42. This (handwritten) letter by Nehru is in the C. Rajagopalachari Papers, NMML.
43. Jagjivan Ram to Gandhi, 9 November 1945, in Volume 19, Series 4, M.K. Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML. Cf. also Indrani Jagjivan Ram, Milestones: A Memoir, translated from the Hindi by Tara Joshi (New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2010), p. 122.
44. Vallabhbhai Patel to B.G. Kher, 1 July 1947, in, Durga Das, editor, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945–50 (in ten volumes: Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1971–74), Volume V, pp. 149–51.
Chapter Thirty-seven: The Greatest Fasts
1. See, for example, Bhim Sen Sachar to Gandhi, 12 July 1947, in Volume 61, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
2. Amrit Kaur to Gandhi, 24 August 1947, in Volume 76, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
3. CWMG, LXXXXIX, p. 83; Together They Fought, p. 513.
4. CWMG, LXXXXIX, pp. 126–27, 130–34.
5. TS, 2 September 1947.
6. Cf. Denis Dalton, Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
7. Editorial in TS, 2 September 1947.
8. CWMG, LXXXXIX, pp. 139–40, 149.
9. As reported in Manubehn Gandhi, The Miracle of Calcutta, translated from the Gujarati by Gopalrao Kulkarni (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1959), pp. 85–86.
10. GBI, pp. 273–74, 328–29.
11. Reports in TS, 4 September 1947.
12. TS, 5 September 1947.
13. CWMG, LXXXXIX, pp. 151–154; TS, 5 and 6 September 1947; Manubehn Gandhi, The Miracle of Calcutta, pp. 88–92.
14. Letter of 26 August 1947, original in Volume 161, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
15. Statement by Abdul Qayum Ansari, President, All-India Momin Conference and a Minister in the Bihar Government, in Searchlight (Patna), 7 September 1947, copy in Volume 130, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
16. Sir Mirza Ismail to Gandhi, 16 September 1947, in Volume 32, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
17. R.P. Parasuram to N.K. Bose, 15 September 1947, Group 14, Nirmal Kumar Bose Papers, NAI.
18. Vigneshwara (pseudonym), ‘Sotto Voce’, Swatantra, 27 September 1947.
19. TS, 10 September 1947.
20. Medha M. Kudaisya, The Life and Times of G.D. Birla (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 190–91.
21. ‘Notes by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur on visits to refugee camps in East and West Punjab, 26th to 28th August 1947’, in MB 1/Q60, Mountbatten Papers, University of Southampton.
22. CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 166–68.
23. CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 173–77.
24. Brijlal Nehru to Gandhi, Lahore 18 September 1947, in Volume 63, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML (emphasis added).
25. CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 179–80, 199–201, 210–11, 388.
26. CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 253–54.
27. CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 273, 524–25.
28. The clippings from the Star of India and the Morning News, both dated 2 October 1947, are in Volume 114, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
29. CWMG, LXXXIX, p. 307.
30. CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 413, 432–33.
31. ‘Note of an interview between H.E. the Governor General, Mr. Gandhi and Lord Ismay on Tuesday, 29th October, 1947’, in MB1/E112, Mountbatten Papers, University of Southampton.
32. Nehru’s Secretary, H.V.R. Iyengar, summarized this divergence in these words: ‘Nehru in many of his public utterances, just like Gandhi, tended to start off by chastising the Hindus and Sikhs and then going on to say that the Muslims were just as bad. Patel, on the other hand, would start off by saying that the Muslims were responsible for all the trouble and then advise the Hindus and Sikhs to hold their hands.’
Iyengar, quoted in A.C.B. Symon, UK High Commissioner, Delhi, to Commonwealth Relations Office, London, 20 January 1948, in DO/142/307, NAUK.
33. J.B. Kripalani, My Times: An Autobiography (New Delhi: Rupa, 2004), p. 720.
34. See Manuben Gandhi, Last Glimpses of Bapu (Delhi: Shiva Lal Agarwala and Co., 1962), p. 16.
35. CWMG, XC, pp. 37–43.
36. CWMG, XC, pp. 71–73, 79.
37. For a moving personal account of these attempts at succour and rehabilitation, see Anis Kidwai, In Freedom’s Shade, edited and translated by Ayesha Kidwai (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2011).
38. CWMG, XC, pp. 191–94.
39. CWMG, XC, pp. 215–21.
40. CWMG, XC, pp. 356–57.
41. Mountbatten to Attlee, 12 September 1947, in MB1/E5, Mountbatten Papers.
42. On the RSS ideology and its role in Indian politics from the 1940s, see, among other works, Jyotirmaya Sharma, Terrifying Vision: M.S. Golwalkar, the R.S.S., and India (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2011); Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
43. CID Report for 8 and 9 March, 1947, in File 137, Delhi Police Records, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
44. Report in H, 28 September 1947; CWMG, LXXXIX, pp. 173–75.
45. Raghu, ‘Whither Mahatma Gandhi?’, Organiser, 11 September 1947.
46. ‘Source Report’, 24 October 1947, signed Bhagwan Das Jain, S[tation] I[nspector], in File 138, Delhi Police Records, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
47. Reports dated 10, 15 and 17 November, in ibid.
48. Reports by Kartar Singh, Inspector, CID, 7 and 9 December 1947, in ibid.
49. Richard Symonds, ‘Gandhi: Some Recollections and Reflections’, talk delivered on 3 February 1998, unpublished, copy in the author’s possession. Cf. also Symonds, In the Margins of Independence: A Relief Worker in India and Pakistan, 1942–1949 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
50. Alan Moorehead, ‘Gandhi: A Last Look’, Observer, 1 February 1948.
51. Amrit Kaur to Rajagopalachari, 1 January 1948, Subject File 57, C. Rajagopalachari Papers, Fifth Instalment, NMML.
52. HT, 3 January 1948.
53. HT, 11 January 1948.
54. CWMG, XC, pp. 266, 282.
55. CWMG, XC, pp. 408–09.
56. Manuben Gandhi, Last Glimpses of Bapu, pp. 133–34.
57. HT, 13 February 1948.
58. Reports in HT, 14 January 1948.
59. CWMG, XC, pp. 413–16.
60. Reports in HT, 15 January 1948.
61. CWMG, XC, pp. 423–25.
62. Letter from Sidney Hertzberg, quoted in Hazel Whitman to Louis Fischer, 5 February 1948, in Box 3, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.
63. Akhil Anand, ‘Let the Old Man Die’, Mainstream, 5 October 2002.
64. CWMG, XC, pp. 425–29.
65. Reports in HT, 16 January 1948.
66. Reports in HT, 17 January 1948.
67. Letter of 17 January 1948, in C. Rajagopalachari correspondence, Devadas Gandhi Papers, NMML.
68. HT, 18 January 1948.
69. CWMG, XC, pp. 438–40.
70. Reports in HT, 19 January 1948.
71. For a complete list of Gandhi’s fasts, see https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/chronology/event-chronology-listing/MTA=.
72. Gandhi to Mira, 16 January 1948, CWMG, XC, p. 430.
Chapter Thirty-eight: Martyrdom
1. CWMG, XC, pp. 438–40.
2. HT, 19 January 1948.
3. HT, 20 January 1948.
4. CWMG, XC, p. 465.
5. HT, 21 January 1948.
6. HT, 28 January 1948.
7. CWMG, XC, pp. 501–02.
8. Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light (London: Cassell and Co., 1950), p. 193.
9. See GBI, pp. 247–50, 258.
10. Cordes to Gandhi, letters of 6 May and 2 July 1947, in Volume 106, Series 4, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth
Instalments, NMML.
11. Cordes to Gandhi, letters of 13 and 20 December 1947, in Volume 82, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
12. Cordes to Gandhi, letters of 18 and 20 December 1947, in ibid. After Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948, Cordes stayed on in Sevagram, until his own death in 1960.
13. Polak to Gandhi, 23 January 1948, Volume 99, Series 5, Gandhi Papers, Twelfth and Fourteenth Instalments, NMML.
14. CWMG, XC, pp. 526–28.
15. HT, 30 January 1948.
16. Manubehn Gandhi, The End of an Epoch, translated from the Gujarati by Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1962), pp. 38–39.
17. Chandiwala, At the Feet of Bapu, pp. 249–54. Pyarelal, ‘The Fateful Friday’, H, 15 February 1948.
18. CWMG, XC, pp. 534–35.
19. These paragraphs draw on ‘MAHATMA GANDHI KILLED BY ASSASSIN’S BULLET’, front-page story in HT, 31 January 1948; Chandiwala, At the Feet of Bapu, pp. 255–56.
20. ‘GANDHIJI’S ASSASSIN ARRESTED ON SPOT/LAST SAD MOMENTS AT BIRLA HOUSE’, back-page report in HT, 31 January 1948.
21. ‘THE ASSASSIN’, front-page report in HT, 31 January 1948.
22. ToI, 31 January 1948.
23. Chandiwala, At the Feet of Bapu, pp. 259–60.
24. H.S.L. Polak to P. Kodanda Rao, 27 April 1934, Kodanda Rao Papers, NMML.
25. S[ushila] N[ayar], ‘He Lives’, H, 8 February 1948.
26. Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1951), p. 278.
27. General Sir Roy Bucher to Louis Fischer, 1 December 1948, in Box 2, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.
28. This account of the procession and cremation is based on reports in the HT and the ToI, 1 February 1948.
29. HT, 1 February 1948.
30. These paragraphs draw on the tributes reprinted in India News, 5 February 1948, issued by the High Commission for India, London, copy in APAC/BL.
31. Pakistan Times, 31 January 1948.
32. ‘Long Live Gandhiji’, Pakistan Times, 2 February 1948.
33. See A.H. Ahmed Kamal, ‘The Assassination of Gandhi and the Early Signs of Crisis of Muslim Nationalism in East Bengal’, in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Decolonization and the Politics of Transition in South Asia (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2016).
34. See copy of speech in MB 1/Q60, Mountbatten Papers, University of Southampton.
35. Wavell, Viceroy’s Journal, p. 439.
36. Reprinted in India News, 5 February 1948, issued by the High Commission for India, London, copy in APAC/BL.
37. Vegetarian News, Summer 1948.
38. The tributes by Blum and Smuts were reprinted in India News, 5 February 1948.
39. Edgar Snow, ‘The Message of Gandhi’, Saturday Evening Post, 27 March 1948.
40. Greenberg, The Inner Eye, pp. 137–41.
41. See Politics, Winter 1948, pp. 1–7.
42. A. Dfyakov, ‘The Assassination of Gandhi’, New Times (Moscow), 18 February 1948.
43. See M.V. Kamath, A Reporter at Large (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2002), pp. 238–39.
44. Vasant Moon, Growing up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography, translated from the Marathi by Gail Omvedt (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 105–06.
45. R.P. Parasuram to N.K. Bose, 15 September 1947, Group 14, Nirmal Kumar Bose Papers, NAI.
46. J.R.D. Tata to Ardeshir Dalal, 6 February 1948, in Arvind Mambro, editor, J. R. D. Tata: Letters (New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 2004), pp. 114–15.
47. Reports in ToI, 14 February 1948; Bimanesh Chatterjee, Thousand Days with Rajaji (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1975), p. 9.
48. The Free Press Journal, 13 February 1948, clipping in Box 3, Louis Fischer Papers, NYPL.
49. Statement of Prabhakar Trimbak Marathe, recorded on 5 February 1948, in Subject File No. 18, D.P. Mishra Papers, First and Second Instalments, NMML. Marathe was married to Nathuram’s sister.
50. PRMGMC, Volume V, pp. 17–20. These letters were originally written in Marathi.
51. PRMGMC, Volume IV, pp. 202–16.
52. See K.L. Gauba, The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 383.
53. See Gopal Godse, Gandhiji’s Murder and After, translated from the Marathi by S.T. Godbole (Delhi: Surya Prakashan, 1989), p. 171.
54. PRMGMC, Volume IV, pp. 89–123.
55. See PRMGMC, Volume II, pp. 12–21.
56. Diary entry of 31 January 1948, Box 60, Malcolm Darling Papers, CSAS, Cambridge.
57. Cf. Clive Dewey’s Anglo-Indian Attitudes: The Mind of the Indian Civil Service (London: Hambledon Press, 1993).
58. See the correspondence between Nehru and Patel in Durga Das, editor, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Volume VI, pp. 8–31.
59. See Guha, India After Gandhi, especially Chapters 3 to 6.
60. A.C.B. Symon, UK High Commissioner, New Delhi, to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, nine-page report dated 4 February 1948, in DO/142/307, NAUK.
61. C. Rajagopalachari, University Addresses (Bombay: Hind Kitab Ltd, 1949), p. 75. The speech was delivered on 20 March.
62. CWMG, IX, p. 175. To be sure, there was one (not insignificant) difference. In 1909, Gandhi faced a possible assassination attempt from Pathans opposed to his policies. In 1948, it was a Hindu, not a Muslim, who killed him. Even so, the prediction of the likely consequences of his meeting a violent death is uncanny.
Epilogue: Gandhi in Our Time
1. CWMG, XXV, p. 202.
2. See A.G. Noorani, The Babri Masjid Question 1528–2003: A Matter of National Honour, two volumes (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2003).
3. Personal communication from Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who was told this story by Dr Nayar herself.
4. Cf. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/hindu-mahasabha-launches-a-website-for-nathuram-godse/article7880713.ece (accessed on 24 April 2016).
5. Cf. Anil Nauriya, ‘Portrait as Mirror’, The Hindu, 3 March 2003.
6. See http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/in-new-rajasthan-textbooks-veer-savarkar-overshadows-gandhi-and-nehru/story-NGzReSVik2uLKCRQDAsQ5I.html (accessed on 4 July 2017).
7. See, for example, this discourse by an Arya Samaj preacher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8JxbBq5eM (accessed on 3 July 2017).
8. Unfortunately, I did not retain a clipping of the newspaper in which I read this interview. It was probably published in the Times of India or the Indian Express.
9. Cf. Nandini Sundar, The Burning Forest: A Savage War in the Heart of India (New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2016).
10. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJs-BJoSzbo (accessed on 25 April 2016).
11. Joachim Alva, Men and Supermen of Hindustan (Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1943), p. 20.
12. Talk by Horace Alexander at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 9 March 1944, Temp Mss 577/11, Friends House, Euston.
13. See R.S. Khare, The Untouchable as Himself: Identity, Ideology and Pragmatism among the Lucknow Chamars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 119–20.
14. Cf. Eleanor Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement (Delhi: Manohar, 1992).
15. Representative of this new Ambedkarism is the website http://roundtableindia.co.in/ (which describes itself as being ‘for an informed Ambedkar age’).
16. Arun Shourie, Worshipping False Gods (New Delhi: ASA Publications, 1997), p. 3.
17. Ibid., p. 102.
18. Ibid., pp. 43, 64, 229.
19. ToI, 25 October 1934.
20. Quoted in ToI, 25 September 1940.
21. Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Class and Ideology: Jotirao Phule and Low-Caste Protest in Nineteenth Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision: The M
ovement Against Untouchability in Twentieth Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
22. Arundhati Roy, ‘The Doctor and the Saint’, pp. 15–179 in S. Anand, editor, B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (New Delhi: Navayana, 2014).
23. The growing radicalization of Gandhi’s views on caste and the abolition of untouchability was first set out in Dennis Dalton, ‘The Gandhian View of Caste, and Caste After Gandhi’, in Philip Mason, India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), a superb if now little-known essay that should be required reading for all students of the subject. Cf. also Nishikant Kolge, Gandhi Against Caste (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017).
24. CWMG, LVIII, pp. 166–67.
25. The Free Press Journal, 27 June 1935.
26. See Gopal Guru, ‘Ethics in Ambedkar’s Critique of Gandhi’, Economic and Political Weekly, 15 April 2017.
27. D.R. Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet (first published in 1983; second edition, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011).
28. CWMG, LXXXII, p. 362.
29. Cf. Madhu Kishwar, ‘Gandhi and Women’, in two parts, Economic and Political Weekly, 5 and 12 October 1985.
30. Notes by S.A. Brelvi, 8 August 1932, SN 19603, SAAA.
31. John Gunther, Inside Asia (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1939), pp. 404–05.
32. See CWMG, XLIV, p. 71.
33. See, among other works, Tariq Ali, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008); Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2009).
34. Of this cohort of Gandhi’s direct disciples, Vallabhbhai Patel died earliest, in 1950. Jawaharlal Nehru lived on till May 1964, having been prime minister for close to seventeen years at the time of his death. Maulana Azad died in 1958, Amrit Kaur in 1964; both served in Nehru’s Cabinet for more than a decade. Rajendra Prasad demitted office as President of the Republic only in 1962, dying the next year. Of those in the Opposition and in civil society, Kumarappa passed away in 1960, Rajaji in 1973, Kripalani in 1982 and Kamaladevi as late as 1988.
35. Cf. Anil Nauriya, The African Element in Gandhi (New Delhi: National Gandhi Museum, 2006).
36. See Susan Williams, Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation (London: Allen Lane, 2006), Chapter 11.
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