The second reason the Chronicle blamed Jinnah was because of his refusal to allow a plebiscite. As the newspaper pointed out, the Lahore Resolution had spoken of Muslim-majority ‘regions’ and ‘areas’, not provinces. And in both Bengal and Punjab, there were large non-Muslim minorities, and even districts where non-Muslims were in a majority. Hence Gandhi had suggested a vote on separation in which all residents of these provinces would participate. But Jinnah demanded the separation of Bengal and of the Punjab and of Sindh, the NWFP and Baluchistan without any consultation with the non-Muslim inhabitants of these provinces. Jinnah’s ‘refusal to agree to a joint plebiscite of all inhabitants of these provinces’, wrote Brelvi, ‘is repugnant to any conception of democracy and fairplay and is, therefore, certainly un-Islamic’.31
On the same day, the Muslim League newspaper, Dawn, also carried a long editorial on the subject. This was most likely written by its editor, Pothan Joseph, a Christian by birth and upbringing. Dawn’s interpretation was radically opposed to the Chronicle’s. It put the blame for the failure of the talks squarely on Gandhi. In his letters to Jinnah, said the newspaper, Gandhi had raised ‘a series of conundrums’ about ‘the qualifications entitling a people to regard themselves as a nation’. The ‘tortuous procedure’ adopted by the Congress leader, remarked Dawn, suggested that ‘compliance with the Muslim claim [for Pakistan] lies on Mr. Gandhi’s lips and does not come from the heart’.
Dawn saw the demand for Pakistan as a priori and non-negotiable, and even non-testable. The creation of Pakistan, it argued, was ‘essential for the survival of the Muslims in India and vital to the civilised purpose of preventing a Central hegemony dominated by the Caste Hindus of this sub-continent’. ‘No one,’ it continued, ‘can deprive the Indian Mussalman of that intense feeling [for Pakistan] which is supported by the material conditions of his struggle for existence.’32
IV
Gandhi and Jinnah had known of each other since 1897, and known each other since 1915. Over the years, they had met and often corresponded with one another. But this was the first time the two men had such extended contact and conversations. At the end, when the talks had clearly and finally failed, Gandhi issued a press statement expressing ‘deep regret’ that no agreement was reached. But he hadn’t completely given up hope, saying that now each party was free to offer its views to the public, and ‘if we do so dispassionately and if the public co-operate, we may reach a solution of the seemingly insoluble at an early date’. The ‘chief thing’, he added, ‘is for the Press and the public to avoid partisanship and bitterness’.
As Gandhi later explained to the veteran Moderate politician Tej Bahadur Sapru, the talks had broken down on two key issues. First, Jinnah would not accept the suggestion of a plebiscite, insisting ‘that the other communities should have no voice as to Pakistan which was [the] Muslims’ exclusive right wherever they were in a majority’. Second, while Gandhi, in a significant concession, ‘accepted the concrete suggestion of division of India as between members of the same family’ who might still forge a ‘partnership [in] things of common interest’ (such as defence and communications), Jinnah ‘would have nothing short of the two-nation theory and therefore complete dissolution amounting to full sovereignty in the first instance’.33
A week after their final meeting, Jinnah told a British journalist that Gandhi’s suggestion of a plebiscite was ‘an insult to intelligence’. The interim national government asked to conduct it would be ‘a Hindu majority Government’, which would, he claimed, so demarcate boundaries and organize the plebiscites as to favour Hindus at the expense of Muslims. ‘The fact is,’ said Jinnah to this reporter, ‘the Hindus want some kind of agreement which will still give them some form of control over Muslims. They will not reconcile themselves to our complete independence.’34
No sooner had the talks ended than the correspondence between the two men was leaked to the press. It was thought this occurred as a result of a lapse by Gandhi’s staff. As a senior journalist commented: ‘Things have been very different around and about Mr Gandhi since his precious Secretary, Mahadev Desai’s, death. The Mahatma’s present entourage has caused many a chuckle among all sane-minded people visiting him.’35
Among those who read the leaked correspondence was the viceroy. He thought the letters ‘a deplorable exposure of Indian leadership’, since if Gandhi and Jinnah had worked out the elements of a solution, or at least been more civil and courteous to one another, that would have been ‘the best way’ to embarrass the rulers. As it turned out, wrote Wavell in his journal, ‘the two great mountains have met and not even a ridiculous mouse has emerged’.36
V
Since his release from jail, Gandhi had been active in the functioning of the Kasturba Gandhi Memorial Trust, formed by some friends shortly after his wife’s death. He helped raised money for the trust, and also laid down guidelines for its functioning. By early September 1944, some Rs 5.7 million had already been collected, with a further Rs 10.7 million promised. (Among the cheques received was one for ten pounds sterling from Henry and Millie Polak, a small contribution of huge symbolic value.) By mid-1945, provincial units had been set up to disburse money and oversee programmes. Numerous letters and applications for support were coming in from social work organizations across India.
The trust deed listed four aims: (i) the ‘conduct and promotion of such charitable activities as would conduce to the general welfare of the condition of poor and needy women and children in the rural areas of India’; (ii) the establishment of hospitals for women and children, maternity homes, widows’ homes and orphanages; (iii) the promotion of primary education and training in handicrafts and cottage industries for women and children in rural areas; (iv) the assisting of other institutions carrying out the objects mentioned in (i) to (iii) above.37
Addressing a meeting of the Kasturba Memorial Trust in Sevagram, Gandhi said the money collected thus far should be spent in villages and not cities, and preferably for the education of women and children. To foster local participation, he asked that 75 per cent of the money collected in a particular district or region be spent there itself, the rest going into a central fund.38
Meanwhile, in a display of churlishness, the Bombay government passed an order making it illegal for government servants to contribute to the trust set up in Kasturba Gandhi’s name. A lady doctor, who worked in a government hospital in Bombay, was barred from serving on the medical advisory council of the trust.39
Even more spiteful than the Bombay government was V.D. Savarkar, who issued a statement carried by the press under this headline: ‘THE HINDU SANGHATANISTS SHOULD NOT CONTRIBUTE A SINGLE PIE TO THE CONGRESSITE KASTURBA FUND’. In this angry and impassioned, bitter and resentful statement, Savarkar attacked Gandhi and the fund from two fronts. First, as a former revolutionary himself, he said Gandhi had never shed a tear for the martyred men and women hung or shot by the British in pursuit of their armed attempts to overthrow British rule. For Savarkar, Kasturba’s sacrifice was ‘relatively insignificant’ compared to the sufferings of those women whose husbands and brothers were tortured, killed or transported for life for opposing colonial rule.
Rather than praising their sacrifices, Gandhi, in Savarkar’s words, saw these revolutionaries as ‘a blot on the “Indian” culture and the Ahimsa/Charkha politics’. In a sharp comment on Gandhi’s loyalist beginnings, he asked: ‘Has the Congress spent a single word in commemoration of the heroic Madam Cama who championed the cause of Independence publicly, when the Congress could not dare even to claim Home Rule and Gandhiji was dancing to the tune of the British Imperial Anthem and prided himself on his hearty loyalty to the Chains that bound Mother-India!’
Second, Savarkar claimed that the money collected in Kasturba’s name would be used to promote the Congress credo of Hindu–Muslim unity to which he and his party, the Hindu Mahasabha, were so totally opposed. He invoked the memory of a previous fund with which G
andhi was associated, the Tilak Swaraj fund, a large part of which, according to Savarkar, was spent ‘to enrich the Moslem purse’ and in ‘exterminating the Tilakite principles’. He now claimed that from the money collected in memory of Kasturba, the Congress would once more ‘contribute huge sums to the Moslems as soon as they are demanded’.40
Savarkar’s statement reeked of jealousy and decades-long animosity. More interesting was a letter from another (if less embittered) Hindu Sanghatanist, the Poona writer S.L. Karandikar. He approved of a memorial to Kasturba, but thought it should take a form different from that Gandhi had outlined for it. Why, he asked, open schools for women, when Kasturba was not herself a pioneer in female education? Any memorial should reflect or represent what she stood for. And, in Karandikar’s view, Kasturba was ‘a typical Hindu lady, whose sole joy is to be a part of the life of her husband. Kasturba’s life and death is this beyond anything else.’ By her death, wrote this correspondent, ‘Kasturba has enriched the tradition of Hindu Womanhood who, during the last fifty years, have suffered silently when either the husband, the son, the father, or the brother suffered in response to the call of the country.’
Therefore, argued this Poona Hindu, the best memorial to Kasturba would be a picture gallery of women saint-martyrs, this either in a central location in Delhi or the Aga Khan Palace where she died. Here would be featured pictures of Tilak’s wife, who died when he was in Mandalay prison; of the wife of Ganpatrao Savarkar, who died when her husband and brother-in-law were in the Cellular jail in the Andamans, and of other such women who died when their male relatives were incarcerated, and ‘whose silent suffering and sacrifice is the foundation of our achievements, in all spheres of life’. This memorial would allow ‘the rising youth of the country [to] have a Darshan of these women martyrs of modern India’.
The letter was not without a grain of truth. For, Kasturba was merely Gandhi’s long-suffering wife, her life dictated by his. In that sense she embodied the orthodox, ancient and irredeemably patriarchal Hindu ideal of a wife’s devotion to her husband. But while Gandhi had treated Kasturba as an extension of himself, he now wanted her memory to inspire women to educate themselves and make their own, unfettered choices about the lives they would like to lead.
VI
While he was in jail, Gandhi followed the course of the war through the newspapers that he was permitted to read. But, due to the severe censorship imposed by the Raj, news of the Bengal famine was scarce. Now that he was out, he began receiving reports of its scale, intensity and long-term impacts. This so distressed him that in November 1944, he thought of fasting to compel the government to more actively bring succour to the citizens of rural Bengal. His doctors (and disciples) dissuaded him; given his age and his recent illnesses, it seemed not to be worth the risk.41
In December, Gandhi’s health took a turn for the worse. He was ‘feeling fatigued. Even after the noonday siesta, the brain seemed tired. There was a complete disinclination to speak or write.’ Rajaji came to Sevagram, and seeing the state he was in, told Gandhi ‘to stop all this ceaseless mental activity if you want to avoid a disaster’. Gandhi therefore decided to be silent, not for one day in a week as was his wont, but for a full four weeks at a stretch. From 4 to 31 December, he would ‘discontinue all public activities, all interviews for public or private purposes and all correspondence of any nature whatsoever’. He wouldn’t even read newspapers.42
Gandhi was lonely as well as ill. ‘Rajaji is leaving today,’ wrote Pyarelal to G.D. Birla on 6 December. ‘I wish there was someone like him to take his place by Bapu’s side. In spite of all the detachment that Bapu has cultivated he is very human and the presence of someone from among his Old Guard cannot be over-estimated.’
But Rajaji had work and family in Madras. Without any companion he could truly trust, Gandhi was desperately lonely. Bajaj, Tagore, Andrews, Mahadev and Kasturba were all dead. Nehru and Patel were absent in jail. ‘There is something frightening in his utter spiritual isolation,’ wrote Pyarelal to Birla. ‘In a measure it is inseparable from greatness. But surely something could be done to mitigate it’.43
A month’s rest helped, and, as the year 1945 dawned, Gandhi expressed afresh a desire to visit Bengal. His doctors, however, forbade him from criss-crossing the country. He was now seventy-five, and weak, and still recovering from his prison ordeal. ‘Bapu is very low,’ wrote his disciple Mridula Sarabhai to a friend in the second week of January. ‘Everybody tries to give him as much rest as possible.’44
On 26 January, Gandhi was in Sevagram. He had a quiet day; elsewhere, enthusiastic young patriots were celebrating the first ‘Independence Day’ since their leader’s release from prison. In Bombay, many meetings, processions and flag hoistings were held. The city’s cotton, bullion and share markets remained shut on the day.
Independence Day was also celebrated in Lahore, Calcutta, Poona and other cities. However, in the provinces of Bihar, Sindh and Madras, the British authorities had issued orders prohibiting the celebrations. Quite a few people defied the bans, hoisting or carrying the tricolour, and were duly arrested.45
In the last week of March, Gandhi travelled to Bombay for a month of meetings with friends, sympathizers and social workers. He was in Bombay when he heard that his former housemate and fellow Tolstoyan, Hermann Kallenbach, had died in Johannesburg. This was one more loss to add to the others, of close associates who had died in recent years. Gandhi had known Kallenbach longer than Andrews or Tagore, Bajaj or Mahadev. When Kasturba and he had sailed for India in 1914, Kallenbach was with them. Had war not broken out when they were en route to England, and had Kallenbach not been technically a German citizen and hence an ‘enemy alien’, he would have come with the Gandhis to India, sharing their life and labours in Sabarmati and Sevagram, and many other places besides. In a short but moving tribute, Gandhi called Kallenbach ‘a very dear and near friend’, who ‘used to say often that when I was deserted by the whole world, I would find him to be a true friend going with me, if need be, to the ends of the earth in search of Truth’.46
In late April, Gandhi went to the Western Ghats, where he spent two months in Mahableshwar and Panchgani, rebuilding his health away from the torrid heat of the plains.
VII
At a meeting of the All India Spinners Association in Sevagram in late March 1945, some members complained of B.R. Ambedkar’s harsh, and continuing, criticisms of the Congress. Gandhi told them that ‘if the followers of Ambedkar oppose us we should not let ourselves be provoked or give up our work because of it. We should reach their hearts and understand their feelings. If we had gone through the experiences that the Harijans have gone through, there is no telling how embittered we might not have become and how little our ahimsa would have endured. Therefore on such occasions we should look inwards and if there is the slightest vestige of untouchability left we should purge ourselves of it.’47
This was one of several statements Gandhi made at this time, re-emphasizing his commitment to ending untouchability. He no longer had time even for the caste system itself. In Bombay, in answer to a question about whether caste was ‘consistent with democracy and democratic organizations’, Gandhi replied: ‘I do not need to refer to my past writings to say what I believe today, because only what I believe today counts. I wish to say that the caste system as it exists to-day in Hinduism is an anachronism. It is one of those ugly things which will certainly hinder the growth of true religion. It must go if both Hinduism and India are to live and grow…The way to do [this] is for all Hindus to become their own scavengers, and treat the so-called hereditary Bhangis as their own brothers.’48
Two weeks later, when Gandhi was in Mahableshwar, a Congressman from Tamil Nadu, come to visit him, asked why he had not visited a famous shrine on a nearby hilltop. Gandhi answered that it was because it practised caste discrimination. ‘As long as the doors of the temples are not open to the Harijans,’ he said, ‘I shall neve
r enter them.’49
In mid-April, Gandhi’s old friend and supporter Ambalal Sarabhai wrote him a remarkable letter from Ahmedabad. Sarabhai, we may recall, had saved Gandhi’s ashram in 1915 when he admitted an ‘untouchable’ family and other patrons backed out. Now, thirty years later, he sent Gandhi a thoughtful update on the battles yet to be won. In the years since Gandhi’s famous fast at Yerwada, much progress had been made in admitting ‘untouchables’ in schools, trains, buses, etc., yet ‘very little success had been attained in the treatment of Harijans on equal footing of touchable Hindus, in private life and social intercourse’.
Sarabhai had started an experiment in his own mill, Calico, with Harijans encouraged to use the same restaurant as the other workers. Those Hindus and Muslims who objected to being served with Harijans were told that they would be served outside, much as the Harijans had been previously. This bold experiment however had not succeeded, since some Harijans who ate inside the restaurant were later set upon by Hindu and Muslim weavers, who also smashed some of the crockery in the restaurant. Sarabhai thought that those who opposed the experiment were perhaps 20 per cent of all workers, but sadly the majority had been silenced by the reactionary militants. Meanwhile, it was very hard for Harijans to find employment as weavers (who were better paid than unskilled labourers) since the thread had to be ‘kissed’ (sucked) from the shuttle, and both Hindus and Muslims objected to the kissing of a shuttle used by Harijans.
Sarabhai had asked the labour union, whose leaders were sympathetic to his scheme, to convene a meeting of workers, and tell them that the union and management both desired to end this discrimination against the Harijans. If a majority favoured non-discrimination, they should see that the small minority ‘do not molest the Harijans or take other retaliatory action’. He hoped to open the restaurant again when this agreement was reached, with the objectors served their refreshments outside.
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