Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  Once the Kheda settlement was secured, Gandhi came back home to Kasturba and the ashram. The construction was proceeding smoothly, supervised by his nephew Maganlal. Gandhi hoped to provide accommodation for 100 people and install sixteen looms. This would cost 100,000 rupees, of which 40,000 had been collected. For the balance he approached his friend Pranjivan Mehta. ‘I have to tax you for a large amount,’ wrote Gandhi to Mehta. ‘Please give, if you can, what I have asked for, so that my anxieties can end.’62

  From August through November, Gandhi was almost continually in Ahmedabad. His stay was not entirely voluntary. In the second week of August, he came down with a bad bout of dysentery. He was flat on his back, ‘passing through the severest illness of my life’, and could hardly write because of the pain.63

  Gandhi had vowed to abstain from milk for life. He had lived without it for the past few years. But his recent sickness had weakened him. The doctors asked him to resume drinking milk to build up his body. So did Kasturba. Gandhi was reluctant to break his vow. He wrote to the Bengali chemist P.C. Ray to ask whether the protein provided by milk could be found in vegetables instead.

  In October, Gandhi’s health turned bad again. His heartbeats became irregular. He was being administered arsenic, iron and strychnine injections to bring back his appetite. Kasturba pointed out that his vow had been taken with regard to cow’s milk only. Why could he not take goat’s milk instead? That would not be a lapse of conscience. The lawyer had been outwitted by his unlettered wife, on technical grounds. He agreed to take the substitute.64

  Gandhi’s young colleagues Narhari Parikh and Mahadev Desai found their mentor’s attitude puzzling. Either he should not have taken the vow, they said, or he should have kept to it. When Mahadev conveyed their disquiet to Henry Polak, he wrote back that at least Gandhi’s health was on the mend. ‘I only hope the improvement continues,’ wrote Polak to Mahadev. ‘I entirely share your feelings as regards his [Gandhi’s] attitude. It seems to be wholly illogical; but I prefer his lack of logic and his life to his logic and his death. In any case, his vow was illogical, and as two negatives make an affirmative, I am perfectly satisfied with the result’.65

  XII

  In April 1918, Gandhi’s eldest son, Harilal, was accused of embezzling funds from his employer. He wrote in panic to his father for advice. Gandhi replied: ‘What shall I write to you? Man behaves according to the impulses of his nature. But it is the dharma of every one of us to gain mastery over them. Make that effort, and all your faults will be forgotten and forgiven. Since you are emphatic that you did not commit the theft, I will believe you, but the world will not.’

  Gandhi advised Harilal not to engage a pleader, but to ‘tell everything to the advocate on the other side’. The letter ended by saying that Mahadev Desai

  satisfies my need for you. He has taken your place, but the wish that it had been you refuses still to die. If others had not become my sons and soothed my feelings, I would simply have died of the pain of separation from you. Even now, if you wish to be an understanding son without displacing anyone who has made himself [dear] to me, your place is assured.66

  In the first week of July, Gandhi was in Nadiad, a town some forty miles from Ahmedabad. He heard (perhaps from Kasturba) that Harilal was to pass through on his way from Bombay. ‘I must go and see him,’ said Gandhi to Mahadev, and went to Nadiad station at night. One train stopped, but Harilal was not on it. Another came a little later, and Gandhi found his son ‘sound asleep in a second class compartment’. Harilal was surprised to see his father. They spoke for a while, ‘but there was no warmth in it’. Gandhi came back to where Mahadev and he were staying, ‘sorely disappointed and grieved’, remarking to his secretary that ‘the very face of the boy has undergone a change and lost its colour’.67

  Gandhi’s second son, Manilal, had been sent away to South Africa. With Albert West, he was running the Phoenix settlement and publishing the magazine Gandhi had founded in 1903, Indian Opinion. Manilal was lonely, and desperately keen to get married (he was now in his mid-twenties, well past the age at which Indian males then found their brides).

  Gandhi insisted that Manilal continue to be celibate. In January 1918, Gandhi wrote to him that ‘You may consider marriage only when you can leave Indian Opinion in good order….We have a thousand desires; all of them cannot be satisfied.’ To West’s sister, Gandhi wrote that if Manilal ‘can stand a few more years of bachelor life, he will get hardened’.68

  Writing to Manilal, Gandhi fretted that he ‘could not attract Harilal to my path of a truth-seeker and he dropped away from it’. He thought he might yet succeed with his second son. Gandhi told Manilal that

  You have stayed on in my life, but are discontented. You can’t bring yourself to go out of it, and yet do not altogether like being in it. This is why you are not at peace with yourself….I have not harmed you intentionally. All I have done I did in the belief that it was for your good. Is not this enough to bring down your anger against me?69

  This is the letter of a purist and perfectionist, of one who had radically simplified his life, abandoned his career, devoted himself to the service of society. At the same time, it is dogmatic and unfeeling. Gandhi greatly admired the medieval poet Narasinha Mehta, whose hymn ‘Vaishnava Jana To’ was now sung daily at his ashram.70 Mehta’s hymn emphasized that only those who understood the pain of others could come close to God. As an uppercaste Hindu, Gandhi himself understood, and responded to, the pain of peasants, workers, Muslims and ‘untouchables’. His views on women—asking for the abolition of purdah, seeking their support in social movements—were moderately progressive for the time. And yet, for all his empathy and concern for those outside his family, Gandhi was curiously blind to the pain of his own sons.

  Harilal and Manilal were both independent and strong-willed. The third son, Ramdas, was timid and shy. Gandhi did not think him capable of public work. But when Ramdas found it difficult to get stable employment, he did disappoint the father. So Gandhi pinned his hopes on his youngest son, Devadas, who was intelligent, hard-working, and less inclined to disagree with his father than the two eldest boys.

  Mahadev Desai records a conversation in the spring of 1918, where Gandhi told him:

  Harilal threw away his whole life in a moment by one false step. I see in him all my faults magnified and my merits minimised, as we see in some special mirrors’ reflections of objects larger and smaller than their size….Dev[a]das had been born to compensate me for the dissatisfaction I feel from my other three sons.71

  In June 1918, Gandhi sent Devadas, then aged eighteen, to Madras to teach Hindi to South Indians, since they were unfamiliar with what would one day become an independent nation’s lingua franca. After six months away from home, Devadas wished to return. Gandhi told him that his ‘interest’ and ’duty’ required him to stay on. ‘When your task in Madras is over,’ he wrote, ‘I shall satisfy your desire for studies. But believe me, the experience you have gained very few must have.’ The tone here is different from his letters to Harilal. The father would still direct and exhort, but in a gentler and kinder way.72

  XIII

  Gandhi had decidedly mixed success in winning his sons over to his cause. He was luckier elsewhere. As he conducted his first experiments with satyagraha, young men and, more occasionally, women flocked to his call.

  In Champaran, those who came to work with Gandhi included ‘barristers, Pleaders, dismissed school masters, Politicians, local agitators…’73 When he started his schools in Champaran, volunteers came from across the country. They included S.L. Soman, a Marathi-speaking Brahmin from Belgaum, who was a lawyer and Sanskrit scholar; Pranlal Prabhu, a yogi from Bhavnagar in Kathiawad, who ‘lives on fruits only, does not take rice, bread, etc.’ and who distributed medicines free to the villagers; Avanti and Baban Gopal Gokhale, a couple from Bombay, he an engineer, she a teacher; and Hari D
. Deo, a member of the Servants of India Society from Poona.74

  In Kheda and Ahmedabad too, idealistic young Indians came to assist Gandhi, abandoning their legal or teaching careers to do so. And he also found sustenance among the subaltern classes. In Champaran, the indigo tenants were looking to Gandhi to lead them. In his native Gujarat, peasants in the countryside and workers in the city were mobilized by Gandhi’s associates, taking their cues from what their leader asked or expected from them.

  Of the educated followers whom Gandhi attracted to himself in 1917–18, three stood out. These were J.B. Kripalani, Vallabhbhai Patel and Mahadev Desai. What they had in common was independence of mind. Their admiration for Gandhi did not shade into blind reverence. They often argued with him, and sometimes even made him change his views.

  Patel and Kripalani were men of action. Neither kept a diary. What we know of their early encounters with Gandhi is partial and incomplete. Mahadev Desai, on the other hand, kept a record of all that Gandhi said to him. Sometimes he also noted what he said in return. We thus know that the disciple did not always concur with what his master had to say.

  In late May 1918, travelling by train in Bihar, Mahadev and Gandhi had an argument about reincarnation. Gandhi insisted that if one was a Hindu (as Mahadev certainly was) one must accept the cycle of births and rebirths. His secretary spiritedly answered: ‘Call me a non-Hindu or a Christian or whatever you like, but why should I hide what I honestly feel?’ How could a horse become a man in his next life, he asked, or a man a horse?

  A month later, back in Ahmedabad, Mahadev disagreed with Gandhi once more. This time they were discussing the position of women. Gandhi said it was ‘in the very nature of womankind’ to be dependent on others. Mahadev answered that her ‘dependence is not as natural as all that’. He cited Annie Besant as an example of a woman who was truly independent.75

  In South Africa, Gandhi had a devoted secretary, Sonja Schlesin, and an outstanding second in command, Henry Polak. In March 1918, six months after Mahadev joined him, Gandhi described him to Polak as ‘a capable helper’, whose ‘ambition is to replace you. It is a mighty feat. He is making the attempt.’76

  Mahadev had one great advantage over his predecessor; he was a native Gujarati speaker. Polak perhaps understood Gandhi’s political philosophy better than anyone else in South Africa. As one who had shared a home with Gandhi, he knew his personal eccentricities rather well too. However, as an Englishman, he was denied access to the mental and moral world of Gujarat and Gujarati. Mahadev was as well read in history and politics as Polak. He had a deep love for English literature. And he was a Gujarati, shaped by the same stock of songs, stories and sayings as Gandhi himself.

  In April, Gandhi wrote to his secretary’s father: ‘Mahadev has relieved me of many of my worries. I was in search of a loving helpmate of his character and learning. Having got Mahadev, I have succeeded in the search.’77

  In May, Gandhi wrote to Mahadev himself: ‘You have made yourself indispensable to me. I meant what I wrote to Polak….It is for your efficiency and character that I have chosen you to help me in my political work and you have not disappointed me. Add to this the fact that you can cook khichdi for me, with so much love.’78

  Gandhi had written to his eldest son, Harilal, that Mahadev had taken his place. But Mahadev was more than a surrogate son. He also served as Gandhi’s secretary, interpreter, travel manager, interlocutor and (when necessary) cook. A year after he joined the ashram, Gandhi told his nephew Maganlal that Mahadev ‘has come to be my hands and feet, and my brain as well, so that without him I feel like one who has lost the use of legs and speech. The more I know him, the more I see his virtues. And he is as learned as [he is] virtuous.’79

  Like Henry Polak—to whom Gandhi compared him—Mahadev Desai had a ready wit and great personal charm, qualities altogether rare in activists who seek to transform the world. Like Polak again, his role in the making of the Mahatma deserves to be far better known than it is.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Going National

  I

  In his recruitment drive in the district of Kaira, Gandhi had meagre pickings. Gujaratis were not naturally oriented towards military service. But men from other parts of India were. Punjabis, Pathans, Tamils, Malayalis, Garhwalis, Kumaunis and Purbiyas all enlisted in large numbers to serve in the World War. Some 1,000,000 Indians took up arms on behalf of the king-emperor, playing a major role in both the European and the Middle Eastern fronts.

  This massive contribution to the war brought forth calls for greater rights for Indians. A leading proponent of self-government was the secretary of state for India, Edwin S. Montagu. Montagu had served as undersecretary of state for India from 1910 to 1914. He had toured India in the winter of 1912–13, and had been keen to succeed Lord Hardinge as viceroy in 1916.

  The prize post of viceroy was denied Montagu, with Lord Chelmsford being appointed instead. As consolation, he was appointed secretary of state in July 1917. His Majesty’s Government had talked about giving ‘responsible government’ for India; Montagu thought this a mealy-mouthed term, preferring the more emphatic ‘self-government’ instead. He told his Cabinet colleagues that ‘if we do not use the word “Self-government”, I do not believe any announcement will fulfil its purpose, and the fact that we have avoided using it will be pounced upon by the Home Rulers.’1

  In the second week of November 1917, Montagu arrived in India to expedite the process of political reform. He spent six months in the country, consulting with the viceroy and his advisers, and with governors and officials in the provinces. In between his talks he indulged himself in shikar expeditions.

  Montagu kept a diary of his conversations, which offers fascinating insights into the men who ruled India. He was shocked by the racism of Europeans in the cities, whose clubs were closed to Indians. In his view, ‘the social question, the fact that the civil servants are willing to work with the Indians but not to play with them, the fact that the Boxwallah will have nothing to do with them, has really brought the present political situation upon us.’2

  Montagu spoke with a representative section of Indian opinion. Among those summoned to Delhi to meet the visitor were Jinnah and Gandhi. The secretary of state found Jinnah to be ‘young, perfectly mannered, impressive-looking, armed to the teeth with dialectics, and insistent upon the whole of his scheme’. Jinnah was ‘a very clever man’, concluded Montagu, ‘and it is, of course, an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own country’.

  Montagu was told that ‘at the root of Jinnah’s activities is ambition. He believes that when Mrs Besant and Tilak have disappeared he will be the leader, and he is collecting around him a group of young men, whom he says he is keeping from revolutionary movements, and professes a great influence over them.’

  Also of the generation following Tilak and Besant was Mohandas K. Gandhi. Montagu had been briefed about the conflict in Champaran and the Gujarati’s role in it. Meeting Gandhi immediately after Jinnah, Montagu jotted down his impressions of the man: ‘He is a social reformer; he has a real desire to find grievances and to cure them, not for any reason of self-advertisement, but to improve the conditions of his fellow men….He dresses like a coolie, forswears all personal advancement, lives practically on the air, and is a pure visionary. He does not understand details of schemes; all he wants is that we should get India on our side.’3

  On 13 December, when in the bath in Calcutta’s Government House, Montagu had an idea that ‘seems to me the most brilliant that has ever entered my head’. This was to ask the prime minister to appoint Sir S.P. Sinha, the eminent lawyer who had been the first Indian member of the viceroy’s executive council, secretary of state for India. Montagu would voluntarily take a demotion and become his undersecretary. This would be an object lesson for arrogant ICS officers, that ‘a British statesman who, however undeservedly, has reached Cabinet rank, finds n
othing derogatory in assisting rather than controlling an Indian’.

  Montagu believed that ‘the dead hand of the Government of India is over everything, blighting it’. His scheme of reform rested on three pillars: wider representation, provincial autonomy and absolute racial equality.4 His conservative Cabinet colleagues thought he was giving Indians too much, too quickly. Within India, the governors of provinces damned his scheme ‘all the way up hill and down dale’.5

  The viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, was also lukewarm. In July 1918, a ‘Montagu–Chelmsford’ scheme was announced, a compromise decidedly weighted in favour of the latter party. Montagu had asked for ‘complete provincial decentralization’. Instead, the Government of India retained a tight leash, by dividing administrative categories into ‘reserved’ and ‘transferred’. The former remained under the control of the unelected governor (always an Englishman) and his unelected officials, while the latter were to be dealt with by elected ministers under the overall supervision of the governor.