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

by Robert Payne

  Without a moment’s hesitation Gandhi said: “Go and tell them I am with them!”

  Nirmal Bose was dumbfounded. He had expected silence or a brief dismissal of the youths as irresponsible and dangerous goondas. Instead, Gandhi was welcoming them with open arms.

  “But what about non-violence?” Nirmal Bose asked.

  Gandhi had walked a few paces ahead. Suddenly he said: “This is an order!” Nirmal Bose did not obey the order, but went to the police, who told him that guards were being posted around the Muslim quarters and nothing was likely to happen that night.

  Although Nirmal Bose came to know Gandhi well during the Noakhali journey, he was still deeply puzzled by many aspects of his character. There was Gandhi’s extraordinary power to dominate any situation, his senses reaching out until he had somehow made everyone his willing accomplice. There was the public Gandhi determined to save India and the private Gandhi determined to save his own soul, and they could not always be reconciled. There were so many Gandhis, and he wondered how they could all live together in such a frail body.

  So now, returning from the police, he asked Gandhi why he approved of the young Hindus who were preparing to use violent means to protect the Muslims from their own Hindu comrades.

  “Here are men who are going to use violence in a moral cause,” Gandhi answered. “They are trying to protect the poor, so I am with them as far as the cause is concerned, but not in regard to the means.”

  “Why don’t you tell them that violence is wrong?”

  “How can I say that unless I demonstrate that non-violence is more effective? I cannot tell them that violence is wrong, while I cannot give them a substitute.”

  It was a simple answer, but not a wholly satisfying one: non-violence was riddled with ambiguities. Gandhi was well aware of their existence and could not always keep them at bay. Someone asked him whether he was contemplating a fast, for as he returned from gazing at the dead bodies, looking small and shriveled and in a state of shock, he seemed to be pondering some extreme action. “You are right,” he said. “I am praying within myself, and perhaps tonight I shall see the light.”

  When Nirmal Bose came to see him, he had already made his decision and drawn up a statement about his intentions, but it had occurred to him that he must first have the permission of Rajagopalachari, the Governor of Bengal, and Nirmal Bose was accordingly sent to summon the Governor by telephone. Rajagopalachari arrived soon afterward. “If Gandhi wants to fast, who are we to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to him?” he said. “It is he who has to dictate, not we.” But in fact he went to great lengths to argue against the fast, massing his arguments like a general massing his artillery against the enemy, explaining logically and precisely exactly how dangerous and futile it might be. Gandhi remained unimpressed. He had already begun the fast. In his eyes there was nothing to lose except one man’s paltry life, and all of India might be saved. “If I falter now,” he said, “the conflagration may spread, and I can see clearly that two or three Powers will soon be upon us and thus will end our short-lived dream of independence.” He did not name the Powers, but they evidently included Pakistan and Britain. As he spoke, independence was two weeks old.

  He hoped to bring peace to Calcutta, and if there was no peace he hoped to die. Somehow, by some means as yet unknown, he was determined to bring at least a semblance of peace to those poverty-stricken areas of Calcutta where it was always easiest to start riots and where his own influence was rarely felt. Rajagopalachari thought the riots were instigated by goondas, the murderous troublemakers who profit from violence. Gandhi remained unconvinced. There were people behind the goondas, and somehow it was necessary to reach their hearts and lead them along the road to peace. He hoped by his fast to shock them into an awareness of the crimes they were committing and bring them to repentance.

  So for two hours Gandhi and Rajagopalachari wrestled and came to no agreement Gandhi was tired and exhausted and still haunted by the sight of the two dead workmen he had seen in the afternoon. Toward the end of the meeting Rajagopalachari read the draft of the announcement in which Gandhi explained why the fast was being undertaken. He observed that Gandhi reserved the right to add sour lime juice to the water he sipped at intervals during the fast: lime juice made him less thirsty. “Why are you adding the lime juice, when you say you are putting yourself entirely in God’s hands?” Rajagopalachari asked. He felt that Gandhi was not playing fair with God. If a fast is undertaken, then it should be undertaken in the most complete form possible.

  Gandhi confessed his error. The offending words were struck out of the draft announcement, and at midnight the Governor of Bengal returned to his palace.

  The fast followed the usual course. Gandhi lay in bed, sipping tea, cheerfully engaging in interminable conversations with the people who came to visit him more eagerly now that he was fasting and thus holding the attention of everyone in Calcutta. He called fasting the “fiery bed,” and very often at such times he would find himself thinking about great conflagrations and massacres more terrible than any that had descended on India since the time of Tamerlane. Violent images of doom filled his mind, and he would speak of them with a strange intensity. When Sarat Chandra Bose came to visit him in the afternoon, he said it was necessary that all the Indian leaders should be prepared to sacrifice their lives. He said: “I shall dance with joy, if perchance all the leaders lose their lives while performing their duty with pure hearts.”

  He spoke for more than an hour with Sarat Chandra Bose, though his voice was weak and he had some difficulty in making himself heard. Sometimes he found himself pondering the state of anarchy which had been the subject of his address at Benares thirty years before. Withdraw the police! Place no restrictions on people’s behavior! Let anarchy prevail! He told Sarat Chandra Bose:

  I will not mind if the entire police force in the city is withdrawn. And if in the result the whole of Calcutta swims in blood, it will not dismay me. For it will be a willing offering of innocent blood. I know how to tackle such a situation. You and I shall then have to rush barefoot in the midst of the flames and work without respite day and night until either peace is restored or we are all dead.

  A few days previously, at a prayer meeting, Gandhi accused Sarat Chandra Bose of filling his pockets with public money. Now when this rightist leader suggested that the riots were caused by Sikhs at the instigation of the Hindu Mahasabha, Gandhi flared up and said he was prepared to listen only to people with pure consciences, and he was in some doubt whether he was speaking with an enemy or a friend. As for the riots, which had continued all through the morning and showed no sign of abating, he was certain they could b,e stopped by peace missions made up of Hindus and Muslims walking arm in arm through the streets. He did not expect Sarat Chandra Bose to take part in them, but he demanded his benevolent neutrality.

  So the arguments continued as more and more visitors entered Haidari Mansion, and sometimes Gandhi would tell them bluntly that they were wasting their time if they came only in an attempt to save his life. His life was past caring for, and he had no very great desire to live through such troubles. If they wanted to do him an act of service, then let them go into the streets and educate Hindus and Muslims in their common citizenship. He would break the fast when he learned that all was quiet in Calcutta, and not before. He had no hope of a quick ending to the riots. Told on the second day of the fast that the looters were quiet, he said bitterly: “Yes, they need a rest.”

  The murders and looting went on, and the people who took part in peace missions took their lives in their hands. A middle-aged Hindu called Sachin Mitra, a gentle and cultured man known for his courage and fair-dealing, a devoted Satyagrahi, went out with some Muslim friends to quell a riot. The Muslims escaped after being savagely mauled; Sachin Mitra was stabbed to death. Another middle-aged Hindu, Smritish Bannerjee, rushed to the rescue of a peace procession which was being manhandled by a mob. He was last seen attempting to escort some girls to a place of safety, h
is shirt already bloodstained. When they found his body, there were five mortal stab wounds in his back. When some women came to ask Gandhi for permission to carry the body of Sachin Mitra in procession through the streets, he said: “If anyone tried to take out my body in a procession after I died, I would certainly tell them—if my corpse could speak—to spare me and cremate me where I had died.”

  When he rejected their request to carry the body of Sachin Mitra in procession, he was not being unsympathetic. He had no high regard for the physical body, detested funeral processions, and intensely disliked the idea of encouraging hysteria. There would have been more riots. In the tense situation of Calcutta the funeral procession of a martyr could lead to a bloodbath.

  Meanwhile the fast was beginning to have some effect. The students came out with the cry: “Down with hooliganism,” and pledged themselves to keep the peace and form peace armies. Suhrawardy, the man who had been the ruling power in Bengal, appeared everywhere, and showed a physical courage equal to Gandhi’s. Hindus cursed him, and he went up to them smiling. Gandhi, too, was beginning to smile more frequently, for he was now at last convinced that God was with him. There had come to him with absolute certainty the knowledge that the fast might last for ten days, and that at some time during this period he would die, or else Calcutta would be quiet again. Uncertainty had plagued him; now he was clear in his mind and slept peacefully.

  A fast is a weapon of terror, a bomb with a time fuse. The Muslims were beginning to wonder how many of them would be massacred if Gandhi died, and the Hindus were wondering whether they could bear the guilt of his death. Gradually, as the hours passed, Calcutta grew quieter. Sarat Chandra Bose was actively engaged in pursuing peace. The Hindu Mahasabha, the Bar Association, the students, the Sikhs and the Muslims all sent deputations begging Gandhi to call off the fast. He refused, saying that he must first have proof that Calcutta was peaceful and would remain peaceful. He had no interest in bringing about a temporary lull, and no desire to live in a fool’s paradise. If the riots began again, then he would fast again, and this time he would certainly fast unto death.

  Finally four days after he began the fast, when he was weak and emaciated, there appeared visible signs that the fury was abating. A deputation of goondas arrived, offering to surrender their weapons and confessing their crimes. It was an extraordinary spectacle: Gandhi small and shrunken on the bed, the thickset goondas kneeling at his feet, begging for his mercy, promising never again to loot or murder. Gandhi said he would not listen to their prayers unless they promised to protect the Muslims.

  During the afternoon Gandhi was unusually restless. One moment he would try to lie down; the next moment he was up again. He kept counting his wooden beads, and sometimes he murmured: “Rama, Rama,” calling on God for assistance. What seemed to be perturbing him was the difficulty of trusting the people who kept saying that peace was restored, that he should break the fast, and that he would serve the country best by leaving Calcutta and proceeding to the Punjab. The interviews and conferences continued. Finally, at 9:15 P.M., after making the officials who were standing around him sign a paper in which they promised faithfully to keep the peace of Calcutta even at the cost of their lives, he agreed to end the fast, which had lasted seventy-three hours. Suhrawardy gave him the ceremonial glass of lemon juice and knelt at his feet and wept.

  The fast was over and there was at least a semblance of peace. Exactly what brought it about, and whether the fast had really contributed to it, were unknown. It had been a strange, unruly fast in that house with the shattered windows on the edge of the slums, with none of the quiet dignity of his earlier fasts in prison.

  When it was all over and his strength had returned, he addressed a vast crowd on the Maidan and warned them that he had given up the fast only because he felt that the city was now in good hands and he believed their promise that they would keep the peace. “But don’t play with me,” he went on. “If you revert to madness after I leave this place, it would be as silly as dancing on an earthen pot. You will keep me alive if you keep the peace.” Suhrawardy spoke from the same platform. “In leaving us,” he said, “Mahatmaji has conferred on us his purity, and for myself I shall continue to follow his commands.” No one could have guessed a year before that the militant Muslim leader would ever speak in this way.

  On the same evening, shortly before he was to leave Calcutta forever, some girls came to offer him garlands and bunches of flowers, and one of them, a small slender girl bolder than the rest, began to perform with her lamp the ancient ceremonial rite of arati, which goes back to the time of the Vedas. It consists in encircling the head of the beloved with wavering flames, from lamps filled with the purest ghee. It was a way of expressing devotion, and very beautiful, but Gandhi, who was weary of garlands and expressions of devotion, was in no mood to accept this offering. “Put out the lights, drain every drop of ghee into a vessel, and give it to the poor,” he said sternly.

  A few minutes later he was being driven to Belur, a small wayside station, where he caught the night train to Delhi.

  Death to Gandhi!

  WHEN GANDHI’S train steamed into the Delhi station, he observed that everyone was strangely solemn and fearful, and there were a surprisingly large number of soldiers on the platform. No one had dared to tell him about the savage communal riots in Delhi, which left the streets littered with the dead and dying. It was a bright September morning, but there was the taste of winter on the air.

  Delhi was a city of the dead, the poor, and the homeless. There was scarcely a street or mosque or temple which had not seen furious fighting, with the police and the army powerless to interfere. The refugees were camped in the vast courtyard of the Jamma Masjid, the greatest of the Indian mosques, and in the grounds of Humayun’s tomb, and in a hundred other places. There was scarcely any bedding, scarcely enough food; medical facilities had broken down; there was no sanitation; the goondas had the city at their mercy. It was the time of the great migrations, with Hindus and Sikhs escaping in their hundreds of thousands from Pakistan, and the Muslims escaping in their hundreds of thousands from East Punjab. “I have supped my fill of horrors,” Nehru said despairingly. “It is the only feast left for us now.”

  When Gandhi arrived in Delhi, he thought he would return to his old lodgings in Bhangi Colony. Patel and Rajkumar Amrit Kaur, who met him at the station, told him that he would be taken to Birla House. He did not particularly like the idea, but there was no alternative, for the Colony was overflowing with refugees and in no shape to receive him. There was no difficulty in finding space for him at Birla House, for that vast mansion on Albuquerque Road could have held an army. A small comer of the house overlooking the terraced gardens had already been set aside for him.

  What Gandhi learned as he drove from the railroad station to Birla House startled him. Delhi was in worse plight than Calcutta had ever been. On September 4, the day he broke his fast, Delhi suddenly erupted into an orgy of murder, arson and looting. There was martial law, and the curfew was lifted for only four hours during the day. People stayed in their houses, scurried out for a few minutes to buy food and then hurried back to their homes. The hospitals were full of the wounded, and the dead rotted in the streets. The city and the nation were being governed by an Emergency Committee with Lord Mountbatten as the chairman, but the committee was oddly ineffective, and no one seemed to know what was really happening. Shock followed shock—trouble in Kashmir, threats from Pakistan, new uprisings in Kathiawar, trains derailed and all the passengers murdered—until it seemed that the nation born only a few days before must inevitably go down in ruins.

  Gandhi’s intention had been to leave within a few days for the Punjab, but it was now obvious that Delhi had a greater claim on him. “I must do my little bit to calm the heated atmosphere,” he said after he had talked to many of the Indian leaders. “I must apply the formula ‘Do or die’ to the capital of India.” He was saying that he would either succeed in bringing peace to Delhi or die
in the attempt.

  He saw Lord Mountbatten, who welcomed him to Government House, explained the workings of the Emergency Committee, and congratulated him again for bringing about “the miracle at Calcutta.” But he was in no mood for congratulations. Exhausted by the long train journey and still more exhausted by the spectacle of Delhi under martial law, he spoke shyly and deprecatingly about himself. Once he had thought he would never enter Government House with pleasure; it was the symbol of a false and alien despotism, and he had spent the best years of his life fighting it. Now, as he looked round those vast and ornate rooms where the Emergency Committee was in session, he heard himself saying: “This house has become a secure island in a sea of insecurity.”

  Though he had no official position, and wanted none, he still possessed the most powerful voice in India and was determined to use it. In the following months he would sometimes complain that he was powerless and had lost whatever influence he once possessed over the men he had trained and appointed to high position, but in fact no important decision was made without consulting him. He was a shadow government, chief adviser to ministers, chief moralist, propounder of riddles, a nuisance and a blessing. What was certain was that he was perfectly serious when he said he had come on a “Do or die” mission.

  In the large, white, pleasantly sunny room set aside for him at Birla House he sometimes received forty people a day and talked to all of them. He was in constant touch with the government by telephone; his secretaries were running messages all over Delhi; Manubehn and Abhabehn were continually at his side. He wrote articles for Harijan, attended prayer meetings, dictated letters, spun, and was continually traveling around Delhi to observe what was happening. Suhrawardy came to join him, but in the changed atmosphere of Delhi he could no longer play the role of peacemaker. Through Suhrawardy, Gandhi kept in touch with Jinnah and the Government of Pakistan; neither Jinnah, who had appointed himself Governor General, nor Liaquat Ali Khan, his Prime Minister, appeared to have any control over events. They drifted with the tide, and seemed to lose themselves in dreams. Soon Jinnah would become a remote, gaunt, unapproachable, terrifying figure, seeing enemies everywhere, attempting to exorcise his fears by nourishing his hatreds, his judgments strangely indecisive now that he was in the seat of power.