Naoroji was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, attending its first meeting in 1885. As a shrewd political strategist he recognized quickly that this could be the organization that could lead the campaign to win more political rights for Indians. He became the mentor of younger leaders and members affectionately called him ‘The Grand Old Man’. As he said later in life, ‘Is it vanity that I should take a great pleasure in being hailed as the Grand Old Man of India? No, that title, which speaks volumes for the warm, grateful and generous hearts of my countrymen, is to me, whether I deserve it or not, the highest reward of my life.’
Naoroji was elected thrice as the president of the Congress—in 1886 and 1906 at the sessions in Calcutta and in 1893 at Lahore. In 1893 he returned to Bombay right after winning his seat in the House of Commons and the news had spread like wildfire through the country. The Governor of Bombay was waiting to greet him when his ship docked at the port. Then when he travelled to attend the Congress session, his journey from Bombay to Lahore was like a victory parade, with joyous crowds waiting at every railway station with garlands.
The 1906 session in Calcutta was in comparison a sad occasion and fraught with conflict between the Extremists led by Tilak and the Moderate faction of Gokhale, both groups wanting their own candidate as president. Leaders feared that the party would break up; so the eighty-one-year-old Naoroji was requested to accept the post and play peacemaker as he was a friend of both Tilak and Gokhale. The strategy worked, as no Congressman could oppose his election. In his presidential address Naoroji said that Indians could not expect real self-government under the British; he called for Swaraj and endorsed the campaign of boycott and Swadeshi.
Naoroji will be remembered most for what came to be called the Drain Theory. He had used his superlative business brain to study the Indian economy carefully and came to the conclusion that the wealth of India was being drained away to make Britain rich. And Naoroji was not just talking theories—he was giving hard facts and figures that the government could not deny.
He collected the economic statistics for years to prove conclusively that colonial rule was systematically impoverishing Indians. Besides, there were very high taxes, especially on agriculture, that had ruined farmers and led to frequent famines, and he had the figures to prove that there were many more famines during British rule than during the rule of the Mughals. Then India was the supplier of raw materials, but Indian industries were not allowed to develop. For example, cotton was imported from India, woven into textiles in the mills of Manchester and then sold back to Indians at high prices. But when an Indian started a textile mill in India, he faced high taxes and a very uncooperative government. This monopoly of trade and industry had ruined the textile industry that during Mughal times was the biggest in the world.
According to Naoroji, this now deeply impoverished country had the ‘lordliest and costliest administration in the world’. Officers in India earned much more than their counterparts in Britain and then went home on generous pensions. As a matter of fact, when the Prime Minister of Great Britain earned a salary of Rs 5000 per month, his subordinate, the Viceroy of India, was earning Rs 20,000 a month! Naoroji studied the export-import figures of three decades and showed how India earned a lot from exports but none of the money ever came to the country. Very often it paid for wars that Britain was fighting in other parts of the world.
Naoroji published a book about this drain of wealth from India, titled Poverty and the Un-British Rule in India, which became compulsory reading for Indian nationalists. He warned the government that if the economic welfare of the people was ignored, then one day it ‘would drive the people to a boycott not only of the British wares but of the British rule’. He was the only Indian member of the Welby Commission in 1895 that looked into the expenditures of the government in India. Debunking the view that the country would fall apart without British officials, he bluntly told the Commission that all India needed were a British viceroy, governors and a commander-in-Chief and even those would not be required after a few years.
In 1907 the Grand Old Man finally came home and settled in Bombay. He kept a close track of the nationalist movement and his home in Versova saw a stream of visitors seeking his advice on a multitude of matters. He continued to write, and personally replied to every letter he received. He had one of the sharpest constitutional minds in the country and when the Minto–Morley Reforms were being drafted to increase the participation of Indians in the country’s government, he sent ninety pages of suggestions. Naoroji died at the age of ninety-two on 30 June 1917. By then the national movement that he had so carefully nurtured was a well-organized and highly efficient force.
Dadabhai Naoroji was always unimpressed by British propaganda about how beneficial British rule had been for India. He opened the eyes of Indians to the reality of colonial rule. If the common man in India became convinced that India deserved to be free, it was because—decades before—a man had the courage to stand up in the heart of British democracy and demand the same rights for his country. Naoroji simply asked the British to show that they believed in the principles of equality by their actions in India. He admired British organizations but was convinced that with education and training Indians could be just as good, thus removing any sense of inferiority. He was one of the first Indians to say that India is for Indians and inspired the generations of nationalist leaders who followed him.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny … At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes … when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.
—Jawaharlal Nehru
He was among the rich and light-hearted young men studying at the Trinity College in Cambridge—casual about attending classes, more interested in playing tennis, wearing Bond Street suits and going to see plays in London. Life was so smooth and easy for young Jawaharlal Nehru, and it could have remained that way for the rest of his life. Instead he chose to join an unequal battle against the biggest imperialistic power in the world and found himself in suffocating jail cells, bitten by mosquitoes, in the company of rats and pigeons, often in solitary confinement. He could have remained the pampered princeling of the Nehru clan, but he chose the pot-holed paths of villages, the heat and dust of public demonstrations, and the blow of police lathis. And he never regretted it.
Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad, the eldest child of Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani. Motilal was one of the most successful lawyers in the city and the family lived in great affluence at his mansion Anand Bhawan. It was also a very westernized lifestyle; young Jawaharlal was pampered with grand birthday parties and there is a photograph of him in a velvet suit and straw hat sitting on a tricycle, looking more English than Indian. There was a private swimming pool, a tennis court and a pony. Two governesses and private tutors were in constant attendance.
The boy was spoilt, but as the only child in a household of adults, he was also rather lonely. Then in 1905 he was admitted to the English public school Harrow and from there went on to the Trinity College at Cambridge. Jawaharlal was intelligent and well read but not academically ambitious; he ended with a second-class Tripos and then joined the Inner Temple to enter the Bar. The plan was that as a barrister he would join his father’s law practice in Allahabad. He was dreamily drifting through life, letting his father take all the decisions for him. He was quite interested in the political events in India, reading the news avidly, but not seriously involved. As his biographer S. Gopal writes, ‘Jawaharlal had opinions but needed a cause; there stretched before him a future secure but with no purpose.’
Jawaharlal returned to India and was married in 1916 to Kamala Kaul in one of the great society weddings of the year. He had always been interested in politics and had been deeply impressed by Annie Besant. He was furious when she was interned at Ooty by the Madras government and with Motilal started a Home Rule Leagu
e in Allahabad. As he immersed himself in the Indian political scene, he began to discover his own culture and history. Meanwhile, Motilal had started a newspaper The Independent and Jawaharlal began to write in it. He attended his first Congress session in 1912 at Bankipore and was rather disappointed to find that it was more of a social gathering, with the delegates all in suits speaking in English, completely out of touch with the real India.
His life took on real purpose after the tragedy at Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919. He was a member of the Congress Enquiry Committee led by C.R. Das that travelled through Amritsar and the countryside interviewing people. This was Nehru’s first close encounter with the real India and he was deeply angered by the helplessness of the people against official brutality. Even then, like most of the educated classes he had faith in the fairness of the British judicial system and expected that General Dyer would be tried for his crime. What shocked him much more was that Dyer was never formally punished and was given a hero’s welcome in England. Like many other leaders, he now realized that the days of requesting for favours were gone. The British would never hand them freedom; it would have to be won through sacrifice and struggle. Nehru, now nearly thirty, had finally found the cause he had been seeking.
Nehru first met Mahatma Gandhi at the Lucknow Congress in 1916. He found in Gandhi the leader and mentor he would follow till Gandhi’s death. It was a fascinating relationship—between a religious, traditional, economically conservative Mahatma and a modern, agnostic, socialist Nehru. He would often rebel against, hold diametrically opposite views to and disagree with his mentor’s policies, but he never broke away and he was Gandhi’s chosen successor. Gandhi explained this complex relationship the best: ‘It will require much more than difference of opinion to estrange us … He says that he does not understand my language, and that he speaks a language foreign to me … But language is no bar to a union of hearts. And I know this—that when I am gone he will speak my language.’
Nehru now joined the call for Non-cooperation by Gandhi with great enthusiasm and soon became the leader of the campaign in the United Provinces. At this time the peasants of Pratabgarh wanted someone to lead their agitation against the oppression of landlords—of high rents, forced evictions and low pay for labour. They came looking for Gandhi who had become the messiah of the peasants after Champaran, and found Nehru instead. His travels into the rural heartlands shocked him—he saw the tragic poverty and the indifference of the officials who supported the zamindars and were only interested in collecting taxes. He wrote later, ‘A new picture of India seemed to rise before me, naked, starving, crushed and utterly miserable.’
At that time the Non-cooperation campaign was in full flow and he astutely realized that harnessing peasant grievances to the movement would make it much more effective and widespread. Marching through villages with a towel on his head against the heat, he spoke at kisan sabhas and intervened vigorously in favour of peasants when they were arrested. As a matter of fact, he was ‘acutely embarrassed’ that he was not arrested himself! Gandhi visited the United Provinces in November and the agitation spread throughout the district. The police was out in force and the deputy commissioner tried to make Nehru leave. All the while he was sending reports to The Independent and soon became a national figure.
Nehru was now wholeheartedly a part of the freedom movement. A charismatic speaker, he now became one of the Congress party’s key orators and organizers. Just like Gandhi had once wandered the country in the third-class compartment of trains, he now began to explore rural India. He travelled by train, car and horse-carriage, and walked for miles. Once when he missed a train, the stationmaster lent him a trolley to get to the next station, though the poor man lost his job because of this patriotic act.
Father and son became ardent followers of Swadeshi. Motilal gave up his law practice and the whole Nehru clan began to wear khadi. Jawaharlal went around collecting foreign cloth to burn in huge bonfires and picketed shops selling foreign goods. He showed true leadership qualities, and his charm and empathy for common people made him immensely popular. He had great oratorical skills and an instinctive talent at building emotional bonds with people that made them trust him. Once when he was addressing a gathering of a thousand people, he was handed an order prohibiting a meeting in the district. Nehru, always, abiding by the law, promptly marched for four miles to the next district, with the audience happily following behind him, and he held the meeting there.
In December 1921 Motilal and Jawaharlal were arrested and sentenced to six months in jail. Released early, when Nehru came out in March 1922, Gandhi had called off the campaign after the episode at Chauri Chaura. Nehru was bitterly disappointed and outspoken in his criticism, but he continued with his public speaking and writings. In May he was arrested again; Anand Bhawan was searched. He refused to plead his case and was sentenced to eighteen months in Lucknow Jail. He spent most of the time reading.
There was a lull in the political scene and in April 1923, when Nehru was appointed as the chairman of the Allahabad Municipal Board, he got his first experience at governance. He was energetic and honest; everything from sanitation and water supply to education got his attention. He introduced spinning and weaving in schools, and in spite of the disapproval of the British officials, encouraged the wearing of khadi by students and teachers. He did his best to encourage the manufacture and sale of Indian goods by reducing taxes and even the commissioner had to admit that the municipality had functioned very efficiently under Nehru.
In 1926 Kamala Nehru was diagnosed with tuberculosis and Nehru with his wife and daughter left for Switzerland. Kamala’s health would remain a source of constant worry through his years of public struggle and long jail sentences. Once her health improved, he took the opportunity to travel through Europe meeting like-minded leaders and intellectuals. In 1927 he spoke at the International Congress Against Colonial Oppression and was given much prominence as a representative of the party fighting the world’s biggest imperialist power. He was attracted to radical and Marxist thoughts and met the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Later he and Motilal visited the Soviet Union and he was impressed by its achievements and felt India had much in common with it. This was the time when he became much more radical in his views and his beliefs began to diverge from those of Gandhi, though Nehru never completely broke away from the Mahatma.
The arrival of the Simon Commission in 1927 once again galvanized the Congress into action. As a general secretary of the party, Nehru too objected to the fact that a commission appointed to decide on the future of India had no Indian member, but he objected more to the assumption that the British Parliament should decide India’s fate. This meant India would be a part of the British Empire forever when he was thinking of independence in the near future. He was one of the earliest leaders to demand independence instead of Dominion Status, and even moved a resolution at Madras in 1927 that no one, not even Gandhi, took seriously.
The day the Simon Commission was to arrive at Lucknow, he led a large procession to the Lucknow railway station. The police charged the demonstrators with horses, sticks and spears. Nehru received lathi blows on his back until he was surrounded and shielded by students. The protestors were beaten and trampled but refused to retaliate or move back, and the police was forced to back off. The news of the attack on Nehru led to widespread anger across the country. In 1928 a reluctant Nehru was elected president of the Congress at the insistence of Gandhi who felt it was time for the young to take the lead.
Nehru took office at the Congress session at Lahore in December 1929 and with his unerring sense of drama he rode to the venue on a white horse. In his presidential address he spoke passionately about the party’s commitment to Purna Swaraj—complete independence—and this time the party agreed with him. For Nehru the time for compromises and discussions were long gone and he called for a campaign of civil disobedience to be led by Gandhi. He unfurled the tricolour by the banks of the River Ravi and declared 26 January 1930 as Ind
ependence Day when people across the country would take an independence pledge. In 1950 the same day would become our Republic Day when the new Indian Constitution would come into force and India would become a secular, democratic republic.
Initially Nehru did not quite understand Gandhi’s plan to make salt as an act of civil disobedience. He wrote later: ‘Salt suddenly became a mysterious word, a word of power … we were bewildered and could not quite fit in a national struggle with common salt.’ He began to appreciate the masterly strategy as he marched along with him for a while. Later he wrote about the experience with great feeling, describing Gandhi as a pilgrim walking fearlessly towards his goal. Then he returned to Allahabad to start the campaign in the United Provinces, and to his delight, Kamala joined him. As they couldn’t manufacture any salt in the landlocked region, they sold contraband salt. The government, which considered him a radical and one of the most dangerous among the Congressmen, was looking for an excuse to stop him. He was arrested soon after for leading a no-rent campaign among farmers in Rae Bareli and sentenced to six months in Naini Jail.
‘Great day!’ he wrote exultantly in his pocket diary as he faced solitary confinement in barracks surrounded by fifteen-feet high walls. It was the walls that disturbed him the most as it cut off much of the sky and the stars that he loved watching at night. He spent his time jogging, spinning on the charkha and reading. There was no electricity, so a punkhawala was assigned to his cell and one day the old man told him that a mango tree outside his hut was full of fruit. Nehru, dreaming of delicious Allahabadi langras, asked him to bring some and the man smuggled in a bunch of wild and very sour mangoes that Nehru dutifully ate with an appreciative smile. The problem was that the man came with more mangoes the next day!
A Flag, a Song and a Pinch of Salt Page 9