by Robert Payne
In jail Gandhi followed his usual quiet routine: praying, reading, spinning. Mirabehn kept him supplied with slivers, and the spinning went on uninterruptedly, but not, as he noted, with the same expertise as in the previous year. He slept a good deal, and complained that sleeping was taking up too much of his time. He read Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera for the first time and found it “dreadfully in earnest,” and began to take an interest in astronomy, which he had never previously regarded with any pleasure. And when he found that bursitis or some other crippling disease was affecting his right hand, so that he was compelled to write with his left, he complained good-humoredly that it was exactly what he could expect now that old age was creeping up on him.
By luck or by the deliberate choice of the prison officers Vallabhbhai Patel joined him in prison. He was an ideal prison companion, calm, solid, dependable in all emergencies. He had a rather crude wit, and Gandhi liked him because he was earthy and vigorous, radiating good health and good sense. Patel had a harsh authoritarian streak, but in prison, in the company of Gandhi, he had little opportunity to display it.
Patel enjoyed sitting at the feet of the master, and he especially liked to prepare his drink of honey and lemon-water, peel his fruit and look after the stick he used for cleaning his teeth. It amused him that Gandhi spent so long cleaning his teeth when there were so few of them. “He has only one or two teeth left,” he reported, “and he spends two hours a day brushing them.” Once Gandhi said: “I give you permission to fast.” Patel shrugged his shoulders. “What is the use of giving me permission?” he replied. “If I fast, they will let me die. If you fast, they will go to no end of trouble to keep you alive.” He could be brutally frank. Someone had written to Gandhi for advice on how to deal with an ugly wife. “Tell him to keep his eyes shut,” Patel suggested. In much the same vein he commented on Gandhi’s ineradicable talent for sending complaints to the government. “I suppose he does this lest they might think he is a spent force,” he said, and there may have been some truth in the statement. Gandhi enjoyed his sallies, but he was relieved when he heard that Mahadev Desai would be permitted to share his prison lodging, for the young secretary possessed a profound spirituality combined with intellectual agility, and these were entirely lacking in Patel.
Mahadev Desai’s arrival in March coincided with a momentous decision to fast once more, this time unto death, for a cause which seemed to many of his friends of minor importance. He did not immediately go on the fast; indeed, he scarcely knew whether it would be necessary; but he went through all the preliminary gestures and attitudes necessary to one embarking on an important and perhaps decisive campaign in which his life was at stake.
At the Round Table Conference, when the claims of the minorities were presented, there had been the suggestion that the harijans, the depressed classes, would be granted a separate electorate. He was not against their separate representation in the legislature, but he was totally against splitting them off from the main body of Hindus as unequal members of society. So he wrote in a long letter to Sir Samuel Hoare that he would resist to the death any attempt to create further divisions within the Hindu community. He wrote:
You will have to appreciate my feelings in this matter by remembering that I have been interested in the condition of these classes from my boyhood and have more than once staked my all for their sake. I say this not to pride myself in any way. For, I feel that no penance that the Hindus may do, can in any way compensate for the calculated degradation to which they have consigned the Depressed Classes for centuries.
But I know that the separate electorate is neither a penance nor any remedy for the crushing degradation they have groaned under. I, therefore, respectfully inform His Majesty’s Government that in the event of their decision creating separate electorate for the Depressed Classes, I must fast unto death.
I am painfully conscious of the fact that such a step, whilst I am a prisoner, must cause grave embarrassment to His Majesty’s Government, and that it will be regarded by many as highly improper on the part of one holding my position to introduce into the political field methods which they would describe as hysterical, if not much worse. All I can urge in defence is that for me the contemplated step is not a method, it is part of my being. It is the call of conscience which I dare not disobey, even though it may cost whatever reputation for sanity I may possess.
In due course Sir Samuel Hoare replied that the matter was still open for discussion and no final decision had been taken, but Gandhi’s views would be taken into consideration. It was a sensible reply, and Gandhi appeared to be satisfied with it. The threat of a fast unto death was held in reserve for many months, and even Gandhi forgot it as the days passed, while he was caught up with the small details of prison life, Mahadev Desai and Patel vying with one another in their service to him, while every day there was spinning and Mahadev Desai taught Sanskrit to Patel, who learned with the utmost difficulty, and always there were letters to write, as many as sixty a day, but since the outward and inward mail were both censored, there were sometimes long delays between the time a letter was written and the time it was received. Gandhi was good-humored about the delays. At all costs he was determined to remain a model prisoner.
As he sometimes pointed out to his correspondents he was not technically a prisoner. He was a détenu, and therefore entitled to special privileges. No other prisoner, for example, was permitted to write sixty letters a day or to send telegrams of condolence or to receive so many visitors. On the other hand, he was anxious to avoid any privileges which could be regarded as adding to his comfort, and he was angry when he learned from Major Martin, the jail superintendent, that the authorities had reserved 300 rupees a month for his upkeep and that this sum was regarded merely as the basic minimum. He thereupon demanded that the cost of his upkeep should on no account exceed thirty-five rupees a month.
From long experience in prisons he had worked out a code of behavior which served his purpose. His aim was to be left alone, to have as little as possible to do with the prison authorities, and to ensure that he could write as many letters as he pleased, and see as many visitors as he liked. He had definite ideas about prison food. “The master of a prisoner’s body is the jailer,” he wrote to his son Ramdas from Yeravda Jail. “Therefore so long as food is served politely and is clean and not uneatable, he will accept it and eat it if it is digestible. If it is not, he will throw it away.” He had the same feeling about his prison cell. If it was well-lighted and well-ventilated, he would accept it with good grace, without carping about the damp, the dirt, the noise, or any other obvious defects. The principle to be accepted was courtesy, for life in prison, like life in a household, became intolerable unless people were courteous to one another.
Throughout these months Mahadev Desai kept a diary in which he related the discussions and the occasional upheavals which took place between the three unlikely prison companions: Gandhi grave and austere, laying down the law and carrying out an extensive political campaign through his letters, Patel sardonic and sometimes ill-tempered, ill-at-ease in prison, lacking in the spiritual resources which both Gandhi and Mahadev Desai possessed. It is an illuminating diary, for we see Gandhi through Mahadev Desai’s eyes, sometimes catching him on the wing when he is not wholly conscious of being observed. Here, for example, is Mahadev Desai recounting a conversation which followed the death of a prisoner in Yeravda Jail:
I said to Bapu, “I was very angry to find how indifferent the Superintendent was as regards the boy’s death in jail.” Bapu observed men tended to become callous in service. I told Bapu about an officer in another jail who was a bad fellow, but took care of sick prisoners, felt for them, and talked about them every day. Bapu said that was because he was addicted to drink. Drink addicts have tender feelings. I wondered how; the Sardar [Patel] advised me not to take to drink to soften the heart. “In Tolstoy’s story,” said Bapu, “the man drinks but still has not the courage to murder his victim; he has some vestige of feeli
ng left. He then smokes a cigar, which blunts his sensibilities. A man is capable of anything when once his intellect is clouded.”
In this way Mahadev Desai recounts their day-by-day conversations, which are not always entirely serious. Some themes continually recur. Brahmacharya was never far from Gandhi’s mind, and Mahadev Desai is continually discussing it with him. From brahmacharya, total purity, it is usually a short jump to discussions on sex and birth control. Gandhi was continually inventing new arguments in favor of abstinence. “Birth control has no place in India,” he thundered. “Millions are physically and mentally enfeebled, and if sex is given a loose rein, it will constitute an impossible bar to progress.” This new and more pragmatic reason for self-control was one of many, and suggests the hopelessness of his self-appointed task of introducing the joys of abstinence to the multitudes of India. Unlike most normal people he was inclined to regard children as a burden, a punishment for the sins of their parents. “As a man sows so should he be ready to reap,” he said. “If he gratifies his instinct, let him bear the burden of children.”
Mahadev Desai wrote it all down with an angelic patience and understanding. On rare occasions a note of irony creeps in. Gandhi was still ruling the Sabarmati ashram from his prison cell, receiving reports and issuing commands. He ordered that logbooks should be kept with accurate records of everyone’s working hours, and he gave instructions that little children should be awakened at 3:30 A.M. so that they could attend prayers at 4:00 A.M. Every house must bear the date when it was last cleaned and a second date when it should be cleaned again. “How long will the ashramites be able to bear all this strain?” Mahadev Desai wrote in his diary. “Bapu has great expectations, but there is a limit beyond which men cannot work. I drew Bapu’s attention to the fact that the ashram children did not get sufficient sleep. He promised to discuss the point with me.”
That authoritarian streak was to remain with him to the end of his days. He was so accustomed to ruling that he would have felt helpless if deprived of the ashram, where everyone instantly obeyed his orders. But in prison he was subject to the discipline of Patel, who would occasionally argue with him, and of Mahadev Desai, who would sometimes smile with the expression of a boy in the presence of a teacher telling tall stories. Mahadev Desai was his touchstone; if he could not convince his secretary of the rightness of his actions or his thoughts, he knew he had failed.
There were others who would never be convinced of the rightness of his actions. He spoke often of Harilal, his eldest son, who drank heavily and chased women and appeared to enjoy being at odds with his father. Gandhi took the blame upon himself. “I was enveloped in darkness before he was born, and voluptuous when he was a child,” he wrote self-accusingly, adding that he was attempting to atone for his sin, but “atonement is proceeding at a snail’s pace.” Harilal amused himself with many women, Gandhi had amused himself with one, and he sometimes wondered whether he was not just as guilty as his son.
After a particularly taunting letter from Harilal, he replied mildly:
I will not still give up hope of your reformation even as I do not despair of myself. I was a bad man before you were born. But I have been gradually improving since then. There is no reason therefore why I should lose hope altogether. And I will continue to hope as long as you and I are alive, and preserve this letter of yours contrary to my usual practice, so that some day you may repent of having written such a foolish thing. I keep the letter not to taunt you but to enjoy a laugh over it if ever God is so good to me. We are all liable to err. But it is our duty to correct our errors. I trust you will correct yours.
But Gandhi knew only too well that Harilal was beyond redemption and he would never enjoy a laugh over Harilal’s letters. He seemed to regard the existence of his son as a punishment for some crime committed in a former life, never to be expiated in the present life. And sometimes he would remember how heroically Harilal had behaved in South Africa, when his heart was still devoted to God and his youthful body was unspoiled. He liked to remember especially that Harilal had been on a hunger strike in prison and served as an example to all the Satyagrahis in South Africa.
Now, as the summer was coming to an end, his own threatened hunger strike began to occupy his thoughts. On August 17, 1932, Ramsay MacDonald, the British Prime Minister, handed down the decision which came to be known as the Communal Award, by which the Depressed Classes were recognized as a minority community entitled to a separate electorate, while in addition they were given the right to contest seats in the general constituencies. This was a handsome reward for being a minority, but Gandhi objected to it on the grounds that this was to create a division within Hinduism which was intolerable and also on the grounds that it perpetuated the Depressed Classes, that totally unwarranted bar sinister. As he had said at the Round Table Conference: “I would far rather that Hinduism died than that untouchability lived.”
On the day after the Communal Award was handed down, Gandhi wrote to the Prime Minister saying that he would resist the decision by a fast unto death which would begin at noon on September 20. Since the date was a month away, this would give the British authorities time to hand down new instructions, and it would also give Gandhi time to change his plan, for some small doubt about the advisability of the fast still lingered in his mind. “It may be that my judgment is warped and that I am wholly in error in regarding separate electorates for Depressed Classes as harmful to them or to Hinduism,” he wrote to the Prime Minister. “If so, I am not likely to be in the right with reference to other parts of my philosophy of life. In that case my death by fasting will be at once a penance for my error and a lifting of a weight from off those numberless men and women who have childlike faith in my wisdom. Whereas if my judgment is right, as I have little doubt it is, the contemplated step is but due to the fulfilment of the scheme of life, which I have tried for more than a quarter of a century, apparently not without considerable success.”
Ramsay MacDonald, himself a self-indulgent man, was not likely to miss the note of self-indulgence in Gandhi’s letter, where there was more about my judgment, my wisdom, my death, my philosophy of life than about the plight of the untouchables. The difficulty was to learn whether there was any substance in Gandhi’s categorical demands. Lord Willingdon could be of no help, for he was by nature indifferent to the problems of the Indian caste system; and the Prime Minister turned to Sir Samuel Hoare for help. With Sir Samuel’s help he wrote an extremely courteous letter, saying that he could not understand why Gandhi should starve himself to death “solely to prevent the Depressed Classes, who admittedly suffer from terrible disabilities today, from being able to secure a limited number of representatives of their own choosing,” and urged him to reconsider. There was also a polite and scarcely visible suggestion that Gandhi was being in some slight degree self-indulgent Gandhi answered that what was at stake was the Hindu religion, about which he did not expect a British Prime Minister to be well-informed, and he insisted that he was not acting for selfish reasons. Since he had raised the question of his own selfishness, it is possible that he was aware that his decision to fast unto death was arrived at by means which were hot entirely free of self-interest. This was to be his ninth fast, and he recognized with a growing sense of elation that it was the most dangerous he had ever undertaken.
This time there were no clear-cut issues, no single enemy. He would say that the fast was not meant to coerce the British, but to sting Hindu consciences and inspire action. Yet it was in the nature of his demands that he would not stop fasting until a complex formula on the representation of the Depressed Classes had been worked out with the British, with the leaders of the Depressed Classes, and with the Congress. Inevitably there would be interminable wrangling, and even if a suitable formula could be established, there was no guarantee that it would be acceptable to him.
Nehru was as, confused as everyone else. “I felt angry with him for his religious and sentimental approach to a political question, and his freq
uent references to God in connection with it,” he wrote in his autobiography. Living out his prison term at Dehra Dun, reading only the scant news available in the newspapers, he thoroughly disapproved of an act which could only do harm to India and was likely to remove Gandhi from the scene. It was a feeling of mingled horror, disgust and brooding affection for the man he loved most in the world, and even when he received a telegram from Gandhi—“During all these days of agony you have been before mind’s eye. I am most anxious to know your opinion”—he could not quite bring himself to accept the idea of a fast unto death on behalf of the untouchables. “First news of your decision to fast caused mental agony and confusion, but ultimately optimism triumphed and I regained peace of mind,” he telegraphed. The agony and confusion were to be shared by most Indians until the fast was over.
In the days before he began the fast, Gandhi gave several interpretations of what he was about to undertake, as though he felt an overwhelming need to define his position in as many ways as possible. He spoke of “the still small voice within” which had commanded him to undertake this penance. He spoke of “fasting for light,” by which he meant that he hoped to receive divine illumination, and he discoursed at length on the practice of fasting among Christians, Hindus and Moslems. He assented calmly to the possibility that the penance might produce hallucinations as easily as illuminations. “In that case,” he replied, “I should be allowed to do my penance in peace, it would be the lifting of a dead weight on Hinduism. If it is an illumination, may my agony purify Hinduism and even melt the hearts of those who are at present disposed to distrust me.” When asked whether such an extreme form of fasting was not an act of coercion, he answered: “Love compels, it does not coerce.” The distinction was a fine one, and escaped most of his listeners. He was more forthright when he declared: “My fast I want to throw in the scale of justice. This may look childish to the onlookers, but not so to me. If I had anything more to give, I would throw in that also to remove this curse, but I have nothing more than my life.”