Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  The leaders’ arrests sent Gandhi into ‘high spirits’, and when he learned that Das’s wife Basanti Devi and other women in Bengal had also courted arrest, Gandhi looked ‘like a child brimming over with sheer joy’, Krishnadas thought. ‘His whole frame seemed to be tingling with joy’ and he appeared to sway with delight as he walked (K 169-70). Distinguished women had conquered the fear of jail. Risking their jobs, thousands of men had nonviolently defied the Empire. In spirit at least, Swaraj had arrived.

  His son Manilal was in South Africa, and Ramdas about to return from there, but Harilal, the eldest, joined the non-cooperation stir in Calcutta and was arrested on 10 December. A ‘very pleased’ Gandhi ‘at once sent a wire to Harilal expressing his satisfaction’, and Kasturba too seemed happy. ‘I also have done three months’ hard labour in South Africa,’ she said (K 171).

  Gandhi himself was not arrested because he had not yet disobeyed a law, and because the Raj did not wish to risk uncontrollable unrest. But he knew he could be taken any day. To Kallenbach he wrote, ‘I am expecting to be deported. Even execution has been suggested… But I know that not a blade of grass moves without His will’ (8 Feb. 1922; 26:112).

  CLIMAX AT HAND

  Hoping to offer the Prince of Wales a grand, undisturbed welcome in the Christmas season, Viceroy Reading explored a deal. If the Raj released most prisoners, lifted its bans, and promised a committee to look into India’s grievances, would the Congress call off its boycott and its Bardoli plan?

  Through Malaviya, the Viceroy sent the question to the incarcerated Chitta Ranjan Das, who was the Congress’s president-elect. From jail Das recommended the deal to Gandhi, who said he would go along if the Ali brothers too would be released, and if there was agreement beforehand on the timing and composition of the grievances committee. Reading turned down the conditions, and the gambit collapsed.

  The atmosphere was tense by the end of December. Scores of leaders and about 30,000 others were behind bars. Some newspapers, including the Independent in Allahabad, had been banned; Mahadev Desai too had been jailed; and Gandhi had sent Devadas to Allahabad to fill Desai’s place and organize if possible a hand-written version of the Independent.

  The Congress held its year-end session in Ahmedabad, its deliberations chaired in Das’s absence by Hakim Ajmal Khan, and resolved that the Bardoli defiance would start in January. At Gandhi’s instance all Congress volunteers were required to sign a pledge of nonviolence and desist from any defiance not cleared by the Working Committee.30

  The climax was at hand. Another truce was, however, proposed by Jinnah, who was in Ahmedabad for a parallel Muslim League session. At his urging Gandhi attended, on 15 January, an All Parties Conference in Bombay that asked him to postpone Bardoli and asked the Raj to release prisoners, withdraw bans and convene a Round Table Conference. Gandhi agreed to put off Bardoli until February, but Reading rejected the Bombay proposals.

  On 29 January, 4,000 khadi-clad Bardoli residents pledged their willingness to stop paying taxes and ‘to face imprisonment and even death without resentment’.31 Gandhi said to them the next day that Swaraj would come not through a show of hands but from a readiness to lose property and, if need be, life; they declared that they would not pay revenue to the Raj unless and until he asked them to.

  On 1 February Gandhi sent Reading an ultimatum. Political prisoners should be released, bans lifted and Congress workers given full freedom. If this did not happen, the Bardoli rebellion would start. The Viceroy replied that the Raj would not surrender. Gandhi, now issuing a leaflet a day to his soldiers, sent Reading a rejoinder and declared that the nonviolent rebellion would start on 12 February.

  Before that date, however, Gandhi was, in his words, ‘stabbed in the back’ by a mob in eastern UP, and he called the whole thing off.

  ANTI-CLIMAX

  On 5 February, in a place called Chauri Chaura near the town of Gorakhpur, an angry crowd of about 4,000 Hindus and Muslims surrounded a police party that had taken shelter in its post after exhausting its supply of ammunition. Minutes earlier, two had died from the police’s bullets; a few days earlier, a sub-inspector had evidently roughed up a non-cooperator who was an ex-soldier.

  The police post was burnt and fleeing constables were hacked to pieces or forced back into the flames. Twenty-two policemen lost their lives at the hands of a crowd that was shouting ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai (Victory to Mahatma Gandhi)’.32

  Not all these details were immediately available to Gandhi, but the newspapers of 8 February carried a story on the incident, and that day or the next, Gandhi also received a wire about it from Devadas who, remembering his father’s wish to send him to a carnage, had gone to Chauri Chaura from Allahabad.

  But the news struck Gandhi dumb, and he knew he had to withdraw his Bardoli challenge, due on 12 February. To every Working Committee member not in prison, and a few others, he at once sent a letter inviting them to a discussion in Bardoli on 11 February. He was ‘violently agitated’, Gandhi added. To Devadas he sent a general’s telegram that could not conceal a father’s concern:

  9 Feb. 1922: Your wire. Send full accurate reports. Keep people nonviolent. Get all information. Tell workers am deeply grieved. Keep calm. God will bless you… Bapu (26: 136)

  The previous day, before learning of Chauri Chaura, Gandhi had written to Kallenbach: ‘Devadas has shaped wonderfully’ (26: 112). For Navajivan Gandhi wrote:

  I am certainly the one most responsible for the crime of the people of Gorakhpur district, but every genuine non-cooperator is also responsible for it. All of us should be in mourning for it. But the matter can be further discussed only when we have more details. May God save the honour of India and of non-cooperators (26:148).

  On 10 February he spoke to his Bardoli associates about putting off the defiance. ‘Almost everyone declared with one united voice that it was unthinkable to suspend the fight at this stage; that if Mahatmaji retreated… the whole country would be disgraced before the world’ (K 225). Vithalbhai Patel, who had taken charge of the Bardoli exercise, objected strongly. Three dissenters, however, thought that not to suspend would be worse.

  Though the Working Committee was yet to meet, Gandhi announced to the 10 February gathering that he was calling off the Bardoli disobedience. Malaviya, who was present, said that Gandhi was showing an out-of-the-ordinary greatness, but almost everybody else seemed stunned and demoralized. The next day the Working Committee grudgingly accepted Gandhi’s decision.

  On 13 February he drafted, for Young India, ‘The Crime of Chauri Chaura’. Claiming that God had spoken to him through the incident, Gandhi added:

  ‘But what about your manifesto to the Viceroy and your rejoinder to his reply?’ spoke the voice of Satan. It was the bitterest cup of humiliation to drink. ‘Surely it is cowardly to withdraw the next day after pompous threats to the government and promises to the people of Bardoli.’ Thus Satan’s invitation was to deny Truth…

  I put my doubts and troubles before the Working Committee and other associates whom I found near me. They did not all agree with me at first. Some of them probably do not even now agree with me. But never has a man been blessed, perhaps, with colleagues and associates so considerate and forgiving as I have…

  The drastic reversal of practically the whole of the aggressive programme may be politically unsound and unwise, but there is no doubt that it is religiously sound, and I venture to assure the doubters that the country will have gained by my humiliation and confession of error…

  The people of Bardoli are in my opinion the most peaceful in India. But Bardoli is but a speck on the map of India. Its effort cannot succeed unless there is perfect cooperation from the other parts…

  The tragedy of Chauri Chaura is really the index finger… If we are not to evolve violence out of non-violence, it is quite clear that we must hastily retrace our steps and re-establish an atmosphere of peace…

  Let the opponent glory in our humiliation or so-called defeat… Chauri Chaura
must stiffen the Government, must still further corrupt the police, and the reprisals that will follow must further demoralize the people. [But] if we learn the full lesson of the tragedy, we can turn the curse into a blessing (Young India, 16 Feb. 1922; 26: 177-83).

  His error—of ‘having been the instrument, however involuntary, of the brutal violence by the people at Chauri Chaura’—required penance and punishment. So he went on a five-day fast.

  Gandhi spoke of an inner compulsion, but the outer context also influenced him. In January and early February he had received reports of indiscipline in Calcutta, Allahabad, the Punjab and elsewhere, and among different communities—Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh.33 Coming on top of the Bombay riots, the reports had deeply troubled Gandhi. As he would say in a letter to a dismayed (and imprisoned) Jawaharlal, Chauri Chaura ‘was the last straw’.34

  Moreover, Gandhi had suspected that suspension was going to be inevitable before long, for Mustafa Kamal (who would soon expel from Turkey the Sultan, for whom he had no use) had knocked the bottom out of the Khilafat issue. To suspend out of moral necessity made political sense.

  Gandhi was bombarded with protests from behind prison walls by Das, the Congress president, the Ali brothers, Motilal Nehru, Lajpat Rai, Jawaharlal, C.R., Azad, and scores of others. Even Mahadev Desai was put out. They wanted to know why, as Rajagopalachari put it, ‘there should be a call for stopping our struggle for birthrights [because of] every distant and unconnected outburst.’35

  Later, C.R. changed his mind, as did many others including Jawaharlal, who would write: ‘All organization and discipline was disappearing… Gandhiji’s decision was right. He had to stop the rot and build anew.’36 But some did not, and wondered about the Mahatma’s political acumen.

  The constructive programme. On 11 February, when the Working Committee agreed to the suspension of all aggressive activities, Shankerlal Banker asked Gandhi not to leave non-cooperators ‘suspended in midair’. They needed an alternative programme of action (K 229). Gandhi’s response, which the Working Committee endorsed, was that workers should

  recruit for the Congress, ensuring that those joining understand ‘the creed of truth and nonviolence’

  spin daily for a fixed time

  introduce the charkha, ‘the wheel of prosperity and freedom’, in every home

  visit ‘untouchable’ homes and find out their wants

  induce national schools to receive ‘untouchable’ children

  visit homes damaged by the drink curse

  help establish real panchayats (village councils) and

  help to place national schools on a proper footing (Young India, 16 Feb. 1922; 26: 181-2).

  Gandhi assembled a team for pushing the constructive programme, did some travelling, and wrote his notes and articles, but his arrest was imminent. With India’s public demoralized, it would not invite uncontrollable unrest.

  Yet strong words remained to be exchanged. In a speech in Parliament, Lord Birkenhead warned India of Britain’s ‘hard fibre’ and Montagu, the secretary of state for India, declared that if the existence of the Empire was in question, India could not challenge with success ‘the most determined people in the world’.

  In Young India Gandhi answered (23 Feb.) that India’s demand indeed ‘involved the existence of the Empire’ and that India’s spirit, which would ‘neither bend nor break’ before ‘the most determined people in the world’, was ready for ‘all the “hard fibre” that can be transported across the seas’ (26: 217-9).

  ARREST AND TRIAL

  On the afternoon of 10 March, when Gandhi returned to Ahmedabad station after a quick visit to Ajmer, a British soldier who from his train window had been watching the passing Gandhi ‘with wide and curious eyes, stretched out his hand’ and said, ‘Mr Gandhi, I must shake hands with you.’ Gandhi wholeheartedly offered his hand, ‘which was immediately grasped,’ and the soldier ‘stammered out some words’ from ‘the fullness of his heart’ that our witness, Krishnadas, could not hear (Krishnadas, p. 258).

  Gandhi was ‘in an exceptionally happy mood’, though that day he also wrote to Devadas, ‘You are making separation from you more and more unbearable every day. I feel it, however much I wish that I did not’ (26: 345). Shortly after ten that night, Dan Healey, the superintendent of police, arrived outside the ashram with a posse, informed Anasuyaben that Gandhi was to be arrested, and added that he could take his time.

  Her news did not surprise Gandhi. After his ashram family had sung for him a favourite prayer-song, Vaishnava Jana, he walked towards the police party, saying to himself, ‘O the happy day! The best thing has happened.’ Along the path he embraced Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the politician (and poet) who had often disputed with Gandhi. Three days later, in a letter to his friend Revashankar Jhaveri, Gandhi would say:

  I was arrested only after I had eradicated my anger, had undergone atonement and purified myself. What better lot can there be for India or for me? (26: 362)

  Kasturba and a few others, including Krishnadas, were permitted to accompany Gandhi to the jail not far from the ashram. Shortly before midnight they left Gandhi on his bed in a verandah outside his cell (Krishnadas had been allowed to make Gandhi’s bed), and returned to the ashram. (K 260-1)

  Much of India sorrowed but there were no demonstrations. As Reading remarked, ‘Not a dog barked.’ There was no barking because some Indians heeded Gandhi’s instruction to respond to his arrest with constructive work while others had been stunned by his Chauri Chaura decision.

  On 18 March Gandhi was tried in the Shahi Baug Circuit House in Ahmedabad for inciting disaffection towards His Majesty’s Government. Three Young India articles of his, published in September and December the previous year and in February 1922, were presented as evidence. The printer and publisher of Young India, Shankarlal Banker, was also arraigned under the same section (124A) of the law.

  History has recorded the short public trial of the Empire’s unusual foe. We know that Justice Robert S. Broomfield had two entries in his calendar for that day: ‘Golf’ and ‘Try Gandhi.’ At the trial Broomfield was courteous and also moved. The accused pleading guilty to the charges, the judge asked Gandhi if he wished to say anything more. Gandhi, who in preceding days had faced his conscience, now wanted the Empire to face its. After outlining the transformation of a believer in the Empire into its foe, he said:

  I came reluctantly to the conclusion that the British connection had made India more helpless than she ever was before, politically and economically. A disarmed India has no power of resistance against any aggressor if she wanted to engage in an armed conflict with him…

  She has become so poor that she has little power of resisting famines. Before the British advent, India spun and wove in her millions of cottages just the supplement she needed for adding to her meagre agricultural resources…

  Little do town-dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of India are slowly sinking to lifelessness… Little do they realize that the Government established by law in British India is carried on for this exploitation of the masses.

  No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye…

  I have no personal ill will against any single administrator, much less can I have any disaffection towards the King’s person. But I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a Government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system.

  Accepting his responsibility for the madness in Chauri Chaura in February and in Bombay in November, he said: ‘I know that my people have sometimes gone mad; I am deeply sorry for it.’ But he did not regret that he had summoned his people:

  I knew that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk and, if I was set free, I would still do the same… I wanted to avoid violence. I want to avoid violence. Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. But I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system whic
h I considered had done an irreparable harm to my country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips.

  Nonviolence was the alpha and omega of his means: of his means—not all Indians subscribed to them. His ends included India’s equality with Britain; he had to protect the self-respect of his people.

  I do not ask for mercy. I do not ask for… clemency. I am here to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.

  Justice Broomfield sentenced Gandhi for six years and Banker for a year plus another six months if he did not pay a fine of 1,000 rupees. He also made remarks showing that the Empire, like its foe, had an unexpected face:

  Mr Gandhi, you have made my task easy in one way by pleading guilty to the charge. Nevertheless, what remains, namely, the determination of a just sentence, is perhaps as difficult a proposition as a judge in this country could have to face.

  You are in a different category from any person I have ever tried or am likely to have to try… In the eyes of millions of your countrymen, you are a great patriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and of even saintly life…

  [But] it is my duty to judge you as a man subject to the law, who has by his own admission broken the law and committed what to an ordinary man must appear to be grave offences against the State.

  I do not forget that you have constantly preached against violence and that you have on many occasions, as I am willing to believe, done much to prevent violence, but having regard to the nature of your political teaching and the nature of many of those to whom it is addressed, how you could have continued to believe that violence would not be the inevitable consequence, it passes my capacity to understand…