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

by Robert Payne

  Gandhi was in no mood to help the British. Singapore fell in February, Rangoon fell in March, and it was clear to him that all Britain’s imperial defenses in the Far East were falling like ninepins. He would not help, and he would not hinder. When, shortly after the fall of Rangoon, the British government sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India with the offer of full-fledged dominion status with the right to secede from the British Commonwealth, Gandhi felt that the British had drawn up this draft declaration at a time when they no longer possessed any real power. The captain of the sinking ship was telling the passengers that they would be permitted to enter the lifeboats under certain conditions. There were restrictions to the offer of dominion status. The princely states would be given the right to enter the Union on their own conditions; states with predominantly Muslim populations would be granted the right to secede. As a result, India might find herself split into nearly six hundred separate sovereign states. The aim was to placate the princes and the Muslims. Britain was in no position to offend them; the Congress was in no position to accept a mutilated India. The draft declaration had been drawn up in good faith, as the best solution to an insoluble problem. Gandhi was outraged, and told Sir Stafford Cripps to take the next plane home.

  The Cripps mission failed because it offered only long-term dividends. Gandhi described the offer as a postdated check on a failing bank. “My firm opinion,” he wrote, “is that the British should leave India now in an orderly manner and not run the risk that they did in Singapore, Malaya and Burma.” Bombs had fallen on Colombo, and the Japanese were at the gates. Gandhi was not unduly perturbed, for he was under the impression that India could deal effectively with a Japanese invasion by non-violent resistance.

  Mirabehn, living in her remote cottage on the outskirts of Sevagram, spent her days translating the Rig-Veda and attending to some goldeneyed toads which lived in the cemented corners of her kitchen. Gandhi now plucked her from her sedentary occupations and sent her to Allahabad, where the Working Committee of the Congress was meeting. In her possession were three copies of a document drawn up by Gandhi. One copy was for Nehru, who had been released from prison, another was for Maulana Azad, and the third was for Mirabehn herself, for she was to act as Gandhi’s representative and explain the document to them. There was some irony in the fact that his plenipotentiary was an Englishwoman, for the document demanded the immediate withdrawal of British power from India to enable a free India to confront a Japanese invasion.

  The “Quit India” resolution, as drawn up by Gandhi, was solemnly debated, defended and attacked, revised and amended, and finally left without any substantial changes, although some of the provisions were spelled out in detail. “Quit India” was addressed to the British Raj, not to the British Army, who would be permitted to remain on Indian soil. The consequences of a British refusal to obey the resolution were not spelled out in any detail, although it was generally accepted that the full force of nonviolent resistance would be directed against them. Rajagopalachari wondered whether “the withdrawal of the Government without simultaneous replacement by another might involve the dissolution of the State and society itself.” The problem was not one which appealed to Gandhi as he implored Britain to leave India to her fate, “to God, or in modem parlance, to anarchy.” Since anarchy was precisely what the British were not prepared to tolerate, the differences between Gandhi and the British Raj now reached their fullest extent. There could be no compromise; the government would act, but it would take its own time, waiting for the first overt call for rebellion.

  The call never came. All through the summer Gandhi kept shifting his ground, modifying his original statement, adding to it or subtracting from it, but never openly declaring for rebellion. He: would discuss a British withdrawal as though it were a question of defining a principle which was close to being an abstraction. To the journalist Louis Fischer he explained in June that the withdrawal would probably be followed by a temporary chaos, but a provisional government would quickly be formed by the present leaders. In July he declared that he had indeed said, “Leave India to God or anarchy,” but in practice the change would no doubt be affected without the slightest disturbance. Later, he realized that there might be difficulties. “I want to guard against a sudden outburst of anarchy or a state of things which may be calculated to invite the Japanese aggression.” Then, forgetting the presence of the Japanese, and filled with an inextinguishable horror of the British presence, he declared: “I have made up my mind that it would be a good thing if a million people were shot in a brave and non-violent resistance against the British rule. It may be that it may take us years before we can evolve order out of chaos.”

  The Congress Working Committee, meeting during the first week of August in Bombay, fell under his spell. He spoke with bitterness and fire, as though he had only that moment discovered that the British were the enemy; and though he talked gravely and slowly, there was no mistaking the fury of the words. He said: “Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is: ‘Do or die.’ We shall either free India or die in the attempt.” And again he said: “You have to stand against the whole world, although you may have to stand alone. You have to stare the world in the face, although the world may look at you with bloodshot eyes.” And again he said: “Every one of you should, from this moment onwards, consider yourself a free man or woman and act as if you are free and are no longer under the heel of this rebellion.” And again he said: “This is open rebellion.”

  Exactly what strategy Gandhi intended was not clear. He appears to have hoped that the shock of his words would make the government move quickly and decisively. What was disturbing was that he appeared to have abandoned all hope of throwing his army of Satyagrahis into the battle; he was summoning all India to revolt, making no distinction between violent and non-violent acts. Although he was speaking on behalf of all Indians, he had made no accommodation with the Muslim League or the princely states. He seemed to hope that he would be killed and that in the violent convulsions resulting from his death India would be able to wrest her freedom from the British. There was not the least doubt what he meant by anarchy and chaos; but there was some doubt about the means he would use to bring anarchy and chaos about.

  Mirabehn had become his spokesman to the Viceroy. She was sent to Delhi while the Working Committee was meeting in Bombay. The Viceroy refused to meet her, but she was received by his private secretary. Finally, after a long conversation, she gave him the message she had received from Gandhi:

  I want at the last to put before you the most vital, the most terrible thing of all. Gandhiji is in deadly earnest. This time it will be impossible for you to hold him. No jail will contain him, no crushing force will silence him. The more you crush the more his power will spread. You are frced with two alternatives; one to declare India’s Independence, and the other to kill Gandhiji, and once you kill him you kill for ever all hope of friendship between India and England. What are you going to do about it? You do not know the latent power lying buried in this coming move. Even we do not know the force of Gandhiji’s spirit, but I can sense it, and I tell you that if the rebellion has to burst, this Viceroy will have to face a more terrible situation than any Indian Viceroy has ever had to face before.

  Mirabehn had been well rehearsed, and she spoke with the authentic accents of Gandhi. Mr. Laithwaite, the Viceroy’s secretary, noted that she spoke of open rebellion. Draft instructions to the members of the Congress, prepared by Mahadev Desai, spoke of a nation-wide hartal accompanied by prayer and fasting, with a warning against non-violent action. It appeared that Gandhi was backing down, for he was now insisting that the proper course was to refuse to pay land taxes and salt taxes. Mirabehn hurried to Bombay. A few hours later, at four o’clock in the morning of August 9, Gandhi, Mahadev Desai and Mirabehn were placed under arrest. They were not taken to Yeravda Jail but to the sumptuous palace of the Aga Khan at Poona, wh
ich had already been prepared to receive them. The palace was ringed with barbed wire, and armed police stood at all the approaches.

  Five days later Mahadev Desai died in convulsions. He had been talking calmly, and suddenly dropped to the floor. He was carried to a bed, his face scarlet, foam pouring from his lips, his arms and legs thrashing. Gandhi hurried to him and called his name, but there was no answer and he died a few moments later. Kasturbai, who had been arrested on the day following Gandhi’s arrest, cried: “Bapu has lost his right and his left hand! Both his hands Bapu has lost!”

  Mahadev Desai was only fifty when he died. For more than twenty difficult years he had been Gandhi’s secretary, his conscience and his closest confidant. He had a subtle and brilliant mind, and was sometimes able to oppose his own subtleties against Gandhi’s. Now he was gone, and there was no one to replace him. Because Gandhi could scarcely operate at all without a secretary, the British government allowed Pyarelal, another secretary, to stay with him in the palace. Pyarelal, a kindly and sensible man, was to remain the chief secretary to the end of Gandhi’s life.

  While Gandhi was a prisoner in the palace, India went into convulsions. The revolt was sporadic, unorganized, deathly. Hundreds of people were killed, railroads were torn up, railroad stations set on fire, and more than five hundred post offices were attacked and some fifty were burned to the ground. Leading members of the Congress were arrested, and those who escaped arrest went underground. “It was a foolish and inopportune challenge,” Nehru was to write later, “for all the organized and armed forces were on the other side.” In Bengal and the United Provinces the revolutionary fire burned strongly, only to die out later in the year.

  Gandhi disclaimed any responsibility for the murders and upheavals which spread across India, but the British government did not accept his disclaimers. They remembered that he had said: “Leave India to God, or in modern parlance, to anarchy,” and that he had called for open rebellion. They were determined to win the war: the fate of India would be decided later.

  The Death of Kasturbai

  KASTURBAI GANDHI was one of those simple, gentle, deeply religious people, who seem to go through life as in a dream. She never complained, never asked questions, and never encroached on her husband’s public life. Since she was completely lacking in ambition, and had no desire to shine even in her husband’s reflected light, she came more and more to resemble his shadow. She would appear whenever he summoned her, and when he no longer had any use for her she would vanish as silently as she came. She never showed any jealousy, though she was surrounded by people who poured out their affection on Gandhi, but she could be quietly authoritative when necessary. When Gandhi was in one of his most strident, authoritarian moods, she would always put in a quiet word and bring him down to earth. She knew him well, and was only too well aware of his failings: his obstinacy, his violent temper, his assumption that everything he commanded must be done without a moment’s hesitation, and she forgave him all his vices because she knew they were outweighed by his virtues. Once when the superintendant of Yeravda Jail apologized to her because Gandhi had been refusing to take proper food in spite of the doctor’s warning, she nodded and said in her broken English: “Yes, I know my husband. He always mischief.”

  So he was, but she had long ago grown accustomed to his mischief. They had been married for nearly sixty years, and they knew each other so well that they had scarcely any need of words in order to exchange their thoughts. This time, when he was arrested, he had turned to her and said: “If you cannot live without me, you may accompany me.” In fact, he could not live without her, and in prison he continued to watch over her, compleasing nature and great eagerness to please. Above all, she was wholly devoted to Gandhi and Kasturbai, who both regarded her as a member of the family, and had known her since she was a child. Her full name was Kumari Manubehn Gandhi, and she was the great-granddaughter of Gandhi’s uncle Tulsidas. Her father, Jaysukhlal Amritlal Gandhi, was a man of some wealth and importance in Porbandar.

  Manubehn was an excellent nurse, a devoted servant, and a less than inspired cook. She arrived at the palace in time to nurse Kasturbai through a mild attack of bronchial pneumonia, and soon Kasturbai was well enough to take her meals with the others. Though she coughed frequently, and showed a telltale puffiness of the face and eyelids, Kasturbai was in good spirits, and even took part in the prison games. She played shuttlecock, or rather she was seen with a racquet in her hand at the inaugural meeting of the badminton club, standing on one side of the net while her husband, also armed with a racquet, stood on the other. They were able to lob a few shuttlecocks over the net, but soon abandoned the game as too exhausting. She tried her hand at ping-pong, but this too proved to be exhausting, and she contented herself with the game of karrom, a kind of shuffleboard, with Mirabehn as her partner, and since Mirabehn was strong and agile, with long arms and a clear eye, she was usually on the winning side. This gave her a childish pleasure, and she took to practicing every day for half an hour in the hope of improving her skill. When she grew too weak to play, they carried the karrom board to her room and played beside her bed.

  During the long, hot summer she began to weaken alarmingly, but she recovered during the autumn. Then in December there was a relapse, the puffiness became more pronounced, her movements slower, and she suffered from breathlessness which interfered with her sleep. A small wooden table was made for her. The table was placed over her knees, and she would sit up, rest her arms on it, cradle her head in her arms and go to sleep; and Sushila Nayyar, entering her room at night, would marvel to see the old woman sleeping peacefully while sitting up in bed. Gandhi, too, was awed by the sight, and after his wife’s death he always saw that this table accompanied him wherever he went, and he would take his meals on it.

  Everyone knew that Kasturbai had not long to live. She had suffered a succession of heart attacks, her circulation was bad, bronchial pneumonia was always waiting for her. Oxygen was sent for, but she disliked the nasal catheter, and it became more and more difficult to nurse her, because she needed constant attendance. She complained of pains in her chest and back, and there were terrible periods when her lips turned blue and she seemed to be beyond help. She asked to see her sons, and after a long interval the government finally permitted her to see them, and after another long delay they permitted her to see a nature-cure expert, Dr. Dinshah Mehta. Orders came down slowly from above; urgent requests would be answered a month later; and Gandhi was inclined to regard all these delays as deliberate provocations when in fact they were due to the inevitable dislocations of the bureaucratic machine. When the government finally permitted the nature-cure expert to visit the palace, it was with the proviso that no one except the doctors were allowed to come into the presence of Kasturbai, Gandhi was enraged. His hands and voice shaking with emotion, he dictated a letter to the government in which he pointed out that the restriction was patently senseless. He wrote:

  It is unbecoming of the Government to impose such conditions on a dying woman. Supposing she wants the bed-pan when Dr. Dinshah Mehta is there, who is to give it to her if the nurses are not to be near her? Supposing I want to ask the nature cure doctor how my wife is progressing, am I to do so through someone else? This is a curious situation. I would far rather the Government sent me away to another prison, instead of worrying me with pinpricks at every step. If I am away, my wife would not expect any help from me and I will be spared the agony of being a helpless witness to her suffering.

  The letter had the desired effect: nurses were permitted to gather round the patient when the doctor was visiting her, and Gandhi learned that he could speak to the doctor whenever he pleased.

  Of Kasturbai’s four sons three were staying in Poona, having been summoned by telegraph. Manilal was in South Africa, but Harilal, Ramdas and Devadas were living near the palace. On January 26 Harilal had made an appearance outside the palace gate, but was refused admittance, apparently because he was drunk. He was not finally ad
mitted until the afternoon of February 17. Kasturbai was overjoyed, for she possessed a great tenderness for the black sheep of the family, but her joy was shortlived. Told that Harilal would not be permitted to see her again, she spoke to her husband. “Why shouldn’t a poor son see his mother as freely as a rich one?” she asked. “They allow Devadas to come every day, but Harilal can come only once. Let Bhandari come to me. I shall ask him why they make a difference with my sons.”

  Gandhi promised to seek permission for daily visits from Harilal. A day termined to prevent it. Gandhi was about to take his evening walk when he heard a sharp cry: “Bapu!” It was Kasturbai, summoning him for the last time. He hurried to her, sat by the bed, and comforted her, as if she were a little child. Her head fell back against him, and because she was restless, he said: “What is the matter? What do you feel?” Like a child she answered in a lisping voice: “I do not know.” Then she said: “I am going now. No one should cry after I have gone. I am at peace.” She died in his arms a few moments later, while they were all singing the Ramadhun.

  When a Hindu dies and is cremated, there are elaborate obsequies, which follow a pattern derived from the ancient Aryan past. Kasturbai’s body was bathed, the hair was combed, a new sari dipped in Ganges water was placed on her, and all the ornaments she wore around her neck and arms were removed. Near her body they placed a lamp burning with ghee, symbol of life, and at her feet the swastika was drawn to symbolize the eternally returning sun, while the Sanskrit word OM was written near her head to symbolize the breath of the Creator. Incense was burned and sandalwood paste was spread over her forehead. When the question of the funeral pyre was raised, Gandhi heard to his surprise that there were already some sandalwood logs in the palace which could be used for this purpose. The sandalwood had been bought by the government when Gandhi was close to death during his fast in 1942.