9 Nov.: There is a constant stream of visitors. How can I refuse to listen to their sorrows? Very often my own grief becomes overwhelming (97: 268).
29 Nov.: But when someone commits a crime anywhere I feel I am the culprit. You too should feel the same (97: 420).
An impression of hardness is conveyed by the record of some of his interviews with Hindu leaders arriving from Pakistan. Gandhi appears to rebuke them for escaping instead of fighting and for abandoning poorer Hindus who could not leave. Thus he said to Lalji Mehrotra, who had fled Karachi:
21 Oct.: The leaders were able to come so easily with their families and belongings but the poor, helpless villagers are in a sad plight. If even one of you had died there I would have danced for joy… [But] I attach no blame to you (97: 129-30).
While reflecting Gandhi’s sadness at the damage to his vision of Hindu-Muslim co-existence as well as his concern for those continuing in insecurity, such words conceal the warmth in Gandhi’s eyes and arms as he welcomed men like Mehrotra. A young Punjabi judge, Gopal Das Khosla, a refugee himself from Lahore, noticed this warmth when he went to Gandhi for advice regarding evacuee property, for which he had been assigned responsibility:
I began to tell him of my assignment, and the difficulties I had encountered. It was a long story and Gandhiji listened patiently without interrupting me… There was no mysterious or hypnotic force to which I was being subjected… He spoke in a calm matter of fact way. What I heard was not a command but a simple statement of truth… He did not digress into a high-falutin’ moral discourse but kept to the practical problem I had put before him. Realization came to me that this man had only one sentiment in his heart and that was the sentiment of love… When he looked at me I noticed a softness in his eyes and I felt ashamed.73
The tenderness was also observed by Dilip Kumar Roy, the poet and musician who sang at Gandhi’s prayer meeting on 1 November:
After the meeting I made my last obeisance on the lawn. He looked at me tenderly with his gentle sad eyes and said, ‘It was good, that song.’ ‘I know you had a special liking for that song.’ He sighed: ‘When do I hear you next? Tomorrow?’ ‘I must fly tomorrow for Calcutta.’ He smiled. ‘Well, well! If you must, you must, and there’s an end of it. But I will miss you tomorrow.’ When I left him my eyes were moist with tears. I was moved by him as never before.74
Two days later, in a letter to someone not named in the record but obviously close to him, Gandhi likened his condition to that of Draupadi in the Mahabharata when the Kauravas tried to disrobe her:
3 Nov.: I saw your letter only now, after listening to the sweet and sad bhajan containing Draupadi’s prayer… Draupadi had mighty Bhima and Arjuna and the truthful Yudhishthira as husbands; she was the daughter-in-law of men like Dronacharya, Bhishma and Vidura, and yet amidst an assembly of people it appeared she was in a terrible plight. At that hour, she did not lose faith and prayed to God from her heart. And God did protect her honour… Today I also am seated in a ‘palatial’ house, surrounded by loving friends. Still, I am in a sad plight. Yet there is God’s help, as I find each day (97: 221).
Though living in Birla House and protected by Nehru, Patel and others in power, Gandhi too felt helpless—and yet aided. Giving of his best, he tried to recognize his imperfections. To Mathuradas Trikamji he wrote (15 Nov.):
I cannot be a witness to [the] pride, impatience, etc., [that] I may be having… [O]nly outsiders can… witness them (97: 314).
Dictating a letter to another friend (not identified in the record), Gandhi said (18 Nov.) that he had just given Manu (who was taking down the dictation) ‘a long lecture’ in answer to a question she had asked. Added Gandhi: ‘Has it not become my profession to lecture people?’ Referring to Manu’s ability to make ‘notes and summaries of my interviews with visitors’, he said, ‘It occurs to me how dense I was at the age of eighteen’ (97: 343-4).
Some tasks afforded pleasure or satisfaction. For the wedding of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth with Prince Philip (to whom the Viceroy was related), Gandhi sent a small table-cloth made from thread he had drawn on his charkha. It was taken to London by the Mountbattens.
9 Nov.: Dear Lord Mountbatten, This little thing is made out of doubled yarn of my own spinning. The knitting was done by a Punjabi girl who was trained by Abha’s husband, my grandson. Lady Mountbatten knows Abha. Please give the bride and the bridegroom this with my blessings, with the wish that they would have a long and happy life of service of men. Yours sincerely, M.K. Gandhi (97: 265)
For the three weeks that Mountbatten was away, Rajagopalachari, coming from Calcutta to serve as acting Governor-General, lived in the Lutyens-designed palace that was called Viceroy’s House until independence, when it was renamed Government House.
When one of C.R.’s house guests, Sarojini Naidu (who had become the UP governor), fell ill, Gandhi called at the palace to see her and also to see C.R. in his new ‘home’. C.R. and his widowed daughter Namagiri, who functioned as first lady, welcomed Gandhi in the north court of Government House with rose petals, and C.R. asked if Gandhi would care for an idli. ‘Idli?’ Gandhi exclaimed. ‘In Gujarat a samdhi (daughter-in-law’s father) offers sweets.’
Kasturba featured in his remarks. ‘Don’t you know that I was a barrister and Ba was almost illiterate?’ he said in a letter (6 Nov.) to someone who had expressed unhappiness with his partner, adding, ‘And, yet, whatever progress I have been able to make in my life today is all due to my wife’ (97: 242). When a Bombay artist wishing to portray Kasturba asked for a photograph and details, Gandhi said he did not have any photographs. Naming someone else who was likely to have them, he however provided a few particulars:
To Bapsy Pavry, 2 Dec .: The ground of Kasturba’s sari always used to be white.
Occasionally it had lines or dots in colour. The hem and the borders used to be coloured. There was no particular choice in the colours (97: 438).
He made faces at his youngest grandchild, Devadas’s son Gopu, who was two-and-a-half at the end of 1947, and enjoyed Gopu’s mimicking of grandfather’s prayer-meeting call: ‘Bhaiyo aur behno, aap shaant ho jaiye’ (Brothers and sisters, please be silent’).75 He missed Gopu when they did not show up, Gandhi told Devadas, who with his wife and children frequently visited his father, usually just before 9 p.m.
For his body, mind and soul, he seemed to turn even more than before to God and the utterance of God’s name, for which, as we know, Gandhi’s preference was Raam, as he pronounced it.
27 Sept.: My physician today, in my thought, speech and action, is Raam, Ishwar, Rahim (97: 3).
Conversation, 8 Nov.: [I]t is my hope that when I die I shall die with Ramanama in my heart. This faith becomes stronger in me each day. You see there was a time when even my opponents took my guidance. Today, let alone my being assailed by my opponents, even my co-workers, friends and close relatives who are like sons to me, do not see eye to eye with me. Still, I am mentally in such excellent health that it surprises me that with the flames raging around me I remain untouched by their heat or sparks. The reason for this is that God is filling me with strength and I am sustained by Ramanama (97: 257).
18 Nov.: My Raam is not a man with two hands and two feet. But if I am perfectly fit it is due to Raam’s grace (97: 343).
STATE OF THE CONGRESS
Having found power after decades of struggle, many in the Congress seemed absorbed in extracting all they could from it. Disappointed by pleas from freedom fighters for posts in the new India, Gandhi remarked, ‘If someone has been to jail, has he done a favour to India?’ (96: 34) On 4 November he spoke of ‘Congress leaders [who] have completely isolated themselves from the refugees’ (97: 230).
Walls within the Congress bothered him. ‘For instance,’ he wrote to a friend on 14 November, ‘Jayaprakash has immense energy. But he does not come forward because of party considerations’ (97: 310). Making Jayaprakash—or his older socialist colleague, Narendra Deva—the Congress president was one rem
edy Gandhi thought of in November.
The incumbent head, Kripalani, was not clicking with Nehru or Patel and had said he wished to resign before his term ended. Gandhi agreed that he should, and so did Nehru and Patel, but the two were not willing to accept Jayaprakash or Deva. In the event Rajendra Prasad, resigning from the Cabinet, took over from Kripalani.
Placing Jayaprakash in the Congress chair would have thrilled India’s youth and paved the way for an interesting succession in the future, but this was another of Gandhi’s ideas that Nehru and Patel jointly and successfully resisted.
Yet in November Gandhi managed to persuade first the Working Committee and then the AICC to recommit the party to ‘a democratic secular State where all citizens enjoy full rights and are equally entitled to the protection of the State, irrespective of the religion to which they belong’ (97: 476-7). In the bitter climate of end-1947, such a reaffirmation was both necessary and difficult, and Gandhi had to work hard to obtain it.
To a friend (not identified), 15 Nov.: The more I look within the more I feel that God is with me. [I]t is He who is giving me strength. These days the Working Committee meeting is going on and I am doing some plain speaking with them. We shall perish if we become cowards, that is, the Congress will die (97: 317).
To an unnamed associate, 17 Nov.: I am pulling on somehow. These days we are busy with the A.I.C.C. meeting. There is great pressure of work. I hardly have time to breathe. Letters have heaped up… Everything here is quite uncertain at the moment. But God will certainly show a way out (97: 338).
To Pyarelal in Noakhali, 1 Dec .: I see my battle has to be fought and won in Delhi itself. There is a lot for me to do here… The… resolutions of the All-India Congress Committee this time were practically mine… It now remains to be seen how they are implemented (97: 433).
Though coming together to defeat some of Gandhi’s solutions, Nehru and Patel were often in conflict. At the end of September Gandhi had thought that for cohesion one or the other should leave the government,76 but on 2 December he said at a public meeting, referring to Nehru and Patel: ‘The two make an inseparable pair. Neither can do without the other’ (97: 445).
While often speaking of Nehru and Patel in the same breath, and working to preserve their partnership, Gandhi strove also to protect Nehru’s superior position in it, above all because Nehru was identified with secularism in a way that Patel was not. At the AICC meeting (15 Nov.), Gandhi warned the Congress against ‘part[ing] company with Jawaharlal’ and added:
Even those who have fabulous wealth, vast armies and the atom bomb respect the moral worth of Jawaharlal’s leadership. We in India ought to have due appreciation for it.77
Attacking calls for the ouster of India’s Muslims, Gandhi said:
I know what some people are saying. ‘The Congress has surrendered its soul to the Muslims. Gandhi? Let him rave as he will. He is a wash out. Jawaharlal is no better. As regards Sardar Patel there is something in him. A portion of him is sound Hindu, but he too is after all a Congressman.’
Such talk will not help us. Where is an alternative leadership? Violent rowdyism will not save either Hinduism or Sikhism… Hinduism cannot be saved by orgies of murder.
Fighting for the Congress soul, he told the delegates:
You represent the vast ocean of Indian humanity… [T]here are many places today where a Muslim cannot live in security. There are miscreants who will kill him or throw him out of a running train for no reason other than that he is a Muslim…
[S]uch things should never happen in India. We have to recognize that India does not belong to Hindus alone, nor does Pakistan to Muslims…
Hinduism teaches us to return good for evil. The wicked sink under the weight of their own evil. Must we also sink with them? It is the basic creed of the Congress that India is the home of Muslims no less than of Hindus…
[I]f you maintain the civilized way, whatever Pakistan may do now, sooner or later she will be obliged by the pressure of world opinion to conform.78
Pressed by Gandhi, the AICC resolved also in favour of ‘the ultimate return’ to their homes of refugees from Pakistan and India. Those who had not left their homes were ‘encouraged to stay there unless they themselves desire to migrate’ (97: 477-8). To the AICC Gandhi spoke, too, of reports that the Meos of Alwar and Bharatpur were being coerced to leave for Pakistan. At one time designated as ‘criminal tribes’, these Meos were Muslims.
I understand that a 1,50,000 Muslims are about to be sent to Pakistan… If there are criminal tribes in India, whose fault is it? We are to blame for not having reformed them. They were here during the British regime. Was there any talk of deporting them then?.. How shameful it is for us that we should force them to trudge 300 miles on foot!79
Gandhi’s intervention put paid to the plan. It was no longer possible for anyone to ask openly for the Meos’ expulsion, or for the government to allow it.
Yet Gandhi’s concern regarding the Congress was not allayed. By rejecting his proposal regarding Jayaprakash or Narendra Deva, Nehru and Patel had shown their attachment to the status quo. And Congress members affected by the communal virus had openly resented Gandhi’s call for an ultimate return of refugees to their homes. After the AICC session, Gandhi gave private expression to a radical thought:
I am convinced that no patchwork treatment can save the Congress. It will only prolong the agony. The best thing for the Congress would be to dissolve itself before the rot sets in further. Its voluntary liquidation will brace up and purify the political climate of the country. But I can see that I can carry nobody with me in this.80
The Nehru-Patel relationship saw severe strains in December. Patel felt offended on two scores. One, Nehru had asked a civil servant to reassess a situation in Ajmer in central India on which Patel had already given an opinion. Then, and this was more hurtful to Patel, Nehru wanted Kashmir removed from Patel’s charge and placed in the hands of another Cabinet member, N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar.
Patel and Nehru both offered to resign. In separate letters to Gandhi they communicated the offers as well as their conflicting perspectives on the two issues. At the end of December Gandhi returned to an earlier thought and said to Patel: ‘Either you should run things or Jawaharlal should.’ Replying that he lacked the physical strength, Patel said he would support the younger man from outside the government.81 ‘Umpire’ Gandhi asked for time to give his verdict.
Failure in Panipat. He had failed, meanwhile, in a bid to persuade Muslims in Panipat, sixty miles north of Delhi, not to migrate to Pakistan. Visiting the town on 10 November, Gandhi met with its Muslims, including several lying in a hospital with injuries received in communal attacks. ‘Nurse’ Gandhi ‘spent a few minutes with every patient, occasionally covering a patient properly with the sheet’ (97: 275). He also met with Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab, who had come into Panipat in thousands and made their homes on the railway platform, where deaths and births took place.
Though belonging to eastern Punjab, Panipat was far from Lahore and linked to Delhi by trade and proximity. Despite their fears (and notwithstanding the agreement for a two-way transfer of the Punjab’s minorities), the town’s Muslims told Gandhi that they would stay on if assured protection. Promises were offered by East Punjab’s chief minister, Gopichand Bhargava, and by local officials.
On 22 November Gandhi thought he should shift to Panipat to encourage its Muslims, but Nehru advised against the move (97: 366). By the time Gandhi visited Panipat again (2 Dec.), the Muslims had made up their minds to leave. They did not feel safe in Panipat, their leaders told Gandhi. Deeply disappointed, he said to them:
If… you want to go of your own will, no one can stop you. But you will never hear Gandhi utter the words that you should leave India. Gandhi can only tell you that you should stay, for India is your home. And if your brethren should kill you, you should bravely meet death…
The Ministers have assured you that they will protect you even at the risk of thei
r own lives. Still if you are resolved to go and do not place any trust in their word there is nothing further I can say to you. What can I do to reassure you? If I should die tomorrow you would again have to flee… You have to decide for yourselves…
But today, having heard you and seen you, my heart weeps. Do as God guides you (97: 443-4).
Returning to New Delhi, Gandhi reported his failure to the Birla House prayer audience. He also described an encounter with a Hindu or Sikh boy in Panipat:
2 Dec.: Today a small boy confronted me. He was wearing a sweater. He took it off and stood glaring at me as if he would eat me up… ‘You say that you have come to protect us’, he said, ‘but my father has been killed. Get me my father back.’… I can imagine that if I had been of his age and in his position, perhaps I would have done the same (97: 449).
Excerpts indicate the range of his concerns in November and December:
21 Nov.: I am told that the Roman Catholics are being harassed near Gurgaon… in a village called Kanhai which is twenty-five miles away from Delhi… the Roman Catholics were threatened that they would have to suffer if they did not leave the village… The freedom we have achieved does not imply the rule of Hindus in the Indian Union or that of Muslims in Pakistan (97: 364).
23 Nov.: It is a matter of shame for us that there are… Jats and perhaps Ahirs too [who] felt that the Harijans were their slaves… They may be given water and food but they can get nothing by right… We feel that we can even intimidate a judge if we are brought before him… The result is that the Harijans are ruined (97: 378).
Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People Page 86
