Once the fast started, relatives and negotiators were permitted to visit Gandhi. Allowed to join her fasting husband, Kasturba greeted him with the words, ‘Again the same old story!’ Gandhi had in fact longed to see her, and knew that she wanted to see him.89 The fast had opened prison locks.
Recovering from typhoid, Devadas too was released and allowed to see his father. Gandhi advised him to say that ‘as his father’s son’ he would rather ‘forfeit his father’s life’ than see the suppressed classes injured. When the press published a letter from Devadas, the father, writing to Lakshmi, the girl the son hoped to marry, said: ‘See what a beautiful letter Devadas has [written]’ (57: 78).
In numerous letters written on the eve of the fast and in the pre-dawn hours of the 20th, Gandhi urged near and dear ones not to grieve if he died. To Khushalchand Gandhi, his older cousin (father of Chhaganlal, Maganlal and Narandas), who over the decades had remained close to him but also retained orthodox practices, Gandhi wrote on 19 September:
I am sure you will welcome the yajna* which begins tomorrow. If you approve of it as holy, I request you both to send me your sincere blessings. If I leave this world before you, please do not grieve, but rejoice that you had a younger brother whom God had granted the strength to complete such a yajna. You have ever been more than a brother to me. At this hour of dawn, your younger brother bows to you… (57: 69)
In a letter to Mira written on the 20th morning, Gandhi admitted that when he wrote to MacDonald announcing the fast, he ‘thought of you and of Ba’ and hesitated, for he knew that they would be shaken. Continued Gandhi:
[F]or a time I became giddy. How would you two bear the thing? But… the letter went. No anguish will be too terrible to wash out the sin of untouchability. You must therefore rejoice in this suffering and bear it bravely… Just think and realize that there is no meaning in having the last look. The spirit which you love is always with you (57:81).
Tagore rushed to see the fasting Gandhi, who lay on a cot under a mango tree, and for several minutes buried ‘his face in the clothes on Gandhiji’s breast’. Malaviya and C.R. called on the man stretched out under the tree. So did Ambedkar and other leaders of the Depressed Classes, including M.C. Rajah and P.N. Rajbhoj.
That mango tree in a prison yard became the national stage. Ambedkar’s first words were, ‘Mahatmaji, you have been very unfair to us.’ ‘It is always my lot to appear to be unfair,’ Gandhi replied. According to Pyarelal (who also joined Gandhi, witnessed proceedings and later recorded them in a book), ‘The redoubtable Doctor (Ambedkar), strongly supported by his colleagues, fought every inch of the ground.’90
The fast undoubtedly put pressure on Ambedkar, who felt the weight of Gandhi’s all-India support, but orthodoxy felt an even greater weight. Defying hoary prohibitions, temples across India opened their doors overnight to ‘untouchables’. In city after city, Brahmins and ‘untouchables’ dined together. Sarojini Naidu’s daughter, Padmaja, thought she was witnessing ‘a catharsis’ cleansing Hinduism of ‘the accumulated corruption’ of centuries, and Tagore felt that a ‘wonder’ was ‘happening before our very eyes’.91
After interviewing Gandhi, a reporter from the British-owned Times of India wrote (24 Sept.):
Under the shade of a small mango tree was Mr Gandhi lying on a cot covered with a prison blanket. At the end of [his answers,] Mr Gandhi leant back, weak from exhaustion, onto his bed. Immediately two of the jail doctors were at his side to render what help they could. But Mr Gandhi seemed to derive most comfort from Mrs Gandhi, who although obviously suffering, seemed delighted to have the opportunity of altering his pillow, rubbing his forehead with olive oil and quietly talking to him (57:114-15).
On the evening of 24 September, leaders of ‘untouchables’ and of caste Hindus gathered round the tree signed the ‘Poona Pact’. Malaviya signed first, followed by Ambedkar, who was followed by Rajagopalachari and Rajendra Prasad. ‘Untouchable’ leaders Rajah, Srinivasan and Gavai also signed.
As Gandhi’s condition had entered the danger zone, word of the agreement was cabled to London, where MacDonald and his ministers accepted it, modifying the earlier award. At 5 p.m. on the 26th, after news of the alteration had reached Yeravda, Gandhi broke his fast, sipping orange juice handed to him by a relieved Kasturba. To Gandhi’s joy, Tagore was present, and also Parchure Shastri, a fellow-prisoner from the ashram, who was afflicted with leprosy.
Gandhi’s acceptance of reserved seats was matched by the acceptance of a common electorate by Ambedkar and other ‘untouchable’ leaders. Incorporated later in India’s Constitution, the agreement has endured, surviving charges that Gandhi’s fast had coerced Ambedkar—that fear of caste Hindu reprisals on ‘untouchables’ had forced Ambedkar’s hand in Poona.
The record of the 1932 fast and negotiations conveys no such suggestion. At that time Ambedkar said he had been ‘surprised, immensely surprised’ to find ‘so much in common’ between Gandhi and himself. ‘If you devoted yourself entirely to the welfare of the Depressed Classes,’ Ambedkar said to Gandhi, ‘you would become our hero’.92
A statement Gandhi composed (26 Sept.) said that he saw ‘the hand of God’ in ‘the glorious manifestation throughout the length and breadth of India during the past seven days’. Expressing his ‘Hindu gratitude’ to ‘Dr Ambedkar, Rao Bahadur Srinivasan and… Rao Bahadur M.C. Rajah,’ Gandhi added:
They could have taken up an uncompromising and defiant attitude by way of punishment to the so-called caste Hindus for the sins of generations.
If they had done so, I at least could not have resented their attitude and my death would have been but a trifling price exacted for the tortures that the outcastes of Hinduism have been going through for unknown generations. But they chose a nobler path and have thus shown that they have followed the precept of forgiveness enjoined by all religions. Let me hope that the caste Hindus will prove themselves worthy of this forgiveness… (57: 123-4)
To caste Hindus he conveyed a warning:
The political part of [the settlement]… occupies but a small space in the vast field of reform that has to be tackled by caste Hindus during the coming days, namely, the complete removal of social and religious disabilities under which a large part of the Hindu population has been groaning.
I should be guilty of a breach of trust if I did not warn fellow reformers and caste Hindus in general that the breaking of the fast carried with it a sure promise of a resumption of it if this reform is not relentlessly pursued and achieved within a measurable period (57: 123-5).
Four days later, in a letter to Andrews, he said:
30 Sept. 1932: I did expect a mighty response from the orthodox, but I was unprepared for the sudden manifestation that took place. But I shall not be deceived. It remains to be seen whether the temples opened remain open and the various other things done persist (57:134).
For the moment, however, a sixty-three-year-old prisoner had made history on two counts. One, lying flat on his back under a jail-yard tree, he had imposed his will on a stern Empire. Two, he had awakened Hindu society’s long-dormant conscience.
Chapter 11
Negotiating Repression
In and out of prison, 1932-36
Willingdon, too, could count gains. Indian defiance had petered out, Gandhi’s nonviolent soldiers were exhausted and in many cases uprooted, and Gandhi himself was behind bars, cut off from family and most colleagues, his subversive ashram almost empty, his seditious journals banned.
His success on the ‘untouchable’ issue was no doubt a fly in the ointment, yet the Raj did not silence Gandhi on that question. After his fast ended, other jail restrictions were quickly re-imposed on Gandhi, but he was not barred from commenting on untouchability. The Raj’s hope was that Gandhi would draw fire both from orthodox Hindus and from men like Ambedkar.
Patel and Desai feared that the Raj’s calculation might prove right, but Gandhi seized the opening his fast had created. His pen and heart were hungry to interact ag
ain with his people, even if solely over the evil of untouchability.
From September 1932 he started calling the ‘untouchables’ ‘Harijans’ (‘People of God’), a phrase first proposed in 1931 by an ‘untouchable’ reader of Navajivan, who cited that usage by Gujarat’s fifteenth-century saint-poet, Narsi Mehta (the author of Vaishnava Jana). Calling himself a ‘self-chosen Harijan,’ Gandhi would explain (28 April 1933) that
The term has not been coined with a view to perpetuating the separate identity of Harijans… The term ‘untouchable’ savours of contempt… [I]n so far as untouchables have a distinct identity we must have a name by which to call them… Let us pray that this separateness may be done away with so that all of us may become fit to be called ‘Harijans’—men of God. A friend rightly said that today caste Hindus have become ‘Arijans’—enemies of Hinduism.1
Week after week he wrote from prison on the question, and the press published his comments. On 5 November 1932 he reminded caste Hindus of ‘the wrongs we have heaped’ on the heads of the ‘untouchables’:
Socially they are lepers. Economically they are worse than slaves. Religiously they are denied entrance to places we miscall ‘houses of God’. They are denied the use, on the same terms as the caste men, of public roads, public hospitals, public wells, public taps, public parks and the like, and in some cases their approach within a measured distance is a social crime, [or]… their very sight is an offence.
They are relegated for their residence to the worst quarters of cities or villages where they practically get no social services. Caste Hindu lawyers and doctors will not serve them… Brahmins will not officiate at their religious functions. The wonder is that they are at all able to eke out an existence or that they still remain within the Hindu fold. They are too downtrodden to rise in revolt against their suppressors (57: 332).
From February 1933 he was even permitted to edit, from his cell in prison, a new journal, the English-language Harijan, which was soon joined by the Gujarati Harijanbandhu (‘Brother to Harijans’), and the Hindi Harijan Sevak (‘Servant of Harijans’).
Also, he blessed two Bills moved in the Central Assembly by an elected member, Ranga Iyer, one seeking to prohibit discrimination against Harijans, and the other making it unlawful for an orthodox minority to bar Harijans from entering a temple. The second Bill arose from the failure of a reformist majority of worshippers at the Guruvayur temple in Kerala to have the temple opened to Harijans.
Patel pointed out to Gandhi that while Malaviya opposed Ranga Iyer’s Bills, Ambedkar had said that the ‘untouchables’ did not really care about temple entry. Desai said he thought ‘we would be crushed between the upper and the nether stones of the orthodox Hindus and the followers of Ambedkar’. Patel’s advice was that Gandhi should ‘let the two parties quarrel’, not allow himself ‘to come between’ the two.
Disagreeing, Gandhi told Patel and Desai (16 Feb. 1933) that ‘millions of Harijans’ could not be allowed to ‘feel that they have been left to their fate’.
Through Harijan Gandhi encouraged Rajagopalachari to leave the Congress chair and lobby in New Delhi for the Bills. The idea of C.R. lobbying in an Assembly the Congress had boycotted made many uneasy, and from his UP prison Nehru sent Gandhi a strong protest.
But Gandhi knew what he was doing: the author of non-cooperation was now starting to prepare his countrymen to accept the Raj’s councils. As we know, for about a year now—from April in the previous year—Gandhi had been thinking, with Patel’s full agreement, of ‘capturing the legislatures’, a switch in strategy dictated by Willingdon’s repression.
Another debate with Ambedkar. Though he had signed the Poona Pact, Ambedkar continued to clash with Gandhi. Declining Gandhi’s request for ‘a message’ for the opening issue of Harijan, he nonetheless sent a ‘statement’ where he said that nothing short of ‘the destruction of the caste system’ would finish untouchability: outcastes existed because there were castes. Ambedkar also indicated a readiness to leave the Hindu fold.
On his part Gandhi linked untouchability not to the existence of castes but to the notion of high-and-low, and saw ‘an attack on untouchability’ as also ‘an attack on this “high-and-low-ness”’. On 14 February Gandhi said:
If this doctrine of utmost superiority and utmost inferiority, descending from father to son for eternity, is an integral part of Hinduism… then I no more want to belong to it than does Dr Ambedkar. But… there is no superiority or inferiority in the Hinduism of my conception.
I invite Dr Ambedkar to shed his bitterness and anger and try to learn the beauties of the faith of his forefathers. Let him not curse Hinduism without making an unbiased study of it, and if it fails to sustain him in his hour of need, by all means let him forsake it (59: 275).
Ambedkar was not persuaded. At the other end, bowing before orthodox pressure, Ranga Iyer would withdraw his Bills, and there were ugly demonstrations by purist ‘sanatanists’ against Gandhi. An old friend, Ranchhoddas Patwari (whose temporary loan had assisted Mohandas’s 1888 journey to London), demanded precise replies to eighty-eight questions (all patiently answered by Gandhi), predicted that Gandhi’s stand against orthodoxy would wreck the Congress, suggested that Gandhi had ‘completely forsaken dharma’, and spoke of a break between them (58: 436-46).
But Hindus who wanted reform felt Gandhi to be their champion, as did Hindus who cherished Hindu unity, and so did a great many ‘untouchables’. Once again seeing more clearly than his critics, Gandhi realized that the bulk of the Hindu community would follow him and that the purists were isolating themselves. To Nehru he wrote:
15 Feb. 1933: The fight against sanatanists is becoming more and more interesting if also increasingly difficult… The abuses they are hurling at me are wonderfully refreshing. I am all that is bad and corrupt on this earth. But the storm will subside. For I apply the sovereign remedy of ahimsa—non-retaliation. The more I ignore the abuses, the fiercer they are becoming. But it is the death dance of the moth round a lamp (59: 278-9).
Another fast. He consolidated his position through a fresh fast, this time ‘a self-purificatory’ one for twenty-one days, undertaken in May 1933. The last one had put pressure on orthodoxy and also on Ambedkar. Now, making no demands of anyone, he would put pressure only on himself. Since fasting was a time-honoured Hindu practice, the self-imposed ordeal underlined his Hinduness. It also brought about his release.
We should not assume that he anticipated all his gains before starting the fast. According to his own account of its origin, for two or three nights he was agitated and could not sleep. Reports from the ashram of indiscipline and of friction between a Harijan and other members had troubled him, and the attacks by Ambedkar and the sanatanists were on his mind. When he retired on the night of 29 April he had no idea (he told Vallabhbhai the next morning)
that something was coming up… But after eleven I woke up, I watched the stars, repeated Ramanama but the same thought would persistently come to my mind: ‘If you have grown so restless, why don’t you undertake [a] fast? Do it.’ The inner dialogue went on for quite some time. At half past twelve came the clear, unmistakable voice: ‘You must undertake the fast’ (61: 40).
If they would give it, Gandhi sought (through scores of separate letters) the approval of Tagore, Malaviya, Srinivasa Sastri, Jawaharlal, Andrews, Anasuya Sarabhai and other friends. Feeling fit and fully expecting to survive the fast, Gandhi also thought that his power to influence events would be enhanced by it:
The evil (of untouchability) is far greater than even I had thought it to be. It will not be eradicated by money, external organization and even political power for Harijans, though all these three are necessary. But to be effective, they must follow or at least accompany… inward power… This can only come by fasting and prayer (61: 38-9).
The news that the imprisoned Gandhi would fast for twenty-one days to purify himself produced an electric effect all over again. From afar Smuts cabled his anxiety, as did hundreds of oth
ers from across India, but Gandhi may have been most affected by a telegram from Harilal, who said, ‘I undertake to do anything you would ask me to, but please do give up the fast.’
‘If I could get Harilal back,’ Gandhi remarked to Kalelkar, who was with him, ‘I would fast for forty-two days’.2 To his son Gandhi cabled back: ‘Your letter touches me. If this fast means your return to pure life it would be doubly blessed. See me. I shall try to guide you. God bless you’ (61: 94).
Devadas, ‘my youngest son and valued comrade,’ as Gandhi called him, made (in the father’s words) a ‘fervent personal appeal, strengthened by a copious flow of tears’ (61: 86). C.R. protested, as did Patel, and from Sabarmati prison, where Kasturba had returned and Mira too was lodged, the latter sent a cable on behalf of Kasturba and herself:
Got news of fast only today. Ba wishes me say she greatly shocked. Feels decision very wrong but you have not listened to any others so will not hear her. She sends her heartfelt prayers. I am stunned but know it is the voice of God and in that sense rejoice even in midst of anguish. Deepest prayers. Love.
In his cabled reply, Gandhi said:
2 May 1933: Tell Ba her father imposed on her a companion whose weight would have killed any other woman. I treasure her love. She must remain courageous to end. For you I have nothing but only thanks to God for giving you to me. You must prove your bravery by sustained joy over this newest of God’s missions for me. Love (61: 49).
Kasturba was allowed to join him in Yeravda, and a grateful Gandhi wrote to Mira: ‘Ba has responded magnificently. Her courage has been a source of the greatest strength to me’ (61: 72). As for Mira herself, Gandhi acknowledged that her ordeal as a solitary prisoner in Sabarmati prison would be ‘more searching’ than his own (61: 137).
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 50
