A Flag, a Song and a Pinch of Salt

by Subhadra Sen Gupta

  Nehru was released in October 1930 and arrested again within ten days. What bothered him the most during these long stays in prison was that it kept him away from his family, especially his young daughter Indira. Their only communication was through letters and now he began to teach her about the history of the world by post. What is truly remarkable is that he was writing mainly from memory as he had few books he could refer to. Writing in an easy, lucid style, he ranged across continents, from the Indus Valley to ancient Egypt and Greece. Later these letters were published as Glimpses of World History and children read and enjoy the book even today.

  Meanwhile, even the Nehru women—his mother, wife and sisters—had joined the campaign and he was delighted to hear that Kamala had led a demonstration and had said that she was proud to be arrested. But he was very upset to hear that his mother had been badly hurt in a lathi charge. For a while Motilal joined his son in jail, but already unwell, he soon fell ill and Jawaharlal spent his time taking care of him. They were released because of his illness, but Motilal died on 6 February 1931. His body lay in state in Swaraj Bhawan—once it had been Anand Bhawan, the palatial home that he had given away to the nation.

  Gandhi now left for the Second Round Table Conference in London. Back home Nehru led another farmer’s agitation in the United Provinces and was arrested again. The government was always looking to constrain him and over the years he would spend time in prisons from Naini and Dehradun to the Alipore Jail in Calcutta and Ahmednagar Fort. Going to the hot and dingy Alipore Jail, he wrote he was going for a ‘rest cure’ to his ‘other home’. During 1920–1945 he spent eleven years in prison and he used much of this time to write books.

  Between 1934 and 1935 he penned his Autobiography that became a surprise bestseller in Europe. During his longest imprisonment in Ahmednagar Fort from 1942 to 1945—his ninth incarceration—he wrote The Discovery of India, which remains one of the most loved books among Indians. It is a personal response to his country and its people, and often a paean to the beauties of the land. What is even more amazing is that there is no bitterness or anger in his books; instead there is a lyrical elegance in his style: ‘The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown more friendly with closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveliness of this world … ever changing, yet ever the same.’

  In 1935 Kamala’s health deteriorated again and Nehru was allowed to take her for treatment to Europe. However, this time she did not recover and died in February 1936. On his way back to India Nehru had to pass through Rome and was invited by Mussolini, the Italian dictator, for a meeting but he refused. He was deeply disturbed by the growth of Nazism and Fascism in Europe and felt strongly that India should oppose Hitler. One of the few internationalist in the Congress, he even visited the Spanish republicans who were fighting General Franco in Spain. He was in China when the Second World War began in Europe and hurried back to India.

  In 1936 when he returned, he was immediately involved in the election campaign of the party for provincial governments to be formed after the Government of India Act of 1935. Nehru as president of the party went on a long campaign across the country. He travelled by train, plane, car, bicycle, cart, steamer, horse, elephant, camel and on foot on an indefatigable marathon of public gatherings. When the results were declared, out of eleven provinces the Congress had won absolute majority in five and was the largest single party in three. What was even more surprising was that the Muslim League had won just five per cent of the Muslim vote, convincing Nehru that communalism had no place in India’s politics. The negotiation with Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the League on the sharing of power failed as the Congress, with a winner’s overconfidence, insisted that the League would have to join the Congress. Soon after, Jinnah came up with his battle cry of ‘Islam is in danger’ that would one day lead to the partition of the country.

  When the war began, the viceroy Lord Linlithgow made India an ally to Britain in the war without consulting the Congress. He also made it clear that all discussion on the future of India would have to wait till after the war. The Congress ministries resigned in protest. This left the Muslim League as the only party in direct contact with the officials. Jinnah declared his loyalty to the government and his support for the war, and would get active support from British officials when he began his campaign for a separate nation.

  The Congress now started a Satyagraha by individuals and Nehru was soon under arrest again. His sentence of four years surprised everyone by its harshness and was criticized even in England. Gandhi was arrested soon after. Then Japan entered the war, its armies swept through Asia and were soon threatening the borders of India. Now the government’s attitude began to soften towards the Congress. The leaders were released and the Cripps Mission arrived to discuss India’s future, Cripps offered Dominion Status after the war was over. It was an offer that came too late as by then the Congress was willing to accept only complete independence. They were also angered by the attempt to divide the people, with Muslims and princely states being given separate rights. The Congress as a secular party fighting for a united nation could not accept this. Linlithgow’s refusal to listen to the Congress’s point of view meant that the Cripps Mission failed.

  The Congress met in Bombay on 8 August 1942 and Gandhi gave the call of ‘Quit India’. Nehru spoke of how India was claiming its right to defend itself against any invasion. Many leaders were arrested that night, and Nehru—with Maulana Azad, Patel and Rajendra Prasad—was sent to Ahmednagar Fort. Once the war was over they were released and the Cabinet Mission arrived for more negotiations. It was accepted that India was to get independence, but now the vexing question was as one or two countries or worse, as a land fragmented into many? Jinnah was demanding Pakistan, made of the regions with a Muslim majority. The princely states wanted the right to choose whether they remained independent or joined either country. The government did its best to create divisions between the Congress and the League, and keep its loyal princes happy.

  The Congress team led by Azad, Nehru, Patel and Rajagopalachari faced weeks of complex negotiations. Gandhi, who was deeply disappointed by talks of partition, had withdrawn from the debate and left the decision to them. The Muslim League supported by the viceroy Lord Wavell obstructed every effort to find a solution. The League first refused to join the Constituent Assembly. Then an interim national government was formed in 1946 with Nehru as Prime Minister. He invited the Muslim League to join, hoping that a united effort would make Jinnah soften his stand. However, the League members did their best to obstruct the functioning of the government. Meanwhile, in 1946, he again put on his barrister’s gown after twenty-five years to join the team of lawyers led by Bhulabhai Desai to defend the three officers of Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army at the trial held in the Red Fort.

  When Lord Mountbatten took over as viceroy, Nehru and Patel finally bowed to the inevitable and the partition of the country became an accepted fact. Jinnah demanded all of Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir, and was disappointed by the size of the country that finally became the new Pakistan. The bloodbath that followed may not have surprised many of the communal parties, but it deeply shocked Nehru who had always believed in his idealistic and romantic manner that all Indians were inherently tolerant. Just like Gandhi in Noakhali, he spent relentless weeks travelling across north India trying to calm the people and stop the carnage.’

  At midnight on 15 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of India in the Constituent Assembly. His poetic speech has become a part of national memory as only he could have looked at the moment and seen India’s ‘tryst with destiny’.

  In many ways he was a very unusual freedom fighter. Looking patrician even in rough homespun khadi, he did not rise from the poor but still had the greatest empathy for the life and struggles of the peasant. More than anyone else, he recognized that the fight was an economic one and that the only way poor Indians could prosper would be through freedom. His love for the land and its peo
ple was deep and abiding, and for him Bharat Mata was not just the land but even more so, the people. People sensed this and gave back a love and trust nearly as deep as the one they gave to the Mahatma.

  Unlike Gandhi, Nehru was a modern man, who thought of technology and scientific development as being essential for the progress of the nation. He was proud of our ancient history and culture but there was no nostalgic looking back to the past. He was also our finest ambassador to the world—charming, sophisticated and erudite, he put India on the international map. In those early, nervous years of our Independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the leader who made sure that India was put on the path of becoming a truly secular, democratic republic.

  Vallabhbhai Patel

  I had imagined that the government would shower bullets, but it indulged in a lathi charge, which is a new thing. The government it seems is civilized, and so it shows its sophistication in various ways. Yet this is only the beginning of war. We have yet to go a long way. Then why worry about going to jail?

  —Vallabhbhai Patel

  One day in 1915, four lawyers were playing bridge at the Gujarat Club in Ahmedabad. They were successful men, prosperous, in tailored suits and ties. Then a thin, frail-looking man wearing the clothes of a Kathiawar peasant, a homespun dhoti, long jacket and turban came up to their card table and politely requested that they come and listen to his lecture. One of the lawyers, Vallabhbhai Patel, turned his heavy-lidded eyes towards the man, listened, dismissed him as another crank and went back to his bridge game.

  However, he read a copy of the lecture and, out of curiosity, went and listened to this man from South Africa everyone was talking about. What he heard from Gandhi was a logical, carefully reasoned plan of action that he called Satyagraha. Logic and strategy always worked with Patel and he finally found the cause and the leader that he would follow for the rest of his life.

  Vallabhbhai Patel was born on 31 October 1875 into a small landowner family in Nadiad in Gujarat. His father Zaverbhai had fought in the Uprising of 1857 in the army of Rani Lakshmi Bai and Vallabhbhai grew up listening to stories of the brave exploits of the rebels. So patriotism and a commitment to the country was a family tradition and his older brother Vithalbhai too would join the freedom struggle. Both the brothers managed to go to England to study law. Vallabhbhai saved for years to get his barrister’s degree from the Middle Temple in London. He walked ten miles every day from his lodging to save the bus fare, then completed the course six months ahead and topped his class. On the day he got his degree he walked to the port and booked a passage to India. He never left his country again.

  The brothers chose different paths in the freedom movement. Vithalbhai believed in the old constitutional way where one gained political rights through joining the Legislative Assembly and by petitioning the government. He joined the Swaraj party with CR. Das and Motilal Nehru. For Vallabhbhai the inspiration came from Gandhi’s Satyagraha, which meant campaigns of boycott and civil disobedience, building up a mass movement.

  When Patel first met Gandhi, he was still talking about the strategy of Satyagraha that he had used in South Africa but he did not know if it would work in India. Patel became his organizer of two campaigns in rural Gujarat, at Kheda and Bardoli, where the strategy was tested on the ground. Patel gave up his lucrative law practice, threw his hats and suits into a bonfire, and donned the plain khadi dhoti and kurta. And that’s how we remember him—the straight, spare body and the calm visage with craggy features that seemed carved out of granite. He became Gandhi’s right-hand man, fund-raiser and party boss, the pragmatic realist who ran the unwieldy party machine with ruthless efficiency.

  In 1917 Gandhi was elected the president of the Gujarat Sabha and Patel became the secretary. A year later the farmers of Kheda District came to them for help. Heavy rains and floods had destroyed their crops and killed their cattle. They had requested the administration to annul the taxes but the officials had refused. Patel, a farmer’s son, knew what they were going through. He first petitioned the government once again and only after another refusal did he start the Satyagraha.

  The Kheda Satyagraha was a ‘No Tax’ campaign. Farmers were told not to pay any taxes but stay peaceful even if the government retaliated. Patel moved in among the villagers, living with the farmers and sharing their food, suffering all their daily deprivations. After Gandhi in Champaran, where the indigo planters had protested against the government’s exploitative policies, this was the first time that a leader had lived among the peasants and it gave them courage. The police was sent in, government agents seized land, crops and cattle, but the farmers did not yield. Finally the government gave in, an enquiry was held, the taxes were cancelled and the farmer’s properties returned. Gandhi was delighted at how well Patel had organized the Satyagraha and kept it peaceful in spite of great provocation.

  During the Non-cooperation Movement, Patel helped Gandhi with raising funds and organizing boycotts and demonstrations. He completely trusted Gandhi’s political instincts and was one of the few who supported him when he suspended the agitation after the violence at Chauri Chaura. The political scene became very quiet after this as Gandhi withdrew to concentrate on his social reform activities. Then the Satyagraha at Bardoli exploded on the national scene and this was completely Vallabhbhai Patel’s show.

  A bigger challenge came at Bardoli in 1928 and it caught the attention of the entire country. Officials regularly assessed the taxes to be paid by farmers and in Bardoli a new assessment by an official named Jayakar suddenly raised the taxes by thirty per cent. When the farmers protested, it was lowered to twenty-two per cent but even then it was much too high. Once again Patel moved into Bardoli, in the Surat District of Gujarat, and started a No Tax campaign. This time it was a long drawn out, nerve-wracking battle of wills between the farmers and the Bombay government. Land revenue was one of the biggest sources of earnings for the government and officials felt that if they gave in to the Bardoli farmers, then other regions would also make similar demands.

  At first sight, it was a highly unequal struggle. Hundreds of farmers were arrested and jailed. Land, crops, cattle and even carts and ploughs were confiscated. Trying to create a rift in the agitation, government began to offer concessions to farmers who paid up. Bands of armed Pathans were sent into villages to bully the farmers into paying and it took all of Patel’s persuasive skills to prevent the situation from turning violent. At his suggestion, whenever the government agents arrived, the farmers withdrew into their homes with their cattle, dismantled their carts and ploughs and buried them. By then the national press had begun to report about Bardoli and other regions began to join the protest. Factory workers in Bombay threatened to go on strike in support of the farmers.

  The most effective strategy was of social boycott. The farmers who were weakening found the whole village boycotting them. Even the families of government officers were not spared. Barbers, sweepers and washermen refused to work for them. They were not supplied with milk or vegetables unless they produced a chit from the local Satyagraha committee. Donations poured in from across the country as volunteers came to help. They published a daily report, Satyagraha Patrika, distributed free in the villages. Pamphlets were given out and women moved from house to house spreading the word. As a matter of fact, it was the women of Bardoli who anointed Vallabhbhai with the title of ‘Sardar’ that he carried with great pride for the rest of his life.

  The battle for the mind and heart of Bardoli went on for six long months. Patel was successful in keeping the peasants united in spite of their differences and divisions of caste and religion. The farmers began to migrate by the thousands to the neighbouring districts. Patel expected to be arrested, so Gandhi moved into Bardoli, ready to take his place. Meanwhile, Vithalbhai brought the situation at Bardoli to the notice of the Central Legislative Assembly and finally got the attention of the viceroy. An enquiry was held and taxes lowered to earlier levels, farmers were released from prison, and their land and p
roperty returned. Bardoli had won.

  After Chauri Chaura many had doubted that Satyagraha could work in a complex land like India. Champaran, Kheda and finally Bardoli proved that a peaceful mass movement could succeed if it was organized and controlled properly. It also built greater political awareness among peasants who realized that the Congress was willing to listen to their grievances and fight for their rights. With the efforts of Gandhi and Patel the Congress finally moved out of the drawing rooms of the cities and became a truly national party. Congress offices opened in every district as Gandhi led a planned effort to widen the membership of the party.

  Patel was beside Gandhi in every Satyagraha as one of the crucial organizers of campaigns across the huge landscape of India. Even when he disagreed with Gandhi, he never rebelled openly. In 1929 he was the favourite for the post of president of the Indian National Congress but Gandhi wanted Nehru, so Patel gracefully withdrew. Then in 1930 he got busy again, organizing the Dandi March, taking care of every detail from the route to the food and shelter for the marchers. He was arrested soon after. In 1931 he was elected the president of the party and jailed again in 1932. This time he shared his jail sentence with Gandhi at Yeravada prison in Poona. The two old friends spent time spinning at the charkha, having long discussions, and Gandhi taught him Sanskrit. In 1939, fearing that Subhas Chandra Bose would break up the party, Patel led the rebellion of the Working Committee by threatening to resign. In 1942 he was imprisoned at Ahmednagar Fort with other leaders and later said that he had a relaxed break reading and playing bridge.

  During the long and complex negotiations of the Cripps Mission and the Cabinet Mission, to discuss and finalize plans for the transfer of power from the British to Indians, Patel was one of the crucial players with Nehru and Maulana Azad. Jinnah had demanded the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, but Patel fought to keep the Hindu majority areas in India. He was also realistic enough to accept a partition of the country as being the only way to keep the country united, though he faced criticism from both Gandhi and Azad for this tough, realistic assessment. During the communal riots that followed, he worked ceaselessly to maintain peace. For instance, when the police in Delhi was accused of not protecting Muslims, he brought in south Indian army regiments to control the situation.