Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  In the middle of June, after the monsoon had set in, Gandhi returned to Poona for a spell in Dinshaw Mehta’s nature-cure clinic; the malaria had left him but worms and amoebae still troubled his stomach. From 5 July he spent nearly four weeks in Panchgani, the hill town to the south of Poona, where he much enjoyed Rajagopalachari’s company, the sort of bracing fellowship, Pyarelal mused, that Gandhi had missed in AKP.1 In the first week of August Gandhi returned to Sevagram.

  Soon after their release, he and Mira had clashed over her wish to marry a man she had known from the Thirties: Prithvi Singh, a revolutionary who had professed conversion to nonviolence. Inclined to doubt the conversion and to believe critical reports about Singh, Gandhi questioned the proposed marriage. Saying she would have to leave Gandhi and start her own ashram in the Himalayan foothills (India’s hot plains had always tormented her), Mira asked for the return of funds she had deposited at Sabarmati, to be used for her new venture.

  Arranging to return the money, Gandhi cautioned Mira against being used by the Communist party,2 and added that he might have to publicly dissociate himself from her new venture. In two letters sent at this time, a piqued Gandhi called her ‘Miss Slade’ and signed himself ‘M.K. Gandhi’. Continuing to sign herself, ‘Ever your devoted daughter,’ Mira wrote on 12 June:

  You have given me my freedom with one hand and taken it away with the other. To give me my money and freedom, and at the same time to say that as soon as I begin to use them you will publicly disapprove, is to sabotage anything I may try to do… My faith in God is my guide. My ideals have not changed in the last few days. I am the same person that I was when we used to talk happily together.3

  The tiff soon ended, in part because Prithvi Singh did not wish to marry Mira. Prompted by Devadas, Gandhi reverted to calling her Mira and signing off as ‘Bapu’. He also blessed the proposed new ashram near the Himalayas, where Mira hoped to rear cattle, and more or less asked to be forgiven:

  18 July 1944: I am learning every day. I must not cause dear ones grief when it is avoidable… I know you forgave me long ago. But it is good to ask for forgiveness.4

  Missing Kasturba, he was eager for letters from his sons. At the end of June he wrote to Ramdas and his wife Nirmala:

  Since Ba is not here, who is there gently to rebuke you for not writing at all? Every day I hope that I will see the handwriting of either of you… How are you all getting along?5

  With Harilal Gandhi had had a long and calm talk during Kasturba’s cremation, at which all sons except Manilal were present. Early in 1945 Harilal went to the home in Mysore of his son Kanti, a doctor, and Kanti’s wife from Kerala, Saraswati. There Harilal seemed to find some stability. In April 1945 Gandhi wrote to Saraswati:

  God will grant you success. The victory over Harilal which was denied to me has come to you two. You are correct in saying that if he can get rid of the two vices, he can be the best of all the brothers.6

  Two months later he sent a warm letter to Harilal, urging him to continue in his son’s home: ‘How can you be a burden there? You may even help them while you are lounging about.’7 But by August 1945 Harilal had left Mysore.

  Learning in June 1944 that one of the Dandi Marchers, Anand Hingorani, had lost his wife Vidya, Gandhi wrote out for Anand a ‘true thought’, as he called it, which was a consoling verse he had received, following Kasturba’s death, from a Mrs Glen E. Snyder of Grimes, Iowa: ‘You cannot say, you must not say/That she is dead. She is just away …’8 This was followed by Gandhi writing each day a thought for Anand, an exercise carried out, we may surmise, with Kasturba too in mind.

  Answering a letter of sympathy from John Haynes Holmes, an old American admirer and Unitarian minister, he said of Kasturba: ‘I remember only her great merits. Her limitations were reduced to ashes with the body.’9 Gandhi agreed to chair a trust founded in his wife’s name, which quickly received seventy-five lakh rupees, and asked that the trust limit itself to ‘women and children in the villages’, focusing on ‘maternity, hygiene and the treatment of diseases, and [basic] education’.10

  And in a letter to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, colleague from 1930, he said (18 July):

  My dream is to have India’s women to lead the world of men who have led women up to now.11

  Political tasks. In the summer of 1944, Hitler’s defeat seemed not too distant, Japan’s defeat also appeared inevitable, and Quit India, essentially crushed by end-1942, seemed only a memory. Nonetheless Gandhi felt certain that Indian independence was on its way, and that Quit India had bolstered the populace:

  9 July 1944: The heavy defeat of the Congress I do not feel at all. I have not a shadow of doubt that this passage through fire and suffering by thousands of Congressmen and Congress sympathizers has raised the status of India and the strength of the people. Victory, that is, independence of India as a whole, is a certainty.12

  Two years earlier, with Japan at India’s door, he had thought in now-or-never terms. In 1944 he felt time was again on his side. He gave himself two tasks: ensuring that the Congress received its due share of power when the British left, and finding Hindu-Muslim understanding.

  On 17 June, writing from the Poona nature-cure clinic, he sought a meeting with the Viceroy as well as an opportunity to speak to the jailed Working Committee. Wavell replied that Gandhi should first reveal ‘a definite and constructive policy’.13 This Gandhi did between 4 and 6 July, when Stuart Gelder of England’s News Chronicle interviewed him in Panchgani.

  ‘I cannot take the country back to 1942,’ acknowledged Gandhi. ‘History can never be repeated.’ He had ‘no intention of offering civil disobedience today’ but wanted a national government with ‘full control of civil administration’, to be chosen by ‘elected members of the Central Assembly’. Only such a government could address ‘the terrible progressive starvation of the people’ from the Bengal famine.14

  Provided India did not have to pay for their expenses, Allied forces could carry on their operations on Indian soil for defeating Japan, Gandhi added. The Viceroy and the C-in-C could retain ‘complete control’ over war policy and over ports and the railways, but the national government should be entitled ‘to offer advice and criticisms even in military matters’. Asked about his own role in such a national government, Gandhi replied:

  After independence [is] assured, I would probably cease to function as adviser to the Congress, and as an all-war resister I would have to stand aside; but I shall not offer any resistance against the national government or the Congress. My cooperation will be abstention from interfering with the even tenor of life in India.

  I shall work with the hope that my influence will always be felt to keep India peace-minded and [working for] brotherhood among all without the distinction of race and colour…

  He saw India’s independence as a prelude to the freedom of all of Asia and Africa:

  Freedom for India will bring hope to Asiatics and other exploited nations. Today there is no hope for the Negroes, but Indian freedom will fill them with hope.

  ‘Will the Viceroy be there (in a national government)?’ Gelder asked. ‘Yes,’ replied Gandhi, ‘but he will be like the King of England guided by responsible ministers.’15

  Speaking to other journalists a few days later, Gandhi said he felt awkward making proposals without consulting the Working Committee:

  If the indication of my mind affords any satisfaction to the authorities, they should open the gates of the prison, and let those who can speak with authority pronounce upon my proposal or at least let me confer with them. As it is, I do not know that I have not embarrassed them by my sharing my personal opinion with the public before first sharing it with them.16

  Aside from the fact that along with Quit India his generalship in the Congress had expired, he correctly sensed that Nehru, Patel, Azad and company would henceforth want to act on their own. Still, in a letter sent on 27 July, Gandhi communicated his proposals directly to the Viceroy.

  Subhas addresses Gandh
i. Earlier, on 6 July, many Indians heard a broadcast that Subhas Bose made to India from ‘somewhere in south-east Asia’. By this time his Indian National Army, operating alongside Japan’s forces, had fought fierce, sacrificial and mostly losing battles around the India-Burma border. The broadcast conveyed selflessness and commitment:

  I can assure you, Mahatmaji, that I and all those who are working with me, regard ourselves as the servants of the Indian people. The only reward that we desire for our efforts, for our suffering and our sacrifice is the freedom of our motherland. There are many among us who would like to retire from the political field once India is free…

  Nobody would be more happy than ourselves if, by any chance, our countrymen at home should succeed in liberating themselves by their own efforts, or if the British Government accept your Quit India resolution and give effect to it. We are however proceeding on the assumption that neither of the above is possible.

  Addressed, as we see, to Gandhi, the broadcast called him the ‘Father of the Nation’.17 There is no evidence that Gandhi heard the broadcast but we must assume that he learnt of its contents and was moved.

  Jinnah. To another key player, Jinnah, a telegram went from Panchgani. It was sent by Rajagopalachari, who had consulted Gandhi. He was releasing his formula to the public, C.R. said in the telegram; would Jinnah mind if the League leader’s rejection of the formula was also announced? He would indeed mind, Jinnah wired back. If Gandhi dealt directly with him, Jinnah added, he would convey the formula to the League.

  Thereupon, on 17 July, Gandhi wrote from Panchgani to Jinnah—in Gujarati, with an attached Urdu translation—suggesting a meeting. Jinnah, also unwell, replied proposing a venue, his house in Bombay, to which Gandhi agreed, and the two decided to meet in September.

  However, at the end of July Jinnah charged that the Rajagopalachari formula was ‘a parody and a negation’ of the League’s Pakistan resolution and intended to ‘torpedo’ it. The Pakistan it offered, Jinnah added, was ‘maimed, mutilated, and moth-eaten’.18 The formula’s ‘mutual agreements’ over defence, etc., would cripple the new nation’s independence, and limiting Pakistan to ‘Muslim-majority districts’ would shrink its size.

  Another shot at the Gandhi-Jinnah talks, an indirect one, was fired by the Viceroy. Following instructions from the War Cabinet, Wavell replied to Gandhi that he saw no point in meeting him. Gandhi’s national government proposal, the Viceroy added, was unacceptable even as a basis for discussion.

  The true reason against a Gandhi-Viceroy meeting was that it would underline the prestige of the recent prisoner, and strengthen his hand for the Jinnah encounter. During discussions in London, and between London and New Delhi, on the reply to be sent to Gandhi, Churchill had said to his War Cabinet:

  I hope the Cabinet will stand firm… As a matter of fact, [the Viceroy] has no right to negotiate with Gandhi at all, considering he was responsible for passing to us the medical opinion on which we were told that he would never be able to take part in politics again…

  Churchill added that he objected to any impression ‘of a great parley between the Viceroy and newly released invalid’.19

  Other players. Ambedkar, from 1942 a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, asked Gandhi at the end of July to address the ‘communal problem between the Hindus and the untouchables’ in addition to ‘the Hindu-Muslim problem’, and offered ‘to formulate points on which a settlement is necessary’. Though Gandhi declined to be drawn into parallel negotiations with Ambedkar, his response revealed an interesting desire:

  6 August 1944: [O]n broad politics of the country we see things from different angles. I would love to find a meeting ground between us… I know your great ability and I would love to own you as a colleague and co-worker. But I must admit my failure to come nearer to you. If you can show me a way to a common meeting ground between us, I would like to see it. Meanwhile, I must reconcile myself to the present unfortunate difference.20

  Master Tara Singh, the Akali leader, urged Gandhi to ensure that Sikh interests were not sacrificed at the altar of a Hindu-Muslim pact. To him Gandhi’s response was: ‘We shall come to no final terms. The smallest interest will have the same weight as the largest.’21

  Churchill. From afar Churchill was continuing to exercise a powerful influence. As Gandhi told Gelder, the journalist: ‘[T]he common talk among us is that whatever the Viceroy may wish personally, he has no authority in the political sphere. Mr Churchill does not want any settlement.’22

  While unaware that Churchill had expressed disappointment at his failure to die, Gandhi fully suspected the Premier’s dislike of his release, and remembered Churchill’s 1931 description of Gandhi as ‘a half-naked fakir’ whose ideas had to be ‘grappled with and finally crushed’.23 On 17 July (the day he also wrote to Jinnah), he dictated a letter to Churchill in which he asked to be trusted:

  Dear Prime Minister, You are reported to have a desire to crush the simple ‘naked fakir’ as you are said to have described me. I have been long trying to be a fakir and that naked—a more difficult task. I, therefore, regard the expression as a compliment though unintended. I approach you then as such and ask you to trust and use me for the sake of your people and mine and through them those of the world. Your sincere friend, M.K. Gandhi24

  Objecting that Gandhi was uncharitably recalling an old remark that Churchill probably regretted, Rajagopalachari advised against sending the letter. Convinced that without Churchill’s approval the Viceroy would not move, Gandhi overruled the objection, and requested Wavell to forward his letter, which however did not reach Churchill for three months. All it then fetched was a line of acknowledgment via the Viceroy.

  Underground leaders. Through a public statement Gandhi asked those still underground to present themselves to the police and claim rewards for their own capture. Some surrendered while others openly defied a law and courted arrest. Several, however, including the socialists Aruna Asaf Ali and Achyut Patwardhan, remained underground. From her hiding place Aruna conveyed her dissent to Gandhi, who replied:

  30 June 1944: I consider myself to be incapable of asking anybody, much less you, of doing anything that would hurt your pride… This struggle has been full of romance and heroism. You are the central figure. I would love to see you since you are so near. Therefore come, if you at all can.

  Lest you cannot, this is my advice: I do not want you to surrender unless you feel that it is the better course… You must… be the best judge of what is proper…

  God be your sole guide and do as He bids you. This I promise: I will not judge you, no matter what you do. More if we meet. Much love from Bapu25

  Aruna and Achyut did not come out until early 1946, after warrants against them were cancelled.

  Savarkar and followers. No group disagreed more violently with Gandhi than the circle around Savarkar. At the end of August, after it was announced that Gandhi, by now back in Sevagram, would talk with Jinnah, two of Savarkar’s followers, Nathuram Godse and an associate called L.G. Thatte, went from Poona to Sevagram with the announced aim of physically preventing Gandhi from leaving for Bombay. Accompanied by supporters, the pair arrived at the ashram entrance, where a police picket asked them to have their say and disperse.

  On their refusal to leave, Godse and Thatte were arrested. A dagger was found on Thatte, who said that a martyr would kill Gandhi. When a policeman asked whether such matters should not be left to a leader like Savarkar, Thatte replied, ‘That will be too great an honour for Gandhiji,’ adding that his companion (Godse) ‘will be quite enough for the purpose’. Without apparently naming the men, Wardha’s police chief relayed the exchange to Pyarelal, who recorded it in a letter he was sending at the time to Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, the Liberal leader.26 That the two were Thatte and Godse would come to light later, after Gandhi’s assassination.

  TALKS WITH JINNAH

  Between 9 and 27 September 1944—twenty-nine years and eight months after Jinnah had welcomed Gandhi on his return
from South Africa—Gandhi walked fourteen times to talk with Jinnah in the latter’s house on Mount Pleasant Road in Bombay’s Malabar Hill. It was a short walk, for Gandhi too was staying on Mount Pleasant Road, in the house of the Birlas. A letter he wrote to Mira speaks of the family and team supporting him during the exercise, including Manilal, who was visiting from South Africa:

  18 Sept. 1944: My talks are dragging on. God alone knows the end of them. There is one good thing. I am bearing the strain well. I am keeping fit in spite of the two enemies within—the hookworm and the amoebae.

  It is good too that we (Gandhi and Jinnah) are within stone’s throw of each other.

  Manilal is attending on me. He is my bed-fellow. Devadas too is here, so is Rajaji. Khurshedbehn (a granddaughter of Dadabhai Naoroji) is on the office staff and so is Mridula, I expect temporarily. They are all working full speed—not to mention Pyarelal, Sushila and Kanu. Pyarelal has a shorthand writer and typist. He is a rare man—silent and hard-working…

  Abha is here for medical examination. There is nothing wrong with her. Manu has come back from Karachi with her father. Pyarelal’s mother and [infant niece] too are here. And they are all very happy.27

  With the bed-fellow remark Gandhi was teasing Mira that women were not sharing his bed.

  Jinnah was not blessed or burdened by anything like Gandhi’s support team, and his illness was worse than Gandhi’s: ‘unresolved pneumonia in the base of his lungs’ had just been diagnosed.28 But he too had a stenographer and was in addition aided by a sharp mind, a steely spine and great popularity among the Muslims. In 1944 the League claimed two million members; seventeen years earlier its membership had been less than 1,400.