The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (The Robert Payne Library)

by Robert Payne

  Gandhi had hoped that the civil-disobedience movement would spread like a prairie fire across India, but instead it had the appearance of thousands of bonfires glowing brilliantly and then dying out. He believed that he had found a weapon which would destroy British willpower, and that swaraj would be the inevitable result of a mass disobedience movement carried to its logical conclusions. But he lacked a powerful oiganization, and a carefully worked-out program. What was needed was a series of symbolic acts, perhaps four or five such acts, to create an atmosphere of mounting tension, with each new act being progressively more demanding and more challenging. But there was only the solemn lifting of a thimbleful of salt from the ground.

  While the government was still temporizing, unable to decide whether to arrest Gandhi, there occurred two events which played into the government’s hands. On the night of April 18 a band of terrorists organized by the Hindustan Republican Association raided the arsenals at Chittagong, and after murdering six people escaped into the jungle. An even more disturbing event occurred five days later at Peshawar, where Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as the “Frontier Gandhi,” the leader of the Red Shirts, who were followers of Gandhi, was arrested. His arrest immediately brought about angry demonstrations, and the armored cars sent to put down the disorders were attacked. One was set on fire, the others fired on the crowd and then retreated, together with the police, who abandoned the city to the Red Shirts. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was released from his jail cell. Three days later two platoons of the Second Battalion of the 18th Royal Garhwali Rifles were sent in to establish order, but they refused to fire on the crowds of Muslims and broke ranks. All the soldiers in the Garhwali Rifles were Hindus. From April 25 to May 4 the city was in the hands of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Red Shirts. Then the British sent in a detachment of Gurkhas with air support, and Peshawar was retaken. There were courts-martial, with heavy sentences handed down for the junior officers of the Garhwali Rifles, who received long terms of imprisonment. The Viceroy realized that he could no longer depend on the military, and in a confidential memorandum to King George V he spoke of his fear that the next uprising might have even more dreadful consequences. “Above all,” he wrote, “this was obviously the sort of thing on which the less press comment there is the better.”

  On April 27 he clamped down on the Indian press, making it a felony for anyone to print anything at all about the civil-disobedience movement Letters, however, were still permitted, and Gandhi wrote an angry letter to the Viceroy, reminding him that the government had used more than the necessary violence in an attempt to put down a non-violent movement Too many heads had been broken, too many shots had been fired into too many crowds, there had been altogether too many arrests—some sixty thousand people had been arrested during the last four weeks—and the time had come, he wrote to the Viceroy, to divert the wrath of the British government in India to cleaner, if more drastic channels. What he meant by this became clear in the body of the letter: he was determined to provoke the government to use even harsher measures, even more terrible reprisals:

  I feel it would be cowardly on my part not to invite you to disclose to the full the leonine paw of authority so that the people who are suffering tortures and the destruction of their property may not feel that I, who had, perhaps, been the chief party inspiring them to action that has brought to right light the government in its true colors, had left any stone unturned to work out the Satyagraha programme as fully as it was possible under given circumstances.

  For, according to the science of Satyagraha, the greater the repression and lawlessness on the part of the ruling authority, the greater should be the suffering courted by the victims. Success is the certain result of suffering of the extremest character, voluntarily undergone. I know the dangers attendant upon the methods adopted by me. But the country is not likely to mistake my meaning. And I have been saying for the last fifteen years in India, and outside for twenty years more, and repeat now, that the only way to conquer violence is through non-violence pure and undefiled. I have also said that every violent act, word and even thought, interferes with the progress of non-violent action. If in spite of such repeated warnings people should still resort to violence, I must disown responsibility save such as inevitably attaches to every human being for the acts of every other human being. But the question of responsibility apart, I dare not postpone action on any cause whatsoever if non-violence is the force that the seers of the world have claimed it to be and if I am not to belie my own extensive experience of its working.

  It was a strange letter, written in haste, with the wounds livid on the page. There was not the least doubt of his anger. The jails were full, the government had shown indifference to his demands, and nothing except repression had resulted from the Salt March. In his view there was only one further step: the Satyagrahis must provoke the government to still greater repression. With the letter went an accompanying declaration that he was determined, together with his companions, to “raid” the government-owned Dharasana Saltworks and take possession of it in the name of the people. He was not too happy with the word “raid,” and he qualified it by adding that this was merely a playful and mischievous name for the non-violent operation he intended to pursue.

  He was arrested before he could lead the raid on the saltworks, and the leadership fell to Sarojini Naidu, the heroic strong-featured poetess who resembled to a quite extraordinary degree the ancient Rajput princesses who led their armies into battle. The “raiders” consisted of about 2,500 members of Congress in white dhotis and Gandhi caps. The government had been forewarned by Gandhi, and they had placed four hundred policemen armed with steel-tipped lathis within the saltworks compound. It was open land, with only some waterlogged ditches and a barbed-wire fence dividing it from the rest of the barren coast. Dharasana is 150 miles north of Bombay, in an area where there are scarcely any roads and nothing grows except cactus. Webb Miller, the American journalist, was present. With a kind of fascinated horror he watched the Satyagrahis marching toward the saltworks, wading across the ditch and then making their way to the barbed-wire fence, which few of them reached, for once across the ditch they were attacked by the police, who mowed them down as though they were tenpins, clubbing them over the head and body with their lathis. Behind the Satyagrahis came the stretcher-bearers, wearing crude hand-painted red crosses on their breasts: the stretchers were blankets.

  At a temperature of 116 degrees in the shade the Satyagrahis advanced in columns, one column following after another. They were in good spirits, shouting: “lnquilah Zindabad!” (Long live the revolution!) at the top of their voices. Webb Miller observed that the Satyagrahis had been well-trained, for not one of them raised his hands to defend himself. Some of them were carrying ropes with which they hoped to scale the barbed wire. Again and again the police charged, and there was the sickening sound of bamboo clubs on unprotected heads and white dhotis would suddenly turn blood-red from the steel spikes of the lathis. Worse still, the police became infuriated by the onward march of the Satyagrahis, and not content with clubbing them into insensibility and gashing them with the spikes, amused themselves by squeezing the testicles of the wounded, thrusting sticks up their anuses, or kicking them in the abdomen. The six British police officers in charge had orders that not a single Satyagrahi must be permitted to enter the compound of the saltworks, and the most extreme measures could be taken, if necessary. Twenty-five native riflemen were posted on a knoll overlooking the compound. The Satyagrahis were aware that at any moment the order might be given to open fire.

  As Gandhi had long known, there are very few things more terrifying than an unarmed procession determined to reach its objective by sheer weight of numbers. The police were outnumbered, frightened, and unnerved, attacking mindlessly and mechanically, scarcely knowing what they were doing. Webb Miller counted 320 wounded Satyagrahis in the field hospital, which was nothing more than a shed under a thatched roof. “In eighteen years of reporting in twenty-two countrie
s, during which I have witnessed innumerable civil disturbances, riots, street fights, and rebellions, I have never witnessed such harrowing scenes as at Dharasana,” he wrote.

  For two hours the Satyagrahis marched against the compound and were knocked to the ground, trampled on, and thrown into the ditches. The blankets of the stretcher-bearers had turned crimson, and the earth was laced with bloodstains. People were groaning and screaming; the hospital was full to overflowing. Suddenly the police charged through the crowds of Satyagrahis and placed Sarojini Naidu and Manilal Gandhi, who was also present, under arrest. About this time, as the unequal battle was coming to an end, Vallabhbhai Patel arrived on the scene. Surveying the battleground, he said quietly: “All hope of reconciling India with the British Empire is lost forever. I can understand any government’s taking people into custody and punishing them for breaches of the law, but I cannot understand how any government that calls itself civilized can deal as savagely and brutally with nonviolent, unresisting men as the British have this morning.”

  In the eyes of the British the non-violent “raid” on the Dharasana Salt-works ended in failure; the law had been upheld; and the Raj had survived still another provocation from the unarmed forces of Gandhi. Two Satyagrahis died from their wounds, and by an official count of the Congress 290 suffered serious wounds.

  The Viceroy wrote a chatty, jocular letter to King George V, describing the events of the day:

  Your Majesty can hardly fail to have read with amusement the accounts of the several battles for the Salt Depot at Dharasana. The police for a long time tried to refrain from action. After a time this became impossible, and they eventually had to resort to sterner measures. A good many people suffered minor injuries in consequence, but I believe those who suffered injuries were as nothing compared with those who wished to sustain an honorable contusion or bruise, or who, to make the whole setting more dramatic, lay on the ground as if laid out for dead without any injury at all. But of course, as Your Majesty will appreciate, the whole business was propaganda and, as such, served its purpose admirably well.

  The Viceroy was highly amused, but there were many who were considerably less amused. Webb Miller’s report of the incident was circulated by United Press around the world, and since it was patently honest and factual, it served as a warning that the British in India would be watched more closely in future. Like Amritsar, Dharasana would acquire the proportions of a legend, and the shadow of Dharasana would fall over the British Raj to the very end.

  On that afternoon, as the wounded arrived in the hospital of the nearby town of Bulsar, Madeleine Slade caught up with the Satyagrahis. She watched them as they were being carried in on blood-soaked blankets, still bleeding. She toured the hospital wards and saw the men lying in agony in their beds, with swollen testicles and broken heads, gashed faces and lacerated limbs. Later that day she wrote: “What has become of English honor, English justice? No amount of argument can excuse what they have been doing at Dharasana. India has now realized the true nature of the British Raj, and with this realization the Raj is doomed.”

  Conversation with a Viceroy

  THE POLICE caught up with Gandhi at Camp Karadi early in the morning of May 5, while he was sleeping in a small reed hut built by his disciples. He lay in a cot, and there was an Indian boy sleeping on the ground beside him and an Indian girl slept on the other side of the cot. Not far away, under the mango trees, more young Indians were sleeping. Altogether there were about forty of his followers nearby. It was one of those warm nights filled with drifting clouds. The moon had gone down, and it was very dark.

  At 12:45 A.M. some thirty Indian policemen armed with rifles marched into the camp, led by an Indian police officer and two British officers. One was the district magistrate of Surat, the other was the district superintendent of police, and all were armed with pistols. These three made their way quietly past a schoolhouse and the grove of mango trees: so quietly that none of Gandhi’s followers was awakened.

  Gandhi was awakened by two flashlights shining in his face. He had gone to sleep about half an hour before; there had been long discussions all evening, and he was still exhausted by the long march and slept heavily. One of the police officers said: “Please wake up!” Gandhi sat up and said: “Have you come to arrest me?”

  “Yes,” said the district magistrate. “Your name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi?”

  Gandhi asked whether he would be permitted to brush his teeth and wash his face, but the district superintendent of police indicated that there was very little time and he could only brush his teeth. He had a timepiece in his hands, and was evidently working according to a previously arranged schedule. By this time the school bell was ringing, waking up all the people in the camp who now began to run to the reed hut, and some succeeded in eluding the policemen and making their way into the hut.

  Gandhi was brushing his teeth when it occurred to him to ask whether he was being arrested under Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code.

  “No, not under Section 124,” the district magistrate replied. “I have a written order.”

  “Would you mind reading it to me?” Gandhi said, and the district magistrate began to read the warrant for his arrest: “Whereas the Governor in Council views with alarm the activities of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, he directs that the said Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi should be placed under restraint under Regulation XXV of 1827, and suffer imprisonment during the pleasure of the government, and that he be immediately removed to the Yeravda Jail.”

  None of the Indians realized the full implications of the warrant. Regulation XXV had been enacted in Bombay at the time when the East India Company was the dominant power, for the purpose of punishing refractory Indian princes. It gave the officers of the company unlimited powers, and had long since been thought in abeyance.

  It was now nearly one o’clock in the morning, and the district magistrate, fearing trouble from the disciples, was in a hurry to remove him to a waiting truck. As usual, Gandhi was serene and calm, in no hurry, giving instructions to the disciples. One was to make up his bedding, another was to take charge of his papers, and still another was asked to provide him with two spindles which he could spin during his imprisonment. The police took charge of the bedding and the papers, while the district magistrate kept saying: “Please hurry up! Please hurry up!”

  At this point Gandhi remembered that he had begun the Salt March with a Vaishnava hymn to Rama, the incarnation of Vishnu, who assumed the guise of a young hero when he descended to earth. There was time for a short prayer, and so they intoned the hymn to the divine hero:

  Oh Rama! Lord of the dynasty of Raghus!

  Thou, an ideal king, an ideal husband of the ideal wife, Sita,

  Thou art verily the Redeemer of the fallen and the sinful.

  So they prayed, while the British officers looked nervously at their watches. Gandhi was standing beside the cot, his eyes closed, his head bent in prayer. Afterward the Satyagrahis one by one bowed down before the Mahatma and touched his feet in sign of their continuing devotion and affection, and then with his armed escort he was marched past the mango trees and the schoolhouse to the waiting truck. The magistrate and the superintendent of police went in the same truck, and there were two more trucks for the police. The procession vanished down the road. It was now about ten minutes past one, and about twenty-five minutes had passed since Gandhi was placed under arrest. By the early morning the news of his arrest had spread across India.

  A few miles from Karadi Camp the Gujarat Mail bound for Bombay was stopped by prearrangement to take on the prisoner and his armed escort. It was important not to delay the train, and this was the reason why the oflicers had looked anxiously at their watches. A special coach had been reserved for the party. Everything had been arranged to the last detail. The train stopped at Borivli, a suburb of Bombay, at precisely 6:40 A.M., and he was then transferred to a high-powered automobile, the pink blinds pulled down. At 10:30 A.M. the prisoner arrived at Yerav
da Jail in Poona. There would be no trial. He had been sentenced to an indeterminate prison term as an enemy of the State.

  The immediate consequence of Gandhi’s arrest was to make the situation very much worse. All over India there were hartals and strikes. The British replied with a show of force, with armored cars patrolling the streets of important cities. In Peshawar, Delhi, Calcutta, Karachi, Multan, Rawalpindi, and many other cities the military took command, hoping to put an end to the disorders, but their presence tended to make disorder all the more inevitable. A gentle and pacific Viceroy found himself much against his will directing a massive policy of repression. He had little alternative, for the campaign of non-violent non-cooperation had inflamed the Hindu masses and brought them to flash point. India was very close to anarchy in the weeks following Gandhi’s arrest.

  In the calm of Yeravda Jail Gandhi lived exactly as he had lived during his previous spells in prison. He sat at his spinning wheel, read voluminously, meditated, sang hymns, and spent some time translating the ancient Hindu hymns into English. He was allowed to write as many letters as he pleased, and two weeks after his arrest George Slocombe, representing the London Daily Herald, was permitted to interview him. Gandhi said the movement of civil disobedience would continue unless there was a definite guarantee of “the substance of independence.” In addition the salt tax must be repealed, the sale of opium and of alcoholic beverages banned, and foreign cloth removed from the shops, while all political prisoners must be released. It was a long interview, which took place over a period of two days, and the government appears to have been unaware of it, for it expressed official surprise; more likely—for a journalist does not enter a prison and interview its most distinguished prisoner without official permission—Slocombe received the tacit approval of the Viceroy, who felt it was not in the public interest that one of his own officials should be asking questions.