Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  The third and most important piece of advice Gandhi offered the new ministers was to bridge the communal divide. The pro-British papers had strenuously striven to paint the Congress-majority provinces as ‘Hindu’, and the others as ‘Muslims’. Gandhi’s own ‘great hope’ was that ‘the Ministers in the six [Congress-ruled] Provinces will so manage them as to disarm all suspicion. They will show their Muslim colleagues that they know no distinction between Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh or Parsi. Nor will they know any distinction between high-caste and low-caste Hindus.’37

  This laudable ideal immediately came under threat in two important provinces. In the United Provinces, the Congress had won 134 out of 228 seats, but none from the specifically Muslim constituencies, where the Muslim League had won as many as twenty-nine seats. The leader of the League in the United Provinces was Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, a one-time Congressman and friend of Jawaharlal Nehru. Khaliquzzaman went to Allahabad to meet Nehru to suggest a Congress–League coalition ministry. He said that they could work out a common programme, and thus defy British attempts at divide and rule. Nehru, however, was not open to the idea. In Khaliquzzaman’s recollection, Nehru believed that ‘the Hindu–Muslim question in India was confined to a few Muslim landlords and capitalists who were cooking up a problem which did not in fact exist in the minds of the masses’.38

  Meanwhile, in the Bombay Presidency, where too the Congress formed a ministry, a bitter controversy arose around the choice of who would head it. The prominent Bombay Congressman K.F. Nariman thought he had the best credentials. However, while Nariman was extremely popular in the city, he was less well known in the Marathi-speaking hinterland. In the end, B.G. Kher, also a long-standing Congressman, and a Marathi speaker, was chosen as prime minister. This was done through a secret ballot where all Congressmen elected to the assembly voted.

  Nariman now accused Vallabhbhai Patel of exerting pressure on the legislators to elect Kher. His supporters, meanwhile, insinuated that Nariman’s being a Parsi went against him. Patel denied this, stating ‘with a full sense of responsibility that I have never, directly or indirectly, influenced this election’. He said that ‘the suggestion that Nariman was not elected because he belonged to a minority community is false and malicious’.39

  Patel may not have been prejudiced against Nariman on religious grounds. But that he had long distrusted the Bombay lawyer was a matter of record. He thought Nariman had campaigned against some Congress candidates in an earlier election, when one of Patel’s closest associates, K.M. Munshi, had unexpectedly lost. He was thus more inclined to support B.G. Kher over Nariman for the prime ministership of the Bombay Presidency. Although the voting by legislators was technically done in secret, ‘the proceedings’, writes one historian, ‘were subtly regulated and controlled by Patel’.40

  The Congress ministries took office, without a partnership with the Muslim League in the United Provinces and with someone other than K.F. Nariman as prime minister in the Bombay Presidency. The party may have had legitimate grounds for both choices. Since they won a majority on their own in the United Provinces, they saw no reason to ally with the League. And while Nariman’s past political record was impressive, it did seem a majority of the elected legislators wanted Kher as prime minister. But in both cases, seeds of suspicion were sown, damaging the Congress’s credentials to represent all of India in a non-partisan fashion.

  IX

  As the Congress ministries took office, there was speculation as to what this portended for the future. How would a party of prison-goers convert themselves into rulers and administrators? Accustomed to breaking government laws, how would they now frame and enforce government policies? And would they be corrupted by the trappings of power? Used to austere lifestyles, how would they cope with large offices, spacious ministerial bungalows, and a bevy of peons and clerks bowing around them?

  Gandhi was sceptical, on the last count especially. A fortnight after the ministries took office, he wrote to Nehru that ‘the Rs. 500 salary with big house and car allowances [for the Ministers] is being severely criticized. The more I think of it, the more I dislike this extravagant beginning.’41

  For his part, Henry Polak wondered how this new partnership between the Raj and the Congress would work, since ‘each has been so accustomed to regard the other as the enemy that it is almost an obsession’. The government would not, he thought, easily come to terms with the fact that ‘a political party which is not of its own liking’ would henceforth issue orders to its officers. On the other side, the Congress had become ‘so much accustomed to regard themselves as the disgruntled opposition that they cannot get into the habit of mind of regarding themselves as a responsible administration’.42

  Other long-time observers of Indian politics were more hopeful. When the Congress ministers moved into the secretariat in July, G.D. Birla was in London. He met businessmen, politicians and members of the two houses of Parliament. ‘Bapu is the most popular person here,’ wrote Birla to Mahadev Desai. ‘They talk of his commonsense, judgment and all other virtues, and his stocks have gone up very high. But what pleases me most is that they say that if the Congress could manage the provinces for five years in good order, independence will come within one-tenth of the time that we have estimated. A friend said, “By God, if you Fellows ran your administration properly, the next Viceroy will have to go with Dominion Status in his pocket”.’

  ‘When I read out to Bapu one sentence in your letter, namely that Bapu’s stocks had gone up he had a very hearty but incredulous laugh,’ wrote Mahadev to Birla, adding: ‘Stocks in the political market as well as in the money market go up and down very suddenly, and it is only a speculator who builds much on them. I wish I could share your belief that the whole thing [collaboration with the Raj] will last very long. As Bapu said to a Minister recently, “If this thing lasts beyond a year I shall either infer that the Britishers have become angels or that our Ministers are completely kow-towing to them”.’43

  Gandhi’s scepticism notwithstanding, the installation of Congress ministries in six large provinces of British India was a major milestone in the constitutional history of the subcontinent. Much more power had devolved on to the shoulder of Indians than at any previous time in the history of the Raj. Indeed, since precolonial regimes were themselves devoid of democratic representation, and were run by unelected kings who nominated their ministers, this was the furthest that Indians had thus far got in the direction of self-rule, swaraj. Surely it was now only a matter of years before the Congress, and India, achieved the next step, of Dominion Status, thus to place themselves on par with Canada, Australia and South Africa.

  A sign of how much of a departure from colonial practice these elections were is underlined in a humble office order issued by the Central Provinces government after their own Congress ministry was installed. It was signed by an Indian ICS officer, C.M. Trivedi, then serving as the secretary to the general administration department. The order was sent to all commissioners and deputy commissioners, the chief conservator of forests, the inspector general of police, all secretaries to government, and a host of other senior officials (including the military secretary and the governor), almost all of whom were, of course, British. The text of the order was short and simple, albeit, in the eyes of its recipients, not altogether sweet. It read: ‘In future Mr. Gandhi should be referred to in all correspondence as “Mahatma Gandhi”.’44

  PART IV

  WAR AND REBELLION (1937–1944)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The World Within, and Without

  I

  After the Congress ministries took office in July 1937, Gandhi did not closely monitor their performance, thinking it would be unfair on their prime ministers (among them the senior Congressmen C. Rajagopalachari in Madras, B.G. Kher in Bombay and Govind Ballabh Pant in the United Provinces). The one topic he took up was the sale of alcohol. Some of the prime ministers argued that if prohibition
was imposed, it would deal a heavy blow to their province’s finances, and to the key sector of education in particular. The excise tax, more or less, covered the education budget. If it went, how would they run and staff government schools?

  Gandhi remained unconvinced. Prohibition had to be pushed through. The ministries must find money to run their schools regardless. When told that prohibition had failed in the United States, Gandhi answered that in that country ‘drinking is not looked upon [as] a vice’—there, ‘millions usually drink’. In India, on the other hand, ‘drink is held reprehensible by all religions, and it is not the millions who drink but individuals who drink’.

  Gandhi understood that prohibition would work only if public opinion was in its favour. He asked teachers and students in colleges to set apart a couple of hours a day to spread the word. ‘They should go to the areas frequented by the drinkers, associate with them, speak to them and reason with them and do peaceful picketing of an educative character.’ He recalled the picketing by women of liquor stills during the non-cooperation movement, asking them ‘to revive the work under better auspices now’.1

  In August 1937, fifteen months after he arrived in India, Lord Linlithgow finally met Gandhi. They spoke for an hour and a half, to begin with about the NWFP and Gandhi’s follower in the Frontier, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who had been externed from his homeland. Gandhi urged the viceroy to lift the ban, telling him that the ‘essential quality’ of Ghaffar Khan ‘was his sincerity, that he was truth itself, a good Moslem…that he…was destined…to play a great part in the future of India’. Linlithgow answered that he had heard that ‘on platforms his tongue was inclined to run away with him’.

  Later, the conversation turned to Jawaharlal Nehru, whom the viceroy had not yet met. Gandhi ‘sang his praises at some length. He was, he said, reserved and spartan, his name Jawaharlal meant jewel, and that exactly described what Nehru was.’ Gandhi told the viceroy that while his own ‘mental furniture was wholly Indian’, Nehru ‘had English mental furniture’, adding that while Nehru ‘was fond of England, and got on with Englishmen well, he had been returned [as Congress president] in opposition to Imperialism’, and thus might be inclined to ‘regard the Viceroy as the leading instrument of Imperialism in India’. Nonetheless, Gandhi urged Linlithgow to reach out to Nehru and set up a meeting.

  The viceroy’s sixteen-paragraph note on the meeting ended with some reflections on Gandhi himself. He was impressed by the man, less so by his politics. Gandhi ‘appeared to be in good health’, wrote Linlithgow, ‘his voice was firm, his mind was extremely quick and alert, his sense of humour very keen’. Then he added: ‘The strong impression upon my mind was that of a man implacably hostile to British Rule in India, and who would in no circumstances hesitate (while at all times, behaving with perfect manners) to take advantage of any person or circumstance in order to advance the process, to which every fibre of his mind is entirely devoted, of reducing British power, influence and prestige in the sub-continent’ (whereas every fibre of Linlithgow’s own mind was devoted to maintaining or preferably enhancing British power, influence and prestige in the subcontinent).2

  II

  In the second week of October 1937, the Muslim League held a meeting in Lucknow. As one attendee recalled, ‘Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s position at this junction was of great responsibility and the League’s fate was hanging in the balance. Muslims were earnestly looking towards him as most of their other leaders had completely betrayed their cause.’3

  After the League’s indifferent performance in the recent elections, Jinnah was working to bring it back to centre stage. He had acquired a group of devoted admirers: professionals, businessmen and students. Now, in Lucknow, itself a great centre of Islamic learning and culture, the president of the Muslim League accused ‘the present leadership of the Congress’ of ‘alienating the Mussalmans of India more and more by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu’. Jinnah claimed that in the six provinces where the Congress was in power, Gandhi’s party had ‘by their words, deeds and programmes shown that the Mussalmans cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands’.

  When a report of this speech reached Gandhi in Segaon, he was moved to protest. The ‘whole of your speech’, he wrote to Jinnah, ‘is a declaration of war’. He added: ‘Only it takes two to make a quarrel. You won’t find me one, even if I cannot become a peace-maker.’4

  Jinnah had, among other things, criticized the singing in government schools of the patriotic hymn ‘Vande Mataram’. Composed by the great Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the poem invoked Hindu temples, praised the Hindu goddess Durga, and spoke of seventy million Indians, each carrying a sword, ready to defend their motherland against invaders, who could be interpreted as being the British, or Muslims, or both.

  ‘Vande Mataram’ first became popular during the swadeshi movement of 1905–07. The revolutionary Aurobindo Ghose named his political journal after it. Rabindranath Tagore was among the first to set it to music. His version was sung by his niece Saraladevi Chaudhurani at the Banaras Congress of 1905. The same year, the Tamil poet Subramania Bharati rendered it into his language. In Bengali and Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, Hindi and Gujarati, the song had long been sung at nationalist meetings and processions.5

  After the Congress governments took power in 1937, the song was sometimes sung at official functions. The Muslim League objected vigorously. One of its legislators called it ‘anti-Muslim’, another, ‘an insult to Islam’. Jinnah himself claimed the song was ‘not only idolatrous but in its origins and substance [was] a hymn to spread hatred for the Musalmans’.6

  Nationalists in Bengal were adamant that the song was not aimed at Muslims. The prominent Calcutta Congressman Subhas Chandra Bose wrote to Gandhi that ‘the province (or at least the Hindu portion of it) is greatly perturbed over the controversy raised in certain Muslim circles over the song “Bande Mataram”. As far as I can judge, all shades of Hindu opinion are unanimous in opposing any attempts to ban the song in Congress meetings and conferences.’ Bose himself thought that ‘we should think a hundred times before we take any steps in the direction of banning the song’.

  The social worker Satis Dasgupta told Gandhi that ‘Vande Mataram’ was ‘out and out a patriotic song—a song in which all the children of the mother[land] can participate, be they Hindu or Mussalman’. It did use Hindu images, but such imagery was common in Bengal, where even Muslim poets like Nazrul Islam often referred to Hindu gods and legends. ‘Vande Mataram’, argued Dasgupta, was ‘never a provincial cry and never surely a communal cry’.7

  Faced with Jinnah’s complaints on the one side and this defence by Bengali patriots on the other, Gandhi suggested a compromise: that Congress governments should have only the first two verses sung. These evoked the motherland without specifying any religious identity. But this concession made many Bengalis ‘sore at heart’; they wanted the whole song sung. On the other side, Muslims were not satisfied either; for, the ascription of a mother-like status to India was dangerously close to idol worship.8

  Through the winter of 1937–38, the exchanges between Gandhi and Jinnah continued, with no quarter being given on either side. Reading reports of his speeches, Gandhi wrote to Jinnah in the first week of February: ‘I miss the old nationalist. When in 1915 I returned from the self-imposed exile in South Africa, everybody spoke of you as one of the staunchest of nationalists and the hope of both Hindus and Mussalmans.’ ‘Are you still the same Jinnah?’ asked Gandhi. ‘If you say you are, in spite of your speeches I shall accept your word.’

  Jinnah, in reply, said his speeches on the Hindu–Muslim question, far from being a ‘declaration of war’, were in fact made in ‘self-defence’. Gandhi was ‘evidently’ not acquainted, said Jinnah, ‘with what is going on in the Congress Press—the amount of vilification, misrepresentation and falsehood that is daily spread about me—otherwise, I am sure, you would not blame me’.


  Jinnah thought Gandhi’s question as to whether he was the same man he had been in 1915 an unfair one. ‘I would not like to say,’ he remarked, ‘what people spoke of you in 1915 and what they speak and think of you today. Nationalism is not the monopoly of any single individual; and in these days it is very difficult to define it…’

  Gandhi asked Jinnah to come down to Segaon on a date suitable to both. Jinnah was open to a meeting, noting, however, that ‘we have reached a stage when no doubt should be left that you recognize the All-India Muslim League as the one authoritative and representative organization of the Mussalmans of India and on the other hand you represent the Congress and other Hindus throughout the country. It is only on that basis that we can proceed further…’9

  Jinnah was here proposing a threefold equivalence: personal, political and communal. On the one side, the Muslims, represented by the League, represented in turn by their major leader, Jinnah; on the other side, the Hindus, represented by the Congress, represented in turn by their major leader, Gandhi.

  Jinnah was making a large, even extravagant, claim, a claim Gandhi was unlikely to accept, not least because the League had performed so indifferently in the 1937 elections. Besides, while Jinnah was the president and sole spokesman of his party, Gandhi was not at this time particularly active in Congress affairs. In his own letters to Jinnah, he had indicated that he would like other Congressmen to be involved in the discussions. He named three in particular: Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose (the party’s main voice in the important province of Bengal) and Abul Kalam Azad (after M.A. Ansari’s death the pre-eminent Muslim leader of the Congress).