So long as Subhas Babu considers a particular course of action to be correct, he has the right, and it is his duty, to pursue it whether the Congress likes it or not… [I]f success attends his effort and India gains her freedom, it will justify his rebellion, and the Congress will not only not condemn his rebellion but welcome him as a saviour.57
Gandhi’s press statement issued after the Raj’s exposure of Jayaprakash’s failed attempt may also provide a clue to his reaction to Bose’s escape:
Assuming the correctness of the charge against Jayaprakash Narayan, the method advocated by him is against the policy of truth and non-violence adopted by the Congress, and he deserves the severest condemnation. But it ill becomes the Government to condemn or discredit it. Frankly, all nationalist forces, no matter by what name they are described, are at war with the Government.
And, according to the accepted canons of war, the method adopted by Jayaprakash Narayan is perfectly legitimate. He has had his training in America for seven long years and is a student of the methods adopted by Western nations in their fight for freedom. To practise deception, to resort to secret methods and even to plot murder, are all honourable and turn the perpetrators into national heroes.
Are not Clive and Warren Hastings British heroes? If Jayaprakash Narayan was in the British Diplomatic Service and by secret diplomacy achieved something of importance, he would be covered with distinction…
While Jayaprakash Narayan remains the patriot we have known him, [Indians] must realize that his method is harmful in the extreme while a non-violent struggle is going on.58
While most of his political associates were in prison, Gandhi remained, in his words, ‘buried in Sevagram’. Apart from visits in February 1941 to Bombay and Allahabad, he stayed put and felt fully confident:
I have got strength and resourcefulness enough to lead this battle… I shall do better and clearer thinking in Sevagram than anywhere else, simply because I have built up there an atmosphere for my growth. With the march of time my body must decay but, I hope, not my wisdom. I seem to see things more clearly with the advance of age. It may be self-deception, but there is no hypocrisy.59
In July 1941 he thought he would send satyagrahis to prison in a steady flow ‘for no less than five years’,60 presumably his estimate at this time of how long the war might last.
On 7 August Tagore died. Braced over the years by the poet’s criticisms, and comforted by his support, Gandhi had in recent months raised funds for Santiniketan. ‘In the death of Rabindranath Tagore,’ his tribute said, ‘we have not only lost the greatest poet of the age, but an ardent nationalist who was also a humanitarian…’ (80: 436)
August 1941 was also the month in which Premier Churchill and President Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter, declaring their ‘respect’ for ‘the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live’ and their ‘wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’. But in the following month Churchill stated explicitly that the Atlantic Charter would not apply to India.
Patel was released (from Yeravda) in August 1941 and C.R. two months later. ‘All eyes are on you including mine,’ Gandhi wrote, with shrewd suspicion, to Rajagopalachari.61And on 31 October he wrote to Patel: ‘I hear it is your birthday today… Remember we are not to go until we have attained Swaraj.’62
Clearly he was curious about what his colleagues had been thinking while in prison. In his jail in Trichy in the Tamil country Rajagopalachari had received a message from Sikandar Hyat Khan, the Punjab premier, brought by a visitor, Kasturi Srinivasan, editor of The Hindu. Hyat Khan proposed a joint Congress-Muslim League move to the British and C.R. showed interest, but Linlithgow, sticking firmly to divide-and-rule, told the governor of Madras that Srinivasan should not have been allowed to meet Rajagopalachari, and Hyat Khan was pressured to abandon his initiative.63
Long months in jail had persuaded C.R. to seek a rapprochement with the Raj or Jinnah or both. On the other hand, Vallabhbhai, who suffered greatly from illness (with a suspicion of cancer) while in Yeravda, seemed content to await Gandhi’s lead. In his UP prison, Jawaharlal felt conflicting tugs: revulsion at Nazism and fascism, distress over Russia’s suffering, anger at British control of India, loyalty to Gandhi and bewilderment at some of Gandhi’s actions.
On 4 December 1941, all ICD prisoners, including Azad, the Congress president and Nehru were released. Most had served out their sentences, and it was hard for the Raj to justify detaining Nehru longer than the rest. Not only that, Nehru was thought likely to advocate a softer line towards the Raj, an assessment based on his warmth for the Soviet Union, Britain’s ally from June. A statement announcing the releases expressed the government’s confidence ‘in the determination of all responsible opinion in India to support the war effort until victory is secured’.64
Gandhi’s response was to say that without a change in policy the releases would not ‘evoke a single responsive or appreciative chord’ in him. He felt the ‘government will be soon disillusioned’ if it thought that ‘the prisoners will have changed their opinions in their self-invited solitude’.65 ICD would continue, Gandhi added, though Working Committee and AICC members would not court re-arrest for the time being.
Pearl Harbor, & another Congress offer. Within three days of the releases, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and drew America directly into the war. Rajagopalachari felt confirmed in his views. Now, surely, with a war in Asia as well as in Europe, the British would give much to obtain the Congress as an ally. Quickly he mobilized support, beginning with president Azad’s.
Once more he won a majority of the Working Committee, which met in Bardoli at the end of December, even though this time both Patel and Nehru voted against him. C.R.’s resolution recognizing the ‘new world situation’ and offering cooperation, including military support, to the Allies, if India’s freedom was declared, was passed. Said Gandhi to his colleagues:
So far as I am concerned, even if I was given the utmost power conceivable, even if I was made the Viceroy of India today, would I ask the people of India to take up the sword to keep the Empire alive?.. Am I to abandon the very boat which has brought me quite close to the shore?66
But the 1940 exercise was repeated. Despite Gandhi’s pre-Pearl Harbor assertion, ICD was suspended, and he was released from leading disobedience. Despite his disagreement Gandhi again asked the AICC, which met in Wardha in January, to endorse the Working Committee’s ‘Bardoli’ offer to Britain. Though Nehru, Patel and Prasad spoke against it—Nehru saying that Rajagopalachari’s was ‘a primrose path’—C.R.’s advocacy, Japan’s sweep across the Pacific, the draw of power and Gandhi’s counsel won the AICC’s ratification.
At Wardha Gandhi explained why he was asking for endorsement. Firstly, he did not wish to split the Congress. Secondly,
It is no longer open to the Government and the Congress critics to say that the Congress has banged the door against negotiation on the doctrinaire ground of non-violence. The resolution throws on the Government the entire burden of wooing the Congress by meeting its legitimate demands and securing its participation in the war effort.67
Thirdly, said Gandhi, ‘We have a right to take a step back for jumping forward.’68 He was saying that if, as he expected, Britain failed to respond positively, a struggle could again be launched.
The Harijan weeklies were revived. If the authorities tried to censor them, said Gandhi, he would reply with satyagraha on his own behalf, not in the name of the Congress. Short of sealing his lips, he was for giving the Bardoli offer every chance.
C.R. noted, in a letter to Devadas (1 Jan. 1942), that despite their differences Gandhi was ‘wonderfully good to me’, adding, ‘But what wonder really? He was ever that.’69 Gandhi was good and thoughtful also towards Patel. Keeping him in Sevagram for forty days, Gandhi treated him with mudpacks, hip-baths, walking and diet control.
Succession. Gandhi and his colleagues were
friends as well, their relationships enriched by more than two decades of common struggle. Their reunion after a year’s separation was not a small thing. But some tension was introduced into it on 15 January, when Gandhi told the AICC that
not Rajaji, nor Sardar Vallabhbhai, but Jawaharlal will be my successor.70
This was not a new thought. Indeed Gandhi prefaced the remark with the words, ‘As I have always said’. Yet being named and eliminated could not have been pleasant. No record of how Patel or C.R. reacted seems to exist, but an activist from Rajasthan who was present, Ramnarayan Chaudhary, saw that Nehru, hitherto cross-legged on the ground with a bolster behind his back, ‘sprang from his seat’ when he heard the remark and sat down atop the bolster.71
Admitting differences between him and Nehru, including over nonviolence, Gandhi yet added:
You cannot divide water by repeatedly striking it with a stick. It is just as difficult to divide us… He says whatever is uppermost in his mind, but he always does what I want. When I am gone he will do what I am doing now. Then he will speak my language too…
I would like to think that when the occasion arises India would defend herself through non-violence and thus be a messenger of peace to the whole world. Jawahar will also then work for it—not for war.72
Bajaj dies. February brought a blow: Jamnalal Bajaj’s sudden death from a stroke. Granted his wish to be treated as Gandhi’s ‘fifth son’, Bajaj had returned a title the British had given him and adopted Gandhi as a father, giving him funds, the Sevagram Ashram and support for every item in the constructive programme. A devastated Gandhi tried to encourage Janakidevi, Bajaj’s widow, and their children. He wrote:
Death has taken a mighty man. Whenever I wrote of wealthy men becoming trustees of their wealth for the common good I always had this merchant prince principally in mind…
His simplicity was all his own. Every house he built for himself became a dharmashala. His contribution as a satyagrahi was of the highest order. In political discussions he held his own. His judgements were sound…
Where am I to get another son like him now?.. But… a calamity of [this] kind is a blessing in disguise. God wants to try me through and through. I live in the faith that He will give me the strength too to pass through the ordeal.73
Desai, Kasturba, Patel, Harilal. Within days of Bajaj’s death, an overworked Mahadev, sent by Gandhi for a break in Nasik, suffered an attack en route at Wardha station, from where he was taken to a hospital. A phone had by now been installed in Sevagram, where, on the evening of Sunday 27 February, an anxious Gandhi ‘kept walking’ to the phone booth to find out how Mahadev was faring in Wardha.
His weekly silence period having commenced, Gandhi scribbled questions to the aide in the booth. When, at night, Mahadev was brought back in a car to his hut, Gandhi ‘came running’, stroked Desai’s head and asked, ‘Mahadev, how do you feel now?’ According to Narayan, Mahadev’s son, this was ‘the first time since his nephew Maganlal’s death’ that Gandhi had broken his weekly silence.74
Mahadev was soon back on his feet but now Kasturba took very ill. However, Gandhi had to leave for Calcutta to meet Chiang kai-Shek, who was visiting India. For the sake of China’s defence against Japan, Chiang wanted an understanding between Indians and the British and wished to meet with Gandhi, Nehru and the Viceroy.
‘I did not at all like leaving you,’ Gandhi wrote from the train to Kasturba.75 She recovered but remained weak; the Gandhi-Chiang meeting did not lead to much. Meanwhile, Patel sent word of his illness.
Early in April, when Gandhi visited Delhi, he saw Harilal, who was also in the capital, and found that his son had suffered a fracture in the hand. Gandhi arranged to send him to a hospital to get the fracture set. To Harilal’s son Kanti, Gandhi wrote: ‘He started talking about coming back to me, but that was only a ruse for getting money…’76
JAPAN AT THE GATE
Censoring Harijan was not attempted by the Raj, but Britain’s reply to the Bardoli offer did not come until the end of March. Events in Asia induced it. On 15 February Singapore, Britain’s ‘strong and secure’ Eastern bastion, was taken by Japanese forces, and on 7 March Rangoon fell.
So far, Churchill had resisted every suggestion for political advance in India, whether made by President Roosevelt or Generalissimo Chiang or anyone else, but the fall of Rangoon forced his hands. On 11 March he announced that his Cabinet colleague and the Leader of the House, Sir Stafford Cripps, would carry a proposal from the War Cabinet to India.
Belonging to the left wing of the Labour Party, a vegetarian, friendly with Nehru and a brilliant lawyer, Cripps had been ambassador to Moscow before Churchill invited him to join his War Cabinet. Arriving in Delhi on 22 March, Cripps described HMG’s scheme.
Offering ‘different items palatable to different tastes’,77 it contained three elements designed to satisfy the Congress. One, full dominion status for India after the war, with the right of secession from the Commonwealth. Two, a post-war Constituent Assembly (which the Congress had been demanding from the 1930s) for which provincial legislatures could elect members. And three, for the here and now, a national government composed of representatives of the leading political parties.
It had attractions for the princes too. They would have the right to send nominees to the Constituent Assembly and to decide the future of their states, a provision implying a right to declare independence.
And it had something for Jinnah. At the end of the war, even as India acquired the right to become a dominion, every province would have the right to stay out and become a separate dominion equal in status to the Indian dominion.
Invited to New Delhi to meet Cripps, Gandhi could not swallow the potential for balkanization, nomination by princes, or a clause in the scheme that placed India’s defence during the war wholly in British hands. Confirmed in his belief that Churchill had resolved not to ‘abandon [India] voluntarily’,78 he quickly returned to Sevagram, but not before using blunt language with Cripps: ‘If this is your entire proposal to India, I would advise you to take the next plane home.’79
However, Azad, Nehru, Patel, C.R. and the rest of the Working Committee continued in New Delhi for talks with Cripps. Annoyed at Patel for ‘stay[ing] on and on in the capital’, Gandhi termed the talks an exercise in ‘churning water to obtain butter’.80
Probed by Azad, Nehru and C.R., Cripps at first agreed that in a national government the Viceroy would only be a constitutional head. However, after Linlithgow complained to Churchill, Cripps was obliged to say that the Viceregal veto would continue. A year later, Linlithgow would tell Wavell, his commander-in-chief in 1942 and successor as Viceroy:
Cripps did not play straight over the question of the Viceroy’s veto… and did make some offer to Congress.81
The three Congress negotiators also objected to defence remaining with General Wavell. On this issue too Cripps tried to accommodate the Congress demand but was thwarted when Churchill cabled him to say that he would reject any arrangement over defence that did not have the full agreement, directly communicated to him, of Linlithgow and Wavell.
Not getting anything like the national government they had in mind, the Congress leaders formally turned down the scheme. While welcoming the secession clause as ‘a recognition of Pakistan by implication’, Jinnah, too, rejected the scheme because it gave provinces and not what he called ‘the Muslim nation’ the right to separate.82
In rejecting the scheme’s provisions for the secession of provinces or princely states, was the Congress asserting a right to coerce large populations? Answering the question, the Working Committee clarified that it ‘cannot think in terms of compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in an Indian Union against their declared and established will’. The Committee added that ‘acceptance of this principle inevitably’ ruled out any ‘compulsion being exercised on other substantial groups within that area’.83
The first sentence conceded the possibility of secession by a people
(not a party or a prince) after an Indian Union was formed. The second allowed parts or portions of a seceding unit to remain in the Union. These statements had the support of all in the Working Committee, including Azad, Patel and Nehru, and of Gandhi as well.
Before leaving India on 12 April, Cripps made a ‘personal and private’ appeal to Nehru, asking his friend to show ‘the supreme courage of a great leader’, that is, defy Gandhi and all his colleagues.84 Jawaharlal demurred but was filled with doubt.85
Churchill was not sorry at Cripps’s failure. ‘When Mr Churchill learned of the breakdown of the Delhi negotiations he put on an act of sham tears and sorrow before his guests at Chequers, not troubling to conceal his own pleasure.’86 Indians unable to agree was just the picture he wanted Roosevelt to get; in addition, an ambitious colleague had returned empty-handed.
SWEPT ASIDE?
Post-war balkanization—an India in several parts, including one or two Muslim Indias and several princely Indias—was not Gandhi’s only anxiety.
Until Pearl Harbor, Gandhi had thought that time was on his side. Whether or not Germany met with defeat, Britain was burning its resources. In a few years, assuming it retained a dominant profile, the Congress would nonviolently inherit the Raj’s power. These calculations were upset by Japan’s sweep and America’s entry into the war, even as Hitler’s move had earlier destroyed the Congress’s careful compact with the British.
With America’s wealth committed to the war, Britain’s staying power had multiplied. As Gandhi observed, ‘With America as her ally she has inexhaustible material resources and scientific skill.’87
Simultaneously, an aggressive Japan was at India’s gate. Instead of a nonviolent independence, India thus seemed more likely to obtain a war on its soil and seas—a no-holds-barred war between Japan and the Allies, fed as much on Indian lives and resources as on the combatants.
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 62
