Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  63. Gandhi to Wavell, 15 July 1945, CWMG, LXXX, p. 426.

  64. Wavell to King George VI, 19 July 1945, ToP, V. p. 1279.

  Chapter Thirty-three: Prelude to Partition

  1. Gandhi to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, 4 August 1945, CWMG, LXXX, p. 69.

  2. B.R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1945).

  3. CWMG, LXXXI, pp. 119–20.

  4. CWMG, LXXXI, p. 169.

  5. Excerpts from speech of 20 December 1931, in Subject File No. 23, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fourth Instalment, NMML.

  6. C. Rajagopalachari, Ambedkarism Refuted (Bombay: Hind Kitabs, 1945), pp. 5–6, 13, 16–17, 23–27, 32–33, etc.

  7. Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, 5 October 1945, CWMG, LXXXI, pp. 319–21.

  8. Nehru to Gandhi, 9 October 1945, in Uma Iyengar and Lalitha Zackariah, Together They Fought: Gandhi–Nehru Correspondence, 1921–1948 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 452–56.

  9. Letter of 19 August 1945, CWMG, LXXXI, p. 140.

  10. CWMG, LXXXII, pp. 236–42, 277–79, 333–35.

  11. Gandhi to Casey, 8 December 1945, CWMG, LXXXII, pp. 180–81.

  12. Casey to Gandhi, 10 December 1945, in Diaries of R.G. Casey, Accession Number 3284, on microfilm, NMML.

  13. Gandhi to Casey, letters of 12 and 16 December 1945, CWMG, LXXXII, pp. 180–81, 201–02, 215.

  14. ‘Extracts from the Governor of Bengal’s diary notes dated 22nd December 1945’, in R/3/2/57, APAC/BL.

  15. Casey to Gandhi, letters of 30 January and 1 February 1946, in Volume 155, Gandhi Papers, Series 4, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML. Cf. also R.G. Casey, An Australian in India (London: Hollis and Carter, 1947), pp. 55–63.

  16. Diaries of R.G. Casey, Accession Number 3284, on microfilm, NMML.

  Casey’s wife was also greatly taken with their visitor. Gandhi ‘had an extraordinary power over Indian people’, she wrote. Whenever he ‘came and went through the portals of Government House all our staff, clerks, domestics, gardeners, of whatever religion or caste—all living creatures—crowded the entrance hall on his arrival and departure, greeting him reverently after their own fashion. This happened to no one else who visited us.’ Cf. Maie Casey, Tides and Eddies (London: Michael Joseph, 1966), pp. 155–56.

  17. CWMG, LXXXII, p. 415.

  18. Sastri to Desai, 7 July 1939, in V.S. Srinivasa Sastri Papers, Last Instalment, NMML.

  19. See Translator’s Preface to M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated from the original in Guajarati by Mahadev Desai (first published in 1927; second, revised edition Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1940).

  20. T.N. Jagadisan, V.S. Srinivasa Sastri (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1969), pp. 182–83. Sastri died on 17 April 1946. Gandhi, who was then in Delhi, issued a brief, dignified statement, noting that ‘though we differed in politics, our hearts were one and I could never think that his patriotism was less than that of the tallest patriot’. See CWMG, LXXXIV, p. 19.

  21. CWMG, LXXXIII, pp. 75, 78–81.

  22. Amrit Kaur to N.K. Bose, 5 February 1946, Group 14, Nirmal Kumar Bose Papers, NAI.

  23. Jiwanji Desai to Khan Sahib Mohammed Nasrullah, Assistant Secretary, Department of Industries and Supplies, Government of India, 25 February 1946, in Volume 136, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  24. Lalit Mohan Garg to Pyarelal, 17 February 1946, in ibid.

  25. See Sho Kuwajima, Muslims, Nationalism and the Partition: 1946 Provincial Elections in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998); David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); idem, ‘A Magnificent Gift: Muslim Nationalism and the Election Process in Colonial Punjab’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 40, Number 3, July 1998.

  26. See, for more details, Kuwajima, Muslims, Nationalism and the Partition.

  27. See Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, ‘Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945–7’, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 34, Number 4, 2000.

  28. This account of the 1946 naval mutiny draws on B.C. Dutt, Mutiny of the Innocents (Bombay: Sindhu Publications, 1971); Percy S. Gourgey, The Indian Naval Revolt of 1946 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1996). Cf. also IAR, 1946, Volume I, pp. 285ff.

  29. CWMG, LXXXIII, pp. 171–72, 426–27.

  30. CWMG, LXXXIII, pp. 245–46.

  31. See CWMG, LXXXIII, Appendix XI, pp. 432–33.

  32. Pethick-Lawrence to Gandhi, 28 March 1946, in Volume 157, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  33. CWMG, LXXXIII, pp. 354–55, 437–38, 376–77.

  34. Z.A. Khan to Gandhi, 17 April 1946; Gandhi to Z.A. Khan, 24 April 1946 (not in CWMG), both in Volume 91, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments. NMML.

  35. CWMG, LXXXIV, pp. 92–93.

  36. CWMG, LXXXIV, pp. 462–63, 122–23.

  37. See Correspondence and Documents Connected with the Conference between the Cabinet Mission and His Excellency the Viceroy and Representatives of the Congress and the Muslim League, May 1946 (Cmd. 6829: London: HMSO, 1946).

  38. CWMG, LXXXIV, p. 150.

  39. CWMG, LXXXIV, pp. 467–76.

  40. Gandhi to Pethick-Lawrence, letters of 19, 20 and 22 May; Pethick-Lawrence to Gandhi, 20 May, CWMG, LXXXIV, pp. 165, 172–74, 183, 477.

  41. Gandhi to Wavell, 12 June 1946, CWMG, LXXXIV, p. 320.

  42. CWMG, LXXXIV, p. 345.

  43. See Maurice Hallet (Governor, United Provinces) to Francis Mudie (Home Member, Government of India), undated letter, c. late June 1946, in Mss Eur F 164/1, APAC/BL.

  44. Wavell, The Viceroy’s Journal, pp. 197, 220, 260–61, 413.

  45. For a broader analysis of the Cabinet Mission and why it failed, see Clarke, The Cripps Version, Part V.

  46. For the details of how Nehru became Congress president in 1946, see Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel, p. 369f.

  47. Cf. my essay ‘Verdicts on Nehru: The Rise and Fall of a Reputation’, in Ramachandra Guha, Patriots and Partisans (New Delhi: Allen Lane, 2012).

  48. Cf. also Rajmohan Gandhi, The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi (New Delhi: Viking, 1995), Chapter 10, ‘Sons and Heirs’.

  Chapter Thirty-four: Marching for Peace

  1. ‘Independence’, H, 28 July 1946, CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 32–34.

  2. Cf. D.P. Mishra to Vallabhbhai Patel, Nagpur, 9 September 1946, in Durga Das, editor, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945–50 (in ten volumes; Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1971–74), Volume III, p. 161.

  3. Gandhi to Patel, letters of 21 and 23 July 1946, CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 35, 45.

  4. Gandhi to Patel, 1 August 1946, CWMG, LXXXV, p. 102.

  5. Gandhi to Patel, letters of 3 August 1946, CWMG, LXXXV, p. 120.

  6. Ambedkar to Patel, 12 August 1946; Patel to Ambedkar, 1 September 1946; Ambedkar to Patel, 14 October 1946, all in Volume 20, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  7. See Salim Yusufji, editor, Ambedkar: The Attendant Details (New Delhi, 2017), pp. 73, 84.

  8. IAR, 1946, Volume II, pp. 177–78.

  9. See Penderel Moon to Major J.M. Short, letters of 6 August and 2 September 1946, in Mss Eur F 189/13, APAC/BL.

  10. This account of the Calcutta riots of 1946 is based on a first-hand account by the anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose, dated 2 September 1946, the copy in Volume 90, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  11. ‘What can Violence Do?’, H, 25 August 1946, CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 186–87.

  12. CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 515–16, 215–16, 235.

  13. CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 276–77.

  14. CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 383–86, 521–22.

  15. CWMG, LXXXV, p. 416.

  16. The letters quoted in this section are all in Volume
88, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteen Instalments, NMML.

  17. See notes and reports in Volume 132, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  18. Anon, Noakhali Tipperah Tragedy, a fifteen-page pamphlet in Box 1, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.

  19. CWMG, LXXXV, pp. 464–65, 480–81.

  20. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 30–32.

  21. Alexander to Gandhi, 5 September 1946, in Volume 90, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  22. Alexander to Gandhi, 19 October 1946, in ibid.

  23. Reports in Searchlight, 3 and 5 November 1946.

  24. Speech at a prayer meeting, 31 October 1946, CWMG, LXXXVI, p. 65.

  25. Gandhi to Nehru, 5 November 1946, CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 78–79.

  26. ‘To Bihar’, CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 81–82.

  27. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 89, 98, 106.

  28. Cf. reports in Searchlight, 11 and 12 November 1946.

  29. See, for more details, Volumes 132 and 133, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  30. See Searchlight, 20 November 1946.

  31. Dasgupta, ‘General Principles upon which Service to Hindu–Muslims of Noakhali is to be based on Gandhiji’s Camp’, note in Volume 39, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  32. As reported in Searchlight, 30 November 1946.

  33. Searchlight, 22 November 1946.

  34. Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi (Calcutta: Nishana, 1953), pp. 64–65.

  35. As reported in Searchlight, 24 November 1946.

  36. Manubehn Gandhi, Bapu—My Mother (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1955).

  37. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 144–45, 147, 149–52, 162, 182, 185, 195.

  38. ‘Literal translation of Maulvi Hamiduddin Ahmed’s statement published in the Azad of 14.12.46’, in Volume 110, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  39. Gandhi to Hamiduddin Ahmed, 27 December 1946, CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 273–76.

  40. As reported in Searchlight, 12 December 1946.

  41. Carl Heath, Gandhi (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1944).

  42. Carl Heath to Gandhi, 14 November 1946; Gandhi to Heath, 2 December 1946 (not in CWMG), both in Volume 138, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  43. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 213–14.

  44. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 266–67, 283, 287.

  45. As reported in Searchlight, 4 January 1947.

  46. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 313, 349.

  47. Reports in Searchlight, 6, 9 and 10 January 1947.

  48. As reported in TS, 17 January 1947.

  49. Note by Sushila Nayar, dated 6 January 1947, in Volume 133, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  50. ‘Enquiry Report about the cause of Hunger-strike by Miss Amtus Salam at Sirandi about the recovery of a Kharga (sacrificial sword)’, by Raihen Ali, S[tation] I[nspector], Ramganj Police Station, 12 January 1947, copy in Volume 136, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  51. Note dated 20 January 1947, in ibid.

  52. See CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 373–76.

  53. Azad to Gandhi, 2 February 1947, in Volume 33, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  54. Phillips Talbot to Walter S. Rogers, 16 February 1947, copy in Box 1, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.

  Chapter Thirty-five: The Strangest Experiment

  1. Bose, My Days with Gandhi, pp. 130–37.

  2. R.P. Parasuram to Gandhi, 1 January 1947 (copy), serial number 53 in Group 14, Nirmal Kumar Bose Papers, NAI; Gandhi to Parasuram, 2 January 1947, CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 299–300.

  3. CWMG, LXXXVI, p. 414.

  4. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 419–20.

  5. Gandhi to Vinoba Bhave, 10 February 1947, CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 452–53; Vinoba Bhave to Gandhi, 25 February 1947, SN 32683, SAAA.

  6. See CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 15–16; CWMG, LXXXVI, p. 476.

  7. ‘Discussion with A.V. Thakkar’, CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 14–16.

  8. Horace Alexander to Agatha Harrison, Calcutta, 19 March 1947, in Box 12, Horace Alexander Papers, Swarthmore College.

  9. Bose to Gandhi, 4 February 1947, Group 14, Nirmal Kumar Bose Papers, NAI.

  10. This section is based on Manu Gandhi, The Lonely Pilgrim: Gandhiji’s Noakhali Pilgrimage (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1964), passim. The quoted remarks are from pp. 9, 12, 31, 90–91, 157, 194, 243, 83, 93, 111.

  11. CWMG, LXXXVI, pp. 400–01, 486; CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 7, 13.

  12. See Volume 141, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  13. Note by K.B. Sahay (Home Minister, Bihar), 1 January 1947; note by T.P. Singh, ICS, early January 1947, both in Volume 139, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  14. Gandhi to H.S. Suhrawardy, 1 March 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 31.

  15. Cf. Sana Aiyar, ‘Fazlul Haq, Region and Religion in Bengal: The Forgotten Alternative of 1940–43’, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 42, Number 6, 2008.

  16. As reported in TS, 4 March 1947.

  17. CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 42–46, 114–16, 125–26.

  18. Letter of 19 or 20 March 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 128–29.

  19. CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 168.

  20. Gandhi to Bhave, 10 March 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 63.

  21. Gandhi to Amrit Kaur, 18 March 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 107.

  22. Bose, My Days with Gandhi, pp. 173–74 (emphasis added).

  Chapter Thirty-six: Independence and Division

  1. Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten (London: Collins, 1985).

  2. See IAR, 1947, Volume 1, pp. 142–43.

  3. Mountbatten to Gandhi, 22 March 1947, in Volume 161, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  4. CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 179–180, 199, 254–55.

  5. Quoted in Janet Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own (London: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 394.

  6. ‘Report of the recent disturbances in the Punjab (March/April 1947)’, twenty-one-page transcript sent by Rameshwari Nehru to Edwina Mountbatten (author unknown), in MB1/Q79, Mountbatten Papers, University of Southampton.

  7. CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 183, 221, 223.

  8. CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 288–89, 298.

  9. B.M. Das to Gandhi, 16 April 1947; Gandhi to B.M. Das, 20 April 1947 (not in CWMG), both in Volume 118, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  10. Shahnawaz Khan, ‘Report on Relief and Rehabilitation Work done by me in P.S. Masaurhi—Bihar from 24th March–5th July 1947’, in Volume 121, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  11. See Sucheta Mahajan, editor, Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1947, Part II (New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research, 2015), pp. 1974–88.

  12. CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 337.

  13. ‘Discussion with Aruna Asaf Ali and Ashok [sic] Mehta’, 6 May 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 421.

  14. CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 551.

  15. Gandhi to Mountbatten, 8 May 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 435.

  16. Letters by S. Banerji and G.J. Khan, 8 and 9 May 1947, respectively, in Volume 122, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  17. CWMG, LXXXVII, pp. 452, 464, 526; CWMG, LXXXVIII, p. 103.

  18. CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 514.

  19. CWMG, LXXXVIII, pp. 6–7, 42.

  20. CWMG, LXXXVIII, pp. 99, 112, 164.

  21. Sant Singh to Major J.M. Short, 9 April 1947, Mss Eur F 189/17, APAC/BL.

  22. Evans Jenkins to Gilbert Laithwaite, 25 May 1947, in Mss Eur F 138/161, APAC/BL.

  23. CWMG, LXXXVIII, pp. 209, 313–14, 452–53.

  24. Nehru, An Autobiography (1942 edition), p. 469.

  25. Moon to
Major J.M. Short, 11 July 1947, in Mss Eur F 189/17, APAC/BL.

  There is a voluminous literature on the partition of India; on what caused it, on how it might have been averted. Of these (at least several hundred) books, permit me to mention just three: C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright, editors, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), valuable for, among other things, its diversity of viewpoints and contributors (including some who witnessed the Partition and its effects first-hand); Sucheta Mahajan, Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000), a sober, scholarly analysis of the complex forces at work; and Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), a fast-paced, vividly written account of the final few months of the British Raj and the birth of the two nations that succeeded it.

  26. See R/3/1/94, APAC/BL.

  27. CWMG, LXXXVIII, p. 461.

  28. Chandiwala, At the Feet of Bapu, pp. 169–70.

  29. CWMG, LXXXXIX, pp. 7–8.

  30. Reports in TS, 10, 11 and 12 August 1947.

  31. Quoted in Gopalkrishna Gandhi, A Frank Friendship, p. 483.

  32. CWMG, LXXXXIX, pp. 27, 28, 33–34; TS, 13 and 14 August 1947.

  33. Horace Alexander, ‘India Achieves Freedom and Gandhi Starts on a New Adventure’, four-page transcript, Calcutta, 16 August 1947, in Volume 114, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  34. Phillips Talbot to Walter S. Rogers, 19 August 1947, Talbot Papers, Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge.

  35. Mountbatten to Cripps, 9 July 1947, in MB1/E5, Mountbatten Papers, University of Southampton.

  36. CWMG, LXXXIX, p. 21.

  37. Alexander, ‘India Achieves Freedom and Gandhi Starts on a New Adventure’.

  38. As reported in TS, 20 August 1947.

  39. Kanji Dwarkadas to Lord Scarborough, 11 February 1947, Mss Eur F 253/53, APAC/BL.

  40. Amrit Kaur to Gandhi, 17 April 1947, in Volume 146, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.

  41. Gandhi to Amrit Kaur, Patna, 20 April 1947, CWMG, LXXXVII, p. 315.