Rajaji

by Rajmohan Gandhi

  In a public statement, C.R. said that India needed ‘the continued guidance’ of both Nehru and Patel and added:

  Some of us who have pulled together all these 35 years must do so to the end of our active lives (Hindustan Times, 23.9.50).

  Undaunted by an infructuous three-hour meeting in which Nehru, Patel, Tandon, Azad and he participated, C.R. wrote a letter urging Tandon to accept Kidwai:

  Here is the last and only hurdle for a historic settlement. May I entreat you to swallow the poison? You can do it and indeed be all the stronger for it (28.9.50).

  If Nehru kept himself out, added C.R., he too would have to stay out and return to Madras. Courteously but firmly Tandon sent the ball back to C.R.:

  My hope still is that Jawaharlalji will join the Working Committee without insisting as a condition precedent that any particular person should be taken on it. Your persuasion will, I feel, help (8.10.50).

  By this time Patel had made an unexpected gesture. Speaking at Indore on 2 October, he said:

  Our leader is Jawaharlal Nehru. Bapu appointed him as his successor in his lifetime . . . It is the duty of all Bapu’s soldiers to carry out Bapu’s request . . . I am not a disloyal soldier (Hindustan Times, 3.10.50).

  A stirred C.R. wrote to Patel:

  Even in the printed report your Indore speech was touching. In the actual spoken word it must have been so greatly moving. You have done all one can do. If even this does not satisfy people’s suspicions, what can man do! (5.10.50)

  But Nehru was not really satisfied. His confidence, however, had returned. He wrote to C.R. (10.10.50):

  I have written a letter to Purushottam Das Tandon on ‘Culture.’ I am enclosing a copy of it for you, as you might be amused.

  The reply was crisp:

  Tandonji will surely be puzzled at the contents as well as the timing of your letter on ‘culture.’ Why this now when the only question is, ‘Will you be a member of his Working Committee?’ (11.10.50)

  Nehru, however, seemed adamant. He wrote to C.R. (13.10.50):

  You will forgive me for not abiding by your advice in this matter.

  And Patel thought the breach had come. Writing to C.R. he said (13.10.50):

  It is painful to prolong this process of mental torture and we must end it now as I see no hope . . . I have gone to the farthest extent . . . but I see that it is all no good and we can only leave it to God. Thanks for the trouble you have taken.

  Aided and abetted by C.R. and Azad, the fates helped. After three marathon meetings on Sunday, 15 October, Tandon announced that twenty persons had agreed to join his Working Committee. Nehru, he said, was one of them, as was C.R., though Kidwai had been excluded.

  Telegrams congratulated C.R. for his mediatory role, but he knew that the reconciliation was qualified and half-hearted. And very soon there was reason for real worry. To Rama Rao he wrote:

  Sardar Patel is very ill . . . He is unable to go to Parliament or leave his house.

  On 12 December Patel had to be flown to Bombay for treatment. C.R. saw him off at the airport, as did Prasad and Nehru. Three days later Patel died. Jawaharlal and C.R. flew together to Bombay for the funeral where, as Vallabhbhai’s oldest friend, C.R. made the oration, tears rolling down his shrunken cheeks. They had been very close, personally and ideologically. And Patel’s death had removed the only brake on Nehru.

  Nehru told C.R. that he would have to take up Home, and C.R. knew it. No one else could step into Patel’s chappals, but C.R. nursed no illusions about being another Sardar. Health and luck permitting, he might manage to retain the confidence of the services and keep an eye on the provinces. But there was no question of his balancing Nehru’s weight and influence.

  Though he became number two in the Cabinet and, when Nehru was away, chaired its meetings and officiated at functions for visiting heads of government, he was not styled Deputy Prime Minister. That designation seemed to die with Patel.9

  True to character, C.R. proved a conservative Home Minister. The Communists had launched a violent movement in Hyderabad’s Telengana districts, and C.R. went all out to suppress it. According to B.N. Mullick, head of intelligence at the time, ‘We were ordered to end it and there were to be no excuses. The Prime Minister favoured a less severe approach but Rajaji carried the day. In the end we were able to report to him that the movement had been broken.’10

  A crucial weapon in the Telengana operation was the Preventive Detention Act, which Patel had brought in. Piloting a Bill to extend its operation by a year, C.R. was unsparing in his attack on secrecy and violence. The Communist technique, he charged, was to lure men by the prospect of sacrifice and danger, drive them into ‘complete criminal outlawry’ and hold them by blackmail. ‘Any officer found guilty of misusing his powers under the Act would be regarded as an enemy of the state,’ C.R. promised. But the Act would be used against violent persons, blackmarketers and ‘those who continually incite communal passions’ (Hindustan Times, 10 & 20.2.51).

  Did he remember his leaflet of May 1919, issued against the Rowlatt Act, where he had promised opposition to any law ‘to suspect and imprison without trial even if the government is democratic and purely Indian’?

  The first amendment to the Constitution, qualifying the rights to property and free speech, was made while C.R. was Home Minister and with his effective defence in Parliament. In the government’s view, the amendment was called for to safeguard land reform legislation and to check incitement to violence. It also enabled C.R., towards the close of his term, to move and push through his controversial Press Bill.

  The Raj’s instrument for controlling the Press, the 1931 Press Act, was still on the statute book but would not have survived a challenge under the new Constitution. With the first amendment a regulatory law became possible. C.R.’s Press Bill empowered the government to obtain, by court order, security from an impeached publisher or journalist. The accused could insist on a jury of journalists or public men and had the right of appeal to a High Court.

  C.R. claimed that he would not have thought of his Bill if a Press Council, capable of ‘inducing all sections of the Press to conform to known standards,’ was in place. Limited to two years, the law, he said, would be repealed earlier if the profession created its own supervisory body. After a long and strenuous debate, the Bill was passed in October 1951. According to Chalapati Rau, founder of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists and friend of Nehru:

  Rajaji was shrewd over the Press Bill. When I expressed my reservations to Nehru, he asked me to meet Rajaji. ‘Please bring as many colleagues with you as you want,’ Rajaji said to me when I sought an appointment. The interview presented no difficulty to Rajaji, for my colleagues freely contradicted one another.11

  With C.R.’s backing, an official of Britain’s MI6 was invited to India. Thereafter — despite some coolness from Nehru — senior intelligence men from India attended secret courses in Britain.12

  As Home Minister, C.R. denied passports to a few who had been invited to the Soviet Union or China. One or two successfully appealed against C.R.’s decision to Nehru, but there was at least one instance, that of R.K. Karanjia, editor of Blitz, where C.R. allowed a passport though informed in writing by S. Dutt, the Foreign Secretary, that Nehru ‘does not like at all the idea of Karanjia’s going to China.’ C.R. took the view that Karanjia ‘is fully in possession of his own mind and will and is not likely to be affected for better or worse in Peking.’13

  Mullick, the intelligence director, suggested prevention of a visit to India planned by Rajni Palme Dutt, the Communist leader — ‘Indian by name but a British citizen,’ as Mullick described him. C.R. ruled that Dutt should be allowed to land but desired that ‘a friendly member should ask a question in Parliament on the subject.’ In his answer, C.R. ‘would expose the real aims of Palme Dutt and the Communist Party.’14

  In another decision, C.R. held that while ‘it would be undesirable . . . to let government servants engage themselves in RSS programm
es,’ young men should not be kept out of the administration ‘merely on the ground that they have previously taken part in RSS activities . . . in school or college or immediately thereafter.’ The elucidation was passed on to all chief secretaries and chief commissioners.15

  The Home Minister was expected to promote Hindi, which the Constitution had termed the national language, but, doubtless recalling the storm raised in 1937-9 when he had made Hindi a compulsory subject in southern schools, C.R. said:

  Let me respectfully warn Hindi lovers not to depend upon the coercion of a numerical majority of an ill-knit population . . . It will lead to disintegration and hostility rather than unity (Hindustan Times, 28.12.50).

  Zapu Phizo having begun an independence movement in the Naga Hills in the Northeast, Bishnuram Medhi, the Assam Chief Minister, informed C.R. of his plans to ‘strengthen the district administration’ to counter the movement. C.R.’s reply to Medhi, a copy of which also went to Assam’s Governor, offered another perspective:

  The Constitution contains provisions designed to confer a wide degree of regional autonomy for these tribals. It seems to me also necessary that we should appoint as many of the hill people as possible both in superior and inferior posts, ignoring conventional standards.16

  Civil servants again noted his evident resolve that friends or relations should not profit from his being where he was. When a letter came charging that a Delhi-based official whose family he had known intimately was corrupt, C.R. minuted:

  CID must keep watch on his movements . . . If he is found guilty on enquiry he must be tried for the offence and dismissed, if necessary.17

  Mullick, the intelligence chief, would later recall C.R.’s functioning as Home Minister:

  Rajaji never asked me to carry out a single wrong decision . . . He gave clear and straight answers and left nothing in doubt — and never sought to escape responsibility for a mistake. Even Patel took political considerations into account, but Rajaji never. The party did not like this attitude of his. He was more at home with officials than with the party.18

  H.V.R. Iengar, the Home Secretary, would describe C.R.’s style:

  One of the first things I did as soon as he took charge was to send him a note about the activities of the Communist Party of India, in those days the main preoccupation of the Home Minister . . . Rajaji sent for me a few days later and started what looked like a cross-examination . . . I began to wonder whether Rajaji himself was a member of the Communist Party!

  I became exhausted and began to feel I was an ignoramus. Then Rajaji smiled. It was for him partly an intellectual exercise and partly an attempt to probe my own study . . .

  I took to him a case of a Bengali police officer of Assam who had been subjected to disciplinary proceedings . . . I thought it was a routine matter which would be disposed of in a couple of minutes. Again I was subjected to a rigorous cross- examination.

  How was I certain that the officer making the inquiry was fair-minded? . . . Was I aware of the tension in Assam between Bengali and Assamese officers? Then Rajaji closed the matter by saying that he agreed with my recommendation.19

  It was a style that Mullick, too, would remember:

  Once I saw a note by Rajaji disagreeing with the department’s recommendation and then, later on in the file, his signature endorsing our proposal. ‘How have you agreed?’ I asked him. He smiled and said: ‘It was not all one-sided, as all of you made it our to be. In my note I pointed out the other side. But when both sides are considered, your recommendation is correct. Where is the contradiction?’20

  More at home with officials than with party people, C.R. was not interested in expanding his political base, for which the Home Ministership would have been an ideal asset. The lawns and front rooms of 1 York Place were free of lobbying politicians, and his evenings, too, could be devoted to the Home Ministry’s files.

  A unanimous vote of the Madras Assembly had made C.R. a member of the Upper House of Parliament. Though, as we have seen, he had to initiate some unpleasant measures in Parliament, his flair enabled him to win support, and opponents acknowledged his effectiveness. Thus Deshbandhu Gupta, a Member from Delhi and editor of the Urdu daily Tej, who with Ramnath Goenka of the Indian Express kept up a steady attack on the Press Bill, said when it was approved: ‘The passage of the Bill is a personal triumph for the Home Minister’ (Hindustan Times, 8.10.51).

  He turned interruptions to good account. When Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, who had left the government early in 1950, said in the middle of a Rajaji argument, ‘Please remember you have ceased being a lawyer,’ C.R. replied, ‘But I have not ceased being reasonable.’21 On another occasion, C.R. was referring to the problems of centrally-administered territories when Thakur Lal Singh of Bhopal, one of the areas involved, interrupted, ‘It is because they are kept under your thumb.’ ‘No, sir,’ said C.R. at once, ‘we are keeping them in our lap’ (Hindustan Times, 27.5.51).

  The record of the Press Bill debate contains the following exchange:

  C.R.: At an early stage of the debate, an hon’ble member was pleased, in his dislike of me, to find a bad name to give me and called me Chanakya.

  H. V. Kamath: It is not a bad name at all.

  C.R.: Now Chanakya, some call him Vishnu Gupta, historians call him Kautilya, is a great name.

  Kamath: An honoured name.

  C.R.: The intention of the hon’ble member was not to honour me. It was only my luck that a good name occurred to him, for which I thank the goodess of accidents. (Loud thumping)22

  Goenka accused C.R. of harbouring a dictatorial mind. Replied C.R.:

  I must tell Mr Goenka that democracy does not mean constant hunger for popularity or the constant fear of unpopularity . . . Let no one mistake the battle between right and wrong, which must be fought in one’s breast, as a battle for dictatorship (Hindustan Times, 4.10.51).

  At the final sitting on the Press Bill, C.R. said:

  There is nothing wrong in this Bill. There is nothing of which I am ashamed. On the contrary, I am proud, for it is the first time in the history of the Press laws that a system of judicial trial has been introduced and the Government made a common complainant.23

  Shortly before the vote on the Bill, Gupta complained that the Press gallery was empty. C.R. pounced on him: ‘Shouldn’t the Press have freedom in this matter also?’ (Hindustan Times, 7.10.51).

  In the assessment of Durga Das, who as a journalist had been covering the legislature in New Delhi since the 1920s, C.R.’s performance over the Press Bill ‘excelled in advocacy any ever known in the annals of the Central Legislature’ (Hindustan Times, 18.9.51).

  Correctness, courtesy and thoughtfulness marked Jawaharlal’s conduct towards C.R. He had gone to the airport to welcome C.R. when the latter came to talk about joining the Cabinet and again when he came to join. Off and on he would send across to C.R. some fruit, a book, or clippings from a foreign journal.

  Nehru to C.R., 18.5.51: Perhaps the enclosed two articles by G.D.H. Cole in the New Statesman might interest you.

  In his reply C.R. summarized Cole’s points, reacted to them, and added: ‘You can see that I can think and write as vaguely as G.D.H. Cole’ (19.5.51).

  While he appreciated Nehru’s cultured attitude, Patel’s death had modified their relationship. Nehru’s need for an ally or reconciler in his dealings with Patel had vanished. His visits to C.R.’s residence virtually stopped. There is no indication that his regard for C.R. had diminished, but there was no need any more to trouble C.R. at 1 York Place.

  N.V. Gadgil, a member of the Cabinet at this time, thought that after Patel’s death Nehru ‘began to think of himself as omniscient.’24 But it was more in the scene, and less in Nehru, that the change had occurred. The counterweight, Patel, had gone.

  Yet C.R. found it hard to accept the change. He who had given comradeship as well as combat to Nehru’s father Motilal was unable to swallow a line-up where Jawaharlal was the Leader and others, including himself, followers. />
  Whether because of the sin of pride or the virtue of self- respect, life in the Nehru cabinet lost its charm for C.R. There were some differences, too. The two disagreed, for instance, on what the Gandhi samadhi at Rajghat should look like. H.V.R. Iengar, Home Secretary at the time, who saw official papers that passed between C.R. and Nehru, sensed that ‘all was not well between the two.’ Nehru would ‘alter Rajaji’s drafts even when nothing material or substantial was involved.’25

  However, over Nehru’s differences with Prasad, which began to surface at this juncture, C.R. backed Jawaharlal. Expressing misgivings regarding the Hindu Code Bill that Parliament was considering, Prasad indicated to Nehru that he might withhold assent to it, a threat he did not in the end carry out. C.R. supported the Bill and, more important, agreed with Nehru that the President had to go by the Cabinet’s advice, even if such a direction was not explicit in the Constitution.

  The eminent lawyer, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, and the Attorney General were asked to give their opinions; a letter that C.R. wrote to Nehru regarding the opinions reveals the closeness of their consultation on this question:

  I am returning Alladi’s very good note. I agree with you that it should be sent to the President along with the Attorney General’s note. Please remember when sending the note to the President to delete the words I have marked on page 6 and also to send in some form or other the portion marked by me in [Alladi’s] covering letter to you (9.10.51).