Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  Then he called the leader of the gang who was busy breaking up the congregation and told him that he was absolutely at his disposal if he cared to argue out his point; if not, would he tell what he proposed to do next? To everyone’s amazement the thugs’ violence melted like ice. The leader of the gang stood before Bapuji with folded hands… That evening he walked all the way home with one hand on the shoulder of the leader of the gang.74

  But we should mark the younger man’s role in this story of trembling yet victorious courage. The affectionate, trusting beat of Bal’s palm had aided Gandhi’s renewal.

  Admitting defeat. Though they allowed Gandhi to walk away unmolested, the Bhayats were in no mood to let their dominance of Rajkot be ended by Patel’s nominees and men like young Dhebar. They, the Garasias, and the Muslims—the minorities that Virawala had mobilized—made up only about fifteen per cent of the population but the bulk of the police and of the state’s muscle-power.

  With their support Virawala was able to block the implementation of the settlement. On 24 April Gandhi left Rajkot ‘empty-handed, with body shattered and hope cremated’, as he put it (75: 298).

  Reflection was called for. A campaign for the mere beginnings of representative government in Rajkot had evoked hostility from significant minorities. The fight against feudalism had stoked fires in caste and communal groups. Moreover, to defeat feudalism he had turned to the chief agent of imperialism.

  It was the Viceroy who had given him and Patel, and the majority of the people of Rajkot, their ‘victory’. By asking Linlithgow to intervene, Gandhi had enhanced the Raj’s prestige. He knew perfectly well that if others—Jinnah, the princes, the landlords, Ambedkar, Savarkar and the like—were to ask the Raj to help out, the Viceroy would not necessarily reject their overtures, or go by Gandhi’s views.

  The plea to Linlithgow was perhaps inopportune as well, for Subhas had lately accused Congress leaders close to Gandhi of planning a deal with the British. In May 1939 Gandhi formally renounced Gwyer’s unenforceable award and said he had erred in asking for the Viceroy’s aid. The fight for ‘liberty within the States’ would have to be waged again, at another time, perhaps in another way.

  India was complex, as was the journey to independence. The Rajkot exercise confirmed this. Did it do more? It certainly forged new leadership. Dhebar (1905-77) would become chief minister of Saurashtra in 1948 and president of the Congress from 1955 to 1959. It also brought new prestige to Kasturba and new depth to an old if taxing relationship between the Gandhis.

  When, in July, the two went to the North-West Frontier Province (his third visit), hosts thought that Kasturba was ‘in wonderful form, even more so than Bapu’.75 In any case Gandhi insisted that ‘Rajkot has been to me a priceless laboratory’ (Harijan, 29 April 1939; 75: 298).

  HITLER, JEWS, PALESTINE

  In November 1938 Gandhi spelt out, in response to pressing requests, his views on German militarism and how to resist it, the persecution of Jews and the bid for a Jewish home in Palestine:

  My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity…

  But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice… Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs… The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred…

  But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism…

  If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment.

  The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race…

  And now a word to the Jews in Palestine… The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs…

  I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country… (Harijan, 26 November 1938; 74: 239-42)

  There is no way of knowing how, if born a Jew in Germany, Gandhi would have organized nonviolent resistance there. In him we have seen a calling to present nonviolence joined by a strong pragmatism. He never asked Indians to invite a massacre from the British, or Hindus, Muslims or ‘Untouchables’ to invite a massacre from their Indian foes. The real commander of a nonviolent battle was very different from the professor of a remorseless nonviolent ethic.

  Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, protested at Gandhi’s willingness to prescribe satyagraha without understanding German realities. The sufferings of Indians in South Africa or in British-ruled India paled, he said, before the Jewish experience of Nazi horrors. He had ‘long known and honoured’ Gandhi’s voice, Buber said, but could nonviolence be asked of Jews in Germany by one who had often said, with reference to India, that violence was preferable to cowardice or bondage?76

  The editor of a Jewish journal suggested that Gandhi’s ‘zeal for Hindu-Muslim unity’ had made him ‘partial to the Arab presentation of the case, especially as that side was naturally emphasized in India,’ but Gandhi answered that he would not ‘sell truth’ either ‘for the sake of India’s deliverance’ or ‘for winning Muslim friendship’. Added Gandhi:

  I am painfully conscious of the fact that this writing of mine will give no satisfaction either to the Editor of Jewish Frontier or to my many Jewish friends. Nevertheless I wish with all my heart that somehow or other the persecution of the Jews in Germany will end and that the question in Palestine will be settled to the satisfaction of all the parties concerned (Harijan, 27 May 1939; 75: 416).

  Kallenbach. Early in 1939 Hermann Kallenbach spent two months in Wardha. The old friends were extremely happy at being together again, though Kallenbach took ill for some of the time. He gave Gandhi more information on what was happening to Jews in Germany. Gandhi wrote in Harijan:

  I happen to have a Jewish friend living with me. He has an intellectual belief in non-violence. But he says he cannot pray for Hitler. He is so full of anger over the German atrocities that he cannot speak of them with restraint. I do not quarrel with him over his anger. He wants to be non-violent, but the sufferings of fellow Jews are too much for him to bear (Harijan, 18 Feb. 1939; 75: 39).

  Letter to Hitler. Other Western friends asked Gandhi to write to Hitler, hoping that a plea from this strange yet prestigious figure who lived far from Europe might have some effect. In any case it could do no harm. In July, while Gandhi was in the Frontier, a letter from Gandhi (‘As at Wardha, CP’) was posted, addressed to ‘Herr Hitler, Berlin, Germany’:

  23 July 1939: Dear Friend, Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.

  It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war whi
ch may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?.. Your sincere friend, M.K. Gandhi (76: 156-7)

  The Raj did not allow the letter to go, a fact of which Gandhi was unaware when, after the commencement of World War II, he published its contents in Harijan (9 Sept. 1939; 76: 312).

  Congress & the coming war. Horror at Hitler’s war machine did not take away India’s right to make her own decisions. With Gandhi’s support the All India Congress Committee declared in May 1939 that the Congress would oppose ‘all attempts to impose a war without the consent of the Indian people’.77

  On 10 August 1939 the Working Committee once more spelt out, again with Gandhi’s full support, Congress policy on the approaching war in Europe:

  In this world crisis the sympathies of the Working Committee are entirely with the people who stand for democracy and freedom, and the Congress has repeatedly condemned Fascist aggression in Europe, Africa and the Far East of Asia as well as the betrayal of democracy by British imperialism in Czechoslovakia and Spain.

  The Congress has further clearly enunciated its policy in the event of war and declared its determination to oppose all attempts to impose a war on India (76: 430).

  Thus German fascism and British imperialism were both to be opposed. To those who knew, the former was more hideous by far, but British rule was nearer at home. Now out of the Congress, Subhas saw no difference between the two. Jawaharlal did, but after 22 August, when a Russo-German pact was signed, his sympathy for the Soviet Union made Nehru less inclined to separate British imperialism from German fascism.

  ‘In the event of a war breaking out the Congress ministries may have to resign,’ he said.78 On the other hand, C.R. and the other Congress premiers met under Patel’s chairmanship and agreed that ‘cooperation with the British should be wholehearted if an understanding was arrived at between the Congress and the government’.79

  On 1 September Hitler’s armies moved into Poland. Two days later, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared that Britain was at war with Germany. Within hours Lord Linlithgow announced that India too was at war. The Congress was not consulted.

  A partnership that Gandhi had carefully forged with the Raj had ended, as had the world he had known for two decades.

  Chapter 13

  ‘Quit India!’

  Wardha, Bombay and Prison, 1939-44

  On 2 September 1939 the Viceroy sent a wire to Wardha informing Gandhi of Germany’s attack on Poland and inviting him to Simla. Some other Indians were also invited. ‘Sorry terrible news,’ Gandhi replied. ‘Taking earliest train. Arriving Simla fourth morning.’

  He left the same day. Before he and his party boarded the train, telegrams went out asking the Working Committee to assemble in Wardha from 9 September. Starting in Bombay, Patel joined Gandhi’s train at Itarsi. Later, from Jhansi station, telegrams were sent to Jinnah, Bose and Jayaprakash inviting them to join the Working Committee’s deliberations. Gandhi was bidding for an Indian consensus. In Harijan he wrote (9 Sept.):

  [I]n the midst of this catastrophe without parallel… Congressmen and all other responsible Indians individually and collectively have to decide what part India is to play in this terrible drama (76: 312).

  Gandhi’s sympathy lay with England, but he knew that Indians would not support the war without an assurance of independence at its end, and without the immediate participation of national leaders in the government in New Delhi.

  After a journey of two nights, he told Linlithgow in Simla (4 Sept.) that he viewed the war ‘with an English heart’. Although, he added, only the Working Committee could commit the Congress, he himself was for the Congress giving unconditional support to Britain and France—unconditional but nonviolent.

  When he spoke to the Viceroy of the possibility of bombs falling on Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, tears came to his eyes. He did not suppress the tears because he wanted the Viceroy to know how he felt. Linlithgow was warm and courteous but unmoved. The War had hardened the imperial mind.

  In a statement to the press the next day, Gandhi referred to the tears—he wanted Indians and his British friends also to know how he felt. He added, however, that with his ‘out-and-out nonviolence’ he did not ‘represent the national mind’. The remark carried two implications. One, he might not stand in the way if the Working Committee offered India’s armed support. In fact his statement also said:

  Yet it almost seems as if Herr Hitler knows no God but brute force and, as Mr Chamberlain says, he will listen to nothing else (Harijan, 9 Sept. 1939; 76: 312).

  The second implication was that the ‘national mind’ did not necessarily share his sympathy for England, France and Poland. He on his part would say in a cable to Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Poland’s celebrated pianist-politician: ‘My whole heart is with the Poles in this unequal struggle… Their cause is just and their victory certain, for God is always the upholder of justice’ (76: 314). As Gandhi noted, others in India had reacted differently.

  At Delhi, as I was entraining for Kalka (en route to Simla), a big crowd sang in perfect good humour, to the worn-out refrain of ‘Mahatma Gandhi-ki-jai,’ ‘We do not want any understanding’…[T]hey were admonishing me not to have any understanding with the Viceroy (76: 313).

  It was the same on the way back to Wardha. At every station Subhas’s supporters asked Gandhi why he was sentimental about England. Had he no tears for endangered German sites?1 Accompanying Gandhi, Patel heard the reaction.

  The India of September 1939 was not ready to offer unconditional support to a Britain that had placed the country at war without consulting its leaders. Anger at Britain was a cloud over Hitler’s terror. If Britain assured India’s independence, the cloud could vanish.

  Instead, the cloud thickened, for as soon as war was declared the British Parliament empowered the Viceroy to override or take over India’s provincial governments.

  The war for freedom in Europe had clipped self-government in India. When the Working Committee met in Wardha, with Prasad in the chair, Subhas and Jayaprakash were present, but not Jinnah. Bose demanded that no ‘Indian men, money and resources’ should go into the ‘imperialist war’.2 Jawaharlal too was ‘in a combative mood,’ as Prasad would put it.3

  Gandhi’s proposal of unconditional nonviolent support was shot down by the Working Committee. No one agreed with him. For the first time in nineteen years his younger colleagues banded together to vote him down. Though anticipated and accepted by Gandhi, the outcome was a milestone that he and everyone else registered, and he regretted, for more than most he understood the cards the British held in India, and the risks in antagonizing a Britain at war.

  Nehru’s resolution declaring opposition to fascism but asking Britain to spell out her war aims and their application to India was easily passed. Jawaharlal was expressing the national opinion when he said that friendship between India and England was ‘possible but only on equal terms’, and that a lorded-over India could not fight for the freedom of Poland.4 To respond from day to day to the Raj’s war policies, the Working Committee asked Nehru to head a three-member ‘war’ committee, comprising himself, Patel and Azad.

  Endorsing the Working Committee resolution, Gandhi praised its author as an ‘artist’ who had ‘compelled India, through the Working Committee, to think not merely of her own freedom, but of the freedom of all the exploited nations of the world’, one who could ‘not be surpassed in his implacable opposition to imperialism’ but was yet ‘a friend of the English people’ and indeed ‘more English than Indian in his thoughts and make-up’ (76: 327).

  These truthful comments were part of Gandhi’s strategy. Despite Linlithgow’s unresponsiveness, he was still hoping for a Congress-Raj partnership in New Delhi similar to what had been worked out in the provinces.

  Some British voices asked HMG to be far
-sighted. The Manchester Guardian wrote of ‘a historic opportunity to secure Indian support’ and Attlee, the Labour Party leader, pleaded for ‘imaginative insight’.5 A group of British officers in the Punjab privately urged the Viceroy to proclaim ‘in a few stirring words’ his ‘belief that a war for freedom could only end in the freedom of India’.6 But the imperial mind, now also a mind focused on the war, seemed closed to such advice.

  In September, October and November Gandhi had more meetings with Linlithgow when he spelt out what the Congress wanted, but the Viceroy, personally courteous and even warm to Gandhi, was unbending over policy. He and Zetland, the secretary of state for India, described the Congress’s demands as blackmail.

  Britain was doubtless in a life-and-death struggle, but this reading was not honest. The Congress’s demands were neither sudden nor unexpected nor conceived after the declaration of war. Since accepting office in 1937, the Congress and its provincial legislators had passed resolutions every few months asking for constitutional advance at the centre. Zetland, for one, conceded that the Congress was only ‘reasserting’ its claims.7

  But Zetland, Linlithgow and their superiors in London, backed by inferiors in the Raj in India, hated the idea of hastening Indian independence. Their counter to Gandhi’s ‘sympathy’ offensive, to the Congress resolution and to liberal British voices, was the reliable device of divide-and-rule. Linlithgow was frank in a letter to the King:

  As soon as I realized that I was to be subjected to heavy and sustained pressure designed to force from us major political concessions as the price of Congress’s cooperation in the war effort, I summoned representatives of all the more important interests and communities in India, including the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes and Mr. Jinnah… and interviewed them one by one… a heavy and trying task, but well worth the trouble.