About 90,000 Indians were arrested for defying laws during the 1930 movement. Except in the Frontier province, the proportion of Muslims courting arrest was, however, small, and Sikhs too seemed to stay away from the fight. Nonetheless ‘unlawful’ salt was collected, moved, sold or bought all across India, foreign cloth was boycotted, and previously bought foreign cloth set aflame. Import of cotton piece-goods came down by 75 per cent, khadi sales rose by 60 per cent and liquor sales were curbed by an expanding corps of picketing women.
Despite Gandhi’s injunctions, violence from the Indian side occurred in Karachi (where two Congress volunteers died of injuries sustained while restraining a mob), in Calcutta, in Peshawar and in Chittagong in eastern Bengal, where an armed band raided the police armoury, killed guards and ran off with weapons and ammunition.
But these incidents were eclipsed by the scale of India’s nonviolent assault in 1930. Referring to it the following year, Churchill charged that the Indians had ‘inflicted such humiliation and defiance as has not been known since the British first trod the soil of India’.39 Another old Harrovian, Jawaharlal, would write in his autobiography that he ‘felt a little abashed and ashamed for having questioned the efficacy of this method when it was first proposed by Gandhiji’.40 Writing, one prisoner to another, to Gandhi, Nehru said (28 July 1930):
May I congratulate you on the new India you have created by your magic touch! What the future will bring I know not but the past has made life worth living and our prosaic existence has developed something of epic greatness in it.41
Land revenue withheld. When, on 19 March, the marchers had passed through the village of Ras, where Vallabhbhai was arrested, Patidar farmers told Gandhi that they would not pay land tax. Having precipitated Patel’s arrest, they would atone by undertaking a defiance their hero had desired.
Times had changed, Gandhi warned. The 1928 Bardoli stir in Surat district was for removing an economic grievance. Now, in a struggle as different ‘as the earth is from the sky’, they were talking of ‘removing a government’. The Raj would be at its harshest.
But the men of Ras, confident of sanctuary and support from kinsfolk in Sisva and Jharola, adjacent Baroda-state villages outside the Raj’s direct control, and confident too that fellow-farmers would not buy forfeited lands, would not be budged. Though he wrote in Navajivan that Ras’s farmers were ‘attempting the impossible’, Gandhi did not obstruct them.42
Ras lay in Keda district’s Borsad taluka. Thirteen other villages of the taluka joined Ras in the defiance over land revenue. After Gandhi’s arrest, Bardoli also decided to withhold the land tax, and at the end of May Kheda’s Patidar peasants (many with relatives in Baroda villages) said they would extend the defiance to the whole district.
Determined to punish the rebels, Alfred Master advanced the date for collecting revenue, frustrating the farmers’ plan to sell standing crops and remove proceeds to Baroda. He also gave free rein to the mamlatdar of Borsad taluka, Mohanlal Shah, who offered to crush the resistance by thrashing and jailing Congressmen, and by encouraging the area’s Baraiyas and Patanvadiyas, poorer peasants whose forebears had lost lands through indebtedness to Patels, to buy the lands the Patels were forfeiting.
Patanvadiyas loyal to Ravishankar Vyas, who had worked in the area, refused to take Patidar lands even if offered free, but others were willing, and the Master-Shah tactics, backed at times by the looting and burning of Patidar homes, were effective. Hundreds of families lost lands, and thousands of Patidars left Kheda for Baroda villages, as did many peasants from Surat and Bharuch districts: in February 1931 Baroda officials would count some 28,000 hijratis or migrants. They were paying a high price, but the men of Ras, and others like them in southern Gujarat, seemed unrepentant.
THE PRISONER
Gandhi did not know for how long he would be incarcerated, for Regulation 25 of 1827, last used a quarter-century earlier, allowed the government to detain a person indefinitely. Kalelkar was his cellmate in Yeravda Central Jail but Gandhi was not allowed to meet any of the politicals kept there, who included Vallabhbhai, Sarojini Naidu and Jairamdas Daulatram of Sindh.
Kalelkar would later write that a prison cook overcame a limp thanks to Gandhi’s prescriptions, and that Gandhi made friends with—and gave Gujarati lessons to—the Irish jailor, Patrick Quinn. Evidently, Quinn carried in his shirt pocket a two-line note written by Gandhi: ‘Be kind to prisoners. If provoked, swallow your anger.’43
Enjoying Kalelkar’s company and the time to spin, Gandhi improved the quality and quantity of his yarn. And a sewing machine sent by a Poona-based friend, Lady Premlila Thackersey, enabled him to improve the tailoring he had learned in South Africa.
Letters. Allowed to write as many non-political letters as he wished, Gandhi wrote sixty to eighty every week: to children in the ashram, Dandi marchers, family members, associates, friends. After inspection and delays, the letters were sent in a bunch to the ashram and forwarded from there by the new manager, Narandas Gandhi (Maganlal’s brother). Many were replies to letters that Gandhi was allowed to receive. He liked getting them, and complained good-humouredly if some did not write.
In his earliest letters he gave ‘Yeravda’ as his address. This was soon changed to ‘Yeravda Palace’ and then, a few letters later, to ‘Yeravda Mandir’ (Yeravda Temple). Often he dealt with questions raised in the ashram, or of diet or health. An unfertilized egg, he wrote, was more ‘vegetarian’ than milk.44 Advice was frequently spelt out, but the letters also contained love, appreciation, imagination, gratefulness, faith, reflection, humour, or concern.
To Mira (Miss Slade), who had packed and sent Gandhi’s spinning wheel, who loved Gandhi and was loved by him, 12 May: Yours is the first letter I take up to write from the jail and that on the silence day. I have been quite happy and have been making up for arrears of rest. The nights here are cool and as I am permitted to sleep right under the sky, I have refreshing sleep… It was a great treat to receive the wheel so thoughtfully sent and with things so carefully packed in it (49: 274).
To ‘Birds’, the ashram children, 12 May, from ‘Yeravda Palace’: Birds are real birds when they can fly without wings. With wings any creature can fly. If you, who have no wings, can fly, you will feel no fear at all… See, I have no wings and still I fly every day and come to you… There is Vimla, and here are Hari, Manu and Dharmakumar. You also can fly with your minds and feel that you are with me (49: 279).
To Kasturba, 12 May: How good it was that I met you all on Sunday evening (4 May) and accompanied you back as far as your camp! I was very happy that I did so. God is showering His kindness on me. Let all the women write to me (49: 280).
To Devadas, arrested in Delhi, from ‘Yeravda Mandir’, 13 May: Since I do not know where you are, I write to you at the Ashram address. There is God to worry for us all and we need not, therefore, worry on account of one another. You know about me, that ultimately I never come to harm. God always clears my path (49: 283).
To Bali and Kumi, sisters of Harilal’s deceased wife Gulab (or Chanchal), who were looking after Harilal’s children, 26 July: I got Bali’s letter. Kumi also should write. I don’t mind your having taken away Manu (Harilal’s youngest daughter). Anything which pleases you two sisters pleases me. Your love for these children sometimes brings tears of joy to my eyes (49: 388).
To Pandit Narayan Khare, the ashram music teacher, 21 Aug.: Your voice as you used to sing at the time of prayers haunts me every day (49: 455).
To Sushila, wife of Manilal, who had visited her husband in jail, 24 Aug.: I hope you always find Manilal with a smile on his face and joking. Does he read anything in jail? (50: 3)
To Narandas Gandhi, 24/26 Aug.: How is Devadas’s health? Tell him that I often think of him. Has Ramdas’s health recovered? (50: 5)
To Narandas, 5/9 Sept.: If Dudabhai (the ‘untouchable’ whose daughter Lakshmi was in the ashram) is eager to have Lakshmi with him and if the latter wishes to go, do not stop her (50: 41).
To Prema Kantak, a woman from Maharashtra who taught the ashram’s children, loved and revered Gandhi and wanted to keep his wooden sandals, 2 Oct. (Gandhi’s birthday): If you wish, you may certainly keep the wooden sandals. But what will you do with those bits of wood? Keep them if you think that they will add an inch or two to your stature…
I used to keep with me a photograph of my father. I had hung his photographs in the drawing-room and the bedroom when I was in South Africa. When I used to wear a chain, it had a locket which contained small photographs of my father and elder brother. I have now put them away. That does not mean that I feel less reverence for them now.
If I tried to keep with me photographs of all [I revere], I would have no room to put them in. And if I tried to keep their wooden sandals, I should have to acquire a piece of land for the purpose. As a man of experience, I advise you, therefore, to follow me when I am walking on the right path. That will be a thousand times better than keeping my wooden sandals… (50: 104)
To Henry Polak, who had disagreed with the 1930 defiance but sent a birthday greeting, 20 Oct.: My dear Henry, I had your and Millie’s loving message. You are never absent from my mind. How is Leon? (50: 156)
To Andrews, 12 Nov.: My dear Charlie… I think of you every day and that often. Love. Mohan (50: 224)
To J.C. Kumarappa, who had written of his misgivings regarding vows, 16 Nov.: The strongest men have been known at times to have become weak… Hence the necessity of vows, i.e., invoking God’s assistance to give us strength at the crucial moment. But I must not strive with you. It seems to me that we mean the same thing but express it differently—you in Spanish and I in Italian, shall we say? (50: 240)
For Mira’s sake he daily translated into English a verse or bhajan from the ashram Bhajanavali, at times asking Kalelkar for his understanding of a Sanskrit, Gujarati, Hindi or Marathi original. Begun on 5 May, the exercise was completed on 15 December. It involved 224 careful if short translations. From Yeravda Gandhi also sent detailed Gujarati commentaries on each of the ashram’s eleven vows.
In November, his term ended, Kalelkar was released. This was a loss for Gandhi, but he was soon allowed the company of Pyarelal, also a prisoner in Yeravda.
Negotiations. Obtaining permission from Irwin, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and M. R. Jayakar called on Gandhi in the middle of August to explore a truce. They brought with them, from Naini Jail in the UP, the two Nehrus and Bihar’s Syed Mahmud, again courtesy of Irwin. The two intermediaries, the three north Indian prisoners, and four Yeravda detainees, Gandhi, Vallabhbhai, Sarojini Naidu and Jairamdas Daulatram, conferred together on 14 and 15 August, and Sapru and Jayakar took the Congress’s terms for a truce to Irwin.
There could be a withdrawal of disobedience, the Congress leaders said, if the British were prepared to concede India’s right to leave the Empire, if Gandhi’s eleven points were satisfactorily addressed, and if free collection of salt was allowed. The Viceroy rejected the terms.
In November and December Sapru and Jayakar attended a Round Table Conference (RTC) that Premier Ramsay MacDonald convened in London. The Congress boycotting the conference, MacDonald admitted its unrepresentative character and adjourned it. From London, Sapru and Jayakar cabled word that Congress leaders should await their return before reacting publicly to the RTC’s outcome.
Their plea coincided with an unexpected statement from Irwin, who declared in Calcutta that it would be ‘a profound mistake’ to ‘underestimate the meaning of nationalism’. ‘Strong action by the Government’, the Viceroy added, could never ‘wholly cure’ it.
Release. On the morning of 26 January 1931—exactly one year after the Congress’s independence pledge—Gandhi was told that he was being released. Jawaharlal, Patel, Rajagopalachari and all the Working Committee members were also set free that day, and the ban on the Committee was withdrawn. Irwin said the releases were ordered to make discussion possible.
Gandhi to Narandas, 26 Jan.: We were informed this morning that Pyarelal and I are to be released… My present feeling is that I shall be leaving peace and quiet and going into the midst of turmoil (51:71).
That evening the Associated Press of India sent out a story from a railway station just west of Poona:
While waiting on the platform of the Chinchwad station to board the train for Bombay, Mr Gandhi gave the following message to the Indian people: ‘I have come out of jail with an absolutely open mind, unfettered by enmity, unbiased in argument and prepared to study the whole situation from every point of view.’
Q. ‘What is your opinion regarding the immediate release of all political prisoners?’
A. ‘I most sincerely believe that every political prisoner now in jail for being connected with my civil disobedience movement should be liberated immediately, and none of us as leaders should be happy as long as any of our brethren or sisters are in Jail.’
Asked if he was happy at being free once again, he replied: ‘I really do not know.’ Mr Gandhi expressed great appreciation of the treatment he received in jail, and when asked if he expected to go back again in the near future, Mr Gandhi replied: ‘Possibly, you never know’ (51: 71-2).
PACT WITH IRWIN
Twelve years younger than Gandhi, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, scion of a landed family in Yorkshire, was made Lord Irwin in 1925 and Viceroy of India in 1926. Publicly acknowledging, to the dismay of several Delhi officials, ‘the spiritual force which impels Gandhi’,45 Irwin also made private remarks that encouraged liberals like Sapru, Jayakar and Srinivasa Sastri.
Prodded by these three, the now lawful Working Committee authorized Gandhi to talk on the Congress’s behalf with Irwin, and accompanied him to Delhi to be available for consultation. In the meanwhile, however, Motilal Nehru, sixty-nine, ailing, and released some months earlier, had died in Lucknow (6 February).
Begun in New Delhi on 17 February, Gandhi’s talks with the Viceroy spanned a sixteen-day period and were held in the Viceroy’s new palace, designed by Lutyens, of red and white sandstone and marble of several hues. Containing a mile-and-a-half of corridors and 340 rooms, and occupying five-and-a-half acres on a sixteen-acre ground, the building sought to proclaim that the Raj was both grand and permanent.
The Viceroy’s visitor was lodged under a roof five miles away in Daryagunj, in the home of the Muslim doctor and Congress leader, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari. From this home Gandhi walked to the viceregal palace to talk with Irwin, and walked back to report to the Working Committee, on some days performing the routine twice.
In London Churchill uttered a famous alarm. It was ‘nauseating’, he said, that ‘a seditious Middle Temple lawyer (this was an error—Gandhi had joined the Inner Temple) now posing as a fakir’ was ‘striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor’.46 Added Churchill: ‘The truth is that Gandhism and all it stands for will have to be grappled with and finally crushed.’47
To Indians the scene that so offended Churchill seemed merely appropriate. After a series of long talks, the rebel and the Viceroy signed an accord on the night of 4 March, the Irwin-Gandhi Pact, as the Raj called it, or the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, as Indians described it.
Against a Congress agreement to suspend disobedience and take part in the Second RTC in London in the fall, the Raj agreed to release all those imprisoned in the 1930 disobedience, withdraw its ordinances and bans on Congress units, return unsold confiscated lands, allow residents of coastal areas to make their own salt and permit non-aggressive picketing of shops selling liquor or foreign cloth.
Independence was not offered. The salt tax was not removed. Sold lands were not to be returned. Yet most Indians rejoiced because tens of thousands were being released, and because the Pact implied equality between Britain and India, between the Viceroy and Gandhi, between the Raj a
nd the Congress and, at the grassroots, between the Raj’s policeman and the nonviolent law-breaker.
Now the men and women of the Congress could freely collect salt or, with impunity, picket cloth or liquor shops ‘under the eye of the very policeman who was till yesterday jumping upon them like a wolf on a fold’.48 Psychologically, it was a revolution.
But there was disappointment as well. Neither Bose nor Jawaharlal, the Congress president, liked the clause in the accord committing the Congress to ‘consider further the constitutional scheme discussed in the Round Table Conference’, which seemed several steps short of complete independence. Patel on his part felt aggrieved by the failure to win back all the lands forfeited by the Gujarat peasants.
Bhagat Singh’s fate. Across India the young were unhappy that the amnesty did not apply to all political prisoners. Bengali youths imprisoned for militant activities were not freed, and—the bitterest disappointment—there was no commutation of the death sentence awarded to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru for the 1928 killing, in Lahore, of Saunders. Could the young rejoice when three heroes of theirs were to hang?
Before agreeing to sign the accord, Gandhi ‘put it to member after member of the Working Committee, individually, and asked whether he should break on prisoners, on lands, on anything, on everything…’49 Despite dissatisfactions, no one counselled a break. The members knew they were obtaining a settlement, not laying down a victor’s terms.
On every point Gandhi had bargained hard. When he told Irwin that he had to honour Patel’s promise that peasants would get their lands back, Irwin replied, truthfully, that he too had given a commitment to Sykes, Garrett and Master that sold lands would not be returned.
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 46