrassing them: his strictures on Hindi sounded a little like the line of the DMK, now Congress’s chief southern foe.

  The obdurate enforcer of Hindi in the late thirties still stood for that language being made ‘part of everybody’s education,’ but he assailed the idea of Hindi soon becoming India’s sole official language.

  He had, in fact, cautioned against such a policy when he was Home Minister, and he was sure it would not work. It would make no sense if the Central Government gave Madras residents Hindi passport forms or Hindi telephone bills. Likewise, letters in Hindi from a government department in New Delhi, Lucknow or Patna to counterparts in Madras, Trivandrum or Shillong would be unintelligible. English, argued C.R., would be a better official language and would not spell discrimination against the South or other non-Hindi regions, whereas Hindi would. ‘The Centre ought to declare,’ said C.R., ‘that English would remain the official medium.’ If it did not, the South would protest — and lose interest in the oneness of India.

  Riots over provincial boundaries had disturbed several parts of India. To C.R. they were a foretaste of the consequences of imposing Hindi. He had not liked the new boundaries decided upon. Maharashtra, he thought, had ‘been given a raw deal’8 — there was an unwillingness, which was later overcome, to let Bombay city be included in it.

  And he was sad that the Malayalam and Kannada districts of Madras would be detached, as the Telugu districts had been. Its mix of languages and cultures had been the strength of Madras, and C.R. feared that the province, ‘once so big and important and progressive will hereafter grow narrow-minded and intensely anti-culture.’9

  His solution, entirely ignored, was for a single southern state of all the Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam areas, a large Dakshina Pradesh that would ‘retain the political significance of the South’ (Indian Express, 27.11.55).

  To many, C.R.’s words seemed harsh, even threatening. Prasad, for example, wrote in his diary that C.R.’s words were ‘couched in the minatory terms of Jinnah.’10 Another angle disturbed Devadas. ‘Have you given up,’ he asked C.R., ‘the direct method of discussion with Jawaharlalji and others?’11

  But C.R. was not without a case. He mobilized support for it all over the Tamil country, and in Calcutta and Hyderabad. His arguments were not easily answered. Eventually, early in 1958, first the Congress and then the Central Government announced that English would continue as the official language, though Hindi should also be used side by side and ‘should ultimately’ become the official medium. The date of Hindi’s enthronement was left to the future.

  C.R. was not wholly satisfied, but a significant victory had been achieved, and it owed much to his role.

  After warning of the Bomb and before spotting Hindi, C.R. had barked at another ‘wolf’ — the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. On this occasion he did not quite retain the supporters attracted by his first shouts. His stand was that neither the usefulness nor the safety of the vaccine had really been established, and that the government’s programme of mass inoculation was diverting resources from nutrition and public health.

  The health department claimed that C.R.’s attack was based on old and discredited fears, and that some of the scientists he had been citing against the vaccine had changed their opinion. The cases where the vaccine had allegedly caused harm seemed to wilt under scrutiny.

  A.B. Shetty, Madras’s Health Minister, said that C.R.’s strictures had resulted in ‘a progressive fall’ in the numbers coming forward for vaccination. ‘Why don’t you convince Rajaji?’ asked an opposition legislator, Swayamprakasam, adding, ‘The controversy is confusing the public’ Replied Shetty: ‘The member may make that attempt. I wish him all success’ (Indian Express, 20.8.55).

  No one convinced C.R.; six years later he would again write of his fear; but he was less insistent.

  Falling leaves . . . Prakasam died in 1957. ‘There is not a home today in Andhra that does not mourn,’ said C.R. (Swarajya, 1.6.57). Two months later Devadas passed away in Bombay. On hearing the news, C.R. took the night plane. At the stop in Nagpur he sobbed uncontrollably when he saw Devadas’s 20- year-old son Ramchandra, his grandson, who was flying to Bombay from Delhi.

  ‘A jewel of a boy had a jewel of a girl and it is all smashed,’ he wrote to Rama Rao (21.8.57). For almost 40 years, ever since, as an 18-year-old, Devadas came to the South to teach Hindi, he and C.R. had been devoted to each other; and the loss to Lakshmi really hurt. Three years earlier, in a letter to Ramsey, he had described his feelings for her: ‘My daughter lost her mother before she could know or remember and I had to bring her up entirely. So I am rather fond of her!’ To Devadas’s 12- year-old son Gopu he wrote:

  You should not let yourself go sad. Appa is not in his body but lives in your memory. He has acquired in your memory a fine and beautiful body like that of a god. And remember many others have faced the death of their fathers and grown up.

  Then, in February 1958, A.V. Raman died. To Rama Rao, C.R. wrote (11.2.58): ‘Indignation incarnate was he and a very good man. His wife seizes my hand to wipe her tears.’

  Other loved leaves, young ones, had been grafted elsewhere. Granddaughters Janaki, Tara and Indira were married between 1956 and 1958. After Janaki’s marriage he wrote to Rama Rao (11.9.56): ‘The girl cried and took leave of me last night . . . I could not sleep well . . . Yet I pretend to follow the doctrine of detachment.’

  Tara’s husband; a Bengali agronomist, was thus described by C.R. to Rama Rao: ‘Cultured, well-behaved, brainy, tallish, healthy, well-shaped and not bad in the face’ (10.3.57).

  From July 1956, C.R., who had been communicating his thoughts through Kalki in Tamil, had a new platform, the English weekly Swarajya. Every week now he could tell a wider audience what bothered him. Swarajya’s editor and owner, Khasa Subba Rao, in the past a frequent C.R. critic, offered him this conduit.

  T. Sadasivam, publisher of Kalki, who for a while now had placed himself wholly at C.R.’s disposal, said he would ensure Swarajya’s viability.

  In his opening piece in Swarajya, C.R. quoted Socrates — ‘I am a sort of gadfly’ — and added: ‘The need is great for a gadfly weekly which can close down any time and start again any day without serious loss, and which is governed by a sense of truth and public welfare and does not look for mass popularity’ (14.7.56).

  Within a few months Egypt was attacked by England, France and Israel over a di
spute about the Suez Canal. ‘We must part now,’ was the heading of C.R.’s piece on the subject: he felt that India had to quit the Commonwealth. Over Hungary, into which Soviet troops moved, he seemed somewhat less agitated, though he admitted that it was ‘the scene of great wrongs.’

  C.R.’s British friends, most of them openly critical of their government’s action, which was soon to miscarry, were upset by the sharpness of C.R.’s attitude. ‘Don’t leave us,’ Pethick- Lawrence wrote in a typical letter. ‘Help us to rescue our country’ (6.11.56). But C.R. was unmoved. His British friends need not have worried too much. C.R. had no influence now over Nehru, who had no intention of quitting the Commonwealth.

  On the eve of the 1957 Indian elections, C.R., who had allowed his membership of Congress to lapse, declared in Swarajya that he would vote ‘for a person of reliable character’ (26.1.57). In the past he had always said, ‘Vote Congress.’ Except in Kerala, where the Communists were successful, Congress won everywhere, including in Madras, where Kamaraj was Chief Minister once more. Congress’s triumphs included Narasimhan’s re-election to Parliament.

  But C.R. was not abandoning the literary world. He went through The Portable Johnson and Boswell, edited by Louis Kronenberger, with a toothcomb. Below the editor’s criticism of Johnson’s ponderousness and polysyllables, C.R. wrote, ‘I agree with Johnson wherever Kronenberger presumes to differ.’ And against Johnson’s famous revision of his first reaction to a play, ‘It has not wit enough to keep it sweet,’ into ‘It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction,’ C.R. entered this marginal comment:

  Anglo-Saxon simplicity of words does not necessarily make for clarity. The second Johnsonian form is really clearer.

  On a margin of Trollope’s The Prime Minister, he scribbled: ‘Mr Trollope, you do not know when your story is finished.’ And when Monica Felton said to him, ‘You must have read Marx at one time,’ he replied, ‘Never,’ grinned, and added, ‘Not a word.’