Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  Hundreds had assembled at the dim hour. When the marchers took their first deliberate steps, there was a complete hush; tears trickled down some faces. After a few seconds the notes of a song could be heard: ‘Kathiyinri, Rathaminri’ — ‘No sword, no blood.’

  A reporter walking in step sought C.R.’s comment on Thorne’s order against ‘harbouring.’ ‘Thorns and thistles cannot stem this tide,’ said C.R. However, at Koviladi, on the second day, the party found the chhatram — pilgrims’ inn — barred and bolted against them. C.R. was invited to a private home and the rest slept on the bed of the Cauvery.

  ‘Stretching out everywhere, the Cauvery serves us like a great friend and mother,’ C.R. wrote to his children. ‘She assists with our lodging and our washing. On her sands thousands, including large numbers of women, attend our meetings.’10

  In the halts that followed, the marchers were joyously hailed. More important, they were fed and housed. Thorne’s directives, reinforced in places by face-to-face warnings from the Collector, were defied or defeated — at one halt, bundles of food were hung on trees the marchers could not miss. Eventually C.R. had to appeal against pampering the satyagrahis.

  Walking five miles in the morning and five in the evening — past rice-fields or groves of banana or coconut, with the Cauvery, flowing seaward, often by their side — they carried with them their larger message. At stops they fraternized with ‘untouchables’ and refrained from entering temples from which the latter were barred, swept village streets, and spoke up for Hindu-Muslim unity and against drink. And at two crowded meetings a day they preached the gospel of nonviolent revolt.

  Reporting on the ‘extraordinarily vigorous propaganda’ along the route, Thorne argued with his seniors ‘with all respect’ that he had been right in proposing C.R.’s early arrest. He added that ‘harm to the prestige of Government has been done by the march.’11

  At Tanjore town, Thorne’s post of command, a brother and sister gave, in C.R.’s words, ‘shelter and noble hospitality,’ but in the morning his heart sank when he found nothing arranged for a meeting scheduled for later in the day. No one, C.R. was told, was willing to offend Thorne.

  A lawyer finally offered C.R. a rickety old table; with the help of the lawyer’s gardener, C.R. had it moved to the meeting site. Not a soul was to be seen there, and C.R. prepared himself for ‘a miserable failure,’ and to ‘yield to [Thorne] at least in one battle.’

  But when C.R. and his team marched down at the appointed hour, they saw a surging mass of humanity. The twenty thousand present observed ‘complete silence’ for a minute, and then, ‘with a heart moved to the depths,’ C.R. spoke.12

  At Kumbakonam, Pantulu Iyer, ex-member of the Legislative Council, kept all the marchers in his home for two nights and fed them. He was jailed for six months. Some government servants who were in the welcoming crowd at Semmangudi lost their jobs.

  Ramachandra Naidu, who had fed the satyagrahis at Tiruthuraipoondi, was picked up by the police from the meeting addressed by C.R. that he was attending. The thousands who watched Naidu being arrested remained calm: Gandhian teaching had been imbibed.

  A mighty crowd was waiting in Vedaranyam, reached on 28 April, the sixteenth day of the march. C.R., tired but smiling, declared that he would break the salt law on the 30th and expect others to break it after him; in an aside, he prophesied that the police arresting the satyagrahis would one day serve them.

  The next day, settled in a camp erected by Vedaratnam Pillai, the marchers fasted and prayed. So did, in fellowship, many others in the province. And C.R. formally wrote to Thorne of his intention to violate the law.

  By now all India was astir and the Raj had reacted. Young India and Navajivan were banned by an ordinance. Jamnalal Bajaj was sentenced for over two years. Jawaharlal was in prison. A police bullet had hit Jairamdas Daulatram, Working Committee member from Sind.

  From 23 to 28 April the town of Peshawar, lying on the historic invasion route from Central Asia, was in control of the Khudai Khidmatgars (‘Servants of God’) led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Scores of the followers of Ghaffar Khan, pledged to nonviolence, were killed by machine-guns, but unarmed Muslims escaped on one occasion when the Raj’s Garhwali soldiers, who were Hindus, disobeyed an order to fire at them.

  The sun had not yet risen over the Bay of Bengal on 30 April when C.R. and 16 fellow-marchers set out towards the Edanthevar salt swamp, a couple of miles from the Vedaranyam camp. Almost immediately after they reached the swamp, bent down and picked up some salt, the district’s police superintendent, Govindan Nair, backed by other officers and 50 constables, was on the scene.

  C.R. and others holding salt were told to surrender it. On their refusal, Nair arrested C.R. To prevent demonstrations of sympathy, Thorne had arranged for a quick, secluded trial in a salt shed near the sea. When the prosecutor fumbled for words, C.R. helped him out.

  The judge, Ponnuswamy Pillai, was composed when he pronounced six months’ rigorous but broke down and wept while signing the jail warrant.

  Some minutes after C.R. was put on a train for Trichy, a small white man entered his compartment and extended his hand to the prisoner. It was Thorne.

  To him C.R. said: ‘Your plan was bold, but you forgot that we are in our own country.’ Thorne smiled and replied, ‘Yes, we have each tried to do our best and our worst.’ Then he ordered coffee and refreshments for C.R.13

  On the train C.R. wrote to Lakshmi: ‘My dear child, I am getting leave . . . Pray to God for our battle’s success.’14

  The next day, shops were closed and business suspended throughout the Tamil country. At Vedaranyam, the cycle of gathering salt, seizure by the police, and a fresh gathering continued for weeks despite a series of selective arrests. Thorne hoped to frighten away the ranks without having to arrest them. Sticks were brought down on fists, and salt forced out. But the ‘sheep’ stood their ground and kept collecting. Only when Thorne ordered wholesale arrests was the cycle broken.

  Including the marchers, 375 were arrested for revolt in Tanjore district. In secret reports to Madras, Thorne said that C.R. had ‘had something of a triumph, even Mohamedans and Adi Dravidas “(untouchables)” taking part in the receptions.’ He noted, too, that C.R. ‘throughout maintained excellent discipline among his followers, . . . always adhered to nonviolence . . . and refrained from the arts of demagogy.’

  Added Thorne: ‘If there ever existed a fervid sense of devotion to the Government, it is now defunct.’15

  Forty-five minutes after midnight on 5 May — within five days of C.R.’s arrest — two oficers holding pistols and thirty rifled policemen surrounded Gandhi’s straw hut in Karadi, three miles inland from the Arabian Sea. Gandhi was arrested under an 1827 regulation that did not require a trial. At ten minutes past one, after being allowed to pray, Gandhi was put in a lorry and driven more than 200 miles to Yeravada Central Jail in Poona.

  On 21 May, 2,500 satyagrahis under the leadership of Sarojini Naidu and Manilal Gandhi, the Mahatma’s second son, raided the Dharasana salt works. They were pitilessly beaten, and arrested, by a force of 400 Indian policemen commanded by six British officers. Two died and 320 were injured but not a hand was raised by the peaceful army.

  In an even bigger raid on 1 June in Wadala, 15,000 took part. Irwin admitted to the Secretary of State in London that he was ‘surprised at the dimensions the movement had assumed.’16 The shunning of foreign cloth was now virtually complete. Imports of cotton piecegoods were down by 75 per cent, khadi sales up by nearly 60 percent. Liquor sales were curbed by a growing corps of women pickets.

  The Raj fought back with wholesale arrests, lathi charges, press censorship, and ordinance rule. Between mid-April and December-end, Irwin ruled through ten ordinances, an ‘arbitrary rule . . . wielded by no previous Viceroy.’17

  In June the AICC and the Working Committee were declared illegal. But India was changing. A parallel establishment was growing. The queues ready for jail were endless and now increasingly
formed by women. A city like Bombay had two governments, the majority, including businessmen and workers, obeying the illegal Congress. When Congress proclaimed a hartal, silence fell on the streets.

  In Gujarat, the recently released Vallabhbhai led a successful no-tax campaign among the peasants. Rather than pay the land tax, 80,000 of them left their villages for temporary camps in the princely state of Baroda.

  To the extent that prison would allow, C.R. followed these developments. He spent three weeks, as convict number 5557, in Trichy Central Jail where at six each evening he was locked inside a small cell in which the only ‘means of ingress of air’ was ‘a small ventilator about 2 feet by 1 foot, barred and wirenetted.’18 From Trichy C.R. was moved for two weeks to the Madras Penitentiary and thence to Bellary Central Jail.

  The summer is long, hot and exacting in Bellary, but C.R.’s four months there offered some satisfaction. He was in the company of intelligent young satyagrahis. They were eager to learn, and C.R. was glad to teach. The jailor, who ‘knew how to deal with gentlemen as well as to keep within the rules,’ allowed C.R. to hold classes and prayer meetings.

  The young men chose the subjects: the lives of great men, of trees and bees, stars and atoms; also Bolshevism, untouchability and the national debt. One of the ‘students’ took down the talks in shorthand; they were published in 1931 as Chats Behind Bars.

  C.R. would turn a dry fact, e.g. the distance of stars, into a memorable picture:

  When you look at a dim star you see not what is there now, but what was there before Buddha was born. The light started then and has taken all the time up till today to reach your wondering eyes . . . All the history of India has taken place in the interval.

  He described how trees yield fruit:

  The beautiful little insects, the flies, the bees and the ants carry the essence from one flower to another, and thereby trees fructify. Don’t imagine these little insects are enemies to the flowers. They are the priests who perform their marriages.

  Satyagraha had to be guarded against misuse:

  Suppose Srinivasa Sastri and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru go on hunger strike so that the Mahatma may withdraw his obdurate demands? Can Mahatmaji’s heart allow Sastriar to commit suicide, and therefore is he to give up the claim on behalf of India? . . . I warn you, enthusiastic young men who have found a new weapon in satyagraha, against [its] misuse.

  Concerned by ‘a pressure of concentrated hatred upon a particular people, the Brahmins,’ he told the men:

  I belong to that hated caste . . . But I want you . . . to avoid all hatred and pursue the method of love in social reform.

  Nationalism was not enough:

  The satyagraha experiment . . . is not a mere nationalist experiment for getting our own liberty. God will help it . . . only if India’s battle is a step in the progress of the whole world.

  Though a battle raged outside and he was part and parcel of it, C.R. showed no bitterness:

  The labour of yours will be spoilt if we . . . swerve even an inch from nonviolence.

  At the final ‘class’ the day before his release, he said, ‘Outside . . . they cannot see or understand me truly as you, my dear friends, have done,’ and added:

  I am naturally an impatient man. I thank you for all the patience you have shown me in spite of my constant harsh behaviour towards you.

  Admonishing the men ‘to be considerate’ to the jail staff, he asked them to return to their cells at lock-up time without waiting to be told. Discipline would lead to ‘strength in civil disobedience . . . when we want it.’ Pleading against any demonstrations of affection — ‘I don’t want to break down,’ he explained — he rose and stepped away.19

  On his release C.R. attacked the new ordinances but also called them ‘fresh vitaminous dishes’ offered by the Viceroy. At meetings in Madras he asked for a ‘dynamic spirit’ of revolt.20

  His words were too much for the Governor, George Stanley, who rebuked officials for allowing ‘a notorious agitator’ like Rajagopalachari to address meetings.21 This description of C.R. was new, and an indication of the Government’s loss of temper.

  Two weeks after his release C.R. was asked to enter into a Rs 500 bond for peaceful behaviour. Before a crowded court in Madras, he refused. On 25 October he was sentenced for a year.

  The Mahatma, serving his term in Poona, sent a characteristic leg-pulling message. ‘Write to Rajaji,’ said Gandhi, addressing a colleague, ‘and tell him that generally I do not write to eminent leaders and therefore I will not write to him either. But I remember him every day.’22

  Lodged first in the Madras Penitentiary, C.R. was later back for a while in the Bellary Jail, where a cat he had befriended seemed glad to see him, and then removed to Vellore, his 1921-2 ‘home’.

  In Vellore he had the company of leaders and activists from the Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil districts. A fellow-prisoner, G. Ramachandran, wrote in his diary:

  There were extremists . . . and hot disputes and occasionally exercises in violent language and action. But most of such violence became subdued as soon as Rajaji came on the scene.

  Ramachandran noted that while in appearance ‘cautious and even timid,’ and ‘physically . . . skin and bone with almost no flesh,’ C.R. was ‘fearless.’ Also, ‘in any crowd in a few minutes he would be the focus of all attention.’

  Asked in Vellore whether the Mahatma approved of his fondness for coffee, C.R., according to Ramachandran’s diary, replied: ‘If this is the only thing I do that Bapu disapproves and my only sin, I shall be on my way to heaven.’23

  His spirit unsullied by imprisonment, he sent a Christmas day wish to Anderson, his colleague on the Prohibition League, ‘that all bitterness should cease and we may all be united in the bonds of friendship — a free India and a Christian Europe.’24

  Among the Raj’s advisers were those who wanted even firmer measures, but Irwin was now thinking differently. In December he said in Calcutta:

  We should, I am satisfied, make a profound mistake if we underestimate the . . . meaning of nationalism . . . and for this no complete or permanent cure had ever been or will be found in strong action by the government.

  When a few weeks later he said that he recognized ‘the spiritual force which impels Gandhi,’ officials in Delhi raised their eyebrows.25 Something more unexpected was in store for them; it also surprised nationalist India. The doors of selected prisons opened on 26 January 1931, exactly a year after Congress’s independence pledge in Lahore, and Gandhi and their colleagues, including C.R., were let out.

  8

  Stigma

  1931-33

  They met in Allahabad, where Motilal Nehru was dying. C.R. had come to visit him at his sickbed. Used to affluence, Motilal had cheerfully borne the rigours of battle. C.R., 20 years younger, had often differed from him; his lifestyle, bordering on the austere, contrasted with Nehru’s. Some thought that Motilal looked like a Roman emperor; C.R. preferred Socrates as a model.

  After Gaya, where they had clashed directly, C.R. had moved to an ashram and the Pandit to the Assembly. But they had met again on the battlefield, and Motilal had finally agreed that councils were futile. ‘There is no hope in that line,’ he had told C.R.1

  When he died, C.R. observed, ‘The nation has lost one of its grandest figures’ (The Hindu, 6.2.31).

  Responding to their release, the Working Committee members authorized the Mahatma to negotiate with the Viceroy. When Gandhi asked for an interview he was summoned right away. The Working Committee accompanied him to Delhi.

  Lord and Lady Irwin had just moved to their new mansion, an immense edifice of red sandstone, designed to suggest the Raj’s grandeur and permanence. There, on 17 February, the Viceroy received Gandhi, enabling Winston Churchill, MP, to utter an alarm that ‘Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir’ was ‘striding . . . up the steps of the viceregal palace’ while still conducting a defiant campaign and ‘parley[ing] on equal terms with the representat
ive of the King-Emperor.’

  Hope alternated with despair during the fortnight in which Irwin and Gandhi conferred. At home in conference as in combat, the Mahatma obtained a Pact. A role was also played by C.R., who ‘quietly laboured with skill and persistence,’ as B. Shiva Rao, the journalist, would observe.2

  With C.R.’s help a compromise over the salt law was evolved: residents of regions close to the salt swamps were allowed to collect their own salt and to trade in it in their own areas. C.R. sold the compromise to Sapru and Jayakar, the Liberal leaders who functioned as the Raj’s intermediaries, and to influential members of the Raj’s civil service like B.Rama Rau and Akbar Hydari. In Shiva Rao’s assessment, C.R. had a part, too, in persuading Gandhi to accept the compromise.

  Ian Stephens, a British official who would become editor of The Statesman, met C.R. in the home of Akbar Hydari. Later he recalled:

  Mr Rajagopalachari I took to; kind, moderate, wise, he much attracted a young Englishman. If Congress people can be like this, I thought, what’s all the fuss about; why this Indo-British political squabbling?3

  If the Delhi negotiations shed some light on C.R.’s assets, their chief outcome was an increase in the prestige of the Mahatma and the Viceroy. Their agreement, described officially as the Irwin-Gandhi Pact and by Indians as the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, by no means conceded all that the Congress had fought for in the previous year. Independence was not mentioned at all in the Pact, and even the salt law was only modified, not withdrawn.

  Yet India thrilled to the Pact because it acknowledged parity between the Viceroy and the Mahatma. For Congress this intangible prize was worth all the preceding exertion. Significantly, Churchill complained that ‘the lawless act’ had ‘now been made lawful’ and appeasement extended to those who had ‘inflicted such humiliation and defiance as had not been known since the British first trod the soil of India.’4