The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (The Robert Payne Library)

by Robert Payne

  MAHARAJAH: So it is you who have roused these people to madness?

  DHANANJAYA: Yes, Maharajah, and there is madness in my own veins, too.

  MAHARAJAH: You forbid my subjects to pay their taxes?

  DHANANJAYA: They would pay-out of terror, but I forbid them. Give your life to none, I say, but to Him who gave it.

  MAHARAJAH: Your assurance merely drives their fear underground and covers it up. The moment there is a crack, it will burst out seven times stronger. Then they will be lost. Suffering is written on your forehead, Vairagi.

  DHANANJAYA: The suffering written on my forehead I have taken into my heart. One dwells there, who is above all suffering.

  MAHARAJAH: What are you thinking of, Vairagi? Why are you so silent?

  DHANANJAYA: I thought all this time I had given the people strength, and today they tell me to my face that I have taken it away.

  MAHARAJAH: How so?

  DHANANJAYA: Simply that the more I excited them, the less I helped them to grow.

  Tagore’s play described how an evil maharajah built a great dam in order to subdue the people of Shiv-tarai by keeping them from access to water. Year by year, with the help of his monstrous machines, the dam grew higher and the people of Shiv-tarai more fearful. The Crown Prince discovers that the dam can be destroyed by forcing it where it is weakly built, and so destroys it, sacrificing his own life in the life-giving waters. Tagore was contrasting the magnanimity and gentleness of the Prince with the incantatory and visionary qualities of the wandering ascetic, and there was no doubt where his sympathies lay. He completed the play at the end of 1921 and gave several readings of it. Then all plans for producing the play were abandoned: the struggle for swaraj had entered a new and more dangerous phase, and nothing was to be gained by attacking Gandhi, who was then in danger of arrest.

  Just as Tagore had an ambivalent attitude to Gandhi, so Gandhi had an ambivalent attitude to Tagore. He felt that the Bengali poet was completely out of touch with the real life of India, loved poetry more than life, and pampered his students to the point of absurdity. These faults were outweighed by his supreme gifts of poetry. But he detected a softness in Tagore, which displeased him, and once, in a letter to Mahadev Desai, he explained that Tagore’s greatest fault was that he lacked fearlessness.

  To be fearless—to be physically brave and to be completely indifferent to the consequences of his actions—were Gandhi’s characteristic traits. He enjoyed proximity to danger, and was contemptuous of those who did not share his joy. His violent speeches could only result in violence; again and again he would say that he would dance with joy if Indians died in defense of their freedom, and in the next breath he would proclaim that swaraj was worthless unless it was acquired non-violently. In him violence and non-violence conducted a perpetual debate.

  When Lord Reading arrived in India in April 1921, he was well aware that the pot was boiling over. The new Viceroy was a Jew, and a man of sensibility. He was also a peculator, who had succeeded adroitly in avoiding punishment at the time of the Marconi scandals. A brilliant lawyer, he soon found himself confronted with a lawyer of even greater brilliance. In a series of conferences with Gandhi held in Simla on May 13 and 14, they conversed for altogether twelve hours. Gandhi produced a favorable impression on the Viceroy, who thus described their first meeting in a letter written to his son:

  He came in a white dhoti and cap woven on a spinning wheel, with bare feet and legs, and my first impression on seeing him ushered into the room was that there was nothing to arrest attention in his appearance, and that I should have passed him by in the street without a second look at him. When he talks, the impression is different. He is direct, and expresses himself well in excellent English with a fine appreciation of the value of the words he uses. There is no hesitation about him and there is a ring of sincerity in all that he utters, save when discussing some political questions. His religious views are, I believe, genuinely held, and he is convinced to a point almost bordering on fanaticism that non-violence and love will give India its independence and enable it to withstand the British government. His religious and moral views are admirable and indeed are on a remarkably high altitude, though I must confess that I find it difficult to understand his practice of them in politics.

  Lord Reading’s difficulties increased as the year advanced. Gandhi’s speeches were growing increasingly violent, and he was making no secret of the fact that he had declared war against the British government. He was continually traveling across India, and every day there was a new speech, a new definition of the word swaraj, a new stratagem for obtaining it. Subhas Chandra Bose might say that “swaraj within a year is not only unwise but childish,” but Gandhi felt that it was well within reach, and needed only a dramatic gesture to announce its arrival. He had already designed the new flag for the independent India, which would soon come into existence. Shortly after Lord Reading arrived in India, the idea came to Gandhi that the Indian flag should be white, green and red—white representing purity, green representing the Muslims, and red representing the Hindus—and there should be a drawing of a spinning wheel, because “India as a nation can live and die only for the spinning wheel.” A quarter of a century later a flag very close to this was adopted as the national flag of India.

  Gandhi spent a good deal of time and thought on a deliberate search for symbols to illustrate and suggest the kind of revolution he desired. The flag, the spinning wheel, homespun cloth, the white khadi cap worn by his followers—all these were physical symbols, their meaning easily understood by the poorest and least educated. By traveling only in third-class compartments and by adopting the dress of poor Hindus he was symbolically identifying himself with the poor. He was always searching for such symbols, and in September 1921, while staying at Madura, the city of weavers and vast temples in Madras, he decided to make himself a symbol. He was in a state of seething anger over the undisciplined behavior of the crowds. How, he asked himself, could he possibly hope for a successful noncooperation movement if the masses behaved like mobs? The purpose of khaddar was to introduce concepts of orderly and disciplined action into the minds of the masses, and he had evidently failed in his purpose. It was necessary to pronounce a penance on himself, and at the same time this penance should assume a form that would serve as an example to others. In this way there came to him the idea of stripping himself of all his clothes except a small, essential loincloth.

  This stripping was an act of mourning for his lost hopes. Krishnadas, his secretary at this time, a quiet and saintly man, observed the process at close quarters and described it in his book Seven Months with Mahatma Gandhi as though it was perfectly natural and even inevitable. He tells how Gandhi, enraged because the people shouted so much that he was unable to make a speech, suddenly announced that he intended to wear only a loincloth. Rajagopalachari strenuously objected, but Gandhi was determined to carry on with his plan, saying that there was nothing extraordinary in wearing a loincloth in Madras Presidency, where people went about half-naked. These people loved finery, there was very little understanding of khaddar among them, and they must be taught a lesson. He proposed to limit the period of penance to about five weeks and then he would revert to his usual costume of long dhoti, cap and shirt. If the weather became cold, he would wear a shawl over his bare chest. This was the only possible mitigation of the sentence he had pronounced on himself. He wrote out a statement, and had copies sent to the Bombay Chronicle, the Hindu, and the Independent, a newspaper which followed the non-cooperation cause, and he asked whether there was an Associated Press reporter available. He was well aware that his decision would create a furor among his followers.

  There had been many Gandhis wearing many masks. There was the lawyer impeccably dressed in the fashion of Saville Row. There was the peasant who wandered over India at Gokhale’s behest wearing the cheap clothes of a pilgrim, and the revolutionary who wore a white skull cap made of khadi, and shirt and dhoti of the same homespun cloth. Now at l
ast there was a man stripped to the same small loincloth that a poor peasant might wear when plowing his poor fields.

  On the evening of September 22, 1921, Gandhi made the decision that was to have an incalculable effect on his legend. He announced that he was merely following the example of his Kathiawari kinsmen who went about bareheaded and bare-chested and with a minimum of clothes at a time of mourning. Almost at once it was recognized that he had found a symbolic disguise, which was wonderfully transparent, suitable for him and for him alone. His nakedness was a badge of honor. Resembling the poorest peasant, he could more easily represent himself as the leader of poor peasants.

  Krishnadas believed that the idea had come to Gandhi quite suddenly at Madura. In fact, Gandhi had been toying with it for some time. It was, after all, a logical extension of his often repeated statement that the Indians should boycott foreign cloth “even if it meant having to be satisfied with the merest loincloth.” He was to wear this loincloth for all the remaining years of his life.

  From time to time other symbolic acts had occurred to him. At the end of July there was a symbolic bonfire of foreign cloth in Bombay, and while the flames were leaping up Gandhi had addressed the crowd on the significance of this act of destruction. The finest silks, embroidered saris, cambric shirts, tweed jackets, all went up into flames, while Gandhi announced with his customary irony that “untouchability should be reserved for foreign cloth.” There were no arrests, for the burning took place on private property; and soon all over India his followers imitated him. Gandhi played the role of Savonarola with eagerness. Charlie Andrews, his closest English friend, was dismayed, and asked what advantage there was in burning the noble handiwork of one’s fellow men and women. “I almost fear now to wear the khaddar you have given me,” he wrote, “lest I should appear to be judging other people as a Pharisee would, saying, ‘I am holier than you.’” Gandhi answered rather lamely that he had restricted himself to burning foreign cloth and had not the least intention of destroying English watches or Japanese lacquer boxes. “Love of foreign cloth has brought foreign domination,” he said, and he hoped there would be more bonfires.

  In November Gandhi was confronted once more with the problem of violence in an extreme form. The Prince of Wales’ visit to India had been postponed several times. Now at last he arrived in Bombay to be greeted by an impressive silence, for all over India the people closed their shops and remained in their houses as though in mourning. The Congress had organized a general strike which reached down into the remote villages. In Bombay, however, there were Parsis, Jews, Eurasians and many others who felt there was no harm in welcoming the heir to the throne. Mob violence, directed especially against the Parsis and the Eurasians, broke out. Liquor shops were smashed, automobiles and tramcars were set on fire, and policemen were killed. Gandhi was stunned. He drove around Biom-bay in an automobile, vainly attempting to bring the rioters to their senses, utterly dismayed because he recognized these youngsters in their khadi caps as his followers. They looted shops, burned foreign cloth, wrecked automobiles, and all the time they were shouting: “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai” At first he thought their behavior could only be explained by a deliberate plot engineered by the British against him, but he soon realized that it was not so. The Congress had called for non-violent non-cooperation with the Prince of Wales, and Bombay was in danger of being drowned in blood.

  As he raced around Bombay in his automobile, he found two policemen dying of stab wounds, called for volunteers to take them to hospital, and then rushed away to confront a crowd of youths molesting everyone who wore foreign clothes. Parsis came running up to him, pleading with him to save the virtue of their womenfolk. Buildings were on fire, and the khadi-clad youths formed lines in the street to prevent the fire engines from ap-proaching the buildings. The cry of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai” grew louder. “Never,” Gandhi wrote later, “has the sound of these words grated so much on my ears.” He sent his own friends out to quell the storm, and they returned with bloody heads and broken bones.

  Gandhi was himself chiefly responsible for the hartal, and he realized that the responsibility for these riots lay with him. “The Lord has saved me from a dire calamity,” he wrote in the strains of a prophet who has seen his prophecies come true. “I was most unwilling to come to Bombay; but God wanted me to see the sights that I have seen, and dragged me to Bombay. If today I had stayed in Ahmedabad I might have easily belittled the happenings in Bombay and paid little attention to them.” What he saw was the failure of non-violent non-cooperation, his own incapacity to maintain discipline, the end of any immediate confrontation with the government, for all the advantages were on the side of the Raj and all the shame had fallen on himself.

  All over India there were riots and murders, but the hartal in Bombay had a very special character: Gandhi saw it with his own eyes. It was a terrifying experience, and though he took some comfort from the knowledge that “the Mussulmans have to my knowledge played the leading part during the two days of carnage,” it was not the kind of comfort that gave him any pleasure; nor was it true that they had played the leading part. Parsi temples had been violated, men and women had been killed; there was need for an act of penance. “I must refuse to eat or drink anything but water till the Hindus and Mussulmans of Bombay have made peace with the Parsis, the Christians and the Jews, and till the non-cooperators have made peace with the cooperators.” But this fast, which lasted only two days, brought no lasting peace, and he remained for some days in a mood of profound pessimism. Only the news that thousands of Congress leaders were being imprisoned by the government gave him any relief. Motilal Nehru and his son Jawaharlal had been arrested shortly before the hartal, and thereafter the government rounded up as many members of the opposition as it could reach. Gandhi was especially pleased to learn of the arrest of his wayward son Harilal, and sent off a happy telegram: “Well done, God bless you. Ramdas, Devadas and others will follow you.”

  Others followed in such large numbers that the jails were crowded, and Gandhi’s hopes soared in the belief that swaraj might be wrested from the enemy on the crest of a wave of repression. “We must be prepared for indiscriminate flogging and shooting by the Government from all parts of India,” he wrote at the beginning of January; but the wish was father to the thought. The repressions were bad enough without these excesses, which would only play into his hands, He hoped for them, prayed for them, but they did not come. Fantasies of violence filled his mind. He saw himself being led out to execution; he would stand there calm and impassive; the bullets would tear into his skin; and freedom would flower from his blood. At the end of the month he gave a speech at Surat in which he declared that the best hope lay in another Amritsar. As usual, he spoke extempore, allowing the dreams to well up from the depths of his being. He said:

  Let some General Dyer stand before us with his troops. Let him start firing without warning us. It is my prayer to God that, if that happens, I should continue to talk to you cheerfully even at that time just as I am doing now and that you should all remain sitting calmly then, under a shower of bullets, as you are doing now. It would be a great thing for Gujarat if, at that time, your ears and backs were turned towards me, but your chests and your eyes faced the direction from which the bullets came and you welcomed them.

  But these nightmares arose from despair, and he was well aware that he had come nearly to the end of his resources. “We have lost our faith in ourselves and in mankind,” he said a few days earlier. Yet when he settled down to write an ultimatum to the Viceroy, announcing that he proposed to lead a vast civil-disobedience movement in Bardoli, in the Surat district of the Bombay Presidency, unless his demands were met in seven days, he gave the impression of a man drawing up a legal petition rather than a threat. The words at first glance seemed temperate, the argument moving by logical stages. Since the government repressions were continuing, therefore it was necessary to seek redress. Since freedom of speech and association and of the press were in abeyance,
therefore it was necessary to restore them. Since innocent people had been jailed and fined, therefore it was necessary to release them and restore the fines. The government was criminal, therefore it must be punished. The government must “declare in clear terms a policy of absolute non-interference with all nonviolent activities in the country whether they be regarding the redress of the Khilafat or the Punjab wrongs or swaraj or any other purpose and even though they fall under the repressive sections of the Penal Code or the Criminal Procedure Code or other repressive laws subject always to the condition of non-violence.” This legal document concealed a raging fire. Gandhi was demanding immunity for any audacious act by himself or by the Congress Party, the abject surrender of the government, and the immediate recognition of himself as the leader of a movement capable of taking the government’s place. If the government adopted the policy of absolute non-interference with all non-violent activities, it would be giving full powers to Gandhi, who would then decide what was violent or nonviolent activity. The ultimatum was rejected, and the government waited to see what would happen.

  It did not have long to wait. On February 5, in the small village of Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces, a thousand miles from Bardoli, a procession of Gandhi’s followers marched past the local police station in good order, but some stragglers were taunted by the police. The stragglers shouted, the procession wheeled round, more taunts were hurled by the police, and soon there was fighting. The twenty-three constables were hopelessly outnumbered, and opened fire without apparently killing anybody. With their ammunition exhausted, they retired inside the police station, which was set on fire. As they came running out, they were hacked to pieces and their mangled remains were tossed into the flames.