Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  Under the provisions of the Act, elections to the provincial assemblies were to be held in early 1937. How would the Congress react? Would it fight and seek to win these elections, to show that it still held the popular mood? Or would it boycott them, since the promised result fell short of Dominion Status, let alone Purna Swaraj? There were varying opinions in the party. The older Swarajists, always wedded to constitutional, incremental means, favoured the first option. The younger socialists, congenitally sceptical of representative government, favoured the second. There was also a third school of thought within the party, which wanted the election to be fought and won, but with the Congress then refusing to take charge of the provincial ministries.

  Gandhi, in Wardha, was keeping in touch with the world of politics despite his professed retirement from it. He knew, and admired, leaders of all three schools in the Congress. Who could best synthesize or reconcile them? Gandhi thought it must be Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru had been almost continuously in prison since the Salt March began. However, in September 1935, he was released on compassionate grounds. His wife Kamala was seriously ill, and he wished to accompany her to Europe to consult doctors there. Gandhi sent Mahadev Desai to meet Nehru at Allahabad. When Mahadev arrived at the family home, Anand Bhavan, he found Nehru had already left for Bombay to book berths on a ship bound for Europe.

  Mahadev now dispatched Nehru a letter with the messages their mutual master had wanted him to convey. These were: (i) that Nehru should once more assume the Congress presidency, since that ‘was the only way’ in which ‘the bitter controversies of today could be avoided and your policy and your programme could be given a fair and unobstructed trial’; (ii) that in Europe he should make no speeches or statements. Gandhi told Nehru that ‘it would enhance your prestige and India’s to impose upon yourself a vow of silence…until your return here’.37

  Nehru agreed to be Congress president in 1936, the crucial year leading up to the elections mandated by the new Act. But he was clear in his own mind that the real leader of his party, and his country-in-the-making, was Gandhi. As he wrote to an English friend: ‘The only person who represents India, more than anyone has done or can do, is Gandhi. I may differ from him in a multitude of things but that is a matter between him and me and our colleagues. So far as I am concerned he is India in a peculiar measure and he is the undoubted leader of my country. If anybody wants to know what India wants, let him go to Gandhi.’38

  IX

  In October 1935, after twenty years at the centre of public life in India, Gandhi issued a public appeal to his correspondents in the pages of Harijan. He was being overwhelmed by the number of letters he received. ‘My capacity to overtake this ever-increasing correspondence,’ he ruefully remarked, ‘decreases in the same ratio as the increase in the volume of my correspondence.’

  So, ‘if a breakdown is not to take place’, he had to ‘cut off as much private correspondence as possible’. He asked for cooperation in this regard of those who wrote, and still would write, to him. He had ‘prized their confidence’ in the past. It had given him ‘an insight into human nature and its ultimate nobility’. And he understood that ‘nothing can be a substitute for personal contact’. But he now had to ‘urge correspondents to deny themselves the temptation of referring to me on all kinds of problems. Let them take the trouble of solving them themselves with such help as writings on ethics and eternal verities can give. They will find that they will do better in the end than if they would make of me a dictionary of reference on every occasion.’39

  The exasperation was justified. The openness of Gandhi’s life, the range of his activities, his willingness to engage in debate, had all encouraged letter writers in India (and abroad) to seek his counsel on a million myriad matters, or else dispute his utterances on a hundred topics offered on a thousand different occasions. Back in the 1920s, the faithful (and superbly competent) Mahadev had handled this correspondence on behalf of Gandhi. After the volume and intensity of the letter writers increased, Pyarelal and Amrit Kaur were also asked to serve as additional secretaries. Now even they found it difficult to cope.

  Some letters, however, would be read, answered and attended to at once. Thus, Tagore had written to Gandhi asking for help for funds to save Santiniketan. The poet, in his seventies, was himself touring with a ballet troupe to raise money for his university. Gandhi answered that he could depend ‘upon my straining every nerve to find the necessary money….The necessary funds must come to you without your having to stir out of Santiniketan.’

  Some months later, Gandhi wrote to the poet again. Attaching a draft of Rs 60,000, he said: ‘God has blessed my poor effort. And here is the money. Now you will relieve the public mind by announcing the cancellation of the rest of the programme. May God keep you for many a year to come.’40

  Gandhi kept the donor’s name to himself. It was the industrialist G.D. Birla.

  X

  Gandhi was now living in Wardha, in a house with a large plot of land, gifted by Jamnalal Bajaj. Here, sheds for spinning and other crafts had sprung up. The headquarters of the All India Village Industries Association were also housed here. The settlement was named Maganwadi, in memory of Gandhi’s nephew Maganlal, who had helped run the ashrams at Phoenix and Sabarmati.

  Since early 1935, Mira had been living in a village called Varoda, a mile and a half from Wardha. She had been tasked with locating a village home suitable for Gandhi. She settled on a hamlet named Segaon, since it had a large population of ‘untouchables’, and the land in the village was owned in part by Jamnalal Bajaj.

  In March 1936, Gandhi began actively planning a move to Segaon. He would live there alone or with Kasturba if she chose to join him. He told Bajaj he wanted ‘as little expense as possible’ to be incurred in building a hut for him, setting Rs 100 as the outer limit for the cost of labour and building materials. Another hut could be constructed for Mahadev. Gandhi would ‘pay visits to Maganwadi as often as necessary’.41

  In the third week of April, Gandhi visited Segaon and met with the villagers. He told them that they ‘must have heard from Mirabehn that I have cast out all untouchability from myself, that I hold all classes of people—Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra, Rajput, Mahar, Chamar—all alike, and I regard these distinctions based on birth as immoral. We have suffered because of these distinctions, and this sense of high and low has vitiated our lives.’42

  On 30 April, Gandhi spent his first night in Segaon. He walked the several miles from the town, and was sorrowfully seen off by the disciples who remained at Maganwadi. Mahadev Desai summed up their feelings in an article in Harijan: ‘An unexpressed but deep-seated pang was in the heart of everyone. Some of them had been with him for the best part of their lives. Had the time come for them to be dropped out, as it had happened to the companions of Yudhisthira when he started on his march for the Kingdom of Heaven?’

  One ashramite (whom Mahadev unfortunately does not name) had the boldness to tell Gandhi that instead of ‘burying himself in this village’, he should undertake an all-India tour to promote rural reconstruction, just as he had done for the abolition of untouchability. Gandhi answered that the comparison was invalid. ‘I have been talking theory all these days,’ remarked Gandhi, ‘talking and giving advice on village work, without having personally come to grips with the difficulties of village work. If I undertook the tour say after passing three seasons in a village…I would be able to talk with knowledge and experience which I have not got today.’43

  An early visitor in Segaon was Dr B.R. Ambedkar. He came with the industrialist Walchand Hirachand. Sadly, we do not have the details of their talks (or arguments), although we do know that, with Gandhi’s hut not entirely ready, the conversation took place under a tree.

  On his way to Segaon and back, Ambedkar spoke with Mahadev Desai about the personal humiliations he had suffered on account of his caste. He recalled how, as a young boy, he was not allowed
to enter the village school; how he and his siblings would not be attended to by the village barber (his sister shaved them all); how, even after studying at Columbia University, he could not get a place to rent while working in Baroda; how, only the previous month, a taxi driver in Bombay refused to ferry him because of his caste.

  ‘We are deeply ashamed,’ said Mahadev on hearing this, adding: ‘but do not you think the situation has changed? Do not you find numerous people to suffer with you today?’ ‘I see no change,’ responded Ambedkar. ‘And what’s the good of telling me you are ready to suffer with us? If you have to suffer, it means we will have to continue to suffer still more.’ Mahadev persisted, pointing to the ‘healthy change’ he had noticed among many upper-caste Hindus in their attitude to caste discrimination. But Ambedkar would not be convinced, saying (in Mahadev’s recollection), ‘One swallow does not make a summer. You are highly optimistic. But you know the definition of an optimist? An optimist is one who takes the brightest view of other people’s sufferings.’44

  On 2 May, the day after he met Gandhi in Segaon, Dr Ambedkar was felicitated by the Nagpur municipality. In his address, Ambedkar said he was ‘a much maligned man’ because of his arguments on behalf of separate electorates at the Round Table Conference. Ambedkar clarified that ‘he never stood in the way of Dominion Status. All he wanted was protection for the minorities [among whom he included the Depressed Classes] to which they were entitled….[H]e declared that if any disaster befell the country the responsibility would be on the caste Hindus and it would be judged through how they used power against the minorities.’45

  Ambedkar had just told Mahadev Desai that he had seen ‘no change’ in the attitude of the caste Hindus. His statement in Nagpur suggests that he was now having second thoughts about the Poona Pact and its ability to even protect, still less enhance the rights of, the Depressed Classes.

  XI

  Gandhi spent a mere week in his new home, before travelling south, to the hill station of Nandi, where he had spent six weeks back in 1927. This time the cool air was not so much for him as for Vallabhbhai Patel, who had been unwell.

  Gandhi and Patel walked up to Nandi from the nearest roadhead, the trek taking them two and a half hours. ‘The air is beautiful,’ he wrote to a disciple, ‘the calmness is divine. No cars or carts or even rickshaws….I do not know a more secluded, cleaner, quieter hill. Sardar is in raptures over the stillness.’46

  One day, the physicist Sir C.V. Raman came up from Bangalore to see Gandhi. Raman’s conceit was legendary. In the summer of 1930, he booked a passage for his wife and himself on a boat leaving for Europe in October, so confident was he of winning the Nobel Prize for physics that year (which he did). Now, meeting an Indian even more celebrated than himself, Raman told him: ‘Mahatmaji, religions cannot unite. Science offers the best opportunity for a complete fellowship. All men of science are brothers.’ ‘What about the converse?’ responded Gandhi. ‘All who are not men of science are not brothers?’ Raman had the last word, noting that ‘all can become men of science’.

  Raman had come with a Swiss biologist who wished to have a darshan of the Indian leader. Introducing his colleague, Raman said he had discovered an insect that could live without food and water for as long as twelve years. ‘When you discover the secret at the back of it,’ joked Gandhi to the Swiss scientist, ‘please pass it on to me.’

  Some days later, Raman came again, this time with his wife, a social worker. Gandhi was impressed with the Tamil lady’s Hindi, telling her husband that it ‘was as good as your science’. Raman answered that in his view English should be the link language of India. Gandhi disagreed, saying that it would be far easier for Hindi to assume that role. He asked how the scientist did not speak the language when his wife did. Raman admitted the deficiency, adding by way of justification: ‘It is that conceit, you know, that I am full of as much as you.’47

  Gandhi was in Nandi when he heard of the death of Dr M.A. Ansari. He was badly shaken by the news. As he told The Hindu newspaper, the Delhi doctor was ‘my infallible guide in Hindu–Muslim relations’. Ansari was only fifty-five when he died. Many years younger than Gandhi, he was a close personal friend, a valued medical adviser, and a brave critic if necessary. That he was a respected Muslim leader made the loss even more acute. In anguish, and perhaps even in desperation, Gandhi wrote to the educationist Zakir Husain, vice chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia. ‘Will you be to me what the Doctor was on the Hindu–Muslim question?’ he asked. ‘What distracts me is not the warmth of a gentleman-friend, of a God-believing and God-fearing doctor. It is the absence of an unfailing guide in the matter of Hindu–Muslim unity.’48

  It was also while in Nandi that Gandhi heard that his eldest son, Harilal, had converted to Islam, taking the name ‘Abdullah’. The conversion had taken place on 29 May ‘in the midst of a large congregation’ at Bombay’s Jumma Masjid. On hearing the news, Gandhi wrote to his third son, Ramdas, that ‘there could be no harm in his [Harilal] being converted to Islam with understanding and selfless motives. But he suffers from greed for wealth and sensual pleasures.’

  It was overwhelmingly likely that Harilal had been offered a material inducement, with a view to embarrassing his famous father. Perhaps, given his own complicated—not to say tortured—relations with Gandhi, Harilal was also in a vengeful mood, seeing conversion as a way to finally settle accounts with an overbearing patriarch.

  On 2 June 1936, Gandhi issued a press statement on Harilal’s conversion. If his son’s conversion was ‘from the heart and free of any worldly considerations’, he said, ‘I should have no quarrel. For I believe Islam to be as true a religion as my own.’

  Yet, Gandhi had ‘the gravest doubt’ that Harilal’s acceptance of a new faith was ‘free from selfish considerations’. He noted that Harilal’s addiction ‘to the drink evil’ was well known, so also his ‘habit of visiting houses of ill-fame’. Through his lifestyle Harilal had accumulated many debts, and until recently ‘was in dread of his life from his Pathan creditors in Bombay. Now he is the hero of the hour in that city.’

  Gandhi knew that ‘God can work wonders. He has been known to have changed the stoniest hearts and turned sinners into saints.’ Yet, the reports of Harilal’s conversion ‘give no such evidence. He still delights in sensation and in good living’.

  Gandhi asked his Muslim friends to examine whether Harilal’s conversion was done with ‘a clean heart’. If it was not, they should ‘tell him so plainly’. Gandhi did ‘not mind whether he is known as Abdulla or Harilal if, by adopting one name for the other, he becomes a true devotee of God which both the names mean’.49

  When the news of Harilal’s conversion came, Gandhi was in Nandi, and Kasturba in Delhi, staying with her youngest son, Devadas. She was deeply upset, and poured out her feelings to Devadas, who at once wrote them out in English. Later, he had his handwritten notes typed, and published in the press under Kasturba’s name, with the title, ‘An Open Letter from a Mother to Her Son’.

  In this extraordinary public chastisement of her firstborn, Kasturba charged Harilal with ‘criticising and ridiculing your great father’. She pointed out that when (as had happened several times already) he had been hauled up before a magistrate for drunken and abusive behaviour, he was let off lightly because of whose son he was. ‘Your father,’ wrote Kasturba to Harilal, ‘daily gets letters from people complaining about your conduct. He has to suffer all this disgrace. But you have left no place for me anywhere. For sheer shame, I am unable to move among friends and strangers. Your father always pardons you, but God will not tolerate your conduct.’

  ‘Every morning,’ said Kasturba to Harilal, ‘I rise with a shudder to think what fresh news of disgrace the newspapers will bring.’ Now they had brought news of his conversion to Islam. Kasturba had, she told Harilal, ‘felt secretly glad even about your conversion hoping that you would now start leading a sober life’. But she had heard
from friends that in fact he was ‘in a condition much worse than before’. The letter ended by telling Harilal that ‘your daughters and son-in-law also bear with increasing difficulty the burden of sorrow your conduct has imposed upon them’.

  Kasturba also had Devadas write a shorter note, again under her own name, addressed to Harilal’s ‘Muslim friends’. She told them that ‘a large number of thinking Mussalmans and all our life-long Muslim friends condemn the whole of his episode’. Those Muslims who had aided Harilal in his conversion were ‘not doing the right thing in the eyes of God’. ‘I do not understand,’ said Kasturba to these new Muslim friends of her son, ‘what pleasures you find in sometimes lionizing him. What you are doing is not at all in his interest. If your desire is mainly to hold us up to ridicule, I have nothing to say to you. You may do your worst.’50

  Five months after his conversion, Harilal made a public statement that he was now thinking of returning to the Hindu fold. On hearing this, Gandhi dryly commented: ‘It seems he is not getting any money from there [the Muslims] either. Maybe, too, he is tired of the whole thing.’51 There may have been a third reason: the very public scolding by his mother. Harilal was more deeply attached to Kasturba than to Gandhi, and much more likely to seek to please her than him, or, in this case, seek not to wound her than him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  From Rebels to Rulers

  I

  In April 1936, Lord Willingdon was succeeded by Lord Linlithgow. The new viceroy was from a family of Scottish landowners. His father, the first marquess, was a former governor general of Australia. The son had served in World War I, then became active in the Conservative Party. He had been chairman of the royal commission of agriculture in India in 1926, and also chaired the joint parliamentary committee on the 1935 Government of India Act.1