7
Difficult Years, 1944–46
The year 1944 dawned with the prospects of Allied victory in the war brightening. The tide had not quite turned on the Burma front—it would be June or July before the Japanese would abandon all plans they might have had of invading India and begin withdrawing. However, their supply lines were becoming impossibly stretched, and the supply bases were being relentlessly bombed by the Americans. The famine had abated, but there was little else that made the new year any different from the past one. The bomb scare continued in Calcutta, and hordes of people fled the city for the countryside to escape being bombed. In the parts of India other than Bengal and Assam, the war was something far away that the people just read about in the morning papers and heard over the radio. Meanwhile in Bengal, after the illness and death of Herbert, R.G. Casey, an engineer and businessman, took over as Governor in January 1944.
The abating of the famine freed Dr Mookerjee from his relief duties, with the result that he could have a breather. In the Amritsar session of the Hindu Mahasabha in December 1943, he explained1 in detail his rationale behind joining the Mahasabha and not the Congress. He said:
So long as communal considerations loom large in the field of Indian administration and the Anglo–Muslim conspiracy continues, the Hindu Mahasabha must function as an active and fearless political organization which can both achieve the rights of Hindus and of India as a whole. So long as a third party remains in India and an aggressive anti-national anti-Hindu Muslim League party holds its sway over the Muslim masses, enjoying the favours of the British Govt and planning to veto the elementary rights of the majority, Hindus for their sheer existence must have their own political organization to fight for their own rights and liberties. The political goal of Hindu Mahasabha is complete independence of India. It stands for joint electorate, if necessary with reservation of seats. It asks for no special favours for Hindus in any part of the country. Its aim and policy are consistent with the welfare of India as a whole.
The remarkable similarity between these political goals as espoused by Dr Mookerjee and as subsequently enshrined in the Indian Constitution some six years later cannot be missed, and points to the foresight of the man.
At the beginning of the year, he made some very important entries in his diary, beginning on 2 January 1944. These entries, though long and detailed, were far from continuous—the next entry in his English diary is found on 21 October 1944 and the next one on 6 December 1945. These were not about contemporary events; they chronicled his entry into politics in 1939 and the years thereafter—the despotic and highly communal rule of the Muslim League–Krishak Praja coalition nominally led by Fazlul Haq, followed by the subsequent Progressive Coalition led by the selfsame Fazlul Haq, in which Dr Mookerjee was the finance minister, and the antics of Governor Herbert.
The Muslim League had adopted its Pakistan Resolution, based on Jinnah’s two-nation theory, at its Lahore session in 1940. No one had the foggiest idea of what this Pakistan would be like. The Mahasabha was the only organization to expressly protest the resolution. Here they were up against not only the Muslim League but also the ambivalence of the Congress who suffered from the grand delusion that they represented Hindus and Muslims alike. Those who have seen the telefilm based on Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, produced and screened more than fifty years later, would have noted how the Muslim League man was forcefully declaring that the Muslim League represents the Muslims and the Congress the Hindus; and how the popular character actor A.K. Hangal, playing the part of a Congressman, was pathetically whining, trying to convince him that the Congress was for Hindus and Muslims alike. In fact, the Muslim League man was speaking the truth, or at least what then was the truth. Now the tragedy was that the Congress rode almost exclusively on Hindu support, and Hindus supported them without reservation; but the Congress would not lift a little finger to help the Hindus when they were faced with a Muslim fundamentalist (the term was not current then) onslaught. In fact, much earlier the Congress had adopted, inwardly of course, the maxims as articles of basic belief, ‘A Muslim can do no wrong,’ and even if he does, ‘Thou shalt not speak ill of Muslims lest thou be called communal.’ The Congress, therefore, could not or did not take a resolute stand against Pakistan, although Nehru had earlier dubbed the idea ‘fantastic nonsense’.
Dr Mookerjee, as a Mahasabha leader, was among the first to protest the idea and take his struggle to the streets. Even earlier, at his behest an ‘Anti-Communal Award Day’ was observed by the Mahasabha. This was against the 1932 Communal Award made by the British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald, regarding which the Congress had taken the inexplicable stand of ‘neither accepting nor rejecting’. The worst features of the award were that it gave separate blocks of seats to Hindus and scheduled castes (while no such separation was made between Sunni and Shia Muslims), and reserved a disproportionately large number of seats for ‘Europeans’. The idea was to let Europeans act as the balancing group between the Hindus and the Muslims. It is with the support of this European bloc that Governor Herbert did the mischief of installing a Muslim League ministry in Bengal in 1943.
In a huge rally held at the Corporation Park in Dacca, Dr Mookerjee called upon Hindus to unite against the communal politics of the League and the shameful capitulation of the Congress before the unfair demands of the League. In the 1942 Lucknow session of the Mahasabha, Dr Mookerjee had declared that the country will fight till the last drop of blood against the kowtowing to the Muslims by the Congress. Then again, in the 1943 Amritsar session of the Mahasabha, he declared that no discussion with the League, which premised on their Lahore resolution, was possible.
In the political firmament of Bengal, there was no Hindu leader at this time to match Dr Mookerjee in stature, despite the fact that he had entered active politics just five years ago. Subhas Chandra Bose had left India in 1941, and Sarat Chandra Bose was incarcerated in faraway Coonoor. His constitutional politics, his refusal to kowtow to unreasonable demands of the Muslim League and his right-wing views were making an impression on the people.
Meanwhile, something sinister was happening within the Congress. Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, better known as C.R. or Rajaji, a Tamil Brahmin, was the most prominent leader in the Congress from south India, which was then almost synonymous with the Madras Presidency. In a meeting of the Congress legislators of the suspended assembly of Madras Presidency held in April 1942, he came out with a suggestion that the party accept the principle of partition as the basis for an understanding with the Muslim League. This suggestion was roundly criticized and summarily rejected in the AICC meeting at Allahabad later in the same month. Rajaji resigned from the Congress Working Committee and his seat in the suspended Madras assembly, and declared that he would henceforth propagate these views of his as an independent political worker. Shortly thereafter, Gandhi’s Quit India movement started and all the first-rung leaders of the Congress, including Gandhi, were herded into jail, and the C.R. formula entered cold storage. Rajaji, however, was not sent to jail because of his resignations and his opposition to the Quit India proposal.
Gandhi, with the other Congress leaders, remained incarcerated in jail right through 1943 and into 1944. The British released him on 6 May 1944, principally because his health was deteriorating and the British wanted no part of the responsibility for anything untoward happening. Meanwhile, Rajaji had been busy canvassing support for his pet formula, and had time to work on Gandhi after his release. In July 1944, he advanced a refined version of his offer of 1942 so that the League’s claim for separation might be accepted to secure the ‘installation of a national government’.
This C.R. formula proposed a settlement with the League in return for its cooperation with the Congress in the ‘formation of a provisional interim government’. The basis of the formula was Rajaji’s belief, not altogether mistaken, that firstly the Congress’s opposition to the war effort was wrong; and secondly, the Muslim League could not be ignored any longer as being the voice of the majority of the Muslims of India (as the Congress had sought to do through Nehru’s famous ‘fall in line’ theory of 1937). C.R.’s advocacy of his formula ultimately resulted in Gandhi finally accepting the modified formula, and on this basis, he proceeded to start a round of talks with Jinnah. Accepting a political theory, which happened to have elements of truth, from a party colleague like Rajaji is one thing, but publicly trying to convince a determined and formidable adversary like Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a totally different kettle of fish.
Meanwhile, Dr Mookerjee and other Mahasabha leaders had heard rumours that Gandhi, who had since been released, was going to surrender to Jinnah on the issue of Pakistan. They had a meeting of the All-India Working Committee in Delhi and Savarkar expressed his definite view that such a move would soon take place. Soon after Gandhiji’s release, Sir Badridas Goenka and Nalini Ranjan Sarker went to see him in Bombay. Dr Mookerjee specially asked them to tell Gandhi that there should be no attempt to appease the Muslim League, and no commitment of any kind should be made before the Congress leaders were released, particularly without consulting the Hindu Sabha regarding Bengal. Both came back to Calcutta and said that they were definitely given to understand that there would be no talk of any compromise, and Gandhi asked everyone to remain fully assured on this point. When Savarkar raised his doubts at the meeting of the All-India Working Committee, Dr Mookerjee, based on what he had learnt from Goenka and Sarker, told him that there was no possibility of any such commitment at all. Before Dr Mookerjee left Delhi, however, he was startled to find an announcement that the famous C.R. formula conceding the principle of Pakistan was secretly approved by Gandhi while he was undergoing his fast at Poona in 1942, and negotiations with Jinnah had started on that basis.
Dr Mookerjee issued a statement2 from Allahabad on 10 July, strongly protesting this act of surrender and betrayal. ‘The real surprise, painful indeed,’ he said, ‘is that Gandhiji should have allowed his name to be dragged into this amazing offer which is a virtual acceptance of Pakistan.’ Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the scheduled castes, was also strongly critical3 of the formula. ‘Rajaji’s plan mingles political issues with religious issues. There is a trap which asks for help in the struggle for independence, baited with thoughts about creating Pakistan. The ancient kings had marriage alliances with neighbouring states to get help in case of an attack by a foreign country. In the bargain the bridegroom was never nice and there was no money in it either.’
After Dr Mookerjee returned to Calcutta he tried to organize public opinion but found a great change in the minds of those who were responsible for moulding public opinion. The Communist Party which all along had played a shameless role in attacking the foundation of Indian nationalism was applauding the move taken by Rajagopalachari. The Mahasabha’s first meeting at the Calcutta University Institute was broken by the communists in an act of abject goondaism.
Dr Mookerjee went to Poona in August 1944 to deliver the inaugural address at the Tilak anniversary. There was a record attendance at the public meeting which he addressed, and he criticized Gandhi’s new move as being highly detrimental to the interests of Hindus and also to the country as a whole. He met Gandhi at Wardha on his way back to Calcutta and had a long talk with him in the presence of Rajagopalachari. He warned him that Jinnah would never agree to what he had offered and he would merely lower the cause of Indian unity and nationalism by his proposed surrender.
Gandhi was not able to offer any convincing reply, except to take refuge in mysticism and answer4 that, ‘at momentous periods of his life he had acted according to his inner voice which made him understand what was right and proper’.
On 17 July 1944 Gandhi wrote to Jinnah asking for a meeting. Jinnah wrote back informing him that he would be glad to receive Gandhi at his residence in Bombay sometime in the middle of August. Dr Mookerjee, by way of a last-ditch attempt to stall these talks, sent Manoranjan Chaudhuri, a party colleague, as an emissary to Gandhi with a letter dated 19 July 1944, together with supporting papers. In the letter, he emphasized how undesirable any partition of the country would be and entreated Gandhi to stand up to Jinnah and oppose him. He said he was sure that neither the British government nor the Muslim League would accept Gandhi’s proposal of transfer of power, but Jinnah would later use these proposals as a handle to extract further concessions. Dr Mookerjee also reminded Gandhi of the strong opinion against partition that the latter had expressed in an issue of the periodical Harijan of 1943, and requested him to adhere to that stand; and also that many Muslims in India still considered Pakistan to be a ridiculous, unacceptable, impracticable idea. In such circumstances if Gandhi sat in talks with Jinnah as the representative of Muslims in India, then that would provide an indelible stamp of approval on the man and sadden and disappoint all nationalist Muslims.
Gandhi, however, seemed to pay no attention to the letter. The talks took place for eighteen days, beginning on 9 September 1944 at Jinnah’s palatial residence on Mount Pleasant Road, Malabar Hill, Bombay, and predictably failed. Gandhi’s apparent wooing and Rajaji’s near-capitulation bent before the iron will of Jinnah. He pretended to just rubbish it, but must have been secretly pleased that Gandhi and Rajaji had come so close to accepting his dream. In short, Jinnah would not budge an inch, but the Congress had meanwhile walked quite a few miles to meet him, and there was no way it could backtrack. The Congress and Gandhi had very nearly conceded Pakistan, and they would take another three years to do it wholly. In Lord Linlithgow’s words, ‘The Hindus were doomed because Jinnah was made great . . . by the Congress.’5
Gandhi’s overture to Jinnah not only made Jinnah great but also did great harm to Bengal in particular, in that it drove a large number of Muslim leaders who were still resisting League domination, towards the League, as Dr Mookerjee had correctly predicted. This happened not only in Bengal but in other provinces as well. But its effect in League-ruled Muslim-majority Bengal was most detrimental. In fact, after Herbert’s misadventure of dismissing the Haq ministry and installing Nazimuddin, things were going very badly for Nazimuddin. Suhrawardy’s mishandling of the famine and Dr Mookerjee’s exposure of the same before the whole world made matters worse for them—so much so that Wavell wanted to dismiss the cabinet and impose direct Governor’s rule under Section 93. When things were going so badly for the League, Gandhi’s concessions to Jinnah gave them a sudden shot in the arm, a burst of oxygen. The opposition coalition party had with them about fifty Muslims who were opposing the Muslim League and sat with them in the Opposition, all determined to oust the League. When these Muslim members found that Gandhi himself was going to make a compromise with Jinnah and recognize the League as the most powerful champion of Muslim interests, ‘they thought it wise and prudent’—so says Dr Mookerjee’s diary—‘to desert us and join the League. Thus, member after member ran away from us and our opposition Coalition Party stood the chance of being disintegrated.’
Dr Mookerjee also found that many of the newspapers which had for so long opposed the Muslim League and had worked with the ‘nationalist elements’—meaning the anti-League Muslims—were now faced with the fact that Gandhi (which meant the Congress) was going to compromise with Jinnah. As a result, they thought it wise and prudent to join the League. Thus, the Gandhi–Jinnah talks strengthened the Muslim League in Bengal, and the success achieved by Dr Mookerjee in consolidating all such nationalist elements was largely ruined.
In December 1944, Dr Mookerjee presided over the Mahasabha session at Bilaspur. He was fully aware of the political, social and economic aspects of the problem before the country, as also of the urgency of establishing direct contact with the masses. But he failed to collect a band of enthusiastic workers who would accept the task of carrying out the Mahasabha’s policy and programme as ‘the mission of their lives’. Moreover, many undesirable persons had taken hold of the organization in different parts of India, as we shall see later in this chapter. In fact, in a letter6 addressed to Leopold Amery on 1 July 1945, Lord Wavell, the viceroy who had succeeded Linlithgow, observed, ‘The Mahasabha is a curious body. Many of its rank and file seem to be Congressmen, and on big political issues will follow Gandhi rather than S.P. Mookerjee or Savarkar.’ Wavell was right—as was proved in the elections to the Bengal assembly held later in December 1945. Wavell was also critical of Dr Mookerjee personally, and called him ‘bitterly communal’—but by all accounts, he was a poor judge of character; and for that and other reasons he eventually jockeyed himself into such a position that both the Congress and the Muslim League wanted him out. Attlee, the new British Prime Minister, had remarked about him, ‘A great man in many ways, you know, but a curious silent bird, and I don’t think silent people get on very well with Indians who are very loquacious.’ Eventually he was sent home in a letter which made Wavell, upon reading, remark to his aide Abell, ‘They have sacked me, George.’
Around this time, Dr Mookerjee added two significant achievements to his list. First, he founded two daily newspapers, one called Nationalist in English and the other Hindusthan in Bengali, towards the end of 1944. Dr Mookerjee’s strong words used in the Nationalist caused Governor Casey to write to Viceroy Wavell that Dr Mookerjee’s articles were anti-British and anti-Allies. Around this time (December 1944), he brought out a volume titled ‘Awake Hindusthan’, which was a collection of his speeches delivered at various places all over India, from Shillong to Lyallpur (now in Pakistani Punjab) and from Ludhiana to Madura.
By June 1945, Lord Wavell had unfolded a plan and the Congress leaders were released from jail one by one to enable them to participate in the discussions on the plan. Dr Mookerjee observes in his diary that after being released, the Congress leaders made a few positive and strident utterances that projected them as pro-Hindu leaders (which Patel, among them, truly was, but very few of the others). Nehru and Patel completely identified themselves with the events of 1942. Unlike Gandhi, they did not raise the question of whether the people were in favour of non-violence or whether they advocated violence. The defenceless common people had not revolted thus for independence since the First War of Independence of 1857. The leaders extolled the people for their heroism and sacrifice and sympathized with their trials and tribulations. This approach evoked a new response among the Hindu masses. They protested vociferously against Pakistan and the Muslim League. The strong terms they used—especially Patel and Nehru—to criticize Jinnah and the League made many feel that the Congress had, at long last, really abandoned its policy of pampering the Muslims and indulging Jinnah. Actions and words like these would later prompt front-ranking Mahasabha leaders like Gokul Chand Narang of Punjab, Mehr Chand Khanna of NWFP, Dr Tripathi of Bihar and a few more to defect to the Congress.
Dr Mookerjee watched with great regret the phenomenon of this shift of almost the total support base of the Mahasabha to the Congress as a result of this clever move by the Congress leaders. He succinctly analyses the same in a diary entry which he wrote during his illness at Madhupur in January 1946. He also observes that although the Congress leaders proclaimed that they were against the formation of Pakistan, they were in reality evading the decision regarding the partition of the country under the garb of self-determination. As to the role of the press, they not only refrained from bringing this inconsistency out into the open, they also tried to misinform the people in many ways. The people of the country, particularly the Hindus, who had become almost obsessed with the idea of gaining independence at any cost, failed to analyse this issue in depth. Since the Congress leaders repeatedly proclaimed that there would be no compromise on Pakistan, the people felt that the Congress had accepted the tenets of the Mahasabha, and did not see any need for a separate existence of the same.
How wrong they were! Dr Mookerjee, in his diary entry on 10 January 1946, gives vent to his frustration at this abandonment by the Hindus of the Mahasabha which, under his leadership, had worked indefatigably for the Hindu cause. He minces no words and writes completely without any concern for political correctness. How could, he asks himself referring to the Congress, an organization which was built on Hindu support, consider it a sin to uphold Hindu interests and fight another organization (referring obviously to the League) which was dedicated to establishing Muslim dominance? What could be more tragic than the fact that Hindus failed to understand this simple truth despite their intellectual and financial resources?
During all this, on 21 August 1945, the central government announced central and provincial elections in the coming winter. It appears from a secret India Office document dated 11 January 1946 that there had already been a decisive swing towards the Muslim League in Bengal, which Jinnah had virtually won over, and that accordingly the League was poised to emerge from the elections with greatly enhanced strength and prestige. The provincial elections of 1946 predictably resulted in a resounding success for the League, which increased its seats from thirty-nine in 1937 to 115 in a house of 250. Suhrawardy, who was unanimously elected the Muslim League party leader in the assembly, formed a ministry and became the new Prime Minister of Bengal on 24 April 1946.
The League had, of course, meanwhile further consolidated its position among the Muslims, and made the Hindu–Muslim polarization even stronger. The group known as ‘nationalist Muslims’ had begun to dwindle after Gandhi and C.R.’s ill-fated overture to Jinnah in 1944, and by this time the polarization was almost complete, barring a few like Maulana Azad or Syed Nausher Ali of Bengal. Its line was totally and stridently communal, anti-Hindu and pro-Pakistan, and there was no hypocrisy about their communalism. Abul Hashim, the general secretary of the Bengal unit of the League, a left-inclined Muslim leader from Burdwan, one of the westernmost districts of Bengal, had put forth his views in a fiery pamphlet titled ‘Let Us Go to War’. In this task, he had help from his communist colleagues, among whom he particularly mentioned Nikhil Chakravartti7 in his memoirs. The absence of Congress leaders during the war (they were all in jail), the death of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan of Punjab and the weak-kneed, wavering politics of Fazlul Haq in Bengal helped the Muslim League in this regard. Sir Sikandar, the powerful and charismatic leader of the Unionist Party (basically a pro-British, trans-religious party of rural landlords), was very popular in Punjab. As for Haq, he constantly vacillated between stridently anti-League and pro-League positions and finally reapplied to join the Muslim League in 1945. As Dr Mookerjee had said of him once, ‘Haq was at once an asset and a liability of no mean order.’
Now we come to a short but tumultuous phase of Dr Mookerjee’s life, the closing months of 1945, which were as hectic as they were frustrating, and which finally took a physical toll on him. This was the period of Dr Mookerjee’s election campaign of 1945 for the Central Assembly elections, interspersed with the incidents in Calcutta connected with the Indian National Army (INA) trials.
The Mahasabha was relatively more powerful in Bengal than elsewhere, so everyone expected it to fare better there. But events took a different turn. Apart from the loss of the support base, Dr Mookerjee’s Mahasabha colleagues had started to waver. After Sarat Bose’s release from jail, Dr Mookerjee had tried very hard with him to work out an arrangement of seat-sharing in order to avoid the division of Hindu votes in the coming elections. This, however, did not work out. Dr Mookerjee started the election campaign for his party in late October 1945 after the seat-sharing talks with Sarat Bose broke down. The Hindu electorate, however, answered decisively against any splitting of their votes, by casting all their votes in favour of the Congress. So much so that a complete nonentity called Nagendra Nath Mukhopadhyay from the Hooghly district, fighting on a Congress ticket from the Calcutta Suburbs constituency, trounced Dr Mookerjee securing 10,216 votes to Dr Mookerjee’s mere 346. The Congress swept the non-Muslim constituencies, and the Muslim League the Muslim ones. Total communalization of the electorate thus took place and the former’s grand delusion of representing Hindus and Muslims alike was shattered. Their few remaining nationalist Muslims drew almost a complete blank in the Muslim constituencies. The circumstances relating to this election and its campaign have been dealt with in detail later in this chapter.
Dr Mookerjee observed with great bitterness in his diary two aspects of this period: Sarat Bose’s intransigence and ultimate refusal in the matter of seat-sharing with the Mahasabha for the Bengal Provincial Assembly election due in 1945; and the manner in which his Mahasabha colleagues and people supposedly politically close to it had behaved in the run-up to and the aftermath of the election and defected to the Congress. His brief friction with the younger of the Bose brothers, Subhas, in 1940 during the elections to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation was far exceeded by his frustration with the elder, Sarat, five years later in 1945. Sarat Bose had been incarcerated in far-off Coonoor in Madras Presidency for nearly four years, and was released from captivity on 14 September 1945. There had been no certainty about his release—Casey, the Governor of Bengal, opposed it till the end—and Dr Mookerjee had already started talks about seat-sharing with Kiran Sankar Ray and his faction of the Congress. Sarat Bose’s release, however, altered the picture and Dr Mookerjee had to start talks afresh with him. In this he found the former quite an egotist and ‘fond only of talking’. Apparently, Sarat Bose called Jawaharlal Nehru all kinds of names.8 These remarks, as Dr Mookerjee had rightly observed, were both rude and irrelevant.
As to seat-sharing between the Mahasabha and the Congress, Dr Mookerjee appears to have been really fed up with Sarat Bose. He records in his diary that the tumultuous welcome that the latter received in Bombay after being released from prison had apparently gone to his head, and he had started comparing himself to Gandhi.9 He acted strangely regarding seat-sharing, having first said that he would leave two seats out of the six general seats for the Mahasabha, then backtracking from the statement and using sarcastic and critical words about Dr Mookerjee in a speech at Deshbandhu Park. Leonard Gordon, biographer of the Bose brothers, also agrees that he could not make up his mind about seat-sharing and had vacillated in this regard. However, once it was certain that there would be no seat-sharing between the Congress and the Mahasabha, Sarat Bose became consumed with defeating Dr Mookerjee, and filed nomination papers from both Burdwan Division and Calcutta when he came to know that the latter might run from either of these two constituencies. He called the election to the Calcutta Suburbs constituency, from which Dr Mookerjee finally contested, the ‘Key Fight’ in India. He managed to do the defeating and upstaging, as the Hindu electorate en masse chose him and the Congress over the Mahasabha to prevent the splitting of Hindu votes, but he totally failed in respect of the so-called nationalist Muslim voters who, together with the communal Muslims, en bloc voted for the League. Gordon rightly observes that ‘the results of the December election must have brought Sarat Bose some joy and a lot of tears’.
Regarding the perfidy of his colleagues and political friends, Dr Mookerjee quotes quite a few examples in his Bengali diary. He specially mentions Kshitish Chandra Neogy, Debendranath Mukherjee, Sanat Kumar Roy Chaudhury and Ananda Mohan Poddar of Bengal, Gokul Chand Narang of Punjab, Mehr Chand Khanna of the Frontier Province, Maheswar Dayal Seth of Awadh, Roy Saheb Arora, Dr Tripathi of Bihar, Panchanathan, Reddy and Dr Naidu of Madras Presidency among those who deserted the Mahasabha as soon as they perceived that the Congress was growing in strength.
In Bengal, Dr Mookerjee’s own constituency, Calcutta Suburbs, comprised forty-four municipalities and an electorate of 36,000 spread over the districts of 24 Parganas, Hooghly and Howrah. He had been told that it would be easy to handle this constituency. Things, however, turned out quite differently. To begin with, the Mahasabha was not very strong in any part of the constituency. Second, a sizeable section of the press was very hostile. Besides, two fairly popular news dailies—one Bengali and the other English—from the same house, both traditionally pro-Congress, as it seemed, appeared to be spreading false propaganda and canards against him, surpassing all limits of decency and all tenets of ethical journalism. Dr Mookerjee observes that while such things are bound to happen during elections, there ought to be a limit to deceitful propaganda, and the two newspapers exceeded this limit. They began spreading rumours, that he was a traitor and had vested interests; that the Mahasabha could do nothing good for Bengal since, like the League, it was also an enemy of the country; that during the struggle of 1942, the Mahasabha had helped the government, and so on. Personal animosity against him came to the forefront.
His opponent was the Hooghly Congress leader Nagendra Nath Mukhopadhyay, a political pygmy compared to him. The Congress started proclaiming that it did not matter who the better candidate was, but to maintain the predominance of the Congress as an organization, Dr Mookerjee should be defeated at all costs.
Dr Mookerjee in his Bengali diary rues the fact that while he did not expect any reward for what he had done for the Hindus and for Bengal during the last six years, he never thought that the Congress would make it their main objective to annihilate him. The Congress neither had the courage nor capacity to put up a candidate against Jinnah, and yet that very Congress, the prestige of whose leaders he had tried his utmost to uphold over the last three or four years during their captivity, was now going all out to defeat him.
He also records that while he could not find much support for the Mahasabha, he did get some support as an individual because of his contribution to society. Those who were comparatively elderly and understood the problems of Bengal were surprised at the hostility of the Congress towards him. The younger, new enthusiasts, who fervently supported the Congress, were dead against him.
Then the INA trials started in Delhi. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, after his escape from India in January 1941 had travelled to Nazi Germany and thence to Japan in two submarines. Then he travelled to South East Asia with the victorious advancing Japanese army and mobilized the Indian POWs in the Japanese POW camps into an army which he named the Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army (INA). The British called it the traitor army and, after the British victory, decided to court-martial them. Now, the Congress did a neat volte-face with them. In 1939, Gandhi had told Subhas that they must sail in different boats, and in 1943 Jawaharlal Nehru had declared that if Subhas Bose entered India with the Japanese he would fight him with sword in hand. Now, sensing the mood of the populace, the Congress completely sided with the accused of the INA, and threw itself into the trial in their support. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, the renowned barrister, was engaged to defend the accused, whom the British seemed determined to hang. Nehru, who was a qualified barrister but had never practised, and by then had presumably forgotten all the law that he learnt in the Inns of Court, donned his gown and stood by the side of Sir Tej Bahadur and drew enormous applause by this gesture. However, he did not really argue on their behalf. As Leonard Gordon wryly remarks, ‘Among Indian nationalists, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been extremely critical of Subhas Bose from 1939 to 1945, found it easier to deal with him in death [as Gordon had presumed] than in life.’
The trials invoked an enormous response all over India and, expectedly, particularly in Bengal which the Congress was quick to take advantage of. Dr Mookerjee opposed this and pointed out the inconsistencies in their stand. In a large meeting held in Calcutta in which the issue of the INA was raised, Dr Mookerjee spoke on the contradictions between the ideals of the INA and the Congress’s stand on non-violence. Everyone lauded his speech. The election meeting was attended by about 40,000–50,000 people. He expressed his views, taking care to steer clear of personal accusations and spoke about how those who had joined the Congress out of opportunism and were deriding him for being a traitor had in 1942, either made themselves scarce or had managed to get released from jail by signing bonds. He told the people that both Sarat Babu and he could work for the country simultaneously. If Bengal had no need for Dr Mookerjee and the Hindus did not need his services any longer, he could divert his energies in some other direction. He said he did not believe that he was indispensable for the country. He had rendered whatever he was capable of and he had done it selflessly and willingly without expectations of any reward. If his services were no longer required, he would gracefully accept it because there was not an iota of self-interest in whatever he did. He got a big round of applause for the speech.
On 22 November 1945, Dr Mookerjee had been out campaigning in the eastern suburbs of Calcutta for election to the Central Legislative Assembly. He addressed a few important meetings in Barasat, Basirhat, Baduria and Taki and returned home at about 9 p.m., very tired after a full day of electioneering. He had heard that there had been a lot of violence in Calcutta and that the police had opened fire. Upon his return he came to know that a lot of people had been looking for him since late afternoon. Some youths had held meetings and had taken out a procession. The police had stopped the procession while it was passing through Dharamtala Street (now Lenin Sarani). It had been planned that the procession would pass through Lalbazar (the location of the Calcutta Police headquarters) and Dalhousie Square (now Binoy-Badal-Dinesh Bagh). The police had tried to stop them, claiming that it was a prohibited area, but the processionists, not having known about this earlier, refused to obey. Lathi charging and firing followed, resulting in the death of a few, and injury to many. All kinds of stories started circulating, but nobody knew exactly what had happened.
Dr Mookerjee rang up Dr Radha Binod Pal10 and told him that they should be present at the scene of the disturbance and stand beside the students in their moment of crisis. Dr Pal in turn informed Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy.11 Dr Mookerjee did not even get time to wash after a whole day of strenuous work and running around, and rushed to Dr Pal’s house at about 9.30 p.m. The latter meanwhile had gone over to Dr Bidhan Roy’s house. Dr Mookerjee then went to the Medical College Hospital. The gate was blocked by a crowd of people, who made way to let him in. He went to meet Principal Dr Lindon, who assured him that everything possible was being done to treat the injured. Meanwhile, Dr Pal and Dr Roy arrived. They took the situation in and went to make a telephone call to the Government House. Dr Roy spoke to Tyson, the police commissioner. Meanwhile Dr Mookerjee came to know that the situation at Dharamtala Street (now Lenin Sarani) was still quite grave. Thousands of students were squatting on the road, and the police were barricading them with lathis and arms in hand. Everyone requested them to go there. Dr Roy, meanwhile, had to leave to attend a serious patient. Dr Pal and Dr Mookerjee went to Dharamtala Street. Their car was stopped by the police when they reached the crossing, but on recognizing them, let them go. When they neared Wachel Mollah’s shop, they saw a fully armed posse of policemen. The students were squatting on the road facing them and shouting slogans. Meanwhile, the Governor had arrived at the spot and requested Dr Mookerjee and Dr Pal to tell the boys to go back home. Dr Mookerjee went up to the boys, who started shouting even louder. They said that since the evening they had been telling the police to inform Sarat Bose and him about the situation.
The situation had, in fact, been exacerbated by Sarat Bose’s refusal to come.
Be that as it may, the result of Sarat Bose’s refusal was that the boys refused to budge. They were determined at any cost to follow the route they had already decided upon. They were not willing to let down their comrades who had willingly sacrificed their lives for the cause. They were determined to go ahead. They calmly assured Dr Mookerjee that they did not intend to indulge in violence and create trouble. The police were equally adamant, and it became a prestige fight. The boys and some policemen requested Dr Mookerjee not to leave as they thought his presence would at least prevent further loss of lives. Mrs Jyotirmayee Ganguli, the Congress leader, was restlessly pacing up and down. She, too, expressed the same view—who knew then that she would be killed the very next day in a car accident!
Dr Mookerjee, tired beyond belief after the harrowing experience of the day, on his feet since early morning without a minute’s rest, eventually managed to reach home at 3 a.m. The next morning, at 10 a.m., he went to the university to talk to Dr Pal to ensure that schools and colleges remained closed for a few days. He feared that there might be more trouble if this was not done. After that he went to the Medical College Hospital. He met all the injured and inquired after their welfare. The college and hospital compound was filled with people. One gentleman came forward. His nephew, Rameswar Banerjee, was among the first to be shot dead. The police had still not handed his body over to his relatives. Dr Mookerjee went to the university with the gentleman and two of his companions. He returned home to have a bite of lunch, but had to rush back on hearing that a huge crowd, about 1,00,000-strong, had again gathered at Wellington Square and the previous day’s performance was about to be repeated. The police were determined to stop them, and the situation was getting more and more precarious every moment. Dr Mookerjee got on top of a police truck and addressed the crowd. Simultaneously, he managed to persuade the police commissioner not to open fire upon the crowd, and told him, ‘Let them go the way they wish to. You can’t stop them without machine guns, and then thousands of them will unhesitatingly sacrifice their lives. The casualties will be greater than at Jallianwala Bagh and they still won’t move.’ Eventually the crowd was allowed to proceed and there was no further firing. Later, he went with Rameswar’s parents to the morgue to recover the body and arranged for the body to be decently attired and carried. An enormous crowd, nearly 2,00,000 strong, followed the body in silence. Meanwhile, there was a lot of commotion in the southern parts of the city. An African-American driver of a US army truck had run over a boy, and a mob had set fire to the truck and thrown the driver into the fire. There was widespread arson and indiscriminate firing by the panic-stricken and crazed police. In the midst of all this, Dr Mookerjee managed to guide the crowd to Keoratala Burning Ghat without incident, walking with them all the way, a distance of well over 6 kilometres.
Dr Mookerjee recalled that Sarat Babu had not turned up. He came late at night. Dr Mookerjee went home at about 11 p.m., after the pyre had been lit. On the way back, he called on a gentleman who had lost his only son in the police firing near Hazra Park in south Calcutta in the evening’s commotion. The mother was sitting with her son’s body in her lap. The father was pacing about as if in a stupor. There, too, recalled Dr Mookerjee in his diary, he witnessed that strange forbearance. No one cried openly or showed his grief. ‘My son has sacrificed his life to the British. Let him stay in my arms for the night. You can take him away in the morning.’ These were the words of an uneducated, ordinary, middle-class mother! Dr Mookerjee wrote in his diary, ‘This brought home to me the heightened awareness among the people and I realized that a revolution was brewing. If such a fearless consciousness could be disciplined and channelized in the right direction how longer could the British remain?’ Ultimately, Dr Mookerjee returned home and went to bed, dead beat, around midnight. The nagging pain that he had in his feet for a long time had got worse. He would have to go on a tour from Kanchrapara to Barrackpore by car the next day according to a prior arrangement.
Dr Mookerjee left in a car with Sushil Chattopadhyay of Asutosh College, who was in charge of his personal campaign in the area between Barrackpore and Kanchrapara. Though he should have rested that day, he decided to go because the visit had been fixed and he thought that work would be disrupted if he did not go.
It was not easy to drive through the roads of Calcutta. Fires could still be seen here and there, even though it was only morning. Trams and buses were not plying and it was hazardous to travel by car. Dr Mookerjee’s party was stopped at several points but was allowed to proceed on being recognized. He was out the whole day, making speeches and holding discussions. He received a warm welcome at Kanchrapara, Halisahar, Bhatpara, Naihati, Jagatdal, Shyamnagar and Ichapur. The progress at Naihati was not too encouraging. The morning’s editions of Anandabazar Patrika and Hindustan Standard made no mention of his role in the events of the past two days. Those who had been eyewitnesses to what he had done were appalled by this deception and shameless suppression of facts.
Dr Mookerjee had by then almost completed his campaigning for the elections. There was a huge meeting at Ichapur. Soon after that he started feeling ill. He suddenly felt very light-headed and thought that he would fall. Sometime later, he felt a severe pain in the heart. He was in the car, on his way to Titagarh. The pain was excruciating, and he had never before experienced anything like it. He realized that the malady was severe this time. He was supposed to go to Rai Bahadur Taraknath Chatterjee’s house, from where he was to proceed to a meeting. It was by then almost 9 p.m. and 2000–3000 people were waiting for him. He somehow reached Chatterjee’s house, lay down and asked for a doctor. He was so unwell that he could hardly speak. He asked Sushil to ring up his house in Calcutta and convey the news without mentioning the seriousness of his condition. He told him to say that he would not be back home that night as he was not feeling well. Unable to ward off his eldest brother’s probing questions, Sushil told him everything. There was quite a furore at home. Dr B.C. Roy and Dr Indu Madhab Basu, both prominent physicians, were informed.
There was a big commotion in Calcutta. All kinds of stories were floating around and somebody had even rung up a newspaper office to confirm whether he was dead or alive. A local doctor came over to treat him and gave him some medicines. The pain subsided a little, but he was still very weak. At about 11 p.m. all his brothers, namely Rama Prasad, Uma Prasad and Bama Prasad, with his boudi Tara Devi and Dr Basu arrived at Barrackpore. Dr Mookerjee, upon their advice, decided not to spend the night away from home. They drove slowly and reached home at about 1 a.m. He wrote in his diary that he was feeling very ill and had never felt so weak before.
The next day, all the doctors who visited the Mookerjee household told Dr Mookerjee that he should take complete rest if he wanted to survive. They said that if he heeded their advice he could still be saved. Otherwise, he might have to lead the life of a disabled person for as long as he survived. There was a great deal of arguing over what would be done about the elections. The doctors, especially Dr Roy, held that he should not do anything that would cause excitement and tension. The elections were scheduled to be held in early December. Elections or no elections, he would not be allowed to step out of the house for fifteen days. He had fallen ill on a Saturday. Many meetings had been scheduled for Sunday at Uttarpara, Serampore and so on. He just could not attend them. Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, a prominent Mahasabha leader and father of Somnath Chatterjee, would have normally gone in his place, but he did not go either, because the week before, some Congress supporters had disrupted a meeting in Howrah and insulted him. Debendranath Mukherjee went to Serampore but did not face any trouble there. On hearing this, Chatterjee went to Uttarpara. It was not possible for Dr Mookerjee to do much, sitting in the house. He still attempted to do some work, but suddenly he had a relapse.
The doctors were furious. They said there was no point in being suicidal. They would not allow him to do any work. Judging from the symptoms that he had, plus his age, obesity, his food habits and the strain that he had taken during the last two days, according to Dr Shuvo Dutta, a leading cardiologist in Kolkata, it is highly probable that he had two consecutive attacks, either of myocardial infarction or of angina. In the first (generally known as a heart attack), a bit of the heart muscle dies as a result of being deprived of oxygen, and in the second there is acute chest pain for the same reason—and this deprivation of oxygen happens because the coronary artery or arteries supplying blood to the heart muscle get constricted due to deposition of fatty substances inside them and cannot deliver sufficient blood. Today, these symptoms would have called for emergency treatment, followed by total immobilization and probably angioplasty or bypass surgery. In 1945, however, cardiology, as we understand the term today, was in its infancy, not even a recognized discipline of medicine yet, and even the simple electrocardiogram (ECG) machine had not been invented. Symptomatic treatment, probably with digitalis syrup (extract of the foxglove flower), was the only known treatment, and ‘change’ of air—that is, change of location, preferably to a place with a salubrious climate—was considered one sure-fire panacea for many illnesses.
The other leaders were reluctant to take up the responsibility of electioneering. Dr Mookerjee told Nirmal Chatterjee and Deben Mukherjee that he would be very relieved if they took charge. It was not just a question of defeat or victory. He was then the president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha. He himself was contesting the elections, and it would have been natural for him to hand over his responsibilities to someone else on account of his illness. But sadly enough, nobody came forward to bear the burden and he was weighed down by a sense of pessimism. He regretted in his diary that the ideals which he had striven for in the past few years were shattered in one blow. What treachery, deception and selfishness there was all around! He had never wanted, he wrote, to establish himself in the political arena. If people felt that he could be of no service to them, he did not wish to impose himself on them. At any rate, since he himself could not manage to carry on with the work in the state of health he was in, and no one else was willing to take charge, there was no other way out for him but to withdraw from the contest. He, of course, could not formally withdraw—by that time the last date for withdrawal must have been past. The inevitable defeat of himself and his party followed. His having put in such superhuman effort to manage the situation and prevent a bloodbath on 22 and 23 November and even having put himself at the risk of losing his life, made no difference, and he suffered the ultimate humiliation of an ignominious defeat in the hands of Sarat Bose’s Congress and the nonentity called Nagendra Nath Mukhopadhyay.
His illness continued. In the meantime, Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel came to Calcutta. There was great excitement all around. Thousands of people assembled to see them. It was as if some floodgate had been opened. Nehru, Patel, Govind Ballabh Pant and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai came to see him. Many people pressed him to join the Congress. He regretted in his diary that they just did not understand that he could not join the Congress unless the differences between the Mahasabha and the Congress—mainly relating to appeasement of Muslims—were resolved. He was in politics for power all right, but with the intention of using the power according to his beliefs and convictions, something that would have been impossible if he had joined the Congress. He went on in his diary, ‘Nobody seemed to understand my point! People usually tend to go with the tide and do whatever is the order of the day.’
He records in his diary that later in the month, his health had started improving marginally—meaning presumably that he did not have any recurrence of symptoms. Gandhi wrote to him in Hindi inquiring after his health and he wrote back in Bengali. Meanwhile, election results began pouring in from all over the country. Two features were clear: first, the Mahasabha did not win anywhere, and secondly, the Congress did not get even a single Muslim seat. The clear and simple conclusion was that the Hindus wanted the Congress and the Muslims the League. Yet the Congress would never term itself a Hindu organization or fight for Hindus’ rights, and would persist in its grand delusion that it represented Hindus and Muslims alike. Meanwhile, Dr Mookerjee observed, if the Mahasabha could manage to survive with the support of its genuine workers, it would certainly get a chance to forge ahead.
The terrible strain, the life-threatening illness, the pervasive frustration sapped his energy and were too much even for a person of Dr Mookerjee’s calibre to bear. He wrote in his diary a month later, ‘I had no longer the strength or desire to shoulder the responsibilities of a leader. I wanted to engage myself in such work that would keep me out of controversies and strife in the last few years of my life. I wanted to immerse myself in some constructive work to help the Hindus regain their lost glory.’ There was a meeting with Patel, presumably because among the top Congress leaders he was the most sensitive to the problem of the Hindus; letters were exchanged, but no understanding could be reached. The Congress felt that the Mahasabha lacked popular support and the Central Assembly elections had proved this, so why would they want to work with the Mahasabha? Finally, Dr Mookerjee called a meeting of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee in Calcutta. L.B. Bhopatkar was made the acting president in order to relieve him. It was decided that the Mahasabha would contest the elections according to its relative strength in the respective provinces.
In the meantime, he had also relinquished many of his duties in the university. Since 1924, for twenty-two years, he had worked tirelessly for the betterment of the university. Now he had withdrawn his name from the syndicate elections. Rama Prasad, his eldest brother, would replace him. He had also asked him to stand in his place in the assembly elections.
All this duty done, he proceeded for the ‘change’ that his doctors and his relatives had been so long pressing him for. And to where else but Madhupur, for which December–January was the best season! But before that he wanted to spend some time with his elder daughter Sabita and his granddaughter Manju (whom he called Didibhai). So he first went to Jamshedpur and thence to Madhupur. His son-in-law Nishith insisted that Sabita and Manju should accompany him and stay with him at least for some time at Madhupur. His mother, Jogomaya, together with a companion, and his younger son Debtosh also went and stayed for a fortnight. His elder son Anutosh used to visit him from time to time from Burnpur near Asansol where he was working with the Indian Iron and Steel Company.
Dr Mookerjee’s month-long sojourn at Madhupur not only gave him a new lease of life but also proved invaluable for posterity. Especially so to his biographers including this one, since it is during this holiday that he made some of his most extensive and significant diary entries which proved later to be invaluable for an understanding of the politics of the times. He reached the place on Christmas day, 1945, and stayed there till 27 January 1946. He had taken his stenographer Baridbaran with him, and started writing on 5 January 1946. He started one account in English and two in Bengali. He succeeded in writing a fairly detailed account in English, of his experience as a minister in Bengal from 12 December 1941 to 20 November 1942. Of his two writings in Bengali, one is an account of his childhood till he was eight years old. In the other one he laid bare his heart and one feels that one sees the author face-to-face. Ashim Kumar Datta, the compiler of his diaries, comments that it may be that he was writing it as an aide-memoire, to be used on a future occasion when he would sit down to write a history for the public. Alas, that opportunity never came. Here he writes about his extreme loneliness—he had lost his wife when he was only thirty-one, and how he missed her. He talks about the anguish he felt when he saw the shameless egotism in some people while organizing the election campaign for the Mahasabha. Above all, he expresses his frustration to find that all his efforts to prevent the division of his dear motherland had so far come to nothing, and the country was on the way to that inevitable destiny. This account gives one an insight into his philosophy of life. He does not refer to any text or teacher, but one can see that the bedrock of his values lies in the doctrine of selfless work preached in the Bhagavad Gita.
Compared to the life that he had had during November–December 1945, the stay at Madhupur was truly restful and it rejuvenated him. It was also a phase that brought him close to his family. But it was not without its physically difficult times. His heart was apparently repairing itself, and he had shown wisdom in giving it the chance to do so. But there were ups and downs. More than once he has complained, in his diary, that he still was not feeling well. On the evening of 9 January he wrote in his Bengali diary:
[F]or the last two days I have been feeling unwell. I was fine for about eight days. Yesterday I had a transient pain in the morning, then again in the evening. The pain struck me as I was sitting on the bed, writing some letters. It lasted for about five minutes but for part of that time the pain was excruciating. I could not breathe at all. Why does it happen—is it gas? I eat very frugally and then have medicines for digestion too.
His uneasiness degenerated into something worse the next day, when he wrote:
Yesterday, I had to stop writing. The pain in my heart was very slight but suddenly I started shivering. This sort of thing has never happened before. I wrapped myself in a sheet and sat in the easy chair but I could not bear it any more and went to bed. I covered myself with sheets, blankets and a quilt. I wore woollen socks and took a hot water bag, but nothing helped. I called Dr Mazumdar and he diagnosed these symptoms as malaria. I have never before had malaria in spite of having travelled so much. There was no respite until 10.00 p.m. I did not feel like removing the blankets and the quilt. The fever subsided at around midnight, but I had a headache and my body ached all over throughout the night. I could not sleep till early morning. The doctor said that perhaps it had been caused by the high dose of Vitamin B injection. I was feeling very weak this morning. My head felt very heavy but I did not have fever. My appetite was poor. I lay in bed the whole day. The doctor came to see me twice. Yesterday, my pulse rate had gone up to eighty-five, but today it had come down to sixty-four. Now I am sitting at the table. The room is dark though there is moonlight outside. It is warmer today. I am quite comfortable today, but who knows how much longer I will have to suffer? Who knows what more lies in store for me?
In the opinion of Dr Shuvo Dutta, a leading present-day cardiologist of Kolkata, Dr Mookerjee’s symptoms all suggest unstable angina. What he thought was ‘gas’ is one of the classic symptoms of such angina, and is very common among Bengalis because of their food habits.
But by 14 January, he recovered considerably, and wrote, ‘I have been slightly better these last two days. I went out for a walk in the morning and in the evening too. My appetite has improved somewhat. The doctor sends me porridge every morning. A multi-course midday meal is sent to me from Jogesh Babu’s house. Sweets are sent from Jnanbabu’s residence. Every alternate day, I go to the doctor’s house for dinner.’ This recovery was not caused by any medication because no medication existed then. It was just his life force that pulled him out of his illness.
The idle days at Madhupur, where he spent a month from 25 December 1945 till 27 January 1946 not only helped him recover, but also brought out the reflective, introverted person in him. Having taken his stenographer along, he took to writing his diary again, which he had been doing in fits and starts over the last few years.
It is here, in a diary entry dated 4 January, that he penned a momentous statement of his belief that stands out as a direct antithesis of the prevailing (and still paid lip service to) Gandhian dogma of ahimsa, non-violence: ‘Force must, in the last analysis, be met with force. An internal policy of non-resistance to armed violence would ultimately condemn any society to dissolution.’
Apparently, the statement stands quite out of context with the rest of the text in the diary entry, though very much in context considering the state of the country then. This was the first entry of the day, and in English, and the very next sentence in the diary entry in Bengali has nothing whatsoever to do with this. This seems to be in the nature of a revelation, something that hits one between one’s eyes all of a sudden. Doubtless he had been thinking of the Hindu–Muslim face-off over the last few days, and it would have been plain as daylight that his defeat was the result of total polarization of the polity on Hindu–Muslim lines, something that every true patriot dreads. It must have disappointed and alarmed him further that the electorate, in the mood of ‘winner takes all’, had reposed their faith in the Congress, little realizing that the Congress would not lift a little finger to protect the Hindus from a Muslim onslaught, should such a thing take place, for fear of being dubbed ‘anti-Muslim’ or ‘communal’. But just these thoughts could not have caused this revelation. He must have been able to see in his mind’s eye, in a flash as it were, what was coming: the gradual hardening of attitude on the part of the Muslim League, the foretaste of victory on its tongue, and its final, diabolical gambits: ‘Direct Action’ or the Great Calcutta Killings, the Noakhali Carnage, the reaction in Bihar, and the eventual capitulation by the Congress, the acceptance of partition, the Punjab bloodbath.
This thought has again been echoed by him six days later. In a Bengali diary entry on 10 January, he wrote the unwritable and spoke the unspeakable:
There could be no dispute if both groups [meaning Hindus and Muslims] worked unitedly to preserve the Indian culture and live amicably according to their respective beliefs. But the Hindus did not worry about how they would protect themselves if the Muslims became overzealous and attempted to dominate them. In that event, the Hindu–Muslim problem would never be solved without a civil war [emphasis added]. We did not want a civil war, but if the other party kept itself in readiness and we were caught off guard, then we would be the losers. The Congress had failed to solve the Hindu–Muslim problem, nor would it ever be able to do so. The problem could be solved either by a mutual understanding, a friendly reunion, or a trial of strength. If there was no compromise, the more powerful party would emerge victor. How could an organization, which was built on Hindu support, yet considered it a sin to uphold Hindu interests, fight another organization which was dedicated to establishing Muslim dominance? What could be more tragic than the fact that the Hindus failed to understand this simple truth despite their intellectual and financial resources? Islam had a singular spirit of unity and equality that Hinduism lacked. Differences along lines of caste, creed or religion kept one Hindu from empathizing with another. On the other hand, one Muslim invariably felt a bond with another, irrespective of where he was from, whether it was from another part of India or another part of the world.
These daring words appeared to be prophetic, as was proved by events in Bengal a mere seven months later. What Jinnah in fact waged by way of his ‘Direct Action’ in Calcutta on 16 August that very year, followed by the Noakhali Carnage of October, were nothing more or less than civil war. And he won that war, for he was prepared. The prize of his victory was his Pakistan.
Dr Mookerjee’s reference to a civil war throws up interesting questions. What if there had indeed been a civil war? Could it have prevented Partition? If it could, should such a war have been waged? At least in one case it did prevent Partition, when Abraham Lincoln went to war and succeeded in keeping the United States united! There have been three partitions so far in the world on religious grounds—those of India into India and Pakistan, Palestine into Israel and West Bank/Gaza and Ireland into British-ruled, Protestant-majority Northern Ireland and Catholic-majority Eire or the Republic of Ireland. The first two, in either of which Islam was one of the religions involved, were followed and are still being followed by serious hostilities, degenerating sometimes to nothing less than all-out war between the partitioned countries. The third, which was between the largely Catholic Eire and largely Protestant Northern Ireland has been affected (particularly the latter) by severe religious strife until recently, though there has never been any serious hostility between Britain and Eire. In other words, Partition does not seem to have solved any problems. Considering the circumstances, would it have not been better to go for civil war, in which Hindus, who were against the partition, would definitely have won because of their overwhelming numbers? And the country would have stayed united!
But not all of Dr Mookerjee’s thoughts were so analytical. In times of solitude and total quietness under a starlit sky, he was overwhelmed by the smallness of human efforts and felt himself to be merely a pawn in the hands of inexorable forces, and could find comfort only in total surrender to the Supreme. Consider the following:
Oh merciful God, let me glimpse You within me. I do not ask anything for myself. Only give me a place at Your feet. Lift me up and take me in Your fold; give me the strength and the yearning to invoke You . . . My mind yearns to see You but I am trying my best to restrain it. I have realized the futility of this world. Here today, gone tomorrow—this is the process of life. Then why fuss over such trivial things? We are only travellers in transit. What is the difference between us and beasts if we spend the little time we have on this earth, steeped in a mire of lust and greed. I have often observed the instinctual behaviour of animals. If men, who have a soul and can recognize God, forget everything and indulge in these base pursuits, what can be more tragic?
Dr Mookerjee is here following his private religion, or his private interpretation of Hinduism, which is largely advaita-vada, the identity of the worshipper and the worshipped, invoking the God within oneself, with shades of the Semitic religions which provide for prayer to a singular God. Of course, in such religions there is no scope of identifying oneself with God without blaspheming seriously, but Hinduism is different. As explained in Chapter 1, Hinduism has no bar to this kind of private interpretation or even to symbiosis between two sets of beliefs in one’s mind. But above all, what shines through all this is the humanity of the man.
In the midst of all this Dr Mookerjee was swept off his feet by his granddaughter Manju, his dear Didibhai, when she arrived from Jamshedpur with her parents on 19 January. He could not help admiring the way ‘she had learnt to chew food with her teeth—six in all’ and observed that she had grown up to be ‘a lovely child, full of life . . . a bit choosy about people! She stared hard at her two Didimonis’ [her late grandmothers’] photographs, picked them up, turned them over and caressed them.’ And that must have brought a tear to Dr Mookerjee’s eyes, for he thought, ‘I wish Sudha was here. How happy she would have been to see her granddaughter!’
As he got better at Madhupur, he began to get restless too, and yearned for the busy world of politics. And the opportunity came soon enough, when it was announced that a British Parliamentary delegation sent by the British Prime Minister to visit India was coming to Calcutta. The delegation was led by Professor Robert Richards, earlier undersecretary of state for India. Then he received a telegram that the delegation had expressed the desire to see him, and he promptly gave them an appointment. And he left Madhupur for Calcutta on 27 January 1946 and arrived the same day, but not before bidding a touching adieu to Madhupur, mentioned earlier, ‘Farewell Madhupur! I have spent one month here in this house . . . Let me end by expressing my gratitude to you, Madhupur, for whatever I have gained by my stay.’