Gandhi was travelling to Karachi with the Congress’s president-elect, Vallabhbhai Patel. The local reception committee had originally planned to give them a ‘royal welcome’, ferrying them from Karachi station to the Congress venue in a procession of twenty-four horse-drawn carriages. But the anger and resentment at Bhagat Singh’s execution forced a change of plan.
On the 25th morning Gandhi and Patel got down at Malir, a station thirteen miles short of Karachi. Getting wind of the plan, a group of protesters came there, and, as the Congress leaders emerged from the train, shouted, ‘Go back, down with truce’. As one of Gandhi’s companions recalled, the militants ‘broke the window panes and entered his compartment, and began to harass and bully him. Bapu suffered their anger with great patience.’35
A reporter at Malir station saw that a protester had ‘offered a black flower to Gandhiji. He accepted it with a sad smile.’ The journalist then continued: ‘Little did these young men know what efforts Mahatmaji had made to save Bhagat Singh and his comrades. He had personally spoken to the Viceroy; he had sent influential personages to the Viceregal Lodge to plead with His Excellency. And even on that fateful day March 23, he had made a last desperate effort. But he had failed.’36
The leading nationalist paper of the Punjab thought the anger against Gandhi expressed by Bhagat Singh’s supporters had ‘not the slightest foundation. The Mahatma did all that any human being could have done to secure the commutation of the sentences of the three prisoners. He went to the farthest limit of his power short of tearing up the settlement [between the Congress and the government], which no man with a judging head or an understanding heart could possibly have expected him to do….But while the anger against the Mahatma and his colleagues is both unreasoning and in the highest degree unreasonable, the dissatisfaction and resentment caused by the sad event itself is only too well founded.’37
The Karachi Congress was clouded over by two things: the execution of Bhagat Singh and his comrades; and bloody Hindu–Muslim riots in Kanpur, in which the prominent Congressman Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was killed when he sought to stop the violence.
This Congress was the first to be held in March instead of December. It saw the (belated) election of Vallabhbhai Patel as president. The Congress passed a major resolution on ‘fundamental rights’ committing a free India to (among other things) freedom of association and combination, freedom of the press, ‘equal rights and obligations of all citizens, without any bar on account of sex’, elections based on universal adult franchise, religious neutrality on the part of the State, ‘protection of the culture, language and scripts of the minorities’, control by the State over key industries, and the abrogation of duty on salt manufactured in India.
At a working committee meeting held in Karachi, the Congress appointed Gandhi to represent it at the next Round Table Conference in London. In an editorial in Young India, Gandhi explained why he was going as the ‘sole delegate. The idea was to present one, unified, Congress view. Moreover, the best Congress workers had to stay on in India.’ For, ‘whether at the end of the Conference it was to be peace or war, every available hand was needed in the country’.38
The Congress also passed a resolution on the Bhagat Singh affair. While ‘disassociating itself from and disapproving of political violence in any shape or form’, it placed on record ‘its admiration of the bravery and sacrifice of the late Bhagat Singh and his comrades Syts. Sukdhev and Rajguru, and mourns with the bereaved families the loss of these lives’. The party described their execution as ‘an act of wanton vengeance’, a ‘deliberate flouting of the unanimous demand of the nation for commutation’.39
Gandhi also weighed in with a signed article of his own. This saluted Bhagat Singh’s bravery, noting that he ‘did not wish to live. He refused to apologize; declined to file an appeal.’ By hanging him and his colleagues, argued Gandhi, ‘the Government has demonstrated its own brute nature, it has provided fresh proof of its arrogance resulting from its power by ignoring public opinion’.
While the Congress was negotiating with the government, observed Gandhi, ‘Bhagat Singh’s hanging was weighing upon us. We had hoped that the Government would be cautious enough to pardon Bhagat Singh and his associates to the extent of remitting the sentence of hanging.’ But just because they declined to do so, the Congress could not go back on the terms of the Gandhi–Irwin Pact. ‘Our dharma,’ said Gandhi, ‘is to swallow our anger, abide by the settlement and carry out our duty.’40
Before they were hanged, Bhagat Singh’s colleague Sukhdev wrote an ‘open letter’ to Gandhi, which was smuggled out of jail and published in the press. If Gandhi really wanted the radicals to change their mind, said Sukhdev, he should have directly approached ‘some of the prominent revolutionaries to talk over the whole thing with them. You ought to have tried to convince them to call off their movement.’
Sukhdev wrote to Gandhi that history was on the side of the proponents of violence. ‘The hegemony of the revolutionary party in the future political struggle,’ he claimed, ‘is assured. Masses are rallying around them and the day is not far off when they will be leading the masses under their banner towards their noble and lofty ideal—the Socialist Republic.’
Gandhi printed Sukhdev’s letter in Young India, and determinedly set out to refute it. He had, he remarked, presented the revolutionaries not with ‘sentimental appeals’ but ‘hard facts’. Murder and assassination had not brought swaraj any closer; on the contrary, it had added to the country’s military expenditure and brought down savage reprisals on the people. Nor was there any evidence of the revolutionaries having contributed to any ‘mass awakening’. Rather, their activities had added to the woes of the masses, since it was they who ‘had to bear the burden ultimately of additional expense and the indirect effect of Government wrath’.
Having defended the philosophy and practice of non-violence, Gandhi added that he did not endorse the execution of the revolutionaries. He had himself made ‘every effort to secure their release’. So had the Congress. But, he pointedly observed, those radicals still at large ‘must help by preventing revolutionary murder. We may not have the cake and also eat it.’41
VII
The execution of Bhagat Singh and his comrades was the last major act of Irwin as viceroy. In April he left India, to be replaced by Lord Willingdon. Most recently governor general of Canada, Willingdon had previously served as governor of Bombay and of Madras. In both capacities, he had dealt with Gandhi the agitator, dealings which left him with a lasting hostility to the man.
Ten days after being sworn in as viceroy, Willingdon wrote to his sister complaining about his predecessor’s settlement with Gandhi. ‘Was it necessary?’ he asked. ‘Was it wise? Didn’t it place Gandhi in quite a wrong position as a plenipotentiary discussing terms of peace, instead of leaving him as he was, the leader of a very inconvenient political party? Have not our friends, the Princes, the Mohammedans, the Europeans and the Depressed Classes become very depressed as a consequence?’42
In the second week of May, Gandhi travelled to Simla to meet with government officials about violations of the settlement by revenue officials in Gujarat. He briefly met Willingdon, who wrote to his sister that ‘Gandhi is still an enigma. I think he will go to London but he refuses to give me any definite promise. He is a weird little man, attractive in a way but as cunning as can be, and always trying to get an advantage.’43
Gandhi’s arrival in Simla was the subject of a sensation-creating report in that often sensationalist newspaper, the Daily Mail of London. Entitled ‘Gandhi’s Effrontery: “State Entry” into Simla’, the report began: ‘Indians are highly elated at the “state” entry into Simla made yesterday by Gandhi, the fanatical Congress leader. It was a spectacle hitherto seen only in the case of a Viceroy, and one denied even to ruling Princes and members of the Executive Council.’
Owing to the narrowness of the Mall—the road leading
to the Viceregal Palace—no cars were allowed on it, except those of the viceroy, the governor of the Punjab, and the commander-in-chief of the Indian Army. The Daily Mail claimed that Gandhi refused to use a rickshaw, ‘so his motor-car was permitted to enter the forbidden territory, followed by three other cars containing his “suite”’.
This report led to a certain amount of alarm among the establishment in London. A question was asked in Parliament, and letters sent to the viceroy to explain what was being referred to in the press and official correspondence as ‘Gandhi’s motor-car incident’. Willingdon sent a long explanatory telegram, saying that it was ‘entirely untrue’ that Gandhi motored to the Viceregal Lodge to visit him. He had instead walked there and back, a distance of seven miles all told. However, on the day Gandhi arrived in Simla, since he had driven fifty miles from the plains, his car was allowed to proceed ‘along the Lower Indian Bazar one mile beyond the ordinary barrier, and then 100 yards on the Upper Mall Road to the house where he was staying. After that Mr. Gandhi never used a car in Simla.’ Willingdon added that in other cases too, the municipality had given special permission for Indians to use cars on parts of the Mall; most recently, the raja of Bilaspur was allowed to use four cars for his marriage procession. The viceroy thus hastened to assure His Majesty’s Government that, since Gandhi’s car had ridden on but a small portion of the Mall, British prestige and honour were entirely intact.44
Gandhi’s conversations in Simla were chiefly with the home secretary, H.W. Emerson. They were long but inconclusive. Emerson urged Gandhi to attend the Round Table Conference, suggesting that he go there not as his party’s sole spokesman but take along other senior leaders who could serve on the conference’s subcommittees. A larger delegation would be helpful, said Emerson, ‘since even a Mahatma could not be in three places at once’.45
Emerson and Gandhi got along well. Afterwards, the home secretary wrote to a colleague that Gandhi ‘has a keen sense of humour, and I found it useful, when we got on to a sticky patch, to have a comparatively frivolous diversion. He is very fair in seeing the other side of the case and is ready quietly to argue any point at issue. He is very sensitive to the personal touch, but does not mind and, in fact, rather welcomes plain speaking.’46
Meanwhile, Charlie Andrews wrote to Gandhi, hoping that he was coming to London for the Round Table Conference. Like the Government of India’s home secretary, Andrews felt Gandhi should have, at his side, ‘a small group of advisors or assessors’ to help him at the conference. He suggested he bring Madan Mohan Malaviya, Jawaharlal Nehru and M.A. Ansari to make the delegation more effective. As he put it: ‘All three are tried and trusted Congress representatives each differing from the other.’47 Others thought he should take Sarojini Naidu, whose charm and speaking skills would help win over the British public, which had lately come around to the view that women could vote and become MPs too.48 However, Gandhi was insistent that he alone would represent the Congress.
VIII
As always, politics could not be Gandhi’s sole preoccupation. In between meetings with proconsuls in Delhi and Simla, he wrote essays on two subjects that had long concerned him: the position of women, and the future of caste.
The first essay was written in response to press reports of a woman committing sati after her husband’s death. Gandhi, appalled at the act (which may have been coerced rather than voluntary), insisted that whatever its sanction in scripture or tradition, ‘self-immolation at the death of the husband is not a sign of enlightenment but of gross ignorance’. If she was truly devoted to her husband, a wife would not commit sati but instead dedicate her life to the fulfilment of her husband’s ideals ‘for his family and country’.
Gandhi thought the practice of sati reflected a fundamental asymmetry between husband and wife. As he pointed out: ‘If the wife has to prove her loyalty and undivided devotion to her husband so has the husband to prove his allegiance and devotion to his wife….Yet we have never heard of a husband mounting the funeral pyre of his deceased wife.’49
The second essay was in response to a letter from a student on how to overcome caste and communal distinctions. ‘I do not believe in caste in the modern sense,’ remarked Gandhi. ‘It is an excrescence and a handicap on progress. Nor do I believe in inequalities between human beings….Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. Thus caste, in so far it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil.’
That said, Gandhi continued to believe in varna insofar as it defined and marked ‘four universal occupations—imparting knowledge, defending the defenceless, carrying on agriculture and commerce and performing service through physical labour. These occupations are common to all mankind, but Hinduism, having recognized them as the law of our being, has made use of it in regulating social relations and conduct.’
This system, believed Gandhi, had been corrupted over the years, resulting in ‘unnecessary and harmful restrictions’ on inter-dining and intermarriage. But as Gandhi understood it, the ‘law of varna has nothing to do with these restrictions. People of different varnas may intermarry and interdine….[A] Brahmin who marries a Sudra girl or vice versa commits no offence against the law of varna.’
This was Gandhi’s first statement of support for inter-caste marriages, a considerable advance on his earlier position. However, he wasn’t prepared to go so far as to prescribe marriage between a Hindu and a Muslim. He saw ‘no moral objection to such unions’; yet, in the present atmosphere, he did not believe that ‘these unions can bring peace. They may follow peace. I see nothing but disaster following any attempt to advocate Hindu–Muslim unions so long as the relations between the two remain strained. That such unions may be happy in exceptional circumstances can be no reason for their general advocacy.’50
Gandhi’s adoption of a progressively radical position against caste distinctions was a consequence of his growing hold over his own community. In the decade and a half since he returned to India, he had steadily established himself as the most admired, the most influential, and the most respected Hindu. Across the country, many Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras now tended to follow his lead rather than that of priests or Sankaracharyas. On the other hand, the early promise of the Khilafat movement had been belied by later events. Gandhi was now confident of preaching the rules of righteous conduct to his fellow Hindus, but not, any more, to his compatriots who were Muslims.
IX
Writing in Young India in June 1931, Gandhi said that he was ‘eager for the sake of the good name of the Congress to proceed to London and deliver its message to the R.T.C. and the British statesmen, not excluding even Mr. Churchill’. However, a week later, in a private letter to a disciple, he wrote: ‘It is not at all certain whether I shall be going to England.’51
In early July, the maharaja of Bikaner offered to book Gandhi a first-class cabin on the ship he was himself travelling to London on, the S.S. Mooltan. The nawab of Bhopal had also been booked on the same ship.52 Gandhi declined the offer, in part because he knew the princes wished to flatter him before the conference, in part because he still wasn’t sure he was going. He had been receiving complaints from Congressmen in the United Provinces, the Punjab and Bengal, about how the government was not fulfilling its side of the pact. It was still arresting Congress workers, still harassing the peasantry.
In the third week of July, Gandhi went up to Simla again, where he met the home secretary, the home member and the viceroy. The discussions were about the settlement and its tardy implementation. Afterwards, when journalists asked whether he was going to attend the Round Table Conference, Gandhi answered that ‘there would be no certainty until he was on board the steamer’.53
For his part, Willingdon continued to harbour deep suspicions about Gandhi. Once more, he blamed his predecessor. For, by negotiating with Gandhi, Irwin had made ‘all future dealings extraordinarily difficult’. ‘My job,’ remarked Willingdon to
his sister, ‘has therefore been to get Gandhi back into his proper position as an ordinary and troublesome citizen under my administration. He on the other hand considers himself to be in an equal and parallel position with me…’54
On his return to Gujarat, Gandhi found the ‘state of things unbearable’. The villagers were ‘terror-struck’ by a coercive administration. He wired Emerson to press the viceroy to intervene, or else Gandhi would ‘regard [the] settlement and faith [as] broken freeing me for such action as may be necessary for [the] protection [of the] people’.55
On 29 July, Gandhi wrote to a Gujarati friend: ‘The chances of my going [to London] are 1 against 99.’56 Ten days later, he received a stiff letter from the Bombay government, refuting the charges of any breaches of the settlement in Gujarat. The next day, Gandhi wired the viceroy that their unyielding attitude made it ‘impossible’ for him to proceed to London. How, he asked, could the Bombay government presume to be ‘both prosecutor and judge’ in a dispute where they were themselves one of the parties?
On 13 August, the CWC met in Bombay. Afterwards, Gandhi told the press he was ‘very unhappy’ at being forced to call off this trip to London. ‘I know what effect this will have on Lord Irwin,’ he remarked, adding: ‘And I also know how disappointed my numerous friends in England will be.’ He had ‘been hoping against hope and expected to the last moment that justice would be done’ (by the government, to the terms of the settlement).57
On 14 August, Gandhi met B.R. Ambedkar in Bombay. This was the first meeting between the two men, one for more than a decade the most important political leader in India, the other, younger by twenty-two years, and seeking to represent his own, desperately disadvantaged community of so-called ‘untouchables’. Both men knew of each other, of course; Ambedkar had been inspired by Gandhian ideas during his ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ of 1927, which Gandhi had praised in the columns of Young India.
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