Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  Escaping, in November 1942, from Bihar’s Hazaribagh jail and conducting a secret campaign, Jayaprakash became a national hero. Aruna Asaf Ali, a Bengali Hindu whose Muslim husband was a member of the Working Committee and incarcerated in the Keep, was another underground leader of Quit India. The socialists Rammanohar Lohia and Achyut Patwardhan initiated several rebellious acts. Among the scores of women who provided leadership were Sucheta Kripalani, whose husband was also a prisoner in the Keep, and Usha Mehta, the organizer of Bombay’s illegal broadcasts.

  With the aid of Ramnath Goenka, who was publishing Indian Express from Madras, Devadas clandestinely produced India Ravaged, a book detailing British excesses. Businessmen provided funds to the rebels; Indian officials of the Raj gave tips that enabled rebels to escape capture; some officials even hid rebels in their homes. As the Raj admitted, the public’s ‘general conspiracy of silence’ prevented the capture of numerous rebels.162

  Though Quit India had negative consequences as well, it delinked the Indian people from their British rulers and fused them with the Congress. After August 1942 it became certain that the British would depart and the Congress take over; when, was the only question left.

  Underscoring Gandhi as India’s biggest player still, Quit India also proclaimed nonviolence in the middle of World War II. The rebellion’s violent aspects could not conceal Gandhi’s salience or his message of nonviolence.

  FIGHTING FROM PRISON

  The day after he was brought to Aga Khan Palace (AKP), Gandhi wrote a strong letter to Sir Roger Lumley, the governor of Bombay. Correctly terming the mansion, which was dusty and in disrepair, a ‘temporary jail’, he charged that at Chinchwad station he had witnessed ‘an impatient English sergeant rough-handle’ a Bombay Congressman ‘and shove him into the lorry as if he was a log of wood,’ and asked that the unwell Patel, who was his ‘patient’, be brought to AKP, which was ‘commodious enough’.163

  Four days later, in a letter to the Viceroy, he directly accused the Raj. ‘The Government of India were wrong in precipitating the crisis,’ the letter began. The Raj ‘should have waited at least till the time I inaugurated mass action’, he said. There were several other assertions.

  Firstly, ‘violence was never contemplated [by the Congress] at any stage’. Secondly, ‘the Congress was making every effort to identify India with the Allied cause’. Thirdly, the Congress’s readiness to let the Muslim League form free India’s first government disproved ‘the charge of totalitarianism against the Congress’.

  Fourthly, ‘the living burial of the author of the [Quit India] demand has not resolved the deadlock, it has aggravated it.’ Fifthly, the cause of the Allies did not require the arrests:

  The declared cause is common between the Government of India and us… [I]t is the protection of the freedom of China and Russia. The Government of India think that the freedom of India is not necessary for winning the cause. I think exactly the opposite.

  I have taken Jawaharlal Nehru as my measuring rod. His personal contacts make him feel much more the misery of the impending ruin of China and Russia than I can—and may I say than even you can…

  He fought against my position with a passion which I have no words to describe. But the logic of facts overwhelmed him. He yielded when he saw clearly that without the freedom of India that of the other two was in great jeopardy. Surely you are wrong in having imprisoned such a powerful friend and ally.

  If notwithstanding the common cause, the Government’s answer to the Congress demand is hasty repression, they will not wonder if I draw the inference that it was not so much the Allied cause that weighed with the British Government, as the unexpressed determination to cling to the possession of India as an indispensable part of the imperial policy.

  Gandhi claimed, too, that ‘Congress seeks to kill imperialism as much for the sake of the British people and humanity as for India’ (83: 210-15).

  MAHADEV DIES

  Kasturba seemed to recover in Gandhi’s company but on the morning of 15 August, the day after having typed and helped edit Gandhi’s letter to Linlithgow, Mahadev suddenly collapsed and died, joining the ranks of several hundred Quit India martyrs. Kasturba sobbed that her husband had lost ‘his left hand and his right hand’. When, weeks later, Patel heard the news in the Keep, he wrote to Gandhi:

  For Mahadev to slip away suddenly and quickly like this, leaving everybody behind, shows God’s wrath.164

  Patel, softening, was willing to imply that Quit India had invited divine punishment, but not Gandhi, who had suffered perhaps one of his life’s harshest blows. No matter who falls, a commander-in-chief may not question an ongoing battle. Yet Gandhi rushed to the lifeless body, took Mahadev’s head in his lap, and cried, ‘Mahadev! Mahadev!’165 Later he sent a detailed telegram for Desai’s wife and son, addressed to Chimanlal Shah, the manager of Sevagram ashram:

  Mahadev died suddenly. Gave no indication. Slept well last night. Had breakfast. Walked with me, Sushila. Jail doctors did all they could but God had willed otherwise. Sushila and I bathed body. Body lying peacefully covered with flowers, incense burning. Sushila and I reciting Gita.

  Mahadev has died yogi’s and patriot’s death. Tell Durga, Babla (Narayan)… no sorrow allowed. Only joy over such noble death. Cremation taking place before me. Shall keep ashes. Advise Durga remain Ashram, but she may go to her people if she must. Hope Babla will be brave and prepare himself fill Mahadev’s place worthily. Love. Bapu166

  The telegram was delivered three weeks after it was sent. Meanwhile, and for the rest of his time in AKP, Gandhi walked twice a day to the spot where his ‘son’, cut down at fifty, was cremated, to lay flowers there. To its credit, the Raj allowed Pyarelal to join Gandhi in AKP, in the place emptied by Mahadev’s death.

  In November Gandhi read in a newspaper allowed to him that a son of the former Viceroy, Irwin, now Lord Halifax, had been killed in the war. He wrote to Linlithgow: ‘I have just read about the sad but heroic death of Hon’ble Peter Wood in action. Will you please convey to Lord Halifax my congratulations as well as condolences on the sad bereavement?’167

  Unease and its remedy. But the Indian people’s nonviolent C-in-C was not at peace. The Raj had assiduously spread the line that Gandhi had condoned if not plotted violence and had pro-Axis leanings. In America in particular the propaganda had hurt his and the Congress’s image. Muzzled, Gandhi could give no reply.

  Another reason for unease had nothing to do with the Raj’s distortions. Quit India had been launched (unavoidably, he thought) for India’s identity, to answer the question, was India British or Indian? It had been launched, too, for the Congress’s survival, and for nonviolence’s visibility.

  Nevertheless it had caused violence. Though censored, newspapers conveyed this reality almost daily to Gandhi. He knew that his friends in England would be deeply saddened—people like Agatha Harrison, Horace Alexander, Muriel Lester, Henry Polak—and Gandhi was troubled in his own soul.

  Reports of starvation from Bengal intensified the discomfort. As before, Gandhi turned to a fast for solace but also for a springboard. If he began a fast, he would be seen and heard. He prepared the ground with a letter to Linlithgow. Datelined ‘Detention Camp, New Year’s Eve’, it said:

  Contrary to the biblical injunction, I have allowed many suns to set on a quarrel I have harboured against you, but I must not allow the old year to expire without disburdening myself of what is rankling in my breast against you. I had thought we were friends and should still love to think so. However what has happened since the 9th of August last makes me wonder…

  If I have not ceased to be your friend, why did you not, before taking drastic action, send for me, tell me of your suspicions and make yourself sure of your facts? I am quite capable of seeing myself as others see me…

  I find that all the statements made about me in Government quarters in this connection contain palpable departures from truth…

  You know I returned to India from South Africa
at the end of 1914 with a mission which came to me in 1906, namely, to spread truth and non-violence among mankind in the place of violence and falsehood in all walks of life.

  The law of satyagraha knows no defeat. Prison is one of the many ways of spreading the message, but it has its limits… I had given myself six months. The period is drawing to a close, so is my patience. The law of satyagraha, as I know it, prescribes a remedy in such moments of trial. In a sentence it is: ‘Crucify the flesh by fasting.’ That same law forbids its use except as a last resort. I do not want to use it if I can avoid it.

  This is the way to avoid it: convince me of my error or errors, and I shall make ample amends. You can send for me or send someone who knows your mind and can carry conviction. There are many other ways, if you have the will. May I expect an early reply? May the New Year bring peace to us all.168

  Though Linlithgow and his staff had fully expected Gandhi to threaten a fast, the letter produced anxious consultations between New Delhi and London. Understanding well that a fast would give Gandhi a voice again, the Raj knew, too, that India would be convulsed if he were to die. From the discussions emerged a reply in which Linlithgow said that in fact it was he who had been let down. The Viceroy then cited the killings and destruction that had occurred in Quit India’s name. Gandhi rejoined:

  [Y]ou throw in my face the facts of murders by persons reputed to be Congressmen. I see the fact of the murders as clearly, I hope, as you do. My answer is that the Government goaded the people to the point of madness. They started leonine violence in the shape of the arrests…

  Referring to starvation in Bengal, Gandhi again held British policy responsible:

  Add to this tale of woe the privations of the poor millions due to India-wide scarcity which I cannot help thinking might have been largely mitigated, if not altogether prevented, had there been a bona-fide national government responsible to a popularly elected assembly.

  He said he had to fast:

  If then I cannot get soothing balm for my pain, I must resort to the law prescribed for satyagrahis, namely, a fast according to capacity. I must commence after the early morning breakfast of the 9th February, a fast for twenty-one days ending on the morning of the 2nd March.

  Usually, during my fasts, I take water with the addition of salts. But nowadays my system refuses water. This time, therefore, I propose to add juices of citrus fruits to make water drinkable. For, my wish is not to fast unto death but to survive the ordeal, if God so wills.169

  In a tough counter, once more prepared after careful consultation, Linlithgow charged:

  There is evidence that you and your friends expected this policy to lead to violence; and that you were prepared to condone it; and that the violence that ensued formed part of a concerted plan, conceived long before the arrest of Congress leaders.

  The Viceroy proceeded to characterize the threatened fast as ‘political blackmail’, adding, in parentheses, ‘Himsa’, using the Hindi word for violence.170 Worried, however, about consequences if Gandhi died in detention, he offered temporary release for the duration of the fast. The offer was declined.

  On 10 February 1943 the fast began. Public opinion in India and the UK forced the Raj to issue regular communiqués on its prisoner’s condition, to allow Bidhan Chandra Roy, the Bengal Congress leader who was also a leading physician, to inspect Gandhi’s health and let another physician, M.D.D. Gilder of Bombay, reside as a detainee in AKP, and to allow relatives to visit the prisoner.

  On the thirteenth day he had difficulty swallowing water and it looked that he might die. With his permission, and in accordance with the latitude he had given himself beforehand, sweet lime juice was added to his water, and he survived. Yet he felt some guilt about imbibing the juice. To General Candy, the Raj’s prison chief, he joked, ‘Where is my fast now?’ To Roy he said: ‘To drink water with juice added and live, or die—this was the choice before me. I preferred to live.’171

  While Gandhi was ‘nearly at death’s door’, Kasturba, scarcely fit herself, ‘never cried or lost courage, but kept up other people’s courage and prayed to God’, her husband would later recall.172

  The fast delivered a direct blow to the Raj. On 26 February three Indian members of the Viceroy’s Council resigned their offices in sympathy with Gandhi: Sir Homi Mody, a Parsi, and two Hindus who had been in the Congress earlier, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar of Bengal and M.S. Aney of Maharashtra. Prison walls had once more been scaled.

  C.R.’s visit and proposal. As a relative, Rajagopalachari managed to see Gandhi on four successive days during the fast, after the crisis had passed. Having left the Congress before Quit India, C.R. was out of jail. The two talked ‘both seriously and lightly’, Rajagopalachari told the press,173 including about Francis Thompson’s poem, The Hound of Heaven. Their significant political discussion was about how to enlist the Muslim League.

  First verbally and then in writing, C.R. presented his formula to Gandhi: The League should cooperate with the Congress in the formation of a provisional national government, and the Congress, on its part, should agree to abide by a post-independence plebiscite on Pakistan in contiguous Muslim-majority districts in the north-west and the east. In the event of separation, mutual agreements would cover common questions of defence, commerce and communications.

  Gandhi said he could assent to such a pact. A month later, without disclosing his formula or Gandhi’s endorsement of it, Rajagopalachari informed Jinnah that Gandhi was not inflexible over Pakistan, whereupon Jinnah publicly declared that he was open to an initiative from Gandhi. When Gandhi saw Jinnah’s statement in Dawn, a newspaper founded by the League leader, he wrote to him:

  To Jinnah, 4 May 1943: When some time after my incarceration the Government asked me for a list of newspapers I would like to have, I included the Dawn in my list.. Whenever it comes to me, I read it carefully… I noted your invitation to me to write to you…

  I welcome your invitation. I suggest our meeting face to face rather than talking through correspondence. But I am in your hands.

  I hope that this letter will be sent to you and, if you agree to my proposal, that the Government will let you visit me.174

  The Raj did not allow the letter to reach Jinnah. A statement said:

  The Government of India have decided that this letter cannot be forwarded and have so informed Mr Gandhi and Mr Jinnah. They are not prepared to give facilities for political correspondence or contact to a person detained for promoting an illegal mass movement which he has not disavowed…175

  Tussling. Aided by Pyarelal, Gandhi mounted attacks from his detention camp on the Raj’s distortions of Quit India before the Central Assembly in New Delhi and Parliament in London, and in Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances, 1942-43, an official pamphlet issued shortly after Gandhi’s fast had commenced. He was fortunately able to rely on papers he or Pyarelal had brought: recent Harijan issues and Gandhi’s notes for the Quit India talks he had given on 7 & 8 August.

  Some of Gandhi’s refutations were not passed on. A long letter he addressed in May to Lord Samuel, a Liberal peer, who had criticized Gandhi in the House of Lords on the basis of the Raj’s statements, was suppressed. But Gandhi’s reply to Sir Reginald Maxwell, the home member in New Delhi, who had said in the Central Assembly that ‘the movement initiated by the Congress has been decisively defeated’, was delivered. ‘I must combat this statement,’ Gandhi wrote to Maxwell, adding,

  Satyagraha knows no defeat. It flourishes on blows the hardest imaginable. But I need not go to that bower for comfort. I learnt in schools established by the British Government in India that ‘freedom’s battle once begun’ is ‘bequeathed from bleeding sire to son’. It is of little moment when the goal is reached…

  The dawn came with the establishment of the Congress sixty years ago. Sixth of April 1919, on which All-India satyagraha began, saw a spontaneous awakening from one end of India to the other. You can certainly derive comfort, if you like, from the fact that the immediate
objective of the movement was not gained as some Congressmen had expected.

  But that is no criterion of ‘decisive’ or any ‘defeat’. It ill becomes one belonging to a race which owns no defeat to deduce defeat of a popular movement from the suppression of popular exuberance—maybe not always wise—by a frightful exhibition of power.176

  Clearly the prisoner was enjoying his rhetorical tussles with the Raj, even though his version was getting no press. In July he sent to the home department a comprehensive, point-by-point rebuttal—well-argued, forceful, in places sparkling—of the Congress Responsibility pamphlet, with Gilder and Pyarelal typing out his drafts.

  Linlithgow leaves. In the autumn of 1943 Linlithgow ended his viceroyalty. There used to be warmth in Gandhi’s relationship with him. Writing to Amery in February, Linlithgow had referred to Gandhi’s ‘very many likeable qualities’ and added, ‘My personal relations with him have always been very good.’177 But the two had clashed bitterly over Quit India. When he read that Linlithgow was leaving, Gandhi wrote to him:

  27 Sept. 1943: Dear Lord Linlithgow, On the eve of your departure from India, I would like to send you a word. Of all the high functionaries I have had the honour of knowing, none has been the cause of such deep sorrow to me as you have been. It has cut me to the quick to have to think of you as having countenanced untruth, and that regarding one whom, at one time, you considered as your friend. I hope and pray that God will some day put it into your heart to realize that you, a representative of a great nation, had been led into a grievous error. With good wishes, I still remain, Your friend, M.K. Gandhi