A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.27
Even more interesting were two other statements Gandhi made in the Frontier. One was on the gender question in the Pakhtun country. Gandhi tackled it indirectly, narrating (on 23 October, in Hungoo) his personal experiences with Kasturba:
I used to be a tyrant at home… I used to let loose my anger at Kasturba. But she bore it all meekly and uncomplainingly. I had a notion that it was her duty to obey me, her lord and master, in everything.
But her unresisting meekness opened my eyes and slowly it began to dawn upon me that I had no such prescriptive right over her. If I wanted her obedience, I had first to persuade her by patient argument. She thus became my teacher in nonviolence. And I dare say, I have not had a more loyal and faithful comrade in life.
I literally used to make life a hell for her. Every other day I would change my residence, prescribe what dress she was to wear. She had been brought up in an orthodox family, where untouchability was observed. Muslims and untouchables used to frequent our house. I made her serve them all, regardless of her innate reluctance.
But she never said ‘no’. She was not educated in the usual sense of the term and was simple and unsophisticated. Her guileless simplicity conquered me. You all have wives, mothers and sisters at home. You can take the lesson of nonviolence from them.28
In July 1939, on his third visit, Gandhi made another memorable statement. By now many of the subcontinent’s Muslims were receptive to the line that Indian independence would mean Hindu rule. Speaking in Abbottabad in the Frontier’s Hazara’s district, he said:
If you dissect my heart, you will find that the prayer and spiritual striving for the attainment of Hindu-Muslim unity goes on there unceasingly all the twenty-four hours without even a moment’s interruption whether I am awake or asleep… That dream [of Hindu-Muslim unity] has filled my being since the earliest childhood.
The greatest of things in this world are accomplished not through unaided human effort. They come in their own good time. God has His own way of choosing His instruments. Who knows, in spite of my incessant heart prayers, I may not be found worthy for this great work.
We must all keep our loins girt and our lamps well trimmed. We don’t know when or on whom His choice may fall. You may not shirk your responsibility by shoving it all on me. Pray for me that my dream may be fulfilled in my life…. God’s ways are more than man’s arithmetic.29
We have a record of some of the Frontier conversations between Gandhi and Ghaffar Khan. In October 1938, recalling their first meeting nine years earlier, Gandhi said to Badshah Khan:
For years, ever since we met each other, it has been a pet dream of mine to visit the tribal areas, go right up to Kabul, mix with the trans-border tribes and try to understand their psychology. Why should we not go forth together, present to them our viewpoint and establish with the tribesmen a bond of friendship and sympathy?30
Said Ghaffar Khan to his guest:
This land, so rich in fruit and grain, might well have been a smiling little Eden upon this earth, but it today has fallen under a blight. Violence has been the real bane… The entire strength of the Pathan is today spent in thinking how to cut the throat of his brother…
The nonviolent movement is the greatest boon that God has sent us… We used to be so timid and indolent. The sight of an Englishman would frighten us. [Our] movement has instilled fresh life into us and made us more industrious. We have shed our fear and are no longer afraid of an Englishman or for that matter of any man. Englishmen are afraid of our nonviolence. A nonviolent Pathan, they say, is more dangerous than a violent Pathan.
‘I have been accused,’ Badshah Khan added, ‘of having a lashkar of one lakh of Khudai Khidmatagars to help the Hindus to subdue the Muslim population!’31 When, in November 1938, the two parted at Taxila, ‘our eyes were wet,’ Gandhi recorded in an article in Harijan.32 Earlier he had spoken at a Peshawar public meeting of
the wonderful and affectionate allegiance of the people to [Badshah Khan] as their general… Not only the Khudai Khidmatgars, but I noticed wherever I went that every man, woman and child knew him and loved him. They greeted him most familiarly. His touch seemed to soothe them. [Badshah Khan] was most gentle to whoever approached him. The obedience of the Khudai Khidmatgars was unquestioned. All this has filled me with boundless joy.33
A big element in the joy was the knowledge that, thanks to the Khan brothers, a vital Muslim-majority province trusted him and the Congress.
SUBHAS BOSE
At the end of 1938 Subhas said he wanted a second term, even as Jawaharlal had obtained it. Bose made it plain, moreover, that in his second term he expected executive authority, so that, for example, he could pull out all the Congress ministries, if that seemed desirable.
Subhas’s stance was in part a response to developments in Europe, where, on 29 September 1938, Premiers Neville Chamberlain (Britain) and Edouard Daladier (France) signed with Adolf Hitler (Germany) and Benito Mussolini (Italy) the Munich pact, permitting Hitler to do as he pleased with Czechoslovakia. To Bose, a vulnerable Britain and France, a bold Germany and a confident Italy added up to an opportunity for mass disobedience in India, ending what he saw as the Congress’s humiliating association with the Raj.
Gandhi’s reaction to Munich, on the other hand, was to say in a letter to Jawaharlal, ‘What a peace at the cost of honour!’ (Letter of 4 Oct. 1938; 74: 77) In Harijan he wrote (8 Oct.):
I do not profess to know European politics. But it does appear to me that small nationalities cannot exist in Europe with their heads erect. They must be absorbed by their larger neighbours. They must become vassals.
Europe has sold her soul for the sake of a seven days’ earthly existence… England and France [have] quailed before the combined violence of Germany and Italy (74: 98).
Soon Gandhi wrote about Hitler and his drive against the Jews (Harijan, 26 November 1938):
If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war.
The last sentence showed that the violence of war was an issue with Gandhi. Even as he condemned Hitler, he proposed, both to the Jews and the Czechs, ‘the superior alternative’ of nonviolent resistance. He did not know that in November 1937 Indian nonviolence and Britain’s ‘appeasement’ of it had been ridiculed by Hitler. Speaking to Irwin, now Lord Halifax and a minister under Chamberlain, Hitler had said:
All you have to do is to shoot Gandhi. If necessary, shoot more leaders of Congress. You will be surprised how quickly the trouble will die down.34
To return, however, to Bose. He was reported to have been ‘in contact with the German consul in Calcutta… negotiating some arrangement’. K.M. Munshi, the minister for law in Bombay, received this information from the Raj’s director of central intelligence and forwarded it to Gandhi.35 It appears, too, that Bose’s ‘admiration for Mussolini was then known to many’.36
Reading the ‘message’ from Europe differently, Gandhi would have been troubled by Subhas’s apparent comfort with authoritarian rulers. But he had another reason for not wanting Bose repeated: disturbed by Jinnah’s attitude, Gandhi had ‘instinctively felt’ that Azad should be picked.37 If Jinnah could not be conciliated and had to be fought, it made sense to have a Muslim as the Congress president. So Gandhi advised Bose not to offer himself again, and Nehru did likewise, but, certain of his destiny, Subhas announced his candidacy.
In the middle of January 1939, after Gandhi and Patel had talked to him in Bardoli, Azad agreed to stand against Bose, whereupon Patel, who had been proposed himself by some PCCs, formally withdrew his name. Fighting the charismatic Bose was a tough proposition, however, especially for one like Azad who lived in Bengal, where Subhas enjoyed passionate support. Within days of agreeing to contest, Azad also withdrew.
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There was a possible Bose opponent left in the lists: Pattabhi Sitaramayya from the Telugu country, whose name had been proposed by the Andhra PCC. Though hardly a famous figure, Pattabhi was publicly endorsed (at Gandhi’s instance) by Patel, Prasad and five other Working Committee members, who however did not quote Gandhi.
Bose sought Nehru’s support. Both saw themselves as socialists. Association with the Raj was distasteful to both. But they saw the European scene differently. If Bose was impressed by Mussolini, Jawaharlal had supported the anti-Fascists of Spain. As for India, while Bose could now think of himself as an alternative to Gandhi, Nehru would not defy Gandhi. He stayed out of the Bose-Pattabhi contest.
While most in the Working Committee were with Pattabhi, many in the Congress rank and file shared Bose’s view that European events, and the possibility of a war between Germany and Britain, justified a return to the policy of defiance. Popular opinion, too, was increasingly anti-British, accusing Britain of wanting democracy in Europe but restricting self-government in India.
Smelling a possible victory, Bose fought back, accusing ‘Sardar Patel and other leaders’ of unfairness and ‘moral coercion’ in endorsing Pattabhi. He also suggested that ‘a compromise on the Federal Scheme’ was likely ‘between the Right Wing of the Congress and the British Government during the coming year’.38 Nehru, no lover of the Right Wing, said publicly that the aspersion was unjust.
Calling Bose’s statement ‘amazing,’ Patel said he knew of ‘no member who wants the Federation’, and added that he and his colleagues had ‘a perfect right to guide the delegates’.39 But a majority of the delegates rejected the guidance. On 29 January, Subhas was re-elected, obtaining 1,580 votes as against Pattabhi’s 1,375.
Though his sympathies were widely known, Gandhi had remained silent during the campaign, but after the result was known he said publicly:
Since I was instrumental in inducing Dr Pattabhi not to withdraw his name as a candidate when Maulana Saheb withdrew, the defeat is more mine than his (Statement of 31 Jan. 1939; 74: 14).
Making it plain that the Congress had to choose between him and Bose, Gandhi allowed Patel and C.R. to lead a campaign that forced Subhas to resign. Efforts for a compromise by Subhas and his older brother Sarat were resisted by the old guard.
When, in March, the Congress met for its plenary on the banks of the river Narmada, in village Tripuri in the Central Provinces, Govind Ballabh Pant moved a resolution calling upon the president ‘to appoint the Working Committee in accordance with the wishes of Mahatma Gandhi’. Seconding the resolution, C.R. mercilessly ruled out a compromise:
There are two boats on the river. One is an old boat but a big boat, piloted by Mahatma Gandhi. Another man has a new boat, attractively painted and beflagged. Mahatma Gandhi is a tried boatman who can safely transport you. If you get into the other boat, which I know is leaky, all will go down, and the river Narmada is indeed deep.
The new boatman says, ‘If you don’t get into my boat, at least tie my boat to yours.’ This is also impossible. We cannot tie a leaky boat to a good boat, exposing ourselves to the peril of going down.40
Gandhi was not in Tripuri but in his former home, the princely state of Rajkot, engaged in a battle for democracy there that we will look at later in this chapter. Subhas was present but quite ill; it was his portrait that fifty-two elephants pulled in Tripuri for the Congress’s fifty-second annual session, and Sarat read out his brother’s address.
But Pant’s resolution was easily carried, even though, once more, Nehru (and most Congress socialists) remained neutral. Refusing to implement the Tripuri directive, Bose resigned as president, and Prasad was elected in his place. In July, after Bose announced a protest day against the Working Committee’s condemnation of propaganda against Congress ministers, he was, ‘with great regret’, declared barred from elective office for three years. His revolt had been put down.
But Gandhi hoped for a restoration of his tie with Subhas. In November 1939 he wrote to him: ‘For the time being you are my lost sheep. Some day I shall find you returning to the fold, if I am right and my love is pure.’41
Sex, love and lust. In December 1935, in Wardha, Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer from New York, and Gandhi had a frank discussion, spread over two days, on sex, love and lust. According to Desai, who was present at the talks, Gandhi ‘poured his whole being into his conversation. He revealed himself inside out, giving Mrs Sanger an intimate glimpse of his own private life’ (Harijan, 25 Jan. 1936; 68: 190-4).
The two agreed on small families but not on contraceptives, Gandhi saying contraceptives would encourage immorality and Sanger asking whether couples could really restrict sexual union to two or three occasions in their lives together. Gandhi accepted that hard cases might justify contraceptives but said that he himself would not prescribe them, though he could ask for union to be confined to a wife’s ‘safe’ period. Pressed by Sanger, Gandhi conceded that sexual union for procreation also partook of lust.
When Sanger suggested that she saw nothing wrong in multiple marriage partners, Gandhi disagreed. Recalling his relationship with Saraladevi, without naming her, he said: ‘Could we not develop a close contact, I said to myself? This was a plausible argument, and I nearly slipped. But I was saved. I awoke from my trance, I don’t know how. I was saved by youngsters who warned me.’42
Love, nonviolence and African-Americans. Why not ‘love’ instead of ‘nonviolence’? The question was asked in February 1936 when two African-American couples, Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman and Edward and Phenola Carroll, met Gandhi in Bardoli.
Visits that Mira and Muriel Lester had made to the USA in 1934, and an earlier visit by Andrews in 1929, had helped many black Americans know more about an Indian they had been excited about from at least 1917, when Hubert H. Harrison referred in an essay to Gandhi’s call for Indian self-reliance.43 W.E.B. Du Bois’s journal, The Crisis, had featured Gandhi in July 1921 and frequently thereafter, and another renowned black leader, Marcus Garvey, too had often spoken of Gandhi. The Thurmans and Carrolls thus represented an expanding constituency of African-American interest in Gandhi.
Answering their question, he said that for one thing ‘love in the English language has other connotations too’. Moreover, in a world of ‘strife and bloodshed, [with] life living upon life,’ ‘nonviolence’ could suggest love plus struggle, whereas ‘love’ on its own might not, said Gandhi, while admitting his warmth for ‘love in the Pauline sense’.
Gandhi seemed to value this encounter for more than one reason. He had always likened untouchability to slavery and remembered the unnamed African-American who helped him out in Pretoria in 1893; and he saw similarities in India’s fight against imperialism and black America’s struggle against racism.
Desai, who was present at the interview, told Thurman, then dean of Rankin Chapel in Howard University, that in all his years with Gandhi he had never seen him ‘greet a visitor so warmly’. At the interview (Thurman would later recall), Gandhi asked ‘persistent, pragmatic questions about American Negroes, about the course of slavery, and how we had survived it’.44 Was colour prejudice growing or dying? Did American law recognize marriages between blacks and whites? And so forth.
When Sue Bailey Thurman asked Gandhi how nonviolence would be applied against lynching, he suggested black non-cooperation ‘unto self-immolation’ against the lynching community, while admitting that his own nonviolence was imperfect. At his request the Americans sang a Negro spiritual, and when Howard Thurman remarked on the similarity between the spirituals and what they had heard from him, Gandhi said:
Well, if it comes true it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world (Harijan, 14 March 1936; 68: 237-8).
A year later, two other African-American leaders, Benjamin E. Mays and Channing H. Tobias, met with Gandhi in Sevagram. Tobias asked, ‘What word shall I give to my Negro brethren as to the outlook for the future?�
� Replied Gandhi: ‘With right, which is on their side, and the choice of nonviolence as their only weapon, if they will make it such, a bright future is assured.’45
Evangelists. Christian ministers and evangelists (John Mott, Frank Buchman, E. Stanley Jones, Toyohiko Kagawa, Sherwood Eddy and others) never stopped visiting him and Gandhi developed close relationships with several without conceding a need to become a Christian, and without approving efforts to proselytize. His oft-expressed view was that lovers or servants of Christ should serve but not desire or ask for converts. ‘You can only preach through your life. The rose does not say: “Come and smell me”’ (to John Mott, Nov. 1936; 70: 77). But he enjoyed his friendships with committed Christians.
Stanley Jones noted a set of opposing qualities in Gandhi: he was of East and West, the city and the village, a Hindu influenced by Christianity, simple and shrewd, candid and courteous, serious and playful, humble and self-assertive. The blend produced ‘a sweet savour,’ Jones said, but, he added, ‘the preponderating impression he leaves is not sweetness but strength’.46
When, in 1929, John Mott asked Gandhi what weighed most on his mind, Gandhi spoke not of alien rule but of ‘our apathy and hardness of heart, if I may use the Biblical phrase… towards the masses and their poverty’.
In December 1938 Mott and Gandhi met again in Sevagram. By this time Munich had occurred, and Gandhi conceded that since ‘the best mind of the world has not imbibed the spirit of non-violence’, the world ‘would have to meet gangsterism in the orthodox way’ (74: 274).
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