Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  From East Bengal he received reports of a scorched earth policy to deny sustenance to Japanese invaders. Homesteads and boats had been destroyed. More destruction of homes and boats, of ‘crops’ and ‘water-supply’, of ‘what belongs to or is of use to the masses’88 seemed in store.

  It was also possible, on the other hand, that the British would cut and run from India, even as they had evacuated Malaya, Singapore and Burma. As Gandhi put it:

  India is not the home of the British people. If they are overwhelmed they will retire from India every man and woman and child, if they have facilities enough to carry them, even as they retired from Singapore, Malaya and Rangoon.89

  Where would that leave the Indian population? ‘Hundreds if not thousands’ of Indians ‘on their way from Burma [had] perished without food and drink’, and ‘wretched discrimination stared even these miserable people in the face’. There was ‘one route for the whites, another for the blacks. Provision of food and shelter for the whites, none for the blacks. And discrimination even on their arrival in India.’90 The Empire’s first concern was for the British in India.

  There was another cause for unease. Successive defeats that Asian Japan had inflicted on Western forces had made many Indians pro-Japanese and fiercely anti-British. These sentiments were strengthened by broadcasts from Berlin by Subhas Bose, heard from March 1942, fourteen months after his escape from house arrest in Calcutta. For his bids for independence, Bose seemed willing to take the aid of Hitler and the Japanese.

  Gandhi heard reports that Bose’s supporters would assist incoming Japanese forces, who it was thought might land in Orissa. Jawaharlal, on the other hand, was recommending a ‘scorched-earth policy and guerrilla warfare’ in the event of a Japanese invasion (82: 196), a position supported by the Indian Communist Party.

  Would the Indian soil that recently offered the world an alternative to violence now witness a war between the Allies and the Axis powers and a violent clash between Indians?

  The enlarged war was sweeping Gandhi, his life-work and his dream aside. It was threatening everything he had built or given birth to, or nourished or cherished—Swaraj, an Indian nation, Congress unity, nonviolence, Hindu-Muslim friendship, Indo-British partnership…

  THE RESPONSE

  It was his life’s biggest challenge yet, and he came up, as he had done so often before, with a simple response. This time it was ‘Quit India!’ He would ask the British to just leave his land and ask his people to repeat the call. Anything less bold or less simple would no longer work or even get heard.

  With the call the initiative returned to him and the Congress; the lights came back to him and all he stood for, including Swaraj, an India for all, and nonviolence. There would be some violence, surely, if he pressed the call—in the summer of 1942 Indians were angry. But he would risk a little violence for the survival of nonviolence. When Hitler, Churchill and the Japanese spoke with gun-ships and bombers, he could not remain silent.

  A resourceful ally, Bajaj, was dead, and two crucial allies, Vallabhbhai and Mahadev, were unwell, as was Kasturba. He himself was nearly seventy-three, and those trained in nonviolence did not comprise a large number. Yet he could not wait. As he said on 28 May to about 100 members of the Rashtriya Yuvak Sangh (‘National Youth Association’) who called on him in Sevagram,

  I always thought that I would have to wait till the country was ready for a non-violent struggle. But my attitude has undergone a change. I feel that if I continue to wait I might have to wait till doomsday… and in the meantime I may be enveloped and overwhelmed by the flames of violence that are spreading all around.91

  Quit India. The two-word phrase was not his own and first used by him only on 3 August, in a letter to American friends.92 But the idea behind it came to him in the middle of April.

  ‘It was the Cripps fiasco that inspired the idea [of asking the British to go],’ he told Louis Fischer, the American journalist, in June. ‘Hardly had he gone when it seized hold of me.’93

  British rule was ‘unnatural’ and had ‘choked Indian life’.94 The scheme that Cripps brought had ‘divided Hindus from Muslims more than ever’.95 Yes, ‘anarchy’ might reign for a while if the British left,96 but India’s conflicting forces would find their natural equilibrium. The Hindu-Muslim problem would become easier to resolve.

  If the British did not leave, the call would nonetheless proclaim that for Indians the first question was not Japan vs. Britain but Swaraj vs. slavery. When the call was given, most of India rallied behind him.

  First move. He made his first move on or shortly before 24 April, sending a draft resolution to the Working Committee meeting later that month in Allahabad. He did not attend himself but authorized Mira to take his draft to the Committee.

  The draft dealt with a likely Japanese attack on India’s east coast. Wanting India to face the possibility of Britain’s defeat or evacuation, Gandhi composed the following resolution:

  The Congress is of opinion that if the British withdrew from India, India would be able to defend herself in the event of Japanese or any aggressor attacking India. The A.I.C.C. is, therefore, of opinion that the British should withdraw from India…

  This Committee desires to assure the Japanese Government and people that India bears no enmity either towards Japan or towards any other nation. But if Japan attacks India and Britain makes no response to its appeal the Committee would expect all those who look to Congress for guidance to offer complete non-violent non-cooperation to the Japanese forces and not render any assistance to them…

  It is not difficult to understand the simple principle of non-violent non-co-operation: 1. We may not bend the knee to the aggressor nor obey any of his orders. 2. We may not look to him for any favours nor fall to his bribes. But we may not bear him any malice nor wish him ill. 3. If he wishes to take possession of our fields we will refuse to give them up even if we have to die in the effort to resist him.97

  Nehru seems to have said to his Working Committee colleagues that the draft conveyed sympathy with Japan and the expectation that the Axis powers would win. Patel replied that the Bardoli resolution had ‘made [it] clear that our sympathies were with the Allies’ but added that the wording in Gandhi’s draft could be changed to remove any unintended pro-fascist impression.98

  Prasad edited Gandhi’s draft accordingly but Nehru produced a resolution of his own. This too kept much of Gandhi’s language while not asking the British, in so many words, ‘to withdraw’. Nehru’s draft rejected ‘any schemes or proposals which retain, even in partial measure, British control and authority in India’, and added: ‘Not only the interests of India but also Britain’s safety, and world peace and freedom, demand that Britain must abandon her hold on India.’99

  When votes were taken, six members and five invitees favoured the Gandhi-Prasad draft, while four members and two invitees preferred Nehru’s. Azad, the president, did not vote, and Rajagopalachari, who was still in the Congress, opposed both. However, on Azad’s urging, Prasad withdrew his version and asked for unanimous backing for Nehru’s draft, which was reluctantly given.

  Gandhi rebuked Patel for not fighting harder in Allahabad. Informed by Kripalani that Azad had secured the withdrawal of Prasad’s draft by threatening to quit, Gandhi commented that the president should have been allowed to resign.100 Yet he remarked also that Nehru’s draft ‘allowed him enough scope for work’.101

  Simultaneously he increased the pressure. Encouraged by him, Patel and Prasad wrote to Azad that they and others were willing to resign from the Working Committee in view of ‘fundamental differences’.102 The resignations were not accepted. Azad knew, as did Nehru, that the public was with Gandhi, who said so in a letter to Azad: ‘Sardar tells me that the public opinion is in favour of my resolution.’103 Significantly, the Congress Socialists, close to Nehru in the 1930s, were entirely with Gandhi over Quit India.

  On 24 April he had written to Nehru: ‘The time has come when each of us must choose his own
course.’104 In July, when the Working Committee met in Wardha for nine days, Gandhi again said to Nehru and Azad that they were free to do as they pleased, and to resign if they must.105

  The two yielded but also influenced Gandhi. At any rate Nehru did. Though Gandhi did not give in on Quit India, his language regarding Japan changed after Nehru questioned him. More importantly, Gandhi agreed to join to his Quit India call an expression of a freed India’s willingness to host Allied troops, if needed, ‘to prevent Japanese occupation’. Writing in Harijan on 28 June, Gandhi admitted that ‘abrupt withdrawal of the Allied troops might result in Japan’s occupation of India and China’s sure fall’.106

  Questions. From the start he had refused to see the Japanese as ‘liberators’, pointing to ‘Chinese history’ as proof of the opposite,107 and he said he ‘could only laugh at the suggestion’ that he had ‘turned pro-Japanese’.108 On 26 April Harijan carried his comment that if ‘the Nazis, the Fascists or the Japanese instead of leaving India alone choose to subjugate her, they will find that they have to hold more than they can in their iron hoop. They will find it much more difficult than Britain has. Their very rigidity will strangle them.’109

  Yet it was a leader’s duty to ready his people for any eventuality. On 7 June Harijan published his reaction to a story that Gandhi’s ‘present attitude towards England and Japan’ was influenced by a belief that ‘the Allies were going to be defeated’:

  I have no hesitation in saying that it is not true. On the contrary I said only the other day in Harijan that the Britisher was hard to beat. He has not known what it is to be defeated. And with America as her ally she has inexhaustible material resources and scientific skill… Thus I have no decisive opinion about the result of the War.110

  To Mira, who had gone to Orissa to prepare the coastal population for a nonviolent response to any Japanese attack, he wrote on 31 May:

  One thing they should never do—yield willing submission to the Japanese. That will be a cowardly act, and unworthy of freedom-loving people. They must not escape from one fire only to fall into another and probably more terrible.111

  And in Harijan of 14 June he wrote:

  Neither food nor shelter is to be given nor are any dealings to be established with [the Japanese]. They should be made to feel that they are not wanted.112

  On 5 June, after Nehru had convinced him about Allied troops, he told Fischer:

  Britain and America, and other countries too, can keep their armies here and use Indian territory as a base for military operations. I do not wish Japan to win the war. I do not want the Axis to win. Oh, [the Allies] could operate the railroads [as well]. They would also need order in the ports where they received their supplies… I accept the proposition that there is a better chance if the democracies win.113

  In Harijan of 14 June he said that the ‘first act’ of a free India ‘would be to enter into a treaty with the United Nations for defensive operations against aggressive powers, it being common cause that India will have nothing to do with any of the Fascist powers and India would be morally bound to help the United Nations’. He added that Allied troops would be ‘tolerat[ed] on the Indian soil under well-defined conditions’.114

  Acknowledging that in the summer of 1942 Indians were nursing ill will against the British, Gandhi claimed that ‘orderly British withdrawal will turn the hatred into affection’,115 which, he insisted, was still his goal. But he told Fischer that he had always known—from personal experience and from ‘British history’—that Britons were ‘impressed by action’, and ‘it is action that we must take now’.116

  But would the British just pack up and leave? In June Rajagopalachari publicly objected to ‘the fond expectation that the British will leave the country in simple response to a Congress slogan’.117 And in July, in a letter to Gandhi, C.R. argued that Britain ‘cannot add to her crimes the crowning offence of leaving the country in chaos to become a certain prey to foreign ambition’.118

  C.R. resigns. From his east coast perspective, Gandhi’s old friend and relative by marriage was convinced that Japan was India’s principal foe. Keen on a Congress-League settlement that he hoped would lead to a national government in New Delhi, and eager to return as premier to defend the presidency of Madras, C.R. persuaded Congress members of the Madras legislature to pass two controversial resolutions on 24 April 1942.

  By the first, the Madras legislators asked the AICC to concede the Muslim League’s claim for the separation of ‘certain areas’ and ask for the League’s support for ‘a national administration at this hour of peril’. By their second resolution, the Madras legislators sought the AICC’s permission for reviving a popular government in Madras (this time including members of the Muslim League) to prepare south Indians to face any Japanese attack.119

  In defence of his moves, C.R. cited the ‘non-coercion’ resolution that the Working Committee had passed in April, shortly after the talks with Cripps, which disavowed ‘compelling the people of any territorial unit to remain in an Indian Union against their declared and established will’.

  Early in May, in Allahabad, the AICC heard Rajagopalachari but by an overwhelming majority turned down the requests from Madras. C.R. then took his case to the public, winning support in some quarters but losing that of his Working Committee colleagues and before long of most in the Congress. The bulk of the Madras legislators also deserted him.

  While conceding that it was ‘a noble thing to strive for Hindu-Muslim unity’ and ‘equally noble to strive to ward off the Japanese intrusion’, Gandhi called C.R.’s plan ‘wholly unnatural’,120 and suggested that it would be ‘most becoming’ if he severed his connection with the Congress and then carried on his campaign with ‘all the zeal and ability’ he was capable of.121

  Members could not be ‘totally debarred from persuading Congressmen to alter their opinions,’ C.R. argued, yet in July he resigned from the Congress, and also from the Madras legislature, ‘in order to be absolutely free to carry on my campaign’.122

  Passion and reason. On 9 June Fischer asked Gandhi whether he had ‘any organization’ with which to conduct his proposed struggle.

  G: The organization is the Congress Party. But if it fails me, I have my own organization, myself…

  F: If you look at this in its historic perspective, you are doing a novel and remarkable thing—you are ordaining the end of an empire.

  G: Even a child can do that. I will appeal to the people’s instincts. I may arouse them…

  F: Do you expect drastic action when you launch the movement?

  G: Yes. I expect it any day. I am ready. I know I may be arrested.

  Five days later, speaking to other American journalists, Gandhi again admitted the likelihood of quick arrests but added: ‘Our arrests would work up the movement, they would stir everyone in India to do his little bit.’123

  Fischer said to Desai that after listening carefully to Gandhi and studying his notes and ‘wondering all the time what was the source of his hold on people’, he had come ‘to the tentative conclusion that it was his passion’.

  ‘That is right,’ Desai said.

  ‘What is the root of his passion?’ Fischer asked.

  ‘This passion,’ Desai explained, ‘is the sublimation of all the passions that flesh is heir to.’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘Sex and anger and personal ambition… Gandhi is under his own complete control. That generates tremendous energy and passion.’124

  But the Quit India passion was not devoid of reason. Contrary to what Rajagopalachari suggested, there is no indication that Gandhi in fact expected the British to quit that summer or immediately thereafter. But he thought that apart from reminding the world of his vision, Quit India would strengthen the Congress in India.

  Did he anticipate that Muslims generally might see Quit India as a bid to pre-empt Pakistan by replacing British control with that of the Congress? Or realize that suppression of the Congress could leave the field free for the Muslim
League and its Pakistan call?

  He did but felt helpless. Insisting, on 14 June, that he was not asking ‘the British to hand over India to the Congress or to the Hindus’, Gandhi added, ‘Let them entrust India to God or in modern parlance to anarchy. Then all the parties will fight one another like dogs, or will, when real responsibility faces them, come to a reasonable agreement.’125

  Talking with Cripps at the end of March, he had ‘acknowledged the great influence of Jinnah and that the movement for Pakistan had grown tremendously in volume during the last two years’.126 And in June and July, despite the sharp difference with Rajagopalachari, he encouraged his friend to continue negotiating with Jinnah.127 Yet he would not put off Quit India for a possible, but to him unlikely, agreement with Jinnah.

  Did he have a plan or strategy for enlisting participation in Quit India? In a letter to Mira, written on 22 May, he gave an inkling of his expectations:

  I want to hasten slowly. I do not want to precipitate matters. Our steps must be firm but gradual so that people may understand them so far as it is possible. A time must come when the thing may become beyond control. We may not purposely let it go out of control.128

  He does not wish to be arrested at once, yet he believes that once ‘people understand’ what he is getting at they will act on their own, even recklessly perhaps. Indeed ‘a time must come’ for that.

  On 9 June (over a month before the Working Committee endorsed Quit India), Fischer asked Gandhi whether he was willing to listen to Chinese, Russian or American voices questioning his plan. When Gandhi said he was, Fischer asked, ‘Have I your authority to say this to the Viceroy?’ ‘Yes, you have my permission,’ Gandhi answered.