AS ONE OF the world’s supreme moralists, Gandhi might have been expected to have something to say about the state-inspired violence of the 1930s. The imperialists who were recolouring the map of Asia that decade were closer to home than the Europeans who had previously made their mark there: the Japanese, who felt the Europeans had dominated for long enough, had their sights on French, Dutch and British possessions in the Far East and on conquering China.
The Japanese annexation of Manchuria in 1931 was followed by a full-scale invasion in 1937, accompanied by rape and massacre on a previously unprecedented scale. Gandhi suggested non-violent resistance: ‘It is unbecoming for a nation of 400 millions, a nation as cultured as China, to repel Japanese aggression by resorting to Japan’s own methods. If the Chinese had non-violence of my conception, there would be no use for the latest machinery for destruction which Japan possesses.’1
The assaults in Germany on the Jewish population resembled more closely Gandhi’s own remit in South Africa and India, featuring as they did the imposition of unjust laws against one section of the population. ‘My sympathies are all with the Jews...’ he said. ‘They have been the untouchables of Christianity... If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war.’2 His advice was: If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon.’3 This weak response, which was much criticised at the time, is all the more remarkable because when Gandhi’s close friend Kallenbach visited him in the 1930s they discussed Jewish persecution at length; and one of Gandhi’s permanent disciples, Margarete Spiegel, known as Amala, was a Jewish schoolteacher who had fled Nazi persecution.
Adolf Hitler was an unmarried, non-smoking, non-drinking, vegetarian nationalist with a strong sense of personal mission. He was just the sort of person Gandhi admired—a remark that can be made without sneering, since Gandhi genuinely perceived such choices as what a person ate and whether or not they smoked as moral indicators. He said: ‘I do not want to see the Allies defeated. But I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.’4 Instead of addressing the quality of the evil that was being unleashed on the world in the 1930s, Gandhi sought a moral equivalence. He considered that the British were just as bad as the Nazis: ‘We resist British Imperialism no less than Nazism. If there is a difference it is in degree.’5 ‘I see no difference between the Fascist or Nazi powers and the Allies. All are exploiters, all resort to ruthlessness.’6
Announcing ‘I own no foes,’ he wrote a letter to Hitler, addressing him as ‘Dear Friend,’ in December 1940, at a time when Britain was being bombarded nightly: ‘We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents [though] many of your actions are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in universal friendliness.’7 For his part, Hitler’s notion of how to deal with Gandhi had been expressed to the former Viceroy Lord Irwin in his later incarnation as Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. ‘All you have to do,’ the dictator remarked briskly, ‘is to shoot Gandhi. If necessary shoot more leaders of Congress. You will be surprised how quickly the trouble will die down.’8
Gandhi at least had the moral courage to admit his impotence. As early as 1938 he remarked that when he contemplated what he would do in a country invaded by aggressors, ‘my head starts reeling. You may well argue how much the non-violence that has made only this much progress even after fifty years’ experience can help us in our struggle. If you think like this, you may give it up. For me there is no question of giving it up. My faith in it is unwavering. I shall however ever regret that the Lord has not favoured me with such clarity of expression that I could explain my ideas to others.’9 His failure to comprehend the orchestrated evil of state-inspired violence had already been apparent in his inability to acknowledge the genocide (committed by the Turkish army) against the Armenians when he was proclaiming the moral validity of the Khilafat. In itself, this was no great failing—why should he comment on every world event? one might ask. However, it does reveal a persistent, underlying failure to understand radical evil. His vision of the calamities of the twentieth century would culminate, horrifyingly, in a metaphysical conceit that welcomed a chaos out of which supposedly would come order as India moved towards the disaster of partition.
Congress politicians were learning about the difficulties of government. They had formed ministries in seven provinces in July 1937, and an eighth followed a year later. Their campaigns for mass literacy and agrarian and social reform were constrained by cost and lack of administrative experience, but their enthusiasm for reform made up for much. Gandhi contributed little save for promoting such long-term aims of his as the prohibition of alcohol, which he described as ‘perhaps the greatest moral movement of the century.’10
Though the provinces were now under Indian political control, the peasant marches, strikes and picketing did not stop. Corrupt time servers were joining the Congress Party, lured by the promise of power and vitiating the moral message of the leadership. Power was being used as an instrument of domination. The crude nationalism of many Congress leaders made Muslims feel they were being Hinduised. Attention often focused on education: children would be made to perform idolatrous acts such as singing ‘Vande Mataram’ with its invocation of Mother India as Durga (an incarnation of the goddess Parvati). Children were also said to be obliged to pay homage and sing hymns of praise to Gandhi’s portrait—certainly not something Gandhi himself would have encouraged. Provincial Congress governments attempted to prevent the slaughter of cows and the eating of beef while making no commensurate efforts to safeguard Muslim culture.
Jinnah complained: ‘The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last ten years, has been responsible for alienating the Mussalmans of India more and more by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu, and since they have formed the governments in six provinces where they are in the majority they have by their words, deeds and programmes shown more that the Mussalmans [Muslims] cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands.’11 Communal violence continued, now with Congress ministers calling out the military to quell rioters, as in March 1938 in Allahabad, to Gandhi’s distress. For all his fine words about Hindu-Muslim unity, the common people refused to acquiesce, instead acting out their ancestral hatreds.
Belatedly acknowledging Jinnah as the main player on the Muslim side, Gandhi was prepared to meet him in April 1938 in an attempt to recover some remnants of Hindu-Muslim unity. The meeting was cursed, however, by a uniquely Gandhian event. As he lay with his aides in the ashram on 7 April, he had suffered an involuntary ejaculation. This was important both because he felt he had by now completely controlled his sexual nature, and because of his almost magical belief in the power of seminal fluid. ‘One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing power,’ he wrote. “Why should I lose my vitality for the sake of a momentary pleasure?’12 Exactly a week later the same thing happened again. He described it to Mirabehn: ‘That degrading, dirty, torturing experience of 14 April shook me to bits and made me feel as if I was hurled by God from an imaginary paradise where I had no right to be in my uncleanliness.’13
He explained to the rest of the women of his entourage what had happened, an exercise which must have taxed even Gandhi’s considerable powers of description. His next response was to distance himself from them, but he felt he had to give way to the entreaties of these women who so needed to be close to him: ‘Once I intended to give up all personal services from Sushila [Nayar] but within twelve hours my soft-heartedness had put an end to the intention. I could not bear the tears of Sushila and the fainting away of Prabhavati.’14 He was plunged into a ‘slough of despond.’ ‘For the first time in my public and private life I seem to have lost self-confidence,’ he wrote in a press release. ‘I do not consider myself fit for negotiations or any such thing for the moment... I ask the public not to attach any exaggerated importance to the interview.’15 With such forebodings he approached the three hours of talks with Jinnah.
The meetings in spring 1938 came to nothing. Jinnah wanted Gandhi to acknowledge him as the leader of the Muslims while Gandhi was that of the Hindus; but Gandhi claimed to represent all India. By the end of the year Jinnah was answering Gandhi’s charge that he, Jinnah, had abandoned nationalism for sectarian politics: ‘I have no hesitation in saying that it is Mr Gandhi who is destroying the ideal with which the Congress was started. He is the one responsible for turning the Congress into an instrument for the revival of Hinduism. His ideal is to revive the Hindu religion and establish Hindu Raj in this country.’16
Gandhi was at this time assailed by fits of trembling at night—perhaps from the cold, or perhaps it was psychosomatic. He was comforted by having young women lie with him. As noted earlier, he habitually had women around him while he performed personal functions, once explaining when challenged: ‘Sushila has been present in the bathroom while I have bathed in the nude and in her absence Ba [Kasturba] or Prabhavati or Lilavati have attended on me.’17 The provision of personal services to Gandhi was a much sought-after sign of his favour and aroused Jealousy among the ashram inmates. Mirabehn advised him to keep his distance from female ashramites. She had never been a participant in his ‘experiments’ with brahmacharya, perhaps because he feared she would show insufficient restraint—or that he would. She might well have felt jealous at the physical closeness (and therefore trust) that was permitted these other women.
He asked Mirabehn: ‘Should I deny myself the service rendered by Sushila? Should I refuse to have malish [massage] by Lilavati or Amtul Salaam for instance? Or do you want to say that I should never lean on girls’ shoulders?’18 He followed Mirabehn’s advice in denying himself those personal services requiring women’s physical contact with him, and issued an apology to ashram inmates, who may have been showing signs of revolt. He apologised for denying them ‘the freedom I have given myself... my action was impelled by vanity and jealousy... My experiment was a violation of the established norms of brahmacharya.’ These sexual ‘experiments’ were indeed a violation of the accepted norms. Physical contact with women and sleeping with them were Gandhi’s own contribution to the practice of celibacy. They were not sanctified by any tradition and were, in fact, forbidden in texts on the subject.
He took responsibility for not only his own, ‘moral lapses’ but also for those of others in the ashram.19 ‘Even a woman’s proximity, speech, look, letter etc., may work the evil as her touch might,’ he pondered. In an Oedipal remark he declared, ‘I must put out my eyes, rather than have the animal in me be aroused.’20 He discussed sex in some detail with Sushila, who in 1938 was twenty-four. Addressing a letter to her with an affectionate insult—‘Stupid girl’—he wrote: ‘If you too have experienced desire, it is as well. For then we are both in the same plight and we both ought to be on our guard... After my 69 years the vikara [lust] in you cannot affect me. I burn with my own vikara. Because of my vikara I regard myself as unfit to take service from any woman.’21 Within three months he had abandoned the whole of this ‘experiment’ in restraint: he resumed resting his hands on women and the personal services to his body were reinstated. He explained to those closest to him in ‘A Circular Letter’ in September 1938 how innocent were the baths he and Sushila took together: ‘The bathing arrangement is this: she bathes in the space behind the bathtub and while she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut. I do not know the manner of her bathing—whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap. I have seen no part of her body that everyone here will not have seen.’ She then massaged him while he lay naked.22 He blamed the morally derelict condition of Congress on deficiencies in his brahmacharya.23
He would continue to be sufficiently troubled about the services he received from women to maintain a commentary on the subject, reporting to Vallabhbhai Patel in February 1939: ‘As from yesterday I have stopped sleeping close to them. That is, the girls sleep far enough to be out of reach of my arms’24 Questioned in the 1970s, Sushila revealingly placed physical contact with women as part of a lifestyle; the elevation of it to a brahmacharya experiment was a response to criticism of this behaviour. She said: ‘Later on, when people started asking questions about his physical contact with women—with Manu [his grandniece], with Abha [another grandniece], with me—the idea of brahmacharya experiments was developed.’25
When war was declared on Germany in September 1939, India was automatically involved and was also at war. The dominions made their own decisions, committing themselves to stand alongside Britain (as India almost certainly would have done if given the choice). It was a serious mistake on the part of the British to fail to give the semblance of a democratic consultation before committing the subcontinent to the war. Memories of the Rowlatt Acts were still strong in India—it was reasonable to fear that emergency powers adopted as a wartime measure would be extended.
Congress declared they wanted to be involved in a war to defend democracy, but they also wanted full democracy to be established in India, with Indian politicians having the right to determine their own constitution. Invited to see the Viceroy to talk about the war, Gandhi said he felt tears welling up at the thought of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament being bombed. But he was unable to communicate this affection to members of the Congress: at the working committee he said he was ‘sorry to find myself alone in thinking that whatever support was to be given to the British should be given unconditionally.’26 Instead, on 14 September 1939 Congress put out a wordy statement drafted by Nehru that said, crucially: ‘If Great Britain fights for the maintenance and extension of democracy, then she must necessarily end imperialism in her own possessions, establish full democracy in India, and the Indian people must have the right of self-determination by framing their own constitution.’27
Gandhi then loyally went along with the Congress line: his policy of supporting the British in the forthcoming war, as in the Zulu rising, the Boer War and the First World War, was ended. There was not even a proposed programme of action. Nehru wrote: ‘Our position is one of non-cooperation but we have not as yet thought of anything more.’28 Jinnah, on the other hand, was prepared to give the support of the Muslim League, but on condition that they were accepted as the sole voice of Muslim India and no constitutional changes were made without the League’s consent. The British were unwilling to concede this but though the League were not therefore wholeheartedly supportive of the British war effort, they would do nothing to impede it.
The then Viceroy Lord Linlithgow invited leaders including Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah for an interview with him, issuing a statement on 17 October that dominion status was the goal of British policy in India and that the Government of India Act would be open to modification at the end of the war. Linlithgow’s lack of either imagination or administrative flair contributed to the already serious problems of his long period in office (1936–43), which encompassed some of the most dramatic events in Indian politics and which also saw the entirely avoidable Bengal famine.
As usual with British policy statements, Linlithgow’s remarks were too little too late; but if the British approach was wrong, that of Congress was disastrous. Congress thinkers had boxed amongst themselves into a corner with their own internal disputes over the issue of dominion status versus complete independence. After more argument amongst themselves, Congress was reduced to expressing a petulant refusal to cooperate with the British, thus throwing away their electoral advantage and giving up what was for many their only experience of government. They also sacrificed what influence they had with the British, who were still and would remain the umpires in the game of constitution-making for whatever kind of an India was going to emerge.
The Congress working committee met in Wardha on 22 and 23 October 1939, condemned the Viceroy’s statement and ordered all Congress governments to resign by the end of the month. If there was one action that could be credited with handing India over to the separatist Muslims, this was it—as a political failure it was exemplary: Congress emasculated itself politically, with gains to no one but the Muslim League.
Jinnah declared a ‘Day of Deliverance and thanksgiving as a mark of relief that the Congress regime has at last ceased to function... [they have] proved the falsehood of the Congress claim that it represents all interests justly and fully, by its decidedly anti-Muslim policy.’29 Other minority groups, notably Ambedkar and his untouchables, supported Jinnah. Jinnah had already decided in favour of a separate Muslim nation, but was a sufficiently calculating politician to keep this quiet. It was the following year, in March 1940, that the Muslim League would declare for a separate Pakistan.
Jinnah was a sick man. He had advanced tuberculosis and had collapsed on his way to the central legislative assembly in Delhi just days before the mass meeting in Lahore where he had announced what would be termed the ‘Pakistan resolution’ (though he never used the word himself). Weak though he was, for two hours he addressed a crowd of a hundred thousand, only a small fraction of whom could understand him, as he spoke in English. ‘The Mussalmans are not a minority. The Mussalmans are a nation by any definition,’ he said. If the British were seriously interested in peace and happiness ‘the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands, by dividing India into “autonomous national States”’30 He rejected Gandhi’s claim that Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and untouchables were all alike: ‘Why not come as a Hindu leader proudly representing your people?’ Jinnah asked him, ‘and let me meet you, proudly representing the Mussalmans?’31 The League later passed a resolution explicitly stating that the north-western and eastern zones of India should be independent states.
Gandhi was appalled: ‘I believe with my whole soul that the God of the Koran is also the God of the Gita and that we are all, no matter by what name designated, children of the same God. I must rebel that millions of Indians who were Hindus the other day changed their nationality with their religion.’32 He was arguing, therefore, that even if they were not Hindus, Muslims were still Indians. Gandhi was not even, however, speaking for all Hindus. Members of the extreme orthodox Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh echoed Jinnah’s views, arguing that non-Hindus had no place in India.
To the disappointment of Congress, their great sacrifice of power for principle was not reflected in equal enthusiasm from the people of India: young men flocked to the recruiting stations, more volunteering for war service than the government could use.
In May 1940 Churchill assumed the premiership. He was always an implacable opponent of Indian nationalists though he was a complex figure, having declared five years earlier that Gandhi had risen in his estimation since he had started standing up for the untouchables. In July 1940, at the time of the Battle of Britain, Gandhi wrote:
I appeal to every Briton, wherever he may be now, to accept the method of non-violence instead of that of war for the adjustment of relations between nations... Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours is not as thorough as the Germans... I want you to fight Nazism without arms or, if I am to retain the non-violent terminology, with non-violent arms... You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.33
HM Government replied: ‘[We] do not feel that the policy which you advocate is one which it is possible for us to consider.’34
An alternative to Congress’s non-cooperation with the British was to join with Britain’s enemies. Subhas Chandra Bose, against Gandhi’s judgement, had been president of Congress in 1939, from which position he proposed the British should be given an ultimatum: to leave in six months or face total civil disobedience. Gandhi and other Congress leaders thought India was not ready for such a battle, which would not only fail but would ‘bring discredit on the Congress [and] spell disaster for the Congress struggle for independence.’ Bose was defeated on the policy,35 took his defeat with bad grace and left Congress to form his own party, Forward Bloc, which imitated the violent nationalism of the German, Italian and Japanese regimes.
With the Muslim League now making the running in national politics, Congress was sidelined and its working committee divided. Nonetheless they decided, in September 1940, to invite Gandhi to come back to lead them in a new campaign of civil disobedience. Gandhi was not willing to lead such a campaign, for which he felt the country was unprepared, but he declared that individual acts of satyagraha should take place, specifically Congress figures speaking out against the war. Nehru, Rajagopalachari and others informed the authorities of what they were going to do and courted arrest with speeches—Nehru was arrested even before he could make his speech and sentenced to four years in prison. After the leading members had been arrested, ordinary members joined in and eventually, by summer 1941 there had been twenty thousand convictions—not many considering the size of the membership of Congress and the population of India. The fact was that the public had failed to comprehend what the protest was about, and the British administrators were equally baffled. The war was good for the Indian economy; it was helping India in stimulating her industries, bringing employment and money. In order to deal with the pressure of war work the Viceroy had expanded his executive council to twelve, eight of whom were now Indian, indicating a continued intention to transfer power to Indians. Furthermore, the new executive council successfully urged the Viceroy to release those civil disobedience figures, including Nehru, who were still detained, as a conciliatory gesture.
They were released shortly before the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor and began their advance through South-East Asia, ultimately taking Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Burma. The Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek visited India in February 1942, meeting Gandhi, Nehru and other leaders to impress on them the importance of India’s playing a role in the war against Japanese aggression. When he met Gandhi, Chiang painted a vivid picture of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China. Gandhi kept on spinning throughout the meeting and at the end presented a doubtless bemused Chiang with the yarn he had spun.
Subhas Chandra Bose attempted a deal with the new imperialist power, and set up his Indian National Army, mainly comprising Indian prisoners of war, under the auspices of Japan. Few Indians at home were foolish enough to believe that life under a Japanese empire would be benign, and Bose’s ideas had little success within India. An exception was Bengal, where terrorist incidents directed against the British took place throughout the rest of the war. In early 1944, Bose and his INA were to cross the Indian border but the tide of war was against Japan and her allies by this time, and the INA surrendered.
By 1942, with the Japanese advances, the war in which India was expected to participate was no longer far away in Europe but in the neighbouring country, Burma. When India’s very borders were threatened, a new consensus might have arisen. Against Gandhi’s advice—as usual he wanted to put non-violence first—Congress offered full cooperation against the Japanese in return for a national government immediately and a promise of independence after the war. But Churchill was not interested—Congress had not been reliable in the past, and India was supporting the war well enough without it.
The deputy prime minister, Labour leader Clement Attlee, had a genuine understanding of India. He had been on the Simon Commission and now chaired the India Committee, set up in 1942, which drew up the terms of reference of a delegation to be sent to India to negotiate a political settlement. This became the Cripps Mission, led by Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of Churchill’s coalition government and a good choice for dealing with Gandhi. An austere socialist, teetotal and vegetarian, a pacifist in the First World War, Cripps was a man of firm principles that had had him expelled from the Labour Party at one time. Cripps had previously met Gandhi, had visited Wardha in 1939 and had distinguished himself by taking off his shoes when he entered Gandhi’s hut—a courtesy mastered by few English visitors.
Cripps was a close enough friend of Nehru’s to be present during the preparations for his daughter Indira’s wedding to Feroze Gandhi. Feroze, a Parsi, was not a relation of Mohandas Gandhi, but it did no harm to Indira’s impressive political career that many people thought he was. ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi had no more than his usual success in urging celibacy on the bride and bridegroom; they were to have two children, the first of whom, Rajiv, became prime minister as had his mother and grandfather; Rajiv’s wife Sonia was to lead Congress.
Cripps was sent with an offer but had no negotiating room; Churchill had tied his hands. The deal was that India would have dominion status and a constituent assembly would frame a constitution, with the right of provinces to opt out of whatever constitutional arrangement was reached. This meant the princely states or the Muslim states could choose to stay with Britain. India’s defence policy would also stay under British control. Churchill, always a fervent imperialist, did not want Cripps to succeed but he wanted to placate British, Indian and (increasingly importantly) American public opinion. The Americans were proud of having broken away from the British Empire—they did not want to be seen fighting to keep others in subjection. Cripps, who had discussed constitutional solutions with Nehru and Attlee in Britain in 1938 (when Nehru was a houseguest of Cripps), was entirely genuine in his approach.
Gandhi went to Delhi to meet him. He rejected the offer comprehensively, especially because of the proposed inclusion of the princely states in a future India, whatever form it might take. Even if they were represented in the constituent assembly, their delegates would be nominated by their rulers, enshrining an undemocratic procedure. He also rejected the possibility of Muslim-majority and other states opting out; and, rather unspecifically, opposed the defence proposal.
Gandhi was widely credited with the aphorism that the Cripps offer was ‘a postdated cheque,’ though the phrase does not occur in his writings or in Cripps’s account.36 He did not add ‘on a failing bank,’ which was a journalist’s invention—Gandhi took no pleasure in Britain’s difficulties. His implacable attitude has been blamed for the failure of the Cripps mission, though the refusal of the proposal to recognise Muslim ‘nationhood’ was enough for Jinnah to reject it also. There was certainly widespread disappointment over the rejection. Attlee later wrote: ‘It was a great pity that eventually the Indians turned this down, as full self-government might have been ante-dated by some years.’37
While these discussions had been taking place, Japanese naval forces had moved into the Indian Ocean, sinking six British ships in the port of Colombo in Ceylon. Two British cruisers followed, then twenty ships were sunk in the Bay of Bengal in one day. Further attacks continued on Indian ports and defending aircraft bases. Gandhi sent a resolution to Congress calling for resistance, namely non-violent non-cooperation, against the Japanese if an invasion were launched. This clearly ruled out any active participation in the war effort designed to stop an invasion in the first place. Some Congress leaders were opposed to his proposal: Nehru wanted to organise guerrilla warfare against the Japanese if they invaded; Rajagopalachari wanted to form a united front with the Muslims and others.
Gandhi’s thinking now took a curious turn: ‘I feel convinced that the British presence is the incentive for the Japanese attack,’ he said. ‘If the British wisely decided to withdraw and leave India to manage her own affairs in the best way she could, the Japanese would be bound to reconsider their plans.’38 He thought it ‘likely the Japanese will not want to invade India, their prey having gone.’39 This is exactly what Japanese propaganda broadcasts said—that one of Japan’s war aims was to free India from British rule. This was doubtless true, because the ultimate objective was for India to serve the Japanese empire. The attraction of India for Japan was the same as it had been for the British and the Moguls: India’s huge wealth and manpower. Had Japan been allowed to invade, and had the Japanese been given an opportunity of committing in Calcutta the sort of atrocities they carried out in Nanking, the difference between the British and Japanese empires would have been readily apparent.
Gandhi hoped that with the withdrawal of British power ‘wise leaders will realise their responsibility, forget their differences for the moment and set up a provisional government.’ He did concede, however, that ‘after the formation of the national government my voice may be a voice in the wilderness and nationalist India may go war-mad.’40 But did that matter? he mused. If ‘a non-violent struggle has been started at my behest and later there is an outbreak of violence, I will put up with that too, because eventually it is God who is inspiring me and things will shape as He wills. If He wants to destroy the world through violence using me as His instrument, how can I prevent it?’41
Cripps had felt that Gandhi ‘may be actually desirous to bring about a state of chaos.’42 This may be a fleeting comment made in frustration at the failure of his constitutional mission, but some of Gandhi’s statements at this time seem perilously close to proposing a metaphysical experiment in which a churning of national passions would ultimately produce sanity and order. ‘Let them entrust India to God or in modern parlance to anarchy. Then all the parties will fight one another like dogs, or will, when real responsibility faces them, come to a reasonable agreement.’43 He seemed to be welcoming a period of chaos after the British withdrawal, for ‘that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time or to unrestrained dacoities [banditry]. From these a true India will rise in the place of the false one we see.’44 He saw in the destruction that air raids wrought in Europe the end of technologically advanced civilisation, a vindication of his faith in the spinning-wheel: ‘The age of cities is coming to an end. The slogan of “Back to the villages” was never so true as today.’45
Gandhi tried to impress upon sceptical colleagues the merit of making the subcontinent a testing ground for non-violence, a cauldron of chaos with non-violence supposedly the solution for everything. Gandhi’s resolution to the Congress working committee would have bound it to say it was ‘of the opinion that the British should withdraw from India... The committee hopes that Japan will not have any designs on India.’ In the event of an attack ‘the Committee would expect all those who look to Congress for guidance to offer complete non-violent non-cooperation to the Japanese forces and not render any assistance to them.’46
Gandhi’s resolution was significantly altered by Nehru and other colleagues at a working committee meeting so as to remove apparent sympathy for the Axis Powers and replace it with intimations of sympathy for the Allies. This became what was known as the ‘Quit India resolution’ (the phrase was not Gandhi’s), which was finally passed on 14 July 1942 by the working committee and placed before the full Congress in Bombay on 7-8 August. By now it included, in deference to the wishes of those who wanted to continue the war against Japan, a reassurance that Allied armed forces could stay in India in order to resist Japanese aggression and to help China. It was doubtless also a consideration that Congress did not wish to offend America when the US was sympathetic to Indian independence. Nehru was reluctant to cause problems for the British, preoccupied as they were in fighting fascism, but went along with Gandhi.
Gandhi gave the committee a mantra: ‘Do or Die. We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.’47 The resolution certainly achieved unanimity among non-Congress Indians: all condemned it, from the Muslims and Liberals to the untouchables and the princes. Jinnah considered the objective of British withdrawal with no constitutional settlement in place would mean the creation of a Hindu raj in which minority interests would be violently crushed. Congress had lost its sense of the future, they were fighting the battles of the past: if even Churchill, the arch-opponent of India’s independence, had accepted that dominion status would follow the war, then the struggle was no longer with the British for independence. Congress needed to focus on the disparate groups within India after the war, particularly the Muslims and the princely states.
Gandhi’s scruples about attacking an enemy when that enemy was suffering misfortunes unconnected with the matter in hand seem to have fallen by the wayside. Three years earlier he had warned Subhas Chandra Bose that India was not ready to call on the British to leave, and nothing had since occurred to make the nation any readier. He also declared his intention not to call off the campaign if violence broke out—which he did not intend as an incitement to violence but which certainly did not discourage it.
Churchill’s war cabinet, having had their best offer rebuffed, were prepared for the chaotic alternative and authorised the Viceroy to take severe measures against Congress. The mistake, as they saw it, of 1930 had been not to arrest Gandhi soon enough, to allow the salt protest to gain momentum. They would not make the same mistake again. The ‘Quit India resolution’ was passed on the night of 8 August; in the early hours of the next morning all members of the Congress working committee were arrested. Those who remained free went underground and instructed Congress supporters to paralyse the government in any way possible. Rioting crowds now attacked British property and symbols of British rule such as railway stations and post offices, of which hundreds were destroyed or damaged. In more organised protests, attempts were made to sabotage the war effort: telephone and telegraph wires were cut and bridges blown up. Troops remained loyal, however: the authorities were able to hit back hard, hundreds were killed and the uprising died down within weeks. If proof were ever needed that non-violence was the right strategy for Indian nationalism, it was surely this failure of violence to achieve any political objectives.
Gandhi was interned with Sarojini Naidu, Mirabehn and Mahadev Desai in the Aga Khan Palace near Poona, which had been requisitioned by the British for war service. Desai was not with him long; less than a week after his arrest Gandhi’s faithful secretary suffered a massive heart attack. Gandhi called out his name, saying ‘If only he would open his eyes and look at me he would not die,’ but Desai, who was just fifty, was already dead.48 Gandhi was upset that national reaction to Desai’s death was so muted and restrained; there was no great outpouring of grief. Gandhi had failed to recognise the difference between a man who was important to him and one who was important to the nation, perhaps considering that the two were the same.
Pyarelal was allowed to join Gandhi as his secretary in Desai’s place. As usual Gandhi showed his best qualities as a leader when most challenged, rallying his colleagues to deal with the death by filling every day with a busy timetable: study, prayer and other activities. ‘We should keep ourselves so busy that there is no time for idle thought, depressing or otherwise,’ he said.49 One diversion he was persuaded to adopt was telling his own life story to his companions, so his principal biographers Pyarelal and Sushila Nayar heard many details that do not appear in his autobiographies.
Kasturba, though not arrested in the original sweep, had been taken in within a day because she threatened to make a speech at a protest meeting in place of Gandhi. Sushila Nayar, who had accompanied her, was also picked up. Kasturba was able to berate her husband: ‘Did I not tell you not to pick a quarrel with this mighty government? You did not listen to me and now we have all to pay the penalty.’50
The Viceroy blamed Gandhi for the violence taking place across India, an accusation which so upset him that from 9 February 1943 he went on a twenty-one-day fast. The authorities fully expected him to the and had arranged such contingencies as a short news blackout, so that in the event of his death local government would have time to prepare for such unrest as it might produce. In fact this fast, during which his drinking water was supplemented with lime juice, salt and other minerals, passed without incident. Lord Linlithgow cabled Churchill that Gandhi was ‘the world’s most successful humbug’—both suspected a level of fraud in the fast, but none was proved. ‘It now seems almost certain that the old rascal will emerge all the better from his so-called fast,’ replied Churchill.51 It may be that someone else, perhaps Sushila, was adding glucose or other nutrients to his water without his knowledge, though she explicitly denied this.
Reports of Gandhi’s life in prison include his continuing the instruction of his wife that he had started when they were first married: he was now teaching her the history and geography of India. She is said to have inquired innocently: ‘Why do you ask the British to quit India? Our country is vast, we can all live there. Let them stay if they like, but tell them to stay as our brothers.’52
Kasturba was suffering from an uneven heart rhythm, breathlessness and chest pains; she had a first heart attack late in 1943, and two more early the next year. She would sit up on the veranda with Gandhi beside her holding her hand. Medicines, whether Western or ayurvedic, ceased to have any beneficial effect, and Gandhi halted them. Her children and other family members came to see her, excepting Harilal, for whom she asked. Gandhi asked the police to look for him and it was found that he had attempted to visit his mother but had turned up at the gates of the Aga Khan Palace so drunk that he had been rejected. Later he was able to see her, and as Ramdas and Devdas were visiting too she was able to see three of her four sons (Manilal was in South Africa). When next Harilal visited he was drunk again, which so upset his mother that she began to beat her forehead with her fist; he was hustled out and not allowed to return.
Kasturba died on 22 February 1944, with Gandhi holding her, after more than sixty years of married life. He joined the women in bathing her body, and wrapped it in a sari made of yarn spun by him, as she had wished. The government did not want a big public funeral which would have taken on the nature of a demonstration, so she was cremated in the palace grounds on wood brought to the palace for Gandhi’s own funeral, had he died on his last fast. Friends and relatives were allowed into the compound. She was cremated in a corner of the grounds where the cremation of Desai’s body had taken place previously. Gandhi waited beside the pyre until it had burned down to ashes. Several times it was suggested he should go and rest but he refused, saying: ‘How can I leave her like this after sixty-two years of companionship? I am sure she won’t forgive me for that.’53 Kasturba’s bangles were found intact in the ashes—a good sign for those who believe in signs and tokens.
‘It was as if a part of Bapu departed,’ Mirabehn said of Kasturba’s death.54 He learned to be reflective about it, and a year after her death was able to write: ‘Perhaps you do not know how many of my plans came to nothing because of Ba’s imperfections. I exercised as much strictness as I could. But the limitation would always show itself.’55 In later years he was pleased to say how much he had learned from Kasturba’s resistance to his will. She so often went against his rules that, according to one resident, ‘Bapu, in the end, had to accept defeat and declare that Ba was exempted from the regulations of the ashram.’56 Their grandson Arun Gandhi remembered his first visit to the ashram when he was four years old. He had a fever when he arrived and Gandhi prescribed a week-long fast for him. After the third day the fever had abated and his mother appealed to Gandhi to ask if he might now eat. When Gandhi said no, the child began to wail. Kasturba, without arguing the matter, gave him a glass of orange juice saying: ‘I am not going to let this child starve.’ Gandhi desisted, and Arun remembered his quizzical smile and small sign of resignation.’57
Gandhi had admonished her, however, when she transgressed rules relating to national campaigns. All of his followers were supposed to boycott Hindu temples that refused entry to untouchables. On a visit to Orissa, Kasturba and Mahadev Desai’s wife visited the Jagannath Puri temple, one of the most important in India but that persisted in excluding untouchables. Gandhi denounced her behaviour at a public prayer meeting that evening, but chiefly blamed himself and Mahadev for not better educating their wives; both undertook a fast. Kasturba was never a convert to ‘Gandhism’; she was ever the orthodox Hindu but, being that, she had to side with her husband. As one of her friends said to her: ‘We must stick to our orthodox views and not allow untouchables in our houses and not drink water touched by a Muslim, but these things are not for you. For you the higher ideal is to follow your husband.’58
Whether she was really, as Gandhi gallantly put it, ‘my teacher in the art and practice of non-violent non-cooperation,’ she certainly shared his miseries.59 Gandhi had truly lived the lesson of his boyhood hero King Harishchandra whose family suffered for his noble principles: Harilal was to die, of tuberculosis exacerbated by alcoholism, in 1948 at the age of fifty.
As well as the deaths of his wife and his secretary, Gandhi was also stricken by the deaths of two close friends, Charles Andrews in 1940 and the cotton merchant Jamnalal Bajaj in 1942. About this time he suffered a severe attack of malaria; his blood pressure was as high as it had been for years. Sushila, monitoring his health, noted that he was suffering from anaemia, hookworm, dysentery, a high fever and depression. The new Viceroy Lord Wavell felt that a third death in custody would re-invigorate the Quit India movement, which was currently moribund. The military situation was also less threatening: the Indian army was at its most numerous, in good shape, and the Japanese were in slow retreat. On 6 May 1944 Gandhi was released from jail for the last time. Of his seventy-four years he had been in prison, in South Africa and India, for more than six.