When Mahadev collapsed on the morning of 15 August, Gandhi cried out, in Gujarati, ‘Mahadev, arise! Arise!’ Mahadev had (mostly) listened to Gandhi ever since he joined him, but this was one order he could not follow. When it became clear that he was dead, his clothes were taken off. He was, as always, wearing a dhoti and shirt made of khadi. In a side pocket of the shirt was an edition of the Gita; in the front pocket, a pen. Both were symbolic, of a life devoted to work and to sacrifice.
Gandhi himself washed Mahadev’s body. Sushila Nayar, who was in the room, recalled that Gandhi’s ‘hand was shaking and he could hardly carry the mugful of water. I was afraid that he might slip and fall. I, therefore, went in and quietly started helping him. He needed the help and accepted it. I poured the water and Bapu rubbed the body with the wash cloth. Mahadevbhai often used to walk barefoot. So the feet needed thorough cleaning. Bapu insisted that his feet must be absolutely clean. He then asked me to turn his body over so that he could wash his back.’5
The towel Gandhi used to dry the body was handed over to Sushila Nayar, with the instruction that it should eventually be passed on to Narayan, Mahadev’s teenage son. Mira decked the body with flowers gathered from the garden. Sushila applied some sandalwood paste on the forehead. As they did so, Gandhi sat next to Mahadev’s body, reciting verses from the Gita.
During the day, a space was cleared in the grounds for the cremation. A bier was made from tree branches, and carried by Pyarelal, Mira, Sushila and some of the prison staff, with Gandhi leading the way, holding an earthen pot with a flame inside. The body was placed on the ground. Hymns were sung, while Gandhi lit the fire that consigned the body to the flames. Kasturba, herself ailing, sat on a chair alongside.6
The next day, the suitcase Mahadev had brought with him to the prison was opened by Gandhi. Apart from his clothes, it contained a copy of the Bible (presented to him by Agatha Harrison), some newspaper clippings and several books, among them a copy of Tagore’s play Muktadhara and a book called Battle for Asia. Gandhi took the last two with him, knowing that Mahadev had kept them to read and digest their findings on his behalf.
Thereafter, every morning, Gandhi would go to the spot Mahadev had been cremated and recite Chapter 12 of the Gita, on the path of bhakti, or devotion. Some of Mahadev’s ashes were kept in a box; on the morning of 18 August, noted Sushila, ‘Bapu again put a little bit of Mahadevbhai’s ashes on his forehead which Ba did not like.’7 By this act, Gandhi wished perhaps to symbolically imbibe some of Mahadev’s learning, to the evident displeasure (or at least puzzlement) of his wife.
III
The news of Mahadev Desai’s passing took time to seep out of the jail. But, as it did, a wave of condolences came in from across the country. A file in the archives has more than 300 letters/telegrams of condolences on Mahadev’s death, addressed to his wife Durga, their son Narayan, or to Gandhi. These were written in Gujarati, Hindi, English and Marathi, with a couple even in Tamil. They came from, among other places, the Gujarati Mitra Mandali, Secunderabad; the district boards or municipalities of Madura, Nellore, Chidambaram, Jalgaon, Thana and Andheri; the staff and students of the Bombay University School of Sociology and Economics (calling Mahadev ‘one of the most devoted workers in the country’s cause’); the cooperative banks of Dhulia and Bulsar; the Ahmedabad Bar Association (noting that Mahadev was a former member); the Sahitya Sabha of Surat (for, Mahadev was an accomplished and widely published littérateur as well); the Poona Journalists Association (which noted that apart from his services to Gandhi and the nation, ‘as a journalist Shri Desai distinguished himself as an outstanding champion of the freedom of the Press’); and the Society of Intelligentsia, Ghatkopar (saying that in Mahadev’s death, ‘the Nation has lost a great philosopher, an erudite, a free journalist and a beloved friend of the youths of India’).
There were also plenty of letters from individuals. The Lahore Congressman Mian Iftikharuddin wrote to Mrs Desai saying ‘your loss is nation’s loss’; a man from Murshidabad said Mahadev was Gandhi’s ‘true friend’ and also ‘a sympathetic friend to the public’; an advocate from Abbottabad said Mahadev ‘was the right hand man to him [Gandhi] and could hardly be spared at this critical juncture’. The propaganda secretary of the Punjab Students’ Federation (a communist front, in theory opposed to the Congress) wrote to Narayan Desai that ‘your father’s loss is an irreparable loss to the nation. India is today intellectually poorer than it was four days back’ (and so it was). An old Congressman from the Andhra country wrote to Durga Desai that the last time he met Mahadev in Wardha, ‘he was teaching your son and also writing some Guzerathi short stories in prose’. The American missionary Dick Keithan and his wife, long-time supporters of the freedom struggle, based in Madurai in deepest South India, wrote to Durga offering thanks for ‘such a life giving itself for us all even to the last moment’, and thanking her for ‘sharing Mahadev with us all and with Mother India’.
In his travels and tours, and through his writing and speaking, Mahadev Desai touched or moved, influenced or shaped, countless Indians across the land. But his wife Durga, staying at home, may not have realized the extent of her husband’s influence until these letters and telegrams came pouring in after his death.
The most poignant of all the letters came from the wife of a Congressman in Delhi in whose house Mahadev had often stayed. The hostess remembered the affection and intelligence of a man she had come to regard as a brother. ‘Hum kya saara Bharat unké liyé rotaa hai,’ she said. (Why only me, the whole of India weeps for him today.) And added: ‘Jab tak Hindusthan aur Mahatma ji ka nam rahega tab tak Mahadev bhai bhi jinda hain.’ (Till such time as India and the name of Mahatma Gandhi are known, the name and memory of Mahadev will be alive too.) Sadly, it has turned out otherwise. Seventy-five years on, India is independent and democratic, Gandhi is much memorialized (and much criticized), but the role of Mahadev Desai in the making of the Mahatma and the nation the Mahatma helped father is mostly forgotten.8
Gandhi once remarked that Mahadev’s ‘greatest characteristic’ was his ‘ability to reduce himself to zero, whenever occasion demanded it’.9 These occasions occurred regularly and even ubiquitously in the twenty-five years he spent in his master’s cause. Gandhi himself recognized how deep was Mahadev’s sacrifice, how rich the range of his contributions. The Quaker Muriel Lester wrote of how ‘one day Gandhiji began to describe to me what sort of salary [Mahadev] might have had, the sort of position normally due to such a brilliant intellect and character of such integrity’. Lester continued: ‘But Mahadev, sitting on the mud floor wide-minded, objective, interested in everything, never so absorbed in serious affairs to banish his fleeting humorous smile, owning only his pen, and his spectacles and his ever living spirit, obviously chose the better part.’10
There was a nice tribute to Mahadev Desai in the Manchester Guardian, which focused on his love of books and of friendship. The (anonymous) obituarist had worked with Mahadev during the Round Table Conference in 1931, when his ‘selfless service impressed me deeply, as did his intelligence and reliability—to say nothing of his sense of humour, without which we could not have survived those strenuous days’. Mahadev, recalled this English friend, ‘liked going into English homes and seeing how people lived. No sooner was he inside them that he would gravitate to the bookshelves. It could be seen how much he loved books by the way he handled them. And one could be quite sure of finding him in some bookshop if he had a few minutes to spare.’11
The appreciation I myself like best came from the anthropologist-activist Verrier Elwin. In the late 1920s, Elwin had been a regular visitor to the Sabarmati Ashram. Gandhi adopted him as his English son, even as Mira/Madeleine was his English daughter. Elwin then went to work with the tribes of Central India, whose culture and lifestyle made him sceptical of the Gandhian credo of abstinence from sex and alcohol. He drew away from the Mahatma, but remained in contact with Mahadev.
Elwin
was in his village home in the Gond country when he heard the news of Mahadev’s death on the radio. This brought forth a score of memories: ‘I remembered him on the battle-field among his beloved peasants at Bardoli; I recalled how he had taught me to read Tolstoy at Sabarmati; I remembered going to see him in prison and how the mean and gloomy little office where we had our interview seemed transformed by the vitality and beauty of this man whom no chains could bind.’
Mahadev was officially merely Gandhi’s secretary, but, as Elwin pointed out, ‘he was much more than that. He was in fact Home and Foreign Secretary combined. He managed everything. He made all the arrangements. He was equally at home in the office, the guest-house and the kitchen. He looked after many guests and must have saved ten years of Gandhi’s life by diverting from him unwanted visitors. He had a wonderful way with elderly ladies….When he went to England, he so charmed my own mother that she, of very orthodox [Evangelical] stock, was completely converted to his politics and half-converted to his religion in an afternoon.’
Elwin praised Mahadev’s literary abilities, these too undertaken exclusively in his master’s cause. Through his ‘clear, clean, idiomatic English style’, Mahadev had made Gandhi ‘perhaps the best known man in the world, certainly the best loved. The punctual, vivid, intimate stories that appeared week by week in Young India and Harijan displayed to readers all over the world a personality so lovable that love was inevitably aroused in response.’
Elwin wrote of Mahadev’s wit, his generosity, his goodness, his extraordinarily self-effacing character. For more than two decades, he was the most important person in the life of the most important Indian. And yet, ‘never was a man less pompous. Never was a man less conscious of his own great powers. His heart was filled with pity, gentleness and love; his mind was dominated by a great and holy cause. There was no room for selfishness and egotism. He was too busy to be mean.’12
Had Gandhi been free, he would have written a remembrance of Mahadev in English for Harijan, and doubtless another one in Gujarati too. But since he was in jail, we do not have an extended tribute from Gandhi after Mahadev’s death. To sense what his secretary meant to him, we must make do with some words of chastisement offered in September 1938, when Mahadev had come close to a breakdown because of overwork and his refusal to take a holiday. ‘Shall we say you have a mania for work?’ wrote Gandhi to Mahadev. ‘Don’t you know if you were to be disabled, I would be a bird without wings? If you became bed-ridden, I would have to wind up three-fourths of my activities.’13
IV
In the country at large, the ‘Quit India’ movement was gathering momentum. The pre-emptive strikes against the Congress leaders had generated widespread anger and resentment. In Bombay itself, where the famous/notorious meeting of the AICC was held, trouble erupted on a wide scale the day after the arrest of Gandhi. ‘Crowds in which students were the most prominent got into local trains, broke glass windows, destroyed cushions of compartments and pulled alarm chains.’ Telephone wires were cut and post offices broken into. ‘Municipal property—street lamps, lamp-posts, refuse carts, hydrants etc.—was destroyed or damaged.’ Markets and bazaars ‘in Hindu localities’ were closed, as were most schools and colleges.
There were similar protests, albeit on a slightly less intense scale, in other towns of the Bombay Presidency, such as Poona, Ahmedabad, Surat and Ahmednagar.
When, on 15 August, the news of Mahadev Desai’s death reached Ahmedabad, there was a citywide hartal. Efforts were made to hold a condolence meeting but the authorities prevented it. Broach, Surat and the Panchmahal also observed hartals in Mahadev’s memory.
On 3 September an ‘illegal Congress radio’ came on air in Bombay. ‘Subversive literature was widely distributed and a large quantity of it was seized.’ ‘Gandhi Week’ was celebrated from 2 to 8 October. On the opening and closing days of this week, flag salutation ceremonies were held in different parts of the city, these dispersed by the police. Many mills and shops were closed on these days. Meanwhile, in Ahmedabad, Broach and Kheda, there were processions on 2 October, Gandhi’s birthday.14
Across the country, in Bengal, the protests were, if anything, even more intense. Between the middle of August and the end of November, hundreds of incidents were reported of the cutting of telegraph wires, the burning of mailbags and letter boxes, the pasting on walls of leaflets saluting ‘Azadi ki Larai’ (The Fight for Freedom), threats to village headmen and petty officials that if they didn’t resign, their houses would be looted. Congress radicals moved around the countryside calling for a no-tax, no-rent campaign. There were strikes in high schools and colleges (including some where there were only girl students). Young men hoisted the tricolour on college buildings. Law courts were picketed. Judges were made to take off their official robes and shout ‘Vande Mataram’.15
The ‘present position in Bengal’, wrote the Hindu Mahasabha leader N.C. Chatterjee to a colleague in Nagpur,
is that the entire Hindu population is with Gandhiji and his movement and if anybody wants to oppose it, he will be absolutely finished and hounded out of public life. The unfortunate statement issued by Veer Savarkar [opposing Quit India] made our position rather difficult in Bengal. It is rather amusing to find that Mr. Jinnah wants the Mussalmans not to join the Congress movement and Mr. Savarkar wants the Hindus not to join the same. Even when the Congress movement has made a great stir and it shows that it has got thousands of adherents.16
Meanwhile, a Bengali newspaper printed behind the censor’s back commented: ‘In their pride and arrogance the English have kicked at Gandhi who is the symbol incarnate of Indians and their inner soul. But the day has arrived when the legs of those who kicked, will break off themselves and become unworkable…’17
In Assam, the province that bordered Bengal on the east, the main Congress leaders were arrested soon after the AICC resolution. Undaunted, students and other activists hoisted flags, raised slogans and, in more remote parts, destroyed bridges, cut telegraph wires and attacked government offices. In response, the government enacted Section 144 throughout the province, rounding up hundreds of activists (including quite a few women) and putting them in jail.18
In Orissa, the province immediately to the south of Bengal, Congress leaders were taken into protective custody in the days following the Quit India resolution. But, as elsewhere, protests erupted, often led by students. In the countryside, telegraph wires were cut. Post offices were ransacked and police stations attacked. In remote Koraput, noted a police report, the speed with which some completely irresponsible Congress adherents managed to pass word round in distant hill-tribe villages that the British Raj was no more, was rather surprising.’19 Acting on this report—or rumour—tribals stormed courts and police stations, shouting slogans in praise of Gandhi and freedom, asking their fellows to stop paying taxes to a government that, in their eloquently expressive and completely unGandhian words, was (as the English translation had it) ‘not worth a single pubic hair’.20
Moving further south, in the Andhra country, ‘telephone wires were cut; rails were removed in several parts of the province. In Guntur District some stations, goods sheds and Railway Carriages were burnt. Trains were de-railed in Bellary and Karnool, Guntur, Kistna, Godavary and Vizag Districts. In Nellur District [a] police station was burnt. In Cuddapah district postal bags were looted in two places. Students abstained from attending schools and colleges en masse.’ The government responded sharply: ‘Heavy firing took place in Tenali, Guntur and Bhimavaram, and there were nearly 30 people dead. The district Congress leaders were detained. Collective fines were imposed on villages and towns where Government property was destroyed.’21
Andhra bordered Karnataka, where the ‘most phenomenal feature’ of the movement was the response of the student community, which organized boycotts and hartals in Belgaum, Dharwad, Gadag, Bangalore, Mysore, Mangalore, Bijapur, Bellari, Sirsi and other places. In Dharwad, on the 23
October, two students, a Miss Shenolikar and a Miss Gulawadi, entered the district court, hoisted the national flag, told the district judge (who was present) that he was dismissed from his office, distributed leaflets, and disappeared.22
Hindi-speaking North Indians were as energetic in their protests as their compatriots who spoke Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada or Tamil. In the holy city of Banaras, a large crowd, acting ‘in the name of Congress, marched to the Collectorate and Government buildings in order to destroy and burn papers and files in those offices and to hoist the Congress flag’. In neighbouring Ballia, a crowd of over a lakh marched to the collector’s house and then to the SP’s home too. The officials caved in, whereupon the crowd then entered their offices, and proceeded to burn the files inside. The United Provinces government sent in the military, while even bombs and machine guns were used in suppressing the rebellion.
The incidents were witnessed by a prosperous zamindar with holdings in both Ballia and Banaras. He noted the scale of the protests but was dismayed rather than impressed by it. For, in the United Provinces, there was now an ‘iron rule’ of the government, and ‘Hindus have had to pay dearly for all this. Muslims are laughing up their sleeves. They have been benefitted by a thousand and one ways. War-contracts, jobs and key-positions, all are being given to Muslims.’
After witnessing the protests first-hand, the zamindar went to the provincial capital, Lucknow. When he complained to a senior British official that the repression was excessive, the official replied that ‘Mr. Gandhi had succeeded admirably in bringing about an awakening and as long as it was a case of criticising us from outside the ring, it was alright’. He said that the British were sensitive to world opinion, and were thus willing to recognize the force of Gandhi’s criticisms of imperial rule. The official continued: ‘Had Mr. Gandhi not put on gloves, and entered the boxing ring, meaning the August Resolution, we were going to yield much more than you Indians had ever thought or expected. The moment Mr. Gandhi got into the ring, it was a case of he knocking us out, or us knocking him out.’23
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