He became independent India’s first Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister, Minister for States, and Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Being Home Minister during the chaotic days after Partition was the hardest job in the cabinet, but Patel’s greatest contribution to a united India was as Minister for States. In 1947 the map of India was like a patchwork quilt with over five hundred princely states dotted across the subcontinent. Some were as large as provinces like Hyderabad and Kashmir, others just a cluster of villages, but they all had to be legally brought into the Indian Union. The maharaj as, raj as and nawabs had to sign the Instrument of Accession immediately. Except for Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir, all the states made a smooth transition from monarchy to democracy mainly because of the persuasive skills of this ‘Iron Man of India’. Clearly it was not easy to refuse the Sardar. In the case of Junagadh and Hyderabad, Patel used the threat of an armed invasion to bring the rulers in line. Only Kashmir has remained controversial till today.
On 30 January 1948, Patel was the last person to meet Gandhi before he was assassinated. He was devastated by the loss and was deeply hurt by a whispering campaign that accused him of not taking enough precautions for the Mahatma’s safety. In fact, he had been begging Gandhi to allow guards, but Gandhi, with his unswerving faith in ahimsa, had always refused. Patel’s health, already fragile, soon began to deteriorate and he died in Bombay on 15 December 1950.
During the crucial final years of the freedom movement the Congress party could not have done without the skills of Sardar Patel. He was the courageous, practical, disciplined and organizing core of the movement; the calm, practical balance to the charisma and passion of leaders like Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. If they could sway the people with their emotional speeches, he could make them nod and smile with his ironical comments. He was the party boss who kept the unwieldy machine of the Congress moving smoothly and was tough enough to keep its fractious members in line. Among all the leaders, his loyalty to Gandhi was absolute.
During those chaotic years of Partition, Patel kept the administration working by the pragmatic decision to continue with the the civil and police services. He was criticized for doing this because the ICS was considered loyal to the British and there were demands that they should all be sacked. Patel knew that at this crucial juncture he needed their skills to keep the country running and this foresight laid the foundation of our administrative services. If today we have a united country without feudal rulers, with democratic institutions and a functioning bureaucracy, it is because of a man the women of Bardoli recognized as the Sardar.
V.O. Chidambaram Pillai
He was ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’–the Tamilian who sailed the sea.
– M.P. Sivagyanam, biographer of V.O.C. Pillai
It was a special day in the coastal town of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. On 9 February 1949, the Governor General of India C. Rajagopalachari had come to launch a ship. To the cracking of a coconut, loud cheers and a band playing, the ship slid into the water and the watching crowd all read the name painted on its bow—Chidambaram. The ship had been named after V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, the man who took the Swadeshi Movement to the sea.
Vulaganathan Ottapidaram Chidambaram Pillai was born on 5 September 1872 at Ottapidaram in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. He was the son of Vulaganathan Pillai—a lawyer—and his wife Paramayee. He first studied in a primary school started by his father and then completed his schooling from St. Francis Xavier High School in Tuticorin. He studied law at Tiruchirapalli and then began his practice at the magistrate’s court in Ottapidaram.
Popularly known as ‘VOC’, Chidambaram Pillai often took on the cases of the poor, knowing very well that they would not be able to pay him high fees. He would at time plead cases even against his father who preferred more affluent clients. Soon Pillai began to protest about the corruption in the law court and was furious at being offered a bribe to withdraw a witness in a case. Then in 1900, when he proved corruption charges against three sub-magistrates, his father’s anger made him leave home and start practising law at Tuticorin.
Pillai joined the Indian National Congress and in 1905 he became involved in the Swadeshi campaign led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. When Pillai led the Swadeshi agitation in the Salem region, first his own foreign clothes, even pens, knives and combs went up in a bonfire. Then shops selling foreign goods were picketed and processions taken out against the partition of Bengal. He even walked out half-shaven from a barber’s shop on discovering that the man was using a foreign razor! Pillai travelled from town to town, giving passionate speeches and building awareness of the Swadeshi campaign, and soon the government took note of his activities.
Pillai had grown up near the sea and he now thought of the great tradition of south Indian maritime trade. At one time the ships of the Pallava and Chola kingdoms had voyaged across the Indian Ocean to reach places as far away as Cambodia and Java. Now the British steamship companies monopolized shipping along the eastern coast. Pillai had already started Swadeshi stores where Indian-made goods were sold, and now moving one step further, decided to compete with these shipping companies. When the news spread that he planned to start a shipping line, some of the wealthy local merchants came forward to help him with loans.
On 12 November 1906 V.O.C. Pillai formed the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company by renting two ships. Later he bought two ships—the SS Gaelia and SS Lawoe—and won the praise and support of Tilak and Aurobindo Ghose. The ships began regular service between Tuticorin and Colombo, carrying passengers and goods. So far this route had been hogged by the British India Steam Navigation Company and their local agent A&F Harvey. They had expected Pillai’s venture to fail but soon found they had a tough competitor. The British company first lowered its passenger fare to just one rupee; Pillai responded by charging a fare of eight annas. Unfortunately, the British company had deep pockets and began to offer free passage and Pillai’s ships began to run empty. By 1909 the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company was close to bankruptcy.
At this time Pillai had also begun trade-union activities and, in 1908, he led a strike at Coral Mills, demanding higher wages for the workers. This textile mill was also owned by A&F Harvey and at their complaint the administration moved swiftly and arrested Pillai. The response surprised everyone—there were violent protests in Tirunelveli and Tuticorin, and four people were killed in police firing. Panic struck the British and finally the textile company gave in and agreed to raise wages. However, Pillai was not released.
Pillai’s arrest and trial was also a result of the recent events in the Congress. As a supporter of Tilak, Pillai had attended the Surat Congress in 1907 with the poet Subramania Bharati and was present when the party split into Extremists and Moderates. This unfortunate division badly weakened the party and it became inactive for some years. The government took advantage of this sudden cessation of the Swadeshi Movement and arrested and jailed many leaders. Tilak was sent to the prison in Mandalay in Burma, and Pillai was arrested and kept at Coimbatore Jail.
There was an unprecedented public outcry at Pillai’s trial, with protests all across the region. Madras newspapers covered the trial proceedings and even the Ananda Bazar Patrika of Calcutta carried daily reports. Funds flowed in, not just from across the country but even from Tamils in South Africa. During the trial Pillai was charged with sedition; Subramania Bharati and the freedom fighter Subramania Siva appeared in his defence. When Pillai was found guilty, the severity of the sentence shocked the nation. He had been sentenced to forty years, the length of two life sentences, and was to be sent to the notorious Cellular Jail in the Andamans. Pillai appealed to the High Court. At the same time Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India wrote to the viceroy, Lord Minto, saying that he feared unrest in Tamil Nadu unless the sentence was reduced. The case finally went up to the Privy Council; the sentence was reduced to six years of rigorous imprisonment. By then this long and expensive legal battle had financially ruined Pillai’s family.
/> In Coimbatore Jail, Pillai was treated like a common criminal and forced to do hard labour. In unbearable heat he had to break stones, even pull an oil press in place of bullocks and was given little to eat. His health began to fail, and by the time he was released in December 1912, he was a broken man. Pillai had gone to prison a hero with huge crowds out in the street in his support. He came out to discover he had been forgotten. The country was quiet, Tilak was still in jail, the Swadeshi Movement that had created such excitement was over and there was no activity in a weakened Congress. His ships had been auctioned to pay off debts and the shipping company had been liquidated.
For the rest of his life Pillai continued to work in the Congress but struggled constantly with poverty and ill health. He completed his autobiography in Tamil verse that he had begun while in prison and now wrote erudite commentaries on Tamil classics and even translated English novels into Tamil. He carried on a long correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi, though he never quite approved of Gandhi’s Satyagraha.
His admirers used to call him ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’—the Tamil who sailed the sea—and ‘Chekkiluththa Chemmal’, the man who pulled an oil press for his people. V.O. Chidambaram Pillai died on 18 November 1936 at the Congress office at Tuticorin, a fitting place for the last goodbye of a man who showed India that with enterprise and courage Swadeshi could succeed.
Lajpat Rai
My friends, I must tell you that henceforth we should recognize it as a fundamental doctrine that the unity of the Hindus and Mohammedans will be a great asset to our political future.
—Lajpat Rai
The order of the judge was that the prisoner be kept in total isolation. Even when he went for a walk around the prison compound he had to stay within sight of the guards. No one was allowed to talk to him and in six months not a single visitor had come to meet him. To make this solitude even more severe, he was not allowed any newspapers and his letters were heavily censored. The guards would have been very surprised to discover that the quiet, lonely man in fact had many friends at the jail in Mandalay in Burma.
Every morning before he came to shave the prisoner, a Bengali barber would memorize the headlines from the day’s papers and give a quick report while he soaped and scraped the man’s face. Later in the day when the water carrier came to replenish the drinking water, he would pull out a newspaper from the mouth of the water pot and the prisoner would take a quick look at the news from his homeland. The guards could keep him away from people but not companions. Lajpat Rai had a pair of kittens, a puppy and a family of mynahs to keep him entertained. The six months of solitary confinement were soon over.
Lajpat Rai was born in the village of Dhudike in the Ferozepur District of Punjab on 28 January 1865. His father Munshi Radha Kishan Azad was a schoolteacher and a widely read man who was interested in many religions. Lajpat Rai’s love of books and interest in education can be traced back to his admiration for his father. He said about his father, ‘In India, I have never come across a better teacher. He never taught, but helped the students to learn in their own way.’ Throughout his life he was involved in founding schools and colleges and at times even donated his savings to them.
Educated in Ludhiana and Lahore, like his contemporaries Tilak and Gokhale, Lajpat Rai qualified as a lawyer. He practised law at Hissar and Ludhiana, but he was always more interested in education, social reform and the freedom movement. He had an open, liberal mind, so even though he was proud of India’s culture, he did not think everything in Indian society was worth admiring. He knew that the caste system, the state of the untouchables and condition of women, all needed improvement and for him the answer lay in education. If one was illiterate, one accepted whatever the priests and upper castes said, but education gave one the confidence to question and fight for one’s rights. He said pragmatically, ‘Everything ancient was not perfect or ideal. We do not want to be mere copies of our ancestors. We wish to be better.’
So in the schools he founded, education was a blend of the ancient and modern. He was keen to revive good traditions like the guru-shishya parampara where the teacher took personal care of his pupils and students were taught about Indian culture. At the same time subjects like science, technology and economics were also in the curriculum. He was a founder of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools, the Punjab National Bank and an insurance company.
It is this spirit of enquiry that drew Lajpat Rai to the Arya Samaj Movement of Swami Dayanand Saraswati that was trying to reform society and remove superstitious religious practices. At this time there was a wave of such progressive reform movements led by enlightened and courageous men like Rammohan Roy in Bengal and G.R. Ranade in Maharashtra. Dayanand wanted to modernize society and preached the equality of all; he fought the domination of priests, was against expensive religious rituals and completely rejected the caste system. He wanted women to be educated and approved of the marriage of widows. Within the Arya Samaj there was no worship of idols, all religious rituals were simplified and worship did not need the intervention of priests. Lajpat Rai was still in college when he joined the Arya Samaj and it became a lifelong passion.
Many years before Gandhi began his work among the Harijans, Lajpat Rai was at work among the Dalits, running schools for their children, visiting their homes and sharing their meals as he tried to understand their problems. He was always ready to go to the rescue of people facing a crisis. He worked in the villages during the famine of 1896 when government measures failed to help the peasants. During a terrible earthquake in Punjab he was up in the hills of Kangra, rescuing people buried under rocks. He founded the Servants of the People Society in 1921 to gather a team of young people who took social work seriously. His popularity soared and soon people were calling him ‘Punjab Kesari’ and ‘Sher-e-Punjab’—the Lion of Punjab.
Lajpat Rai joined the Congress party when he was twenty-three and soon was one of its most powerful orators, travelling all across north India, addressing public rallies. He made sure his voice was heard loud and clear. In 1897, at a time when famine was ravaging villages, the Lahore administration planned to install a statue of Queen Victoria to celebrate the golden anniversary of her reign. Lajpat Rai caustically commented that the Queen would be remembered with more love and loyalty if the money were used to help children orphaned by the famine. His sway over public opinion was so strong that the administration became unnerved and the proposal was quietly abandoned.
Lajpat Rai was the ‘Lal’ of the ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ trio with ‘Bal’ Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra ‘Pal’. They were dubbed the Extremists within the Congress party as they were in favour of a more aggressive form of protest against the government. He agreed with Tilak that the time had come to take the freedom movement to the people and start an India-wide campaign of boycott and Swadeshi. His reply to all talk about slow, quiet, constitutional protests was an impatient comment: ‘No nation was worthy of any political status if it could not distinguish between begging political rights and claiming them.’ However, in spite of being called an Extremist, he was never keen on extreme measures, always preferring dialogue and compromise.
Just after the partition of Bengal, he proposed a giant demonstration of a lakh people at the Benaras session of the Congress saying that it ‘will carry more weight and will impress the people in England more than any number of congresses’. Lajpat Rai wanted action, but he was not keen on a split between the Moderates and the Extremists in the party, and worked hard to avoid it at the Surat session in 1907. Like Tilak he knew that a divided party would only play into the hands of the government, but others did not listen to his sensible advice. He was deeply disappointed when all his efforts at mediation failed and the session had to be abandoned after unruly scenes. He knew such a break would only weaken the nationalist movement and he was right, as for nearly a decade the party went into decline. It would take the public outrage at the Jallian walla Bagh massacre and the appearance of Gandhi to revive it.
Right after Surat, La
jpat Rai was arrested for leading a revolt by farmers in Punjab against the raising of water taxes and land revenue. He spent six months in solitary confinement at the jail in Mandalay in Burma, where later Tilak would spend six years. He kept a diary that he later published as The Story of My Deportation. On being released he went to England in 1914 as a representative of the Congress and was planning to tour Europe when the First World War broke out. So he left for the United States where he carried on his propaganda work to make people aware of the nationalist movement in India. Working with great energy he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America, wrote in newspapers and started a journal Young India. At that time Lala Hardayal had started the Ghadar party in America with Punjabi immigrants and Lajpat Rai also worked with him.
When Lajpat Rai returned to India in February 1920, he found Punjab traumatized by the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh and a country in an uproar of protest. He was soon at the centre of the struggle and was elected the president of the Congress at Calcutta. After Tilak died in August, Lajpat Rai began to tour the country to raise money for the Tilak Swaraj Fund. When the Non-cooperation agitation was started by Gandhi, Lajpat Rai joined it and Punjab was next only to Bengal in its Swadeshi spirit and the effectiveness of its well-organized demonstrations. However, Lajpat Rai was not totally convinced by Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa and was a bit wary of the cult of adoration and obedience that the members of the Congress were building around Gandhi.
A Flag, a Song and a Pinch of Salt Page 11
