Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  A duel over the indemnity law took place in the second chamber between the Premier and V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, who was an acknowledged master of the art of oratory. Said Sastri:

  Are there not thousands and thousands who are not criminals, who are not hereditary oppressors, who honestly believe that certain exclusions have a proper sanction? Is a year or two too long to bring them over to our side?

  If Madura was an epic act, let it remain an epic. Why protect them from the results of the action which they took knowingly? . . . Nothing will be lost if this Bill is stayed and a straight- forward Bill for open entry into the temples were brought forward.

  Interrupting, C.R. asked if Sastri was in favour of a simple law declaring the temples open. The Premier added: ‘Was that his advice? May I pause for a reply?’

  Sastri: My answer will be long, sir.

  C.R.: If the answer is to be long, then I presume, sir, that it is an argument and not an advice . . .

  Sastri: I have not brought out this Bill; I am here only in the position of a critic; if circumstances lay it upon me ever to take up this question, I will not adopt this indirect backdoor method.

  C.R.: Sir, he has still not said, ‘Follow the other method.’

  ‘Sastri’s speech,’ commented C.R., ‘was one of extraordinary perfection. But having said that, having appreciated it in full measure, I must say that it was all too much like a lady’s umbrella — a silken umbrella, perfect in form, in beautiful symmetry, full of colour and beauty — which gave no protection against sun or wind or rain.57’

  The 1939 metaphor of the lady’s umbrella was a talking point in Madras even in the early eighties.

  It was time again for Congress to choose a President. Subhas Bose sought re-election — we saw that his predecessor, Jawaharlal, had had two successive terms. But it was plain that Bose differed from the Mahatma on some basic and immediate issues. Unlike Gandhi, Bose thought that the country was ripe for mass disobedience against the British, and his estimate of the ominous European scene varied substantially from Gandhi’s.

  Bose rejecting Gandhi’s advice to withdraw, and Azad declining Gandhi’s advice to stand against Bose, the Mahatma endorsed the candidacy of Pattabhi Sitaramayya, whose name had been proposed by the Andhra Congress. Before the voting, Bose argued that a Congress President should function not like a constitutional monarch, the position thus far, but as a Prime Minister; and he repeated an allegation that the old guard was ready, contrary to Congress directives, to compromise with the Raj over an all-India federation.

  Bose won over Pattabhi by 1,580 votes to 1,375, and Gandhi said he had been defeated. Yet, as Bose put it himself, ‘a large majority of Congressmen who dislike[d] the high command did not want to give up Mahatma Gandhi’ (The Hindu, 7.5.39). With Congress unprepared to reject Gandhi, and Bose unwilling to be a mere chairman, there was a stalemate at Tripuri, on the banks of the Narmada, where Congress met in March 1939 for its annual session.

  Subhas was ill and incapacitated at Tripuri and Gandhi absent — he was in Rajkot, fasting over what he saw as a breach of promise by the Rajkot ruler. C.R., who went to Tripuri, did not like Bose’s victory or his radicalism; and he was perturbed by Bose’s presidential address — read out by Subhas’s brother Sarat — which called for an ultimatum to the Raj.

  C.R.’s response to the stalemate was to back a resolution that regretted the aspersions cast upon the old guard — the latter were ‘hurt to the quick,’ Nehru said58 — and asked Bose ‘to appoint the Working Committee in accordance with the wishes of Mahatma Gandhi.’

  The drafting of this resolution, which was moved by Pant, the U.P. Premier, probably owed much to C.R.59 Seconding it, C.R. spoke with a directness that delighted traditionalist ranks and drew waverers to their side. Despite the tempers of Tripuri, he was heard in complete silence:

  There are two boats on the river. One is an old boat but a big boat, piloted by Mahatma Gandhi. Another man has a new boat, attractively painted and beflagged. Mahatma Gandhi is a tried boatman who can safely transport you. If you get into the other boat, which I know is leaky, all will go down, and the river Narmada is indeed deep.

  We have tried Mahatma Gandhi for 20 years — to our satisfaction. What he says he means. He promises the minimum but performs the maximum.

  Do not think, ‘We will get into the new boat for a while and then again get back into the old boat.’ You may not survive to get back to the old boat for, as I said, the new boat is leaky.60

  The resolution was passed. The parable of the boatman was acclaimed. But Bengal did not forget C.R.’s remarks against her favourite son. Nine years later, shouts of ‘Leaky boat! Leaky boat!’ were hurled at C.R. when he arrived in Calcutta as Governor of West Bengal.

  Implementing the Tripuri directive was more than what Bose was prepared to consider. He resigned the Presidentship. A little later he left Congress altogether. But his honour was intact; and in his future lay daring deeds and a nation’s love.

  At a meeting in Calcutta, the AICC asked Rajendra Prasad to fill the place vacated by Subhas. The occasion, presided over by Sarojini Naidu, was a stormy one, Bose’s supporters alleging that Prasad’s election was unconstitutional. When it was over, C.R. said to the harried chairperson: ‘Sarojini, yours has been a Mrs Herculean performance.’61

  12

  Hitler

  1939

  The first quarter of 1939 saw conflicts between C.R. and the Raj. C.R. objected when the Raj wished to deploy the Madras police to quell riots in some of Orissa’s princely states. Then the Raj objected when C.R. desired to transfer and censure a Collector, Alan Crombie, following an incident of firing in a jute mill in his district, Vizag. Also, C.R. sought a reduction in salaries protected by the Raj’s special laws. Finally, he asked to be consulted in the appointment of High Court judges.

  The Raj yielded wholly on the first point and partially on the second. C.R. had asked if Erskine subscribed to the view that ‘neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister in charge of services nor the Minister in charge of the department concerned, nor all the Ministers together’ could shift or censure an officer.1

  Though C.R.’s Ministry often assigned officers to new duties, transferring an ICS officer as a mark of disfavour was a different matter altogether. In the end the Ministry was allowed to move Crombie to Bellary and to ask the Federal Public Service Commission to inquire into Crombie’s role in the firing, but a public censure was not permitted. (Five months later, the Commission exonerated Crombie.)

  On the remaining points the Raj gave nothing away, and C.R. pondered resigning. Not dipping into handsome earnings when he had touched lower salaries seemed unfair to him. As for appointments to the High Court, he wrote to the Governor (2.2.39):

  I am certain that when the Secretary of State or the Governor- General consults Your Excellency in regard to such matters, your Prime Minister has an inherent right to be taken into confidence and to be consulted . . . The question has assumed a very serious shape.2

  Describing a meeting where he told the Ministers that the Raj would not yield over salaries or the High Court, Erskine observed that one of the Ministers who

  would never, if he could help it, under any circumstances, demit office, no matter what point of principle was involved, and who has had quite sufficient political experience to recognise a crisis when he sees one, [became] exceedingly perturbed. His face went a nasty dark-green colour and at one period of the discussion his teeth even began to chatter . . .

  The idea of the Ministry’s resignation was dropped. C.R. discussed with his colleagues the alternative of his resigning alone, leaving ‘one of them to step into his shoes,’ but they dissuaded him.3

  To what he saw as the exploitation and intensification of racial and caste divisions, C.R. reacted memorably in the Assembly:

  With due deference to Sir Pannirselvam, I say that we . . . will land ourselves in utter hopeless retrogression if we go on in this manner . . .

  This agit
ation about Hindustani . . . has been converted into a regular propaganda which creates communal hatred. Is it good for anybody? Is it only this government that is to reap the results of this communal hatred? . . . Has an earthquake converted Tamil India into an island, separated from the rest of India?

  When England has forgotten centuries ago the difference between Norman and Saxon and Celt, when we have the standing example of America before us, we are saying this is a dark man, this is a fair man; this is an Aryan, that is a Dravidian; this is a Scythian, that is a Mongolian and that is a Jew.4

  When the Ministry was assailed for not trying to break the Raj- devised constitution, C.R. replied:

  The Hon’ble Member who spoke about this subject does not know the technique of breaking the constitution . . . Just as we grow without knowing we have grown, just as no man knows when he cast off his childhood or boyhood or his middle age, constitutions do not know when they have been broken . . .

  An objection that his Ministry had not carried out a threat to resign was answered with unkind humour:

  It may be, sometimes, that. . . it looks almost that we are going to resign and other people get themselves ready to take our places. But [then] we get unpacked and other people have to go disappointed, and we are still in harness.

  In reply to criticism of his new taxes, he said:

  I do not remember having told any group of people or any audience that we will reduce taxes all round. But we did say that the rural population would have less tax . . . It is easy enough to condemn the sales tax, the property tax, the entertainments tax and the petrol tax and to say that we won’t have any taxes whatsoever. But it is not good for the country.5

  He was, thus, a teaching parliamentarian as well as a trenchant and merciless one. The Mahatma, for one, observed that C.R.’s ‘ability as a parliamentarian among Congressmen’ was ‘unsurpassed’ (Harijan, 10.9.38).

  By the summer of 1939 war seemed likely in Europe. The Raj said it would amend the Government of India Act to enable the centre to declare an emergency and, during an emergency, to override or take over provincial governments. Objecting emphatically, C.R. termed the measure ‘a grave inroad into the field and status of provinces’ and voiced the fear of an emergency declaration well before a war.6 Despite such protests, the amendment became law.

  On 1 September Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. Two days later, within hours of Britain’s declaration of war, the Viceroy proclaimed India a belligerent state. He did this on his own, without consulting either the Central Assembly or the easily identifiable leaders of Indian opinion.

  A year earlier, when war seemed possible, Patel had told Lumley, the Governor of Bombay, that Congress leaders ‘would expect to be consulted . . . and invited to approve participation in the war.’ Lumley had passed the word to Zetland, who, in turn, informed the British Cabinet.7

  In 1938, C.R. had asked for a meeting regarding the possible war between the Viceroy and Gandhi. The day before Hitler attacked Poland, C.R. revived the proposal; Erskine conveyed it to the Viceroy. Thus the Raj had looked at, and rejected, the idea of sounding out Congress or Gandhi before declaring India’s belligerency.

  Even so, the Mahatma told Linlithgow that he regarded the war with ‘a British heart.’ He could not commit Congress, Gandhi added, but personally he was for Congress giving unconditional though nonviolent support to the Raj. Congressmen seemed divided. While many sympathized with the anti-British stand of Bose, who labelled the War imperialist, C.R., leading the moderates, could contemplate Congress giving ‘wholehearted support to Britain in the fight against gangsterism personified.’8

  He did not mind if this conflicted with the creed of nonviolence; though vital, in C.R.’s view, to the Indian struggle for freedom, nonviolence could not be the norm for all battles. In return, Britain, should announce a time-table for Dominion Status for India: as an earnest gesture of progress towards Dominion Status, some Congressmen should be taken into the Central Government in New Delhi.

  Equidistant from C.R. and Subhas was Nehru, named chairman of Congress’s War sub-committee, comprising Patel and Azad himself. While declaring opposition to Nazism, Nehru said that Indians ‘will not participate [in the War] as slaves’ (The Hindu, 18.9.39). At his instance, the Working Committee asked Britain to spell out her aims in the War and their application to India; the response would determine Congress’s stand.

  While Congress waited for the Raj’s reply, C.R.’s police arrested all German males in the Presidency and handed them to the Raj’s military. Anti-aircraft guns were installed in Madras city; the harbour was guarded, the Marina seafront blacked out.

  Some Congressmen in the South — Bose’s followers — made anti-War speeches. B.W. Day of the ICS, serving in Madras, would later recall that C.R. was ‘strongly opposed to this sort of thing and in principle prepared to take action, but there was always something that prevented his sanctioning a prosecution.’9 Without a Congress-Raj settlement, it was not easy for C.R. to prosecute critics of Britain’s War.

  At the end of September C.R. told the Press that ‘Congress was negotiating with the British government in regard to the political status of India’ (The Hindu, 30.9.39). Early in October, Gandhi, Prasad, Congress’s Acting President, Nehru and Patel talked with Linlithgow; also invited by the Viceroy were Jinnah and the Princes, Ambedkar and the Hindu Mahasabha.

  Some days later C.R., in his words, had ‘full, free, frank and cordial’ talks with the Viceroy in New Delhi. The Premier asked for ‘a number of Congress leaders to be appointed to the Viceroy’s Executive Council,’ but Linlithgow was cool.10

  Stopping in Wardha on his way back to Madras, C.R. spent two hours with Gandhi, discussing, among other matters, what he might do if he gave up office. Desai thought that C.R. would write on the Upanishads or learn Hindustani himself as ‘expiation’ for imprisoning anti-Hindustani agitators, but the Premier told him that he would probably teach, using the medium of handicraft!11

  On 17 October the Viceroy spoke. India, he said, would have constitutional talks, not freedom, at the end of the War; for the duration of the War, Indians could sit on a largely decorative consultative committee. In the declaration, Linlithgow referred also to ‘the conflicting interests and claims’ of Indian groups. In a letter to his King the Viceroy justified and described his divide-and-rule exercise:

  As soon as I realised that I was to be subjected to heavy and sustained pressure designed to force from us major political concessions as the price of Congress’s cooperation in the war effort, I summoned representatives of all the more important interests and communities in India, including the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes and Mr Jinnah, . . . and interviewed them one by one, . . . a heavy and trying task but well worth the trouble.

  [The declaration] does not give to Congress what they are asking for, which is an understanding by Your Majesty’s Government that India will be given political independence at the conclusion of the war . . .

  [The declaration] has made plain the fact that we cannot concede to Congress the validity of that party’s claim to speak for the whole of India.12

  C.R. termed the Viceroy’s statement ‘deeply disappointing.’ He felt that ‘a great and unique occasion’ had been ‘simply thrown away’ (The Hindu, 18.10.39). Subhas saw in the statement the ‘strongest justification’ of his stand. Gandhi said it was stone instead of bread and also divide-and-rule.

  When C.R. protested to Erskine, the Governor — so he reported in a letter to Linlithgow — charged that Congress ‘had made a bad psychological mistake in attempting to use England’s difficulties as a lever to bargain for an immediate political advance at the centre.’ Apparently, the Premier was also told ‘quite plainly’ that ‘the British people were the last nation in the world who would submit to blackmail in time of war.’13

  Does blackmail go with sympathy? The Mahatma’s concern for the British was expressed several times: seeing it the Viceroy, according to his son and biographer, Lord Glende
von, was ‘deeply moved.’14 About Hitler, Gandhi had said: ‘It almost seems that Hitler knows no God but brute force and will listen to nothing else’ (The Hindu, 5.9.39).

  The Raj was well aware also of C.R.’s feelings. As Erskine had written to the Viceroy two months before the War started, ‘He himself (C.R.) wanted us to win any possible war against the Totalitarian countries.’15 Subhas, true, spoke another language, but he was no longer in the inner ring of Congress; in August, in fact, he had been barred for three years from any elective post in Congress because of his defiance of directives.

  If Congress’s sympathies were clearly with the Allies, its political demands were not conceived after the declaration of War. At virtually every legislative session, Congress Premiers, including C.R., had asked for constitutional advance at the centre; party resolutions had invariably done the same.

  When, following the start of the War, Congress reiterated these demands, the Raj’s custodians reacted not with surprise but with relief at the prospect of a termination of the Raj- Congress understanding and the departure of Congress Ministries.

  On 16 September, Erskine forwarded to Linlithgow C.R.’s plea that the Viceroy should see Gandhi and Nehru. The Governor added, however: ‘Personally I think we should not enter into any bargain for if Congress do go out it will be their funeral and not ours.’16

  For Erskine and many others in the Raj, disputes among Indians were a blessing: they required the Raj’s continuance. Erskine’s feelings about Indian independence came across in a phrase he used while writing to Linlithgow at the end of 1939: ‘If, by bad management of our affairs, we were ever forced to leave India . . .’