Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  In December 1945, Rajaji’s little book Ambedkarism Refuted was published. Ambedkar, said Rajaji, ‘heaps ridicule on the slow pace of the progress achieved’ by the Congress in emancipating the ‘untouchables’. Surely, this was because of colonial rule? Once India was independent, the pace of reform would accelerate. In any case, argued Rajaji, ‘the progress of conditions regarding the Scheduled Castes in India does not compare ill with what has been done in America for Negroes, or in the South African republic for the natives of Africa, or for the Jews in civilized Europe’.

  Where Ambedkar had savaged Gandhi, Rajaji felt ‘that any fair-minded person must appreciate the service rendered by Gandhiji to the cause of social reform in India and admire him for having brought about a revolutionary upheaval of conscience about the so-called untouchables’. He continued: ‘Carping criticism of the pace of results in a Herculean task benefits no one’; no one, that is to say, except the rulers, the ‘British imperialist caste’, who used criticisms such as Ambedkar’s ‘as an answer to world-opinion in regard to their obstinacy towards Indian political aspirations’.

  Rajaji demonstrated that Ambedkar had been extremely selective, even tendentious, in his quotations from Gandhi’s writings. But he spoilt an otherwise good case by casting personal aspersions on his master’s fiercest critic. Gandhi and the Congress, he said, wished to remove the disabilities of all erstwhile ‘untouchables’, which would hurt educated members of this community most, since they could no longer claim special status. This, claimed Rajaji, ‘is the material explanation for the violent dislike of Gandhiji exhibited by Dr. Ambedkar who looks upon this great and inspired reformer as the worst enemy of the “untouchables”, meaning thereby of the educated and ambitious among them who find that the depressed status furnishes a short cut to positions’.6

  While his old adversary Ambedkar attacked him on one side, on the other side, Gandhi was carrying on an argument with one of his closest disciples. This was Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was a vigorous votary of rapid industrial development. He saw India’s failure to adopt the scientific method as the main cause of its subjugation at European hands. Now, after both Gandhi and he were out of jail and the negotiations for the transfer of power had begun, Nehru made it clear that when India became independent, it would adopt a model of economic development based on the factory and the city rather than the farm and the village.

  Gandhi had several times stated that Nehru was his political heir. This implied that Nehru, rather than Patel, Rajaji, Azad or Prasad, would be the prime minister of a Congress-led government when freedom finally came. Nehru and he were on the same side when it came to Hindu–Muslim harmony, the rights of women, and the like. But Gandhi worried about this fundamental difference on the economic question. His worry deepened when, in the third week of September, the CWC met in Poona, and Nehru and he had a long argument on the best way to achieve all-round economic and social progress in an independent India.

  The details of the conversations in Poona are not available. But we do have a letter that Gandhi wrote Nehru shortly afterwards, where he explained why he believed that the village must be placed at the centre of India’s economic renewal. ‘If India, and through India the world, is to achieve real freedom,’ wrote Gandhi, ‘then sooner or later we shall have to go and live in the villages—in huts, not palaces.’ It ‘does not frighten me at all’, he continued, ‘that the world seems to be going in the opposite direction. For the matter of that, when the moth approaches its doom it whirls faster and faster till it burns up. It is possible that India will not be able to escape this moth-like circling. It is my duty to try, till my last breath, to save India and through it the world from such a fate.’

  Gandhi hoped that Nehru and he could meet soon to discuss these differences. He knew that their bond was so deep that it ‘can never be broken’. The bond was personal, and it was political—‘we both live for India’s freedom’, he remarked, ‘and will be happy to die too for that freedom’. But while Gandhi was ‘an old man’, Nehru was ‘comparatively young’. That was why, observed Gandhi, ‘I have said that you are my heir. It is only proper that I should at least understand my heir and my heir in turn should understand me. I shall then be at peace.’7

  Nehru’s reply was equally long, and equally considered. He thought Gandhi idealized the Indian village, which, far from being an embodiment of truth and non-violence, was ‘backward intellectually and culturally’. The needs of the masses for food, clothing, housing, education, etc. would be better served by modern factories, modern science and technology, and modern means of transport. Nehru, however, agreed that industrial development need not be concentrated; with the availability of electric power, light and medium industries could be dispersed across India.

  Industrialization, argued Nehru, was necessary not only to meet basic human needs, but also to protect the nation’s sovereignty. In a world of competitive nation states, technical modernization was mandatory to ward off military aggression. To be sure, Nehru deplored the ‘tremendous acquisitive tendency both in individuals and groups and nations, which leads to conflicts and wars’. He hoped, within and outside India, to work to replace competition with cooperation.8

  III

  Since his release from jail, Gandhi had been keen to visit Bengal, to study the destitution that the great famine of 1943 had left in its wake. His slow recovery from his jail illness, and the fluctuating and unstable political environment, had forced him to postpone his trip several times. For, travel through Bengal was even more arduous than in other parts of India. The trains were irregular and the roads bad (or non-existent), while in the deltaic districts, canoes where passengers rocked from side to side were the only viable means of transport.

  Gandhi had a long and very complicated relationship with Bengal. He had first visited the province in 1896, and been back often. He had intense arguments with the bomb-throwing revolutionaries of Bengal, and less polemical, but arguably more productive, debates with its greatest poet, Tagore. Although the Congress was very strong in Bengal, its leaders there, from C.R. Das to Subhas Bose, were never as subservient to Gandhi as were Congressmen from other provinces.

  Gandhi’s connection with Bengal was political and it was personal. His sole romantic attachment after marriage was with that gifted and independent-minded bhadramahila, Saraladevi Chaudhurani. In August 1945, Gandhi met Saraladevi’s son, Dipak, who said that his mother was ill and depressed. On 19 August, Gandhi wrote to her: ‘Dipak gives me a sorrowful account of you. Disease like birth and death is part of us. May you have the strength to suffer what comes as your lot.’ Saraladevi had in fact died the previous day, the news not having reached Gandhi when he wrote to her.9

  Gandhi was finally permitted by his doctors to go to Bengal in December 1945. He travelled to some districts in the interior, but was otherwise based at the Sodepur Ashram, run by his long-time disciple Satis Chandra Dasgupta, and an hour away from Calcutta by road. Here, he met citizens who came to see him. He occasionally ventured out into the city, and had several meetings with the governor of Bengal, a bluff, engaging Australian named Richard Casey.

  After two weeks in and around Calcutta, Gandhi left for Santiniketan. This was his first trip there since the death of Tagore. He spoke to students, urging them to become messengers of international fellowship and peace, laid the foundation stone of a hospital carrying the name of C.F. Andrews, and walked around the place, reviving old memories. Asked by a professor whether Santiniketan should ‘allow itself to be drawn into political work’, Gandhi answered that its goals were different. While supporting the cause of India’s independence, while serving the poor and needy, the students and staff of Santiniketan should ‘keep out of the present-day political turmoil’, fulfilling instead its founder’s intellectual, cultural and moral ideals.

  In the last week of December, Gandhi visited the district of Midnapore, which had been extremely active during the Quit India movement
of 1942, so much so that activists had even at one stage set up a parallel government. Gandhi did not approve of the means the rebels had used. They had, among other things, blown up railway tracks, burnt a court and seized a police station. Gandhi chastised local Congress workers for ‘committing the mistake of thinking that all that did not involve killing was non-violence’. He warned Bengali admirers of Lenin that ‘our tradition is wholly different from Russia’s’. A non-violent revolution, he pointed out, aimed not at the ‘seizure of power’, but rather at ‘a transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power’.10

  Shortly after reaching Calcutta, Gandhi met with the governor, Richard Casey. The two men got along well, so at regular intervals Gandhi went back to Government House. Their first conversation turned to the question of food and famine. Later, Gandhi heard the governor speak on the radio, proposing an ambitious dam-building scheme to capture the waters of Bengal before they went into the sea. Gandhi wrote to the governor that ‘your gigantic project will come to nothing until the whole mass of the people of Bengal is interested in the Government of the province’. As important as utilizing ‘waste water’, he pointed out, was utilizing ‘waste labour’. The millions of peasants in Bengal must be encouraged to take up weaving and other artisanal crafts to make every hour of their day productive. If the governor thought the idea ‘practical and capable of immediate application’, Gandhi was happy to send him ‘a detailed scheme’ to be implemented with the aid of the Spinners and Village Associations that he had founded.11

  Casey wrote a long and fascinating reply, setting out his differences with Gandhi as regards rural uplift. ‘While I am at one with you in looking forward to the regeneration of village life through the provision of healthy village occupations,’ he wrote,

  I still believe that I am correct, at least in the circumstances of Bengal, in laying all the stress that I can on the control of physical environment as fundamental to prosperity. I believe that the fundamental curse of Bengal (I don’t claim to know about the rest of India) is poverty, which brings in its train illiteracy and disease. So long as the people are under-nourished and impoverished so long will it be impossible (to my way of thinking) for them to be happy or, in any complete sense, free. You know the saying: ‘Things are in the saddle and ride mankind’—which in Bengal are land and water—so that mankind may ride free.

  It seems to me that we both have the same goal but we proceed to it in different ways. The goal is human happiness—that is, freedom in the complete sense. I wish to create the physical circumstances which, in my belief, are a prerequisite to happiness. Your bolder vision, if my interpretation is correct, sees its attainment without the control of these physical circumstances.

  Casey told Gandhi that he did have ‘regard for home spinning and weaving’, and would ‘be glad to see the renaissance of village craft’. Yet, he could not see ‘that this would be a real cure in itself for the ills of Bengal. These ills are shortage of food, under-nourishment and poverty. They derive from the insufficient productivity of the land, and, in my belief, they could be largely cured by the integration and development of the land and water of the province.’

  ‘Maybe, mine is not a panacea,’ remarked Casey. ‘I remember reading somewhere that “human nature is the greatest puzzle that God has set for man in this world, and when we have solved it we shall have solved everything”. I do not look, as perhaps I should, to solve the problem of human nature, but I do look to the creation of circumstances in which human nature can best fulfil itself.’12

  Gandhi also wrote to Casey asking him to release all political prisoners. Many of those detained in Bengal’s jails had been put away on the basis of police testimonies that the accused had not seen or had any chance of contesting. Gandhi had it on good authority that ‘there is no terrorism to be feared’. He added: ‘The prisoners are all likely to be public-spirited. But that can be no reason for keeping them behind prison bars.’ Urging Casey to discharge these political detainees ‘without the slightest ado’, Gandhi asked for ‘a little grace before, as you and I hope, the transference of powers [to Indian hands] comes’.13

  Casey passed on a record of his talks with Gandhi to Lord Wavell. Apart from spinning, agriculture, political prisoners, and the like, they had spoken about the value of massages and masseurs, and even about Gandhi’s renegade son, Harilal, about whom the father said (in the governor’s recollection) that he ‘had not put any impediment in the way of his becoming a Muslim. He’d said to him that if his becoming a Muslim resulted in his giving up drink, he would be glad. But it didn’t.’

  Gandhi had told Casey that ‘the I.C.S. were responsible for a great deal of India’s troubles and difficulties. They were loyal to the British, but not to India. He said that this all started with Warren Hastings and Lord Clive, who might be heroes to [the British], but they certainly were not to Indians.’

  Casey then asked Gandhi what the British should now do in India. The notes continue:

  He said that he supposed we looked at the Congress and at the Muslim League—and said to ourselves, ‘Which shall we choose between’—on the one hand, there is the Congress who represented a very great proportion of the people of India, but who had been rebellious and difficult for a number of years—and, on the other hand, the Muslim League, who had co-operated with us for a long time, but who represented only a relatively small proportion of India—and who now took the point of view that India must be divided up, which we (the British) must realise was wrong. Were we going to support the majority (the Congress) who, in spite of the difficulties that they might have created for us in the past, now wanted the right and proper thing (a united India)—or those who had been our friends in the past and who wanted the wrong thing—a divided India? If we decided for the Muslims—for Pakistan, the Congress would never accept such a decision, and we would be doing India a final and very great disservice.14

  On the larger political question of which side the British should support in the Congress–League battle, Casey had no say. It would be the viceroy, the secretary of state and the Labour government in London who would plan out India’s constitutional future. But on matters within his domain, the governor was more than ready to help. He released political prisoners in batches, forty or fifty at a time, till the jails of Bengal only had criminals qua criminals. He provided sales tax exemptions for dhotis, lungis and saris, so as to reduce the burden on the poor. Finally, he instructed his officers to allow salt to be used for home consumption without being taxed. Thus, as he told Gandhi, in this respect at least ‘the Gandhi–Irwin Pact is being administered in a fair—and even generous—way in this part of the world’.15

  In his diary, Casey jotted down some observations he had kept out of his letter to Wavell. He recalled Gandhi saying ‘that Jinnah had told him that he (Gandhi) had ruined politics in India, by dragging up a lot of unwholesome elements in public life and giving them political prominence…’ Casey himself thought that Gandhi ‘clearly has a certain rather feminine streak in him’. The Australian was also impressed by how the ordinary Indian saw Gandhi; as he noted: ‘Each night he came to see me, his departure was remarkable in that probably 150 of our servants (Muslim and Hindu) lined the passages and the entrance to the house, to see him—all salaaming profoundly.’

  Later that month, Casey also met Nehru, Patel and Azad. In his diary entry for 10 December 1945, he noted:

  I can well believe that a good deal of our trouble and difficulty in India has been our own fault, particularly in the last 20 years or so. We (or at any rate a good many amongst us) have not sought company or the friendship of Indians for their own sake….We make them feel ill-at-ease and inferior. In its train comes the natural reaction—bitterness and dislike. We have, to an appreciable extent, dug our own grave in India by our high-hattedness—although the metaphor is not a very happy one.

  Casey then continued:

&nbs
p; There is a lack of warmth and generosity in our dealings with Indians, both Hindus and Muslims. It may be said—why should we show warmth and generosity to rebels? Well, we’ve got to make up our minds about it—whether they are to be regarded as rebels against constituted British authority or the people to whom we’re about to hand over the control of India. They’re the same people.16

  Reading these noticeably empathetic lines, one is tempted to say: if only Casey rather than Linlithgow had been viceroy of India in 1939! History, and historians, have rightly paid much attention to Gandhi’s interactions with General Smuts in South Africa and with Lord Irwin in India, encounters that had a direct bearing on politics and public policy. However, of all the imperial proconsuls Gandhi dealt with in three continents, the one he perhaps most enjoyed speaking (and arguing) with was the Australian, R.G. Casey.

  On Gandhi’s last day in Calcutta, he gave an interview to the United Press of India, the conversation focusing on the great, and recently deceased, hero of Bengal, Subhas Chandra Bose. (Bose had died in an air crash in August, after Japan’s surrender to the Allies—he was apparently en route to Russia.) Gandhi was generous to a man with whom he had had major political and philosophical differences. He warmly endorsed the adoption of the Indian National Army’s slogan Jai Hind (glory to India), noting that just because it had been used in war, it need not ‘be eschewed in non-violent action’. As for Bose himself, Gandhi remarked that he ‘always knew of his capacity for sacrifice. But a full knowledge of his resourcefulness, soldiership and organizing ability came to me only after his escape from India.’ He added: ‘The difference of outlook between him and me as to the means is too well known for comment.’17