Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  Stirred by news of Hindu and Sikh women in Pakistan preferring death to dishonour, Gandhi said on 18 September:

  [T]hey have gone with courage. They have not sold away their honour. Not that their lives were not dear to them, but they felt it was better to die with courage rather than be forcibly converted to Islam by the Muslims and allow them to assault their bodies. And so those women died. They were not just a handful, but quite a few (96: 388-9).

  We may note other remarks by him in September:

  18 Sept.: When I go to Pakistan I will not spare them. I shall die for the Hindus and the Sikhs there. I shall be really glad to die there. I shall be glad to die here too…

  20 Sept.: This is the time to remember Khuda, Allah, Ishwar and Rama… [T]he blood of these three communities (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) is one. I would do everything possible to prove this. I would cry myself hoarse and shed tears before God in order to attain this. I do not shed tears before man, but I can do so before God (96: 395-6).

  23 Sept.: I want to go to Lahore. I want to go to Rawalpindi… If you avoid fighting in Delhi I will take it that God has granted my prayer. Then with the grace of God, I will go to the Punjab. Let me tell you that once peace descends on Delhi, I shall not stay here even a day longer (96: 412).

  24 Sept.: I have just a handful of bones in my body. But my heart belongs to me. So do your hearts belong to you…

  The trains coming from Pakistan these days do not bring the Muslims. The Hindus and the Sikhs are brought in those trains. Some get killed in the train. And the people who go from here are Muslims who are killed on the way. I am told that I should count the figures. What figures should I count?.. And what will I do knowing the figures? (96: 418-9)

  Exchange with Churchill. In a speech in London (27 Sept.), Winston Churchill, now in the opposition, underscored Gandhi’s shame:

  The fearful massacres which are occurring in India are no surprise to me. We are, of course, only at the beginning of these horrors and butcheries, perpetrated upon one another, with the ferocity of cannibals, by the races gifted with capacities for the highest culture, and who had for generations dwelt, side by side, in general peace, under the broad, tolerant and impartial rule of the British Crown and Parliament. I cannot but doubt, that the future will witness a vast abridgment of the [subcontinent’s] population.69

  To these formidable phrases from his old foe, Gandhi offered an immediate and also impressive response (28 Sept.). After translating Churchill’s sentences for his prayer-meeting audience, he called the former Premier ‘a great man’, acknowledged that that there was ‘no doubt’ that Churchill, who ‘took the helm when Great Britain was in great danger’, had ‘saved the British Empire’ in World War II, and admitted that ‘a few lakhs in India had taken to the path of barbarism’.

  At the same time he took Churchill to task for describing the killings in India with, as Gandhi put it, ‘such relish and gross exaggeration’, and asked Churchill ‘to take the trouble’ of thinking about Britain’s responsibility in the tragedy. Though not referring to Churchill’s personal wish for India’s partition, Gandhi added that by dividing India before quitting, Britain had ‘unwittingly invited the two parts of the country to fight each other’, a step ‘the future may or may not justify’. He concluded by saying to his people:

  Many of you have given grounds to Mr Churchill for making such remarks. You still have sufficient time to… prove Mr. Churchill’s prediction wrong (97: 6-8).

  Lahore never left Gandhi’s thoughts.

  1 Oct.: All those who have their properties in Lahore should get them back… What wonderful buildings I have seen there! And what about all those educational institutions for girls?.. The people of the Punjab come of a sturdy stock. They are business-minded and produce wealth. There are great bankers there who know how to spend money as well as earn it. I have seen all that with my own eyes. They have built all those buildings, all those colleges for men and women, and then all those grand hospitals (97: 25).

  He smelt continuing ill will in Delhi and spoke about it:

  1 Oct.: I do not quite know who they are, but they are definitely there, and are working to carry out preplanned murders, arson and forcible occupation of buildings (97: 24).

  Birthday. On the morning of his seventy-eighth birthday he emerged from his bath to find that Mira had laid out flowers on the floor to form three symbols: the word Rama (in Hindi), the sacred syllable Om, and a Cross. Nehru and Patel, Ghanshyamdas Birla and several from the Birla family, Lady Mountbatten, and many others turned up to greet him. Many touched his feet.

  ‘Bapuji’, an unidentified visitor remarked, ‘on our birthdays it is we who touch the feet of other people and take their blessings but in your case it is other way about. Is this fair?’ Laughing, Gandhi answered: ‘The ways of Mahatmas are different! It is not my fault. You made me Mahatma, maybe a bogus one; so you must pay the penalty!’

  But the merry note quickly vanished. Repeating a thought he had been expressing for weeks, he requested those present to pray that ‘either the present conflagration should end or He should take me away. I do not wish another birthday to overtake me in an India still in flames.’

  Patel’s daughter Maniben wrote later that day in her diary: ‘His anguish was unbearable. We had gone to him in elation; we returned home with a heavy heart.’70 But Gandhi must have been moved by a letter he received for his birthday from Sonja Schlesin, his talented secretary four decades earlier in Johannesburg:

  Far from losing your desire to live until you are 125, increasing knowledge of the world’s lovelessness and consequent misery should cause you rather to determine to live longer still… You said in a letter to me some time ago that everyone ought to wish to attain the age of 125, you can’t go back on that (97: 204).

  Arguing that the violence in India was ‘the final attempt of the forces of evil’ to foil a ‘divine plan’ of India leading the world to nonviolence, and warning Gandhi against feeling depressed, a well-wisher asked him to remember that he was ‘the only instrument to further the divine purpose’. Harijan (12 Oct.) carried the well-wisher’s letter as well as Gandhi’s reply:

  I am not vain enough to think that the divine purpose can only be fulfilled through me. It is as likely as not that a fitter instrument will be used to carry it out and that I was good enough to represent a weak nation, not a strong one. May it not be that a man purer, more courageous, more farseeing is wanted for the final purpose? (97: 39)

  Purity, courage and farsightedness are thus the three qualities Gandhi deems necessary in one wanting to change history. Added Gandhi:

  If I had the impertinence openly to declare my wish to live 125 years, I must have the humility under changed circumstances openly to shed that wish… This has not been done in a spirit of depression. The more apt term perhaps is helplessness. In that state I invoke the aid of the all-embracing Power to take me away from this ‘vale of tears’ rather than make me a helpless witness of the butchery by man become savage… Yet I cry—‘Not my will but Thine alone shall prevail’ (97: 39-40).

  Warned by a Harijan reader against sheltering ‘frozen Muslim snakes’ which would bite on revival, Gandhi allowed himself some fun in his reply:

  3 Oct.: To liken a human being, however degraded he may be, to a snake to justify inhuman treatment is surely a degrading performance… I have known rabidly fanatical Muslims to use the very analogy in respect of Hindus… Lastly, let me, for the sake of snake-kind, correct a common error [and point out] that eighty snakes out of every hundred are perfectly harmless and they render useful service in nature (97: 30).

  Shuttling between Delhi and Karachi, Pakistan’s capital, Suhrawardy carried messages from Gandhi to Jinnah and back. Gandhi wished to know (25 Oct.) ‘what Pakistan really wants to do—whether they want the Hindus to stay there or not’. He added that he was aware of what was ‘happening to the minorities in the Punjab, in Sindh and in the Frontier province’ (97: 169).

  But East Punjab�
��s minority too had been pushed out. On 16 October Gandhi wrote to Amtus Salaam, who was continuing to serve in Noakhali, that the Patiala of old, to which Amtus Salaam belonged, was ‘now but a dream’. Her relatives were all safe (he had helped arrange their departure for Pakistan) but, bemoaned Gandhi, ‘they had to leave Patiala for good!’ (97: 93).

  To acquaint him with developing events, a small group of Delhi’s Muslim leaders met with Gandhi every day. On 26 October, which was Eid day, Gandhi asked them to help him cultivate the right attitude towards his likely assassin:

  Jesus Christ prayed to God from the Cross to forgive those who had crucified him. It is my constant prayer to God that He may give me the strength to intercede even for my assassin. And it should be your prayer too that your faithful servant may be given that strength to forgive (97: 163).

  Sikhs. Following a visit he had made to Karachi, Jamnadas Dwarkadas of Bombay conveyed to Gandhi (20 Sept.) a remark by Ghazanfar Ali Khan, a minister in Pakistan: ‘If Sikhs can be kept aside they would be perfectly happy to let the Hindus stay’. ‘Separating Sikhs from Hindus—I can never accept that,’ said Gandhi.71

  After others returning from Karachi repeated the hint of a Hindu-Muslim pact minus the Sikhs, Gandhi made a public comment:

  Harijan, 7 Dec. 1947: I know the vicious suggestion that the Hindus would be all right if they would sacrifice the Sikhs who would never be tolerated in Pakistan. I can never be a party to any such fratricidal bargain. There can be no rest for this unhappy land unless every Hindu and Sikh returns with honour and in safety to West Punjab and every Muslim refugee to the Union, barring of course those who do not choose to do so for reasons of their own (97: 384).

  But a Gandhi critical of cruelty at Muslim and Hindu hands spoke also of Sikh excesses and of the misuse of the kirpan. Warned by a Sikh politician that he ‘should be cautious about what he says about the Sikhs’, Gandhi refused to yield:

  I speak freely and frankly because I am [the Sikhs’] true friend. I make bold to say that many a time the Sikh situation was saved because the Sikhs in general chose to follow my advice… A sacred thing has to be used on sacred and lawful occasions. A kirpan is undoubtedly a symbol of strength, which adorns the possessor only if he exercises amazing restraint over himself and uses it against enormous odds… (97: 383-4)

  Kashmir & Junagadh. The subcontinent’s ‘yellow’ pockets were disappearing. While almost all princely states had joined India or Pakistan, three presented problems: Hyderabad and Junagadh, which had Muslim rulers and preponderantly Hindu populations, and Kashmir, where a Hindu ruled over a Muslim majority, and where Gandhi had spent five days on the eve of independence.

  While the Nizam of Hyderabad and Kashmir’s Maharaja dallied, each hoping to emerge as an independent ruler, the Nawab of Junagadh acceded to Pakistan on 15 August, sparking off protests in his seaboard territory in Kathiawar, adjacent to Porbandar. Nonetheless, Junagadh’s accession was accepted (on 13 September) by Jinnah, who was applying to princely states not the two-nation theory but the principle of the ruler’s wish. In response, Patel, who assumed charge of New Delhi’s relationship with the princely states, declared that neither he nor the people of the region would allow Junagadh to become part of Pakistan.

  Not to let Kashmir join India was, on the other hand, the goal of influential elements in Pakistan, including Abdul Qayyum Khan, the new chief minister of the Frontier province, and Major-General Akbar Khan of the Pakistan army. Fearing that Hari Singh, the Hindu Maharaja, might after all accede to India, these elements sponsored, on 22 October, a raid into Kashmir of thousands of Afridi tribesmen.

  When the raiders neared Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, Hari Singh as well as Sheikh Abdullah, the state’s popular leader (who had been released by the Maharaja at the end of September), pleaded for India’s help. Discussions involving Nehru, Patel, Hari Singh and Abdullah produced three immediate outcomes. The ruler acceded to India; Indian troops were flown to Srinagar to defend Kashmir; and Abdullah was empowered as Kashmir’s de facto premier. In addition, it was declared that following the restoration of peace the people of Kashmir would decide their state’s future.

  Kept fully in the picture by Patel, Nehru and Abdullah, Gandhi gave, in his own phrase, ‘tacit consent’ to the dispatch of Indian forces to Kashmir (98: 319). On 29 October he even said, publicly, that ‘the job of armed soldiers is to march ahead and repel the attacking enemy’ (97:185).

  This amounted to blessing a violent exercise. Yet the fact that Abdullah, ‘the lion of Kashmir’, sought to represent ‘not only the Muslims but the entire masses in Kashmir’ (97: 285-6) made all the difference to Gandhi. He thought that Kashmir, where Hindus and Sikhs stood at Abdullah’s side (97: 383-4), might provide an antidote for the subcontinent’s Hindu-Muslim divide:

  29 Oct.: After all, Kashmir cannot be saved by the Maharaja. If anyone can save Kashmir, it is only the Muslims, the Kashmiri Pandits, the Rajputs and the Sikhs who [live there]. Sheikh Abdullah has affectionate and friendly relations with all of them…

  The poison which has spread amongst us should never have spread. Through Kashmir that poison might be removed from us (97: 185-6).

  After the raiders were repulsed, continued Gandhi, ‘Kashmir would belong to the Kashmiris’ (97: 185). In Kashmir, as in Hyderabad and Junagadh, the will of the people should prevail.

  11 Nov.: The dispute as to which Union Junagadh would finally accede to can be resolved only by taking public opinion, that is, by referendum… Whatever I have said about Junagadh equally applies to Kashmir and Hyderabad.

  Neither the Maharaja of Kashmir nor the Nizam of Hyderabad has any authority to accede to either Union without the consent of his people… If it had been only the Maharaja who had wanted to accede to the Indian Union, I could never support such an act. The Union Government agreed to the accession for the time being because both the Maharaja and Sheikh Abdullah, who is the representative of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, wanted it. Sheikh Abdullah came forward because he claims to represent not only the Muslims but the entire masses in Kashmir (97: 285-6).

  The Nawab of Junagadh fled to Pakistan after Gandhi’s nephew Samaldas (Laxmidas’s son) led a popular movement in the state and Vallabhbhai sent Indian soldiers to Junagadh’s borders. In a referendum held in February 1948, Junagadh’s population voted overwhelmingly for India.

  In Kashmir the pro-Pakistan forces were pushed back though they retained control over part of the state. Later in the year the Indian government referred the Kashmir question to the United Nations. Said Gandhi:

  25 Dec.: I shall advise Pakistan and India to sit together and decide the matter. If the two are interested in the settlement of the dispute, where is the need for an arbitrator? (98: 114)

  4 Jan. 1948: Mistakes were made on both sides. Of this I have no doubt… Therefore the two Dominions should come together with God as witness and find a settlement. The matter is now before the United Nations Organization. It cannot be withdrawn from there. But if India and Pakistan come to a settlement the big powers in the U.N.O. will have to endorse that settlement (98: 171).

  BODY AND SPIRIT

  Asked by an Indonesian visitor about his apparent cheerfulness, Gandhi replied (7 Nov.):

  I look after my health with care… I have decided to live cheerfully even in this atmosphere of darkness and inhumanity. Moreover, I consider no one as my enemy… I also resort to certain outward remedies. You see that even while guests such as you are visiting here I lie with a mud-pack on me. Do please forgive me my lack of manners (97: 251).

  A Czech writer, Jiri Nehnevasja, shook Gandhi’s hand and later described it:

  My hand rests in his for a while. It is a small wrinkled hand with a white palm and pale fingers. The handshake is firm, manlike.72

  In December one of these fingers was crushed when Brij Krishna slammed the door of the car in which they had gone to a meeting. To an anxious Ramdas the father wrote (22 Dec.):

  It is true that I crushed my fin
ger… It was nothing to worry about. The pain subsided in a minute or two and I addressed the meeting… I am no doubt careful but even a careful person does meet with such accidents (98: 96).

  Though his listening, writing and counselling tasks in Delhi seemed ‘endless’, and he said he got ‘utterly exhausted by the end of the day’ (9 Nov.; 97: 268), he was usually able to start all over again the next morning, and unfailingly took his morning and evening walks.

  He was letting the subcontinent’s shame, sorrow and guilt flow into his heart and hoping that his listeners too would be affected:

  1 Oct.: I do not wish to be a witness to these things. I do not wish to see such a downfall. My only prayer to God is that He should take me away before that happens… I tried to sacrifice my life for India’s freedom. I did not lose my life; but freedom came. But what is the point of remaining alive to see this happening in the wake of freedom? So I pray to God day and night that He should take me away. Or He should give me the power to extinguish this fire (97:25).

  1 Nov.: There are countless women at [the] Kurukshetra [refugee camp] who are still wearing the same clothes with which they had arrived. I cannot even bear to hear about these things—who knows what will happen if I have to see these things? (97: 211)

  Aware, as Delhi’s winter approached and advanced, of uprooted and unprotected ones—Hindu, Sikh and Muslim—shivering in Delhi’s camps, he shivered himself. People pursued unto their hospital rooms and killed there, a train passenger stabbed and thrown into a river, a man killed while opening the little shop where he repaired spectacles, trainloads of refugees blocked and butchered, all because they belonged to the wrong religion and none because of any wrong committed, all before approving or silent onlookers—such were the incidents related to, and then by, Gandhi: