Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  5. Walchand Hirachand to G.D. Birla, telegram dated 11 July 1931, Subject File 84, Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML.

  6. See Muriel Lester to Gandhi, 13 March 1931, in Subject File 81, Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML.

  7. Muriel Lester, Entertaining Gandhi (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1932), pp. 34–35.

  8. The Observer, 13 September 1931.

  9. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 8–10.

  10. Letter of 16 September 1931, Nehru Papers, NMML.

  11. Reports in MG, 14 September 1931, and in the Observer, 13 September 1931.

  12. Police note dated 18 September 1931, MEPO 38/156, NAUK.

  13. Agatha Harrison, ‘88 Knightsbridge, London’, in Chandrashanker Shukla, Gandhiji as We Know Him (Bombay: Vora and Co. Ltd, 1945), pp. 82–88.

  14. Lord Willingdon to Gandhi, 4 September, 1931, SN 17642, SAAA.

  15. CWMG, XLVIII, p. 12.

  16. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 13–20.

  17. See Vasant Moon, editor, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 2 (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1982), pp. 596–99.

  18. CWMG, XLVII, pp. 26–34.

  19. C.F. Andrews, ‘Mr. Gandhi: The Champion of the Very Poor’, MG, 24 September 1931.

  20. MG, 26 September 1931.

  21. See Margarita Barns, India: Today and Tomorrow (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937), p. 80.

  22. Manchester Guardian, 28 September 1931.

  23. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 24–25.

  24. Observer, 11 October 1931.

  25. Police note dated 12 October 1931, MEPO 38/156, NAUK; C. Rajagopalachari and J.C. Kumarappa, editors, The Nation’s Voice: Being a Collection of Gandhiji’s Speeches in England and Sjt. Mahadev Desai’s Account of the Sojourn (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1932), p. 243.

  26. Observer, 1 November 1931. Among the students who heard Gandhi was an American, Dean Rusk, later to be his country’s Secretary of State. ‘Despite his slight frame and loincloth and his philosophy of non-violence,’ recalled Rusk, ‘Gandhi was far stronger than he is usually portrayed. He was a dynamic personality, vibrant and inspiring, not at all weak or feeble.’ Dean Rusk (as told to Richard Rusk), As I Saw It (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 72.

  27. See Drusilla Scott, A.D. Lindsay: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), pp. 214–16; idem, ‘Gandhi in Oxford’, Balliol College Annual Record 1994, pp. 58–62.

  28. Untitled memoir by R.O. Hicks, in Hicks Papers, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge.

  29. MG, 17 September 1931.

  30. MG, 24 September 1931.

  31. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 79–80.

  32. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 106–07.

  33. CWMG, XLVII, pp. 160–61.

  34. CWMG, XLVIII, p. 179.

  35. CWMG, XLVIII, p. 223.

  36. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 297–98.

  37. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 115–16.

  38. Mahadev Desai to Jawaharlal Nehru, 25 September 1931, Nehru Papers, NMML.

  39. Interview with the Daily Herald, CWMG, XLVIII, p. 207.

  40. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 140–41.

  41. CWMG, XLVIII, p. 229.

  42. MG, 21 September 1931.

  43. Clare Sheridan, To the Four Winds (London: Andre Deutsch, 1957), pp. 264ff.

  44. John Haynes Holmes, ‘I Meet Gandhi’, Unity, 23 November 1931.

  45. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 47–48; Lester, Entertaining Gandhi, pp. 79–80.

  46. MG, 23 September 1931.

  47. Gandhi to Albert Einstein, 18 October 1931, CWMG, XLVIII, p. 183.

  48. See GBI, pp. 42–44, 47–50.

  49. CWMG, XLVII, pp. 326–27.

  50. CWMG, XLVII, pp. 272–73.

  51. Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: Volume III, 1918–1950: The Lure of Fantasy (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 286.

  52. Mahadev Desai to Hermann Kallenbach, 4 November 1931, Kallenbach Papers, NAI.

  53. Copy of printed article by Horace Alexander, ‘Mahatma Gandhi: What Manner of Man’, date and source unknown, in Box 2, Benthall Papers, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge.

  Alexander had visited Gandhi in Sabarmati in 1928, and kept in close touch since. See Geoffrey Carnall, Gandhi’s Interpreter: A Life of Horace Alexander (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), Chapter 3 and passim.

  54. See Dalal, Gandhi: 1915–1948, p. 92.

  55. ‘Gandhi’, undated 10-page typescript in Box 2, Benthall Papers, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge.

  56. Viscount Templewood, Nine Troubled Years (London: Collins, 1954), pp. 59–60.

  57. Jawaharlal Nehru to Gandhi, letters of 27 September and 4 October 1931, SNs 17863 and 17973, SAAA.

  58. CWMG, XLVII, p. 173.

  59. CWMG, XLVIII, p. 351.

  60. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 356–68.

  61. MG, 16 December 1931.

  62. MG, 7 December 1931.

  63. See, for example, the material in Correspondence File No. 18, Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML, as well as SNs 17993 and 18060, SAAA.

  64. See photograph in Subject File 81, Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML.

  65. See Mira Kamdar, ‘When Paris Met the Mahatma’, Caravan, December 2011.

  66. See Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence, pp. 166–234.

  67. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 395–98, 498–500.

  68. Mahadev Desai to Dr Scarpa, 2 December 1931, copy in D.G. Tendulkar Papers, NMML.

  69. Report by the Rome correspondent, MG, 18 December 1931.

  70. ‘Pope Refuses to Meet Gandhi in Scanty Garb’, Associated Press, 12 December 1931, in Subject File 312, Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML.

  71. Gandhi to Romain Rolland, 20 December 1931, CWMG, XLVII, pp. 429–30.

  72. ‘A Retrospect’ YI, 31 December 1931, CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 432–36.

  Chapter Twenty: Arguments with Ambedkar

  1. CWMG, XLVIII, p. 445.

  2. Gandhi to Rajagopalachari, 28 August 2016, CWMG, XLVII, p. 372.

  3. Lord Irwin to Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, 1 October 1930, in Mss Eur C 152/19, APAC/BL.

  4. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 446–47.

  5. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 459, 500–02, 472–75, 469–72.

  6. See Source Material, Volume III, Part IV, pp. 454–56.

  7. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 490–92.

  8. CWMG, XLVIII, pp. 2, 531–32.

  9. Gandhi to Samuel Hoare, 15 January 1932, CWMG, XLIX, pp. 10–11.

  10. Gandhi to Frederick Sykes, 23 January 1932, CWMG, XLIX, pp. 19–20.

  11. New York Times, 7 April 1932, clipping in Subject File 312, Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML.

  12. Gandhi to Manu Gandhi, 4 April 1932, CWMG, XLIX, p. 269.

  13. Gandhi to Harilal Gandhi, 27 April 1932, CWMG, XLIX, p. 375.

  14. Gandhi to Narandas Gandhi, 26 May 1932, CWMG, XLIX, p. 498.

  15. See CWMG, XL, pp. 327–31, 335–36.

  16. Gandhi to Hoare, 11 March 1932; Hoare to Gandhi, 13 April 1932, CWMG, XL, pp. 190–91, 533–34.

  17. Gandhi to Ramsay MacDonald, 18 August 1932, CWMG, XL, pp. 383–84.

  18. CWMG, XL, pp. 466–69.

  19. Macdonald’s letter was reproduced in BC, 13 September 1932.

  20. See BC, 6 September 1932.

  21. B.G. Horniman, ‘Tragedy Must be Averted’, BC, 13 September 1932.

  22. Interview in BC, 17 September 1932.

  23. Ambedkar’s statement was reproduced in full in BC, 19 September 1932.

  24. CWMG, LI, pp. 62–63, 66–68.

  25. ToI, 19 September 1932.

  26. CWMG, LI, pp. 101, 109.

  27. Report in ToI, 21 September 1932; IAR, 1932, Volume 2, p. 242.

  28. CWMG, LI, pp. 116–20.

  29. Source Material, Volume III, Part IV, pp. 835–36.

>   30. See reports in BC, 21 September 1932.

  31. ToI, 22 September 1932.

  32. CWMG, LI, pp. 458–60.

  33. Reports in BC, 23 September 1932; ToI, 23 September 1932.

  34. Horniman, ‘Enthusiasm for Temple-Entry Must Not Be Allowed to Wane’, BC, 24 September 1932.

  35. Aloysius Soares, Down the Corridors of Time: Recollections and Reflexions, Volume I: 1891–1948 (Bombay: published by the author, 1971), p. 327.

  36. Pyarelal, The Epic Fast (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1932), p. 63.

  37. Ibid., p. 65.

  38. Ibid., p. 71.

  39. Source Material, Volume III, Part IV, pp. 206–10, 491.

  40. Pyarelal, The Epic Fast, pp. 153–56.

  41. Reports in BC, 26 September 1932.

  42. See Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatmaji & the Depressed Humanity (Calcutta: Visva-bharati Bookshop, 1932), pp. 4–5.

  43. Chandiwala, At the Feet of Bapu, p. 74.

  44. Letter dated Poona, 29 September 1932, addressed to ‘My Dear Charlie’, from a person signing himself ‘Bond’, in Mss Afr.s. 2307, Box 7, File 3, Rhodes House Library, Oxford.

  45. CWMG, LI, pp. 143–44.

  46. MacFleck, ‘The Moral of the Fast’, New Statesman and Nation, 1 October 1932.

  47. B.R. Ambedkar to A.V. Thakkar, 14 November 1932 (copy), SN 18642, SAAA.

  48. IAR, 1932, Volume 2, pp. 257–58, 281–82.

  49. ‘Why “Harijans”’, CWMG, LIII, pp. 266–67.

  50. CWMG, XLI, pp. 347–48, 462–63.

  51. CWMG, LI, pp. 376–77.

  52. CWMG, LII, p. 211.

  53. News reports in Subject File No. 23, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fourth Instalment, NMML.

  54. Gandhi to M.A. Ananta Rau, 17 December, 1932; Gandhi to Mathurudas Trikumji, 23 December 1932; Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, 31 December 1932, in CWMG, LII, pp. 219, 269, 311–12.

  55. CWMG, LII, pp. 435–36.

  56. Kamal Kumar Banerji to Gandhi, 6 December 1932, SN 18664, SAAA; Gandhi to Kamal Kumar Banerji, 14 December 1932, CWMG, XLII, p. 191.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Shaming the Hindus

  1. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, letters of 23 August and 12 September 1932, in Mss Eur F 237/4, APAC/BL (emphasis in the original).

  2. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 25 September, 1932, in ibid.

  3. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 10 October 1932, in ibid.

  4. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 30 October 1932, in ibid.

  5. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 30 December 1932, in ibid.

  6. CWMG, LII, pp. 347–50.

  7. CWMG, LII, pp. 498–500. The meeting took place on 4 February 1933.

  8. ‘Dr. Ambedkar and Caste’, H, 11 February 1933, CWMG, LIII, pp. 260–62.

  9. Home Secretary to Inspector General of Police, 28 February 1933, Source Material, Volume III, Part VI, p. 477.

  10. C. Rajagopalachari to Gandhi, 12 December 1932, CWMG, LII, p. 434 (emphasis in the original).

  11. C. Rajagopalachari to G.D. Birla, 10 January 1933, SN 20198, SAAA.

  12. Gandhi to A.V. Thakkar, 19 January 1933, CWMG, LIII, p. 54.

  13. A.V. Thakkar to C. Rajagopalachari, 19 January 1933, SN 20057, SAAA.

  14. ‘An Open Letter on Temple Entry to the Viceroy & Governor-General of India and the Central Legislature of India, by His Holiness Jagadguru Shri Shankaracharya of Puri’, an eight-page letter published by the All India Varnashrama Swarajya Sangh, and printed at the Delhi Printing Works, n.d., c. June 1933, SN 21582, SAAA.

  15. The Authoritative Opinion of His Holiness Shree Shankaracharya of Sankeshwar-Karavir Peeth on the Anti-Religious Bills Now Pending Before the Legislative Assembly (Bombay: The Gomantak Press, 1934).

  16. Chief Secretary, United Provinces, to Home Secretary, Government of India, 10 August 1934, in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL.

  17. See ‘Gandhi’s Ambedkar’, in Ramachandra Guha, An Anthropologist Among the Marxists and Other Essays (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).

  18. L.R. Pangarkar to Gandhi, 15 January 1933, SN 20047, SAAA.

  19. See Source Material, Volume III, Part V, pp. 90–95

  20. Jawaharlal Nehru to Gandhi, 7 March 1933, SN 19008, SAAA.

  21. Polak to Gandhi, 1 June 1933, SAAA.

  22. Kasturba to Gandhi, letters of 13 March, 9 April and c. 24 April 1933, in Source Material, Volume III, Part VI, pp. 127, 201–03, 242–43.

  23. CWMG, LIV, p. 235.

  24. CWMG, LV, pp. 16, 38.

  25. CWMG, LV, pp. 74–75, 77.

  26. These paragraphs are based on CWMG, LV, pp. 55, 92, 121–22, 128, 441; Kasturba to Gandhi, 5 May 1933, SN 21170, SAAA; Harilal to Gandhi, 5 May 1933, SN 21213, SAAA; Mira to Gandhi, 2 May 1933, SN 21110, SAAA.

  27. ‘The Beginning of the Yajna’, Harijanbandhu, 7 May 1933; ‘All About the Fast’, H, 8 July 1933, CWMG, LV, pp. 135–36, 254–56.

  28. Devadas Gandhi to Padmaja Naidu, 8 May 1933, Padmaja Naidu Papers, NMML.

  29. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 8 May 1933, in Mss Eur F 237/5, APAC/BL.

  30. Devadas Gandhi to Padmaja Naidu, 8 May 1933, Padmaja Naidu Papers, NMML.

  31. CWMG, LV, pp. 177–78, 444–45.

  32. CWMG, LV, pp. 200–01.

  33. Police report dated 17 June 1933, in F. 800 (40) (4) AA-II, Home (Special), MSA.

  34. CWMG, LV, pp. 265–69, 276.

  35. IAR, 1933, Volume 2, p. 329.

  36. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 1 August 1933, in Mss Eur F 237/5, APAC/BL.

  37. H.N. Brailsford, ‘Hitlerism Wins in India’, originally in Reynold News, reprinted in Free Press Journal, 13 August 1933, clipping in F. 800 (40) (4) AA-II, Home (Special), MSA.

  38. Mahadev Desai to Mira, 12 October 1933, in Ghanshyam Das Birla, Bapu: A Unique Association (in four volumes) (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1977), Volume I, pp. 323–28.

  39. CWMG, LV, pp. 353–54, 468–69, 393.

  40. Lord Willingdon to Florence Brooks, 21 August 1933, in Mss Eur F 237/5, APAC/BL.

  41. CWMG, LV, pp. 373, 425–26.

  42. Richard Gregg to Gandhi, 31 August 1933, Personal Correspondence Files, Gandhi Papers, NMML.

  43. Gandhi to Agatha Harrison, 16 November 1933, CWMG, LVI, pp. 232–33.

  44. These methods are described in some detail in the intelligence reports contained in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL; as well as in S. Mahadevan, Mahatma Gandhi’s Warning and Flashes in Harijan Tour (Madras: Journalist Publishing House, 1936), passim.

  45. BC, 11 November 1933.

  46. CWMG, LVI, pp. 250–53.

  47. BC, 24 November 1933.

  48. Mahadevan, Mahatma Gandhi’s Warning and Flashes, pp. 8–12.

  49. Letter dated 17 November 1933 from the Chief Secretary, Central Provinces, to all Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners, in File No. 9 of 1933, Political and Military Records, Nagpur Division, VAN.

  50. This account is based on letters and documents in File No. 800 (40) (17) of 1933, MSA.

  51. Mira to Devadas Gandhi, 12 December 1933, Devadas Gandhi Papers, NMML.

  52. See H, 5 January 1934.

  53. CWMG, LVI, p. 345.

  54. District Magistrate, Kistna, to Chief Secretary, Madras, 22 December 1933, in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL.

  55. CWMG, LVI, pp. 460–61, 465, 470; CWMG, LVII, pp. 18–19.

  56. Muriel Lester to C.F. Andrews, 16 February 1934, Mss Afr.s. 2307, Box 7, File 3, Rhodes House Library, Oxford.

  57. Muriel Lester to Gandhi, c. April 1934, Personal Correspondence Files, M.K. Gandhi Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML.

  58. Mirza Ismail, My Public Life (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1954), pp. 27–30.

  59. See CWMG, LVI, pp. 416–17; CWMG, LVII, pp. 35–36.

  60. CWMG, LVII, pp. 45–47, 503–04.

  61. See http://www.thehind
u.com/​opinion/​op-ed/​taking-a-comprehensive-view-of-quakes/​article7216725.ece;article/​724133/​suggesting-religious-reasons-for-quakes-isnt-new-mahatma-gandhi-did-that-in-1934 (accessed 22 May 2015).

  62. See Gandhi to Rajendra Prasad, c. 28 January 1934, CWMG, LVII, p. 61.

  63. Letter dated c. 31 January 1934, CWMG, LVII, p. 74.

  64. Mahadevan, Mahatma Gandhi’s Warning and Flashes in Harijan Tour, pp. 135–40.

  65. CWMG, LVII, p. 112.

  66. CWMG, LVII, p. 160.

  67. Collector of North Arcot, quoted in Chief Secretary, Madras, to Home Secretary, Delhi, 1 March 1934, in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL.

  68. ‘Draft Rules for the Disbursement of Gandhi’s Harijan Purse Tour Fund’, H, 2 March 1934.

  69. ‘Our Shame’, H, 9 March 1934, CWMG, LVII, pp. 259–62.

  70. CWMG, LVII, pp. 288–89, 358.

  71. Agatha Harrison to C.F. Andrews, Patna, 7 April 1934, in Temp Mss 883/1/12, Agatha Harrison Papers, Friends House, Euston.

  72. Chief Secretary, Assam, to Home Secretary, Delhi, letters of 21 April and 4 May 1934, in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL.

  73. CWMG, LVII, pp. 338, 352, 363–64, 449–54.

  74. CWMG, LVIII, pp. 27–29, 37–38; Minoo Masani, Bliss Was It in That Dawn: A Personal Memoir upto Independence (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1977), pp. 56ff.

  75. Gandhi to Premabehn Kantak, 10 September 1935, CWMG, XLI, p. 403.

  76. CWMG, LVII, pp. 474–75.

  77. CWMG, LVIII, p. 82.

  78. Home Secretary, Bombay, to Home Secretary, Delhi, 17 July 1934, in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL.

  79. ‘Attempt on Mr. Gandhi’s Life at Poona’, ToI, 27 June 1934; ‘Poona Bomb Outrage on Mahatma’, BC, 26 June 1934.

  80. ‘Congratulation’, BC, 26 June 1934.

  81. CWMG, LVIII, pp. 108–09.

  82. Mahadevan, Mahatma Gandhi’s Warning and Flashes in Harijan Tour, Preface.

  83. See Chief Secretary, United Provinces, to Home Secretary, GoI, 10 August 1934, in L/PJ/7/595, APAC/BL.

  84. CWMG, LVIII, pp. 259–61, 266–68, 273–74, 277–78.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: A Second Sabbatical

  1. This account is based on copies of the original correspondence in E.S. Reddy Papers, NMML.

  2. See Birla, Bapu, Volume I, pp. 358–59.