Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  Gandhi to Patel, 18 April 1934: I hope you have fully understood my decision… I feel that [it] was absolutely correct. It has been taken neither too late nor too early…

  I think it is our duty to give full freedom to Congressmen who favour entering the legislatures. It is but right that those who daily attend legislatures in their thoughts should do so physically as well… Is it not better that one who daily eats jalebi in his imagination should eat the real thing and know the wisdom or folly of doing so?..

  I see that [Rajagopalachari] fully approves of the move… Rajendrababu has been in favour of it from the beginning (63:408).

  Catching Gandhi’s signal, Haig, the home member in Delhi, announced that an AICC meeting called to ratify Gandhi’s call would not be banned. In May the AICC met in Patna in Gandhi’s presence, confirmed the suspension, and agreed that the Congress as such, rather than Swarajists acting on its behalf, would enter legislatures. In June, bans on most Congress bodies were lifted. Mindful of the elections due in November, Gandhi asked Ansari to chair a Congress Parliamentary Board (CPB).

  KASTURBA

  Gandhi exchanged weekly letters with his wife in Yeravda jail. Not allowed to correspond with anyone else, Kasturba could however see copies of the Gujarati weeklies Harijanbandhu and Jam-e-Jamshed. She asked Gandhi to include a spiritual discourse in his weekly letter, which he usually did. He also described for her the places he was in, or events such as the Bihar earthquake, and week by week gave news of dozens of people she was interested in.

  Harilal’s habit of getting into trouble and into newspapers, the courage of his son Kanti, who was in jail as a satyagrahi, the situation with Kasturba’s brother Madhavdas, Manilal’s struggles in South Africa, the eyes of Ramdas’s daughter Sumitra, the playfulness of Manilal’s daughter Sita, the pregnancies of Ramdas’s wife Nirmala and Devadas’s wife Lakshmi, how Mahadev and Pyarelal were faring in their jails, her health or his—such were the subjects they wrote about.

  The couple’s concern for each other came across. Though separated, they were together in anxiety while their great-granddaughter Kusum (born to Rami, Harilal’s daughter) lay seriously ill. When Kusum died, Gandhi wrote to Rami and Rami’s sister Manu:

  1 Feb. 1934: Even I, though my heart is as hard as stone, felt grieved for a moment. Both you sisters will have calmed down [by the time] you get this letter… Keep writing to me. I will expect a letter from Rami. Ba will be very much pained at the news (63: 76).

  Occasionally there was humour. ‘You should now stop worrying about Manilal,’ Gandhi wrote to Kasturba on 8 March. ‘I hope you do remember that he is past forty now’ (63: 262). What he wrote on 6 April probably gave her, and Gandhi himself, some relief:

  I have now decided to stop all others from going to jail. I alone should offer satyagraha. Hence, when all of you are released you will not have to offer satyagraha again for the present (63: 359).

  Released at the end of May, Kasturba joined her husband in June.

  Bomb. Between April and August, the month when he completed his all-India Harijan tour, Gandhi was in Assam, north and south Bihar, Orissa, Bombay, Poona, Gujarat, Ajmer in central India, Sindh, the Punjab, Bengal, UP and Bihar again. Once more, and for the fifth time, he had covered virtually all of India, mostly by third-class train, partly by car, and often on foot. Once more great numbers greeted him everywhere, drawing and giving strength.

  Harijans and reformists thrilled to him. In places visited by him schools or hostels for Harijans were set up; temples opened doors to Harijans; and Gandhi collected funds for the Harijan Sevak Sangh, or the Servants of Harijans Society.

  His sanatanist opponents were violent at times. In Benares his portrait was burnt, and in Karachi a Hindu carrying an axe was apprehended before he could hit Gandhi. In Orissa Gandhi was abused near Puri’s famed Jagannath Temple, from which Harijans were barred. On 25 April he escaped an attack by lathi-wielding sanatanists when he alighted at Jasidih station in Bihar. Prevented by the welcoming party from hitting Gandhi, they repeatedly struck the car he entered, but he was not hurt.

  Two months later, on 25 June in Poona, an unknown assailant threw a bomb at a car thought to be carrying Gandhi for a talk at the Municipal Building. Occupants were injured but Gandhi was not in the car. Informed of the attack on reaching the venue, he referred to it in his remarks:

  I have had so many narrow escapes in my life that this newest one does not surprise me. God be thanked that no one was fatally injured by the bomb…

  The sorrowful incident has undoubtedly advanced the Harijan cause… I am not aching for martyrdom, but if it comes in my way in the prosecution of what I consider to be [my] supreme duty… I shall have well earned it…

  Let those who grudge me what yet remains [of my life] know that it is the easiest thing to do away with my body. Why then put in jeopardy many innocent lives in order to take mine which they hold to be sinful?..

  I have nothing but deep pity for the unknown thrower of the bomb. If I had my way and if the bomb-thrower was known, I should certainly ask for his discharge (64: 94).

  The bomb-thrower in Poona was not caught or identified, and we do not know whether he had any links to the group that would eventually kill Gandhi. The following month, in Ajmer, Pandit Lalnath, a sanatanist leader, was hit in the head. Gandhi visited him to apologize.

  CONGRESS POLITICS

  As July advanced, all eyes were on Gandhi, whose self-imposed abstention from politics was to end on 3 August. Would he exercise the right, now confined to him alone, to defy the Raj and court imprisonment? If he did, could the Congress think of contesting elections?

  By now back in Wardha, Gandhi fasted for a week from 7 August, in reparation, he said, for the attack on Lalnath. Later, after Patel (freed in July) and Rajagopalachari had conferred with Gandhi, a relieved C.R. said in a letter to Devadas: ‘It is fairly certain that he will NOT go to prison.’11

  Released on an eleven-day parole because of his wife’s illness, Jawaharlal sent Gandhi (13 Aug. 1934) a long, bitter letter about the state of the Congress. Grudgingly reconciled to the suspension of disobedience, and ready to imagine, ‘under certain circumstances, entering a legislature myself’, Nehru however spoke of himself as ‘a revolutionary’ resenting opposition in the Congress to ‘the advanced and fighting elements in the Congress ranks’ (64: 455-62).

  The last phrase referred chiefly to a Socialist Party born inside the Raj’s prisons in March 1934. Envisaged as a party within the Congress, its leaders were Jayaprakash Narayan of Bihar (who had returned to India in 1930), Narendra Deva and Rammanohar Lohia from the UP, Minoo Masani, Yusuf Meherally, and Asoka Mehta of Bombay, and Achyut Patwardhan of Maharashtra.

  A professed socialist but not a member of the new faction, Jawaharlal was in some ways their hero, yet they felt an allegiance also to Gandhi, who publicly welcomed the group’s formation while expressing disapproval of violence and class war and claiming that his voluntary poverty made him a truer, real-life socialist.

  However, a majority in the Congress, led by Patel, C.R. and Prasad, were wary of socialism, and to Jawaharlal’s dismay the Working Committee, with Gandhi’s approval, warned against ‘loose talk’. Asking Jawaharlal not to be hard on the Working Committee, Gandhi added (17 Aug. 1934): ‘I fancy that I have the knack for knowing the need of the time… After the explosion I want construction’ (64: 302-3).

  Resignation. At the end of August, Gandhi gave Nehru (who was back in jail), Patel, C.R., Prasad, Azad and other colleagues a shock, announcing that he was retiring from the Congress! In a letter (5 Sept.) addressed to Patel—the last elected president of the Congress—Gandhi explained that cogitation during the travelling, ‘non-political’ months had led to the decision. Finding that many who differed from him suppressed their views, he saw himself as a ‘stifling’ force, ‘arresting [the] full play of reason’ (64: 394-6).

  Division in the Congress had influenced him, he said. Patel, C.R. and Prasad, all three holding co
nservative economic views but seen as Gandhi’s loyal colleagues, nursed sharp misgivings about the socialists, but Gandhi felt a bond with the latter as well, and we know of his faith in Nehru.

  Was he then with the rightists or the socialists? He felt he was for both sides and against neither. The best way of not lending his weight to either side was to leave the Congress. The two groups should fend for themselves, if necessary have it out with one another, and find their levels. If a need arose, he would try from outside to unite the groups.

  Then there was his advancing age, plus the attacks on his person—the Congress should learn to think of a future without him. Finally, Gandhi sensed that his retirement could facilitate a settlement between the Congress and the Raj. If this did not come about, and another clash proved necessary, the Congress could always summon him to lead it.

  Azad protested, and a disconcerted Rajagopalachari argued that Gandhi would ‘surely be disappointed’ if he thought that he could retire and still keep the Congress or himself ‘politically important’, but Gandhi was being astute. ‘I do not retire to a cave,’ he told Rajagopalachari. ‘I hold myself at everybody’s disposal.’12

  His retirement would in fact enable the Congress to present a cooperating face while the chief rebel remained in the wings, available, when the time came, to resume fighting.

  Released in August 1934, the Khan brothers spent several weeks with Gandhi, Bajaj and Desai in Wardha, and Ghaffar Khan had his teenage daughter Mehr Taj brought from England to study there. Gandhi seems to have probed Ghaffar Khan about presiding at the Congress session set for the last week of October in Bombay: retirement did not mean taking his hands off. Wary, however, of all-India burdens, the Frontier leader declined Gandhi’s ‘offer’.

  Another possible candidate, Rajagopalachari, had felt disqualified ‘on account of my ignorance of Hindi,’13 and the choice fell on Rajendra Prasad, whose work for earthquake relief had added to his reputation. While praising Prasad as one ‘whose sacrifice for the nation, judged whether in quality or quantity, is not to be excelled’, Gandhi made sure, through his letter to Patel (5 Sept.), that the Congress knew what he thought of the absent Nehru, who had ‘many years of service in front of him’:

  I miss at this juncture the association and advice of Jawaharlal who is bound to be the rightful helmsman of the organization in the near future (64: 394-6).

  It was a measure of Patel’s fibre, and of his own candour, that Gandhi could write plainly to Vallabhbhai that Jawaharlal would be the future leader.

  Gandhi was not breaking with the Congress, only redefining his relationship with it, yet sending the resignation letter gave him a pang. ‘It is not with a light heart,’ he wrote, ‘that I leave this great organization’ (64: 394-6). To the session in Bombay, chaired by Prasad, Gandhi said:

  I am not going out as a protest against anything inside the Congress. I am going out so that Congressmen may think and act for themselves. My retirement does not in any way mean that I am not ready to come back whenever my help is needed.

  I am leaving the Congress to lift the weight which has been suppressing it, in order that it may grow, and I may grow myself… I am leaving in order to develop the power that non-violence has…

  If you have given me the position of a general commanding an army, you must allow that general to judge whether he serves the army by being at its head or whether he serves the army by retiring and giving place to lieutenants who have served well.

  If you believe that I have been a fairly wise general, you must believe in my judgement even now…14

  STARTING AGAIN

  It was like starting all over again. He had broken up his home and ashram, resigned from the Congress, moved across from western India to a stopgap base in central India, and suspended disobedience for all save himself. His future seemed uncertain, and the Wardha address temporary.

  When Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the German pastor who would be executed in 1945 for an alleged role in a plot to kill Hitler) asked, in a letter posted in London, whether he and a friend could spend some time with him in India, Gandhi replied (1 Nov. 1934):

  If you and your friend have enough money for return passage and can pay your expenses here, say, at the rate of Rs 100 per month each, you can come whenever you like. The sooner the better so as to get the benefit of such cold weather as we get here. The Rs 100 per month I have calculated as the outside limit for those who can live simply. It may cost you even half the amount…

  With reference to your desire to share my daily life, I may say that you will be staying with me if I am out of prison and settled in one place when you come… [I]f I am travelling or if I am in prison, you will have to be satisfied with remaining in or near one of the institutions that are being conducted under my supervision (65: 274-5).

  Brahmacharya. As he indicated at the Bombay session, Gandhi hoped that a personal strengthening would accrue from his latest renunciations. He also hoped to work on himself, for he linked the apparent success of repression to his imperfections. Part of his response related to brahmacharya. If he acquired that quality in perfection, he seemed to think, all opposition might evaporate, whether of the Raj, the intellectuals, the sanatanists, Ambedkar, or Muslims suspicious of the Congress.

  Convinced that ‘there must be some men who have something of the woman too in them’, he revived earlier efforts to join their ranks. ‘If men and women can never live together without getting disturbed by sex attractions, their brahmacharya is not brahmacharya,’ he said in a letter (addressed to Pandit Khare) in September 1934:

  Do not mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister so live? Why, then, cannot men and women who are not so related live likewise? If we are sincere, we shall progress through our mistakes and realize one day that what seemed impossible has become possible.15

  Five years earlier (we saw in Chapter Nine), some Sabarmati co-workers had objected to Gandhi’s practice of placing his hands on the shoulders of women while walking, but he had defended himself, claiming, ‘Never has an impure thought entered my being during or owing to the practice.’ In the compound of Bajaj’s guest-cottage in Wardha he resumed the practice, following a natural inclination.

  In September 1935, however, Gandhi stopped the practice when he learnt that a young man visiting Wardha had molested a girl after professing sisterly feelings towards her. But he was not happy. Whether advance towards perfect chastity was hindered or helped by the freedom he assumed with women became a major subject of debate in Gandhi’s mind and with co-workers; and from time to time he resumed or suspended the practice.

  Though acknowledging (in the columns of Harijan and in letters) that he had not attained perfect purity in thought, and admitting, in 1936, that he experienced involuntary discharges more frequently in his sixties in India (at intervals of several months rather than several years) than in his thirties and forties in South Africa, Gandhi seemed to conclude that freedom with women—his sisters and daughters as he viewed them—helped his (and their) quest for perfection, though there also were moments when he thought he might be deceiving himself.

  In the late 1930s, this freedom included his taking a bath in the presence of others, including women, and their sleeping near him. The women included Sushila Nayar, Pyarelal’s sister, who had trained as a doctor and was twenty-two in 1936, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, forty-seven, an unmarried Christian from a family, formerly Sikh, that ruled the princely state of Kapurthala, Prabhavati, the thirty-year-old Sabarmati ‘graduate’ married to the socialist leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, and Amtus Salaam, from a prominent Muslim family in the princely state of Patiala.

  In September 1934, writing to Prema Kantak from Wardha, Gandhi wrote, ‘There is a terrace here for sleeping,’ and named those sleeping near him: ‘Amtus Salaam, Vasumati, Amala (Margarete Spiegel, a German Jew), Ba when she is here, Om (Bajaj’s daughter) and Prabhavati’ (65:31).

  In his middle and late sixties, when the national scene offered little cheer, Gandhi found comfo
rt and security in his apparently lust-free proximity to his female associates/aides.

  Politics, economics & village India. If tensions marked Gandhi’s chastity drive, his political or economic thinking was free of doubts. His retirement from the Congress was joined to a plan to strengthen the body’s rural links. In his 1933-34 tour of much of India, Gandhi had seen that though khadi provided employment to around 220,000 women and 40,000 men in nearly 6,000 villages, other village industries were needed to combat rising rural unemployment.

  He therefore created an All-India Village Industries Association as an autonomous and non-political affiliate of the Congress. J.C. Kumarappa was asked to lead the new association from Wardha, where Bajaj offered twenty acres of orange orchards for experiments in village industries: how to make things like paper, soap and jaggery in a village, or make processes like hand-pounding rice more efficient, and so forth. In memory of one who had helped build Phoenix and Sabarmati, Gandhi named the site Maganwadi.

  Repudiating a charge that he was against technology, Gandhi said: ‘Is not this charkha in front of me a machine? We do want machines but do not wish to become their slaves. We should make the machine our slave’ (65: 225). In another comment, he said:

  The problem with us is not how to find leisure for the teeming millions inhabiting our villages. The problem is how to utilize their idle hours, which are equal to the working days of six months in the year (Harijan, 16 Nov. 1934; 65: 354).

  In an interview in November 1934 with a left-leaning anthropologist, Nirmal Kumar Bose, Gandhi spelt out his philosophical objection to state socialism: