Irwin also hesitated because he was uncertain of moderate opinion. Ten days before the march began, he wrote that “Gandhi and co. must soon show their hand and try some of their folly in action. When they do, the trouble will, I fancy, begin,” and he then wonders “how many of our moderate friends will have the courage to stand up, publicly against extreme courses that in private they vigorously condemn.”133 Irwin was right to be concerned about the response of his “moderate friends,” for their reaction to the impending struggle was predictably ambivalent. The nature of this feeling may be seen in the press reaction to Gandhi’s letter to Irwin.
The Times of India and The Pioneer both attacked Gandhi’s letter strongly, but both also carried its full text and devoted editorials exclusively to it.134 The impact of its style was felt especially, though, among moderates. The Leader, more than most newspapers, was representative of this reaction. At first The Leader was dubious, in an editorial on the letter, about the wisdom of Gandhi’s policy. However, it offered a full report on the debate over the letter in the Legislative Assembly. Sir Hari Singh Gour argued in this debate that the projected satyagraha could not be effective and would probably degenerate into violence. But Maulvi Mohamad Yakub responded that the letter “placed Lord Irwin in a very difficult position. It has been couched in a friendly tone and written in the form of a friendly letter with … a deep touch of sincerity.”
Another member, Mian Abdul Haye, said that he most often disagreed with Gandhi, but now he could not say that his action was wrong. “Though today I feel Mahatma Gandhi and his company are taking a leap in the dark, many a time the suspicion comes over me that they are in the right and we on the other side are in the wrong.”135 Then, in a long editorial commenting on this Assembly debate, The Leader observed that Mian Abdul Haye’s remark was representative of the feelings of many moderates: “There are many others beside him in the legislatures and outside, who do not belong to the Congress, who feel similarly. This section which is unable to make up its mind is likely to take a swing to the left if the Government does not act with severe self-restraint….” The debate in the Assembly, therefore, “demonstrates how morally weak the position of the Government has become and it can easily be made worse by an unnecessary show of strength or by making a fetish of law and order.”136
Two days later, as Gandhi began the march, The Leader moved a step closer to him. In an incisive editorial entitled “The Fateful Letter and After,” The Leader indicated that it had reconsidered its lukewarm support of Government policy. The piece began with an appropriate quotation attributed to Lord Morley (then Secretary of State for India), writing to Minto (his Viceroy) in May, 1907: “It is an old and painful story. Shortcomings in government lead to outbreaks; outbreaks have to be put down; reformers have to bear the blame, and their reforms are scotched; reaction triumphs; and mischief goes on as before, only worse…not only amongst sedition-mongers, but also amongst your law-and-order people, who are responsible for at least as many of the fooleries in history as revolutionists are.” The editorial then praised the tone of Gandhi’s letter and deplored the Government’s stupidity in arresting Sardar Patel. Commenting on the inspiring nature of Gandhi’s appeal, it concluded that “Mr. Gandhi is in truth a Mahatma by reason of his moral and spiritual greatness, his soul force … a leader and teacher of unique authority.”137
When Irwin turned from the press to the advice of his Provincial Governors, he found there, too, sentiments on Gandhi that were far from unanimous on any one policy directive. In February, Sir Stanley Jackson, Governor of Bengal, worried that “Civil disobedience must be a very difficult matter to deal with. It is such a direct challenge to authority, and if authority does not assert itself, it will possibly be brought into contempt with dire consequences…but I do not think it will last long if the investigators are dealt with firmly.”138 Sir Hugh Stephenson, Governor of Bihar and Orissa, implied that Gandhi’s arrest seemed predictable, while Sir Charles Innes, Governor of Burma, urged tough action on the eve of the march: “…it seems important to strike hard and quick at the leaders and so to disorganize the whole movement.”139 During the first week of the march, however, Irwin received from other Governors more restrained advice. Sir Geoffrey de Montgomery, Governor of the Punjab, advocated letting Gandhi get to his destination, where he would then make salt and the Government could confiscate it. But arrest was unnecessary. Gandhi, he felt, was “dreadfully anxious to get arrested” and if he were imprisoned, it would only give “a sign for whipping up further activity.”140
At the same time, Sir George Stanley, Governor of Madras, suggested a wait and see posture, allowing only that “arrests may ultimately be necessary.” And before the end of March, a humorous response came from Sir Laurie Hammond, Governor of Assam, who advised that “the best thing to do with Mr. Gandhi (and his followers) is to allow them to manufacture salt and then confiscate it and tell him to increase his output.”141
But the Governor on the hot spot, Frederick Sykes, was not taking the situation lightly, and Irwin attended closely to his cables. As the campaign intensified in Bombay Province, Sykes in some desperation requested Irwin to meet with him in Delhi to discuss options. They met on March 26 and 27 and were joined by Irwin’s trusted advisers, Sir James Crerar and H. G. Haig, the former Home Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council and the latter Home Secretary of the Government of India. It was a somber meeting that began with discussion of Sykes’s long “Draft Note.” Sykes said that although Gandhi had not yet reached the coast, “the excitement has been great, and the crowds large, even allowing for the importation of a large outside element.” In the first ten days of the march, at least 74 village government officers (patels) had already resigned, many more resignations had been threatened, and these were only in the areas that Gandhi had so far reached. “Boycott of Government servants” had begun and Gandhi threatened to expand the tax resistance to include land revenue. Even now, in Surat, collection of the latter was difficult. All this showed, Sykes concluded, that the salt march was surely not the “fiasco” that the Government had predicted.142
Extraordinary measures were being taken to undermine the march’s objectives.143 Sykes outlined for Irwin and the others several options open to the Government, ranging from arrest and long imprisonment for Gandhi, to indifference toward the whole campaign. Above all, Sykes stressed to them there was an urgent need for a firm statement of Government intentions, and “in the absence of a clear understanding of Government policy” Sykes was convinced that Gandhi’s action would soon undermine all British authority in Bombay.
So these four earnest men deliberated, searching for a solution that would do credit to their empire: for decisions that history may later regard as evidence that they wielded power wisely.
O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.144
What leaps from these records of their deliberations is not the sort of wisdom that history finds remarkable, but profound ambivalence and indecision. Sykes yearns for a single stroke of policy that will relieve him from the growing furor, yet he repeatedly acknowledges the undeniable risks of arresting Gandhi. Will an arrest trigger a mass uprising? Uncontrollable violence? Or another fast in prison by the incorrigible Mahatma? All four men recognize the inconsistency of a policy that permits the arrests of other leaders, like Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru, but leaves Gandhi untouched. And what is to be done about the women resisters? On the one hand, they are increasing in unprecedented numbers. On the other hand, government policy must be “that in no case should women volunteers be handled or searched for salt; different arrangements [are] necessary in their case.”145
The British would never resolve this dilemma of how to handle female satyagrahis but it would be only one of their many problems. The discussion inevitably focused on their lasting preoccupation of how to deal with Gandhi. The Viceroy must decide on whether to arrest the Mahatma. With all
the intelligence and insight that has since earned him the reputation as “that most sensitive of Tory Viceroys”146 Irwin pondered the question. At the end of March, he made his determination—to wait awhile longer. He recognized the urgency of the situation and proclaimed the Government’s firm intention was that “the law shall not be openly flouted.” But his preference was to postpone Gandhi’s arrest until the Legislative Assembly had concluded its session, after which “there would be no objection to arrest him at any time.” Irwin then sent Sykes away with rather cryptic instructions: notify him immediately if the situation worsens, but don’t arrest Gandhi until he has reached Dandi. In sum, Irwin declared that “the policy in general was not to have more prosecutions than could be helped, but that the situation must in no case be allowed to deteriorate.”147 Shortly after, Sykes returned to Bombay and in an increasingly desperate state wired to Irwin that Gandhi was fast undermining his authority and “he cannot be left at liberty much longer.”148
In her careful study of this civil disobedience movement, Judith Brown incisively summarizes the Government’s dilemma: “If it arrested him [Gandhi] it risked massive public outcry; if it let him remain free it appeared to be frightened of his power and unwilling to back its own supporters.”149 Irwin thus hesitated and would continue in a state of patent ambivalence for almost a month longer. Trying to rationalize his position to Sir George Stanley, he wrote on April 14:
I am sure that the right policy is to jump on the leaders as quick as possible when you have got decent ground for doing so. I am conscious that our action in not arresting Gandhi is very illogical, but I have little doubt that up to now it has helped us and embarrassed the other side. But we must constantly be on guard against the legend to establish itself that we are afraid of him, or that he is unarrestable.150
In his letters to friends abroad, too, Irwin repeatedly seeks to justify his reluctance to arrest Gandhi.151 In these letters, he occasionally suggests one factor that may have been at the heart of his ambivalence: his perception of Gandhi as a genuine man of God. Irwin was himself devoutly religious and he remarks on Gandhi’s reputation of saintliness.152 Thus, he writes late in April to Sir Samuel Hoare that it has been right not to arrest Gandhi because “Indian opinion distinguished pretty clearly between him, whom they regard as more of a saint than a politician, and others who are more politicians than saints.”153 Had Irwin too in some part of himself come to share this view? In several letters to friends and relatives, he repeats an observation made by a District Magistrate in Ahmedabad which noted the “religious character of Gandhi’s movement in popular estimation,” and especially how freely the New Testament is drawn on by Gandhians producing an increased sale of Bibles in Ahmedabad.154 To his father, he tried to explain himself most directly:
I am anxious to avoid arresting Gandhi if I can do so without letting a ‘Gandhi Legend’ establish itself that we are afraid to lay hands on him. This we clearly cannot afford. But at present there are no signs of that idea obtaining currency. Apart from this, there is the undoubted fact that he is generally regarded as a great religious leader rather than a politician and that his arrest, while it will certainly not make the world fall in half, would yet offend the sentiment of many who disagree with him and his policy…
I saw a letter a day or two ago from the head Government officer in Ahmedabad in which he said that it ought to be recognized that there was a gulf in public estimation separating Gandhi from any of the others concerned and emphasizing how the whole of Gandhi’s march had been enveloped in a religious atmosphere. According to him, educated Hindus speaking about it drew analogies of, and supported them by quotations from, the New Testament, and this interest had the quaint result of increasing the sale of Bibles in Ahmedabad higher than ever before. A curious side coincidence, isn’t it?155
Yet Irwin knew that it was not coincidental at all. Direct comparisons of Gandhi with Christ had become a leitmotif of popular commentary on the Indian movement, both in Britain and the United States.156 In November 1929, for example, Fenner Brockway, British Labour M.P., wrote in a publication that was distributed in both London and India that Gandhi, “in living out his creed personally…has probably succeeded in doing so more completely than any man since the time of Christ.”157 Such was the image of Gandhi known around the world by 1930 and Irwin was probably sensitive to its implications.
Irwin’s ambivalence over Gandhi was finally resolved, it seems, by Sykes’s increasing alarm and Sir Malcolm Hailey’s intervention. Hailey, Governor of the United Provinces, was perhaps the most trusted adviser in the small group that Irwin liked to call his “wise men.” Hailey had himself been ambivalent on the question of Gandhi’s arrest, offering, as he later recalled, “a compromise of differing views.” Generally, however, Hailey supported Irwin’s reluctance to arrest him, and Irwin frequently cited Hailey’s support in his correspondence home. But on April 25, with the unrest increasing rapidly, Hailey finally came down hard for Gandhi’s arrest, and in a long letter to Irwin advised that they had already waited too long and should act speedily now.158 It appears that this removed Irwin’s ambivalence, and he soon wired a relieved Sykes to prepare conditions for the arrest. Irwin’s perception of Gandhi, however, as a religious figure was to return in force, and the Gandhi-Irwin talks a year later were to be marked by the unusual relationship that emerged between these two leaders.159
This account of the government’s response to the salt march illustrates the sort of ambivalence that Gandhi often managed to create among his adversaries. This ambivalence could occur in very different political and social contexts. Most often, as in the instance of the salt march, the target of his satyagrahas was the British Raj, whose determination to enforce law and order was thrown off balance by the moral thrust of Gandhi’s leadership. The peculiar moral force and religious aura of Gandhi’s example prompted Irwin to pause and to reflect deeply on his government’s purpose, creating an ambivalence in the ruling authority that proved utterly indispensable for the rapid acceleration of the satyagraha movement that followed.
But the British Government’s attitude of ambivalance toward Gandhi was fostered not only by Irwin. In London, Wedgwood Benn, who had become Secretary of State for India in 1929, now expressed the position of the Cabinet on the question of Gandhi’s arrest. He was as reluctant to arrest Gandhi as his Viceroy. On the day before the march began, Wedgwood Benn cabled to Irwin that the Government “above all” must not be embarrassed by “a lengthy trial with all its opportunities for propaganda,” nor should action against Gandhi appear as “vindictive.”160 As the movement gathered momentum, Wedgwood Benn became increasingly disinclined to arrest Gandhi, because “if Gandhi is arrested and disorder followed, it would become merged in the terrorist organization and thereby strengthen it.” Then he added significantly that if terrorism should so succeed, at least “it will be a straight fight with the revolver people, which is a much simpler and much more satisfactory job to undertake.”161 The concession is revealing. A “straight fight” meant meeting violence with violence; a “simpler” and “more satisfactory” policy not only because of Government’s superior physical force, but also because terrorism, unlike satyagraha, could make no appeal to conscience. British colonial authorities shared this trait throughout their Empire: they evidenced no qualms of guilt in their ruthless execution of terrorists.
Nor was confusion over how to handle the Mahatma confined to high officials. The remarkable memoir of John Court Curry, an English police officer serving in Bombay during Gandhi’s campaigns, conveys the extreme emotional distress that British police could experience when dealing with the civil disobedience movement. Curry interviewed Gandhi after his arrest in 1919 and recounts the exchange in detail, recalling the precise effect on him of Gandhi’s words and behavior. He concludes:
He impressed us by his quick, agile and gentle mind, his ready understanding and his great charm of manner. I have always regretted that no opportunity for close personal contact
with him came my way after the interview about the Rowlatt Act which I have here described. I am convinced that so far from deserving the adulation which he has received as a Mahatma he has done great harm to the Indian people. The strange mentality which I have here attempted to describe encouraged inherent tendencies of an unhealthy nature just at the time when they required a sane and virile outlook.
Eleven years later, Curry was confronted by mass civil disobedience. When the full force of the salt satyagraha hit, there are many accounts of how civil resisters felt but little is known of police sentiments, so it is impossible to gauge what sort of reaction may be representative. However, Curry’s response suggests the ambivalence and confusion that could occur among those charged with direct enforcement of the law. He described his distress in 1930:
From the beginning I had strongly disliked the necessity of dispersing these non-violent crowds and although the injuries inflicted on the lawbreakers were almost invariably very slight the idea of using force against such men was very different from the more cogent need for using it against violent rioters who were endangering other men’s lives. At the same time I realized that the law-breakers could not be allowed to continue their deliberate misbehavior without any action by the police. As time went on I found to my dismay that my intense dislike of the whole procedure grew to such an extent that on every occasion when the Congress staged a large demonstration I felt a severe physical nausea which prevented me from taking food until the crisis was over. I knew on each occasion that the crisis would be over in a matter of hours and that the crowd would disperse or be dispersed and the leaders would call off the demonstration. I was at a loss to understand why I should be physically affected by it. I remembered that I had had no such feelings on occasions of serious rioting in Bombay or in my earlier pursuits of frontier raiders. I thought then, and I still think, that I was largely influenced by the feeling that whatever we did the result was to the advantage of the Congress policy and that the policy of our Government in dealing with it was wrong.
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