Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  A vivid account of these protests is contained in the travelogue of Edward Cadogan, a member of the Simon Commission. In Bombay, wrote Cadogan, they were met with ‘the first of those hostile demonstrations with which we were destined to become so familiar all over India’. Then, in Delhi, their convoy of cars was stalled by ‘a concourse of more or less hostile riff-raff’ waving ‘banners with “Go back, Simon,” inscribed thereon’. Next, in Kanpur, a group of students ‘had blocked all the approaches in our neighbourhood and shouted themselves hoarse’. The pattern was repeated wherever they went—in Guntur, Lucknow, Lahore and Poona, where the commissioners could travel only under heavy police escort in the face of fervent opposition by crowds in which college students were prominent.

  Edward Cadogan was struck by the depth of the protests, and by the hostility of one family in particular. ‘Of all the bitter and irreconcilable opponents with whom the Government of India had been brought into contact during recent years,’ remarked Cadogan, ‘Motilal Nehru and his son stand out [as] the most conspicuous.’ The visiting Englishman was puzzled by Motilal’s volte-face; once a ‘warm friend of the English community’, he had ‘suddenly and for some reason’ become their ‘inveterate foe’. And he was angered by Jawaharlal, who had organized ‘the most spectacular of all the demonstrations’ against the commission, and whose propaganda among students was ‘doing infinite harm with complete impunity’.3

  In the third week of February, the Central Legislative Assembly discussed a resolution, proposed by Lala Lajpat Rai, expressing ‘the Assembly’s entire lack of confidence’ in the Simon Commission. Lajpat Rai remarked that even ‘with the best of intentions and motives, the Commissioners could only be the gramophone of the [British] Indian bureaucracy, and eventually the gramophone of the Secretary of State for India’. His fellow Congressman Srinivasa Iyengar acidly remarked that ‘the Britisher’s [belief in] fair play never crossed the English Channel’. Then Motilal Nehru added that ‘Sir John Simon is a big man but I for one will not advise my countrymen to surrender their right to the biggest man in the world. That right is the right of self-determination.’

  The Congress leaders were buoyed by the support they received from Moderate politicians such as M.A. Jinnah. Addressing the British members of the assembly, Jinnah said they were making ‘a great mistake by trying to represent that all the parties are determined on the boycott for some sinister motive’. If they persisted in this attitude, he warned, the British ‘will lose the whole of India’.

  With the bulk of the Indian members voting for it, and all official members against, Lajpat Rai’s motion passed by a narrow majority: sixty-eight to sixty-two. The result was greeted with shouts of ‘Vande Mataram’ (the invocation to the motherland composed by the Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee).4

  II

  Gandhi watched these protests against the Simon Commission from afar. He was more closely involved, however, with a localized struggle, that of the peasants of Bardoli in southern Gujarat. The government had imposed an enhanced revenue on this taluk, which the villagers were refusing to pay. At a meeting of peasants on 4 February, Vallabhbhai Patel urged them to show the government ‘as to what evil consequences result through awakening a sleeping lion’.5 Patel himself resigned from his presidentship of the Ahmedabad Municipality, and moved back to the Gujarat countryside where he had been born and raised. He organized and spoke at many meetings, while writing to the authorities to suspend the enhanced assessment, and conduct an impartial inquiry into the condition of the peasantry. ‘Vallabhbhai’s name,’ remarked a colleague, ‘is now a synonym for honest cooperation with Government when possible and clean and honest fight where necessary.’ Helping him in the campaign were Mohanlal Pandya and Abbas Tyabji, the latter urging Muslim cultivators not to stay aloof from the movement.6

  The government responded by confiscating the properties of those who refused to pay the enhanced tax. In a further show of strength, police parties were sent to the defaulting villages. The peasants were undeterred. At a meeting in Varad on 28 April,

  enthusiastic scenes of devotion and worship showered upon Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel were witnessed. Women dressed in Khadi, with garlands of hand-spun yarn and offerings of flowers, cocoanut, red powder and rice were paying their respects and making obeisance in unending chains. Songs composed by pious matrons among women-folk, in some places altered to suit the present occasion, invoking God to bless them in their holy struggle for truth were recited by about five hundred women, which gave a religious turn to the congregation consisting of about 2,500 souls.7

  On 2 May, one of the satyagraha leaders, Ravishankar Vyas, was arrested and sentenced to five months in jail for telling peasants not to carry the luggage of the revenue officials. Other satyagrahis were also arrested and sentenced for intimidating public servants. Meanwhile, the government seized and auctioned lands and cattle owned by the protesting peasants.8

  Writing in Young India, Gandhi said the people of Bardoli ‘have lost their possessions’ but ‘kept their honour’. He urged them to stay firm. ‘Imprisonments, forfeitures, deportations, death, must all be taken in the ordinary course by those who count honour before everything else.’

  Gandhi compared the Bardoli struggle to a great ‘yajna’, or sacrifice. The government was using a fourfold method to crush the satyagraha: namely, sama (appeasement), dama (bribery), danda (punishment) and bheda (promotion of divisiveness). But the peasants of Bardoli, led by ‘their beloved Sardar’, had thus far resisted all attempts to appease, bribe, divide or punish them.9

  This appears to have been the first reference in print by Gandhi to Vallabhbhai as ‘Sardar’, the term by which he was now commonly known to the peasants of Bardoli, a term variously connoting patriarch, community leader and commander, all definitions applying to this man of peasant stock who, after winning wealth and fame in the city, had returned to lead his people in their fight against a harsh and unfeeling government.

  III

  The ashram in Sabarmati now had a total of 277 residents: 133 men, sixty-six women and seventy-eight children. Spread across 132 acres, it had homes, a school, a printing press, and sheds for carpentry and spinning. Among the latest reforms Gandhi had initiated were a common kitchen where everyone had to eat; private or family kitchens in individual cottages were no longer permitted. The thirty-odd ashram ‘servants’ were also now dispensed with; the inmates had do all the cleaning and clearing themselves, working in batches of six in the kitchen.10 A Sindhi professor who joined the ashram thought its ‘most striking social feature’ was ‘the utter absence of servants and so also of masters. It was a large family of equals in the sense that no work or occupation was considered too low or too high.’ This was broadly true, except that there was one person more equal than others: Gandhi, ‘Bapu’ to all in the ashram, who drafted the community’s rules, supervised its functioning, and resolved or adjudicated disputes among its members.11

  Kasturba was happy to have her husband at home for a stretch. Three of their sons were now productively engaged: Manilal running Indian Opinion and the Phoenix settlement in Natal; Ramdas promoting khadi in rural Kathiawar; Devadas working in Jamia Millia Islamia, the new ‘Nationalist Muslim’ university in Delhi. But the eldest boy, Harilal, continued to be estranged from his parents. ‘Harilal has practically forsaken me,’ wrote Gandhi to a friend in South Africa. ‘He drinks, eats and makes himself merry. But he is a brave boy in one sense that he makes no secret of his vice and his rebellion is an open rebellion. If he had not done his creditors down, I would not have minded his other lapses as I mind this betrayal of his creditors.’12

  Harilal’s absence hurt; but what hurt far more was the premature death, in late April 1928, of his nephew Maganlal Gandhi. Maganlal had died of typhoid, contracted while touring in rural Bihar. In an eloquent tribute, Gandhi spoke of his nephew’s work in running the Phoenix settlement in South Africa and his vital
role in nurturing the Sabarmati Ashram. Maganlal was, in Gandhi’s eyes, a model celibate, a model constructive worker, and a model civil resister too. Terming Maganlal ‘my best comrade’, Gandhi feelingly wrote: ‘He was my hands, my feet and my eyes. The world knows so little of how much my so-called greatness depends upon the incessant toil and drudgery of silent, devoted, able and pure workers, men as well as women. And among them all Maganlal was to me the greatest, the best and the purest.’13

  IV

  From his ashram, Gandhi monitored the ongoing struggle in Bardoli. Thousands of rupees were being collected for the ‘Bardoli Satyagraha Fund’ from sympathizers in Gujarat’s two largest towns, Surat and Ahmedabad, and from Bombay as well.14

  In the third week of July 1928, the governor of Bombay, Sir Leslie Wilson, visited Surat, and had a three-hour-long discussion with Vallabhbhai Patel. The details were not shared with the press. However, rumours leaked out that while the governor had agreed to an inquiry into the terms of assessment, he insisted it would be carried out by a revenue officer. Patel wanted a judicial officer to be appointed, on the grounds that he was likely to be more impartial.

  On 23 July, the governor spoke in the Bombay Legislative Council about his meeting with Vallabhbhai Patel. He was prepared to offer ‘a full, open and independent enquiry’ into the Bardoli dispute, to commence once the revenue now due to the government had been paid. The payment of arrears was non-negotiable, for the question was ‘whether the writ of His Majesty the King-Emperor is to run in a portion of His Majesty’s Dominions or whether the edict of some unofficial body of individuals is to be obeyed’. The peasants of Bardoli were told they had fourteen days to pay up.15

  In a note prepared for the governor, a senior official wrote that ‘Bardoli has been chosen with great care as the arena for this trial of strength. Gandhi’s influence over this area is paramount and he has for some years sedulously trained the inhabitants to practise his principles of Satyagraha and civil disobedience. There are in this area a number of people who were in South Africa with Gandhi.’16

  This note was dated 28 July. Another note, sent to the governor three days later, observed that ‘in the Bardoli Taluka there is complete contempt for Government and except for the Police, civil authority exists only on sufferance’.17

  On 2 August, as the deadline indicated by the governor of Bombay approached, Gandhi left for Bardoli. He stayed in the area, while Vallabhbhai Patel went to Poona to meet the governor. Writing to Vallabhbhai’s daughter Manibehn on 4 August, Gandhi was hopeful that a settlement would be reached, for ‘the Government is not in a sufficiently strong position now to prolong the fight. Public opinion is against it and it has made many mistakes.’

  Gandhi’s optimism was not misplaced. On 6 August, the government agreed to an inquiry ‘by a Judicial Officer associated with a Revenue Officer, the opinion of the former prevailing in all disputed points’. The satyagrahis under arrest were all released, and the village headmen who had resigned, reinstated. More good news followed, when it was announced that the inquiry would be conducted by R.S. Broomfield, who had made that memorable speech praising Gandhi while sentencing him to prison back in March 1922.18

  Vallabhbhai Patel now returned in triumph to Bardoli. At a mass meeting held on 12 August, he recalled the abandonment of the non-cooperation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident. ‘After the year 1922,’ remarked Vallabhbhai, ‘people were doubtful whether the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi were practicable and whether people would hear them or not? God gave us this opportunity and we have been able to prove that it was practicable and people have now got faith in the message of Mahatma Gandhi.’19

  In November, Judge Broomfield and his colleagues commenced their inquiry. Mahadev Desai and his fellow ashramite Narhari Parikh shadowed them, making sure the villagers’ testimonies were properly translated and recorded. It was found that the settlement officers had grossly overestimated crop and cattle yields in the taluka. On these inflated estimates they had arrived at an enhanced assessment for the taluka of Rs 187,492—the figure that had provoked outrage and then protest. The inquiry commission now radically revised this downwards—to an increase of a mere Rs 48,648. The satyagrahis had been handsomely vindicated. As Mahadev Desai wrote at the time, the peasants of Bardoli had ‘dealt a severe moral blow to the Government’, and ‘added to the moral stature of the peasant throughout the length and breadth of India’.20 Mahadev’s verdict was endorsed by the viceroy of India, who told the governor of Bombay that the peasant agitation in Bardoli was ‘without doubt the most serious thing we have had to face since I came to India’.21

  V

  In answer to the all-white Simon Commission, a conference held in Bombay on 19 May 1928 tasked a group of Indians with drafting a preliminary constitution for a free India. Chaired by Motilal Nehru, the committee had ten members, among them two Muslims and one Sikh, as well as representatives of the Hindu Mahasabha and of the Indian Liberal Federation. The committee had twenty-five sittings, while also canvassing proposals and suggestions from the wider public.

  On 10 August, Motilal Nehru submitted the committee’s report to the Congress president, M.A. Ansari. This envisaged, once the British departed, a House of Parliament, with 500 members elected on the basis of universal adult franchise; and a Senate, whose 200 members would be sent by the legislatures of individual provinces (themselves based on adult franchise). In this federal system, the Union would have control of, among other things, defence, foreign affairs, monetary policy, and civil and criminal law; with subjects such as land, water, public health and education dealt with by the provinces.

  The report also considered relations between what was currently British India and the 500-odd princely states which covered a little over one-third of the subcontinent. It said an Indian government would respect existing treaty rights between the Crown and individual rulers; but hoped that the princes would eventually join the federation, in view of the ‘historical, religious, sociological and economic affinities’, as well as the shared ‘aspirations and ambitions’, of the residents of princely and non-princely India.22

  The most important—and contentious—sections of the Nehru Report dealt with the Hindu–Muslim question. For India as a whole, Hindus were then 65.9 per cent of the population; Muslims, 24.1 per cent. Yet, there were significant regional variations, with Muslims in a majority in Bengal, the Punjab and the NWFP. The Nehru Report recognized that the ‘whole [Hindu–Muslim] problem resolves itself into the removal from the minds of each of a baseless fear of the other and of giving a feeling of security to all communities’. However, the ‘clumsy and objectionable’ system of separate electorates introduced by the British did ‘not give this security. They only keep up an armed truce.’23 The committee also considered, and rejected, a proposal that the Muslims of Bengal and the Punjab should have guaranteed reservation of seats in the legislature in order to protect their ‘majority’.

  Universal adult franchise would secure Muslims political security in the Punjab and Bengal. In other provinces, where their numbers might not translate into many seats, the Nehru Report advised minority reservation in proportion to population, but for a fixed period of ten years only. However, it rejected the suggestion of one of its members that the Central Legislature should have one-third of its seats reserved for Muslims.24

  On receiving a copy of the report, Gandhi sent Motilal Nehru a note of congratulation. ‘I was not prepared,’ he remarked, ‘for the endorsement of the franchise, for instance, or of your solution of the Native States. But I see that the Hindu–Muslim question is still to be a thorny question.’25

  Gandhi admired Motilal Nehru, and appreciated his labours. But the work of constitution-making per se did not appeal to him. While urging the acceptance of the Nehru Report in public, in private he wrote to an English friend that while ‘the way to constitutional swaraj may lie through Lucknow [where the Nehru Committee had met]’, th
e ‘way to organic swaraj which is synonymous with Ramrajya lies through Bardoli’.26

  VI

  The Nehru Report was envisaged as an Indian response to the Simon Commission. The latter explicitly ruled out self-government; the former took self-government as the basis for its deliberations. As Motilal Nehru and his colleagues met in Allahabad and Lucknow in the summer of 1928, Sir John Simon and his fellow Englishmen fled the heat of the Indian plains for the comparative cool of London.

  While Simon was in London, C.P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian arranged for Charlie Andrews to meet him. Writing to Gandhi, Andrews said he made it ‘quite clear’ to Simon ‘that India did not want any Commission to frame India’s constitution. That must be left to India herself.’27

  The Simon Commission returned to India in early October. Once more, they were met with a hostile reception on landing in Bombay. Hundreds of protesters, led by K.F. Nariman and Shaukat Ali, marched to Ballard Pier raising slogans such as ‘Simon Go Back’, and ‘Down with British Imperialism’. These physical demonstrations of protest were accompanied by posters put up across the city. One poster urged the students of Bombay to follow the example of students in Egypt:

  WHAT EGYPT DID

  INDIA CAN DO

  In Egypt the hated Milner Commission was avoided everywhere

  Like the plague.

  When some of the members entered the Law Court,