Gandhi wanted to make the Congress more Indian, and he wanted it to have a properly representative character. So it was resolved to have party units at different levels: that of the province, the district and the taluk (sub-district). Taluk, district and provincial committees were constituted, their members chosen by election. The provinces would in turn send members for the All India Congress Committee (AICC). The most select and powerful body was the Congress Working Committee (CWC), which had about fifteen members and was where all major party decisions were taken.
In its own workings, the Congress had now replaced the administrative divisions of British India with one which explicitly recognized the linguistic diversity of the subcontinent. Outside the Hindi-speaking heartland, every major language group had its own provincial unit. There was no longer a Madras Presidency Congress, but there were now a Karnataka Provincial Congress Committee (KPCC), an Andhra PCC, a Maharashtra PCC, etc. The party’s apex body, the CWC, took care to reflect this diversity. In 1921, for example, it had a member apiece from Gujarat (represented by Gandhi), Maharashtra, Bengal and Assam, Bihar and Orissa, and Andhra. Of the three general secretaries, Motilal Nehru was from the United Provinces, C. Rajagopalachari from Tamilnadu, and Dr M.A. Ansari from Delhi. The treasurer, Jamnalal Bajaj, was from the Central Provinces. Meanwhile, the AICC, second only to the CWC in importance, was also becoming more representative. In 1919, it had a mere eighteen Muslim members; three years later it had as many as eighty-four (out of a total of 350). This was part of Gandhi’s attempt to ensure that the Congress could not be dismissed as a ‘Hindu party’.
The Nagpur constitution introduced the idea of paid membership. For the modest sum of four annas (one-fourth of a rupee), anyone over eighteen years of age could become a member of the Congress, and participate in its discussions at the taluk or district level, or join a trade union, peasant organization or women’s group working under the Congress umbrella.1
Gandhi’s attempts to make the Congress a mass organization were successful. In the months after the Nagpur Congress, tens of thousands of primary members enrolled in each of the provinces. By the end of the year, the party had close to 2 million members. Before Gandhi took charge, the Congress was dominated by lawyers, editors and scholars, who brought the high status of their professional position to their work in the party. But with the non-cooperation movement, the ability or desire to abandon one’s profession became a critical attribute. As one historian of the party puts it: ‘The significant difference between the pre-1920 and the post-1920 Congress leadership lay in the fact that before 1920 it was social position which automatically conferred a leading role in the movement; after 1920 it was the renunciation of social position and the demonstration of willingness to accept sacrifice that was demanded of those who aspired to lead.’2 Men such as C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru and C. Rajagopalachari gained in prestige and public acclaim because they had abandoned their lucrative legal practices to serve the nation.
II
Gandhi spent the second half of January 1921 in Bengal, raising money for the non-cooperation movement. His wife, Kasturba, was with him. While he was in Calcutta, Gandhi received a letter from C.F. Andrews, complaining that he was spending too much time on his campaign against untouchability. Gandhi replied that while, as an Englishman and Christian, Andrews was merely an observer, as an Indian and Hindu, Gandhi was ‘an affected and afflicted party. You can be patient, and I cannot….I have to deal with the Hindu Dyers.’
By comparing upper-caste Hindus to General Dyer, Gandhi was underlining his disgust with the practice of untouchability. He was, he told Andrews, ‘engaged as a Hindu in showing that it is not a sin and that it is sin to consider that touch a sin’. It was ‘a bigger problem than that of gaining Indian independence’, said Gandhi, continuing prophetically: ‘It is not impossible that India may free herself from English domination before India has become free of the curse of untouchability.’3
From Calcutta, Gandhi proceeded to the mineral-rich areas of Bihar. In the coalfield town of Jharia, where there was a large community of Gujaratis, he held a public meeting, and collected 60,000 rupees in cash and jewellery. A lady in the crowd put her gold necklace around Kasturba’s neck and was about to adorn her wrists with gold bracelets. Kasturba protested—taking off the necklace, she said the collection was for the nation’s swaraj, not for her personally. The lady then gave Gandhi the necklace, but begged Kasturba to at least wear the bracelets. As Mahadev Desai wryly noted in his diary: ‘Kasturba refused—with the result that the Swaraj fund was robbed of the bracelets.’4
The incident showed the long distance Kasturba had travelled in her own political journey. Back in 1901, when the grateful Indians of Natal presented the Gandhis with jewellery, husband and wife had a terrific row. He wanted to return the gifts, but she, thinking of her future daughters-in-law, thought that since they were given in good faith the jewels could be retained.5 Now, twenty years later, Kasturba would accept gifts of necklaces and bracelets to aid Gandhi’s campaigns, while denying them for herself.
From Bihar, Kasturba went back to Ahmedabad, while her husband continued his non-cooperation tour. He visited several towns in the United Provinces, before moving on to the Punjab. Then he moved south, where, in the first week of April, the AICC met at Vijayawada. In attendance was an Andhra Congressman named P. Venkayya, who for several years had been pressing Gandhi to adopt a ‘national’ flag for the nation-in-the-making. This time too Venkayya made the same proposal, but in the design he offered, Gandhi ‘saw nothing to stir the nation to its depths’. Then Lala Hansraj of Jullundur suggested that the spinning wheel should find a place on the Swaraj Flag. Gandhi was struck by the suggestion, and asked Venkayya to give him a design containing a spinning wheel on a background of saffron (denoting Hindu) and green (denoting Muslim).
The enthusiastic Venkayya produced a design in three hours. Gandhi looked at it, and realized that a colour was also needed for the other religions of India. He suggested white be added to the saffron and the green. For, ‘Hindu–Muslim unity is not an exclusive term; it is an inclusive term, symbolic of the unity of all faiths domiciled in India. If Hindus and Muslims can tolerate each other, they are bound to tolerate all other faiths.’
Gandhi further suggested the order in which the colours should be placed: white first, next green, finally saffron, in progressive order of numerical importance, ‘the idea being that the strongest should act as a shield to the weakest’. Eventually, the white was placed in the middle, between the saffron and the green, the two major religions symbolically surrounding and protecting the others.6
III
In his travels through India, Gandhi was often accompanied by one or both the Ali Brothers. At public meetings they would appear jointly, and speak in turn. This double act signified both the growing Hindu–Muslim unity and the coupling of Khilafat and non-cooperation.
The Ali Brothers do seem to have genuinely admired Gandhi. Speaking to a mixed audience of Hindus and Muslims in a town in the United Provinces, Mohammad Ali called Gandhi ‘a brave man, a true man’, who would ‘sacrifice his life and property for the cause of India’.7 Speaking in another United Provinces town, Shaukat Ali proclaimed that ‘today Mahatmaji is the leader of all of us, Hindus and Muslims, and if you Hindus and Muslims obey Mahatmaji and act on his advice and sacrifice your life and property for country and religion you will be gifted with all the blessings of this world and the next’. Then he continued:
The fact is though [his] bones are small and Mahatma Gandhi is a lean and thin man and I have repeatedly said I could if I liked place him in my pocket with my left hand, yet his heart is so large that this Government has no power save that of fear…Brethren, the work of Mahatma Gandhi is now the work of the whole country…Each one of the 33 crores [of Indians] is now a Gandhi.8
These joint tours of Hindu and Muslim leaders caused some discomfort among the authorities. There can ‘be no dou
bt’, wrote a senior official of the Madras Presidency, ‘that both Gandhi and the Ali Brothers create tremendous temporary enthusiasm and attract enormous crowds wherever they go’. Some came out of mere curiosity, ‘but a large number, and especially women, seem to be inspired with feelings of real adoration for the Mahatma and many thousand rupees worth of jewels were collected at his meetings’.9
For all their mutual affection, the Ali Brothers did not share Gandhi’s principled commitment to ahimsa, or non-violence. This extract from a speech made by Mohammad Ali in the town of Fyzabad in February 1921 is illustrative:
The Mussalmans wanted to seek the alliance of Gandhiji in the work of the Khilafat but I told them that we could not make him our ally as he wanted to banish from our hearts all thought of using the sword. I declared that God has given me the right to use the sword against any adversary when I had the power to do so and that no one could then stop me. This is our creed. But now we know and we see that our country does not possess that power and so long as we do not have that power we will be his (Gandhiji’s) associates…[W]e are, therefore, standing today on the same platform—he for reasons of principle and we for those of policy.10
The adherence of the Ali Brothers to non-violence was purely tactical. In a speech in the Gujarati town of Broach, Mohammad Ali said that while for the present they would keep the sword in its sheath, ‘we must reserve the right to take up arms against the enemies of Islam’.11
In response to the British refusal to restore the Khilafat, some Muslims had migrated to Afghanistan. They were following an ancient practice known as hijrat, sanctioned by the Prophet himself, whereby one left a state that refused to honour Islam for a state that upheld the principles of the faith.12 Afghanistan was an independent Islamic state, whose amir did not have the best relations with the Raj. Speaking in Madras in April 1921, Mohammad Ali said if the amir of Afghanistan invaded India to overthrow the British, it was the duty of Indian Muslims to support him.13
This was an extremely provocative statement, for only two years previously, the British and the Afghans had fought a bloody war, with thousands of casualties on both sides. Gandhi was unhappy with Mohammad Ali seeming to favour the amir. The British were absolutely livid. In May, Gandhi was in Simla, the summer capital of the Raj, when Madan Mohan Malaviya suggested that he meet the new viceroy, Lord Reading. Gandhi, with his long-standing belief in dialogue, agreed. Reading was new to India; this was the time to press upon him the demands of the Indians.
In the third week of May, Gandhi had several meetings with the viceroy. Afterwards, Lord Reading wrote to his son: ‘There is no hesitation about him, there is a ring of sincerity in all he utters, save when discussing some political questions….[H]e is convinced to a point almost bordering on fanaticism, that non-violence and love will give India its independence…’14
One of the subjects Gandhi and Reading discussed was the language of the Ali Brothers. The viceroy’s advisers told him that in their speeches the brothers had offered incitements to violence, and were thus liable to prosecution and arrest. When this was put to Gandhi, he said he would get the brothers to commit themselves to his own creed of non-violence. He hoped that would persuade the viceroy to stay their arrest.
On Gandhi’s suggestion, the Ali Brothers issued a statement clarifying that they did not intend prescribing violence as a means of bringing about political change. This led to a certain amount of gloating in government circles, and on the other side, anger against Gandhi among some Muslims. His friend Abdul Bari wrote him a letter saying that by making the Ali Brothers ‘apologize for fictitious violence’, he had humiliated them in the eyes of the community and lowered the prestige of the movement itself.15
IV
While mobilizing popular support, Gandhi also set about collecting money for his movement. The Congress had started a ‘Tilak Swaraj Fund’, for which Gandhi had set a target of Rs 1 crore (equivalent to 10 million, or 100 lakh). Each province had been assigned a target of its own.
Gandhi first focused on Kathiawar, the part of Gujarat where he had himself been born and raised. ‘Kathiawaris claim me as one of themselves,’ he wrote. ‘Their love for me will now be tested. If, despite their love for me, I fail in convincing them, how can I ever hope to win over other Indians?’16
The Kathiawaris contributed Rs 2 lakh to the Tilak Fund, four times the target specified for them. The British-ruled areas of Gujarat responded even more energetically to Gandhi’s call. The state contributed more than Rs 13 lakh, almost half coming from Ahmedabad alone.17
Gandhi next trained his eye on the city of Bombay, whose Gujarati merchants belonged to three distinct religions: Hinduism, Islam and Zoroastrianism. While Gujarati Hindus and Gujarati Muslims had long supported Gandhi, the Parsis were mostly Empire loyalists. In an open letter ‘To the Parsis’, Gandhi recalled the ‘sacred ties’ that bound him to them, such as the mentorship of Dadabhai Naoroji and the support given to his movement in South Africa by the Parsis.18 Some Parsis were persuaded by his appeal. One, from the famous Godrej family that manufactured safes and almirahs, donated Rs 3 lakh to the Tilak fund, by far the largest single contribution. ‘Mr. Godrej’s generosity,’ remarked Gandhi, ‘puts the Parsis easily first in India.’ Meanwhile, his friend Parsi Rustomji had sent Rs 52,000 from South Africa.19
Gandhi appealed for funds through print, and in person. He spent almost a month in Bombay, going from one locality to the next, gathering notes, coins, cheques and jewels. On 26 June 1921, some 20,000 people gathered in a merchant’s godown in central Bombay, to present a purse to Gandhi. As one eyewitness reported, ‘The heat was oppressive and owing to the over-crowding the audience endured much discomfort. Many of them unable to bear it any longer left the place before Gandhi arrived, but dropped their contributions into the collecting boxes as they left. Gandhi, however, stuck it out to the end, intent only on the collection of as large a sum as possible.’
Gandhi collected nearly Rs 5 lakh in this one meeting. These included small donations by individuals as well as larger contributions by guilds or trade bodies.
Other days in Bombay were even more successful. In C.B. Dalal’s chronology of Gandhi’s Indian years, the entry for 30 June 1921 reads: ‘Bombay: Visited, accepted purses from, and addressed various institutions and organizations’.
From the intelligence reports of the Bombay government, we can flesh out the day in greater and richer detail. Gandhi’s first meeting was at the northern suburb of Borivili. Collecting Rs 45,000 from its residents, he then traced his way back to the city. At 1 p.m. he visited the Mangaldas Cloth Market in the company of the Ali Brothers and Sarojini Naidu, collecting upward of Rs 35,000. He then attended a meeting of Lohanas at Mandvi, around three thousand-strong, some eight hundred women among them. This Gujarati merchant caste had raised Rs 110,000 for their compatriot. The Lohanas were advised by Gandhi ‘to use Swadeshi clothes, to give national education to their children and to take up national work’.
Gandhi’s next stop was Grant Road, where, at 3.30 p.m., he met the jewellers of Bombay. A group collection of Rs 10,000 was offered to him, after which a jeweller named Gulab Devchand handed over the impressive sum of Rs 232,000, ‘together with an address which was written out on a khadi handkerchief and contained a prayer that God would help Gandhi in reaching the goal of Swaraj to which they all aspired’. Gandhi’s merchant friend Revashankar Jagjivan gave him Rs 25,000, while a further Rs 60,000 ‘were collected from small associations and bodies, including the Grass Merchants, Plumbers, etc….’
At 5 p.m., the indefatigable Gandhi was in the posh locality of Colaba. Here, after the Colaba cotton merchants had presented him a purse of Rs 154,000, ‘two bales of cotton were also put up for auction; the one on which Gandhi was sitting went for Rs 6,100; the other, not so pleasantly favoured, only fetched Rs 2,500’.
Gandhi’s next meeting was with the Parsis, at a place well-suited for a com
munity which pioneered modern Indian drama—the Excelsior Theatre. ‘The leaders of Parsi Society were conspicuous by their absence’; but sections of the Parsi middle class were present, among them the prominent lawyer K.F. Nariman. A purse of Rs 30,000 was handed over, after which ‘Gandhi and the various Parsi speakers flattered each other on their many noble qualities and achievements, and Gandhi suggested that the Parsi ladies should come out and assist the volunteers on picketing duty’.
Gandhi then seems to have been taken by his minders for supper. The next meeting, the last for the day, started at 9.30 p.m. It was organized by the Mandvi District Congress Committee. Admission was by tickets priced at Re 1 and Rs 2. Some 10,000 people were present, and ‘the usual speeches advising the use of Swadeshi cloth instead of foreign and the adoption of the Charkha were made by Gandhi, the Ali Brothers and Mrs. Naidu’. About a lakh of rupees was collected along with a few items of jewellery.
It had been an exhausting day for Gandhi, but also a productive one. The police mole following him around from meeting to meeting surely shared his weariness, but perhaps not his satisfaction.20
V
All through 1921, members of the Congress acted on the principles of non-cooperation. Some returned medals or honours bestowed upon them by the colonial government. Teachers in government schools stayed away from work. So did many students in government colleges. Members of provincial legislative councils resigned. So did those who served on university senates or town municipalities.
A file in the papers of the AICC contains a register, ninety-five pages long, with names of individuals in different provinces who, in various ways, sought not to cooperate with the government. Thus ‘the three Desai brothers of Hubli resigned [from] the membership of the Taluka Local Board’. The chief imam of Madras, Maulvi Shah Zahid Hussain Khadri, returned the title of Shamsul Ulama that the viceroy had accorded him. The students of the Sanatana Dharma Sabha High School in Amritsar went on strike until it stopped receiving government funds and became a certifiably ‘national’ school. So did the students of the Islamia High School, Etawah.21
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