Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  25. New Times, 8 April 1919, in ibid.

  26. See Progs Nos 284–300, April 1919, Home (Political-B), NAI.

  27. CWMG, XV, pp. 190–203.

  28. Testimony to Hunter Commission by J.P. Thompson, Chief Secretary of the Punjab, in V.N. Datta, editor, New Light on the Punjab Disturbances in 1919. Volume One (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1975), pp. 36–37.

  29. Disorders Inquiry Committee, 1919–1920: Report (Calcutta: Government of India, 1920), p. xxxiii.

  30. CWMG, XV, pp. 207–08; Desai, DTDG, II, p. 25.

  31. Progs Nos 514–15, May 1919, Home (Political-B), NAI.

  32. K.L. Gillion, ‘Gujarat in 1919’, in Kumar, ed. Essays in Gandhian Politics, pp. 136–38.

  33. Gandhi to PSV, 14 April 1919, CWMG, XV, pp. 218–20.

  34. CWMG, XV, pp. 220–24.

  35. Disorders Inquiry Committee, 1919–1920: Report, p. 19.

  36. Gandhi to Tagore, 5 April 1919; Tagore to Gandhi, 12 April 1919, CWMG, XV, pp. 179–80, 495–96.

  37. CWMG, XV, pp. 243–44, 265–66.

  38. IAR, 1920, Volume I, Part I, pp. 42–44.

  39. Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (Delhi: Rupa and Co., 2005), especially Chapter 16; Disorders Inquiry Committee, 1919–1920: Report, pp. 29–40; anon., ‘By a Voice from the Punjab’, YI, 9 June 1919. Cf. also the retrospective justification of the repression in the Punjab by the province’s Lieutenant Governor at the time—Michael O’Dwyer, India As I Knew It: 1885–1925 (London: Constable and Company, 1925), especially Chapter XVII.

  40. Mss Eur F 137/13, APAC/BL.

  41. Gandhi to J.L. Maffey, 16 May 1919, CWMG, XV, p. 311.

  42. CWMG, XV, pp. 354–62, 445–49.

  43. DTDG, 2, p. 40.

  44. CWMG, XV, pp. 399–400; XV, pp. 28–29.

  45. CWMG, XVI, pp. 3–4.

  46. Gandhi to M.A. Jinnah, 28 June 1919, CWMG, XV, pp. 398–99.

  47. Letter to Private Secretary to Governor of Bombay, 25 August 1919, CWMG, XVI, pp 60–62.

  48. See Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (first published in 1982; reprint New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  49. A copy of this petition was provided to me by the Gandhi scholar and collector E.S. Reddy.

  50. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, pp. 32–34.

  51. Abdul Bari to Gandhi, Lucknow, 27 April 1919, SN 6567, SAAA.

  52. See CWMG, XVI, pp. 90–91.

  53. CWMG, XVI, pp. 151–52.

  54. ‘Turkey’, Navajivan, 7 September 1919, CWMG, XVI, pp. 104–05.

  55. CWMG, XVI, pp. 226–27.

  56. George Lloyd to Lord Halifax, 1 November 1919, in Mss Eur B 158, APAC/BL.

  57. Preface to CWMG, XVI, p. ix, unsigned, but this assessment is most likely the work of C.N. Patel, the editor of the Gujarati section of the Collected Works.

  58. CWMG, XVI, pp. 221–22.

  59. CWMG, XVI, pp. 180–81.

  60. Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda (first published in 1961; reprint Calcutta: Ramakrishna Sarada Mission, 1992), p. 245.

  61. Saraladevi’s life and career (but not her relationship with Gandhi) are discussed in, among other works, Bharati Ray, Early Feminists of Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); Chitra Deb, Women of the Tagore Household, translated by Smita Chowdhry and Sona Roy (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2010); Sunil Gangopadhyay, First Light, translated from the Bengali by Aruna Chakravarti (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2001).

  62. CWMG, XVI, p. 316.

  63. This account of Gandhi’s visits to Lahore, Amritsar and other places in the Punjab is based on CWMG, XVI, pp. 283, 286–87, 296–97, etc.

  64. BC, 30 October 1919.

  65. Quoted in Richard Cashman, The Myth of the Lokmanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 205.

  66. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, p. 82.

  67. CWMG, XVI, pp. 363–67.

  68. GBI, p. 43.

  Chapter Five: The Personal and the Political

  1. CWMG, XVI, pp. 512–13, 516.

  2. Gandhi to Maganlal, c. 23 January 1920, CWMG, XVI, pp. 496–97.

  3. CWMG, XVI, p. 517.

  4. CWMG, XVII, pp. 29–33.

  5. CWMG, XVII, p. 56f.

  6. CWMG, XVII, pp. 53–54; Source Material, Vol. III, pp. 251–52.

  7. YI, 11 February 1920.

  8. ‘The Message of the Punjab’, YI, 24 March 1920.

  9. Saraladevi Chaudhurani, ‘What is an Ideal Gurukul’, YI, 12 May 1920; idem, ‘At the Point of the Spindle’, YI, 2 February 1921.

  10. CWMG, XVII, pp. 73–75.

  11. CWMG, XVII, pp. 75, 105–07.

  12. See Afzal Iqbal, editor, Select Writings and Speeches of Maulana Mohamed Ali (Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1944), pp. 165–73.

  13. See Minault, The Khilafat Movement, pp. 86–90.

  14. ‘Pledges Broken’, YI, 19 May 1920, CWMG, XVII, pp. 434–36.

  15. For more details, see Ian Bryant Well, Jinnah’s Early Politics: Ambassador of Hindu–Muslim Unity (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005), Chapter 5.

  16. C.F. Andrews to Gandhi, letters of 16 November 1919 and 8 September 1920, SN 6979 and SN 7245 respectively, SAAA (emphasis in the original).

  17. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism in India, pp. 211, 374.

  18. ‘Hindu–Muslim Unity’, N, 29 February 1920, CWMG, XVII, pp. 58–60.

  19. See Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Sub-Committee of the Indian National Congress (Bombay: Karnatak Printing Press, 1920), pp. 156–60.

  20. Disorders Inquiry Committee, 1919–1920: Report, pp. xl–xli.

  21. ‘How to Work Non-Co-operation’, YI, 5 May 1920, CWMG, XVII, pp. 389–92.

  22. CWMG, XVII, p. 71.

  23. ‘Uses of Khadi’, N, 25 April 1920, CWMG, XVII, p. 329.

  24. Bhatt, Motabehn, p. 40.

  25. Gandhi to Saraladevi, 30 April 1920, CWMG, XVII, pp. 358–59.

  26. Gandhi to Saraladevi, 1 May 1920, CWMG, XVII, pp. 365–66.

  27. Gandhi to Saraladevi, 2 May 1920, CWMG, XVII, pp. 374–76.

  28. Gandhi to Balwantrai Mehta, c. 2 September 1927, CWMG, XXXIV, pp. 439–40.

  29. Gandhi to Kallenbach, 10 August 1920, CWMG, XVIII, pp. 129–31.

  30. Rajagopalachari to Gandhi, 16 June 1920, in Gopalkrishna Gandhi, editor, My Dear Bapu (New Delhi: Penguin 2012), pp. 37–39.

  31. Progs No. 19 for July 1920, Home (Political-B), NAI.

  32. CWMG, XVII, pp. 502–04.

  33. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 4–7, 55–57.

  34. Reports in BC, 30 July 1920.

  35. BC, 2 August 1920, quoted in Ravinder Kumar, Essays in the Social History of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 248.

  36. BC, 2 August 1920; CWMG, XVIII, pp. 107–09.

  37. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 104–06.

  Chapter Six: Capturing the Congress

  1. ‘Mr. Montagu’s Threat’, YI, 1 August 1920, CWMG, XVIII, pp. 100–02.

  2. Chelmsford to Montagu, 4 August 1920, Mss Eur E 264/6, APAC /BL.

  3. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 143ff.

  4. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, pp. 123–24.

  5. Gandhi to C.F. Andrews, 23 August 1920, CWMG, XVIII, p. 190.

  6. ‘Madras Tour’, N, 29 August 1920, CWMG, XVIII, p. 210.

  7. DTDG, II, p. 217.

  8. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 191, 193–94.

  9. On the ambivalence of Bengal and Bengali politicians towards Gandhi, c. 1920, see J.H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-Century Bengal, pp. 147–51. Cf. also Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement
, 1876–1940 (Delhi: Manohar, 1979), Chapter 6.

  10. ABP, issues of 2, 3 and 4 September 1920.

  11. See Gopalkrishna Gandhi, A Frank Friendship, p. 75.

  12. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 230–31.

  13. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 245–49, 260.

  14. See J.H. Broomfield, ‘The Non-Cooperation Decision of 1920: A Crisis in Bengal Politics’, in Low, editor, Soundings in South Asian History.

  15. See IAR, 1920, Vol. I, pp. 130–31.

  16. Desai, DTDG, II, pp. 279–81; Mushirul Hasan, A Nationalist Conscience: M.A. Ansari, the Congress and the Raj (New Delhi: Manohar, 1987), p. 99.

  17. IAR, 1920, pp. 131–35.

  18. Mahadev Desai to Devadas Gandhi, 22 November 1920, SN 7351, SAAA.

  19. Gandhi to Muhammad Iqbal, c. 27 November 1920, CWMG, XIX, p. 34.

  20. Muhammad Iqbal to Gandhi, 29 November 1920, SN 7361, SAAA.

  21. CWMG, XVIII, pp. 373–77.

  22. Letter by H.A. Popley and G.E. Phillips, printed in YI, 1 December 1920.

  23. YI, 12 January 1921.

  24. Undated letter, c. November–December 1920, SN 7425, in SAAA.

  25. S. O’Brien to Gandhi, Cannanore, Malabar, 1 January 1921, SN 7427, SAAA.

  26. CWMG, XVII, p. 471.

  27. CWMG, XIX, pp. 7–9, 73.

  28. Quoted in V.B. Kulkarni, M.R. Jayakar (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1976), pp. 84–85.

  29. ‘The Caste System’, YI, 8 December 1920, CWMG, XIX, pp. 83–85.

  30. C.B. Dalal, Gandhi: 1915–1948: A Detailed Chronology (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1971).

  31. Cf. History of Indian Railways (Delhi: Government Press, 1964).

  32. DTDG, III, p. 135.

  33. See Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography: Volume One: 1889–1947 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1976), Chapter 4.

  34. As stated in Chapter 5, the bulk of Sarala’s letters to Gandhi was destroyed after his death by the latter’s family. But we do not know—how or why—these letters of October 1920 survived the bonfire, and now rest in the archives of the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad.

  35. Saraladevi to Gandhi, 10 October 1920, SN 9876, SAAA.

  36. Saraladevi to Gandhi, 14 October 1920, SN 9877, SAAA.

  37. Saraladevi to Gandhi, 16 October 1920, SN 9878, SAAA.

  38. Saraladevi to Gandhi, 22 October 1920, SN 9889, SAAA.

  39. CWMG, XIX, p. 93.

  40. DTDG, III, p. 178.

  41. Tagore to Andrews, 18 September 1920, in Rabindranath Tagore, Letters from Abroad (Madras: S. Ganesan, 1924), pp. 20–21.

  42. CWMG, XIX, pp. 137–38.

  43. Gandhi to Rajagopalachari, 24 August 1924, CWMG, XXV, p. 137.

  44. Report in BC, 22 December 1920.

  45. CWMG, XIX, pp. 147–54.

  46. CWMG, XIX, p. 159.

  47. See File 13 of 1920, AICC Papers, 1st Instalment, NMML.

  48. CWMG, XIX, pp. 185–87.

  49. IAR, 1921, Part II, p. 144.

  50. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, The History of the Indian National Congress (1885–1935) (Madras: Congress Working Committee, 1936), pp. 348–49.

  51. See S.S. Pirzada, editor, The Collected Works of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Volume 1 (1906–1921) (Karachi: East and West Publishing Company, 1984), pp. 402–06.

  52. Viceroy to Secretary of State, 5 January 1921, in Mss Eur E 264/6, APAC/BL.

  Chapter Seven: The Rise and Fall of Non-Cooperation

  1. Gopal Krishna, ‘The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, 1918–1923’, Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 25, Number 3, May 1966.

  2. Ibid., p. 425.

  3. CWMG, XIX, pp. 288–90 (emphasis in the original).

  4. Desai, DTDG, III, pp. 254–55.

  5. GBI, pp. 143–44.

  6. ‘The National Flag’, YI, 13 April 1921, CWMG, XIX, pp. 561–62. See also Arundhati Virmani, A National Flag for India: Rituals, Nationalism and the Politics of Sentiment (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008).

  7. Speech in Marehra, Etah district, 13 May 1921, in File 111 of 1921, Home (Political), NAI.

  8. Speech in Jhansi, 20 November 1920, in ibid.

  9. R.A. Graham of the Madras Government to S.P. Donnell of the Government of India, 18 April 1921, in File 241/1A of 1921, Home (Political), NAI.

  10. Quoted in P.C. Bamford, Histories of the Non-Co-operation and Khilafat Movements (Delhi: Government of India Press, 1925), p. 54.

  11. Speech in Broach, 1 June 1921, translated in File 11 of 1921, Home (Political), NAI.

  12. See M. Naeem Qureshi, ‘The “Ulama” of British India and the Hirat of 1920’, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 3, Number 1, 1979.

  13. See Minault, The Khilafat Movement, p. 131.

  14. Quoted in Trial of Gandhiji (Ahmedabad: High Court of Gujarat, 1965), p. xiv.

  15. Minault, The Khilafat Movement, pp. 142–45.

  16. CWMG, XIX, pp. 277–78.

  17. Gandhi to Lala Lajpat Rai, c. 30 June 1921, CWMG, XIX, p. 300.

  18. CWMG, XIX, pp. 4659–771.

  19. CWMG, XX, p. 286.

  20. Source Material, Volume III, Part I, pp. 415–17.

  21. See File No. 5, AICC Papers, First Instalment, NMML.

  22. CWMG, XX, pp. 454–55, 472.

  23. Bamford, Histories of the Non-Co-operation and Khilafat Movements, pp. 100–09.

  24. Cf. Sumit Sarkar, ‘Popular’ Movements and ‘Middle Class’ Leadership in Late Colonial India (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1983); Majid H. Siddiqi, Agrarian Unrest in North India: The United Provinces, 1918–22 (New Delhi: Vikas, 1978); Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).

  25. ‘Ethics of Destruction’, YI, 1 September 1921, CWMG, XXI, pp. 41–44.

  26. Young India, 27 April 1921, CWMG, XX, pp. 42–43.

  27. Letters from Abroad, pp. 123–24.

  28. ‘English Learning’, YI, 1 July 1921, CWMG, XX, pp. 158–59.

  29. These remarks by Tagore are quoted in L.K. Elmhirst, Poet and Plowman (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati, 1975), pp. 20–22.

  30. Tagore, ‘The Call of Truth’, Modern Review, October 1921, reprinted in R.K. Prabhu and Ravindra Kelekar, editors, Truth Called Them Differently: Tagore–Gandhi Controversy (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1961), p. 72f.

  31. Gandhi, ‘The Great Sentinel’, YI, 13 October 1921, CWMG. The reader interested in a fuller account of the Tagore–Gandhi debate should read Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, editor, The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and Tagore (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1997).

  32. ‘The Inner Meaning of Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-co-operation’, YI, 22 September 1920.

  33. Dwijendranath Tagore to Gandhi, 1 September 1921, marked ‘Most Private and Confidential’, SN 7607, SAAA.

  34. P.C. Ray to Gandhi, 5 October 1921, SN 7634, SAAA.

  35. See File No. 188/IV of 1922, Home (Political), NAI.

  36. Shaukat Ali to Gandhi, 11 September 1921, SN 7611, SAAA.

  37. See D.A. Low, ‘The Government of India and the first non-co-operation movement, 1920–2’, in Kumar, ed., Essays in Gandhian Politics, pp. 305–07.

  38. ‘My Loin-Cloth’, published in N, 2 October 1921, and in English in The Hindu, 15 October 1921, CWMG, XVIII, pp. 225–26.

  39. Conrad Wood, The Moplah Rebellion and Its Genesis (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1987), Chapter 5.

  40. Quoted in Wood, The Moplah Rebellion, p. 225.

  41. CWMG, XXI, pp. 116–18, 120–21.

  42. CWMG, XXI, pp. 232–33.

  43. Gandhi to Mahadev Desai, 31 October 1921, CWMG, XX, p. 375.

  44. CWMG, XX, p. 350f.

  45. CWMG, XXI, pp. 462–64, 481.


  46. ‘The Moral Issue’, YI, 24 November 1921; ‘Rights of Minorities’, YI, 1 December 1921, CWMG, XXI, pp. 484, 501–02.

  47. Abul Kalam Azad to Gandhi, Calcutta, 6 December 1921, SN 7692, SAAA.

  48. ‘One Year’s Time Limit’, N, 11 December 1921, CWMG, XXI, pp. 557–58.

  49. CWMG, XXII, p. 15.

  50. See clipping from the Pioneer, 15 March 1922, in File 489 of 1922, Home (Political), NAI.

  51. CWMG, XXII, pp. 94–101, 166–68.

  52. CWMG, XXII, pp. 191–92.

  53. Governor of Bombay to Viceroy, 4 January 1922; Note by S.P. O’Donnell, 6 January 1922, both in File 489 of 1922, Home (Political), NAI.

  54. CWMG, XXII, p. 271.

  55. CWMG, XXII, pp. 287–98.

  56. Gandhi to Viceroy, dated Bardoli, 1 February 1922, CWMG, XXII, pp. 302–05.

  57. CWMG, XXII, pp. 512–14.

  58. CWMG, XXII, pp. 344–50.

  59. See Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922–1992 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 14–17.

  60. CWMG, XXII, pp. 350–51.

  61. CWMG, XXII, p. 377.

  62. CWMG, XXII, pp. 377–80.

  63. Gandhi to Devadas Gandhi, 12 February 1922, CWMG, XXII, p. 397.

  64. See Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, 19 February 1922, CWMG, XXII, p. 435.

  65. See ‘The Crime of Chauri Chaura’, YI, 16 February; ‘Shaking the Manes’, YI, 23 February 1923, CWMG, XXII, pp. 415–17, 457–58, etc.

  66. These paragraphs on the Government of India’s prolonged discussion on whether to arrest Gandhi are based on the correspondence in File No. 489 of 1922, Home (Political), NAI.

  67. CWMG, XXIII, pp. 84–85.

  68. Source Material, Volume III, Part I, pp. 465–66.

  69. This account is based on a pamphlet called The Historic Trial of Mahatma Gandhi, printed at the International Printing Works, Karachi, and reproduced in Source Material, Volume III, Part I, pp. 657–66.

  70. Francis Watson, The Trial of Mr. Gandhi (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 61–62.

  Chapter Eight: The Mahatma from Above and Below

  1. Bamford, Histories of the Non-Co-operation and Khilafat Movements, p. xiii.