Nehru: The Invention of India

by Shashi Tharoor

the death of Tilak and the official launching of Gandhi’s Non-cooperation movement, both on 1 August 1920, marked the Mahatma’s ascension to unchallenged leadership of the Indian National Congress. (Gokhale had died earlier, in 1915, at the shockingly young age of forty-nine). The special session of the Congress in Calcutta that year saw the entire old guard of the party arrayed against Gandhi, but as the debates progressed and the Mahatma clung stubbornly to the dictates of his conscience, the leadership realized they needed him more than he needed them. Gandhi’s programme passed in committee with strong Muslim support and the surprising defection from the old guard of Motilal Nehru; it was then resoundingly adopted by the plenary. This was a defeat, above all, for Jinnah, the principal epitome of the old ‘drawing-room’ politics, who wrote to the Mahatma to deplore his appeal to ‘the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means complete disorganization and chaos. What the consequences of this may be, I shudder to contemplate.’ His disillusionment with Gandhi’s mass mobilization led to Jinnah’s gradual withdrawal from political life—booed off the stage at the 1920 Nagpur Congress, he took the next train to Delhi, never to return to the party—and later, in 1930, to bitter, if comfortable, self-exile in England. When he returned, it would be to challenge everything that Gandhi stood for.