Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  Gandhi believed that personal relationships were a reliable route to intercommunity cooperation. His closest friends in the diaspora included a Parsi merchant and a Muslim merchant, both Gujarati-speaking like himself, both willing to repeatedly court arrest under his leadership; two Jews—an architect and a journalist-turned-lawyer; and a Christian priest who was also his first biographer. Now, in India, men such as the Ali Brothers and Maulana Abdul Bari were to be both his personal friends as well as his political comrades. Gandhi thought that if individuals of different religions could inspire trust and affection among one another, surely the wider communities of which they were part could do likewise.

  In January 1920, Gandhi proceeded to Lahore, continuing his investigations into the Punjab atrocities, and incidentally also furthering his friendship with Saraladevi Chaudhurani. The day he reached Lahore, Gandhi wrote to his nephew Maganlal that ‘Saraladevi has been showering her love on me in every possible way’. In return, Gandhi hoped to convert her to his ways. He asked Maganlal to send a good spinning instructor for Saraladevi.2

  In the last week of January, Sarala’s husband was released from prison. The day he came home, Gandhi ‘saw a new glow on Smt. Saraladevi’s face. The face which had been lined with care was today bright with joy. Or perhaps I am doing her an injustice. Even during separation Saraladevi had not lost the light on her face.’3

  In his first two weeks in the Punjab, Gandhi visited Gujrat, Sargodha and other districts in the interior. ‘Saraladevi Chowdhrani accompanied me on this journey,’ wrote Gandhi, but it is not clear whether her husband did. The peasants of Punjab were much taken with the lady, for, as her companion noted, ‘many men and women address Saraladevi as Mataji or Mother’.4

  Gandhi and his associates had now recorded the testimonies of some 1700 witnesses to the happenings of March–April 1919. With this mountain of material, he proceeded, alone, to Banaras, where he stayed in Madan Mohan Malaviya’s house and hammered out a first draft of the Congress report on the Punjab. Taking a walk at sunrise, he saw a ‘golden sheen appear on the Ganga’, and as the sun came into view over the horizon, ‘there seemed to stand in the water of the river a great pillar of gold’. This beautiful sight was soon spoilt by another, that of people defecating on the banks of the river. One could not walk along the Ganga barefoot, one dare not drink its water, and one could not visit with pleasure the still dirt-and-garbage-filled Kashi Vishwanath Temple either. When he started his morning walk Gandhi was moved to sing the gayatri hymn (an invocation to the sun); by the time he ended, he was reflecting gloomily on ‘the cause of [the] degradation of the Hindus’.5

  The report drafted, Gandhi took the night train from Banaras to Delhi, where he was once again joined by Saraladevi (coming from Lahore), the two travelling together to Ahmedabad. One does not know what Kasturba made of the new arrival. On 27 February, Sarala was the main speaker at a public meeting held in the dry riverbed of the Sabarmati River. A crowd of 3000 heard her speak on the Punjab troubles, her words translated from Hindi into Gujarati by her companion. Speaking after her, Gandhi said that ‘unless our sisters in the country give their blessings to the brothers, India’s progress is impossible’. In Ahmedabad he had found a sister in Anasuya Sarabhai, and now, in the Punjab, he had found Saraladevi. When he stayed with her, said Gandhi, ‘I had from her as much service as from one’s own sister and thus became her debtor.’6

  Gandhi was enchanted with, and by, Saraladevi Chaudhurani. A sign of this was the regularity with which her name appeared in the columns of his newspaper. In February 1920, Young India reprinted several letters connected with Saraladevi’s membership of the ‘Lahore Purdah Club’, a society which brought together high-born Indian women and wives of senior British officials. In April 1919, the president of the club was Una O’Dwyer, wife of the province’s lieutenant governor. After Sarala’s husband had been arrested for his part in the Rowlatt satyagraha, the president wrote to the Purdah Club’s managing committee, demanding that they ask ‘the Chaudhurani’ to resign her membership, failing which she would be removed from the list of members. ‘It is obvious,’ said Lady O’Dwyer, ‘that the wife of the Lieutenant Governor cannot belong to the same club as the wife of Chaudhari Ram Bhuj.’

  Young India printed Mrs O’Dwyer’s letter, along with a letter from the secretary of the Purdah Club, asking Saraladevi to resign. This had the signatures of all the committee members, several of whom were Indian. In reproducing this correspondence, Gandhi’s newspaper remarked: ‘It is painful to find cultured Indian ladies being so terror-struck as to easily expose themselves to ridicule and insult. For in sending the notice they did to Saraladevi Chaudhurani they insulted not Mrs Chaudhari but themselves. Shrimati Saraladevi is a member of the Bengali aristocracy, wife of a noted leader of the Punjab and what is more, one of the few highly educated and gifted ladies India possesses. It was the Club that was honoured by her being its member.’7

  The treatment by the Lahore Purdah Club of Saraladevi was unquestionably petty. But did it merit extended commentary in the main organ of Gandhi’s political struggle? That an individual’s club membership was treated alongside serious articles on education and the condition of workers must be reckoned an example of the editor’s extreme partiality to this subject.

  The next month, Young India printed an article by Saraladevi on how the Punjab was awoken from its slumber by an unnamed man from Gujarat. ‘He had never seen the Punjab but he had a message for her as for the rest of India. Many read it, some only understood it….The people of the Punjab did not sign his pledge. They did not grasp the inwardness of Satyagraha, nevertheless its freedom-giving spirit permeated the Punjab air and the Punjab was vitalised. A new power came into being—the power of suffering—and so the citizens of Lahore received bullets in their breasts without retaliating…’8

  A second article by Saraladevi praised Gandhi by name, for having, in his ashram school, ‘reproduce[d] all the best of our ancient Gurukuls’. A third referred to him as ‘the national visionary who is blessed with prevision through the lens of a lofty mission’.9

  This was a mutual admiration society, and a very public one too.

  II

  Gandhi was becoming increasingly engaged with the Khilafat question. The 19th of March 1920 was to be observed as ‘Khilafat Day’, with fasting and cessation of business. In a letter to the press, Gandhi summarized the Muslim claim as follows: the Turkish Empire should be fully restored in the European parts it once controlled, subject to protection of the rights of non-Muslim subjects; and the sultan should be assured control over the holy places of Islam in Arabia, although the Arabs could be granted self-governing rights. ‘To deprive the Khalif [Caliph] of the suzerainty of Arabia,’ wrote Gandhi, ‘is to reduce the Khilafat to a nullity.’10

  Muslim leaders had made several unsuccessful representations to the viceroy. The victorious Allies had not forgiven Turkey for siding with Germany. They also claimed that the Ottomans had grossly oppressed the Arabs. To free the Arabs from Turkish control, and to bring them under their own influence, the British and the French were in the process of elevating tribal chiefs into full-fledged monarchs, by creating kingdoms in Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. If this happened, Turkey would shrink to a fraction of the size it enjoyed under the Ottomans; crucially, it would lose control of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

  The attitude of the Allies put a great strain on Gandhi’s Empire loyalty. Back in December, at the Congress session in Amritsar, Gandhi had suggested that the party work with the government in making the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms effective. But he was now arguing that, with the refusal of the Allies to grant the Turkish claim, ‘non-co-operation is therefore the only remedy left open for us’. A fresh satyagraha might make the government reconsider. Gandhi thus asked: ‘If every Hindu and every Muslim resigns from the service of the Government, what will be the result?’11

  In pursuit of their ca
se, a ‘Khilafat Delegation’ was sent to England in March 1920. It was led by the respected Delhi doctor M.A. Ansari, a friend of Gandhi’s. Its most prominent member was Mohammad Ali, who addressed a series of public meetings in London. Islam, he told the British public, ‘does not recognise geographical and racial barriers such as the nationalism of modern Europe has set up in the way of the freest human intercourse and the widest human sympathies’. Thus, ‘to the Muslim of India the Turk is not only a man, but a brother’ with whom he shared ‘a common outlook on life and common institutions and laws’. And Islam was ‘a complete scheme of life’, which had two centres, ‘the personal centre’ of the caliph and ‘the local centre’ of Mecca and Medina. The two centres were connected, which was why it was vital that the holy places of Arabia be under the control of the caliph. Mohammad Ali hoped for a loose federation of Turk and Arab that would keep the caliphate intact and which ‘will give the Arab all the freedom he desires or demands’.12

  The Khilafat Delegation made speeches, and met with MPs, Cabinet ministers and the prime minister, Lloyd George. Their efforts were unsuccessful. In the first week of May, the Allies formally announced the peace terms that Turkey was compelled to accept. Turkey was granted the Constantinople sector and the Turkish areas of Asia Minor. However, Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine were to become quasi-independent states, the first under a French Mandate, the latter two under a British Mandate. Hejaz (part of present-day Saudi Arabia) was to be recognized as ‘a free and independent State’, with its ruler to control access to Mecca and Medina for pilgrims from other countries.13

  The Khilafat Delegation was devastated. So was their friend Gandhi, who claimed that this offer broke a ‘solemn promise’ made to the Turks by Prime Minister Lloyd George. He called for direct action in response. ‘If India—both Hindu and Mohammedan—can act as one man and can withdraw her partnership in this crime against humanity which the peace terms represent, she will soon secure a revision of the treaty and give herself and the Empire at least, if not the world, a lasting peace. There is no doubt that the struggle would be bitter, sharp and possibly prolonged, but it is worth all the sacrifice that it is likely to call forth.’14

  From its inception in 1885, the Indian National Congress had a mixed record in attracting Muslims to its ranks. The formation of the Muslim League in 1906 and the creation of separate electorates had further muddied the waters. The League and the Congress were initially suspicious of one another, until Jinnah and Tilak brought them together in Lucknow in 1916.

  The Rowlatt satyagraha of April 1919 had seen Hindus and Muslims come together on a common platform. In taking up the Khilafat question, Gandhi was hoping to consolidate this unity. He had already befriended the Ali Brothers and Maulana Abdul Bari. More recently, he had got to know Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a respected scholar and journalist who was now increasingly active in the Khilafat movement.

  Not all prominent Muslims were in favour of the restoration of the Khalifa, however. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, for one, had mixed feelings. As a Shia, he did not share the Sunni reverence for the Caliphate. As a constitutionalist, he was not in favour of street protests demanding its restoration.15

  And was Khilafat the best way to promote inter-religious solidarity? C.F. Andrews was unsure. The Khilafatists in India, wrote Andrews to Gandhi, were too ‘pro-Turkish’ and ‘have lamentably failed to understand the awakening of the Arab speaking people’. They were asking for the Turkish caliphate to once more have dominion over non-Turkish territories such as Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Armenia and Mesopotamia. But, as Andrews pointed out, ‘these lands have been won by the sword and lost by the sword. They have never been populated by Turks.’16

  Many Hindus also did not agree with Gandhi on the Khilafat question. The historian Jadunath Sarkar argued that the idea that the ruler of Turkey was the spiritual head of all Muslims did not have the antiquity Gandhi accorded it. Rather, it was a creation of the late nineteenth century; a response to the absorption of other sovereign Muslim states into Western empires. The liberal editor K. Natarajan accepted that the Turks had been treated harshly by the Allies; but, as he pointed out, with the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, ‘the Indian Mussulman’s freedom to follow his religious tenets has not suffered a bit’.17

  Hindu intellectuals worried about Gandhi’s enchantment with Khilafat; so did the Hindu orthodoxy. If they made common cause with the Muslims, would they have to eat together (breaking the rules of caste) and perhaps even sanction inter-religious marriages? Gandhi assuaged their fears, saying that ‘in order that we may help them on the Khilafat issue, there is absolutely no need to drink water from the same glass, sit together at meals or give sons and daughters in marriage’. He offered his own personal experience as proof. When he stayed with Maulana Abdul Bari in Lucknow, the maulana ‘sent for a Brahmin cook for me and even had his milk warmed by him. He is a non-vegetarian but he did not let me catch even a glimpse of meat in his house. Because of his observing such decorum, our friendship was strengthened, not weakened.’18

  Finally, to modernist and orthodox Hindu alike, Gandhi offered an instrumental argument: ‘If twenty-two crores of Hindus intelligently plead for the Muslims on the Khilafat issue, I believe that they would for ever win the vote of the eight crores of Muslims.’

  Meanwhile, the Congress and the government had released their respective reports on the Punjab troubles. The Congress report, drafted by Gandhi, recommended that both General Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar, and the lieutenant governor at the time, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, be relieved from ‘any responsible office under the Crown’. It also called for the recall of the viceroy, the refund of fines collected from the people, and an end to the corrupt practices of local officials.19

  The official report acknowledged the excesses under martial law, and chastised General Dyer for not thinking before he acted. However, it shied away from punishing errant officials. The viceroy, forwarding the report to London, euphemized Dyer’s action, saying, ‘in the face of a great crisis an officer may be thrown temporarily off the balance of his judgement’. He also gave the much-hated Michael O’Dwyer a resounding certificate of character, praising his ‘experience and courage’ as well as his ‘decision and vigour’, which, in the viceroy’s view, ‘was largely responsible for quelling a dangerous rising which might have had widespread and disastrous effects on the rest of India’.20

  To the rejection of the Khilafat demand was now added the whitewashing of the egregious behaviour of the Punjab government. This was a double betrayal, putting enormous strain on Gandhi’s once fervent faith in British justice. He now decided that the only way to make the rulers see reason was to launch a fresh movement of protest. He outlined in print a programme of ‘non-co-operation’, to unfold in four stages. The first entailed the giving up of titles; the second the resignation from government service of select officials; the third stage—a ‘distant goal’—the resignation of policemen and soldiers; the fourth stage, ‘still more remote’, the non-payment of taxes. He added that ‘non-co-operation as a voluntary movement can only succeed if the feeling is genuine and strong enough to make people suffer to the utmost’.21

  III

  Even as he thought and wrote about political matters, Gandhi’s relationship with Saraladevi steadily grew more intimate. He persuaded her to write an article for Navajivan; introducing it in print, he asked readers to read it several times over since ‘its sweetness is inexhaustible’.22 In April, Sarala travelled with him to Bombay, where he had to attend a Khilafat meeting—6 to 13 April was observed as ‘National Week’, since, exactly a year ago, the Rowlatt Act hartal had occurred on the 6th and the Jallianwala Bagh shooting on the 13th. Gandhi spoke at several meetings, Sarala each time accompanying him to the venue. Afterwards, he penned this endearing (and extended) tribute to his companion:

  The swadeshi movement received the finest impetus from Shrimati Saraladevi Chowdhrani. During the Nation
al Week, she expressed a desire to wear a sari and blouse of khadi [homespun cloth]. I have not so far succeeded in inducing any woman to wear a sari made of khadi and so at first I thought Saraladevi was joking. But she was perfectly sincere in what she said and, what is more, she meant khadi as rough as what I wear. I got a sari and blouse made for her and she celebrated the National Week in these. When her maternal uncle [Tagore, also in Bombay at the time] saw her in this dress, he also remarked: ‘If you don’t feel embarrassed yourself, there is nothing wrong with this dress. You can go anywhere in it.’ There was a big party on the 11th at Mrs. Petit’s in honour of the poet [Tagore] and she had to decide whether she could attend it in khadi. She then remembered the poet’s remark and honoured that party by attending it in this same khadi dress. She received no less respect than she used to in her costly silk saris. After this she went to all meetings and functions in khadi and at every one of them which I attended I could see that people’s respect for her had increased because of this dress.23

  However, Gandhi’s other ‘sister’, Anasuya Sarabhai, had steadfastly refused to wear khadi. As she later recalled: ‘The first person to wear khadi was Saraladevi Chaudharani. She chose the thickest cloth with an enormous border—the one used for curtains.’ Gandhi kept trying to get Anasuya herself to wear khadi, but she always refused, saying, ‘you keep sending me khadi, but I find it so thick’.24