But the Viceroy agreed to urge the Bombay government to reinstate village headmen who had resigned and help non-governmental efforts for the return of sold lands. In addition, Gandhi was told by Irwin that Ansari could attend the London RTC on behalf of the group of nationalist Muslims: this was important for Gandhi, who knew that anti-Congress Muslims would be vocal at the London conference.
Yet Irwin firmly rejected Gandhi’s plea for the lives of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. Claiming surprise that ‘the apostle of non-violence should so earnestly be pleading the cause of the devotees of a creed so fundamentally opposed to his own’, Irwin also felt that it would be ‘wholly wrong to allow my judgement to be influenced by purely political considerations’. In Irwin’s view, the death sentence for killing a police officer was ‘directly deserved’.50
After the three were hanged, Gandhi acknowledged that while he strove for commutation, neither he nor the Working Committee had made it a breaking point. Apart from Irwin’s own position, London was resolute on the question. If Gandhi had called for a Congress boycott of the Second RTC, the sentences would still have been carried out, but the door of dialogue that seemed to be opening—‘the second door to Swaraj’,51 as Gandhi called it—would have closed.
Irwin told Gandhi that Churchill was bound to accuse him of betraying Britain.52 The Viceroy was correct. Churchill complained that ‘the lawless act has now been made lawful’ by Irwin’s concessions, that ‘Mr Gandhi and Congress have been raised to a towering pedestal’, and that appeasement had been offered to those who had ‘inflicted such humiliation and defiance as has not been known since the British first trod the soil of India’.53
At a press conference in Delhi on 6 March, when Indian, British and American journalists talked with Gandhi, he sparkled.
Journalist: Will you press for Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence) at the RTC?
Gandhi: We will deny our very existence if we do not press for it.
Journalist: What was it that turned the tide in the negotiations?
Gandhi (smiling): Goodness on the part of Lord Irwin and perhaps
(a bigger smile on Gandhi) equal goodness on my part as well.
Journalist: Do you expect Purna Swaraj in your life time?
Gandhi: I do look for it most decidedly. I still consider myself a young man of sixty-two.
Journalist: Do you prefer English people as a governing race to other races?
Gandhi: I have no choice to make. I do not want to be governed except by myself.
Journalist: Would you agree to become the Prime Minister of the future Government?
Gandhi: No. It will be reserved for younger minds and stouter hearts.54
One of the correspondents interacting with Gandhi was William Shirer of the Chicago Tribune, the future author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and of Gandhi: A Memoir. According to Shirer, Gandhi said to him at this time, ‘You will see, my dear Mr Shirer! We shall gain our freedom—in my lifetime.’55
Twenty-seven in 1931, Shirer was drawn to Gandhi. Recalling a moment during the Delhi talks when, on Gandhi’s request, he typed out a statement dictated by Gandhi, the reporter would say:
I was so moved by some of his words and the simple, sincere way in which he spoke them that at moments I had difficulty in putting them down on my typewriter.56
Karachi Congress. The Working Committee chose Vallabhbhai as the new Congress president. Only one person resented the appointment, older brother Vithalbhai, who felt that his sacrifice of the Central Assembly presidency had gone unrewarded.
En route to Karachi for the Congress plenary, Gandhi again urged Irwin to spare the lives of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, saying that peace would be endangered, and his own position rendered ‘almost too difficult’ if the hangings were carried out. In this ‘final appeal’, Gandhi’s last sentence was, ‘Charity never faileth’ (51: 290-1). On 23 March, the day on which the letter was sent, the three were hanged.
When Gandhi arrived at Karachi station on 25 March, incensed young men greeted him with black flags and shouted ‘Down with Gandhism’. He thought they would physically attack him. Instead they presented flowers made of black cloth and escorted Gandhi to the car brought for him. On the night of 26 March, addressing the plenary under the ‘canopy of heaven’, as Desai put it, Gandhi praised the young men’s courtesy, and added:
I think they had a right to [condemn] me, if they felt that I was betraying the country… I want to win them over by love. Having flung aside the sword, there is nothing except the cup of love which I can offer to those who oppose me.
‘One’s head bends before Bhagat Singh’s bravery and sacrifice,’ Gandhi had said at a press conference (51: 301). At the plenary he added:
But I want you also to realize Bhagat Singh’s error… I declare that we cannot win Swaraj for our famishing millions, for our deaf and dumb, for our lame and crippled, by the way of the sword. With the Most High as witness I want to proclaim this truth…
Do you think that all the women and the children who covered themselves with glory during the last campaign would have done so if we had pursued the path of violence? Would our women, known as the meekest on earth, would women like Gangabehn, who withstood the lathi-blows until her white sari was drenched in blood, have done the unique service they did if we had violence in us?
And our children—our vanarasena (monkey-army). How could you have had these innocent ones, who renounced their toys, their kites and their crackers, and joined as soldiers of Swaraj—how could you have enlisted them in a violent struggle? We were able to enlist as soldiers millions of men, women and children because we were pledged to non-violence (51: 305-9).
In a Navajivan tribute to Bhagat Singh’s courage (29 March 1931), Gandhi repeated his rejection of assassination:
If the practice of seeking justice through murders is established amongst us, we shall start murdering one another for what we believe to be justice. In a land of crores of destitutes and crippled persons, this will be a terrifying situation (51: 316-17).
Sole representative. The success of the previous year’s struggle ensured unity at the Karachi session, which endorsed the Gandhi-Irwin accord, with Jawaharlal moving, and Subhas Bose seconding, a resolution for ratification, and authorized Gandhi to attend the RTC as the Congress’s sole representative, with plenipotentiary discretion over last-minute proposals.
Giving Gandhi colleagues in London would mean excluding others, a hard and divisive exercise. Should president Patel go but not Jawaharlal? Jawahar but not Bose? Why not Rajagopalachari? In any case, India would require leaders during Gandhi’s absence. Covering the Karachi session, Shirer thought Gandhi functioned there as ‘the consummate politician’.57
Karachi also adopted a significant resolution on fundamental rights in a free India. Collaboration between Jawaharlal and Gandhi produced the text of this resolution, which Gandhi moved. ‘By passing this resolution,’ he said, ‘we make it clear to the world and to our own people what we propose to do as soon as we come into power’ (51: 329).
It committed the Congress to freedom of expression, religion, thought and assembly; equality regardless of caste, sex or creed; a minimum wage and limited working hours; a secular state (‘Swaraj will favour Hinduism no more than Islam, nor Islam more than Hinduism,’ Gandhi explained58); the abolition of untouchability and serfdom; removal of the salt tax; and state ownership or control of key industries.
Communal conflict in Cawnpore (Kanpur) coincided with the Karachi session. Indians were stirred by the death there of forty-one-year-old Ganesh Shanker Vidyarthi, editor of a Hindi weekly and prominent UP Congressman, who was killed while attempting to prevent a Hindu-Muslim clash. In Young India Gandhi wrote (9 April 1931) that Vidyarthi’s ‘heroism [was] bound in the end to melt the stoniest hearts, melt them into one’ (51: 361).
Willingdon and disappointment. The relationship with Irwin offered hope but in the provinces British officials tried to block the Viceroy’s co
ncessions. In Gujarat, Garrett and Master resisted the reinstatement of pro-Congress village chiefs and refused to help rebels recover their lands, and there was obstruction in other provinces as well.
At Gandhi’s instance Irwin had Master transferred, but after 18 April there was no Irwin to go to. He had been succeeded as Viceroy by Lord Willingdon, former governor of Bombay and Madras, who had called Gandhi a ‘Bolshevik’ in 1919 and thought Irwin ‘a simple man’ whom Gandhi had ‘deluded’.59
Three years older than Gandhi, the new Viceroy, born George Freeman Thomas, was a liberal MP before being made a baron and Canada’s governor-general (1926-31). A lord-in-waiting and tennis partner to George V, he seemed to prefer India’s princes to its politicians.
Finding Willingdon indifferent to repeated complaints about violations of the Pact in Gujarat, the Frontier Province, and the UP, and to pleas for releasing the Bengal prisoners, Gandhi announced on 11 August, eighteen days before he was to sail for London, that he would rather not go for the RTC.
A failure to re-enlist Muslim partners had also affected him. Shaukat Ali, with whom Gandhi talked for two days in Bombay, evidently first accepted and then rejected Gandhi’s proposal of an alliance formula: a one-third share for Muslims in the Central Assembly plus joint electorates.60
But Sapru and Jayakar busied themselves once more, and in three days Gandhi, Patel, Jawaharlal and Ghaffar Khan found themselves in Simla, where Gandhi had a meeting with Willingdon that he felt was ‘bereft of all grace’.61 Willingdon rejected every demand save one. He would not intervene in the UP or the Frontier or Bengal, and, no, Ansari could not be a delegate at the RTC. But he was willing, the Viceroy said, to order an inquiry over lands in Bardoli.
The tiny concession tipped the scale for Gandhi; and Patel, Nehru, and Ghaffar Khan also urged him to go. But Gandhi’s faith in ‘the second door’ to freedom had all but gone. He announced in Simla that ‘notwithstanding the suspension of disobedience’ the Congress would, if forced, seek relief in ‘defensive direct action’.62
Gandhi knew that this ‘relief’ would mean fresh suffering for his soldiers. Hoping against hope, he would go to England, not primarily to attend the RTC but to talk with the British people.
As aides to go with him, he picked Mahadev Desai, Devadas, Pyarelal and Miss Slade. Asked by a journalist about Mira, Gandhi laughed and answered, ‘[W]hy shouldn’t I bring her? She is a most useful assistant and, besides, she is anxious to see her mother who lives in England’ (51: 276). But he took no close political companions.
To Rajagopalachari, 28 Aug. 1931: There are two men whom I would like by my side in London, you and Jawaharlal… You will both help me, like the others, by being [in India]. Only, your presence with me would have lightened my burden (53: 294).
ENGLAND
On 29 August 1931 Gandhi and party boarded the Rajputana in Bombay. Forty-three years had passed since he last sailed, as a nervous if eager teenager, from India to England—his later visits to England (in 1906, 1909 and 1914) had been made from South Africa. This time he was going on India’s behalf.
A country he knew and from some angles admired, England was also, however, India’s master. Moreover, Gandhi was well aware that its rulers, the RTC hosts, were going to treat him not as the voice of India (which is how Irwin had seen him) but only as one of several Indian representatives.
Since reaching the British people was his true goal, he accepted an invitation to live in a community centre in Bow in the East End called Kingsley Hall, founded by two sisters, Doris and Muriel Lester. A pacifist, internationalist and feminist, Muriel had visited the Sabarmati Ashram and invited Gandhi and his party to live in the Hall’s ‘cells’, as she called them.
He enjoyed the sea voyage, with Mira, the admiral’s daughter (who wore Indian clothes and shaved her head like an Indian nun), pronouncing that as a sailor Gandhi was ‘out and away the best’ among his party.63 When an impish young fellow-passenger on the Rajputana presented him with a ‘journal’ called ‘Scandal Times’ and asked for comments, Gandhi removed the pin from the sheets, which he returned, kept the pin, and said, ‘Thank you.’64
Egyptians resentful of European hegemony turned up at Suez and Port Said but were not allowed to meet the Empire’s chief rebel. The poet Ahmad Shauqi had exhorted Egyptians that as Gandhi passed by they should
Stop to welcome him, from close quarters sitting in boats and also from a distance in whatever way possible. He is a guide and pathfinder like Confucius… He has inspired in Hindus and Muslims the spirit of mutual love and with his spiritual powers brought the two swords in one sheath. He is a great powerhouse which generates the power to tame predators.65
In Marseilles, where he took a train for Calais on the Channel coast, hundreds, including scores of journalists, mobbed Gandhi, and on 12 September about 5,000, including many Indians, greeted him in Folkstone on the English side of the Channel. Later in the day a large throng of east Londoners welcomed Gandhi when he arrived at Kingsley Hall.
He told a correspondent of the Evening Standard (12 Sept.) that he would ‘wear his loin-cloth in London, but would protect himself from the weather with shawls and rugs’. Asked if he would see any plays, Gandhi remembered long-forgotten pleasures in his reply:
At one time I used to attend the Lyceum. I liked Shakespeare’s plays—I adored the incomparable Ellen Terry—I worshipped her, but that was before the advent of melodrama. The only reason I will not attend theatres in London is because I shall not have time. I am not the dreadful old man I am represented to be. Actually I am a very jolly fellow. I could almost be described as Scotch. I am very careful of my sixpences (53: 347-8).
On the evening of 13 September he had a long talk, at the Dorchester, with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. The son of a poor Scottish farmer, the Labour PM had been heading, from the end of August, a Tory-dominated ‘national government’ unpopular with most Labour MPs. Gandhi found MacDonald feeling helpless: it was the Depression, unemployment was high, the pound was falling and the Premier’s base was weak.
In any case, India was not England’s chief concern. Moreover, policy regarding India remained in the hands of officials who thought that Indians could not rule themselves. Worst of all, from Gandhi’s angle, was the certainty that various delegates from India—Muslims, princes, Parsis, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and men like Bhimrao Ambedkar from Maharashtra, who led an important body of the ‘untouchables’—would declare at the RTC that the Congress did not represent their India.
The RTC. Still, ‘whilst there is yet a little sand left in the glass’,66 he would make an attempt. In his first speech to the RTC, he depicted the Congress’s inclusive character, named some of the Muslim, Parsi and Christian presidents it had chosen, spelt out its commitment for the rights of minorities, ‘untouchables’ and women, acknowledged British qualities and claimed that India was relevant even to Britain’s economic crisis:
Time was when I prided myself on being, and being called, a British subject. I have ceased for many years to call myself a British subject; I would far rather be called a rebel than a subject. But I have aspired, I still aspire, to be a citizen, not of the Empire, but in a Commonwealth; in a partnership—if possible, if God wills it, an indissoluble partnership—but not a partnership superimposed upon one nation by another… [E]ither party should have the right to sever the connection…
I wondered, even as I was sailing towards London, whether we… at the present moment would not be a drag upon the British Ministers, whether we would not be interlopers. And yet I said to myself: It is possible that we might not be interlopers…
India, yes, can be held by the sword! I do not for one moment doubt the ability of Britain to hold India under subjection through the sword. But what will conduce to the prosperity of Great Britain… an enslaved but rebellious India, or an India an esteemed partner with Britain to share her sorrows…?
And so I said to myself whilst I was nearing the shores of your beautiful island, perchan
ce it might be possible for me to convince the British Ministers that India as a valuable partner, not held by force but by the silken cord of love… might conceivably be of real assistance to you in balancing your Budget, not for one occasion but for many years.
What cannot two nations do, one a handful, but brave, with a record for bravery perhaps unequalled, a nation noted for having fought slavery, a nation that has at least claimed times without number to protect the weak; and another a very ancient nation, counted in millions, with a glorious and ancient past, representing at the present moment two great cultures, the Islamic and Hindu cultures…
And supposing that God fires both Hindus and Mussulmans represented here with a proper spirit, so that they close ranks and come to an honourable understanding… (53: 364-5)
Covering the RTC in London after having followed, for seven months, Gandhi’s doings and speaking in India, Shirer thought that this speech, delivered from the heart and without notes, was ‘the greatest one of his long political life’.67
Reaching out. Gandhi walked morning and evening along the streets of Bow, plied the spinning wheel daily in his ‘cell’, which had no table, chair or bed (he slept on the floor), prayed morning and evening in Kingsley Hall (where a goat was installed for Gandhi’s milk needs), and received callers in his cell.
Residents of Bow crowded their windows to stare at the strange figure walking past their homes. Hearing that they wanted to see him, Gandhi visited a woman in a hospital and a sick man in his home. Successfully badgering their parents, children joined Gandhi in his early morning walk. Muriel Lester observed that Gandhi ‘was delighted and took his walk with them, their rosy faces like apples, and big scarves round their necks’. The children called him Uncle Gandhi and ‘were sad to see he had no socks on and used to try to make him wear warmer clothes’.68
At a ‘joy night’ in Kingsley Hall, a woman called Martha Rollason patted Gandhi ‘on the shoulder’ and said, ‘Come on, Mr Gandhi, let’s have a dance.’ Muriel Lester thought Gandhi ‘looked awfully pleased to be asked’69 but he did not try to dance. At the Dorchester Hotel, the maitre, a man called Charles, greeted Gandhi, reminding him that they had taken dancing lessons together in 1889. Gandhi, who remembered, exclaimed, ‘Charlie!’
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 47