Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  Gandhi’s attitude towards caste, ca 1920, can be summed up in four propositions:

  While the orthodox or literal-minded saw caste as a vertical system based on hierarchy, he would reconfigure it as a horizontal system in which no group was superior or inferior;

  Eating, mixing and marrying were personal or communal choices—while in his own ashram he promoted inter-dining and intermingling, he would not presume to impose this on all Indians;

  In dealing with his fellows, man must not follow the scriptures, but his own conscience.

  Untouchability was not just a social question, but also a moral one. The practice was wrong, unjust, cruel. Therefore, it had to be eradicated.

  By 1920, Gandhi saw the abolition of untouchability as being as significant as the consolidation of Hindu–Muslim unity. For the movement for swaraj to be politically strong, it had to transcend religious differences; for it to be morally credible, it had to put an end to the treatment of a large section of Indians as less-than-human.

  VII

  After the special session of the Congress in Calcutta, Gandhi resumed his travels. In October, he toured the Punjab and the United Provinces; in November, the Bombay Presidency and his native Gujarat. The magnificently detailed chronology of his life by Chandubhai Dalal30 tells us that he visited nineteen towns and cities in the first month, and as many as twenty-nine in the second. Everywhere, he spoke at public meetings and, before or after these meetings, talked to delegates likely to attend the Congress session in Nagpur in December.

  Gandhi’s travels were mostly by train, on tracks built by British firms after the Great Rebellion of 1857. At the time of the rebellion there were merely a few hundred miles of railway track in the subcontinent; by the end of the century, this had jumped to more than 30,000. The railways criss-crossed the country, connecting east and west, south and north.31

  Gandhi usually spent a day (or less) in the places he visited. His longest stay was at Allahabad, where he spent as many as four days. He was welcomed at the station by Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, and with ‘blowing conches and ringing bells’.32 Talks to students at Allahabad University and a large public meeting had been arranged. In between, he had long conversations with the Nehrus. Jawaharlal had recently visited the district of Pratapgarh, where discontented peasants, led by a sadhu called Baba Ram Chandra, had started a no-tax campaign. This direct exposure to rural poverty had further radicalized the younger Nehru. He was now urging his father to put his weight more fully behind Gandhi’s movement.33

  VIII

  As Gandhi combed the country, canvassing support for non-cooperation, his relationship with Saraladevi Chaudhurani once more came under strain. This is visibly manifest in a series of letters written by Sarala to Gandhi in October 1920, these among the very few by her to have survived.34

  In the second week of October, Sarala journeyed to Ahmedabad in the hope of spending some time with Gandhi. However, he was out, on the road. From the ashram, she wrote to him about what she was doing while he was away—wearing saris made of khaddar, and persuading society women in Ahmedabad to do likewise. But she wished he was there. ‘The bathroom is the only place to receive my sobs,’ she wrote. ‘But I am hoping they will come to an end very soon.’35

  Eventually, tired of waiting, Sarala travelled back to her home in Lahore. From there she wrote to Gandhi about the ‘misconceptions’ between them, and of her ‘anger’ at his not giving her ‘a free hand’ in how she wished to live her life. When, in a recent conversation, she had accused him of harbouring ‘harsh thoughts’ and of having an ‘adamantine’ pride, Gandhi had answered that he was ‘activated by love’ in his ‘punishment’ of her. Now, Sarala challenged him to directly declare his feelings for her. ‘If it be love,’ she told Gandhi, ‘tell me…in simple touching language you are missing me daily, suffering the pangs of separation yourself [as she was], longing for the dawn of the day when we shall meet again. If it be love, let pride be prostrate once and for all and love use its language in a free flow once more.’

  On the other hand, said Sarala to Gandhi, if it was the case that ‘love is killed and cannot be revived any more’, then he should ‘confess that freely and do not bear a “White man’s burden” for the uplift of the Black’.36

  Two days later, Sarala wrote again. She was hurt that Gandhi had charged her ‘with a new sin to [add to] my many older ones—that of jealousy’. Sarala admitted that like other human beings, she was not entirely free of that emotion. ‘But what of that in our relationship?’ she remarked. ‘Do you mean to say that I am jealous of you? I can only laugh at the charge & wonder at your biased reading of me.’ Sarala concluded that Gandhi and she were ‘at cross purposes, it seems’. ‘The misunderstandings can’t be cleared up by the post,’ she added.37 It seems that Gandhi thought so too, for after his United Provinces tour, he decided to carry on to the Punjab to meet her.

  Gandhi reached Lahore on 19 October. He stayed two days with the Chaudhuris. However, Sarala and he could not get much time to themselves, since an unending stream of students came to pay their respects to the visitor. In a letter written to Gandhi the day after he left, Sarala suggested a temporary truce. As she somewhat poetically put it: ‘Let us not tread on delicate grounds for some time and agree to differ in our respective views on certain topics. Shall we? Let God’s light be thrown on the actions & motives & thoughts of both of us & not our individual lights.’38

  In Gandhi’s life, politics was now rapidly taking precedence over friendship. On 11 December, Gandhi wrote Sarala an answer to ‘a longish letter which shows that you do not understand my language or my thoughts. I have certainly not betrayed any annoyance over your complex nature, but I have remarked upon it.’ He continued: ‘In you I have an enigma to solve. I shall not be impatient. Only bear with me whenever I try to point [out] what to me appear to be your obvious limitations. We all have them. It is the privilege of friendship to lay the gentle finger on the weak spots.’39

  Sarala was tired of being asked to live the simple life. And she seemed to have reservations about Gandhi’s political programme too. Mahadev Desai’s diary for 17 December 1920 has this entry: ‘Saraladevi had written: Non-co-operation was based on hatred [of the British] and she loved Bapu the less therefore. She would love Bapu more if he was free of hatred; an activity, moreover, like non-co-operation could be taken up by others also.’40

  Sarala’s reservations may have been stoked by her famous uncle. Gandhi’s campaign of non-co-operation provoked ambivalent feelings in Tagore; as he wrote to their mutual friend C.F. Andrews, he wished the emotion would flow along constructive channels. If that happened, said Tagore, ‘I shall be willing to sit at his [Gandhi’s] feet and do his bidding, if he commands me to co-operate with my countrymen in service of love. I refuse to waste my manhood in lighting the fire of anger and spreading it from house to house.’41

  On receiving Saraladevi’s letter of 17 December, Gandhi wrote back immediately. He first answered her reservations about his political method. ‘You would be right in your regret over my being engaged in N[on]-C[o-]O[peration] if it was a matter of politics with me,’ remarked Gandhi. ‘As it is, with me it is my religion. I am gathering together all the forces of hate and directing them in a proper channel….If I could but show our countrymen that we need not fear the English, we will cease to hate them.’

  The second, and more significant, paragraph of the letter turned to their relationship. I have reproduced it more or less in extenso, deleting only the odd repetitive thought/sentence:

  I have been analysing my love for you. I have reached a definite meaning of spiritual wife. It is a partnership between two persons of the opposite sex where the physical is wholly absent….It is possible only between two brahmacharis in thought, word and deed. I have felt drawn to you, because I have recognized in you an identity of ideals and aspirations and a comple
te self-surrender. You have been ‘wife’ because you have recognized in me a fuller fruition of the common ideal than in yourself….It follows from what I have stated that spiritual partners can never be physically wedded either in this life or a future, for it is possible only when there is no carnality, latent or patent. Are you spiritual wife to me of that description? Have we that exquisite purity, that perfect coincidence, that perfect merging, that identity of ideals, that self-forgetfulness, that fixity of purpose, that trustfulness? For me I can answer plainly that it is only an aspiration. I am unworthy to have that companionship with you. I require in me an infinitely higher purity than I possess in thought. I am too physically attached to you to be worthy of enjoying that sacred association with you. By physical attachment I here mean I am too much affected by your weaknesses. I must not be teacher to you, if I am your spiritual husband, if coincidence or merging is felt. On the contrary there are sharp differences between you and me so often. So far as I can see our relationship, it is one of brother and sister. I must lay down the law for you, and thus ruffle you. I must plead gently like a brother ever taking care to use the right word even as I do to my oldest sister. I must not be father, husband, friend, teacher all rolled into one. This is the big letter I promised. With dearest love I still subscribe myself,

  Yours

  LAW-GIVER42

  This letter lacks the clarity and precision that marks Gandhi’s writings. Amidst the confusion and complexity, one can, however, discern a few distinct strands. The first is the strongly patriarchal tone—the husband is the Law-Giver, to whose superior will the wife must bend. A second and allied note is the presumption that Gandhi’s way of life is also superior—he has achieved a ‘fuller fruition’ of the nationalist ideal. A third is the visible tension between Gandhi’s commitment to celibacy and his attraction to Saraladevi. He does not, he confesses here, have that ‘infinitely higher purity [in practice] that I possess in thought’.

  This letter does seem to have taken their relationship almost to breaking point. After this missive of 17 December, Saraladevi Chaudhurani’s name appears very infrequently in the Collected Works. That it was Gandhi who took the decision to end their friendship/spiritual marriage is manifest from a letter he wrote to C. Rajagopalachari three years later. ‘Yes, your guess is correct,’ writes Gandhi. ‘The fair friend is Sar[a]ladevi. She wants to bombard me with more stuff but I have refused to give further accommodation.’43

  As the colleague who had cautioned Gandhi against deepening the relationship, Rajaji must have read these words with a sense of relief and also, one supposes, vindication.

  IX

  Gandhi arrived in Nagpur for the Congress on 20 December 1920, accompanied by Shaukat Ali. They were received by a large crowd, which took them in an open carriage through the streets. Gandhi was staying in a lodge run by his fellow vegetarians, the Marwari community.44

  On Christmas Day—the day before the Congress began—Gandhi gave two talks, one to a group of weavers, the other to a meeting of ‘untouchables’. He told the former that ‘I regard myself a farmer-weaver’, urged them to revive their profession, and expressed dismay that the cloth they wore was not produced by themselves.

  The speech to the ‘untouchables’ was longer and more personal. Here Gandhi spoke of how ‘I have to suffer much in trying to carry my wife with me in what I have been doing’ (to end untouchability). He noted that ‘at present I am engaged in a great dispute with the Hindus in Gujarat’ on the same question. Calling the practice of untouchability ‘a great Satanism in Hinduism’, he observed: ‘I have said to the Hindus, and say it again today, that till Hindu society is purged of this sin, swaraj is an impossibility.’

  Even so, Gandhi advocated a cautious, incrementalist approach to the activists who had gathered to hear him. They wanted to have a resolution passed at the Congress demanding that ‘untouchables’ should be allowed to enter all temples. Gandhi responded: ‘How is this possible? So long as Varnashram dharma occupies the central place in Hinduism, it is vain that you ask that every Hindu should be free to enter a temple right now. It is impossible to get society to accept this. It is not prepared for this yet.’

  Gandhi noted that some temples in South India were closed even to him (because he had refused to wear a thread signifying his upper-caste status). Others were open only to members of certain sects. ‘I don’t feel unhappy about this,’ he remarked. ‘I am not even prepared to say that this betrays the Hindus’ narrow outlook or that it is a wrong they are committing. Maybe it is, but we should consider the line of thinking behind it. If their action is inspired by considerations of discipline, I would not say that everyone should be free to go to any temple.’

  Gandhi added: ‘I myself eat and drink in the company of Antyajas. I have adopted the daughter of an Antyaj [“untouchable”] family and she is dearer to me than my own life.’ The girl was Lakshmi, daughter of Dudhabhai and Danibehn, admitted to the ashram in 1915. While himself extremely heterodox, Gandhi felt that he could not yet ‘tell Hindu society that it might abandon its self-control’.45

  From social reform, Gandhi plunged straight into politics.46 On 30 December, he spoke to the Congress on the crucial non-cooperation resolution. This asked for ‘the establishment of an Indian Republic’ through the programme already outlined by Gandhi in Calcutta, namely, the boycotting by students of government schools and colleges, by lawyers of courts, by merchants of foreign goods, by voters and representatives of councils. Policemen and soldiers were requested to ‘refuse to subordinate their creed and country to the fulfilment of orders of their [British] officers’. The resolution also appealed to all government servants, ‘pending the call of the nation for resignation of their service, to help the national cause by importing greater kindness and stricter honesty in their dealings with the people’.

  The resolution was in eleven paragraphs, the last of which called for individuals and organizations to ‘advance Hindu–Muslim unity’, for ‘the leading Hindus to settle the disputes between Brahmin and non-Brahmin’ (these particularly acute in the Madras Presidency), and for a ‘special effort to rid Hinduism of the reproach of untouchability’.47

  Gandhi asked the delegates to carry the resolution ‘with a prayer to God from the deepest recesses of your heart’, and to ‘show no violence in thought, deed or word whether in connection with the Government or whether in connection with ourselves’. His exhortations were met with loud cries and cheers of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’.48

  Gandhi was the star of what was the biggest Congress yet. As many as 14,582 delegates came. There were also more Muslims (1050) and more women (169) than ever before. The Congress was presided over by the veteran C. Vijay­aragh­avach­ariar, who was completely in thrall to Gandhi. In a long, rambling presidential address, he quoted Burke, Lincoln and the ‘Hindu idea of polity’, before speaking of the ‘process of national unification’ that had ‘greatly expanded and intensified under the auspices of Mahatmaji Gandhi and the stalwart patriots who are co-operating with him’.49

  The vast majority of the delegates at Nagpur were with Gandhi, and so were the leaders. As the official history of the Congress was to later put it,

  the support that Gandhi obtained at Nagpur was undoubtedly greater than what he had in Calcutta. In Calcutta, the only top-notch politician [who] had lent a helping hand to Gandhi, and that rather late in the day, was Pandit Motilal Nehru…Else the stool of [non-co-operation] was resting on but one leg. At Nagpur, it stood on all its four legs with perfect equipoise. Gandhi and Nehru, Das and Lalaji [Lajpat Rai] were all for it.50

  Although the party historian would not mention it, there was in fact a ‘top-notch politician’ who did not go along with Gandhi in Nagpur. This was Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Jinnah had stayed away from the Khilafat movement, uncomfortable with the strident militancy of the Ali Brothers; now he would stay away from Gandhi’s struggle too. In a speech of con
trolled passion, Jinnah opposed the non-cooperation resolution for two reasons: because so long as the British were in control of the government machinery, a unilateral declaration of swaraj, or independence, was ‘mere sentimental feeling and expression of anger and desperation’, a ‘declaration which you have not the means to carry out’; and because he did not want to make a fetish of non-cooperation, a method which in his view would ‘not succeed in destroying the British Empire’. The Congress under Gandhi’s direction was, said Jinnah, adopting a course that was ‘neither logical nor politically sound’.

  Jinnah was booed and barracked at regular intervals. When he referred to ‘Mr. Muhammad Ali’ there were angry cries of ‘Maulana’, ‘Maulana’, the honorific usually used before Mohammad Ali’s name. When Jinnah ended his speech, by appealing to Gandhi ‘to pause, to cry halt before it is too late’, he was answered by shouts of ‘Shame! Shame!’ and ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’.51

  Jinnah’s dissent apart, this was from first to last a Gandhi show. The Congress organization was now effectively his to control and direct. A week after the meeting, the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, wrote to the secretary of state in London that ‘Gandhi has had undoubtedly a great personal triumph, and I gather…that he really dominated the whole situation’. Then he hopefully added: ‘Yet I fancy that a feeling of soreness has been left behind with those who do not see eye to eye with Gandhi…’52

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Rise and Fall of Non-Cooperation

  I