Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  What was the Congress to do? Nehru and Kripalani, the Congress president, journeyed to Noakhali at the end of December and asked if Gandhi could suggest a way out. He replied that the latest British award had to be accepted by the Congress; after all it had signed on to 16 May. Moreover, rejecting 16 May meant giving up on a united India.

  Yet, added Gandhi, Assam could stay out of the Muslim Group, if need be, by seceding from the Congress. This was also his advice to Assam’s Congress leaders, who called on Gandhi on 15 December in Srirampur. He told them:

  As soon as the time comes for the Constituent Assembly to go into Sections, you will say, ‘Gentlemen, Assam retires’ (93: 143).

  The Congress adopted Gandhi’s solution, but Wavell exploded at Gandhi’s ‘most mischievous’ response, as it would be termed in the Viceroy’s diary.54 Calling Gandhi ‘double-tongued’ but ‘single-minded’ in his pursuit of independence, the Viceroy told the British Cabinet in December 1946 that Gandhi felt that his ‘life work of driving the British from India’ was ‘almost accomplished’.55 On his part the old man felt no qualms. He would not agree to Assam, or the NWFP, being coerced. So, in line with Krishna’s tips to the Pandavas, he gave astute political counsel.

  Accompanying Nehru to Noakhali, Mridula Sarabhai complained to Gandhi about some of Patel’s public remarks, including a statement at the Congress’s Meerut session that ‘the sword will be met by the sword’ if advocates of Pakistan departed from ‘the method of peace and love’.56 In a letter to Patel written at two in the morning of 30 December, Gandhi listed the accusations, adding, ‘If we stray from the straight and narrow path we are done for.’57

  In his answer, Vallabhbhai wrote, ‘Mridula must have made these complaints… She cannot stand it if anyone disagrees with Jawaharlal.’ The Meerut remark, Patel added, had been ‘torn out of a long passage and presented out of context’.58

  At three in the morning of 30 December, after writing the letter to Patel, Gandhi scribbled a note for Jawaharlal, who was returning to Delhi. If Nehru wished to visit but could not, or if it was not ‘seemly that you should often run to me’, an emissary could be sent. ‘Somehow or other,’ Gandhi added, ‘I feel that my judgement about the communal problems and the political situation is true. So I suggest frequent consultations with an old, tried servant of the nation’ (93: 210-11).

  The note thus breathed self-confidence, a sense of duty and a complaint that a seasoned general was being ignored.

  Leaving Noakhali. Though constantly urged by Bengal’s Muslims, including premier Suhrawardy, Fazlul Huq and others, to go to Bihar, Gandhi felt he was in the right place, and indeed able from Noakhali to influence Bihar. His certainty was disturbed, however, when Niranjan Singh Gill of the INA, sent by Gandhi to Bihar, reported on 21 February that the province’s Congress ministry had been found wanting.

  In letters to Shri Krishna Sinha, the Bihar premier, Gandhi complained that no one from Bihar had given him an account of what had happened, and he asked Sinha to hold an early inquiry into the killings (93: 170-71 & 94: 27-8).

  On 28 February Gandhi made up his mind to go to Bihar, a decision clinched by a visit by Mujtaba, secretary to Syed Mahmud, a minister in Bihar and the province’s leading Congress Muslim. When Mujtaba read aloud the letter he had brought from Mahmud, ‘his voice grew husky’, women around Gandhi could not restrain their tears, and ‘Bapu sank into deep thought’.59

  Fifty-three years later. Interviews conducted in Noakhali in April and November 2000 found residents retaining precise memories of Gandhi—his shaven head, pocket watch, vigorous walking, his drinking of goat’s milk, and work as a doctor. Recollections always mentioned ‘his granddaughters’ as also his work for Hindu-Muslim peace.

  The memory of him seemed to be fresh and near the top of people’s minds, and many recalling him spontaneously recited or sang Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram… Ishwar Allah Tere Naam. Though Gandhi’s 1946-47 stay was seen as a special event, the remembrances were of an approachable and friendly man.

  Abul Kalam Bhuiya, who looked around seventy and spoke some English, a farmer and son of Hyder Baksh Bhuiya, said in Srirampur:

  I attended his prayer meeting. He went to Muslim homes, offered them treatment. He took goat milk and a red leaf vegetable. Was punctual about his time, wore pocket watch at the waist, a dhoti that went down to his knee, advocated peace, love and brotherhood.

  Also in Srirampur, Fazlul Huq Patwari, again around seventy, a farmer and son of Jalauddin Patwari, recalled:

  I saw him. We sat together (possibly at a prayer meeting)… He said, ‘Let us live side by side (Hindus and Muslims).’ He was a good man. He walked a lot and we were running behind him. He distributed toffees for the children. Muslims took and ate what he gave.

  Most interviewees were in their teens at the time of Gandhi’s visit. A day labourer, Aamir Husain Shaikh, seventy-five in 2000, said:

  When he came it was total chaos. He brought peace. I saw him many times. He wore khadi clothes.

  Nepal Chandra Das, approaching eighty, farmer and brother of Nimay Chandra Das, said, also in Srirampur:

  My brother and I carried his mail to Chaumahini and Chandipur. We attended his prayer meetings in the school field.

  Md Akhtar uz Zaman of Srirampur, son of Maulana Abdul Majid (who may have been the imam of the Srirampur mosque in 1946-7), recalled:

  He came to our home, showed my father the Qur’an, and asked where the holy book authorized wrongdoing.

  Dr Ali Ahmed, around seventy, a homeopathic doctor in Madhupur near Srirampur, son of a government servant, said:

  I attended many prayer meetings. He asked for Hindu-Muslim unity. He told the Hindus, ‘No revenge.’ He was first a pious man and then a politician. His name and fame will remain in this vicinity for ever, in every nook and corner.

  Madhusudan Chakravarti, a seventy-five-year-old grocer in Paniala, son of late Anada Charan Chakravarti, a priest, said:

  I saw him. He stayed in Mazumdar badi… He got the whole village to sit together and have a meal—khichri—Hindus, Muslims, Harijans. This happened for the first time.

  Sirajul Islam Majumdar of Kamalpur, in his late fifties, son of Dr Khaleelur Rahman Majumdar:

  My father told us of (he sang) ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram, Ishwar Allah Tere Naam.’ My grandfather protected Hindus on his roof.

  Usha Rani Das, a widow, aged around sixty-five, living in a house between Kamalpur and Bangsha:

  There was a meeting in the fields. Hindus and Muslims all came. I was very young but married. He asked us to put on the bindi and the sindoor that we had taken off. We obeyed the advice and were not attacked.

  In Chandipur, Ayub Ali, a day labourer in his late seventies who said he owned a little land, said:

  His arms rested on the shoulders of two granddaughters. ‘What has happened has happened,’ he said. He came close to my house. He went to every house for peace, spoke to all. He spoke in Hindi, but there were translators. He knew the kalima. He was good. If he had not come troubles would have continued.

  Abdul Khaleq, also in Chandipur: ‘I helped grow vegetables for him.’60

  ‘Darkness’. If his four months in Noakhali seemed the peak, so far, of Gandhi’s lifelong effort to knit Indians together by serving them, they also saw a profound journey into his own soul, and included a daring test. He claimed he was stronger for the test, but we should also note his repeated references in Noakhali to a ‘darkness’ he felt around him. On 2 January he wrote in his diary:

  Have been awake since 2 a.m. God’s grace alone is sustaining me. I can see there is some grave defect in me somewhere which is the cause of all this. All around me is utter darkness. When will God take me out of this darkness into His light? (93: 227)

  On 6 January he wrote to Patel: ‘I am in complete darkness but my hope burns as bright as ever’ (93: 242). The same day, in another letter, he said: ‘The task here is a difficult one. I have to make my way through darkness. But “one step enough for m
e”’ (93: 245).

  On 9 January he told an interviewer in Fatehpur that he himself was in darkness and added, ‘I hope I shall see light soon’ (93: 256). The next day, in a letter to his son Ramdas, he wrote: ‘I am still surrounded by darkness. I have no doubt whatever that it indicates a flaw somewhere in my method. Take it as though I had confined myself to this place to detect that flaw’ (93: 259).

  What Gandhi was saying, or admitting, was that he did not clearly see the lead he should give to prevent division and fresh violence in India. He was at a loss, or in the dark. A short-term answer for the dilemma in which the Congress found itself in December was hardly enough. India was hurtling towards partition and new rounds of killing, and he did not quite know the remedy to prescribe.

  He had been in difficult situations before, but in the end light had always dawned, and he had known the ‘one step’ to recommend to the Congress and to his people, even if what lay beyond that step was often unclear. Confidence about finding a response had led him, in 1931, to make a large claim before Prime Minister MacDonald and others at the London RTC:

  We have problems that would baffle any statesman. We have problems that other nations have not to tackle. But they do not baffle me (1 Dec. 1931; 54: 227).

  This time, he felt, light was being greatly delayed, if not denied. Why? And, in any case, why the violence and ill will around him? Though nagged by such questions, Gandhi plodded away at the tasks of each day.

  London announcement. On 20 February 1947, while he was making up his mind to leave Noakhali and go to Bihar, Prime Minister Attlee made a historic announcement in London. He said that Britain would leave India by June 1948, i.e. in sixteen months or less, handing over ‘to some form of central government or in some areas to the existing provincial governments’ or ‘in such other way as may seem most reasonable’. Attlee added that Wavell would be replaced as Viceroy by Lord Louis Mountbatten, a forty-six-year-old admiral related to King George VI.

  The statement set the stage for the final act of the India/Empire drama. It would be the final round also of one man’s long struggle to lead his country to freedom in one piece, and his soul to God.

  Chapter 16

  To Rama

  1947-1948

  In a letter to Nehru from the village of Kazirkhil (24 Feb.), Gandhi underlined the hint of partition that Attlee’s announcement contained:

  I have read Attlee’s speech… This may lead to Pakistan for those provinces or portions which may want it… (94: 33)

  Since the League was in power in Bengal and Sindh and in a position to control Baluchistan, these provinces could emerge, in the light of 20 February, as Pakistan areas. However, a Unionist/Akali/Congress coalition led by Khizr governed the Punjab, and the Congress’s Dr Khan Sahib was the premier in another Muslim-majority province, the NWFP. Would the Congress and its allies inherit the Punjab and the Frontier?

  The League responded to Attlee’s announcement by launching movements to remove the Punjab and NWFP ministries, as well as the Congress ministry in Assam, a province that Jinnah continued to claim for Pakistan, its non-Muslim majority notwithstanding. In Bengal, a response of an opposite kind was led by the Hindu Mahasabha’s Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, who demanded a separate West Bengal, a Hindu-majority region that could stay out of any Pakistan.

  On 28 February Gandhi was asked in Haimchar whether Bengal’s partition was not desirable. His answer, offered in a post-prayer speech, was that he preferred a united India and a united Bengal, yet India’s Hindu majority did not have the right ‘to keep everyone united by means of compulsion’, and Bengal’s Muslim majority could not seek to compel the province’s Hindu population or its western half. He was ‘as much against forced partition as against forced unity’ (94: 58).

  Part of the darkness in his mind had lifted: ‘non-coercion’ was a principle he would go by. His four months in Noakhali had confirmed his faith in a people’s right to choose their rulers and, if it came to that, their flag. The British flag, in any case, was on its way out:

  [W]hatever might have been the history of British rule in the past, there was no shadow of doubt that the British were going to quit India in the near future.

  But neither Hindus nor Muslims could choose their neighbours, and all should be alert to a horrible possibility:

  It was time, therefore, that the Hindus and the Muslims should determine to live in peace and amity. The alternative was civil war which would only serve to tear the country to pieces (94: 58).

  Despite his written plea to Nehru (30 Dec.) about ‘frequent consultations with an old, tried servant of the nation’, Gandhi was not consulted after the London announcement of 20 February. Nehru and Patel seemed to think that Gandhi was both out of touch and hard to reach, a view apparently shared by C.R., Azad and Prasad, and also by the Congress president, Kripalani. Moreover, Nehru, Patel and company were under relentless pressure.

  Events moved very fast in the Punjab, where the Congress was largely a Hindu party while the League was a Muslim organization and the Akali Dal a Sikh one. Representing well-off farmers of all three communities, the Unionist party was a receding force, suffering from a pro-British and pro-landlord image, and the Punjab Muslims’ discontent with the Khizr cabinet, which included Congress and Akali ministers, had grown.

  Since Sikhs had governed the Punjab before British rule, and a large proportion of the province’s traders were Hindus or Sikhs, ending domination by the non-Muslim minority had long been a rallying cry. In the year 1900, agitation by the Punjab’s Muslim farmers had secured from the Raj a law against alienation of land to traders; and communal bitterness had been reinforced by campaigns for and against the Arya Samaj, founded by the Hindu reformer Dayanand Saraswati (1824-83), who made remarks critical of Islam and Sikhism.

  For three years, 1919-22, there was an unexpected Hindu-Muslim-Sikh alliance. After that disintegrated, several Muslim, Hindu and Sikh newspapers disseminated hate. And following violence in eastern India in the second half of 1946, armed bands of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus were formed in the Punjab.

  In February 1947, the League’s call to prevent Muslim-majority Punjab from being taken over by Hindus and Sikhs drew a fervent response. Defying restrictions, crowds of Muslims, including women and students, picketed government buildings, hoisted the League’s flag over them, and stopped the movement of trains. Attacked as a betrayer of Islam, Khizr caved in, resigning on 2 March.

  When, the next day, Governor Evan Jenkins asked the League leader in the legislature, the Khan of Mamdot, to form a government, Master Tara Singh, the Akali leader, emerged sword in hand and declared that the Sikhs would not be cowed down. An ‘Anti-Pakistan Day’ was announced by Sikh and Hindu leaders, provoking a fierce counter-reaction.

  Within a couple of days at least 1,000 were killed in different places in the province. Rawalpindi was the worst-hit city, and Sikhs and Hindus the main victims there.

  Patel reacted by asking for a division of the Punjab, thereby conceding Pakistan. To Jinnah’s close Hindu friend, Kanji Dwarkadas, he wrote (4 March): ‘If the League insists on Pakistan, the only alternative is the division of the Punjab and Bengal.’1

  On 5 March the Mamdot ministry was dismissed, governor’s rule promulgated, and the military asked to enforce peace, but the Punjab’s unity had died during the two days of carnage.

  As Patel had done, the province’s Hindu and Sikh leaders demanded a separate East Punjab province where non-Muslims would enjoy a majority. Nehru, Kripalani, Azad, C.R. and Prasad fell in, and on 8 March, only sixteen days after the London announcement, the Congress Working Committee formally asked for a division of the Punjab. Though Bengal was not directly mentioned, the resolution clearly implied that province’s partition as well.

  In the Frontier, the Khan brothers and the Congress ministry would hold out for some months more, but by 9 March when, alongside the Working Committee resolution, the Hindustan Times published maps showing two Punjabs and two Bengals, the division
of India had been sealed.

  The future might say that the Empire—its overlords in London and guardians in India, including the Viceroy in New Delhi and the governor in Lahore—had been negligent, indifferent or inept regarding the consequences in the Punjab of the Attlee announcement. As the interim government’s two leading figures, Nehru and Patel (who held the home portfolio), would also be assigned some responsibility. But perspectives were hazier in March 1947, when neither the Raj nor the Congress was as energetic as the Punjab’s bands of killers and arsonists.

  Moreover, the interim government at the centre was a house at war, with Liaqat Ali Khan and his League colleagues refusing to accept Nehru as their chief. As finance minister, Liaqat had announced taxes aimed at the Congress’s backers.

  On 9 March Gandhi saw the Working Committee resolution in newspapers in Bihar, where he had arrived four days earlier. He had not been informed of any plan to ask for a division of the Punjab. Kripalani, the Congress president, had indeed sent Gandhi a telegram on 3 March: ‘We all consider your presence here next Working Committee meeting sixth essential. Kindly postpone Bihar programme till ninth.’ To this Gandhi, who was in Calcutta by now, on his way to Bihar, answered the same day: ‘Your wire. Regret inability. Send messenger Bihar. Bapu’ (94:67).

  But no emissary was sent to brief Gandhi or obtain his views. The Working Committee’s momentous decision on partitioning the Punjab (and Bengal) was thus taken without his knowledge or input. He realized, of course, that events had forced his colleagues’ decision, and it was not until 20 March that he wrote to Jawaharlal about it. The letter also referred to the censorship imposed on reports from the Punjab: