Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  Many Muslims were in terror, Gandhi was told, and he was urged, ‘before he went up to Noakhali’, to spend some days in Calcutta to ‘pour a pot of water over the raging fire’ that was burning the city (96: 206). On 10 August Gandhi said (in Satis Dasgupta’s Sodepur ashram, where he was halting) that he had ‘decided to stay to see if he could contribute his share in the return of sanity in the premier city of India’ (96: 208).

  This point of time, when Gandhi again feels obliged to change plans, is a good place to register the contrast between a Gandhi who once executed his strategies by the calendar and the map—a Gandhi who knew precisely when and where he and his forces would march—and the more uncertain Gandhi we are now observing, one forced again and again to alter his plans. And if the sure general of earlier years extorted our admiration, perhaps we should also mark the older man’s responsiveness to rapidly changing situations. He retains his equanimity when things do not go his way, even as he had resisted excessive elation when they did, and when a schedule he has patiently prepared for has to be abruptly abandoned.

  Four days before freedom, the BBC asked for a message from the Empire’s chief foe. The moment of triumph was also one of grief, and Gandhi felt he had nothing to say. The BBC pleaded: his message would be broadcast in several languages, Gandhi was told. Through Nirmal Kumar Bose, who had rejoined him in Calcutta, Gandhi conveyed a firm answer:

  I must not yield to the temptation. They must forget that I know English (96: 209).

  Later that day (11 Aug.), when Suhrawardy said that Calcutta needed Gandhi for a while, Gandhi answered that he would put off his Noakhali visit provided ‘you and I are prepared to live together’: he was repeating his ‘mad offer’ of May. Added Gandhi:

  We shall have to work till every Hindu and Mussalman in Calcutta safely returns to the place where he was before. We shall continue in our effort till our last breath. I do not want you to come to a decision immediately. You should go back home and consult your daughter… [T]he old Suhrawardy will have to die and accept the garb of a fakir (96: 214).

  This time the offer was accepted. At his 12 August prayer-meeting in Sodepur Gandhi said that he had been warned by some Hindus that Suhrawardy was ‘not to be relied upon’. But then some Muslims imagined him (Gandhi) ‘to be a consummate hypocrite’ and an enemy of Muslims. ‘God alone knew men’s hearts,’ Gandhi added. He would trust Suhrawardy even as he hoped to be trusted himself.

  Both would live under the same roof, and have no secrets from each other. They would together see all the visitors. People should have the courage to speak out the truth under all circumstances and in the presence of those against whom it had to be said (96: 216-7).

  On the morning of 13 August Gandhi left the Sodepur ashram, Suhrawardy left his house in the city, and Hydari Manzil, ‘an old abandoned Muslim house’ in Beliaghata, a run-down Hindu-majority locality, became his latest base or ashram, with Suhrawardy as his latest ashram-mate, and Abha, Manu and Bisen as his aides. But among the Hindus of Beliaghata ‘young blood [was] boiling’, as Gandhi wrote to Pyarelal within hours of moving into Hydari Manzil (96: 222).

  Accusing Gandhi of a pro-Muslim bias, a band of angry young Hindus asked him to leave Beliaghata. He had two sessions with the group, including one in Suhrawardy’s presence. If Beliaghata’s Hindus invited their Muslim neighbours to return, he said to them, he and Suhrawardy would move to a predominantly Muslim area until Hindus were invited to return there. The young men were ‘completely won over’ by this offer,48 and another irate group was pacified when Suhrawardy boldly admitted responsibility for the Great Calcutta Killings a year earlier (96: 230).

  The next day, 14 August, was so different that it even became possible for Calcutta’s residents to imagine that ‘there never had been bad blood between the Hindus and the Muslims’. A grateful Gandhi wrote:

  In their thousands they began to embrace one another and they began to pass freely through places which were considered to be points of danger by one party or the other. Indeed, Hindus were taken to their masjids by their Muslim brethren and the latter were taken by their Hindu brethren to the mandirs. Both with one voice shouted ‘Jai Hind’ or ‘Hindus-Muslims! Be one’.49

  India was independent before morning, and Gandhi once more opened his eyes in a Muslim house in one of Calcutta’s poorest corners. Three hours or so earlier, at midnight in New Delhi, speaking inside a magnificent circle of sandstone built by the Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru had made one of his greatest speeches, on India’s ‘tryst with destiny’.

  Content where he was, Gandhi recited his pre-dawn prayers, plied his charkha, remembered Mahadev Desai, whose birthday it was, and said he would consume only fruit juice during the day. Though he had not felt like lighting lamps, fireworks had lit up Calcutta for all of the previous night. The day saw a stream of visitors to Hydari Manzil: the new ministry, led by Prafulla Ghosh, Rajagopalachari (the governor), students, Communists, and others, including ‘numberless Hindus and Muslims’50.

  Gandhi’s advice to the new ministers was offered in short sentences: ‘Be humble. Be forbearing… [N]ow you will be tested through and through. Beware of power; power corrupts. Do not let yourselves be entrapped by its pomp and pageantry. Remember, you are in office to serve the poor in India’s villages’ (96: 233).

  He wrote the day’s quota of letters. One was addressed to his Quaker friend in England, Agatha Harrison:

  My dear Agatha, This letter I am dictating whilst I am spinning. You know, my way of celebrating great events, such as today’s, is to thank God for it and, therefore, to pray. This prayer must be accompanied by a fast, if the taking of fruit juices may be so described. And then as a mark of identification with the poor and dedication there must be [extra] spinning… My love to all our friends (96: 230-1).

  So the Empire’s principal foe sent his love to Britons on independence day. In the afternoon he conducted a prayer-meeting on an open ground in Beliaghata. Thousands of Muslims and Hindus attended. There, and earlier in the day, Gandhi felt that ‘the joy of fraternization [was] leaping up from hour to hour’.51

  In a short prayer talk, Gandhi expressed joy at the turn of events in Calcutta and concern over the news coming in of ‘madness’ in Lahore and of flooding in the Chittagong area, now part of Pakistan. He ended the talk by asking Calcutta’s residents to ‘treat the Europeans who stayed in India with the same regard as they would expect for themselves’—Gandhi had heard of some Europeans being compelled to utter independence cries (96: 232).

  Making an unusual request, he then asked to be driven anonymously round the city. He wanted to take in more of Calcutta’s joy and also to probe whether it was ‘Miracle or Accident?’, his title for a piece he wrote the next day for Harijan:

  16 Aug.: By whatever name [the change in Calcutta] may be described, it is quite clear that all the credit that is being given to me from all sides is quite undeserved; nor can it be said to be deserved by Shaheed Saheb (Suhrawardy). This sudden upheaval is not the work of one or two men. We are toys in the hands of God. He makes us dance to His tune… In the present exuberance one hears also the cry of ‘Long Live Hindustan and Pakistan’ from the joint throats of the Hindus and the Muslims. I think it is quite proper (96: 236-7).

  Eid day fell on 18 August. Half a million Hindus and Muslims attended Gandhi’s prayer-meeting, held on the grounds of the Mohammedan Sporting Football Club. ‘I will never be able to forget the scene I have witnessed today,’ Gandhi said (96: 247).

  His secret. Someone in Calcutta asked Gandhi for an answer to doubt. Gandhi’s reply appears as a plate opposite page 89 in the final volume of Tendulkar’s eight-volume biography of Gandhi, with Gandhi’s signatures in Hindi and Bengali underneath the text, which is in English. But Tendulkar does not name the questioner, who may have been the reticent Tendulkar himself, and he does not give a precise date. But he implies that it was in August 1947:

  I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes t
oo much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.

  A man of God who was definitely not a godman, Gandhi appealed to believers and also to agnostics, of whom Tendulkar was one. In this famous text, Gandhi characteristically defines Swaraj in terms of empowering the weak.

  Jehangir Patel and Marjorie Sykes would write that Gandhi’s distinctive offering was ‘the gift of the fight’, and Rammanohar Lohia would say: ‘This enabling the individual to resist oppression by himself and without any support is to my mind the greatest quality of Mahatma Gandhi’s action and life.’52

  Endorsing the thought, Upton Close would write: ‘What was his secret? I think my wife discovered it. She said: “In his presence I felt a new capability and power in myself rather than a consciousness of his power. I felt equal, good for anything—an assurance I had never known before, as if some consciousness within me had newly awakened.”’53

  Punjab. By independence day, however, terrifying cries were being uttered in the Punjab. On 2 August Evan Jenkins, the governor, had told Mountbatten that roughly 1,200 Muslims and 3,800 Sikhs and Hindus had been killed in the province since 4 March. In his final days as Viceroy, Mountbatten was urged by Jinnah, Nehru and Patel alike to be ruthless in suppressing rioters, if need be by imposing martial law, but Jenkins and senior military commanders argued against the step, and Mountbatten agreed with them.54

  The Empire quitting India was not going to risk many British lives to keep the peace in the Punjab. As for the Raj’s Indian soldiers, they were not thought capable of shooting rioters from their community. The Empire would however allow ‘a few hundred British civilian and military officers’ to remain in the province through independence day.

  From 1 August a newly-created Punjab Boundary Force (PBF) under the command of a British officer, Major-General T. W. Rees, was placed along the likely ‘border’ that Sir Cyril Radcliffe’s Boundary Commission was to delineate by the middle of the month. Though the PBF’s officers comprised whites as well as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, its 55,000 men did not include a single Briton.

  This worked out to little more than one soldier per square mile. As independence day approached and the border was delineated, it proved easy for murderous bands in the Punjab to bypass the PBF; and for minorities the option of moving across the border became a compulsion to leave.

  In the Frontier province (and in Assam’s Sylhet district), the referendum went as expected in Pakistan’s favour. A week after Pakistan’s emergence Dr Khan Sahib’s ministry was dismissed, and the vilification of Badshah Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgars continued.

  Gandhi’s reaction to the Punjab news was to offer to go there, but Nehru and Patel persisted in their opposition to the idea, while urging him to come to Delhi. Meanwhile Governor-General Mountbatten wrote to Gandhi (26 August):

  In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and large-scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man, and there is no rioting. As a serving officer, as well as an administrator, may I be allowed to pay my tribute to the One-man Boundary Force, not forgetting his Second in Command, Mr Suhrawardy (96: 303).

  Writing back (30 Aug.) to Mountbatten that credit should probably go instead to ‘suitable conditions’ in Bengal (96: 303), Gandhi told Nirmal Kumar Bose that his gift lay not in ‘creating a new situation’ but in sensing and ‘giving shape’ to ‘what is stirring in the heart of the masses’.55 The claim of insight and craftsmanship was thus joined to an admission of dependence on his people.

  Gandhi asked Mountbatten too about going to the Punjab (96: 303). In a letter written the same day to Nehru, he said:

  About my going to the Punjab, I won’t move without your and Vallabhbhai’s wish. I want to say, however, that every day pressure is being put upon me to rush to the Punjab before it is too late…

  If I am not going to the Punjab, would I be of much use in Delhi as an adviser or consultant? I fancy I am not built that way. My advice has value only when I am actually working at a particular thing. I can only disturb when I give academic advice as on food, clothing, the use of the military…

  Left to myself I would probably rush to the Punjab and if necessary break myself in the attempt to stop the warring elements from committing suicide (96: 304).

  And to Patel Gandhi wrote, also on 30 August:

  May God give all of you the strength and the wisdom the situation demands. Did you ever think that you would have to face such a difficult situation so soon? His will be done (96: 304).

  PLANS MADE AND UNMADE

  The next day he decided that, accompanied by Suhrawardy, he should after all go, as earlier planned, to Noakhali—to Pakistan, that is. Having played a valiant part in Hydari Manzil, Suhrawardy left for his home to get ready for Noakhali. However, a hostile demonstration at Hydari Manzil on the night of 31 August caused yet another change in Gandhi’s plans.

  At about 10 p.m. a crowd of angry Hindus smashed the house’s windows, doors and ceiling fans. Gandhi, Abha, Manu and Bisen came out to meet the demonstrators. Bricks and a lathi were thrown at Gandhi, at an unidentified Muslim who was present, and at Bisen, whom the crowd took for a Muslim. Only the unknown Muslim was hit and no one was hurt, but it was a close call.

  Abha and Manu, ‘two very brave girls’, as Gandhi called them, did not leave his side and held on to him throughout the disturbance (96:315). Instructing the Muslims in the house and the two policemen present to remain calm, he folded his hands, in the Hindu fashion, towards the demonstrators while firmly asking them to disperse, but they did so only after the police superintendent arrived.

  Going to sleep at 12.30 a.m., Gandhi was up again in three hours. One of his first acts thereafter was to write to Vallabhbhai, describing the incident. He also mentioned urgings to visit the Punjab, referred to Nehru, and added, ‘I feel totally lost. I pin my hopes on you two’ (96:313).

  Soon he learnt of killings elsewhere in the city during the night. He went to some affected areas, saw ‘two dead bodies of very poor Muslims’ (96: 317), and wondered about Calcutta’s peace.

  In the afternoon, however, a telegram arrived from Nehru suggesting a visit to the Punjab ‘as early as possible’,56 whereupon Gandhi thought he should do that the next day (2 Sept.), giving up Noakhali (96: 321). The decision in favour of the Punjab was made in the teeth of Patel’s view (27 Aug.): ‘You will not be able to put out the conflagration in Punjab.’57

  But after visitors brought more news of Calcutta’s violence—around fifty had been killed during the night of 31 August and the day of 1 September—he was clear about something else. At about eight p.m. on 1 September he decided he would go neither to Noakhali nor to the Punjab: he would stay put in Hydari Manzil and fast until peace returned to Calcutta.

  ‘If the fury (in Calcutta) did not abate, my going to the Punjab would be of no avail,’ he wrote to Jawaharlal (96: 321). And if Calcutta responded positively to his fast, he could go with confidence to the Punjab.

  Running to Hydari Manzil from the mansion once designed for the Empire’s chief functionary in India, governor Rajagopalachari asked Gandhi: ‘Can you fast against the goondas?’ Gandhi’s reply was that his fast could touch ‘the hearts of those behind the goondas’, without whose ‘sympathy and passive support the goondas would have no legs to stand on’ (96: 318).

  Announced at 8.15 p.m. on 1 September, the fast had an immediate impact. Violence died down. Hindus and Muslims marched jointly for peace. About 500 members of the north Calcutta police force, including a few Britons and Anglo-Indians, went themselves on a twenty-four-hour sympathy fast while remaining on duty. A professor would later recall:

  Some [university students
] even gathered weapons from streets and homes at great personal risk and returned them to Gandhiji. Men would come back from their offices in the evening and find food prepared by their family ready for them; but soon it would be revealed that the women of the home had not eaten during the whole day… They could not understand how they could go on when Gandhiji was dying for their own crimes.58

  Rammanohar Lohia, the Socialist leader, brought to Gandhi a group of young Hindus who admitted complicity in violence and handed over a small arsenal of arms. Inspecting surrendered weapons, Gandhi remarked that he was seeing a sten-gun for the first time (96: 342). When (4 Sept.) members of another gang turned up, asking for ‘any penalty’ and pleading, ‘Only you should now end your fast,’ Gandhi said they should go ‘immediately among the Muslims and assure them full protection’ (96: 337).

  Not forgetting Noakhali, Gandhi sent (4 Sept.) a letter via Pyarelal to Khwaja Nazimuddin, the new chief minister of Pakistan’s East Bengal province, informing him that he was being asked to visit ‘both parts of the Punjab’, which had gone ‘utterly mad’, and asking Nazimuddin ‘to tell me all about Noakhali’ (96: 333).

  At 6 p.m. on 4 September a deputation of Mahasabha, Sikh and Muslim League leaders, headed by Suhrawardy, went up to Gandhi’s bedside in Hydari Manzil and asked for the fast to end. Gandhi asked them if they would risk their lives to prevent a recurrence of the events of 31 August and 1 September. After withdrawing to another room, the leaders returned with a pledge. Gandhi reminded them that ‘above all, there is God, our witness’ and agreed to break his fast, which had lasted for seventy-three hours.