Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  You are a great soldier—a daring soldier. Dare to do the right. You must make your choice of one horse or the other. So far as I can see you will never succeed in riding two at the same time. Choose the names submitted either by the Congress or the League. For God’s sake do not make an incompatible mixture and in trying to do so produce a fearful explosion. Anyway, fix your time limit and tell us all to leave when that limit is over. I hope I have made my meaning clear (91: 156).

  As Gandhi saw it, while the Congress had the credentials for leading a new government, even a minority government headed by the League and answerable to the Central Assembly would not damage India’s future. But he would not agree to a ‘solution’ where the Congress was equated with Hindus, the League with Muslims, and both pressured to accept a distasteful ‘compromise’. He sent a similarly frank letter the same day to Cripps:

  You are handling the most difficult task of your life. As I see it the Mission is playing with fire…You will have to choose between the two—the Muslim League and the Congress, both your creations…

  Coquetting now with the Congress, now with the League and again with the Congress, wearing yourself away, will not do. Either you swear by what is right or by what the exigencies of British policy may dictate.

  In either case bravery is required. Only stick… to your dates even though the heavens may fall. Leave by the 16th whether you allow the Congress to form a coalition or the League. If you think that the accumulated British wisdom must know better than these two creations of yours, I have nothing to add (91: 158).83

  Only partially informed of the talks between the Congress and the Mission, Gandhi wanted the ministers, and especially their skilful draftsman, Cripps, to wind up the effort, but Cripps seemed determined to instal a new government before returning home. In his reply to Gandhi, Cripps said: ‘[W]e want to temper… courage with prudence. I still have great hopes that before we leave India, we may have helped towards a settlement of the problem’ (91: 158).

  Actually, Cripps was once more competing with Gandhi for the minds of Nehru, Patel and company, and hoping to bring them round to support the Mission’s plans, even if Gandhi disagreed.

  On 16 June Wavell’s list for the interim government was announced. Six Congress Hindus (Nehru, Patel, C.R., Prasad, Mahtab and the Dalit leader, Jagjivan Ram), five Muslims (Jinnah and four others from the League), a Sikh (Baldev Singh), a Christian (John Matthai), and a Parsi (N.P. Engineer) were invited to form a new council.

  Though Azad, still the Congress president, was not included, four of the party’s ‘top five’ had been, and it was a good guess that Baldev Singh and Matthai would support the Congress six in any division in the council. At last India would have a Congress-dominated council, with Nehru as its vice-president and de facto premier, even if the Viceroy continued to chair proceedings.

  Yet there was a flaw: the list implied that the Congress represented only the Hindus, and that only the League represented Muslims. For the sake of a compromise—but perhaps also because he would not be leading the Congress team84—Azad was willing to accept an all-Hindu Congress list and its corollary: his exclusion. He even privately informed the Mission that the Working Committee ‘would not stick out’ on the question of a Congress Muslim.85 When Gandhi suggested that Azad should replace one of the caste Hindus named, the latter ‘absolutely refused’.86

  Most in the Working Committee, including Nehru and Patel, seemed ready to go along with Azad, but they had reckoned without Gandhi, who on 19 June ‘gave a final notice’ that if they agreed to an all-Hindu Congress list ‘he would have nothing to do with the whole business and leave Delhi’.87 He would have nothing to do with a Congress that reduced itself to a Hindu body.

  Gandhi might have been rejected by the Working Committee but for a letter from Wavell to Azad. Landing on 22 June, the letter asked the Congress not to press for a non-League Muslim. Rejecting Gandhi was conceivable for the Congress leadership in the summer of 1946, but submitting to a Viceregal diktat was not. When the Working Committee voted on the 16 June list, ‘all except one were opposed’.88

  Wavell and Jinnah were expecting the Congress to reject 16 June, and Jinnah thought he might lead a new government without the Congress. However, Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence were keen for the Congress too to come in. We can say in broad terms that Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence made up the pro-Congress (though not necessarily pro-Gandhi) half of the British team, with Alexander and Wavell constituting its pro-League half.

  ‘The way out.’ Cripps knew that prospects of the Congress coming in rested on Clause 8 in the 16 June Statement. This clause said that if the 16 June list was unacceptable to the Congress or the League or both, then the Viceroy would ‘proceed with the formation of an Interim Government which will be as representative as possible of those willing to accept the Statement of May 16th’.

  According to Wavell’s diary, clause 8 was put in at his behest to ensure that ‘Mr Jinnah, who had accepted the Statement of May 16, should not be put at a disadvantage with the Congress, who had not.’89 Under this clause Jinnah, if he wished, could renegotiate his party’s representation in the new government, a right not available to those rejecting 16 May.

  But Cripps knew, and the Congress understood, that Clause 8 entitled the Congress too to renegotiate its names—to include, for instance, a Muslim on its list—provided it accepted 16 May.

  From the night of 22 June there were several direct and indirect contacts between Patel and Cripps/Pethick-Lawrence. It is not clear whether the initiative for these contacts was Patel’s or of the Britons or of the man serving as a go-between, Sudhir Ghosh, a young Bengali who had studied at Cambridge and built links with the Labour Party. Ghosh has claimed that it was his:

  I told Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence that the only advice I could give them about salvaging something out of the wreckage was that they should have a private talk with Patel, who was the only man amongst the Congress leaders who was a practical statesman.90

  Gandhi rejected. Whoever initiated them, the private talks resulted in the Congress accepting 16 May. What happened, and how it happened, constitutes a less than glorious episode in the final stages of India’s freedom effort. It can be pieced together from three diaries (of Gandhi’s secretary Pyarelal, Patel’s daughter Maniben, and the British Viceroy, Wavell), the account supplied by Ghosh, and HMG’s Transfer of Power volumes.

  23 June. At New Delhi’s Gole Post Office roundabout, Sudhir Ghosh, sitting with Pethick-Lawrence in the latter’s car, stops, just before 8 a.m., the car in which Patel is returning to Birla House (his lodgings) after a visit to Gandhi in the sweepers’ colony. Patel gets inside P-L’s car while Ghosh moves into Patel’s. Both cars go a mile or so to 2 Willingdon Crescent (in the Viceroy’s grounds), where P-L and Alexander are staying.

  Patel and the three ministers talk from 8 a.m. for about half-an-hour. Though he has met them earlier as part of the Congress team, this is the first time that Patel meets them by himself. He tells them that the Congress will reject 16 June; P-L tells him that in that case, given clause 8, Jinnah would be invited to help form a government. Patel asks if the Congress too would be invited if it accepted 16 May. P-L and Cripps assure him that it would. Without authority yet with absolute certainty, Patel says that the Congress will accept 16 May.

  23 June, 9:30 a.m. At the Viceroy’s House, P-L startles Wavell, who was all set to call Jinnah, by telling him that the Congress will reject 16 June but accept 16 May. At Azad’s residence, Vallabhbhai tells Azad, Nehru, C.R. and Prasad that acceptance of 16 May would bring the invitation from the British. Power beckons.

  23 June, late afternoon. A crisis. Telegrams from Assam and Bombay inform Congress leaders that the form candidates for the Constituent Assembly had to fill required a commitment to Para 19. Learning of this, Gandhi says to the Working Committee that 16 May ‘now stinks’.91

  Still the same day, 23 June, 10:30 p.m. Ghosh brings to Patel an ingenious solution by Cripps. The form wou
ld be altered to read ‘for the purposes of the declaration of May 16’ instead of ‘for the purposes of Para 19’. Patel is satisfied, but would Gandhi agree?

  24 June, 7 a.m. Patel takes Gandhi to 2 Willingdon Crescent to meet the three ministers. P-L assures Gandhi and Patel that if the Congress accepted 16 May they would, thanks to clause 8, ‘put themselves on the level with the Muslim League in respect of the interim government’ and could send in new names.92 Gandhi brings up the telegrams from Assam and Bombay. Cripps spells out his solution, but P-L intervenes and says, ‘No, that presents difficulty.’93 All agree to meet again at 8 p.m., with Wavell also present. Patel is irritated when Gandhi tells him that P-L’s intervention troubled him.94

  24 June, 8 p.m. By now Cripps has persuaded P-L to accept his solution regarding Para 19. Gandhi again asks about Para 19. P-L assures him that Congress candidates to the Constituent Assembly do not have to accept compulsory grouping. Wavell intervenes and says that grouping is essential but P-L, the leader of the British team, asks Wavell ‘not to press the point’.95

  ‘Are you satisfied?’ Patel asks Gandhi after the interview. ‘On the contrary,’ replies Gandhi. ‘My suspicion has deepened.’96 A ‘much disquieted’ Wavell asks P-L and Cripps whether the assurance to Gandhi was sincere, but is ‘out-talked’ by them.97 Late in the evening the Mission issues an elucidation that candidates to the Constituent Assembly are ‘not bound down in terms of Para 19’.98

  Patel and other Working Committee members rejoice. Four years earlier, in 1942, Cripps had come close to detaching Nehru from Gandhi. This time he has detached Patel, and through him the rest.

  24 June, 10 p.m. Gandhi writes to Cripps that while his colleagues are now ready to enter the Constituent Assembly, he proposes ‘to advise the Working Committee not to accept the long-term proposition… I must not act against my instinct.’99

  25 June, 8 a.m. The Working Committee meets. At Gandhi’s instance Pyarelal reads the note to Cripps. It is heard in uncomfortable silence. Gandhi says: ‘I admit defeat. You are not bound to act upon my unsupported suspicion… I shall now leave with your permission.’

  A hush falls over the gathering. Nobody speaks for some time. Then Azad, with (as Pyarelal would write) ‘his unfailing alertness’, asks the others: ‘What do you desire? Is there any need to detain Bapu any longer?’ Everybody is silent. The silence is a message. And the message is to Gandhi. He gets up and leaves.100

  Wavell, Cripps & Gandhi. Later that day (25 June) the Working Committee formally rejected 16 June and, going against Gandhi’s advice, formally accepted 16 May, with its ‘own interpretation’ of disputed clauses. The Viceroy was shocked at the Congress’s acceptance of 16 May, which he attributed to Cripps’s ‘instigation’, and felt that Cripps and Patel had ‘outmanoeuvred’ him.101

  As soon as he heard of the Congress’s acceptance of 16 May, Jinnah informed Wavell that the League, which had already agreed to 16 May, was accepting 16 June as well, demanded rejection of the Congress’s ‘insincere’ acceptance, and readied himself for the Viceroy’s invitation.

  Though Wavell considered asking Jinnah ‘to form a government’ without inviting the Congress, he did ‘not see how this could possibly be done’.102 He had to recognize the Congress’s acceptance of 16 May even as he had recognized the League’s, which too was premised on an interpretation.

  But he could not reconcile himself to Cripps, whom he credited with the skill ‘to make both black and white appear a neutral and acceptable grey’.103 When at the end of June the Mission finally left India, Wavell and Cripps did not exchange goodbyes.

  The Viceroy disliked Gandhi as well. In 1947 he would write of Gandhi as an implacable foe of Empire and the ‘most formidable’ of the opponents ‘who have detached portions of the British Empire in recent years’.104 Worse in Wavell’s eyes was Gandhi’s claim that he bore no ill-will towards the British. The Viceroy did not believe it.

  Response to rejection. Being snubbed by his colleagues was not pleasant for Gandhi. Though it had happened before—in 1939, 1940 and 1941—the 1946 rebuff, occurring on the threshold of Swaraj, was starker. It would lead his colleagues to high office and Gandhi, in old age, to the wilderness.

  Being discarded was not pleasant, yet once again Gandhi’s response was to back the Working Committee before the Raj and the world. Four years earlier, over Quit India, he had dared his colleagues to defy him and go their way, and they had followed him.

  Now he was older, weaker, without Kasturba and Mahadev, and without any significant allies or support. When he first presented Quit India, public opinion was with him even if several on the Working Committee were not. Now the public too desired a quick transfer of power, not a scrutiny of how or to whom it should be transferred.

  Nehru, Patel, Azad, C.R., Prasad and company were ‘sons’ who with his approval had taken over from Gandhi. The impatience of these sons was hurtful, but Gandhi lacked an alternative set of successors. Persons like Jayaprakash and Lohia might have provided the nucleus for such a set, but the two had only just been released. Moreover, they espoused a socialism that Gandhi thought divisive and was wary of.

  The colleagues rejecting him were India’s best and represented the Congress mind. He would support them despite his wounds, despite his knowledge that a game of double-speak was being played on all sides—by the British, the Congress and the League—and despite his sense of violence in the air.

  Loyal to the Congress for more than fifty years—from 1894, when he started the Natal Indian Congress—he would strengthen the Congress’s position in the transition to independence. Like Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata, who suppressed qualms of conscience while assisting the Pandavas, he would assist the Congress to the best of his ability.

  When, therefore, the AICC met in Bombay (7 July) to pronounce on the Working Committee’s acceptance of 16 May, Gandhi asked for ratification. With this meeting, Nehru took over from Azad as the Congress head. Jayaprakash and other Congress socialists argued that the Constituent Assembly would be a trap. Gandhi, who had welcomed the released Jayaprakash as ‘an outstanding general in India’s fight for freedom’ (91: 194), admitted that ‘the darkness’ he had felt in respect of 16 May had not lifted. Yet, he added:

  The Working Committee [members] are your faithful and tried servants. You should not lightly reject their resolution. I am willing to admit that the proposed Constituent Assembly is not the Parliament of the people. It has many defects. But you are all seasoned and veteran fighters… If there are shortcomings in the proposed Constituent Assembly, it is for you to get them removed (91: 250).

  By 204 to fifty-one, the AICC ratified the decision.

  Attempt on his life. After the AICC meeting Gandhi journeyed for the third successive summer to Panchgani in Maharashtra’s Sahyadri hills, and stayed there for three weeks. Earlier, on the night of 28 June, the train in which Gandhi was travelling bumped against boulders deliberately placed on the rails, between Neral and Karjat, not far from Bombay. He slept right through the bump and through two clanging hours of repairs that followed, and learnt only the following morning of what probably was an attempt on his life.

  That day, while on the train, he wrote this ‘thought for the day’ for Anand Hingorani: ‘Man ever lives in the jaws of Death. He is said to be dead when Death closes its jaws.’105 A few days later, when he was shown a photograph of himself sound asleep on the train while mechanics were fixing it, he laughed and said: ‘I see here how I will look after my death.’106

  JINNAH AND DIRECT ACTION

  Cheated of a great prize at the last minute, Jinnah accused Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence of treachery, Wavell of betrayal, and the Congress of dishonesty. He said that Cripps had ‘debased his talents’ and placed ‘a fantastic and dishonest construction’ on Clause 8,107 and that it was totally unjust that both the Congress and the League should be invited to send new names for an interim government.

  Though Clause 8 was clear, and its application to both the Lea
gue and the Congress legitimate, Jinnah’s wrath was understandable. Calling him ‘a great Indian and the recognized leader of a great organization’, Gandhi seems to have remarked at this time that Jinnah should have been treated better by the Mission.108 But if the ‘purposely vague’ language of 16 May lay at the root of Jinnah’s discomfiture, the Congress (like the League) had sought to take advantage of it and, like Yudhisthira, Gandhi too had gone along.

  The bitterness produced by the ambiguity of 16 May was sharpened by indiscreet remarks that Nehru made on 10 July. Jawaharlal told a press conference in Bombay that the Congress would be ‘completely unfettered by agreements’; that the Union government was ‘likely to be much stronger than what the Cabinet Mission envisaged’; that the western Muslim Group would ‘collapse’ because the NWFP would not join; and that Assam would not join the eastern Muslim Group ‘under any circumstances whatever’.109

  An up-in-arms Jinnah claimed that Nehru’s remarks constituted ‘a complete repudiation’ of 16 May and demanded that Britain should ‘remove the impression’ that the Congress had accepted 16 May.110 Patel said privately that Nehru’s statement was ‘an act of emotional insanity’,111 and in a letter from Panchgani (17 July) Gandhi reproved his heir:

  Your statement does not sound good. It must be admitted that we have to work within the limits of the State Paper (the 16 May document)… If we do not admit even this much, we will be doing nothing and Jinnah Saheb’s accusation will prove true (91: 297).

  Passions entered the streets in some cities. On occasion it was bravely confronted. Two close friends who had taken part earlier in Gandhi-initiated satyagrahas, Vasantrao Hegishte, a forty-year-old Hindu, and Rajab Ali Lakhani, a twenty-seven-year-old Muslim, lost their lives on 1 July 1946 while together attempting to quell a mob in Ahmedabad.