V
On 9 October 1947, H.S. Suhrawardy came to see Gandhi. Suhrawardy had just returned from Karachi, where he had tried, but failed, to get Jinnah to sign ‘a declaration of cooperation and mutual assistance between the two dominions’, committing both to protecting their minorities and to not making provocative statements against one another. Gandhi had already signed the statement, which may have made Jinnah even more averse to joining in. Jinnah received Suhrawardy coldly, accusing him of being ‘taken in’ by Gandhi. When the Bengali reported this to him, Gandhi commented that ‘there cannot be a worse libel…You should know that I am incapable of deceiving anybody or wishing anybody ill.’ He urged Suhrawardy not to give up on his peace mission, saying: ‘If only you could get Jinnah to do the right thing, peace between the two Dominions might return.’29
In late October, a force of Afridis and Pathans, encouraged, funded and advised by the Pakistan government, entered Kashmir to seek to forcibly incorporate it into their country. Commenting on this invasion, Gandhi said ‘it is not possible to take anything from anyone by force’. He added: ‘If the people of the Indian Union are going there to force the Kashmiris, they should be stopped too, and they should stop by themselves.’
This was said on 26 October. The next day, the first batch of Indian troops was flown to Srinagar. The maharaja had asked for them in the wake of the invasion. Nehru came to Gandhi and apprised him of why the troops were sent. Gandhi accepted that the action was necessary for protecting the Valley from the raiders. But after the soldiers had saved Srinagar and Kashmir, what would happen next? Gandhi answered the question thus: ‘All that would happen would be that Kashmir would belong to the Kashmiris.’ To the Kashmiris, not to the maharaja.
Gandhi was happy that the popular leader Sheikh Abdullah had been released in time to help repulse the invaders. ‘If anyone can save Kashmir, it is the Muslims, the Kashmiri Pandits, the Rajputs and the Sikhs who can do so. Sheikh Abdullah has affectionate and friendly relations with all of them.’30
On 28 October, Gandhi met the governor general. When the conversation turned to the conflict in Kashmir, Gandhi said that if ‘Sheikh Abdullah and his men stood side by side with them [the Indian troops] in defence of their hearth and homes and womenfolk it would have a wonderful effect throughout India, whatever the outcome of the battle. The fact that Moslems and Sikhs and Hindus had fought together in a common cause would be a turning point in history.’31
In between visits to refugee camps and his own daily evening prayer meeting, Gandhi had many visitors at Birla House. Nehru and Patel came often to see him, usually separately. This was not only because he had intimate relations with both, but also because the two had recently begun drifting apart. They had different views on the communal question. Patel was still sore with the Muslims of the south and the west voting for the League in 1946 even when their districts would never be part of Pakistan. He wanted the Muslims who stayed behind in India to prove their loyalty to the Union. Nehru, on the other hand, argued that by staying back, they had already demonstrated their loyalty. He further insisted that whatever Pakistan did to its minorities, India must ensure that Muslims (and Christians) would have equal rights in the republic.32
Nehru and Patel also disagreed on the functioning of the Cabinet system. Patel thought the prime minister was merely the first among equals. He was cross that Nehru had deputed his secretary to inquire into a riot in Ajmer, when law and order came under his home ministry. Nehru answered that as the head of the government, he could send an official wherever he wished.
Nehru and Patel took their disagreements to Gandhi, independently. Both threatened to resign. To the mountain of worries confronting Gandhi, here was a new, unexpected and unwelcome one: a fight between the two men he had thought would, working together, unite the nation after he was gone. He worried too that he had lost his authority over the two men, and that Patel in particular thought his ideas had no relevance any more. As Gandhi told Kripalani (whom he had known longer than he had known either Nehru or Patel), ‘Jawaharlal at least tries to understand me, though he may not follow my advice, but Sardar thinks that I am now no good [and that] I am living in the clouds and have lost touch with the reality of the situation.’33 Speaking to his grand-niece Manu about the conflict between Nehru and Patel, Gandhi remarked: ‘Today we miss Mahadev as never before. Had he been alive, he would never have allowed things to come to such a pass.’34
VI
In the middle of November, the AICC met in New Delhi. Addressing the delegates, Gandhi told them: ‘You represent the vast ocean of Indian humanity. You will not allow it to be said that the Congress consists of a handful of people who rule the country. At least I will not allow it.’
Gandhi’s talk at the AICC focused on religious harmony. ‘India does not belong to Hindus alone,’ he insisted, ‘nor does Pakistan to Muslims.’ Congressmen may ‘blame the Muslim League for what has happened and say that the two-nation theory is at the root of all this evil and that it was the Muslim League that sowed the seed of this poison; nevertheless I say that we would be betraying the Hindu religion if we did evil because others had done it.’ Gandhi reminded the delegates that ‘it is the basic creed of the Congress that India is the home of Muslims no less than of Hindus’.35
That India did not belong to Hindus alone was also a recurrent theme in his prayer meetings. On 19 November, he spoke of how, in the old, historic locality of Chandni Chowk, shop owners who were Muslim were being forcibly driven out. Two days later, he reported that some 130 mosques in and around Delhi had been damaged or destroyed; such acts, he commented, ‘can only destroy [the Hindu] religion’.36
Gandhi also spoke of the abduction of women by rioters. In West Punjab, Hindu and Sikh girls had been captured and often forcibly converted to Islam. On the Indian side of the border, Hindus and Sikhs had acted likewise with Muslim women.
Some of Gandhi’s disciples, such as Mridula Sarabhai and Rameshwari Nehru, were working on restoring these girls and women to their families.37 They estimated that the number of abducted women was close to forty thousand in all, a large, perhaps we should say alarming, figure. ‘We have become barbarous in our behaviour,’ remarked Gandhi mournfully. ‘It is true of East Punjab as well as of West Punjab. It is meaningless to ask which of them is more barbaric. Barbarism has no degrees.’38
In the second week of December, there was a meeting of social workers in Delhi. To his colleagues working on khadi, village uplift, and Harijan work, Gandhi unburdened himself of his worries at the rather quick corrosion of values among those Congressmen who had entered the legislature or had become ministers. ‘Anybody who goes into politics gets contaminated,’ he said. ‘Let us keep out of it altogether. Our influence will grow thereby. The greater our inner purity, the greater shall be our hold on the people, without any effort on our part.’
Gandhi added that ‘the Congressmen are not sufficiently interested in constructive work. If they were, it should not have been necessary for us to meet here.’ He urged constructive workers to strive to ‘resuscitate the village, make it prosperous and give it more education and more power’. When told that the government sometimes obstructed their efforts, Gandhi replied: ‘If the people are with you, the Government are bound to respond. If they do not, they will be set aside and another installed in their place.’39
The conflict in Kashmir had escalated. The maharaja had acceded to India, enraging Pakistan, who now threw regular troops into the battlefield, to supplement the raiders they had previously promoted. In the first week of January, the Government of India decided to take the matter to the United Nations. Gandhi felt that it might have been better to keep this a bilateral affair. He thought it not too late to invite Pakistan’s representatives to Delhi, and ‘with God as witness find a settlement’.40
VII
Four weeks after Partition and Independence, Lord Mountbatten had written to Prime Minister Attlee
that ‘we are now under a far greater pressure than at any time since we came out here…Nevertheless I honestly feel that we are all beginning to get a grip on a wellnigh desperate situation, and I feel we shall pull through all right if none of my vital ministers are bumped off—a factor which is not impossible of fulfilment with the fear-crazed, half-mad crowds of people roaming the streets of Delhi.’41
The fear was real, the madness partly provoked. The riots of 1946–47 had brought radicals on both sides to the fore. On the Muslim side, it was the Muslim National Guards and the Khaksars; on the Hindu side, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Founded in 1925, the RSS was now led by M.S. Golwalkar, an intense man of extreme views, determined to purge India of all non-Hindu influences. RSS cadres had played an active part in the violence in the Punjab. Now, in Delhi, they sought to crystallize and take advantage of the swarm of Hindu and Sikh refugees that had come into the city.42
On 8 March 1947, a rally of RSS workers of the Delhi province was held. Some 100,000 volunteers participated. The chief guest was M.S. Golwalkar, who told the gathering that it ‘was the duty of every Hindu to defend his religion’.
Two days later, a meeting of RSS leaders was held in the home of one Sham Behari Lal in Daryaganj. The attendees seemed to be mostly Hindu merchants. The fragile Hindu–Muslim situation in Punjab was discussed. One Lala Hari Chand presented a purse of Rs 100,000 to M.S. Golwalkar on behalf of the Delhi branch. Golwalkar, in his speech, said that if the Hindus perished, the Sangh would perish. Golwalkar added that ‘the disunity among Hindus in the Punjab was the cause of the present calamity. The Sangh should unite the Hindus and the capitalists should help by funds.’43
In the last week of September 1947, Gandhi spoke to a group of RSS workers in the Harijan Colony. He praised their discipline and the absence of untouchability within their ranks, but told them that ‘in order to be truly useful, self-sacrifice had to be combined with purity of motive and true knowledge’. Many allegations that the Sangh was against Muslims had been brought to Gandhi’s notice. He reminded the Sangh workers that Hinduism was not an exclusive religion, and that Hindus ‘could have no quarrel with Islam’. The strength of the Sangh, said Gandhi, ‘could be used in the interests of India or against it’.44
Gandhi was ambivalent about the RSS; the Sangh, for their part, actively distrusted him. An article in their magazine, Organiser, savagely attacked Gandhi’s attempts at forging communal peace in Bengal. ‘Nero fiddled when Rome burnt,’ it remarked. ‘History is repeating itself before our very eyes. From Calcutta Mahatma Gandhi is praising Islam and crying Allah-o-Akbar and enjoining Hindus to do the same, while in the Punjab and elsewhere most heinous and shameless barbarities and brutalities are being perpetrated in the name of Islam and under the cry of Allah-o-Akbar.’
Gandhi had reached out to the Muslims; but the RSS believed that ‘Muslims do not attach any importance to Gandhiji and his words unless it suits them. His policy towards the Muslims has utterly failed to the chagrin and detriment of Hindus. He is, however, still held in great reverence and esteem by the Hindus, although they are in no mood to appreciate his subtleties and much less his Islamic preaching and appeasement.’
This article in the Organiser urged Gandhi to put his acknowledged leadership of the Hindus to other ends. The Mahatma, it said, ‘has unprecedented opportunity of organising and consolidating Hindus and making them and Hindusthan great and strong within and without to be reckoned with by any aggressive nation of the world’.45
This was at once a critique and a lament. If only Gandhi would use his status and position to actively and militantly lead the Hindus, thus to show Muslims their place while simultaneously forcing Hindus themselves into the councils of the world! From the point of view of the RSS, Gandhi was a leader gone awry. Their own endeavour, as a policeman assigned to their beat reported, was ‘for building the Hindus physically strong and for establishing Hindu rule in India’. The RSS believed ‘that the present government was not cent per cent a Hindu Government but still they were not opposed to it as with the help of this government they would be able to establish purely a Hindu State’.
The police report continued:
According to the Sangh volunteers, the Muslims would quit India only when another movement for their total extermination similar to the one which was started in Delhi sometime back would take place….They were waiting for the departure of Mahatma Gandhi from Delhi as they believed that so long as the Mahatma was in Delhi, they would not be able to precipitate their designs into action. They were further of the opinion that at the time of the forthcoming Id-ul-Zuha festival, if the Muslims would slaughter any kine [cows] of which the Sangh people would get a scent, then there was every possibility of communal disturbances in Delhi.46
In November 1947, M.S. Golwalkar returned to Delhi. He collected money from supporters, met RSS cadres and assessed the progress of the Sangh in Delhi. Several thousand new members had been enrolled. An intelligence bureau report dated 15 November noted that ‘the workers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, especially those coming from West Punjab as refugees, intend starting communal trouble in Delhi after the Diwali festival. They say they could not tolerate the sight of Muslims moving about in Delhi and collecting large amounts from business while the Hindu and Sikh refugees, who were made destitute for no fault of theirs but only because they opposed the Muslim League and establishment of Pakistan, were dying of starvation and would have to freeze dead with chill in the coming winter….It is reported that some [RSS] workers have gone out to fetch arms and ammunition for the purpose.’47
The annual function of the Delhi RSS was celebrated at Ramlila Ground on 7 December. The main speech was by Golwalkar, who spoke for an hour and a half. He began on a visible note of self-congratulation: ‘The RSS had so many branches throughout the length and breadth of India that it would take twenty to twenty-five years to visit all of them. Despite continuous touring he had succeeded in seeing only a few of them. People were surprised to see the progress of this organisation, which was not heard of a few years back, and regarding which they had seen nothing in the press…’
Golwalkar then turned to the aims and ideals of the Sangh. After eulogizing the medieval warrior-kings Shivaji and Rana Pratap, he spoke of the importance of Hindu unity and self-respect. ‘We should not be ashamed to call ourselves Hindus,’ he remarked. ‘The Sangh had taken a vow to keep up our ancient culture…’
The following evening, a smaller and more focused meeting was held in the Sangh’s camp on Rohtak Road. Some two thousand RSS full-timers were present. Addressing this group of activists, Golwalkar said, ‘We should be prepared for guerrilla warfare on the lines of the tactics of Shivaji. The Sangh will not rest content until it had finished Pakistan. If anyone stood in our way we will have to fight him too, whether it was Nehru Government or any other Government. The Sangh could not be won over.’
Also in the meeting was a policeman in plain clothes. His report noted that ‘referring to Muslims’, M.S. Golwalkar
said that no power on Earth could keep them in Hindustan. They would have to quit the country. Mahatma Gandhi wanted to keep the Muslims in India so that the Congress may profit by their votes at the time of election. But, by that time, not a single Muslim will be left in India….Mahatma Gandhi could not mislead them any longer. We have the means whereby such men can be immediately silenced, but it is our tradition not to be inimical to Hindus. If we are compelled, we will have to resort to that course too.48
The mood in Delhi during the second half of 1947 was very ugly. Angered by the violence in the Punjab, inflamed by the stories carried by Sikh and Hindu refugees, RSS militants in India’s capital wished to purge this ancient city of its Islamic influences, of its large and well-established Muslim population. M.S. Golwalkar and the RSS were even thinking of having men like Gandhi and Nehru—who stood in the way of making India a
Hindu theocratic state—‘immediately silenced’.
VIII
In Birla House, a new member had joined Gandhi’s entourage, a young English Quaker named Richard Symonds. He first met Gandhi with Horace Alexander in June 1942, and then caught up with him again in late 1945. In September 1947, Symonds returned to India to work among Partition refugees. In December, he fell seriously ill with typhoid, and was admitted into a hospital, from where Gandhi had him removed to Birla House, where he spent several weeks recovering.
Every day, Gandhi would drop in to see the patient, and have a chat. When Symonds, agitated, spoke of Partition and its consequences, Gandhi instead turned the conversation to when he was studying law in London, the ‘only time he said, he was popular with the British’, because at dinner his fellow students could have his share of the wine allotted to their table. On Christmas Day, Gandhi had Symonds’s room decorated with streamers, and when he saw that Alexander had brought some celebratory sherry, remarked: ‘I see you are having high jinks. Well, what would not be right for me may be right for you.’
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