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

by Ramachandra Guha

not want the enemy to get hold of them. However, these boats were traditionally used by the villagers of Bengal to buy and sell goods crucial for subsistence. Food and other essential commodities now became scarce. The government did not react, and people began to

starve to death. Still there was no response. Rice was sequestered for the city of Calcutta (where large numbers of British and American troops were based) while the districts of the province were left without sup...

a million died in 194...

On 5 February, Devadas Gandhi met the senior home department official R. Tottenham in Delhi,

and asked him to have Kasturba released from prison, and allow her to move to Sevagram or Delhi, since ‘the change of air or scene might be good for her’. Devadas’s proposal was endorsed by H.V.R. Iyengar of the Bombay government, who thought it possible

that ‘freedom will give her [Kasturba] happier psychological environments and make her last days easier’. The Indian ICS man made a ‘radical’ proposal, which was to release Kasturba, let Gandhi out on parole,...

Poona, on the condition that Gandhi did not leave its premises, stayed away from political discussions, and gave no interviews. Tottenham rejected Iyengar’s proposal, since it would, from the government’s point of ...

might live for many months yet; parole [for Gandhi] might have to be indefinitely extended; Lady Thackersey’s bungalow might become a centre of attraction to an extent to which even she might object; ...

it is difficult to give that word a precise definition and anyhow he would be continu...

Gandhi and Kasturba had been married for sixty years. They had made homes together in Rajkot, Durban, Johannesburg, Bombay, Ahmedabad and Wardha. They had raised four children together. Their own relationship

had passed through many phases, from Gandhi seeing her as an object of his lust, to demanding that she follow him blindly in his activist and personal choices, to a maturing accommodation where they came to respect and love one another—this companionship briefly

interrupted by the Saraladevi episode, now we...

In October 1943, Lord Wavell had replaced Linlithgow as viceroy. A

former commander-in-chief of the British Indian Army, Wavell knew the country well. His appointment was seen by some as a demotion. Churchill did not warm to Wavell, and wanted to shift him out of active military service. So, he sent him to oversee the administration of Indian

civilians, about whose welfare the British prime minister had never greatly cared about. As Wavell wrote in his journal: ‘He [Churchill] has a curious complex about India and is always loth to hear good of it and apt to beli...

was even more blunt; as he put it (again, in private), Churchill knew ‘as much of the Indian problem as George III...

The first argument that Wavell and Churchill had was about food aid to Bengal. When t...

supplies to be sent to the famine-stricken districts of eastern India, the prime minister ‘spoke scathingly of India’s economic efficiency’ and said the available stocks were better used within Europe. Wavell co...

the Greeks and liberated countries from starvation than the Indians…’ The prime minister was hostile to Indians in general and to one Indian in particular, telling the viceroy ‘that only over his dead body would any...

that he had ‘one great advantage over the last few Viceroys’. They ‘had to decide whether and when to lock up Gandhi’, whereas Wavell...

From the early 1920s till the late 1930s, the New York Times had adopted a

broadly sympathetic attitude towards the Indian national movement and its leader. However, the onset of the war, and Germany’s pounding by air of Britain, introduced a certain ambivalence. After Pearl Harbor and the entry into the war of the United States, the balance began

to shift further. Once the Quit India movement was launched, mainstream American opinion decidedly took the side of Churchill against the Congress. Now, the New York Times was going so far as to suggest that Gand...

Rajaji understood both its social and political significance. After he had

abandoned his flourishing legal career because of non-cooperation, the sole appearance he made in court was to defend an ‘untouchable’ who entered a temple to which caste Hindus had denied him access. In December 1931, while Gandhi was returning to India after

the Round Table Conference, Rajaji was active in a campaign to have ‘untouchables’ enter the famous (and famously orthodox) Guruvayur temple. As he told an audience assembled there: ‘It would certainly help...

temple. One of the many causes that keeps Swaraj away from us is that we are divided among ourselves. Mahatmaji received many wounds in London. But Dr. Ambedkar’s darts were the worst. Mahatmaji did ...

to plead guilty to Dr. Ambedkar’s charges. Mahatmaji pleaded that the removal of untouchability was an accepted national programme in India and that he himself was the greatest exponent of it....

be more distant tha...

Gandhi had told Casey that ‘the I.C.S. were responsible for a great deal of India’s troubles and difficulties. They were loyal to the British, but not to India. He said that this all started with Warren Hastings and Lord Clive, who might be heroes to [the British], but

they certainly were not to Indians.’

Gandhi spread the message of religious toleration. These began with a Buddhist prayer taught to him by a Japanese monk who had lived in Sevagram, and continued via verses from the Koran, the Gita, the Bible and

the Zend-Avesta to Gandhi’s favourite Ramdhun, whose last verse he had tweaked to ‘Ishwar Allah téré naam, sabh ko sanmati dé Bhagwan’ (God is called both Ishwar and Allah, and may He give good sense and wisdom to all).

There was no public reference to Gandhi’s death by Winston Churchill. There was no public comment

either by B.R. Ambedkar, despite him being a member of Nehru’s Cabinet. However, a week after Gandhi’s death, Ambedkar wrote a fascinating letter to his future wife Dr Sharada Kabir. Here, he called the murder a ‘foul deed’, adding: ‘You know that I owe nothing to Mr.

Gandhi and he has not contributed to my spiritual, moral and social makeup…. Nonetheless I felt very sad on...

Ambedkar went to Birla House on the 31st morning, where he ‘was very much moved on seeing hi...

walked with the funeral procession for a short distance and returned home, but later in the afternoon went to the cremation site, where the m...

Writing to the friend whom he was to marry, Ambed...

‘great men are of great service to their country, but they are also at certain times a great hindrance to the progress of their country’. He further elaborated: Mr. Gandhi had become a positive danger ...

holding together the Congress which is a combination…agreed on no social or moral principle except the one of praising and flattering Mr. Gandhi…. As the Bible says that something good cometh out of evil, so also I think that good wi...

from bondage to superman, it will make them think for themselves and it will compel them to s...

An interesting (and also prophetic) reaction came from the industrialist J.R.D. Tata. While (unlike Jamnalal Bajaj and G.D. Birla) Tata had never explicitly identified with the Congress, Gandhi was fond of him, not least because his uncle Ratan Tata had funded his struggle in

South Africa. When Gandhi was murdered, J.R.D. Tata was in Switzerland, from where he wrote to a colleague: I was horrified, as you all must have been, at the news of Gandhiji’s assassination. It is a World tragedy but who knows whether his paying the

ultimate price may not in the end have done more for the cause of peace, tolerance and communal harmony for which he gave his life than he would have achieved by remaining alive. It may have, amongst other things, brough...

the Cabinet and the Congress and healed, at least for the crucial time being, the differences and fissiparous tendencies which were beginning to make themselves conspicuous in government circles…. I trembled to think what would ha...

grief and anger caused by Gandhi’s murder amongst the great mass of the people of India and the realisation of the righteousness and soundness of what he stood for, will keep…the extremists from f...

I have written elsewhere about the ‘further joint efforts’ by Nehru and Patel to unite India. In the aftermath of Gandhi’s death, his two lieutenants submerged their differences, and held the ship of state together. Between

1948 and 1950, Nehru and Patel, and their colleagues in government and administration, tamed a communist insurgency and brought the princely states into the Union, promulgated a Constitution assuring equal rights to minorities and women, and mandating a

multiparty system based on adult franchise. While Patel died in December 1950, the first General Election, held in the first months of 19...