Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948

by Ramachandra Guha

Amidst the abuse and scepticism there were a few dissonant notes. The Glasgow Herald, run by a liberal editor named Robert Bruce, printed a long and thoughtful piece called ‘Gandhi Sahib’. This began by asking ‘Who is this “egregious Mr. Gandhi”’ (the adjective favoured by some Tories and Tory papers), and then providing this answer: ‘He is the soul of India in revolt, the spirit of Indian discontent, the assertion of the East’s equality with the West, the most powerful and at the same time the most puzzling personality in India today.’ Gandhi, said the Scottish journal, ‘is not to be dismissed by the fine sarcasm of an editorial in an English newspaper nor rendered ridiculous by the foolish worship of admiring disciples’. The unsigned piece was written by someone who had travelled widely in India and spoken to many Indians. He called Gandhi a ‘patriot’, who is ‘human enough to break through the conventions of caste and custom to eat with pariahs’. While ‘a partisan in politics, Gandhi is no bigot in religion. He calls himself a Hindu but that is a term exceedingly broad, and in many matters he shares common ground with Christians and Mahomedans.’ The journalist further added that ‘he is singularly free from race prejudice’. This unusually sympathetic piece ended with a prediction: ‘When in course of time the “United States of India” come into existence, I hazard the opinion that history will regard the spectacle as an outcome of the work and worth of the “egregious Mr. Ga...

This last sentence, or judgement, was not original. It seems to have been cribbed from a New York clergyman named John Haynes Holmes. Holmes had discovered Gandhi through reading Gilbert Murray’s article in the Hibbert Journal. He looked for more material on Gandhi; the more he read, the more he was convinced that he was ‘a great and wonderful man’. Finally, on Sunday, 10 April 1921, he chose as the topic for his sermon the question, ‘Who is the Greatest Man in the World?’ The answer was Gandhi, who, of all those then living, reminded the clergyman most of Jesus. Like Jesus, ‘he lives his life; he speaks his word, he suffers, strives, and will some day nobly die, for his kingdom upon earth’.

Here, directly and crisply stated, is the essence of Gandhi’s philosophy of religion. This consisted of five, interconnected, propositions. First, the claim that no religion is perfect, with all religions being a mixture of truth and error. Second, the assumption that all religions are in a process of evolving, of ridding themselves of error and groping towards the truth. Third, the argument that it was through interfaith dialogue, by seeing one’s faith in the mirror of another, that one could rid it of imperfections. Fourth, the conviction that a person of faith must not always trust priests or the so-called ‘authorized’ interpreters to give the correct interpretation. Fifth, the belief that when interpreting or judging a religion, one must trust its best practitioners rather than its most powerful. Just as Gandhi rejected the Christian priest’s or the Muslim imam’s claim to certitude and absolute religious authority, so too he would reject the claim of the Sankaracharyas to give a ‘final interpretation’ of Hinduism.

Gandhi stayed at Spring Vale, a garden village near Darwen built by the Davies family for their millworkers. He went for long walks, his loincloth and sandals attracting excited comment (especially among the children). He had several meetings with workers and their representatives. The Lancashire constabulary was out in full force, lining, at fifty-yard intervals, the roads he drove or walked on. They feared a hostile demonstration by unemployed workers. In fact, the people of Lancashire, rich and poor, were disarmed by Gandhi’s gesture of coming into their midst. Wherever he went, ‘the crowds behaved with the greatest good humour, and even the local Conservative Associations, in all the circumstances, with admirable restraint’.

This entry won the second prize, of one guinea. The first prize went to a Reverend J.A. Wurtleburg from Harrogate, whose entry started thus: Farewell, Mr. Gandhi! Farewell to your figure, familiar at least in the Illustrated Papers! How they will miss your loin-cloth, blanket, goggles, and the inscrutable smile! You are going back to your native land, but what you are going to do there only that ovular head knows, and perhaps even it is a little vague. We are none of us quite sure whether you are a fanatical seer with no real constructive policy, or whether you will prove a statesman who can well and truly lay the foundations of a building which might startle the ages.61 As befitting a prize-winning entry, this was suitably even-handed, as well as open-minded; unsure whether Gandhi was saint or charlatan, statesman or fanatic, it left it to the future to decide.

As it turned out, Bonhoeffer could not accept Gandhi’s invitation. Whether it was due to lack of funds or worry that Gandhi would be in prison, the sources do not say. But it remains an intriguing thought—what if Bonhoeffer had spent several months with Gandhi in 1934–35, and, on his return, had conducted or led a non-violent campaign against the Nazis? At this stage, Hitler’s regime was not completely in control. The attacks on Jews had commenced, but the Nuremberg Laws were not yet enacted. And the invasion of Austria lay several years in the future. The Nazis were far more ruthless than the British colonialists in India, and would have acted early to suppress any mass protest. Even so, had a movement of satyagraha, led by a charismatic Christian pastor, taken place in Germany in 1935, it could perhaps have awakened sensitive men and women in the West to the horrors that lay ahead if they did not intervene.

the same time, Gandhi’s decision dismayed his closest political allies. ‘Your retirement from the Congress will be a suicidal step,’ wrote Rajagopalachari. ‘That will complete the triumph of the Government over the Congress, and that of the Viceroy over you. An intense and irrevocable feeling of defeatism will spread over the whole nation, and kill political hope and enterprise…’13 These responses were in character. Far more interesting was the reaction of Henry Polak, who had known Gandhi longer than anyone living in India, whether Indian or British. In a letter to Srinivasa Sastri, Polak remarked that Gandhi had a temperament of restless energy, and it seems to me that he has alternations between the political mood and the social and economic reform mood. Sometimes they almost merge and blur each other. I should not at all be surprised if in the not very distant future he will feel a call to jump back into the Congress leadership once he has put his village organisation upon a proper footing.

Mahadev now dispatched Nehru a letter with the messages their mutual master had wanted him to convey. These were: (i) that Nehru should once more assume the Congress presidency, since that ‘was the only way’ in which ‘the bitter controversies of today could be avoided and your policy and your programme could be given a fair and unobstructed trial’; (ii) that in Europe he should make no speeches or statements. Gandhi told Nehru that ‘it would enhance your prestige and India’s to impose upon yourself a vow of silence…until your return here’.37 Nehru agreed to be Congress president in 1936, the crucial year leading up to the elections mandated by the new Act. But he was clear in his own mind that the real leader of his party, and his country-in-the-making, was Gandhi. As he wrote to an English friend: ‘The only person who represents India, more than anyone has done or can do, is Gandhi. I may differ from him in a multitude of things but that is a matter between him and me and our colleagues. So far as I am concerned he is India in a peculiar measure and he is the undoubted leader of my country. If anybody wants to know what India wants, let him go to Gandhi.’

Some letters, however, would be read, answered and attended to at once. Thus, Tagore had written to Gandhi asking for help for funds to save Santiniketan. The poet, in his seventies, was himself touring with a ballet troupe to raise money for his university. Gandhi answered that he could depend ‘upon my straining every nerve to find the necessary money…. The necessary funds must come to you without your having to stir out of Santiniketan.’ Some months later, Gandhi wrote to the poet again. Attaching a draft of Rs 60,000, he said: ‘God has blessed my poor effort. And here is the money. Now you will relieve the public mind by announcing the cancellation of the rest of the programme. May God keep you for many a year to come.’40 Gandhi kept the donor’s name to himself. It was the industrialist G.D. Birla.

One day, the physicist Sir C.V. Raman came up from Bangalore to see Gandhi. Raman’s conceit was legendary. In the summer of 1930, he booked a passage for his wife and himself on a boat leaving for Europe in October, so confident was he of winning the Nobel Prize for physics that year (which he did). Now, meeting an Indian even more celebrated than himself, Raman told him: ‘Mahatmaji, religions cannot unite. Science offers the best opportunity for a complete fellowship. All men of science are brothers.’ ‘What about the converse?’ responded Gandhi. ‘All who are not men of science are not brothers?’ Raman had the last word, noting that ‘all can become men of science’.

Some days later, Raman came again, this time with his wife, a social worker. Gandhi was impressed with the Tamil lady’s Hindi, telling her husband that it ‘was as good as your science’. Raman answered that in his view English should be the link language of India. Gandhi disagreed, saying that it would be far easier for Hindi to assume that role. He asked how the scientist did not speak the language when his wife did. Raman admitted the deficiency, adding by way of justification: ‘It is that conceit, you know, that I am full of as much as you.’

The day after Gandhi was arrested, the War Cabinet met in London. Churchill was in a jovial mood, for, as he told his assembled colleagues, ‘We have clapped Gandhi into prison.’ General Smuts introduced a note of seriousness, telling Churchill that Gandhi ‘is a man of God. You and I are mundane people. Gandhi has appealed to religious motives. You never have. That is where you have failed.’ Churchill, with a grin, replied: ‘I have made more bishops than anyone since St. Augustine.’ But Smuts was not amused; as an eyewitness reported, ‘his face was very grave’.

The British Labour leader Stafford Cripps wrote a letter in red ink, wishing Gandhi on his ‘double-seven’ birthday on behalf of his wife Isobel and himself. Since Gandhi had ‘devoted so many years’ to the freedom of his people, remarked Cripps, he must be happy that ‘at last Jawaharlal, Vallabh[bh]ai, and others are where they ought to be, at the head of Indian Government. A few short steps and the final act will have been completed and then we can all rejoice together in the accomplishment of Indian Freedom.’ The file in the Gandhi Papers containing these letters from the Great Men of History also has a lovely letter from an unknown American, who wrote: Today at lunch I got the urge to tell you that small towns, like Forty Fort [in Pennsylvania] where I live, all over the world have been made better because of your life. Perhaps it is not so strange after all that you, Hindu leader, should remind the world and Palestine to adopt the methods of Jesus, our Christ. Jesus lives today and perhaps he speaks through you. To me it is one of my great blessings that I have lived in the same generation with you. You feel and know, I am sure, that the world is getting better; and, that we are drawing closer to the people of India and China. Gandhi’s secretary, Pyarelal, surely showed him the telegrams from Ho and Aung San, and the letter from Cripps. One hopes he showed Gandhi the letter from Forty Fort too.

Talbot went to Noakhali in early February 1947. He followed the Mahatma around from village to village, writing that ‘the Gandhi march is an astonishing sight’. It began just before dawn, with Gandhi setting off on the road, accompanied by a party of about a dozen aides, among them a ‘Sikh attendant who fawns as much as Gandhi permits’. Then, as the sun began to climb, peasants from hamlets on the way came along, ‘swelling the crowds as the snows swell India’s rivers in spring’. They joined in the singing of hymns of prayer and of peace. The peasants pressed in on Gandhi, men and women, young and old, and many children too. ‘Here, if I ever saw one,’ wrote the American journalist, ‘is a pilgrimage. Here is the Indian and the world’s—idea of sainthood: a little old man who has renounced personal possessions, walking with bare feet on the cold earth in search of a great human ideal.’

At hand, to see and record the violence slowly ebb away and finally end, was Horace Alexander. In Calcutta on the 15th, he wrote: ‘The fears and enmities of yesterday seemed to have vanished like a black cloud or a hideous nightmare. The dawn of freedom was also the dawn of goodwill. Freedom and peace had kissed each other. Hindus and Muslims crowded into lorries together, waved the new tricolour flags and shouted “Jai Hind” all over the city. In “Bustees”, where for months people had not dared to cross a road separating one community from the other, and where the women had kept indoors, men and women were fraternising.’ What explained this transformation? As Alexander saw it, the change from fear and dread to joy and peace was so sudden as to seem spontaneous. Probably the truth is that the common people were all longing for peace and reconciliation. But someone had to touch the hidden spring. Only a great soul could do that. The Mahatma’s decision to take Suhrawardy into close and affectionate partnership was the symbolic act that touched the spring. But he knows better than any man that the work of reconciliation is only just begun. The partners must strive day by day to consolidate the ground they have won.37 The new governor of West Bengal, C. Rajagopalachari, told the city’s Rotary Club that ‘Mahatma Gandhi has achieved many things in his lifetime, but I do not think he has achieved anything so great, so grand, as he has achieved in Calcutta’.

The return of peace to Calcutta prompted Mountbatten to write to Gandhi that ‘in the Punjab we have 55 thousand soldiers and large scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our force consists of one man, and there is no rioting.’14 This tribute has been widely quoted. Less well known, but perhaps more moving and insightful, are two contemporary assessments by Gandhi’s fellow Indians, both, as it happens, Muslims. When Gandhi broke his fast in Calcutta, in Patna a member of the Bihar government remarked: ‘We are ashamed of ourselves for creating conditions in which the ordeal had to be undertaken, but we are supremely happy that the penance was only short-lived and that its reaction on Calcutta was literally miraculous.’ The minister continued: ‘Gandhiji is not a man of a particular place or community. He belongs to the world and his efforts for the restoration of mutual concord and harmony in Bengal or Bihar symbolise his services to humanity at large.’ Gandhi’s fast, said the minister, prompted the question: ‘Why is it that while we are engaged in petty things and indulging in violence and slaughter, retaliation and reprisal, an old man of 80 is moving about on his tottering legs from one end of the country to the other asking people to give up madness and return to sanity?’

As news of the assassination spread, the first to arrive at Birla House were Devadas Gandhi and Maulana Azad. They were followed by Nehru, Patel, the Mountbattens, other ministers and senior officials (including the army chief, General Roy Bucher). As one report went, ‘Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel sat for long beside the body and gazed hard baffled by the sudden catastrophe. Maulana Azad after a while retreated to a secluded corner to mourn in silence. The Governor-General, Lord Mountbatten, hearing someone say that it would be a day of mourning for the whole country, remarked that it would be a day of mourning for the entire world.’

There were some people watching from even higher up. Mountbatten’s staff had climbed up to the great dome of the Durbar Hall, from where they saw the procession carrying Gandhi’s body go down Kingsway, the massively broad avenue that ran from India Gate to the Viceregal Palace. Now, remarked Mountbatten’s private secretary, the man who more than anyone else had helped to supersede the Raj was receiving in death homage beyond the dreams of any Viceroy. Gandhi died one evening and is taken for cremation the following morning. Here is no long-heralded State funeral; all the same, the people have flocked within the hour and by the hundred thousand to have one last glimpse of him. Who, in the face of the overwhelming tribute, can honestly assert now that Gandhi had no genuine mass following?

Even professedly ‘global’ magazines are not immune to nationalist sentiment, and doubtless Time’s choice of Einstein as the Person of the Century was influenced by the fact that he was an American, and a naturalized American at that, thus further feeding into the myth of the Lady of Liberty who always provides refuge to the worthy and the needy. But Einstein himself would have been embarrassed at being so anointed. For, he absolutely venerated Gandhi, as the first of the three epigraphs to this book demonstrates. An authoritative recent study of the scientist’s political views states unambiguously that ‘for Einstein it is clear that Gandhi was the supreme moral compass’.38 In Einstein’s Berlin study, there were portraits of Newton, Faraday and Clerk Maxwell. When he moved to Princeton in 1935, he added a portrait of Gandhi. However, a scientist friend who visited him in 1954 observed that while the portraits of the physicists had been taken down, that of Gandhi remained. When asked about this, Einstein answered that the Mahatma was ‘the greatest man of our age’.

This posthumous, worldwide praise for Gandhi would have amazed the men who jailed him in British India. Successive viceroys dismissed him as a humbug, a hypocrite, a back number. Their insolence towards him could be extreme: during the Second World War, Gandhi was reduced to corresponding with, and being reviled by, an additional secretary in the home department, who reported to the home secretary who reported to the home member who reported in turn to the viceroy. But who now remembers that arrogant civil servant, or his boss, or his boss’s boss’s boss, who once sat in a grand palace atop Raisina Hill in imperial New Delhi? This revenge of history is a mark of the greatness of Gandhi the man, and of the profound political changes he helped bring about: namely, the dismantling of the British Empire and the institutional and ideological edifice that once sustained it.