With God as witness we Hindus and Mahomedans declare that we shall behave towards one another as children of the same parents, that we shall have no differences, that the sorrows of each will be the sorrows of the other and that each shall help the other in removing them. We shall respect each other’s religion and religious feelings and shall not stand in the way of our respective religious practices. We shall always refrain from violence to each other in the name of religion.27
VI
Gandhi was now very keen to travel to the Punjab. He had not previously visited that politically conscious province, which had taken an active part in the swadeshi movement of 1905–07. More recently, it was the centre of the Ghadar movement, where Sikhs who had migrated to North America returned to the Punjab to mobilize the peasantry. Many Punjabis had also served in the World War, often forcibly recruited by the British.
Gandhi was quite well known in the Punjab. As the chief secretary of the province later recalled, in one speech ‘the coming of Mr. Gandhi was compared to the coming of Christ, to the coming of Muhammad and the coming of Krishna. Now that was the man who, if I should use the words of a speaker at Amritsar, was to break the power of the bureaucracy, that was the man around whom the whole of the agitation centred; that was the man who by his new device of passive resistance was to relieve the people of the burden with which they were threatened.’28
On 8 April, Gandhi boarded a train to Delhi, from where he hoped to proceed to the Punjab. When the Government of India heard of his plans, they consulted the chief commissioner of Delhi and the lieutenant governor of Punjab, both of whom said ‘it would be most dangerous to allow Mr. Gandhi to enter their jurisdictions’. If he came he would have to be arrested, since ‘his avowed intention was to break the law of the land’.29
The government now decided to stop Gandhi. At the station of Kosi Kalan (about sixty miles short of his immediate destination), the police served Gandhi an order prohibiting him from entering Delhi and the Punjab, and restricting his movements to the Bombay Presidency.30
The detention of Gandhi provoked protests all across India. Shops and offices shut down in Bombay. In Calcutta, a large crowd gathered at the Nakhoda mosque, with Hindus mixing with Muslims.31 On the morning of 10 April, when the news of Gandhi’s arrest reached Ahmedabad, workers in mills downed tools, and shops shut down. The next day, a rumour gathered ground that Anasuya Sarabhai had also been arrested. This led to a riot, with an excited crowd, composed largely of millhands, attacking Europeans, torching government buildings and looting the homes of officials. The trouble continued the next day, and subsided only when troops were called in to fire at the rioters and the city placed under martial law. At least twenty-three people were killed and more than 100 injured in the shooting.32
Gandhi returned to Ahmedabad on 13 April. When he heard of the violence caused in his name, he broke down. He was ‘exceedingly ashamed’ to hear of the disturbances in his city. He wrote to the viceroy that he had ‘over-calculated the measure of permeation of satyagraha among the people’. But, he added, externing him from the Punjab was itself a ‘grievous blunder’, since ‘the mad incendiarism that has taken place in Ahmedabad would never have occurred, if the orders had not been served upon me….Rightly or wrongly, I seem to command, at the present moment, in an excessive degree the respect and affection of the people all over India.’33
On 14 April, Gandhi addressed a large meeting in his ashram. The recent happenings in the city were, he said, ‘most disgraceful’. He had said ‘times without number that satyagraha admits of no violence, no pillage, no incendiarism; and still in the name of satyagraha, we burnt down buildings, forcibly captured weapons, extorted money, stopped trains, cut off telegraph wires, killed innocent people and plundered shops and private houses’. These events in Ahmedabad had ‘most seriously damaged the satyagraha movement’. Had ‘an entirely peaceful agitation followed my arrest’, added Gandhi, ‘the Rowlatt Act would have been out or on the point of being out of the Statute-book today. It should not be a matter of surprise if the withdrawal of the Act is now delayed.’
Gandhi had now decided to ‘offer satyagraha against ourselves for the violence that has occurred’. This would take the form of a seventy-two-hour fast. Gandhi asked those assembled to also ‘observe a twenty-four-hour fast in slight expiation of these sins’.34
Gandhi’s address, reported the Bombay government, ‘had a very beneficial effect and the disturbances at Ahmedabad practically came to an end on…14th April’ itself.35
VII
Against this backdrop of the hartal on the 6th, Gandhi’s detention on the 8th, and the violent protests on the 10th, there occurred a fascinating exchange of letters between Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. Apart from being India’s most famous writer, Tagore was also a social reformer, who preached against caste and religious discrimination, and was establishing a ‘University of the World’ in his native Bengal.
When he planned his satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act, Gandhi was very keen to get Tagore’s blessing. On 5 April, he wrote to the poet that he was anxious to gather for the satyagraha campaign ‘the ennobling assistance of those who approve it. I will not be happy until I have your considered opinion on this endeavour to purify the political life of the country.’
Gandhi was hoping for an endorsement; what he got instead were words of caution. Tagore acknowledged that Gandhi returned to the ‘motherland in the time of her need to remind her of her mission…to purge her present-day politics of its feebleness…’ But he warned that
passive resistance is a force which is not necessarily moral in itself; it can be used against truth as well as for it. The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation.
Tagore knew that Gandhi’s own desire was to ‘fight against evil by the help of the good’. But ‘such a fight’, he warned, ‘is for heroes and not for men led by impulses of the moment’.36
The words were prescient. As the violence that followed Gandhi’s arrest demonstrated, not all those who joined his movement had his own calm resolution and steady commitment to non-violence. On 18 April, Gandhi announced the suspension of civil disobedience. He hoped satyagraha could be resumed in a few months, by which time his associates would have spread and cultivated a spirit of disciplined non-violence.37
VIII
As Gandhi started and stopped his movement in the Bombay Presidency, events were moving swiftly in the Punjab. Three days after the hartal of 6 April was Ram Navami, the festival celebrating the birth of Lord Ram. This was normally observed by Hindus alone. But on this day in Amritsar, ‘contrary to previous practice, the festival was very largely participated in by Muhammadans, and along with the usual shouts political cries were freely raised, “Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai”, “Hindu–Mussalman ki jai”’.
On the evening of 9 April, orders were issued for the deportation of two prominent local Congressmen, Satyapal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew. One was Hindu, the other Muslim. When news of Gandhi’s arrest reached Amritsar on 10 April, a large and angry crowd collected on the streets. British banks were set on fire and three bank managers murdered. A female missionary was beaten up and left for dead.
The violence continued through the 10th and the 11th. With the police unable to control the crowds, the city was placed under de facto martial law. The collector handed over charge to Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, who had come with a contingent of Gurkha and Pathan troops.
The martial law regime in the Punjab was extremely harsh. Mail was censored. Temples and mosques were closed to worshippers. Water and electricity was cut off from the homes of those whose political affiliations were suspect. Worse still were public floggings of select rebels; and most incredible was an order making it mandatory for all Indians to crawl along the street that had witnessed the attack on the woman missionary.38
The protesters
remained defiant. They called for a meeting to be held at one of the town’s public parks, Jallianwala Bagh, on the afternoon of 13 April. General Dyer issued a proclamation banning the meeting, sending soldiers with megaphones into the streets to warn people against attending. A crowd of several thousand gathered nonetheless. Enraged that his proclamation was disregarded, Dyer proceeded to the meeting place with some fifty soldiers and two armoured cars.
The 13th of April was Baisakhi, Sikh New Year’s Day. From the morning, pilgrims had filed into the Golden Temple. After visiting the shrine, many worshippers walked over to the nearby Jallianwala Bagh, to rest and chat in the park before returning home. By the time Dyer reached the park, this mixed crowd of protesters and worshippers was several thousand strong.
The armoured cars could not negotiate the narrow lanes of the old town, so Dyer and his men disembarked and proceeded on foot. Having deployed his troops, the general at once gave orders to open fire on the crowd facing him in the enclosure. In panic the crowd dispersed, towards the park’s single entrance, now blocked by the troops. Dyer shouted to his men to continue shooting. Asking them to reload their magazines, he personally directed fire at the densest parts of the crowd. Some 1650 rounds were fired. Almost 400 people died in the carnage.39
The drama, intensity and brutality of the week’s events are all captured in the diary of J.P. Thompson, the chief secretary of the Punjab at the time. On 6 April, Thompson noted down the popular rumours about the Rowlatt Bills. ‘Few understand what it is. One story is that police permission will be required for weddings and funerals. Another that anyone who does not salaam a policeman will be arrested.’ The hartal called by Gandhi for 6 April was ‘complete’ in Amritsar and in ‘most towns of importance’.
On 8 April, the chief secretary confided to his diary that ‘the situation is serious. Gandhi and company have started hawking prescribed pamphlets in the streets of Bombay.’ On the 9th, he noted Gandhi’s departure for Delhi: ‘We have sent an order directing him not to enter the Punjab.’ The next day was described as ‘memorable’; with a crowd of 5000 rushing the civil station in Amritsar, and burning the town hall. ‘Troops fired—30 casualties.’
Thompson seems to have ignored his diary on 14 April. The entry for the 12th deals with Lahore where troops marched through the city, closing the magnificent Badshahi mosque to worshippers. ‘Temper of mob very bad,’ noted the chief secretary grimly. Portraits of the king and queen were smashed, and at least two railway stations looted.
The entry for 13 April reads: ‘Late at night mutilated wire came through from Amritsar….Meeting held in spite of prohibition—200 killed!’ On the 14th, at a party at the Governor’s House, Thompson met Watkins, the principal of Amritsar’s Khalsa College, who told him that in Jallianwala Bagh the troops ‘shot men down like rabbits as they ran’, adding, ‘in an excited state’ that the ‘only thing that can save the situation was that LG [the lieutenant governor] should disown action taken’. Thompson’s own view was that while it ‘seems to have been a bloody business—200–300 killed in a garden’, ‘probably it will be justified by [the] result’.40
IX
Under martial law, there was strict press and postal censorship in the Punjab. The facts of the Jallianwala Bagh incident were largely unknown to the outside world. But rumours and counter-rumours were rife.
A month after the massacre in Amritsar, Gandhi wrote to the viceroy’s private secretary: ‘I have not said a word about the events in the Punjab, not because I have up to now not thought or felt over them, but because I have not known what to believe and what not to believe.’41
In early June, the first reports on the Amritsar massacre began appearing in the Indian press. Gandhi now broke his public silence on the Punjab, with an article criticizing the imprisonment of Kalinath Roy, the editor of the province’s leading English paper, the Tribune. Roy had been tried and jailed for sedition, when in fact, his writings were marked by ‘sobriety’ and ‘self-restraint’. Gandhi next took up the case of Radha Krishna, the editor of Pratap, likewise sent to jail by the Punjab government for allegedly inflammatory articles. He urged that he be released too.42
Gandhi’s writings were now appearing regularly in a weekly called Young India. This journal was started by Shankarlal Banker and Umar Sobani in Bombay. In May, the government suspended the widely read Bombay Chronicle newspaper and deported its editor, B.G. Horniman, for taking the side of the anti-Rowlatt agitators. To fill the gap, Young India now became a biweekly. Gandhi and Mahadev Desai also began the process of shifting it to Ahmedabad.43
While it was being published in Bombay, Young India carried advertisements. Those paying for space included soap and almirah merchants, jewellers, booksellers, an orphanage that was an ‘ideal institution for Homeless Hindus of all ages and both sexes’, and a certain A. Ratna and Co., Madras, who for Re 1 plus postage would supply a ‘fine photo of Mr. M.K. Gandhi’.
After the magazine shifted to Ahmedabad in early October 1919, it reverted to being a weekly, and stopped carrying advertisements. Young India now reprinted, in full, statements and speeches by Gandhi. Each issue also carried one and frequently several articles especially written by him for the journal. In the autumn of 1919, for example, Gandhi published more than a dozen articles about the Punjab—these dealing with the plight of the families whose members had been killed in the Amritsar firing, miscarriages of justice and the apathy of officials.
X
The satyagraha had been suspended. Gandhi now turned his attention away from politics and to the promotion of spinning and weaving. He had long believed that the decline of handicrafts was one of the causes of India’s poverty. In the past, weaving had been an important subsidiary occupation in villages, taking up the slack in the lean season. Machine-made goods had destroyed India’s hand-spun textile industry. Its rejuvenation was key to Gandhi’s plans for national renewal. In his ashram, he had set up looms, and made it mandatory for members to spin every day.
For Gandhi, swaraj and swadeshi, freedom and self-reliance, went hand in hand. In the summer and autumn of 1919, he gave many talks on the importance of economic self-reliance. Speaking in Bombay, he said that ‘because of its neglect of swadeshi, the nation has been ruined’. Speaking in the town of Godhra, he said that if the free hours of men and women in rural homes were occupied in spinning and weaving, crores of rupees of foreign exchange would be saved.44
A journalist from Madras, coming to meet him in Bombay, found Gandhi sitting cross-legged on a couch, wearing handwoven clothes, writing a letter to a friend in Gujarati, using materials ‘of the more common swadeshi type’. The ‘paper was none too fine, the pencil had to be pressed hard to make an impression, and the envelope would not easily open in the prevailing [monsoon] weather’. The reporter (a westernized Tamil Brahmin) also noticed ‘that one of the curls of [Gandhi’s] spectacles had broken midway and was being held in position by a piece of thread knotted round his head. I was wondering why a fresh curl had not been put in, but soon found a broken curl was not without its uses, as it serves well enough for a toothpick on occasions.’
The journalist asked what Gandhi’s message was for the people of South India. He replied: ‘I want every man, woman and child to learn hand-spinning and weaving.’45
The theme of swadeshi also figured heavily in Gandhi’s personal correspondence. Writing to Jinnah in the last week of June, he said, ‘Pray tell Mrs. Jinnah [the erstwhile Ruttie Petit] that I shall expect her on her return to join the hand-spinning class that Mrs. Banker Senior and Mrs. Ramabai, a Punjabi lady, are conducting [in Bombay].’ Then he gratuitously added, ‘And, of course, I have your promise that you would take up Gujarati and Hindi as quickly as possible. May I then suggest that like Macaulay you learn at least one of these languages on your return voyage [from England]?’46
Jinnah was a political colleague. Their relations were civil, though by no means warm. But even to perfect
strangers, Gandhi was prone to offer similar advice. The Bombay Presidency now had a new governor, George Lloyd. Gandhi had been unsuccessfully seeking an interview with him for some time. While the request was being processed, he sent the governor’s private secretary a note explaining his programme of swadeshi, and its importance for the economic survival of the peasantry, for whom spinning and weaving could become ‘an automatic famine insurance’. He then made four requests of the governor. The first three were straightforward—viz., that the governor issue a statement approving of hand-spinning and hand-weaving, that the registrar of cooperative societies be instructed to encourage these activities, and that district officers be instructed likewise.
The last request was more unusual. Thus Gandhi wrote:
And, if it is not a presumption, I would respectfully ask H.E. on my behalf to secure Lady George Lloyd’s patronage for my spinning classes. Several titled ladies are, with a view to encouraging the industry among the poor classes, taking spinning lessons. I would consider it an honour to be allowed to present a spinning-wheel to Her Excellency and to send her a lady teacher or to give her the lessons myself. I may mention that the art of spinning is incredibly easy to learn.47
This was cheeky, even insolent, reflecting Gandhi’s extraordinary sense of self-belief. That his proposal could ever be accepted beggars the imagination—a titled and grandly dressed English lady, meant to grace ballrooms, racecourses, and guards of honour, squatting on the floor of her palace while working on a wooden spinning wheel, instructed by a little brown man in a loincloth.
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