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

by Robert Payne

  Early the next morning a hundred and fifty friends and relatives came to the palace to see the cremation. Gandhi had hoped for a public funeral, but this was refused by the government. Yet the private funeral had some of the aspects of a public funeral, with so many people crowded in the small enclosure where the cremation would take place. Kasturbai was dressed in a red-bordered white sari, which was covered with flowers. Five glass bangles were placed on her body. After she was laid on the pyre, Gandhi offered a short prayer composed from the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the New Testament and the Zend-Avesta of the Parsis. Then Devadas stepped forward and lit the fire, but for some reason there was not enough wood, the arrangement of the pyre was faulty, and the body took so long to burn that it was not reduced to ashes and calcined bones until the evening, although the ceremonies had begun in the early morning. Because Gandhi showed signs of extreme exhaustion several attempts were made to lead him back to his own room, but he refused to leave, saying: “How can I leave her during her last moments on earth after we have lived for sixty-two years together?” He tried to force a smile. “She would never forgive me if I did.” His followers comforted him as best they could, and he was there to the very end when the flames died down.

  That night as he lay in bed, he gave himself up to somber thoughts, wondering whether he could survive without her. “I cannot imagine life without her,” he said. “I had always wanted her to go first, because I did not want to worry about what would happen to her when I am no more. She was an indivisible part of me, and her going has left a vacuum which will never be filled.”

  For a few moments he was silent, contemplating the emptiness of his life now that she was gone. “But how God tested my faith!” he turned to Sushila Nayyar. “If I had allowed you to give her penicillin, it could not have saved her, and it would have meant the bankruptcy of my faith. I pleaded with Devadas in order to convince him about the soundness of my decision. And so she passed away on my lap! Could it have been better? I am happy beyond measure!”

  But he knew he was not happy beyond measure; he was in despair. When the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, sent a letter of condolence, Gandhi in reply spoke of their long years together and the habit of continence which had given them great respect for one another. “We were a couple outside the ordinary,” Gandhi said, but this knowledge did not prevent him from feeling the full weight of grief. Mahadev Desai had died in the palace, then Kasturbai, and soon, he thought, it would be his own turn.

  On the fourth day after Kasturbai’s death the ashes and bones, now cold, were gathered up by her sons Ramdas and Devadas. They were laid out on a banana leaf, decorated with flowers and vermilion and incense, and later they were consigned to the holy Indravani River near Poona. Among the ashes the five glass bangles were found to be intact, a sure sign that she had lived a pure life.

  Her death broke Gandhi’s health. For many days he was listless, lost within himself, and sometimes he would rouse himself sufficiently to write one more letter chiding the government, saying the British reaction to the “Quit India” movement was wrong, ill-advised and without historical precedent, and the Viceroy answered that the British had no other alternative but to suppress the rebellion if they were to continue fighting the Japanese. “You are too intelligent a man, Mr. Gandhi, not to have realized that the effect of your resolution must be to hamper the prosecution of the war; and it is clear to me that you had lost confidence in our ability to defend India, and were prepared to take advantage of our supposed military, straits to gain political advantage.” So wrote Lord Wavell in a long letter designed to placate the implacable Gandhi, who saw no virtue in defending India against the Japanese or against any invader. For Lord Wavell, who had been commander in chief in Burma, the menace of the Japanese was real and tangible, to be feared like nothing else in the world, and the exchange of correspondence ended on the usual note of interrogation.

  Six weeks after Kasturbai’s death Gandhi was prostrated with a severe attack of malaria. His temperature rose alarmingly, his blood pressure fell, and the doctors were dismayed by his general weakness. On April 16, 1944, they issued a bulletin: “Mr. Gandhi has been suffering for the last three days from malaria. He is feeling weak, but his general condition is as satisfactory as can be expected.” The disease lingered on, and on May 3 the doctors issued a considerably less optimistic bulletin: “There has been a worsening of Mr. Gandhi’s anaemic condition and his blood pressure has fallen further. His general condition is again giving rise to some anxiety.”

  As usual, he argued with his doctors, insisting that the best treatment consisted of a liquid diet and prolonged fasting. With some difficulty they were able to convince him that quinine was a sovereign remedy against malaria. He took thirty-two grains of quinine in two days; he slept better, his temperature dropped, and soon there was no more trace of malaria in his blood. On May 4, though still weak, he was pronounced out of danger.

  On the evening of May 5 Colonel Bhandari entered Gandhi’s room and announced quietly that all the prisoners would be released the following morning.

  “Are you joking?” Gandhi asked.

  “No, I am serious,” Colonel Bhandari replied, adding that the government would have no objection if he remained a few days longer in the palace in order to put his affairs in order.

  Gandhi had no intention of staying in the palace a moment longer than was necessary. He was told that the guards would be removed at 8:00 A.M. the following morning, and he decided to leave at precisely this moment. At 5:00 A.M. prayers were offered for the last time in the palace, and there was a last visit to the samadhis of Mahadev Desai and Kasturbhai. A few minutes later he wrote to the government, asking them to secure for him that small space consecrated by the deaths of his closest companions. Some weeks later the government replied that it was in no position to order the Aga Khan to sell them a plot of land, but the Aga Khan would certainly permit people to offer flowers and prayers at the site; and with this half-promise Gandhi seemed to be content.

  As he drove away from the palace, the last of his many prisons, he was in a deeply meditative mood. Prison never held any terrors for him; he was accustomed to them; sometimes he wooed them like a bride; but he remembered that Kasturbhai had been terrified by her imprisonment even though she had wanted to be imprisoned in order to be near him. “Yes, Ba and Mahadev laid down their lives on the altar of freedom, and have become immortal,” he murmured. “Would they have attained that glory if they had died outside of prison?”

  On the Eve

  AFTER A FEW DAYS’ rest with friends in Poona, Gandhi went to stay in a palatial house at Juhu, the seaside resort of Bombay. The house belonged to Shantikumar Morarji, the wealthy son of a shipowner from Porbandar. Shantikumar was a close friend of Devadas, and it was remembered that during the cremation of Kasturbhai he was always by Devadas’s side, helping him like a brother. Gandhi had stayed in the same house after leaving Yeravda Jail. The Morarjis were regarded as members of the family.

  At first Gandhi seemed unable to return to health. He was strangely reserved and silent, and seemed lost in some inner world of his own. It was learned that he had contracted hookworm; he had not completely recovered from the attack of benign tertian malaria which felled him in prison; and he was still haunted by the death of Kasturbhai. To hasten his recovery he took a vow of silence. He regarded illness or weakness of any kind as something a Satyagrahi should be ashamed of, and what he liked to call “medical silence” was usually his first weapon against the enemy. For a few days the silence was total; later he permitted himself to speak for four hours every day, between 4:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M. Although the government had released him unconditionally, he was inclined to think the government would order his arrest as soon as he had recovered his health. “And if they do not arrest me, what can I do?” he asked plaintively. Once more he seemed to be living in a vacuum, where there were no signs of life, where no decisions could be made, and where the people had lost any voice in their future.

/>   Some saboteurs had blown up part of the Bombay dockyard. He drove to the dockyard to look at the damage, but he had nothing to say either in favor or disfavor of the saboteurs.

  The sea air and long walks along the sands were gradually bringing him back to health. Friends came to stay in the house, and he was especially pleased to have the company of the poetess Sarojini Naidu, who was herself ill, though she could still fill the room with her warmth and good humor. She was a force of nature, and even ill-health could not prevent her from telling jokes or reciting poems.

  To amuse him the Moraijis decided to have a private showing of a film which was then playing to packed houses in Bombay. The film was Mission to Moscow, depicting the adventures of an American ambassador in the wartime Kremlin. It was a bad choice, for the film was an excessively incompetent testimony to the strength of the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The projector was set up in the living room, a hundred guests were invited, and Gandhi, sitting in the front row, watched with mounting disbelief the antics of the American ambassador in Moscow. But what he chiefly objected to were the low dresses of the women and the scenes showing couples in a close embrace while dancing. In his view such films would have an inevitable deleterious effect on the young. Later he saw another film, Ram Rajya, produced in an Indian studio and concerning a highly moralistic king from an ancient legend. He liked this film a little better, but to the end of his life he showed a deep dislike for films and cameramen. This was a pity, for he was highly photogenic and the medium could have been used effectively to get his ideas across to the people. In the last months of his life he used radio effectively and had no illusions about the advantages of reaching millions of people instantaneously.

  As he regained his health and began to take an interest in affairs, he was reduced once more to writing letters to the Viceroy and addressing small groups. On June 17 he wrote to the Viceroy pleading for permission to meet the members of the Working Committee of the Congress, and since they were all in jail and the meeting would clearly involve a prolonged discussion of political strategy, the Viceroy replied tersely that he could see no advantage in it. The reply scarcely surprised Gandhi, but he had other means of making his views known, and in a long interview given to Stewart Gelder, the correspondent of the English newspaper News Chronicle, he said he could if he so desired start the movement of civil disobedience all over again, but nothing was to be gained by repeating history, he had no desire to embarrass the British government, and he de manded only that the civil government should be in the hands of the Indians, with the army under allied control, the Viceroy assuming the role of a constitutional monarch guided by his ministers, and he wanted popular government restored to all the provinces. He doubted whether anything of the kind would come to pass, because Churchill was still in control of the British government and therefore of the destinies of India. “Mr. Churchill does not want a settlement,” Gandhi declared. “He wants to crush me.”

  That Mr. Churchill would have liked nothing better than to crush Gandhi was undeniably true, but he was not crushable. His Majesty’s Government wanted a solution to the Indian problem, and was genuinely in favor of granting India a limited form of independence after the war. Gandhi, writing to the Viceroy a few days after the interview with Stewart Gelder, offered to call off all obstructive tactics against the government if a declaration of immediate Indian independence were made. The Viceroy replied that there could be no independence before the end of the war and there must be agreement on a constitution safeguarding the rights of the minorities. He was prepared to countenance a transitional government working within the existing constitution. It would be composed of Hindus, Muslims, and the important minorities. Gandhi realized that this meant that the British had no intention of surrendering power unless and until the Hindus and Muslims came to a general agreement on constitutional problems. Since it was very unlikely that the Hindus and the Muslims would be able to solve these problems, at least within the time that would elapse before the end of the war, Gandhi was inclined to regard the British as deliberately stalling. They should give India independence, and then let the Hindus and Muslims fight out the constitutional problems by themselves. “The British,” he said, “were engaged in a diabolical conspiracy to stifle India’s aspirations.”

  But there were others who were determined to stifle Gandhi’s aspirations. One of these, and the most dangerous and determined, was Mohamed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, known as Qaid-e-Azam, meaning “the Great Leader.” Suave, ruthless, incapable of the arts of compromise, he shared with Churchill a complete incapacity to understand the springs of Gandhi’s being. He came from a family which until recently had been Hindu, and he had something of the convert’s passion for Islam without feeling any necessity to obey its more demanding creeds. He drank whiskey, shaved his beard, dressed always in Western style, and lived in a completely Western manner. He had flaunted Muslim law and tradition by marrying a rich Parsi woman. A rich lawyer, trained in England, with an intricate mind and contempt for any minds less intricate than his own, he was determined to bring about in his lifetime the state of Pakistan. A Muslim state would be carved out of India, and he would rule it. He was not concerned with the exact boundaries of this state so much as with its existence as a national unit completely separate from Hindu influence. His dream was to form around Pakistan a vast Muslim empire which would embrace Russian Turkestan and the four western provinces of China, and whatever other Muslim states would eventually fall under the sway of Pakistan. The state of Pakistan was merely the first step in his dream of a federation of Islamic states stretching halfway across the world. He was suffering from heart disease and tuberculosis, and he was all the more eager to bring about his Islamic empire because he knew he was dying.

  By the autumn of 1944 Gandhi realized that the time had come to bring about a rapprochement with the Muslims. Time was running out Whatever his public statements, Jinnah was committed to Pakistan and had no interest in a rapprochement: his aim was to use both the Hindus and the British, and to make them serve his own ends. Any conversations with Gandhi would therefore assume the form of frigid inquiries into the exact strategies Gandhi would employ, while revealing nothing about his own strategies.

  Gandhi rebelled against the thought of partition; it was “an untruth,” a denial of God, a vivisection on the living flesh of India, and therefore a sin. India divided against itself would be a denial of his whole lifework, and his task therefore was to wean Jinnah from his dream of Pakistan. Jinnah fell ill, and the meeting was delayed until September 9. It took place in Jinnah’s palatial residence on Malabar Hill in Bombay, and from the beginning it was stormy. They spoke politely with one another, pretending that they were discussing realities. They spoke in English, the only language they had in common; the house was guarded by Indian bayonets; the servants tiptoed in and placed a glass of orange juice on the table. They pretended to be talking about formulas, constitutions, methods of forming a government, but in fact they were deliberating about the destruction of an empire, the birth of new empires, new nations. Asked after the first meeting whether he had brought anything from Jinnah, Gandhi answered bitterly: “Only flowers.”

  What was terrible was that these two men, both educated in London, possessed no common language of ideas. They could not communicate, perhaps because Jinnah had no desire to communicate. There were long silences. They fought out their battles as though they were creatures from different universes, and they made demands on each other that they knew to be totally unacceptable. The fate of India was being decided in Jinnah’s vast marble-tiled living-room. The silences between them generated the future bloodshed.

  There was something almost ludicrous about these dangerous meetings, which continued from day to day. Jinnah insisted that he spoke as the president of the Muslim League; Gandhi emphasized that he had come merely as an individual, representing no one except himself. Jinnah answered that he obviously represented the Hindus, o
therwise he would not have come, while if he represented only himself there was no point in continuing the discussion. “We are a nation of a hundred million,” Jinnah declared, “and, what is more, we are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions.” In a single sentence he was begging a multitude of questions. Gandhi convinced himself that “Jinnah wants a settlement, but what he wants he doesn’t know.” In this he was wrong. Jinnah knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew exactly how to get it. Gandhi felt certain that Jinnah was in league with the British, and in this, too, he was wrong. Jinnah had the Muslim League, and this was enough.

  The conversations ended in a deadlock; they agreed to differ, and were aware that their differences were fraught with momentous consequences. Gandhi thought of going on a fast, but the divine voice did not speak. He was ill, with a bad cold, a bronchitic cough and pains in his chest. He lived quietly in his ashram, observing silence, spinning for an hour daily, writing out answers to urgent questions on slips of paper. It was another breakdown, the third or fourth in his life, and he seemed in those days so spiritually isolated from his flock and from all India that there were many who wondered whether he would ever resume his political life.