Saraladevi was heart-broken when Gandhi informed her that their relationship could not continue as once thought. The change seems to have occurred in the middle of June 1920, for on 12 June, after receiving a telegram from Gandhi, Rajagopalachari wrote to him: ‘Had your telegram. Words fail me altogether. I hope you have pardoned me.’67 We can infer that Gandhi’s telegram (its text is not known) signified a change in the relationship to one who had voiced his concern.
Determined to nail down the change, Rajagopalachari wrote Gandhi a strong letter on 16 June. Addressed to ‘My dearest Master,’ the letter said that between Saraladevi and Kasturba the contrast was similar to that between ‘a kerosene oil Ditmar lamp’ and ‘the morning sun’. Asserting that Gandhi had nursed a ‘most dreadful delusion’, C.R. added: ‘The encasement of the divinest soul is yet flesh… It is not the Christ but the shell that I presume to warn and criticize. Come back and give us life… Pray disengage yourself at once completely.’68
The break was made. Devadas has written that when he was leaving for a course of study in Benares (probably in the summer of 1920), his father ‘suddenly stepped forward and with great love kissed me on the forehead’.69 Gandhi was showing gratitude, and not just love, to his twenty-year-old son. He would say in August in a letter to Kallenbach, ‘Devadas is with me, ever growing in every way and every direction’ (21:131).
And to Saraladevi he wrote on 23 August that Mathuradas and other allies were right to be ‘jealous of his character, which was their ideal’. To deserve their love, which was ‘so pure and unselfish’, he would, he told her, ‘surrender all the world’ (21: 196).
A shattered Saraladevi complained that she had ‘put in one pan all the joys and pleasures of the world, and in the other Bapu and his laws, and committed the folly of choosing the latter’.70 She demanded an explanation, which Gandhi finally tried to offer in a letter he sent in December 1920:
I have been analyzing my love for you. I have reached a definition of spiritual [marriage]. It is a partnership between two persons of the opposite sex where the physical is wholly absent. It is therefore possible between brother and sister, father and daughter. It is possible only between two brahmacharis in thought, word and deed…
Have we that exquisite purity, that perfect coincidence, that perfect merging, that identity of ideals, the self-forgetfulness, that fixity of purpose, that trustfulness? For me I can answer plainly that it is only an aspiration. I am unworthy of that companionship with you… This is the big letter I promised. With dearest love I still subscribe myself, Your L.G. (22: 119).
The initials stood for Law Giver, the title with which she had rebuked Gandhi. A brave effort, the letter could not assuage Saraladevi’s feelings. In the years that followed she would criticize Gandhi, at times accusing him of allowing nonviolence to break out in hatred, and at other times saying that he possessed a Christo-Buddhist rather than a Hindu frame of mind (24: 400).
Communication did not cease, however. In the 1940s, at her instance, Gandhi suggested Dipak’s name to Jawaharlal as a possible match for his daughter Indira. That idea did not work out but after Saraladevi and Gandhi were both no more, Dipak married Radha, the daughter of Maganlal Gandhi. Saraladevi and Gandhi had known of this romance. After giving some of her time to the education of girls, Saraladevi turned to spirituality and in 1935 adopted a guru. She died in 1945.
What if anything Gandhi told Kasturba about the episode is not known, but we must assume that she noticed both the attachment and its severance. Others too would have told her, including Devadas, who was devoted to his mother. We must assume also that the relationship shocked and wounded Kasturba while it lasted, and that its ending enhanced her prestige in circles around him. Writing about her in the letter he wrote to Kallenbach after a two-year gap, Gandhi said in August 1920: ‘Mrs Gandhi is at [the]Ashram. She has aged considerably but she is as brave as ever’ (21: 132).
Twelve years later Gandhi would write to Ramdas that he did not want any of his sons
to behave towards his wife as I did towards Ba… [S]he could not be angry with me, whereas I could with her. I did not give her the same freedom of action which I enjoyed… My behaviour towards Ba at Sabarmati progressively [changed]… and the result was that…[h]er old fear of me has disappeared mostly, if not completely (11 Aug. 1932; 56: 316-17).
Though Gandhi did not mention it in the letter, the Saraladevi episode, which occurred a year after Kasturba’s life-saving intervention over milk, may have contributed to the improvement in his attitude.
Khilafat & ‘Non-cooperation’. Agitated by signs that the victorious Allies intended to end the Turkish Sultan’s custodianship of Islam’s holy places in Arabia, Palestine and Iraq, many of India’s Muslim leaders met in Delhi in November 1919.
After recalling a promise by Lloyd George, the British Premier, on 5 January 1918 that the Allies were not ‘fighting to deprive Turkey of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor’, a promise that had enabled Indian Muslims to enlist as soldiers for the British, the gathering searched for a suitable response to what seemed both a betrayal and a sacrilege, for the Turkish Sultan, the head or Khalifa of the Sunni faithful around the world, had protected Islam’s holy places for centuries (19: 447).
Invited to the deliberations, where indignation at the British was marked and he was viewed with some suspicion, Gandhi asked the Muslims to be firm but also wise. Boycotting all foreign cloth was more sensible, he said, than singling out British products, and in any case it would be laughable for an assembly where everyone had ‘some article of British manufacture on his person’ to declare a boycott of British imports (A 434).
At this, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who had demanded the British-goods boycott, countered that boycotting all foreign cloth was not very practical either. However, Mohani added, ‘Let that stand, but give us something quicker.’ Gandhi’s response, conveyed in his still rough Hindustani, contained a single English phrase for which he could not readily find a Hindustani word. Once more he was ready for the moment of opportunity.
‘We can respond with non-cooperation,’ Gandhi said. If the Allies and the British played foul with Turkey, ‘which may God forbid’, Indians could refuse to cooperate with British rule. They could return the Raj’s titles and honours and withhold cooperation even from the tempting councils the Montford scheme was offering (A 435).
The Delhi gathering decided to wait for the decision of the Allies, but ‘non-cooperation’ intrigued many Muslim minds, and Gandhi had moved a step closer to his goal of a Hindu-Muslim front.
The Amritsar Congress and the Reforms Act. Its principal leaders were all present when, in December, the Congress met for its annual session in Amritsar, on a site chosen for its proximity to Jallianwalla Bagh. Released on the session’s eve, the Ali brothers were a large draw. Tilak, Annie Besant and Jinnah were present, as also Malaviya, the retiring president, and Motilal Nehru, who succeeded him. The Bengalis were led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Bipin Chandra Pal, both famed for their oratory.
However, thanks to the Rowlatt satyagraha and his response to the Punjab repression, Gandhi, still not fully fit, was the people’s star. Motilal Nehru acknowledged as much when from the chair he referred to ‘Mahatmaji’,71 and Jinnah, too, spoke of ‘Mahatma Gandhi’.72 Supporting Gandhi in Amritsar was a second line of leadership attracted by him, including Vallabhbhai Patel from Gujarat, Jawaharlal Nehru from Allahabad, Rajagopalachari from Madras and Rajendra Prasad from Bihar.
The Montford scheme, now the Reforms Act passed by the House of Commons, was the main item before the plenary, but after what had happened in the Punjab it appeared impossible to accept what the British offered. Tilak, Das and Pal led the attack on the Act, but Malaviya, Motilal Nehru and Annie Besant seemed willing to try it out.
In the end, a resolution moved by Gandhi and seconded by Jinnah was accepted. Through it the Congress declared that it would work the Reforms Act even though it was ‘inadequate’ and ‘disappointing’. Gandhi said
that the release of the Ali brothers had encouraged him to hope that the British would respect Indian sentiments, including over the Punjab wrongs and the Khilafat question.
REDEFINING HONOUR
On the Punjab, Gandhi drafted for the subjects committee a resolution that condemned the massacre and also the violence of Indian mobs. A record of the discussion on this resolution has been left by a delegate, K.M. Munshi, a lawyer and author from Bombay who would hold senior positions in independent India:
The hearts of most of us revolted at the latter part of the resolution… This must have been Mrs Besant’s work, many thought; she was after all British. One Punjab leader gave expression to the feeling rather crudely: no one born of an Indian mother, said he, could have drafted this resolution. Lokamanya too was indignant and so were Pal and C.R. Das; and the latter part of the resolution was lost by an overwhelming majority.
The next day the President wanted the committee to reconsider the resolution as Gandhiji, he said, was very keen on it. There were vehement protests. Ultimately Gandhiji was helped to the table to move that the resolution be reconsidered. He spoke sitting. Out of respect the house sat quiet but with ill-concealed impatience.
Referring to the remark that no son born of an Indian mother could have drafted the resolution, Gandhiji stated that he had considered deeply and long whether as an Indian he could have drafted the resolution, for indeed he had drafted it. But after long searching of the heart, he had come to the conclusion that only a person born of an Indian mother could have drafted it.
And then he spoke as if his whole life depended upon the question… When he stopped, we were at his feet… The resolution was reconsidered and accepted in its original form.73
Other remarks by Gandhi in Amritsar were recorded by Pyarelal Nayar. Gandhi’s voice, Pyarelal would say, was ‘full-chested and so distinct that it could be heard clearly to the farthest end of the vast gathering in that pre-mike era.’ Said Gandhi:
The Government went mad, but our people also went mad. I say, do not return madness with madness but return madness with sanity, and the situation will be yours.74
From England, where he was on vacation, Frederick Pratt, the commissioner in Ahmedabad, sent a ‘private’ letter to Gandhi:
A week or two ago when I read the account of your speech in the Amritsar Congress… I felt that I would like to write and congratulate you on the stand you took…
Our relations in the past have not been harmonious. Speaking for myself only, I feel sure that there have been hard thoughts and hard words against you, which were not justified. But the future matters more than the past, and I wish to grasp the hand of fellowship and cooperation in the same spirit in which you extended it in your admirable speech.75
Pratt’s gallant letter indirectly acknowledged that in Amritsar Gandhi had given a new meaning to Indian honour, enabled the Congress to capture the moral high ground, and put the Empire on the defensive. According to Munshi, ‘the old guard were routed’ at Amritsar and ‘Gandhiji was left in possession of the field.’76
Restructuring the Congress. He was also left holding a baby, for the Congress asked him to write a new constitution for the party. Two years earlier he had restructured the Gujarat Sabha. Now he offered a new design for the Indian National Congress (22: 170-78). In the constitution he proposed, any adult accepting the Congress’s goal (‘Swaraj within the Empire’) and paying four annas (quarter of a rupee) a year could become a Congress member. Where referring to a member’s rights and roles, Gandhi’s draft, approved in December 1920, spoke of ‘he’ or ‘she’, and ‘him’ or ‘her’.
Democratically elected committees would function at all levels—village or town, taluka, district, province and all-India. Unlike the Raj’s provinces, Congress provinces would be linguistic and include adjacent princely territories, but the Congress would not interfere in the internal affairs of princely states.
Elected annually by votes from each provincial unit, the Congress president would nominate a Working Committee of fifteen which would function round the year and where the president would only be primus inter pares.
Popular membership, admitting persons from princely states, specifying that women were welcome, and the proposed committees, including the Working Committee at the apex, were all new ideas. Emboldened by Amritsar, Gandhi was looking to forge a people’s Congress as well as an efficient, and if necessary fighting, machine.
Chapter 8
The Empire Challenged
India, 1920-22
For some months after the Amritsar session, Gandhi encouraged his younger allies’ interest in the provincial legislatures created by the Reforms Act. Elections for these legislatures were set for November 1920. Though vital subjects were reserved for the British governor and his nominated council, the new legislatures, chosen by a partial franchise, would possess tempting powers. So Vallabhbhai announced his candidature for the Bombay legislature from Kheda, and in Madras Rajagopalachari drafted a manifesto for the Congress nationalists.
But influential events intervened in March and May, and Gandhi’s suppressed sense that he would rise against the Empire came true. The first event concerned Turkey and its Khilafat. Muhammad Ali, who led a deputation to England in March urging Prime Minister Lloyd George not to sever Islam’s holy areas from Turkish control, was told by the Premier that there was no reason for Turkey to escape the ‘justice, the pretty terrible justice’, that Germany and Austria had received.1
Gandhi responded by calling Khilafat ‘the question of questions’ and saying that ‘the terrible, stern justice for Turkey must be tempered with the pledged word… of the British Empire’ (Young India, 31 March 1920).
Yet on 14 May India learnt of the Treaty of Sevres, which not only deprived Turkey of all her colonies and of Greek-majority areas; it placed Mecca and Medina under a pro-British chieftain, and gave Britain guardianship over Iraq, which contained Karbala and Najaf, and also over Palestine, which included Jerusalem. All of Islam’s holiest sites were thus placed under the direct or indirect influence of Britain, while France, another non-Muslim country, was asked to ‘advise and assist Syria’.
If Muslim India’s indignation was solidified by mid-May, all of India was offended before the end of the month by the report of the Hunter Commission on the Punjab excesses. While confirming the facts summarized in Gandhi’s account, the Hunter report drew weak conclusions and absolved the Punjab governor, Michael O’Dwyer, of all responsibility. General Dyer was held guilty of ‘a grave error of judgement’ and deprived of his command, but that could not soothe the wounds caused by O’Dwyer’s harsh decrees.
There was worse to come. The House of Lords gave Dyer a vote of approval and British admirers presented him with a sword of honour and 20,000 pounds.
The simultaneous resentment of Hindu and Muslim India was a rare phenomenon. For over six decades, the Raj had worked painstakingly and successfully to prevent a Hindu-Muslim front. The last time something similar had happened was in 1857, when Hindus and Muslims of the Empire’s Bengal army had mutinied. Involving only a slice of India, that rebellion was ruthlessly and effectively crushed.
This time, however, Gandhi had nonviolent weapons for baffling the British, and he hoped to involve all of India. As he would say in Madras on 12 August, and repeat the thought in Calicut on 18 August, India had been given ‘an opportunity which is not going to recur for another hundred years’ (21: 145 & 183).
Suddenly, three deep longings of his seemed realizable: Hindu-Muslim unity, if Hindus made common cause with Muslims; weaning Muslims from the pull of violence, if they were offered the option of nonviolent non-cooperation; and the end of British rule, if Hindus and Muslims jointly withheld their cooperation from the Raj.
We have seen that this last was his heart’s desire but so far the head had ruled it out. Now, with the Empire rejecting its principles, he felt he had no choice. Moreover, India was so bitterly estranged from the Empire that if he did not lead an all-India
n as well as a nonviolent fight, others were likely to incite Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs to separate, violent, regional, and (as 1857 had proved) futile rebellions.
The chance of a lifetime seemed the only possible option, and it found Gandhi ready. After all, he had started cultivating the Ali brothers (and other Muslim leaders) within weeks of his return from South Africa, and from April 1919 he was preparing the ground for challenging the Empire over the Punjab.
Sharply disagreeing with Gandhi’s Khilafat stand, Henry Polak, now living in England, accused him of ‘narrowness’, which he linked to Gandhi ‘being cooped up in India and not knowing anything of the new life in Europe’.
Yet new events had occurred or were looming in the Middle East as well. In November 1917, well before the post-war reallocation of the Ottoman Empire’s lands, the British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, had announced a British commitment for ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine. Their close comradeship in South Africa notwithstanding, a British Jew and an Indian aiming for Swaraj and Hindu-Muslim partnership could not take the same view of the Middle East.
To Polak, 27 March 1920: Now for the Khilafat. I do not mind your differing from me so violently as you do… I can only say that the new life in Europe appears to me to be abhorrent for its total disregard of sanctity of promises and of its idolatrous worship of brute force and money. Being in the thick of it, you are unable to feel the foul stench that modern Europe is filling the world with. I who stand outside it know what it means… [I]f I could but see you face to face, I would certainly endeavour to convert you to my view (20: 186).
For a while criticism of Gandhi’s Khilafat position came also from Andrews, who underlined the right of Arab and Armenian territories to be free of Turkish domination. Gandhi’s reply touched on the European powers’ commercial motives.
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 32
