Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  Activity in Delhi was matched by an unexpected response in Pakistan, where ‘in the twinkling of an eye the Muslim League’s enemy number one of pre-partition days was transformed into their “greatest friend”’.94 From West Punjab, Mridula Sarabhai (who was trying to recover abducted Hindu and Sikh women) wired that Pakistanis were asking how they could help. They too should turn the searchlight inwards, Gandhi replied.

  Prayers were offered in public and ‘by Muslim women in the seclusion of their purda’.95 In Karachi minister Ghazanfar Ali Khan said that Gandhi had applied ‘a drastic remedy’, and in Lahore West Punjab’s chief minister, the Khan of Mamdot, finance minister Mumtaz Daulatana and League leader Firoz Khan Noon offered their ‘deep admiration and sincere appreciation’ for Gandhi’s step, with Noon saying, ‘Religious founders apart, no country has produced a greater man than Mahatma Gandhi.’96

  Through Sri Prakasa, the Indian high commissioner in Karachi, and Zahid Husain, Pakistan’s high commissioner in New Delhi, Jinnah sent a message urging Gandhi to ‘live and work for the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity in the two dominions’97. It was an indirect appeal for ending the fast. However, a vicious attack (13 Jan.) on a refugee train at West Punjab’s Gujrat station killed or maimed hundreds of Hindus and Sikhs from Bannu in the Frontier province. Gandhi reacted frankly:

  14 Jan.: [If] this kind of thing continues in Pakistan, how long will the people in India tolerate it? Even if 100 men like me fasted they would not be able to stop the tragedy that may follow.

  Then Gandhi challenged his people, Pakistanis and Indians, by reminding them of a well-known verse:

  The poet says, ‘If there is paradise it is here, it is here.’ He had said it about a garden. I read it ages ago when I was a child… But paradise is not so easily secured. If Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs became decent, became brothers, then that verse could be inscribed on every door. But that will be only when Pakistan has become pure… If that happens in Pakistan, we in India shall not be behind them…

  Society is made up of individuals. It is we that make society… If one man takes the initiative others will follow and one can become many; if there is not even one there is nothing (98: 234-35).

  In sympathy with Gandhi, many Hindu and Sikh refugees in Delhi cut down on their meals. Muslims were welcomed in Subzimandi and other areas where a boycott had earlier been in force. Peace processions marched across the city, and about 200,000 signatures were secured to a commitment to assure Muslim rights.

  Though he lost weight and doctors worried about acetone levels in his body, Gandhi was enduring the deprivation remarkably well, putting in plenty of work and walking when it was thought he had to be carried.

  Writing to Mira in her ashram in the Himalayan foothills, Gandhi said (16 Jan.) he thought he was on his ‘greatest fast’. Other lines in this letter show Gandhi’s attempt to draw amusement from the self-imposed ordeal:

  I am dictating this immediately after the 3.30 a.m. prayer and while I am taking my meal… The food consists of eight oz of hot water sipped with difficulty… It revives me whenever I take it. Strange to say, this time I am able to take about eight meals [a day] of this poison-tasting but nectar-like meal. Yet I claim to be fasting and credulous people accept it (98: 240).

  On 18 January, the sixth day of the fast, a delegation of over 100 persons representing different communities and bodies called on a shrivelled Gandhi at Birla House, and Rajendra Prasad read from a declaration all had signed:

  We take the pledge that we shall protect the life, property and faith of the Muslims and that the incidents which have taken place in Delhi will not happen again.

  We want to assure Gandhiji that the annual fair at Khwaja Qutbuddin Mazar will be held this year as in the previous years.

  Muslims will be able to move about in Subzimandi, Karol Bagh, Paharganj and other localities just as they could in the past. The mosques which… now are in the possession of Hindus and Sikhs will be returned.

  We shall not object to the return to Delhi of the Muslims who have migrated from here if they choose to come back and Muslims shall be able to carry on their business as before.

  We assure that all these things will be done by our personal effort and not with the help of the police or military (98: 253).

  Appeals for ending the fast were then made by Prasad, Azad, Zahid Husain (the Pakistani high commissioner), Ganesh Dutt, who said he spoke for the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, Harbans Singh, in the name of the Sikhs, and Khurshid and M.S. Randhawa for the Delhi administration.98

  Acceding, Gandhi added that he would not ‘shirk another fast’ if he found that he had been deceived.

  Brij Krishna thought that Gandhi’s shrunken and lined face looked radiant.99 After prayers from five faiths were sung, there was complete silence as Azad handed a glass of orange juice to Gandhi, who extended a long thin hand to grasp it. There were shouts of delight when he sipped. Then he asked everyone present to partake of fruit. Among those in tears was Jawaharlal, who told Gandhi that he had been secretly fasting from the previous day.

  As for Patel, with Gandhi’s full approval he had gone on a mission to integrate Kathiawar’s princely states, including Porbandar, Rajkot and Bhavnagar, into Union territory.

  Nehru having left Birla House, Gandhi scribbled a note for him: ‘Break your fast… May you live for many long years and continue to be India’s Jawahar (jewel).’ Asking Pyarelal to deliver the note right away to Nehru, Gandhi remembered Arthur Moore as well. Sushila was told to ‘phone Moore at once’ with the news and to advise him on sensible ways of breaking a fast. When reached, Moore said he had heard the good news and already broken his fast—with a cup of coffee and a cigar.100

  Gandhi had energy enough to compose a statement for the prayer-meeting of the 18th evening:

  They have assured me that from now on Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims will live as brothers and under no conditions and on no provocation will the residents of Delhi, including the refugees, become enemies of each other. This is not a small thing…

  [W]e must pledge that once we have turned our face towards God we shall never turn away. When that happens India and Pakistan will unitedly be able to serve the world and make the world nobler. I do not wish to live for any other purpose.

  In lines quoted often in the future, Gandhi proceeded to explain why instead of ‘God’ he spoke at times of ‘Truth’:

  I embarked on the fast in the name of Truth whose familiar name is God… In the name of God we have indulged in lies, massacres of people, without caring whether they were innocent or guilty, men or women, children or infants. We have indulged in abductions, forcible conversions and we have done all this shamelessly. I am not aware if anybody has done these things in the name of Truth. With that same name on my lips I have broken the fast (98: 260-61).

  Conspiracy. Others, meanwhile, were embarked on a conspiracy to kill Gandhi. They included Nathuram Godse, who edited a Marathi journal in Poona called Hindu Rashtra; Narayan Apte, the journal’s manager; Nathuram’s brother Gopal Godse; Digambar Badge, who ran an arms shop in Poona; Badge’s servant Shankar Kistayya; Vishnu Karkare of Ahmednagar; and Madanlal Pahwa, a refugee from Pakistan who worked as Karkare’s assistant.

  Several in the group were Chitpavan Brahmins from Maharashtra, as was their hero, Savarkar, who was alleged though not proved to be part of the conspiracy. Gandhi’s political mentor, Gokhale, and close associate, Vinoba Bhave, were Chitpavan Brahmins too. So was Tilak, India’s most popular leader before Gandhi.

  In August 1947, Godse and Apte had flown with Savarkar from Bombay to Delhi and back, and in January 1948 Godse and Apte seem to have had two meetings with Savarkar.101 According to Savarkar’s biographer, Dhananjay Keer, Godse was ‘a staunch Savarkarite, and was fairly known as the vanguard and lieutenant of Savarkar’.102

  The date when killing Gandhi was first considered in this circle is not certain, though we saw that Nathuram Godse had turned up in Sevagram in 1944 with hostile intentions. There a
re suggestions that earlier that summer he had gone with a similar urge to Panchgani, while Gandhi was there.103 According to Badge’s later testimony, Nathuram Godse and Apte asked him to supply two gun-cotton slabs, five hand grenades and two revolvers on 10 January 1948, but the plan may have been conceived earlier.

  A member at different times of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, Nathuram Godse would say afterwards that he hated nonviolence and the charkha, and that Gandhi had weakened Hindu society and India. Gandhi’s sympathy for Muslims offended him and the other conspirators, but perhaps there also was a grudge at Gandhi’s stature as India’s leader, a position rightfully belonging, in the view of men such as Godse, to Savarkar.

  Seven members of the conspiracy were in Delhi by the night of 19 January: the Godse brothers and Apte, Badge and Kistayya, Karkare and Pahwa. They possessed guncotton slabs, grenades and revolvers. On the morning of 20 January, three of them went to Birla House where, from outside the compound, they surveyed the site of Gandhi’s prayer-meeting.

  A plan of action was worked out at a meeting in a New Delhi hotel room that quickly followed. First Pahwa would explode a guncotton slab beside a wall not far from where Gandhi sat. Immediately thereafter, in the expected confusion, Apte and Godse would give signals and the rest would attack. Badge and Kistayya would fire revolvers at Gandhi, and these two as well as Karkare, Gopal Godse and Pahwa would throw grenades at Gandhi.

  All seven reached Birla House in the evening. After prayers had been recited and Gandhi had commenced speaking, Pahwa detonated a guncotton slab, causing an explosion about seventy-five feet from where Gandhi was seated. But the rest of the plan was not carried through: for one thing, Badge’s courage failed him. In any case all except Pahwa slipped away to a waiting taxi. As for Pahwa, he was spotted by a woman, Sulochana Devi, apprehended by others present, and handed over to the police.

  Later in the evening Gandhi heard that a man had been arrested for the explosion. At the time of the explosion, he did not realize what had caused it. The audience seemed to panic, but Gandhi said in a firm voice recorded by All India Radio: ‘Listen! Listen! Listen! Nothing has happened.’

  Order returned and Gandhi resumed speaking. Later that night and the following day he received numerous messages praising him for his poise. He also heard that Madanlal Pahwa had been defiant in custody. In his post-prayer remarks of 21 January, Gandhi’s outlook came across, as also his battle for the Hindu mind, his certainty about his role, and his intuition that Pahwa was not acting on his own:

  Let me first deal with the bomb incident of yesterday. People have been sending me wires congratulating me and praising me. In fact I deserve no congratulations. I displayed no bravery. I thought it was part of army practice somewhere. I only came to know later that it was a bomb and that it might have killed me if God had not willed it that I should live…

  You should not have any kind of hate against the person who was responsible for this. He had taken it for granted that I am an enemy of Hinduism. Is it not said in Chapter Four of the Gita that whenever the wicked become too powerful and harm dharma God sends someone to destroy them? The man who exploded the bomb obviously thinks that he has been sent by God to destroy me. I have not seen him. But I am told that is what he said when questioned by the police. He was well dressed too.

  But… if we do not like a man, does it mean that he is wicked?.. If then someone kills me, taking me for a wicked man, will he not have to answer before God?.. When he says he was doing the bidding of God he is only making God an accomplice in a wicked deed…

  Those who are behind him or whose tool he is, should know that this sort of thing will not save Hinduism. If Hinduism has to be saved it will be saved through such work as I am doing. I have been imbibing Hindu dharma right from my childhood. My nurse, who literally brought me up, taught me to invoke Rama whenever I had any fears…

  [H]aving passed all the tests I am as staunch a Hindu today as intuitively I was at the age of five or six… Do you want to annihilate Hindu dharma by killing a devout Hindu like me? Some Sikhs came to me and asked me if I suspected that a Sikh was implicated in the deed. I know he was not a Sikh. But what even if he was? What does it matter if he was a Hindu or a Muslim? May God bless him with good sense…

  Yesterday an illiterate woman displayed courage in having the culprit arrested. I admire her courage (98: 281-4).

  Reading in the papers that one Madanlal Pahwa was in custody for exploding a device at Gandhi’s prayer-meeting, Jagdish Chandra Jain of Bombay, a professor at Ruia College, realized that this was the young refugee he had been trying to help. More importantly, Jain remembered that Pahwa had talked of a conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. Contacting Kher, the Bombay chief minister, and Morarji Desai, the home minister, Jain conveyed what he had heard, including the names of some other co-conspirators.

  The Bombay government passed on the information to Patel, who spoke to Gandhi and had a police officer also speak to Gandhi. Though Gandhi ‘absolutely refused’ to have the police present at his prayer meetings,104 a few plainclothesmen were posted at Birla House.

  But leads supplied were not followed up with energy in Bombay or Delhi, and no one other than Pahwa was arrested. Gandhi was not part of the Establishment, which looked after its own—ministers, generals, police chiefs or secretaries to government—with zeal, but was less thorough over others, even over someone spoken of as the father of the nation. Moreover, the season’s heart-hardening poison had ‘permeated many branches of the services, not excluding the police’.105

  ‘To Pakistan’. Following the fast, Gandhi’s prestige was at its apex, nationally and globally. The Times of London, the Post of Washington, and other newspapers had commented on its impact, the Times saying that Gandhi’s ‘courageous idealism has never before been more plainly vindicated’.106 A young British cleric opposing racism in South Africa, Rev. Michael Scott, sent Gandhi a tribute to satyagraha, adding, ‘[Y]our invincible spirit will always inspire mankind.’ Scott signed himself ‘Your grateful pupil Michael’.107

  Pyarelal has described the Gandhi of January 1948. At times betraying ‘signs of flagging memory’, his mind was ‘razor sharp’, his judgement ‘uncannily sure’ and ‘the intuitions, if anything, more unerring than ever’. Despite his age and the fast, he ‘could put in an amazing amount of physical and… mental work’.108 Yet the fast had damaged both his kidneys and his liver. Gandhi blamed his ‘inadequate’ faith in God.

  Having done his duty by Delhi, he was free to go to Pakistan. After Mian Iftikharuddin from Lahore called on him, Gandhi wrote to the visitor’s wife:

  22 Jan.: My dear Ismat, I was disappointed when Iftikhar appeared without you and was sorry when I learnt that the cause was your illness. Your services are required much more than ever before. Therefore be up and doing. I assure you I am eager to go to Lahore as soon as my convalescence is finished and the way is open for me to go to Lahore (98: 284-5).

  Returning from a visit to Karachi, Gandhi’s Parsi friends Jehangir Patel and Dinshaw Mehta, who were accompanied by a third Parsi, the khadi-wearing Karachi-based helper of refugees, Jamshed Mehta, informed him that Pakistan would welcome him, on two conditions: he should not ask for reunion, and he should accept protection by Pakistani police.

  At first resisting the second condition, Gandhi yielded when Jamshed Mehta pressed him. By 27 January the three Parsis were back in Karachi. In talks with Pakistan’s leaders, Gandhi’s arrival in Pakistan was tentatively set for 8 or 9 February.109

  He thought he would go to Karachi first, then to the Frontier province to be with the Khan brothers, and finally to the Punjab. Sent by him to aid insecure Hindus and Sikhs in Bahawalpur, Sushila was already in Pakistan. She would help prepare the ground.

  Without giving us his name, Pyarelal writes of ‘a Muslim leader from Pakistan’ who at this time told Gandhi that he ‘looked forward to witnessing a fifty-mile-long procession of Hindus and Sikhs returning to Pakistan with Gandhiji at its head’. W
hoever visualized the unlikely scene, Gandhi, it seems, was ‘thrilled’ at the thought. 110

  But before Pakistan he would go to Wardha and Sevagram: among other things, institutions started there by him needed attention. He thought he should leave for Wardha on 2 February.

  21-29 January 1948. ‘Afflicted men cannot be balanced men. Everybody cannot be a Mahatma Gandhi,’ said Giani Kartar Singh, an influential Akali leader. He was speaking to Gandhi on 21 January, after listening to Gandhi’s praise of the Sikhs for signing the Delhi commitment. Kartar Singh received this reply: ‘Mahatma Gandhi is neither an angel nor a devil. He is a man like you’ (98: 280).

  On 23 January Gandhi remembered Subhas, whose birthday it was, and also Harilal, for that day he wrote to Kanti, Harilal’s son. Answering a letter from Kanti, the grandfather said, ‘Your letter is beautiful’ (98:292).

  The next day (24 Jan.) he thought of Mahadev while writing about Manu’s progress to her father, Jaisukhlal:

  She has made great progress in writing the diary. She takes great interest in writing notes and when I see them Mahadev’s face appears before my eyes…

  Manu is enjoying herself. If you have some magic for making her fat you should let me know (98: 296-7).

  Three days later he made it a point to attend the annual fair at the twelfth-century tomb in Mehrauli, south of Delhi, of the Muslim mystic, Khwaja Qutbuddin. Held year after year for centuries, the fair was set to be abandoned after the recent violence, but his fast had saved it. He asked for ‘a vow at this holy place’ by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs that strife would not be allowed again (98: 309).

  Though back on a gruelling schedule, he found time for journalists from afar. On 27 January Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman & Nation questioned Gandhi about the violence he had condoned in Kashmir, and on 29 January he was interviewed by Margaret Bourke-White, photographer for Life magazine.