Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  C.R.’s release was preceded by an event he apprehended — the arrest of the Mahatma. Early in March, the AICC ratified the stoppage announced by Gandhi, but not without murmurings against his moves. Some Congressmen voiced doubts about civil disobedience. Finding non-cooperation irksome, and disconcerted by the abrupt halt of the aggressive campaign, a section of the Khilafat leadership withdrew its loyalty from Gandhi and offered it to the Raj.

  Emboldened by the weakening in nationalist ranks, the Raj finally laid hands on the Mahatma. He was arrested at Sabarmati Ashram on 10 March and tried for sedition in Ahmedabad. Pleading guilty, Gandhi said that preaching the Government’s overthrow had become his duty. Judge Broomfield sentenced him for six years.

  On 12 March C.R. wrote in his diary: ‘We had news today that Gandhiji was arrested. The news was received fairly calmly, and we resolved on a 36-hours’ fast and prayer.’ Joint Hindu- Muslim prayers were held in the evening. Non-political convicts ‘instinctively came and joined.’

  It was on the day of his release that C.R. heard of Gandhi’s sentence:

  Learnt that Pilate gave six years S.I. to Christ. God gave us a man to lead us, but the Government claim the right to take him away . . . Their will be done!

  Parting from his jail ‘family’ was sad for C.R. On 20 March Major Anderson accompanied him through the gates and asked if the jail did not look better from outside.

  ‘The inside is not so bad as it is thought to be,’ replied C.R. ‘Don’t come again,’ said Major Anderson.

  5

  Hero

  1922-25

  C.R. and Devadas were the first to interview Gandhi in Poona’s Yeravada prison. On 1 April, cross-examining jail officials and the Mahatma, C.R. prised out particulars that Gandhi had chosen to ignore. The Mahatma had a flimsy blanket for a mattress and was using his clothes and some books as a pillow. Locked inside his solitary cell at night, he was denied newspapers and made to petition for religious books.

  Rejecting the Mahatma’s advice, C.R. informed the Press of his findings, and asked the Raj’s officers to realize their ‘privilege of being custodians of a man greater than the Kaiser, greater than Napoleon . . . ’ (Young India, 6.4.22).

  The regime tried to refute C.R.’s allegations; his rejoinder was devastating, and in a private letter to New Delhi the provincial government admitted that C.R. had won the debate. Gandhi’s circumstances improved: C.R. had thus done for the Mahatma in Yeravada what Gandhi had done for him in Vellore.

  In April, C.R. commenced editing Young India, an arrangement advised before his arrest by the Mahatma. Though the journal continued to be printed in Ahmedabad, the editor functioned from Salem.

  India was confused and demoralized. The confusion was caused by Gandhi’s decision to call off the battle when he held the advantage, the demoralization by his arrest.

  Noticing the change in the atmosphere, Gandhi had proposed a new strategy before he was arrested, a switch to a phase of preparation, of training through constructive work. ‘All our energy’ should be concentrated, he counselled, ‘on the tasteless but health-giving economic and social reform’ (Young India, 2.3.22).

  Yet efforts for khadi and Hindu-Muslim unity and against drink and untouchability were unexciting alternatives to revolt, and many Congressmen, including C.R., craved for disobedience. Others, however, questioned the practicability of disobedience and non-cooperation. Indirectly at first and later openly, they proposed a return to pre-Gandhian constitutional protest — agitation within the Raj’s rules.

  The Raj made a number of fresh arrests in the first half of 1922. Editors and publishers were among the victims. There were other restrictions: a few days after his release, C.R. was ordered not to take part in a mass meeting called in Trichy.

  This was hard to take, and C.R. suggested to the provincial Congress that ‘if normal Congress work is rendered impossible or extremely difficult by orders of magistrates,’ civil disobedience should be considered (The Hindu, 10.4.22).

  In his eve-of-arrest remarks the Mahatma had discouraged even this ‘defensive disobedience.’ However, the Raj was informed by an intelligence officer that, influenced by C.R.’s advice, Congress’s Tamil Nadu and Andhra committees were ‘in favour of defensive disobedience on a very large scale.’1

  Shorn of numerous imprisoned members, the AICC met in Lucknow in June, its proceedings guided by the recently released Motilal Nehru and C.R. It endorsed, with no marked enthusiasm, Gandhi’s constructive programme, and asked a six-member Civil Disobedience Enquiry Committee (CDEC) to tour the country and explore the possibilities of disobedience.

  Besides Nehru and C.R., the committee included Congress’s acting President, Hakim Ajmal Khan (Das, the President, was in prison), Dr M.A. Ansari, Vithalbhai Patel, and Kasturiranga Iyengar. C.R.’s position was clear. In Young India he wrote:

  The demand for individual civil disobedience is becoming irresistible . . . The injunctions (discouraging disobedience) issued by Mahatmaji . . . are straining the loyalty of Congressmen to the utmost (8.6.22).

  Yet many rank-and-file Congressmen were exhausted, and some influential voices spoke of other avenues. Mrs C.R. Das suggested (with the approval, it was said, of her jailed but accessible husband) that non-cooperators should consider capturing ‘provincial councils, where . . . their task would be to obstruct all work, good or bad’ (Young India, 4.5.22).

  Among the pro-council forces were all-out cooperators, ‘responsive’ ones who would cooperate only if the Government was positive, and ‘wreckers from within.’ What they had in common was a coolness for the constructive programme and for disobedience. Together they proposed an invasion of the councils.

  C.R.’s chief concern now was to combat the new doctrine. ‘Those who do not believe in . . . noncooperation,’ he suggested, ‘should form themselves into a distinct and separate party (within the Congress) and work along the lines of their own faith’ (Young India, 22.6.22).

  What the pro-council factions wanted, however, was to capture the Congress. A battle thus ensued betwen the ‘pro- changers,’ who wanted Congress to enter the councils, and the ‘no-changers,’ led by C.R., who wished to adhere to the boycott.

  For some months the CDEC tour took the heat out of the controversy. From his ‘cabin in the steamboat as it throbs in its course up the great’ river, C.R. wrote of the ‘forest-clad hills and broad-bosomed Brahmaputra’ of Assam, which he was visiting for the first time.

  Adding that ‘Assam’s greatest beauty is the family loom,’ he contrasted the ‘sisters in Assam, . . . plying the shuttle and making garments for themselves and their children,’ with the ‘highborn ladies’ elsewhere in India ‘laboriously picking and choosing from the silks exhibited in the bazaar’ (Young India, 17.8.22).

  At times sending four or five pieces a week to Young India, he asked, ‘What became of the Bombs?’ and answered; ‘It is the Mahatma’s hold and the truths he . . . drove home into the mind of India that have . . . made secret crime a thing to be ashamed of’ (22.6.22).

  It was ‘a mistake,’ he wrote in another piece, ‘to lay undue emphasis on Indianisation’:

  The self-respect of India does not depend on the colour . . . of its officers. It depends on the complete control which the representatives of the people of India have over the officers . . . Then it matters little whether [the bureaucracy] is composed of Englishmen or Scotchmen or Indians (24.8.22).

  Here C.R. anticipated his own role fifteen years later when as a democratically chosen Premier of the Presidency he would be served by Indians, Scots and Englishmen.

  A section in Congress urged a boycott of all goods from Britain and a preference for imports from other countries. To C.R. this was ‘the road from one prison to another, not to emancipation.’ Moreover, singling out British goods for a ban would suggest malice (Young India, 2.11.22).

  C.R.’s writing reflected the thinking of the Mahatma, whose release seemed to be C.R.’s chief desire in 1922. The thought that Gandhi
‘at the age of 53 [had] to rot in jail for six long years’ agonized C.R. ‘What is outraged love doing?’ he asked, and exhorted Indians ‘to marshall their invincible strength’ to secure freedom for Gandhi (Young India, 7.9.22).

  As the Mahatma’s interpreter, he was asked if physical force in self-defence was permissible. C.R.’s answer was, ‘No one may surrender to wrong.’ But violence for political objects was out (15.6.22).

  Noting that the public debt was ‘increasing at a pace that should alarm all honest administrators,’ C.R. made the radical proposal that Congress should ‘give notice that any further loans floated on the sanction of the present . . . sham legislatures of India will be repudiated’ (Young India, 17.8.22).

  Turkish developments were partly pleasing but chiefly disconcerting. Kamal Pasha defeated the Greeks. Many Indians shared what C.R. called the ‘joy of the East in finding itself strong,’ (21.9.22) but Kamal also deposed the Sultan and abolished the office of the Khalifa. Swept away along with the Khalifa was a major fuel for the nationalist drive, Khilafat.

  The CDEC submitted its report on 30 October. Unanimous in the view that the country was not ripe for mass civil disobedience, endorsing but not proposing limited disobedience, the CDEC was evenly divided on the question of council entry.

  Vithalbhai Patel, a council enthusiast from the start, was supported by Ajmal Khan and, to C.R.’s disappointment, by Motilal Nehru. For a while C.R. feared that Ansari too would desert him, but in the end Ansari and Iyengar joined C.R. in advising that the council-boycott should continue.

  On one issue, the proposed boycott of all British goods, which he opposed, C.R. found himself in a minority of one. But he felt he ‘would be doing grave wrong if [he] did not stand by Mahatmaji’s oft-emphasised view’ (Young India, 23.11.22).

  Leading the attack on the council-boycott, Das, who was released in August, Motilal Nehru and Vithalbhai Patel were men with resources and of acknowledged stature. Das, in addition, was Congress President. C.R., on the other hand, was a comparatively new political figure groomed in the unprepossessing town of Salem.

  Though a General Secretary, he commanded no ‘bloc’ or faction and possessed but little influence on moneyed men. But he had Young India and he owned a sharp intellect. His arguments were not easy to refute.

  Elections, he pointed out, would cause ‘a fatal drain on resources,’ drawing off funds, men, time and talent from constructive work, which was preparation for the next round of battle. Also, competition for seats and offices would intensify caste and communal feeling. ‘Wreckers from within’ were reminded by him that the bureaucracy had ample powers to rule, through certificates and ordinances, without the legislature’s assent.

  Moreover, said C.R., members elected to councils on Congress tickets might ignore or defy Congress instructions; there could be ‘a gradual corruption and disintegration of the Congress organisation.’ Besides, elections would ‘surely place the policy of the Congress in the hands of the wealthy and their friends’ (Young India, 30.11.22).

  The first trial of strength took place in November, when the AICC met for six days in Calcutta, but a decision was postponed to the end-December annual session of the Congress at Gaya.

  Das and Nehru mounted an impressive effort to bring their supporters to Gaya. To Satyamurti, who with Srinivasa Iyengar and Rangaswami Iyengar comprised the trio campaigning for council entry in the South, Nehru wrote:

  It is now time to work hard to see that persons in favour of running elections are returned as delegates in large numbers . . . If we can count on the support of even one-fifth of the delegates from Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Karnataka, victory will be certain.2

  On the sandy banks of the Phalgun, not far from the Bodhi tree under which, 2,500 years earlier, Gautama had become the Buddha, the delegates gathered. A profusion of white tents, a cluster set apart for the leaders, had sprung up to house them.

  Lodged in a tent among the mass of the delegates, and not among the ‘leaders,’ C.R., 44, bespectacled and dressed in a white kurta and dhoti with a folded angavastram draped over one shoulder, was a focus of attention. So were Das, the President, and Nehru.

  Discussions went on for days. Formal meetings, were followed each night by informal but crucial talks at the different tents. C.R. would go to Das’ and Motilal Nehru’s ; Nehru came to his. For his unflinching loyalty to Gandhi and his programme, and because of a similarity in appearance, C.R. was satirized by opponents as the ‘Deputy Mahatma.’ Gaya as a whole, however, called him Rajaji, a form coined by Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s secretary.

  An early issue was the proposal to boycott British goods. Many of the no-changers were sufficiently embittered against the Raj to support this departure from Gandhi’s view, and the CDEC, we saw, had voted five to one for such a boycott. But C.R. fought pluckily against it, and the Subjects Committee voting, though going against him, was surprisingly close: 146 to 129.

  At the open session the voting was reversed. C.R. was to cherish this result all his life, describing it at the time as ‘proof that the nation holds fast to the teachings of its imprisoned leader in spite of every temptation’ (Young India, 11.1.23). Rainy, Chief Secretary of Bihar-Orissa, informing Delhi of C.R.’s victory, reported that his words against a boycott of British goods had ‘created a deep impression.’3

  He easily carried Gaya on debt repudiation. His scheme had been called ‘clearly Bolshevik,’ ‘immoral’ and ‘outrageous.’ It was ‘immoral and outrageous for any government to borrow beyond the capacity of the people it purports to govern,’ C.R. retorted. Clarifying that only future loans would be repudiated, he said that borrowings ‘till now . . . will be deemed a lawful charge’ (Young India, 7 & 21.12.22).

  On the council question, Gaya heard the powerful oratory of Das and Nehru. Vithalbhai, Srinivasa Iyengar and Satyamurti ably supported them. Not expected to win, C.R. countered them.

  Courteous, quickwitted and sure of his stand, he was in irresistible form. A voice from the audience urged him once, while he was speaking, to move forward in order to be seen better. ‘I cannot show my back to the revered President,’ replied C.R.

  But he could cause the defeat of the President’s policy. Das and Nehru were worsted in debate and votes. C.R.’s resolution retaining the council-boycott was passed by 1,740 votes against 890.

  ‘Great was their (the no-changers’) enthusiasm and the hero of the day was the Madras leader, Mr Rajagopalachari,’ Subhas Bose would comment.4 Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, a future Chief Minister of Bengal, would observe: ‘Mr Rajagopalachari became the leader of the Congress at Gaya.’5

  ‘The limelight into which the votes have thrown me does not suit my temperament,’ wrote C.R. (Young India, 18.1.23). Liking it or not, he stayed in prominence for another year, striving to protect Congress from the fascination of councils. In the end he was unsuccesssful.

  Das, who vacated the Congress chair following the Gaya voting, and Motilal Nehru launched a Swaraj party within Congress, with Das as president and Nehru as secretary. The Swaraj party would aim, they said, to capture the councils.

  Was the Congress splitting? Abul Kalam Azad, released in January 1923, made an immediate compromise bid; he was joined by Jawaharlal Nehru, also lately freed. ‘Forced,’ as Young India put it, ‘to accept the [Swarajist] revolt as a fact and make terms with the rebels,’ C.R., Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad asked the AICC, meeting in Allahabad at the end of February, to accept a truce.

  C.R. moved and Motilal Nehru seconded a resolution calling on both sides to suspend, until 30 April, all propaganda for or against the councils.

  Accompanied, and translated, by Prasad and Devadas, a now well-known Rajaji spoke to large crowds in the Central Provinces, Bihar, Bengal, the Punjab and Sind. His theme was Gandhi’s constructive programme. Years later, with characteristic modesty, Prasad would recall:

  It was my privilege to join him and also translate his speeches . . . which, while giving me an opportunity of learning a lot, a
lso saved me the trouble of delivering . . . speeches of my own, which, I doubt not, would have fallen flat after his brilliant performance.6

  In Jubbulpore (Jabalpur) in the Central Provinces, their visit provided an opportunity for the sort of defensive disobedience that C.R. had been looking for. To welcome C.R. and his friends, the municipal committee wanted to hoist the national flag over the Town Hall; the District Magistrate vetoed the plan. After C.R. spoke to the thousands ‘who had angrily gathered,’ local citizens resolved to disobey the fiat.

  ‘The Flag Calls You,’ C.R. enjoined in Young India (23.3.23), adding:

  We cannot get a cleaner or a more beautiful battlefield . . . We should get ready for a severe struggle round this flag.

  Ascending the well-guarded Town Hall tower peacefully was however a problem. A month later the Central Provinces Government offered a plainer opportunity for disobedience: it banned a street procession with a flag.

  A defiance campaign was organized by Jamnalal Bajaj, a rich Marwari who was a trusted disciple and a generous supporter of the Mahatma. Flag in hand, hundreds from all over India, including many southerners enlisted by C.R., trooped to Nagpur, where they were arrested.

  Taken into custody in June, Bajaj was awarded eighteen months in jail and a Rs 3,000 fine. To realize the sum his car was attached but not a man in Nagpur would buy it; it was sold, finally, in Kathiawad.

  The ‘flag satyagraha’ ended when the Raj allowed Congressmen to carry the flag along a route earlier banned, with Congress agreeing to declare after one procession that the satyagraha was over.