Lets Kill Gandhi

by Gandhi, Tushar A.

  Sir Ardeshir Dalai (Parsi)

  A Sikh member, whose name they would submit later

  Jinnah wrote to Wavell: 'With regard to your suggestion for submitting a panel of names ... the Working Committee [of the League] desires to point out that when a similar proposal was made by your Excellency's predecessor, Lord Linlithgow ... the Working Committee opposed it and, when its objections were brought to the notice of Lord Linlithgow, he dropped the proposal and suggested another alternative.'*

  On 14 July, when the conference met for the final sitting, Wavell revealed that even without receiving a list from the Muslim League, he had formed a list of Executive Council Members which he was certain would be acceptable to the conference. But the Muslim names he had suggested were not acceptable to Jinnah. The viceroy, however, did not show his list to the Congress president even after the Congress asked for the list; no one else was shown the viceroy's list either. The viceroy did not place the list before the conference for consideration and debate. In his concluding remarks he said that the conference had failed and he was holding himself responsible for the failure. 'It grieves me to think,' Gandhi wrote to the viceroy, 'that the conference which began so happily and so hopefully should have ended in apparent failure—due exactly, as it would seem, to the same cause as before. This time you have taken the blame on your own shoulders. But the world will think otherwise. India certainly does'. Probing into the cause of the failure he continued: 'I must not hide from you the suspicion, that the deeper cause is perhaps the reluctance of the official world to part with power, which the passing of virtual control into the hands of their erstwhile prisoners would have meant'.

  The failure of the Simla Conference was a hard blow to the morale of the Indian masses, who had hoped for a new beginning. If the outcome of the conference depended solely on the acceptance of the viceroy's offer by the presidents of the Congress and the Muslim League, where was the need to call all the other delegates? Jinnah, in a statement, called Wavell's plan a 'snare' and 'a death warrant' for the Muslim League. He claimed that, even if all the Muslims in the government were to be from the Muslim League, they would still be in a minority in the Cabinet. The representatives of 'all the minorities', Jinnah said, would 'in actual practice, invariably ... vote ... against us' in the Government. Jinnah seemed to have forgotten his own oft repeated theory that the Muslim League was the champion and protector of all the minorities in India, and the Congress represented not even 'Hindus' but only 'caste Hindus'. Now he claimed: 'All other minorities, such as Scheduled Castes, Sikhs and the Christians have the same goal as the Congress.... Their goal and ideology is ... of a united India. Ethnically and culturally, they are very closely knitted to Hindu society.' This was classic Jinnah double-speak.

  The net result of the conference was to introduce the formula of 'caste-Hindu-Muslim parity' into practical politics and to stereotype officially the principle of religious division on the eve of independence. The conference also marked the beginning of an essay—which became so prominent during the Cabinet Mission's negotiations later—in which the 'intentions' of the British statesmen were belied by the text of their declarations and what was repudiated in profession was pursued in practice through the device of the 'ambiguous middle'. Commenting on the intentions of Lord Wavell, Francis Sayer of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration said in an interview with Gandhi, 'You will admit, that Wavell did make an honest attempt to break the deadlock.'

  'An honest attempt should have ended honestly,' Gandhi replied.

  Confirmation of the less-than-honest intentions of the British administration came in the form of a letter received by Nehru from London: 'It is now known that the Wavell offer was maintained in being as part of election necessities. Also, that the final termination of the talks by Wavell, without taking the obvious course of forming a Government without Jinnah, was dictated from here'.

  CABINET COMMISSION

  After the failure of the Simla Conference, India was in a continuous state of turmoil. The demand for self-determination and freedom was gaining momentum. The Congress cadres were restive; another showdown was eminent.

  Gandhi took the brief lull after the Simla Conference to tend to the needs of his colleagues. Patel's health had been ruined during his incarceration; he was afflicted with a spastic colon. Doctors advised a major surgery, but the risks were too great. Gandhi suggested that Patel put himself under his care and allow him to nurse him back to health with nature cure. Thus the two of them checked into the Nature Cure Clinic run by Dr. Dinshaw Mehta in Urli Kanchan, a small village near Poona, in the third week of August 1945. They stayed there for the next three months. An incident that occurred while the two were at the clinic is worth narrating. The incident left an imprint on the mind of Gandhi's daughter-in-law Sushila, wife of Manilal, Gandhi's second son.

  One day a young man carrying a large basket came to meet Gandhi at the clinic. 'I have brought fruits for Gandhiji,' he told Sushila. She asked him his name and said that, as Gandhi was busy, he would be unable to meet him. The young man looked restless and uneasy and refused to give his name. He kept the basket in the waiting room and slipped away. After sometime, Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu opened the basket, and found to his utter shock that it only contained used and tattered footwear. He reported it to Sushila. Gandhi was informed about this incident and, without batting an eyelid, he told Kanu, 'Go and sell them in the bazaar.' Kanu managed to sell the shoes to an old goods trader in the Poona bazaar and got four rupees for them, a handsome sum those days. Gandhi instructed Kanu to deposit the sum in the Harijan fund. The next evening, speaking after the prayers, Gandhi referred to the gift. 'I was presented with a basket full of old footwear by a friend yesterday. The footwear has been sold for four rupees and the same has been deposited in the Harijan fund. I would like to thank the anonymous friend for his kind gesture.'

  The young man who had left the basket was present in the audience. He stood up and angrily demanded that the money be given back to him. 'Give me the money; you have no right to sell the footwear. I have not permitted you to donate the money to the Harijan fund. The money is mine,' he shouted. Gandhi explained that, once he had accepted the gift, it was his to do what he liked with. Patel was also present at the meeting, and everyone got a good look at the enraged young man. The hate-filled face of the young man, who had by now sharted shouting and abusing Gandhi, imprinted itself on many minds. The young man was then removed forcibly from the prayer meeting. After Gandhi's murder, when Nathuram Godse's photograph was published in the newspapers, Sushila immediately recognised him as the man who had presented the basket of footwear. Sushila narrated this incident to the late Chandrakant Bakshi, an eminent Gujarati writer, when he met her in Durban, South Africa.

  The election results in England showed that there was an overwhelming majority in Britain in favour of terminating British rule in India. The Labour party swept the polls and formed the government. Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the new secretary of state for India, was an old friend of Gandhi. Congratulating him on his appointment, Gandhi wrote: 'If the India Office is to receive a decent burial and a nobler monument is to rise from its ashes, who can be fitter person than you for the work?', to which Lord Pethick-Lawrence replied: 'I greatly hope that our personal friendship, which has existed for so many years, may bear fruit in harmonious cooperation in achieving the lasting good of India and her people'.

  The viceroy was invited to confer with the new Labour government in London in the last week of August, to review the Indian problem de novo and find a solution in consultation with the viceroy. At the same time, the long postponed elections to the Central and Provincial Legislatures were announced, to be held during winter. On 19 September 1945, after the viceroy's return from London, a statement was issued in India, announcing the intention of both HMG and the viceroy, immediately after the elections to the Central Assembly and in the provinces, to (1) invite the resumption of ministerial responsibility in the provinces, (2)
convene a constitution-making body as soon possible, and (3) reconstitute the viceroy's Executive Council with the support of the main Indian parties.

  Gandhi set out on a tour of Bengal, which was then under the rule of its governor the Australian, Richard Gavin Casey. He had sent an invitation to Gandhi to visit Bengal. The Midnapore district of Bengal had been devastated by a cyclone, floods, a man-made food famine, and to top it all, government repression. Casey agreed to allow Gandhi to visit the devastated district and so, while the country was busy preparing to face elections, Gandhi left for Bengal on 30 November 1945.

  While recording his impressions about Gandhi, Casey wrote: Amongst saints he is a statesman, and among statesmen he is a saint. Mr. Gandhi's greatest asset is his warm humanity.... He can make his point publicly with an opponent and yet leave his opponent without any feeling of bitterness'. The following week Gandhi began a tour of the devastated district of Midnapore. The district had been devastated by a cyclone and a tidal flood of unprecedented fury that eclipsed anything India had witnessed during the freedom movement in the past two decades. The once lush rice fields of the districts were littered with the corpses of men and cattle. Of the casualties, many were believed to have been buried indiscriminately under the very ground where Gandhi held a prayer meeting. There was no sign of the tragedy above the ground. 'God mercifully hides under a mantle of greenery the shame of man's tragedy on earth,' observed Gandhi during his post-prayer address.

  The viceroy kept HMG in England briefed about the situation in India. His reports were becoming grimmer with every passing month. The situation in India was rapidly deteriorating. Sustaining British rule in India was becoming more difficult and less justifiable with every passing month. The colonial government was becoming increasingly unpopular with almost all sections of Indians. A showdown with the 'caste Hindu Congress' was looming large. In a despatch sent to Whitehall in December 1945, the viceroy pointed out that if the Congress was suppressed, it would create a vacuum as no other organisation could replace it. After the elections the Congress was sure to present its demand in a more extreme form if some action to solve the deadlock was not taken in the meantime, and it would become very difficult to resist it then. The Congress might even resort to 'direct action' to enforce its demand, and in that eventuality the government would find itself without any supporter—not even the princes. The delirious enthusiasm with which the released Congress leaders were greeted was a clear indication that the spirit of 'do or die' had taken root.

  The armed forces were also not left untouched by the anger and nationalistic fervour. There were outbreaks of mutiny in Jubbalpore and some other cantonments. A similar outbreak in Poona was only averted due to the advice against such a move given by Gandhi to the representatives of the Indian troops, who had secretly met him. The Indian National Army under-trials, Indian soldiers who had fought the British in Burma under the leadership of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, were lionised all over India. In February 1946 Calcutta had erupted for three days, during which period the police had resorted to firing on student-led processions fourteen times. These were all portents, and their significance could not be ignored. The gulf between the representative of the British power in India, and the people over whom they enforced their writ, was never greater. Distrust of British intentions was deep, and the impatience for independence, intense. The viceroy feared that soon, the only option left to the colonial occupiers would be complete and voluntary capitulation, or a virtual reconquest of India and an indefinite military occupation, but public opinion back home in the England of 1946 was not prepared to tolerate these alternatives. The British were left with only one option and they had to save face as well as exact revenge for what Gandhi's non-violent liberation movement had done to the empire.

  The results of the elections to the provinces and the Central Assembly came in. The Muslim League—due to its headstart over the Congress, which was severely repressed between 1942-45, and the patronage it received from the British administration—predictably managed to win almost all the Muslim seats in the Central Assembly as well as all the provincial legislatures—except the NWFP where a Congress ministry led by the Khan brothers swept the polls, not only capturing the Assembly but defeating the League on majority of the Muslim seats too. The Congress formed ministries in eight of the eleven provinces and in Punjab it formed a coalition with the Unionist Party, which cut across communal alignments. The Muslim League formed ministries in Bengal and Sind. In Sind it had a precarious majority and was able to form a ministry and cling to power only due to the benevolence of the British governor, Sir Francis Mudie.

  The time had come for the British to do the right thing. The promises made by the viceroy on behalf of HMG in September 1945 had to be honoured. The viceroy's council was to be formed with the support of the main political parties in India and a constitution-making body had to be convened; all this was part of the promise given to the people of India. The British government decided not to leave the responsibility of negotiating with the Indian parties solely in the hands of the viceroy. On 19 February 1946, the government announced in the British Parliament that a mission comprising three Cabinet ministers would shortly be sent to India. There, in association with the viceroy, they would proceed to 'give effect to the programme outlined in the Viceregal announcement of September, 1945'. Announcing this, the Labour Party prime minister, Clement Attlee, made some very pertinent remarks in the House of Commons, on 15 March 1946:

  'India must choose what will be her future constitution. I hope that the Indian people may elect to remain within the British Commonwealth.... But if she does so elect, it must be of her own free will.... If, on the other hand, she elects for independence, in our view she has a right to do so.... I am well aware, when I speak of India, that I speak of a country containing a congeries of races, religions and languages.... We are very mindful of the rights of minorities, and minorities should be able to live free from fear. On the other hand, we cannot allow a minority to place a veto on the advance of the majority.... There is the problem of the Indian States.... I do not believe for a moment that the Indian Princes would desire to be a bar to the forward march of India. But, as in the case of any other problems, this is a matter that Indians will settle themselves'. For the first time the three principal hurdles that had tripped up the process of settling the Indian question were removed: the veto of the minority on political advance, the obligation towards the princes, and the denial of the right to unqualified independence.

  But other hurdles 'arising out of past circumstances' still threatened the process. India was to pay a terrible price for these 'past circumstances'. Gandhi, observing the process, was a worried man. It was the hour of the country's destiny. Would the India of his dreams acquit itself in a manner worthy of its glorious past? 'The British Cabinet Delegation will soon be in our midst,' he declared, 'to suspect their bona fides in advance would be a variety of weakness. As a brave people, it is our duty to take at its face value the declaration of the British ministers that they are coming to restore to India what is her due. If a debtor came to your house in contrition to repay his debt, would it not be your duty to welcome him? Would it not be unmanly to treat him with insult and humiliation in remembrance of an injustice?'

  In March 1946, while Gandhi was staying at the Nature Cure Centre, he received a personal invitation from the British Cabinet Delegation to meet them in Delhi in the first week of April, to discuss with them how the British could most expeditiously 'Quit India'. The special messenger bearing the invitation from Delhi, Sudhir Ghosh, almost did not make it to Urli Kanchan. The car sent to take him to the airport was delayed and so he missed the Royal Air Force flight scheduled to take him to Bombay and then on to Poona. Half an hour after take off from Delhi, the plane crashed, killing everyone on board.

  Gandhi accepted the invitation and left for New Delhi. Reading Road, New Delhi, is the address of the magnificent Birla Mandir. Just a stone's throw away from this magnificent ed
ifice of red stone and marble is a humble temple to Valmiki, author of the epic Ramayana and the patron saint of the Valmiki community of north India. Members of the Valmiki community predominantly worked as sweepers. A compound wall separated the temple from the municipal sweepers' shanty colony, popularly known as Harijan Colony. On his trip to New Delhi to confer with the Cabinet Mission, Gandhi camped in a two-room tenement next to the Valmiki temple. For the next few months this became a hub of activity. The CWC regularly met here. Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Jayprakash Narayan and Sarojini Naidu became daily visitors; the bureaucracy, foreign guests, and world press corps all made a beeline for the humble abode next to the temple. Anybody who had anything to do with India eventually ended up at the humble doors of the 'half-naked fakir' at his Harijan Colony camp.

  In the summer of 1946, the obscure little colony rivalled the Viceregal palace in importance. It was here that the final chapter of the dramatic last days of the British Empire were written. Many meetings with the Cabinet Mission were held here, which resulted in the end of the 150-year-old British Raj, the birth of independent India and the tragedy of Partition.

  The Harijan Colony was situated around a playground, where Gandhi held his evening prayers. A band of militant Hindu youth also used the ground for physical training and to practice with weapons and firearms. They ended their daily preparation with a salute to their version of a Mother India, who was intolerant of the 'paradharmi', or people of other religions and faiths, i.e. Muslims. They were members of the RSS, a replica of a creed of fanatic Muslim religious zealots— the Muslim National Guard.

  The Cabinet Mission comprised three members of the British Parliament—Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and Albert V Alexander. Gandhi admired Pethick-Lawrence. Cripps was often referred to as the 'Occidental Gandhi'. His austere simplicity, vegetarianism and faith in the healing power of spirit endeared him to Gandhi who was delighted to find a 'fellow crank and faddist'. The Cabinet Mission's negotiations were held against a backdrop of communal trouble. The Muslim League was livid that the British prime minister had threatened to take away its power of veto. Jinnah denounced this attempt to 'bypass the League' as a 'flagrant breach of faith'. True to its past, communal fires were lit in many places, stabbings in communally sensitive areas were resorted to all over the country. The involvement of the Muslim League was evident.