Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  The boys went to school in round dark caps, shirts and veshtis. On one occasion, knowing that Father was not at home, Krishnaswami got at the former’s revolver and cartridges; aiming at the trunk of the tamarind tree, he pulled the trigger with the forefingers of both hands.

  Manga had died before fulfilling her promise to donate her jewels to Tirupati. C.R. partially implemented it after her death. Taking Krishnaswami and Ramaswami to Tirupati for their upanayanam, the age-old rite initiating boys into a period of learning and discipline, he gave some of the jewellery to the temple. (The pieces that remained were not destined to stay in the family. In 1921, a servant called Perumal — God — removed the valuables, including her mother’s jewellery, that Namagiri, married by then, was keeping.)

  About a year after Manga’s death, a client offered his daughter to C.R. ‘I don’t wish to have a sixth child,’ C.R. replied. ‘I am not going to marry again,’ he added. The tone was final.

  The War was still on. Indian troops fought for the Empire. Schoolgirls all over India, including Papa in Salem, were asked to knit for them. The endurance of brown soldiers in the winter battles of 1914-5 in France and Flanders won acclaim. Within India, however, those wanting to widen political rights were seriously curbed by the new Defence of India Rules.

  Tilak, who had been released in 1914, offered a bargain: Indian recruits against a promise of Home Rule. To strengthen his negotiating position, he formed, in April 1916, a Home Rule League. Annie Besant, a radical Irishwoman who had made India her abode and Indian emancipation her mission, also popularized the Home Rule cry.

  Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta, leaders of the Moderate Congress, had died in 1915. In the two years that followed, Mrs Besant, bursting with energy, and Tilak, physically weak but strong of will, held the political stage.

  Gandhi, who had returned to India in 1915, was in the countryside, quietly sowing his strange seeds. They had germinated in South Africa, but would they in Indian soil? One of the first Indians to feel they would was C.R.

  A paper he wrote in February or March 1916, ‘M.K. Gandhi: His Message to India,’ brings this out. Unlike Tilak and Mrs Besant, Gandhi had advocated unconditional Indian help to the Empire at War, thereby disappointing most Extremists. Not, however, C.R., who discerned that once Gandhi decided to oppose an injustice, he would fight harder than anyone else.

  As C.R. saw it, Gandhi was prepared to attack not just the symptoms but the source and strength of the Raj — the civilization that sustained it. According to Gandhi, C.R. wrote, there was ‘no use blaming the English, for they came and remain only because of us . . . By adopting their civilization, we retain them . . . But for [Indian] lawyers and judges and policemen, who are first cousins, no foreign rule would be possible.’

  The solution was to expel the imported civilization, remembering, at the same time, that Indian weaknesses had produced ‘child-marriage, baby-mothers, girl-widows, polyandry, inequalities of caste, prostitution in the name of religion [and] animal sacrifice.’

  Above all, C.R. pointed out, Gandhi (referred to as Mr Gandhi in the paper) was ready to ‘disregard unjust commands, laws repugnant to . . . conscience,’ and to ‘accept the penalty for [their] breach.’ In South Africa, Gandhi had shown that ‘there are no limitations to the power of human character with resolution and suffering.’

  With prescience, C.R. said that whether or not Indians should turn to Gandhi’s approach, pitting ‘soul force’—the force of gladly invited suffering — against ‘the force of arms’ was ‘a great question that has to be considered some time or other.’4

  Seeing Gandhi for the first time in 1916, Jawaharlal Nehru, born in the UP of Kashmiri parents, found him ‘very distant and different and unpolitical.’5 Of Gujarati peasant lineage, Vallabhbhai Pate! was playing bridge when Gandhi walked past him at Ahmedabad’s Gujarat Club. Patel ‘took stock of him, was not impressed and returned to the game.’6 In 1917, in his province, the Bihari lawyer Rajendra Prasad watched Gandhi in action among the indigo peasants of Champaran. Abul Kalam Azad, the Bengal-based Muslim ideologue, met Gandhi first in 1920.

  These five, C.R., Patel, Jawaharlal, Prasad and Azad, were to form, for nearly three decades, the core of Gandhi’s political team. As Jawaharlal put it in a 1949 letter to Prasad, ‘the public generally have looked up to us five persons’ as ‘the old guard.’7

  Of the five C.R. was the fourth to meet Gandhi, Azad being the last. But C.R. was the first to note the glimmer on the horizon. One of the opening sentences of his 1916 paper said:

  Led by him, our brothers and sisters of South Africa had so acted that Indians may forget their unworthiness for a time and walk proudly in the world.

  Meanwhile, also in 1916, he had joined Mrs Besant’s Home Rule League and assembled a League unit in Salem. Congress met at Lucknow in December 1916 and asked for a proclamation from Britain that she would ‘confer Self-Government on India at an early date.’

  The Muslim League, founded in 1906, had been convened in Lucknow at the same time, and Congress and the League agreed on a scheme of self-government with quotas for Muslims in provincial legislatures and in a Central Assembly. The principle of the League’s demand for a separate electorate for Muslims was conceded. Tilak, Annie Besant, and M.A. Jinnah, the League president, were the architects of the concordat.

  Raised now by both Hindus and Muslims, the Home Rule slogan spread, despite stringent Press laws, to many parts of the land. Two Governors reacted on behalf of a perturbed Raj. In the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer accused Home Rule champions of ‘revolutionary and subversive’ intentions. And the Madras Governor, Lord Pentland, declaring that ‘all thought of the early grant of responsible Self-Government should be put entirely out of mind,’ referred to ‘the possibility of coercive measures’ against Home Rule campaigners.8

  It was at Pentland that C.R.’s first public attack on a British official was directed. In a letter published in The Hindu, C.R. asked the Madras Presidency to express itself clearly ‘so that there will be no mistake about what people think of His Excellency’s pronouncement.’ Reminding the Governor that in the agitation for Home Rule ‘so far not a single act of violence or even technical illegality has been noticed in the Presidency,’ he turned to the threat of ‘coercive measures’:

  Our consciences being clear, we can but await calmly the effect of such repressive measures on a people hitherto peaceful and law-abiding.

  A protest meeting in Salem followed; ‘the large representative gathering’ (it included Muslims) unanimously passed a resolution moved by C.R., criticizing the Governor’s ‘astonishing and unconstitutional attitude.’9

  Pentland acted. Mrs Besant and her associates Wadia and Arundale were interned in the Nilgiris on 16 June under the Defence of India Rules. C.R. and his allies ‘met informally’ next morning and convened a public meeting for the evening. Despite heavy rain a large crowd assembled and cabled its protest to Prime Minister Lloyd George. Next day the Salem Home Rule League demanded Lord Pentland’s recall.

  Lloyd George’s remedy was to ask thirty-six-year-old Edwin Montagu to take the place of Austen Chamberlain as Secretary of State for India. On 20 August, Montagu made an unexpected declaration in London. ‘Substantial steps’ would be taken, he said, in the direction of ‘the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.’ And on 16 September Mrs Besant and her associates were released.

  Her name now on most people’s lips, Mrs Besant took a train on the night of 20 September for Madras. To forestall demonstrations of support, the Government banned the sale of platform tickets at stops on the way. An important halt, which came in the middle of the night, was Salem.

  A fair crowd gathered at the station despite the lateness of the hour. On its behalf C.R. asked for platform tickets. ‘Not being issued,’ he was told.

  ‘I will keep the crowd calm,’ said C.R. ‘Please sell the tickets.’

  ‘Sorry, they are not being sold
.’

  ‘You are depriving the railways of revenue,’ C.R. argued.

  ‘We have orders not to sell.’

  The train came. ‘Follow me,’ said C.R., as he strode towards the platform. The crowd followed him, welcomed Mrs Besant, and remained calm. C.R. faced no consequences—the Raj did not want to add to his importance.10

  But C.R. also had an ear for tunes other than of freedom. The felling of a Salem tree elicited a letter from him in the Madras Mail. In 1916 he launched, with some associates, the Tamil Scientific Terms Society, and edited the Society’s journal, which proposed Tamil equivalents for terms in botany, chemistry, physics, physiology, astronomy, and arithmetic.

  Though the journal died after four issues, C.R.’s interest in the subject survived. In subsequent years, he would write Tamil booklets with titles like Can It Be Done In Tamil?, Chemistry on the Front Verandah, and The Domestic Life of Plants.

  The Empire asked India for fresh recruits in 1918, the fifth year of the War. India seemed willing to help, at a price, which was going up. Proclaiming the principle of self-determination, President Wilson had whetted India’s political desires. Indian soldiers returning from the front were beginning to ask for equality of treatment. Inflation and shortages, products of the War, led to unhappiness.

  Yet it looked as if a handsome political offer might satisfy Indian sentiment. It was known that an offer was going to be made. In October 1917, the Secretary of State, Montagu, arrived in India, the first holder of his office to do so. Touring and receiving deputations on a prodigious scale, he sparked off speculation on the degree of self-government that India would get.

  Elected Congress President, Annie Besant altered her stance. She had hopes in Montagu. Urging India to help with the War, she dropped her pre-conditions. Unconditional support was Gandhi’s stand too. ‘Let the Montagu offer come,’ said Tilak.

  Sharing Tilak’s views, C.R. fought against unqualified support when the South’s politically-minded intellectuals gathered in Conjeevaram (Kancheepuram) for the Madras Provincial Conference of May 1918. With this conference C.R. leaves the periphery of Indian politics and mounts the stage.

  Sarojini Naidu, the poetess, was presiding. Mrs Besant proposed a resolution of unconditional Support. An amendment to make the support conditional was moved by S. Satyamurti, who would soon become prominent in South Indian politics and in the Central Assembly.

  Backing Satyamurti’s amendment, C.R. reminded the gathering of Tilak’s stand. In a thrust aimed at Mrs Besant, he added that popular opinion ‘should on no account be subordinated to the changing views of a few leaders.’ Annie Besant defended her position. When hands were counted, 140 were for Satyamurti’s amendment and 118 against. From Mrs Besant’s side, however, came a demand for voting against a roll-call.

  C.R. at once objected. Plain-clothes policemen were present. While hands raised by a seated flock were almost anonymous, ‘ayes’ pronounced when names were individually called would expose supporters of the amendment.

  Mrs Naidu ruled in favour of a roll-call. The result was a tie, each side obtaining 118 votes. Fear had neutralized 22 participants. Mrs Naidu’s casting vote went against the amendment, amidst loud cries of ‘shame.’

  Unafraid, C.R. had stood up to Mrs Besant. He had also been alert, instantly seeing through the roll-call plea. Also, his persuasive powers had been in evidence. Writing to The Hindu, a Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli) lawyer said that he had seen that C.R. could ‘convert many others.’ Another participant, K.S. Venkataraman, left Conjeevaram with the impression that ‘if there was to be a leader who could lead the South as Tilak was doing in Upper India, it was none other than C.R.’11

  In June came the reform document, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, named after the Secretary and the Viceroy, and soon to be known as the Montford Report. It proposed partial self- government for the provinces, worked by elected legislatures and ‘Cabinets’ of Indian Ministers. However, vital subjects were reserved for the Governor and the Executive Council that he nominated, and Members of the Council were to be far more influential than Ministers of the Cabinet. And Central powers were not to be shared at all.

  What to Montagu was a leap appeared a crawl to many Indians. Not, however, to the Moderates, who welcomed the Report. To counter them a Nationalists Association was formed in the South, with Kasturiranga Iyengar, editor of The Hindu, as chairman and C.R. as secretary.

  C.R. declared that Congress now had to think about ‘the form of agitation . . . that we should organize in order to compel more genuine reforms.’12 Madras sent a fair contingent of Nationalists to Bombay, where Congressmen gathered from all parts of India for a special meeting.

  The session’s leading lights were the candid Chittaranjan Das, Bengal’s foremost lawyer, and the dignified Madan Mohan Malaviya of the United Provinces, spokesman of the conservatives. In a demonstration of unity, Malaviya moved a resolution first drafted by Das. Modified by C.R., the resolution reminded the Government of the Lucknow Scheme for Home Rule and termed the Montford reforms ‘disappointing and unsatisfactory.’

  ‘This thin Madrasi,’ said Das, pointing to C.R., ‘put a comma here, a semicolon there, inserted a phrase here, removed one there . . . and within a few minutes he was able to give us an acceptable resolution.’ C.R.’s role delighted the Madras contingent. ‘Returning home,’ K.S. Venkataraman would recall, ‘we felt as if we had conquered an empire.’13

  It was reported that Tilak, with whom C.R. talked in Bombay, had said that Salem was too small a place for the forty- year-old C.R. In any case, Kasturiranga Iyengar urged C.R. to make Madras his base, while his paper, The Hindu, noted that ‘very great enthusiasm prevailed’ at a political conlerence that C.R. organized in Salem, with ‘300 delegates and 1,500 visitors present.’14

  Increasingly playing a political role, C.R. was also elected, in June 1917, Chairman of the Salem Municipal Council. Though the rules permitted a municipal council to select a chairman from outside its ranks, the provision was rarely used. In 1917 Salem had reasons for doing so. Plague had afflicted the town. Also, an extension to the town had been planned.

  The courtroom giving him only partial satisfaction, C.R. was willing to accept the challenge involved in the Chairmanship. In the first year of C.R.’s term, the municipality earned Rs 94,794, of which Rs 35,392 came from house tax and Rs 33,346 for water and drainage. Tolls fetched about Rs 10,000. In the next year the town’s income rose to Rs 1,14,852.

  Running a few schools and a hospital were some of the municipality’s chief concerns. (In 1917 there were 671 deaths from plague in Salem, 115 from imported cholera and 108 from small-pox.) The civic body was expected, too, to supply water to the town, remove its refuse, clean and light up its streets, and, if possible, add to its classrooms and dispensaries. However, its resources were pitifully inadequate.

  His council did not even have the money, C.R. was to complain, to pay a doctor for a periodical examination of Salem’s schoolchildren, scarcely a multitude at the time. Reporting to the provincial government, Davis, Salem district’s British Collector, wrote that C.R. sought ‘to put [the municipality’s] finances in order, even at the cost of much harshness.’15 When a clerk appointed by him reported a second illness within the space of a few days and asked for long leave, C.R. ended his services, observing that ‘the municipal office cannot afford to employ a sickly person.’16

  Salem Extension owed something to C.R.’s initiative. Before he was thought of as Chairman, he had argued in Madras for the municipality’s right to acquire land at the edge of the town. When the municipality auctioned sites in the Extension, C.R. bought a plot himself. Three months later, he became Chairman.

  Gavel in hand, he auctioned a fresh batch of sites. Profits from the auctions helped reduce the town’s accumulated arrears.

  During his spell as Chairman, C.R. selected, for lifelong opposition, two demons: liquor and untouchability. Liquor was pauperizing Salem’s handloom weavers. At C.R.’s prodding the Mun
icipal Council asked the Government to curtail its availability. Persuaded by C.R., the weavers made a similar appeal at what The Hindu described as ‘two remarkable meetings’ (15.11.17).

  A joint council that included E.W. Legh, the Collector, C.R., and Sweeting, the Police Superintendent, then decided that the number of arrack shops in Salem should go down from fourteen to six, with none in the centre of town. The hours of sale were reduced, and the employment of women inside liquor shops banned.

  Three incidents revealed C.R.’s stand on caste. One involved a preacher belonging to a depressed caste, Swami Sahajananda, who visited Salem in 1917. A feast for the Swami was arranged in the home of C.R.’s friend Yagyanarayana Iyer, the Brahmin principal of Salem College. The Chairman attended.

  Iyer had committed, and C.R. had abetted, a social crime. The horrified majority of Salem’s Brahmins ostracized the two and other Brahmin accomplices. Excluded at weddings and funerals, they were also told that priests would not conduct annual ceremonies for the dead in their homes. To reduce reliance on priests, some of the culprits memorized the religious texts themselves.

  The second incident was related to water. In different wards of the town, the municipality’s employees turned on the water taps every morning and turned them off every evening. In July 1918, one of the employees, an ‘untouchable’, was assigned to the public tap in the agraharam.

  This had been the doing not of C.R. but of one of his close friends, the engineer responsible for the town’s water supply, A.V. Raman. All the same, an ‘untouchable’ was defiling the Brahmins’ water. There was an outcry. A hundred ‘respectable and responsible ratepayers’ asked the council to move the employee to another ward, and letters in The Hindu attacked C.R.