Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  His perception of the threat to South India from the Japanese prompted him to reach another decision: he would attempt to form a government in Madras. The hunter of big game was now ready to settle for a smaller, provincial prize — and eager to take on the Japanese. If necessary, he would conciliate the Raj and the League.

  However, embittered towards Britain after the parleys with Cripps, the Working Committee was no longer likely to be persuaded by C.R. Aware of his growing isolation in the Committee, C.R. reached yet another crucial decision: Congress in the South should be ready to act on its own.

  After meeting C.R. on 18 April, Hope informed the Viceroy that he had found the former Premier ‘very changed in his outlook’ and ‘quite helpful over the War.’ C.R. indicated his willingness to ‘come back at the head of a coalition government’ which would include the ‘Justice party, the Muslim League (if allowed by Jinnah), Christians, Scheduled Classes and even one European.’

  ‘What if Congress refuses you permission to lead a coalition ministry?’ asked Hope. ‘I will be prepared to break away and run an independent show down here,’ replied C.R.10

  At C.R.’s instance, the Madras Congress Legislature Party (MCLP) passed two resolutions that were to lead to a fierce controversy and, ultimately, to his resignation from the Congress. By the first, the MCLP recommended to the AICC that it should concede the League’s claim for the separation of ‘certain areas,’ and thus secure the League’s support for ‘a national administration at this hour of peril.’

  By the second resolution, the MCLP sought the AICC’s permission for including the League in a popular government in Madras that would prepare South Indians to face any Japanese attack (The Hindu, 25.4.42).

  Across India, Congressmen seemed outraged by the suggestion that Congress should concede separation and knock on the doors of the League and the Raj. Azad said he was ‘greatly astonished’ by the MCLP resolutions. (The Hindu, 27.4.42). Nehru termed C.R.’s move ‘undesirable’ and ‘extraordinary’ (The Hindu, 28.4.42). Patel was furious. The Mahatma was frankly critical and also understanding:

  I am wholly opposed to him (C.R.). But I hold that Rajaji has acted in a wholly constitutional manner. I am a lover of personal freedom and free expression of views however embarrassing they might be . . . He was hasty in pronouncing his opinion on vital things before he had consulted his colleagues, but who can help being hasty in these times, especially if he thinks he has something precious to give?11

  When, following the MCLP meeting, C.R. arrived in Allahabad for an AICC session, black flags were waved at him by workers of the Hindu Mahasabha. Azad told him that before sponsoring his MCLP resolutions he should have discussed their far-reaching contents with his national colleagues. C.R. agreed with Azad, expressed regret, and resigned from the Working Committee. The Viceroy informed the King that C.R. had ‘left the working committee to conduct a campaign in favour of wholehearted participation in the war.’12

  Early in May the AICC met.

  C.R.: ‘Let us dare. Let us give to [the Muslims] what they are asking. They will themselves say they do not want it if you . . . throw it on the table.’

  A voice: ‘Do all [Muslims] want it or only the Muslim League?’

  C.R.: ‘It has been difficult to dislodge the League from its position of control and influence with large masses of Muslims.’

  Nehru: ‘No!’

  C.R. (to Nehru): ‘Produce a communal settlement and I will go down on my knees before you’ (The Hindu, 3.5.42).

  Pointing out that the Working Committee had said, in its reply to the Cripps offer, that Congress could not think in terms of ‘compelling people of a territorial unit to remain in the Indian Union against their declared and established will,’ C.R. claimed that the MCLP resolutions conceded nothing more.

  He was cordially cheered at the end of his speech, but the Congress was in no mood to endorse separation. In The Hindu’s phrase, Nehru ‘spiritedly’ opposed C.R. So did many others. A C.R. motion in defence of the MCLP step was defeated 120 to 15.

  With a large, impulsive, and, as Gandhi noted, hasty gesture, C.R. had sought the League’s cooperation for an anti-Japan Hindu-Muslim front in the South. In the process he lost his Congress base. After Allahabad, the Congress MLAs of Madras began to desert him. Eventually, only seven were to stand by him; all hope of ‘an independent show’ run by C.R. vanished.

  A passionate lover of seemingly lost causes, C.R. took the question of separation to the public. Repeating C.R.’s argument, Mian Iftikharuddin, president of the Punjab Congress, said that C.R.’s was ‘actually the most effective unity of India move, not a Pakistan move’ (The Hindu, 11.5.42). Three members of the League working committee, Khaliquzzaman of the U.P., Nazimuddin of Bengal, and Nawab Mohammed Ismail of Bihar, welcomed C.R.’s initiative, as did a number of Muslim journals.

  The Communists hailed his anti-Japanese stand as well as his espousal of minority rights. From Bangalore Navaratna Rama Rao notified his personal support. The pro-Congress masses were not converted, but C.R. obtained a large hearing. Srinivasa Sastri, opposed to the Pakistan idea, heard C.R. at Salem and wrote to a friend:

  C.R. had a triumph yesterday. An audience of 20,000 listened for an hour-and-a-half without the slightest disturbance . . . We can’t deny Fajaji great prestige and popularity.13

  A Madura meeting he addressed was ‘one of the biggest held in the city,’ but angry critics shouted at him. ‘If I am to be afraid of you,’ C.R. told them, ‘how am I to face Japanese aggressors if they come?’ The Hindu reported (22.5.42):

  A missile was thrown at Rajaji. He jumped into the crowd of hostile demonstrators and declared, ‘You want to attack me? Come on, here I am.’

  To large numbers in the South, Rajaji and the Congress had for years been synonymous terms, and C.R. was the Mahatma’s voice. To hear C.R. dissenting from Gandhi and from Congress shocked and baffled them. In the end the great bulk of the South’s Congress supporters gave Rajaji their respect but not their obedience.

  Gandhi, too, had been reflecting, and the solution he came up with was the ultimate one: the British should leave. Congress should ask the British to Quit India, and organize mass action if they did not. As Gandhi saw it, their unwillingness to part with power, preparedness to divide India, which the Cripps package had revealed, and withdrawal from Malaya, Singapore and Burma, had earned the British the hatred of India. ‘Orderly British withdrawal’ would ‘turn the hatred into affection,’ he claimed.

  The thought of Quit India was electrifying to many Indians, but C.R. objected, and a public debate between Gandhi and C.R. ensued. ‘There is no reality,’ C.R. declared, ‘in the fond expectation that Britain will leave the country in simple response to a Congress slogan’ (The Hindu, 16.6.42). In a letter to Gandhi, C.R. argued that Britain ‘cannot add to her crimes the crowning offence of leaving the country in chaos to become a certain prey to foreign ambition.’14

  Gandhi replied that with the launching of Quit India, ‘the whole of India’s mind would be turned away from Japan.’ ‘Today,’ he added, ‘it is not.’ C.R., on his part, saw a Congress- League understanding as the golden key. Once that occurred, ‘the next day’s post would bring the charter of freedom’ (The Hindu, 16.5.42).

  While conceding that it was ‘a noble thing to strive for Hindu-Muslim unity, equally noble to strive to ward off the Japanese intrusion,’ Gandhi called C.R.’s plan ‘wholly unnatural’ (The Hindu, 31.5.42).

  After a letter (3.6.42) in which Gandhi said to C.R., ‘No more wordy warfare with you by me in the Press,’ the two met in Wardha for long talks, but differences remained. Gandhi wrote to him:

  Mahadev was telling me how sad you were over my obstinacy in not appreciating what was so plain to you . . . But I am built that way. Once an idea takes possession of me I can’t easily get rid of the possession. I suppose you are of the same build. Therefore there seems to be no escape but to suffer each other’s limitations! (5.7.42)

  By question
ing Quit India and expressing openness regarding Pakistan, C.R. was inviting hostility. At a meeting in Bombay’s Napoo Hall, a tar-filled paper ball hurled at him amidst shouts of ‘Rajaji Murdabad!’ and ‘Akhand Hindustan Zindabad!’ hit him on the temple: his face and shawl were smeared. For several minutes, until the noise died down, C.R. stood ‘with utter unconcern.’ Then, in a slow, measured tone, he said:

  Friends, let me first of all congratulate the young man who threw tar at me with such perfect aim. He and I disagree. But India needs determined men like him to beat back the imminent Japanese invasion and to win and retain freedom.15

  Jinnah noted that C.R. was no longer ‘talking of Pakistan as vivisecting India or cutting the cow or baby into two’ (The Hindu, 31.5.42). However, a resolution commending C.R.’s approach was defeated 32 to 24 in the League’s U.P. committee. The Communists backed C.R., and he defended the removal of the Raj’s ban on them. They were opposed to Quit India: the Soviet Union was Britain’s ally.

  Old lieutenants such as Santhanam, Sadasivam, publisher of the weekly, Kalki, and its editor, Krishnamurti, supported C.R.; featuring C.R.’s arguments, Kalki was brought out twice a week for a spell. But C.R. was increasingly angering mainstream Congressmen.

  In July, K.Kamaraj, the thirty-nine-year-old president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, asked C.R., in some ways the father of the provincial Congress, to show cause why action should not be taken against him for attacking Congress resolutions.

  Nehru charged that C.R. was ‘splitting the Congress over Pakistan.’16 Patel, chairing the Congress Parliamentary Board, who in 1937 had persuaded C.R. to assume the Premiership of Madras and had been one with C.R. from 1919, was angrier. In a message sent via Gandhi, he sought C.R.’s resignation from the Assembly. Gandhi advised a further step:

  It will be most becoming for you to sever your connection with the Congress and then carry on your campaign with all the zeal and ability you are capable of.17

  Though rejecting the charge that he was working against Congress, and contending that members could not be ‘totally debarred from persuading Congressmen to alter their opinions,’ C.R. left Congress. A letter from him to Kamaraj acknowledged ‘the value of discipline as well as the need for liberty of thought’ and stated that he was resigning ‘in order to be absolutely free to carry on my campaign’ (The Hindu, 10.7.42).

  He resigned, too, from the Assembly. The MCLP met again and cancelled the resolutions it had passed at C.R.’s instance.

  As for Quit India, first the Working Committee and then the AICC, which met in Bombay on 7 and 8 August, endorsed it. Misgivings had been expressed by Azad and by Nehru, who was anxious about the defence of China and Russia, but the two fell in after sensing the Mahatma’s fire and the grassroots support for Quit India.

  If Britain withdrew, said Congress, a provisional government ‘formed by the cooperation of the principal parties’ would allow Allied troops to be stationed in India — a significant concession from Gandhi that made it easier for Nehru to support Quit India. If Britain rejected the Quit India call, ‘a mass struggle on nonviolent lines on the widest possible scale’ would be launched ‘under the leadership of Gandhiji.’ If leaders were put behind bars and Congress committees prevented from functioning, then ‘every man and woman . . . must be his own guide.’

  Resignation had not subdued C.R. He saw the Mahatma again, called on Jinnah who had charged that Quit India was aimed at coercing the British to sanction a Hindu raj, and reported back to Gandhi. On the eve of Quit India, making a fresh effort to bridge the Gandhi-Jinnah divide, C.R. cabled the Mahatma:

  Feel you should ignore Jinnah’s allegations and definitely offer him such quota of provisional government as he wants and ask him to nominate his men. This along with your names on behalf of Congress will rationalise your demand of Britain and force acceptance of proposals.

  Replied Gandhi: ‘Every effort has been and will be made in the direction indicated by you though not identical.’18

  Two days later, the AICC sanctioned the Quit India struggle. Gandhi said he would launch it after talks he hoped to have with the Viceroy. But the Raj’s wartime regime, ready with its plans of arrests, bans and reprisals, took no chances. By dawn on 9 August, Gandhi and other leaders had been put away. And Congress was banned.

  India exploded in reaction. A few pockets declared themselves free. Factories were brought to a halt. Demonstrators streamed out of bazaars, factories, villages and colleges, condemning the arrests. Often they were fired at: six hundred were killed in the first few days of the August Movement, as it came to be called.

  Nonviolence was not uniformly observed in this open rebellion, the gravest threat to British rule since the 1857 Rising. False reports of the Mahatma’s approval of violence ‘for this struggle’ encouraged acts of destruction. Trains were derailed, telephone and telegraph wires cut, police stations and post offices burnt down. From the other side, the Raj’s forces fired in scores of places on unarmed crowds and, on several hundred occasions, freely used the lathi.

  Though incidents continued for months, by the end of August the back of the rebellion was broken. The House of Commons was informed that over a thousand had been killed by the end of November; the actual figure was doubtless higher. About a hundred thousand nationalists were jailed, many of them for the duration of the War.

  The banishment of the Mahatma and the Working Committee had emptied the national stage; part of it was filled by C.R. His first public reaction to the arrests was a lament: ‘My words have fallen on deaf ears, both of my colleagues and of the British government’ (The Hindu, 11.8.42). Four days later he made a sharp comment on the violence that was occurring: ‘If any people think that they are helping Gandhiji by these ruinous activities, they are deluding themselves and bringing cruel discredit on him’ (The Hindu, 15.8.42).

  The Mahatma, and C.R., suffered a serious blow, a week after Gandhi’s arrest, in the sudden death of Mahadev Desai, who had been detained, with the Mahatma and Kasturba, in the Poona house of the Aga Khan.

  Some members of the Ashram he had started in Tiruchengode left in order to join the Quit India campaign. C.R. was hurt but it was clear that his task now was not to defend himself in his controversy with the Mahatma or Congress: it was to defend Congress, despite all his differences with it, and to keep the Gandhian flag flying.

  Thus he refuted Amery, the Secretary of State, who, accusing Congress of having tried to seize power through a coup ‘after the manner of modern dictators,’ had added that Indian soldiers attached to the Allies would be demoralized if Congress shared in the governance of India. Terming the coup charge a ‘black falsehood’ and declaring that crushing Congress was ‘a psychological impossibility,’ C.R. neatly turned the tables on the question of the Indian soldiers:

  Will the British Government agree to abide by the free verdict of the fighting forces in India? We will gladly agree to abide by it (The Hindu, 23.10.42).

  His eager, restless mind produced a new scheme: Let the Viceroy induct into his Council some Congress leaders, including a few of the jailed, and a larger number of the League’s nominees, with the War Cabinet in London retaining the right to prosecute the War from India. Jinnah, with whom C.R. canvassed the idea, was non-committal but the League’s paper, Dawn, sounded positive.

  In Britain the former Chief Secretary of Madras, C.R.’s friend Brackenbury, wrote to The Times welcoming the scheme, and a British committee which included some MPs asked the Secretary of State to facilitate a visit by C.R. to the UK. But the Raj was in no frame of mind to let recent rebels enter the government or even to let C.R. enter Britain. The Viceroy, moreover, refused to allow C.R. to meet Gandhi in prison.

  Calling on Linlithgow in November, C.R. had suggested that Gandhi was likely now to be readier for a compromise and could be expected, if C.R. was permitted to meet him, to authorize C.R. to condemn the violence that had taken place. Despite a fifty-minute talk, the Viceroy turned down C.R.’s request.
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br />   The Raj’s calculations are revealed in a letter that Linlithgow wrote to Hope. A Gandhi-C.R. meeting, the Viceroy said, would have an ‘instantaneous depressing effect on all non- Congress elements.’19 The public explanation for the refusal was that the Mahatma was ‘under restraint for revolutionary activities’ and had not apologized for ‘the bloodshed he had provoked’ (The Hindu, 14.11.42).

  Even The Statesman, British-owned, regretted the decision. It added: ‘True, being a big man, [C.R.] asked for a big thing . . . Would harm have been done?’ (14.11.42)

  Gandhi forced the Raj’s hands. Repeated government charges, circulated in India and abroad, especially in America, that the Mahatma had condoned if not plotted the August violence, and insinuations that he was secretly working for the Japanese, drew from Gandhi a demand for proof or clearance from the Viceroy.

  Linlithgow refusing to oblige him, Gandhi resorted to his distinctive weapon, the fast. He did not wish to die, said Gandhi, but he would combat the injustice done against him by not eating for 21 days.

  The fast commenced on 10 February 1943. At one point it looked as if he would die of the ordeal, and three Members of Linlithgow’s Council, H.P. Mody, M.S. Aney and N.R. Sircar, resigned when their plea for Gandhi’s release was not heeded by the Viceroy.

  Some of Gandhi’s family were allowed to visit him. As a relative, C.R. too was able to call on Gandhi. For four days from the seventeenth day of the fast, by which time the crisis had passed, C.R. saw him daily.

  From Gandhi, C.R. obtained a complete disapproval of sabotage and violence. C.R. learnt, too, that in a letter to the Viceroy written soon after his arrest Gandhi had deprecated the deeds of violence, while disclaiming responsibility for them. (Though this letter had reached Linlithgow well before C.R. saw him in November, the Viceroy, in his remarks to C.R., had ‘deplored the absence of any condemnation of these [violent] happenings on Gandhiji’s part, though he had newspapers.’20)