Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  There is no reply to this letter in the Collected Works. It may be that Gandhi was too embarrassed to reply, or that he talked with Tagore about the matter in person (over the telephone, since he was in Segaon at the time). Tagore was the least parochial of men, who had once urged Gandhi to shed his xenophobia and embrace the world. Now, twenty years on, he was urging the claims of his province. It is often the case that as men grow older, the attachment to their roots, their native language and their ancestral culture, grows. Even so, the letter is uncharacteristic. The poet had never before interfered in Congress politics. Was he put up to this by Subhas Bose or his supporters?

  In the second week of December, Subhas Bose himself came to Segaon. Gandhi and he had long discussions, with Mahadev and Jawaharlal Nehru in attendance. Bose refused to be shaken from his decision to seek a second term.

  It had been many years since the Congress had a presidential election. Since Gandhi’s emergence as the party’s pre-eminent leader, the president had always been chosen by consensus. But now, with neither side backing down, an election was organized by the AICC. This was held in the last week of January 1939. Bose won comfortably, getting the support of 1580 AICC members, some 200 more than Sitaramayya did.

  Bose was a superb orator who had the ability, as Nirad Chaudhuri once remarked, to ‘say a thousand times the same thing in different forms, and to get animated without end in the face of the same objects’. By contrast, his opponent, Sitaramayya, was a sober, stolid Congressman, without any charisma, and without the credibility of other Gandhians such as Abul Kalam Azad or Rajendra Prasad either. Had Prasad or Azad stood instead of him, they would have given Bose a much tougher fight, and perhaps even defeated him.8

  Gandhi did not attend the AICC session. He was at Bardoli when he heard the news of Bose’s re-election. He issued a statement which began:

  Shri Subhas Bose has achieved a decisive victory over his opponent, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya. I must confess that from the very beginning I was decidedly against his re-election for reasons which I need not go into. I do not subscribe to the facts or the arguments in his manifestos. I think that his references to his colleagues were unjustified and unworthy. Nevertheless, I am glad of his victory. And since I was instrumental in inducing Dr. Pattabhi not to withdraw his name as a candidate when Maulana Saheb withdrew, the defeat is more mine than his.

  Subhas Bose responded with a statement of his own. He was grieved that Gandhi saw it as ‘a personal defeat’, since the voters in the Congress presidential election were not called upon to vote for or against him.

  Bose acknowledged that the result of the election had been interpreted as a victory of the Left within the Congress. Even so, he thought this would not or should not presage a split within the party, as many feared. He himself assured Congressmen that ‘there will be no violent break with the past in the parliamentary or in the extra-parliamentary sphere’.

  Bose ended with a profession of regard for Gandhi himself. Though they differed on some ‘public questions’, he would ‘yield to none in my respect for his personality’. Bose insisted that ‘it will always be my aim and object to try and win his confidence for the simple reason that it will be a tragic thing for me if I succeed in winning the confidence of other people but fail to win the confidence of India’s greatest man’.9

  Bose’s statement was generous, as well as conciliatory. But even if Gandhi had been open to a compromise, the Gandhians were not. In response to Bose’s re-election, most members of the CWC resigned. They included Patel, Kripalani, Bajaj and Rajendra Prasad, all Gandhi loyalists. The resignation of these working committee members left ‘the Congress with a president marked for the helm, but without a crew to run the ship’.10

  III

  From the affairs of his party, Gandhi now turned back to the problems of princely states—or, to be more precise, the problems of his own princely state. This was Rajkot, where he had lived between 1874 and 1888, as a schoolboy and married man, and again in 1892–93, as a lawyer. His father had been diwan of the state. Many of his family members still lived there.

  For forty years, from 1890 to 1930, Rajkot had an exceptionally broad-minded ruler, named Lakhajiraj. The Thakore Saheb (as the ruler was known) had inaugurated a representative assembly of the state’s citizens, its members drawn from all major groups: traders, farmers, labourers, artisans and professionals. This council was free to make recommendations on policy, although the final decisions on whether or how to implement them rested with the ruler and his advisers.

  After Lakhajiraj’s death, his son and successor, Dharmendrasinhji, disbanded the people’s council. While the new ruler busied himself with the pleasures of the flesh, the state was run by his autocratic diwan, Darbar Virawala. Popular discontent grew. In 1936, the workers in Rajkot’s cotton mills went on strike for better wages. The Thakore Saheb was forced to agree to the formation of a labour union. Now other sections of society began to organize themselves. Peasants protested against the harsh rates of land assessment. Lawyers and intellectuals demanded greater rights of representation in the councils of the state.

  These movements for democracy were encouraged by Vallabhbhai Patel, who kept in close touch with activists in Rajkot. In September 1938, Patel met a senior adviser of the Thakore Saheb, and put forward a charter of demands. In November, the ruler agreed to appoint a ten-member inquiry committee, whose three members were to be state officials and the remaining seven nominated by Patel. This committee was charged with, among other things, fixing a limit on the ruler’s expenses, and recommending reforms so as to ‘give the widest possible powers to [the] people consistent with [the ruler’s] obligations to the paramount power and with [his] prerogatives as an adviser’.

  However, the Thakore Saheb resiled from this agreement. Of the names sent by Patel, several were claimed not to be residents of Rajkot. Then the ruler and his advisers insisted that there should be representatives of Muslims, the Depressed Classes and the nobility (known as Bhaiyats). The State clearly wanted to ensure that their representatives would have a majority in the committee.

  After the ruler reneged on his promise, a satyagraha was organized, in which Patel’s daughter Manibehn was arrested. Kasturba was close to Manibehn, whom she saw as akin to a daughter, and of course, through her husband she had her own strong ties to Rajkot. She was keen to join the struggle in the state, and after some hesitation, Gandhi agreed to let her go. Soon after she entered the state, Kasturba was placed under detention, prompting her husband to go to Rajkot himself.11

  Gandhi arrived in Rajkot on 27 February 1939. In his first week there, he spoke to a wide cross section of the population. He paid special attention to the groups that had stayed away from the struggle: Hindu landlords with large holdings, Muslims and the Depressed Classes. He also met the British Resident and members of the Durbar.

  Gandhi had hoped that as a result of his intervention, the Thakore Saheb of Rajkot would honour his promise to Vallabhbhai Patel, by ensuring peasant leaders majority representation in the arbitration committee. When he did not, Gandhi went on a fast (his first for almost five years), which began on 3 March. Kasturba was allowed to spend the days with him, going back in the evenings to her detention camp. On the 6th, she was released, so as to be with him day and night.

  The fast ran for four days. It was called off on the 7th after the viceroy personally intervened in the dispute. Linlithgow prevailed upon the Thakore Saheb to agree to the appointment of the Chief Justice of India, Sir Maurice Gwyer, as an arbitrator between the State and the protesters. It was agreed that Gwyer’s decision on who would staff the arbitration committee would be final.

  During Gandhi’s fast, the viceroy in Delhi, and the secretary of state in London, were besieged with telegrams asking them to intervene and save Gandhi’s life. These pleas came from, among others, the Marwari Chamber of Commerce, the Indian Cotton Association and the Bombay Assembly Co
ngress Association. G.D. Birla sent a personal telegram to the secretary of state saying that if Gandhi were to die, it would ‘be disaster [of the] first magnitude both to India and Empire’.12

  The British press covered Gandhi’s fast extensively, its comments ranging from the sceptical and sneering to the pejorative and hostile. The Daily Telegraph claimed Gandhi was attempting ‘to substitute suicide for discussion’. The Birmingham Post remarked that ‘nowadays Mr. Gandhi seems less than ever to need provocation to martyrdom’. The Glasgow Herald observed that the fast proves yet again ‘how difficult saints are to deal with in the days of their flesh—especially when they choose to exercise their saintliness in the sphere of politics’.

  Amidst this general tone of suspicion, an editorial in the News Chronicle stood out. Entitled ‘BEYOND THE SWORD’, it ran:

  Mr. Gandhi’s fast, undertaken to secure democratic reforms from the ruler of Rajkot State, has ended in a settlement which is not merely a great personal triumph but a remarkable victory for the method of passive resistance.

  Unlike violence, personal sacrifice tends to have a disarming effect on those to whom it is directed and breeds conciliation. The Viceroy would never have intervened in so conciliatory a way if Mr. Gandhi had led an armed attack on Rajkot State.

  It is not a method which can be applied at the moment in Western Europe, but we cannot afford to forget that in the long run it is the human spirit that triumphs, not the sword.13

  This was a brilliant summation of the philosophy behind Gandhian satyagraha. By suffering oneself, and drawing attention to that suffering, a protester could open up a channel of communication with his or her adversaries. To be sure, satyagraha could not be used against Hitler in Germany. But in normal times, normal places and against normal rulers, as a means of protest it was always more moral, and often more effective, than violence.

  IV

  From Rajkot, Gandhi went to Delhi, where he met with the viceroy. They discussed the stand-off in Rajkot, and the broader question of what role the princes could play in a future All-India Federation. Linlithgow told Gandhi that the Congress ‘must carefully avoid frightening the Princes or driving them into a panic. They were a very stiff proposition.’ The viceroy’s notes of the meeting continue: ‘I took the opportunity to remark to Mr. Gandhi that he had criticised me a great deal over the appointment of British Dewans. I must frankly tell him that I found it quite impossible to find Indians of the requisite quality. He said he was quite unable to agree with that…’

  Gandhi had criticized British diwans for their distance, linguistic and cultural, from the subjects of the states, and for their partiality to the Raj. In defending them so determinedly, while disparaging Indians in the same position, did Linlithgow know that Gandhi himself was the son and grandson of diwans? If he did, it was an extraordinarily insensitive thing to say.

  Linlithgow and Gandhi also discussed the idea of ‘Pakistan’, now being talked about in the Muslim League circles. Coined in 1933 by a Cambridge student called Choudhry Rahmat Ali, the term expanded on the idea suggested by Muhammad Iqbal in his Muslim League presidential address of 1930, in recommending a sovereign Muslim state in the north-west of British India. ‘P’ stood for Punjab, ‘A’ for the ‘Afghan Province’ of British India (i.e., the NWFP), ‘K’ for Kashmir, and ‘S’ for Sindh, with the last four letters denoting both ‘state’ in Urdu as well as the fifth province to be included in this future nation, Baluchistan. Moreover, ‘Pakistan’ also meant ‘Land of the Pure’ in both Urdu and Persian.

  Linlithgow later noted that ‘before we concluded I thought it well to mention the Pakistan project to him [Gandhi] and to ask him whether he thought it had any life in it. He said he understood not; but that that might come. I replied that I had in mind to give the idea an airing very soon in my own way and get it out of the way. Mr. Gandhi said he was sure that it was the right course; that he doubted if it would stand any detailed examination though it no doubt had wide possibilities. I asked whether by that he meant that it might represent an upsurge running back into the depths of the Muslim world. He said that that might indeed be the case, in certain circumstances, but that even if Pakistan admitted of realisation it could never settle the communal question in India or represent more than a sharp division which might in due course give rise to a major calamity.’14

  V

  Because of his preoccupations in Rajkot, Gandhi had missed the annual session of the Congress, held that year in Tripuri, in the Central Provinces. The session reflected the growing split within the party. The so-called ‘Old Guard’, led by the United Provinces prime minister, Govind Ballabh Pant, were determined to push Subhas Bose towards resigning as president. At Tripuri, Pant introduced a resolution whose operative sentence was as follows: ‘In view of the critical situation that may develop during the coming year and in view of the fact that Mahatma Gandhi alone can lead the Congress and the country during such crisis, the [All India Congress] Committee regards it as imperative that the Congress executive should command his implicit confidence and requests the President to nominate the Working Committee in accordance with the wishes of Gandhiji.’

  Bose was, in effect, being asked to renominate members who had resigned in February. But how could a president function with a working committee with whose members he had such sharp differences of opinion?

  Bose’s elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, wrote a hurt letter to Gandhi. Meanwhile, Subhas Bose had fallen ill. Writing to Subhas on 24 March, Gandhi denied he had anything to do with Pant’s resolution. Then he added these decidedly ambiguous lines: ‘The initiative lies with you. I do not know how far you are fit to attend to national work. If you are not, I think you should adopt the only constitutional course open to you.’

  Bose replied that the initiative for uniting the party lay with Gandhi, not with him. He told Gandhi that ‘the main problem appears to me as to whether both parties can forget the past and work together. That depends entirely on you. If you can command the confidence of both parties by taking up a truly non-partisan attitude, then you can save the Congress and restore national unity.’

  Bose also rejected the suggestion that he step down because of poor health. He had ‘not the slightest desire to stick to office’, yet did not ‘see any reason for resigning because I am ill. No President resigned when he was in prison…’

  Two days later, Bose wrote to Gandhi again. Once more, he said that while there was a wide gulf between the two factions, Gandhi alone could bridge it. ‘It is in your hands to save the Congress and the country,’ he wrote. ‘People who are bitterly opposed for various reasons to Sardar Patel and his group, still have confidence in you and believe that you can take a dispassionate and non-partisan view of things. To them you are a national figure—above parties and groups—and you can, therefore, restore unity between the warring elements. If for any reason that confidence is shaken—which God forbid—and you are regarded as a partisan, then God help us and the Congress.’15

  Bose was correct in identifying Vallabhbhai Patel as his main opponent within the party. The two had an old rivalry, at once personal and political. Their relationship rapidly deteriorated after the death of Vallabhbhai’s elder brother Vithalbhai in 1933. Bose had nursed Vithalbhai during his last illness. In his will, the elder Patel left three-fourths of his estate to Bose, to be used ‘preferably for publicity work on behalf of India’s cause in other countries’. Vallabhbhai now cast aspersions on the authenticity of the will. A long legal battle ensued, which ended in a triumph for Vallabhbhai, with Vithalbhai’s next of kin getting the money instead of Subhas.

  This familial history apart, Patel was also opposed to Bose’s militant socialism. When, in 1938, Gandhi decided to propose Bose’s name for the presidency of the Congress, Patel opposed it. Gandhi overruled his objection. In 1939, when Bose sought a second term, Patel opposed him again, unsuccessfully. ‘I never dreamt,’ wrote Pat
el to Rajendra Prasad, ‘that he [Subhas] will stoop to such dirty mean tactics for re-election.’ In another letter, he told Prasad that ‘it is impossible for us to work with Subhas’. The resignation of the working committee members in February, and Pant’s resolution at Tripuri in March, were both approved of—if not instigated by—Patel.16

  In his letters to Gandhi in the last week of March, Subhas Bose urged him to take a more adversarial stance towards the Raj. The international crisis had convinced Bose that ‘the time has come to force the issue of purna swaraj’. But Gandhi, he complained, was ‘obsessed with the idea of corruption within the Congress. Moreover, the bogey of violence alarms you.’ Bose wanted the Congress to issue an ultimatum to the British; and if (as expected) it was not met, to resign from their ministries and launch a full-fledged agitation for freedom. He told Gandhi that he was ‘so confident, and so optimistic on this point, that I feel that if we take courage in both hands and go ahead, we shall have swaraj inside of 18 months at the most’.

  Replying to Bose, Gandhi said that he should form his own working committee, formulate its programme and place this before the AICC. If the AICC accepted his programme, then Bose could ‘prosecute it unhampered by the minority’. If it was rejected, however, Bose should resign and make way for a new president.

  In his letter, Gandhi made clear his disagreement with Bose on the political route he had proposed. He himself saw ‘no atmosphere for non-violent mass action’. Gandhi told Bose that ‘I smell violence in the air I breathe. But the violence has put on a subtle form. Our mutual distrust is a bad form of violence. The widening gulf points to the same thing.’17