Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  Gandhi, we may recall, had written to President Roosevelt on 1 July 1942, arguing that the Allied claim to be fighting for freedom would be credible only if India was made free. Roosevelt sent a brief reply a month later, choosing his words very carefully. He said that the United States had ‘consistently striven for and supported policies of fair dealing’, and that, with other nations, they were now ‘making a supreme effort to defeat those who would deny forever all hope of freedom throughout the world’. Roosevelt told Gandhi that he hoped ‘our common interest in democracy and righteousness will enable your countrymen and mine to make common cause against a common enemy’.54

  Gandhi didn’t get to read Roosevelt’s letter, for by the time it reached India he was in jail, where all his correspondence was censored. The Quit India movement, meanwhile, had further soured relations between the nationalists and the Raj. Roosevelt now decided to send William Phillips out to India as his personal envoy. Phillips stayed for almost four months, touring the country and meeting Indian politicians of all stripes, many senior British officials (from the viceroy downwards) and several princes too.

  Phillips was extremely keen to visit Gandhi in prison. But, as he told President Roosevelt two weeks after he arrived, he wanted to wait a while before requesting permission to see him. For, ‘just now, my call upon him would raise speculation to fever heat without any compensating advantage’.55

  A month after Phillips arrived in India, Gandhi began his fast. The American observed that there was ‘widespread sympathy for Gandhi’ among Indians, even those who didn’t normally support the Congress. ‘The general feeling seems to be that “the grand old man” is being persecuted by our oppressors and therefore he has our entire sympathy and support.’

  When Gandhi was halfway through his fast, Phillips went to a large dinner given at the Imperial Hotel by Sir J.P. Srivastava, civil defence member of the viceroy’s executive council. The dinner was held in honour of the visiting British governor of the United Provinces. About one hundred people were present. Phillips was told that more than fifty guests had backed out because of the government’s intransigence towards the fasting Gandhi. However, noted Phillips, ‘Doctor Ambedkar, the Depressed Classes Member, ridiculed the whole excitement and insisted that there was nothing to it, that the Government could not possibly have taken any other course. He hates Gandhi because of the refusal to permit the Depressed Classes to have an electorate independent from the Hindus.’

  At the same time, continued Phillips, ‘my host [Sir J.P. Srivastava], however, took a different attitude. He said neither his wife nor his two daughters would come to the dinner because of their intense feeling against the Government, of which he was a member. He said that many families were thus divided and that the situation was terribly complicated. If Gandhi dies, he saw infinite trouble.’56

  Later, in a letter to President Roosevelt, his envoy to India wrote:

  It is difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand the deep-seated feelings which have been aroused by this performance of an old man of 73 years….That such a being is willing to sacrifice himself for the cause that every Indian has at heart, namely, the independence of India, has touched the people as a whole. While, of course, Gandhi’s methods in the past are not approved, probably by the majority, nevertheless his honesty of purpose is respected and Indians who have been violently against him have now joined the chorus of appeals on his behalf.

  The viceroy, wrote Phillips to Roosevelt, ‘has remained adamant’ in the face of many appeals to release Gandhi and restart negotiations with Indian leaders. Phillips thought Linlithgow ‘does not feel, I fear, the pathos in the appeal of these millions for freedom for their own country….Perhaps he is a “chip off the old block” that Americans knew something about in 1772.’

  In his next letter, sent ten days later, Phillips said that the ‘only result’ of Gandhi’s fast, now successfully completed, ‘has been increasing bitterness against the British from large sections of the public. The Government has handled the case from the legalist point of view. Gandhi is the “enemy” and at all cost British prestige must be maintained.’

  But, continued Phillips, ‘Indians look at it from a different angle. Gandhi followers regard him as semi-divine and worship him. Millions who are not his followers look upon him as the foremost Indian of the day and that since he has never had an opportunity to defend himself it is a case of persecution of an old man who has suffered much for the cause which every Indian has at heart—freedom for India. And so presumably Gandhi comes out of the struggle with an enhanced reputation as a moral force.’

  After spending two months speaking to a cross section of people, Phillips could clearly see that most Indians were now ‘caught in the new idea which is sweeping over the world, of freedom of oppressed peoples’. Yet, Churchill and Linlithgow were determined not to transfer any power to Indians. Phillips thought his fellow Americans should seek to break the deadlock. He proposed that a conference of all major Indian political parties and their representatives be convened under the blessings of the king-emperor, the U.S. President, and the President of the Soviet Union. The conference could be held in any city in India other than Delhi, and be ‘presided over by an American who could exercise influence in harmonizing the endless divisions of caste, religion, race and political views’. The British, for their part, should free Gandhi and other leaders to attend this conference.

  Phillips believed his proposal offered ‘a way out of the impasse, which if allowed to continue, may affect our conduct of the war in this part of the world and our future relations with colored races. It may not be successful, but, at least, America will have taken a step in furthering the ideals of the Atlantic Charter.’57

  Roosevelt himself had never visited India. While more sympathetic than Churchill to the rights of coloured people, for him too the demands of the war were more pressing than any other. Meanwhile, Phillips continued his travels around India. He met Ambedkar several times, noting: ‘He is always interesting but far from constructive.’ He also had long conversations with Jinnah, writing later: ‘Undoubtedly he has a brilliant mind. He is tall and slender and well dressed, and he looks far more like an Englishman than an Indian.’

  Jinnah, observed Phillips, ‘hates and distrusts Gandhi and firmly believes that the latter has no intention of helping to create a Coalition Government with Hindus and Muslims….He warned that the more support which was given to the Congress Party from abroad the more obstinate Gandhi would be in his demands.’ Jinnah spoke to the American diplomat ‘about his right to Pakistan, and said that the new Muslim State which, he insisted, would be a continuous block in the North representing forty million Muslims, would be able to take care of itself economically and financially’.58

  Phillips also went for a tiger shoot with the viceroy in the sal forests of Dehradun. He had tried several times to get permission to see Gandhi; now, amidst the campfires, he tried once more, and failed again. In a farewell press conference held in Delhi in the last week of April, Phillips remarked that in his extended tour of India, he had travelled extensively and met hundreds of people ‘from all walks of life and representing all types of opinion, occupation, and profession’. There remained, however, one significant omission. As he delicately put it: ‘I should have liked to meet and talk with Mr Gandhi. I requested the appropriate authorities for permission to do so and was informed that they were unable to grant the necessary facilities.’59

  William Phillips’ reservations about the viceroy were shared by some Englishmen too. The novelist and historian Edward Thompson wrote to a friend in April 1943 that ‘there is no hope whatever [of a resolution in India] until you get a new Viceroy. The present man is a humiliating combination of high-mindedness and arrogance.’60

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Death of Kasturba

  I

  As he recovered from the after-effects of the fast, Gandhi resumed his daily rout
ine, walking, writing, reading and spinning. He had been subscribing to the Muslim League’s newspaper, Dawn. He saw there that in a League meeting in Delhi, Jinnah had asked Gandhi to write directly to him if he was interested in a settlement.

  Early in May 1943, taking up the offer, Gandhi wrote to Jinnah to come meet him in prison. ‘Why should not,’ asked Gandhi, ‘both you and I approach the great question of communal unity as men determined on finding a common solution, and work together to make our solution acceptable to all who are concerned with it or are interested in it?’1

  The government did not forward the letter to Jinnah. As the viceroy wrote to the secretary of state for India, the ‘Congress at the moment are beaten and disheartened’, and thus ‘it would suit us best to preserve the status quo here until the war with Japan is won…’

  Word of the suppressed letter got around, forcing the government to issue a formal communiqué, saying they could not permit ‘political correspondence or contact to a person detained for promoting an illegal mass movement which he has not disavowed, and thus gravely embarrassing India’s war effort at a critical time’.2

  Jinnah himself called Gandhi’s invitation ‘meaningless’. He had hoped Gandhi would come to an agreement with the Muslim League on the basis of Pakistan, in which case ‘we were willing to bury the past and forget it’. He added: ‘This letter of Mr. Gandhi can only be construed as a move on his part to embroil the Muslim League to come into clash with the British Government solely for the purpose of helping his release so that he would be free to do what he pleases thereafter.’3

  Never short of self-confidence, Jinnah had even more reason to be pleased with himself at this time. The Congress’s absence from the political field had allowed the Muslim League free play. Their membership had continued to grow steadily, with many new recruits among college students and professionals. The League was now part of ruling governments in Punjab, Sindh, Assam and Bengal. The membership of the party, once in the mere thousands, was now close to two million.

  The appeal of the League rested in part on the image of its leader. Jinnah was seen by his followers as upright and incorruptible, and of a high intellectual calibre, so high that (unlike other Muslim leaders in the past, such as the Ali Brothers), he could not be taken for a ride by the crafty Congress bosses. The idea of a sovereign Muslim state was also greatly appealing to them. Thus, as one historian of this period observes, ‘the demand for Pakistan reminded Muslims of their past glory and opened before them vast and fascinating vistas of future greatness. It was this stimulant which put life and vigour into the Muslim League.’4

  Jinnah himself often placed this image of a future Muslim state before his followers. On 23 March 1943, he issued a statement reminding everyone, not just the Muslims, that on this day three years previously ‘was declared, at Lahore, for the first time authoritatively from the platform of the All-India Muslim League, the final goal of Muslim India, which later on came to be known as the “Pakistan scheme”’.

  The ‘progress that Mussalmans, as a nation, have made, during these three years,’ said Jinnah with noticeable (but also well-merited) satisfaction,

  is a remarkable fact. Never before in the history of the world has a nation rallied round a common platform and a common ideal in such a short time as the Muslims have done in this vast sub-continent. Never before has a nation, miscalled a minority, asserted itself so quickly, and so effectively. Never before has the mental outlook of a nation been unified so suddenly. Never before has the solidarity of millions of population been established and demonstrated in so limited a time and under such peculiar circumstances as are prevalent in India. Three years ago Pakistan was a resolution. To-day it is an article of faith, a matter of life and death with Muslim India.5

  II

  In the summer of 1943, Gandhi asked for and received a copy of the government report entitled Congress Responsibilities for the Disturbances, 1942–43. He spent several weeks poring over its contents, and then drafted a reply rebutting its contents. Replete with long quotations from his own writings (sourced by Pyarelal), this rebuttal runs to some ninety pages of Gandhi’s Collected Works. Contrary to the government’s claims and charges, Gandhi insisted that:

  He never had and never would countenance violence in any popular movement against colonial rule;

  He had consistently opposed Nazism and Fascism;

  He was by no means pro-Japanese, and had condemned their attacks on China;

  He was not at all anti-British, had many British friends and felt deep sympathy for the British people;

  He had always sought a compromise before deciding to launch a mass struggle.6

  This extraordinary letter showed the depths to which Gandhi had been wounded by the calumnies to his reputation. In fifty years in politics, he had often been abused and vilified, but usually by individuals, not by governments. That a British viceroy questioned his motives and his character so harshly was something he would not leave unchallenged.

  Gandhi’s hurt, extended response to the government’s charges also reveals the stress he was under. Physically, he had not yet recovered fully from his fast earlier in the year; emotionally, he had not yet recovered from the loss of Mahadev in August 1942. Age, ill health and mental weariness had made him far more prickly about criticism than he had perhaps ever been before.

  In September, Lord Linlithgow’s term as viceroy finally ended. He had served in the post longer than anyone else, not because of his inherent qualities or his suitability for the job, but because once the war broke out, continuity at the top was deemed important. In a farewell letter, Gandhi told him: ‘Of all the high functionaries I have had the honour of knowing, none has been the cause of such deep sorrow to me as you have been….I hope and pray that God will some day put it into your heart to realize that you, a representative of a great nation, had been led into a grievous error.’7

  III

  While Gandhi was in prison in Poona, on the other side of the subcontinent famine was looming. In their bid to stop a Japanese invasion, the British had destroyed thousands of country boats in Bengal. They did not want the enemy to get hold of them. However, these boats were traditionally used by the villagers of Bengal to buy and sell goods crucial for subsistence. Food and other essential commodities now became scarce. The government did not react, and people began to starve to death. Still there was no response. Rice was sequestered for the city of Calcutta (where large numbers of British and American troops were based) while the districts of the province were left without supplies. The famine got worse, and worse. Perhaps more than a million died in 1943 alone.8

  Meanwhile, the most prominent living Bengali, Subhas Bose, had joined the Japanese side in the war. After he was forced to resign from the Congress presidency in 1939, Bose formed a group called the Forward Bloc, which he saw as a left-wing vanguard of the Congress. Addressing a meeting in Madras in January 1940, Bose remarked that ‘to say that we must spin our way to swaraj or that spinning is the acid test of our fitness for swaraj is something too big to swallow’.9

  Bose hoped he would be able to rejoin the Congress Party, and tame the conservatives. This proved impossible. After a series of combative speeches excoriating the British, he was put under house arrest. In January 1941, he escaped, and made his way across Afghanistan to Germany. He made contact with Indian exiles, and sought an audience with Hitler. He had decided that, on the principle of ‘the enemy’s enemy is my friend’, he would seek the support of the Axis powers to deliver India from British rule.10

  Bose was in Germany through much of 1941 and 1942. But Hitler did not much care for India or Indian independence. His officials suspected that Bose had pro-Soviet sympathies. Disappointed, in February 1943, Bose left by sea for the East, hoping now to solicit the help of the Japanese for his cause.11

  Bose got a more sympathetic reception here. An Indian
Independence League had been set up by the Japanese; this was converted into an Indian National Army, with Subhas Bose placed in charge. This Azad Hind Fauj (to give it its Hindustani name) was largely composed of former soldiers of the British Indian Army, who had surrendered to the Japanese in Singapore and Malaya, and now hoped to free their country under Bose’s leadership.12

  There is a vast (and ever proliferating) literature on Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army (INA). I flag here only an important point obscured in the stirring tales of Bose’s disappearance from India, his controversial appeal to Hitler, his final concord with the Japanese, the battles his army fought—namely, that this rebel retained a deep attachment to the party in which he had cut his political teeth. Of the four brigades of the INA, three were named after Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad (the fourth was named, after he yielded to his sycophants, after Bose himself). These were all Bose’s old Congress comrades; besides, he knew of the enormous appeal their names carried within India. Like Gandhi and Nehru, Bose also remained a vigorous proponent of Hindu–Muslim harmony, and of equality for women. He even started a women’s regiment, this named after the nineteenth-century warrior-queen, the Rani of Jhansi. But on the question of non-violence he differed with Gandhi, and on the question of who were more evil, the Allies or the Axis, he differed with Nehru.13

  On 2 October 1943, Subhas Bose spoke over the radio from Bangkok. This, he reminded his Indian listeners, was the birthday ‘of their greatest leader, Mahatma Gandhi’. His address rehearsed Gandhi’s contributions; how, when he started his non-cooperation movement in 1920, ‘it appeared as if he had been sent by Providence to show the path to liberty. Immediately and spontaneously the whole nation rallied round his banner.’