GANDHIJI'S POLITICS X-RAYED

📜 SECTION 1

1. The back-ground to the event of 30th January, 1948 was wholly and exclusively political and I would like to explain it at some length. The fact that Gandhiji honoured the religious books of Hindus, Muslims and others or that he used to recite during his prayers verses from the Geeta, the Quoran and the Bible never provoked any ill will in me towards him. To my mind it is not at all objectionable to study comparative religion. Indeed it is a merit.

2. The territory bounded by the North Western Frontier in North and Cape Comorin in the South and the areas between Karachi and Assam that is the whole of pre-partition India has always been to me, my mother-land. In this vast area, live people of various faiths and I hold that these creeds should have full and equal freedom for following their ideals and beliefs. In this area the Hindus are the most numerous. They have no place which they can call their own beyond or outside this country. Hindusthan is thus both the motherland and the holy land for the Hindus from times immemorial. To the Hindus largely this country owes its fame and glory, its culture and art, knowledge, science and philosophy. Next to the Hindus the Muslims are numerically predominant. They made systematic inroads into this country since the 10th century and gradually succeeded in establishing Muslim rule over the greater part of India.

3. Before the advent of the British both Hindus and Muslims as a result of centuries of experience had come to realise that the Muslims could not remain as masters in India, nor could they be driven away. Both had clearly understood that both had come to stay.
Owing to the rise of the Maharattas, the revolt of the Rajputs and the uprise of the Sikhs, the Muslim hold on the country had become very feeble and although some of them continued to aspire for supremacy in India, practical people could see clearly that such hopes were futile. On the other hand the British had proved more powerful in battle and intrigue than either the Hindus or the Muslims, and by their adoption of improved methods of adminis-tration and the assurance of the security of the life and property without any discrimination both the Hindus and the Muslims accepted them as inevitable. Differences between Hindus and Muslims did exist even before the British came. Nevertheless it is a fact that the British made the most unscrupulous use of these differences and created more differences in order to maintain their power and authority. The Indian National Congress which was started with the object of winning power for the people in the governance of the country had from the beginning kept before it the ideal of complete nationalism which implies that all Indians should enjoy equal rights and complete equality on the basis of democracy. This ideal of removing the foreign rule and replacing it by the democratic power and authority of the people appealed to me most from the very start of my public career.

4. In my writings and speeches I have always advocated that the religious and communal consideration should be entirely eschewed in the public affairs of the country, at elections, inside and outside the legislatures and in the making and unmaking of Cabinets. I have throughout stood for a secular State with joint electorates and to my mind this is the only sensible thing to do. (Here I read extracts from the resolutions passed at theBilaspur Session of Hindu Mahasabha held in December, 1944. Annexure Pages 12 and 13). Under the influence of the Congress this ideal was steadily making headway amongst the Hindus. But the Muslims as a community first stood aloof and later on under the corroding influence of the Divide and Rule Policy of the foreign masters were encouraged to cherish the ambition of dominating the Hindus. The first indication of this outlook was the demand for separate electorates instigated by the then Viceroy, Lord Minto in 1906. The British Government accepted this demand under the excuse of minority protection. While the Congress Party offered a verbal opposition, it progressively supported separatism by ultimately adopting the notorious formula of neither accepting nor rejecting in 1934.

5. Thus, had originated and intensified, the demand for the disintegration of this country. What was the thin end of the wedge in the beginning become Pakistan in the end. The mistake however was begun with the laudable object of bringing out a united front amongst all classes in India in order to drive out the foreigner and it was hoped that separatism would eventually disappear.

6. In spite of my advocacy of joint electorates in principle I reconciled myself with the temporary introduction of separate electorates since the Muslims were keen on them. I however insisted that representation should be granted in strict proportion to the number of every community and no more. I have uniformly maintained this stand.

7. Under the inspiration of our British masters on the one hand and the encouragement by the Congress under Gandhiji's leadership on the other, the Muslim League went on increasing its demands on communal basis. The Muslim community continuously backed the Muslim League, each successive election proved that the Muslim League was able to bank on the fanaticism and ignorance of the Muslim masses and the League was thus encouraged, in its policy of separatism on an ever increasing scale year after year.

8. As I have shown before despite their objection to the principle of communal electorates the unreasonable demands of the Muslim League were conceded by the Congress firstly by the Lucknow Pact of 1916 and at each successive revision of the constitution thereafter. This lapse, from nationalism and democracy on the part of the Congress, has proved an expensive calamity as the sequel has shown.

9. Since the year 1920, that is to say after the demise of Lokamanaya Tilak, Gandhiji's influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he ostentatiously paraded before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to these slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. To imagine that the bulk of mankind is or can ever become capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day is a mere dream. In fact, honour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistence to the aggressive is unjust. I will consider it is a religious and moral duty to resist, and if possible to overpower, such an enemy by the use of force Shree Ramchandra killed Ravan in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. Shree Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness. In the Mahabharat Arjun had to fight and slay, quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma, because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence is to betray a total ignorance of the springs of human action. It was the heroic fight put up by the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj that first checked and eventually destroyed Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely correct tactics for Shivaji to kill Afzul Khan as the latter would otherwise have surely killed him. In condemning Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Govind as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit.

10. Each of the heroes in his time resisted aggression on our country, protected the people against the atrocities and outrages by alien fanatics and won back the motherland from the invader. On the other hand during more than thirty years of the undisputed leadership of the Mahatma there were more desecration of temples, more forcible and fraudulent conversions, more outrages on women and finally the loss of one third of the country. It is therefore astounding that his followers cannot see what is clear even to the blind, viz that the Mahatma was a mere pigmy before Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Govind. His condemnation of these illustrious heroes was to say the least, most presumptuous.

11. The clique which has got into power with the patronage of British imperialism by a cowardly surrender to the Partition of India at the point of Muslim violence is now trying to exploit Gandhiji's death in hundred hectic ways for its own selfish aims. But history will give to them their proper place in the niche of fame. Gandhiji was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever and for the freedom they brought to them.

12. As pointed out herein below Gandhiji's political activities can be conveniently divided under three heads. He returned to India from England some time about the end of 1914 and plunged into the public life of the country almost immediately. Unfortunately soon after his arrival Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Mr.G.K.Gokhale, the latter whom Gandhiji called his Guru, died within a short span of time. Gandhiji began his work by starting an Ashram in Ahmedabad on the banks of the Sabarmati river, and made Truth and non-violence his slogans. He himself has admitted that he had often acted contrary to his professed principles and if it was for appeasing the Muslims, he hardly had any scruple in doing so. Truth and non-violence are most excellent as an ideal and admirable as guides in action. They are, however, to be practised in actual day-to-day life and not in the air. I am showing later on that Gandhiji himself was guilty of glaring breaches of his much vaunted ideals.

13. Gandhiji's political career will be divided as already stated under three heads:

14. When Gandhiji finally returned to India at the end of 1914, he brought with him a very high reputation for courageous leadership of Indians in South Africa. Не had placed himself at the head of the struggle for the assertion and vindication of the national self-respect of India and for our rights of citizenship against white tyranny in that country. He was honoured and obeyed by Hindus, Muslims and Parsees alike and was universally acclaimed as the leader of all Indian in South Africa. His simplicity of life, his unselfish devotion to the cause which he had made his own, his self-sacrifice and earnestness in fighting against the racial arrogance of the Africanders had raised the prestige of Indians. In India he had endeared himself to all.

15. When he returned here to serve his country-men in their struggle for freedom, he had legitimately hoped that as in Africa he would command the unchallen-ged confidence and respect of all communities. But in this hope he soon found himself disappointed. India was not South Africa. In South Africa, Indians had claimed nothing but elementary rights of citizenship which were denied to them. They had all a common and acute grievance. The Boer and the British both had treated them like door mats. Hindus, Muslims and Parsees therefore stood united like one man against the common enemy. They had no other quarrel with the South African Government. The Indian problem at home was quite different. We were fighting for home rule, self-government and even for Independence. We were intent on overthrowing an Imperial Power, which was firmly entrenched in the soil and was determined to continue its sway over us by all possible means including the policy of 'Divide and Rule' which had intensified the cleavage between the Hindus and Muslims. Gandhiji was thus confronted at the very outset with a problem the like of which he had never experienced in South Africa. Indeed in South Africa he had smooth sailing throughout. The identity of interest between the various communities there was complete and every Indian had ranged himself behind him. But in India communal franchise, separate electorates and the like had already undermined the solidarity of the nation, more of such were in the offing and the sinister policy of communal favouritism was being pursued by the British with the utmost tenacity without any scruple. Gandhiji therefore, found it most difficult to obtain the unquestioned leadership of the Hindus and the Muslims in India as in South Africa. But he had been accustomed to be the leader of all Indians and quite frankly, he could not understand the leadership of a divided country. It was absurd for his honest mind to think of accepting the general-ship of an army divided against itself.

16. For the first five years after his return to India there was not much scope for the attainment by him of supreme leadership in Indian politics. Dadabhai Naoroji, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Lokmanya Tilak and Mr.G.K.Gokhale and others were still alive and Gandhiji honoured as he was, popular as he was, was still a junior compared to those veterans both in age and experience. But an inexorable fate removed all of them in five years and with the death of Lokmanya Tilak in August, 1920 Gandhiji was at once thrown into the front line.

17. He saw that the foreign rulers by the policy of 'Divide and Rule' were corrupting the patriotism of theMuslims and that there was little chance of his leading a united host to the battle for Freedom unless he was able to cement fellow feeling and common devotion to the Motherland. He, therefore, made Hindu-Muslim unity the foundation of his politics. As a counterblast to the British tactics he started making the most friendly approaches to the Muslim community and reinforced them by making generous and extravagant promises to the Muslims. This, of course, was not wrong in itself so long as it was done consistently with India's struggle for democratic national freedom, but Gandhiji completely forgot this, the most essential aspect of his campaign for unity, with what results we all know by now.

18. Our British rulers were able, out of Indian resources continuously, to make concessions to Muslims and to keep the various communities divided. By 1919 Gandhiji had become desperate in his endeavours to get the Muslims to trust him and went from one absurd promise to another. He promised 'a blank cheque' to the Muslims. He backed the Khilafat movement in this country and was able to enlist the full support of the National Congress in that policy. For a time, Gandhiji appeared to succeed and prominent Muslim leaders in India became his followers; Mr.Jinnah was nowhere in 1920-21, and the Ali Brothers became de-facto Muslim leaders. Gandhiji welcomed this as the corning promise of leadership of the Muslims. He made most of the Ali Brothers, raised them to the skies by flattery and unending concession; but what he wanted, never happened. The Muslims ran the Khilafat Committee as a distinct political religious organisation and throughout maintained it as a separate entity from the Congress, and very soon the Moplah Rebellion showed that the Muslims had not the slightest idea of national unity on which Gandhiji had set his heart and had staked so much There followed, as usual in such cases, a huge slaughter of the Hindus, numerous forcible conversions, rape and arson. The British Government entirely unmoved by the rebellion suppressed it in a few months and left to Gandhiji the joy of his Hindu-Muslim unity. The Khilafat agitation had failed and let down Gandhiji British Imperialism emerged stronger, the Muslims became more fanatical and the consequences were visited on the Hindus. But undaunted by the tactics of the British rulers, Gandhiji became more stubborn in the pursuit of his phantom of Hindu-Muslim unity. By the Act of 1919 separate electorates were enlarged and communal representation was continued not merely in the legislature and the local bodies but even extended within the Cabinet. The services began to be distributed on communal basis and the Muslims obtained high jobs from our British Masters not on merit but by remaining aloof from the struggle for freedom and because of their being the followers of Islam. Government patronage to Muslims in the name of minority protection penetrated throughout the body-politic of the Indian State and the Mahatama's meaningless slogans were no match against this wholesale corruption of the Muslim mind. But Gandhiji did not relent.

He still lived in the hope of being the common leader both of the Hindus and Muslims and the more he was defeated, the more he indulged in encouraging the Muslims by extravagant methods. The position continued to deteriorate and by 1925 it became patent to all, that the Government had won all along the line, but like the proverbial gambler Gandhiji increased his stake. He agreed to the separation of Sind and to the creation of a separate province in the North-West Frontier. He also went on conceding one undemocratic demand after another to the Muslim League in the vain hope of enlisting its support in the national struggle. By this time the stock of the Ali Brothers had gone down and Mr.Jinnah who had staged a come-back was having the best of both the worlds. Whatever concessions the Government and the Congress made, Mr.Jinnah accepted and asked for more. Separation of Sind from Bombay and the creation of the North-West Frontier province, were followed by the Round Table Conference in which the minority question loomed large. Mr.Jinnah stood out against the federation until Gandhiji himself requested Mr.McDonald, the Labour Premier, to give the Communal Award. Further seeds were thereby sown for the disintegration of this country. The communal principle became deeply imbedded in the Reforms of 1935. Mr.Jinnah took the fullest advantage of every situation. The Federation of India which was to consolidate Indian Nationhood was in fact, defeated Mr.Jinnah had never taken kindly to it. The Congress continued to support the Communal Award under the very hypocritical words of neither supporting nor opposing, which really meant its tactic acceptance.

During the War, 1939-44, Mr.Jinnah took up openly one attitude a sort of benevolent neutrality and promised to support the war as soon as the Muslim rights were conceded; in April 1940, within six months of the War, Mr. Jinnah came out with the demand for Pakistan on the basis of his two nation theory. Mr.Jinnah totally ignored the fact that there were Hindus and Muslims in large numbers in every part of India. There may be a majority of Hindus in some case and a minority of Muslims in other Provinces and vice versa, but there was no Province in India where either the Hindus or the Muslims were negligible in numbers and that any division of India would leave the minority question wholly unsolved.

19. The British Government liked the Pakistan idea as it kept the Hindus and Muslims estranged during the war and thereby avoided embarrassing the Government. The Muslims did not obstruct the war efforts and the Congress sometimes remained neutral and some times opposed. On the other hand the Hindu Sabha realised that this was an opportunity for our young men to have a military training, which is absolutely essential for our nation, and from which we were rather kept far away intentionally by the British. But due to this war, the doors of Army, Navy and Air-force were opened to us, and Mahasabha urged our countrymen to militarise Hindus. The result was that nearly half a million Hindus learnt the art of war and mastered the mechanised aspect of modern warfare. The Congress Governments are enjoying the fruits of the Mahasabha's foresight because the troops they are using in Kashmir and had employed in Hyderabad would not have been there ready made but for the effort of men with such outlook. The Congress in 1942, started the 'Quit India' movement in the name of Freedom. Violent outrages were perpetrated by Congress men in every Province. In the Province of North Bihar there was hardly a railway station which was not burnt or destroyed by the Congress non-co-operators; but in spite of all the opposition of the Congress the Germans were beaten in April, 1945 and the Japanese in August, 1945. The atomic bomb brought the collapse of the Japanese resistance and the British won against Japanese and Germans in spite of the opposition of the Congress party. The 'Quit India' campaign of 1942 had completely failed. Britishers had triumphed and the Congress leaders decided to come to terms with them. Indeed in the subsequent years the Congress policy can be quite correctly described as 'Peace at any Price' and 'Congress in Office at all costs. The Congress compromised with the British who placed it in office and in return the Congress surrendered to the violence of Mr.Jinnah, carved out one-third of India to him an explicitly racial and theological State and destroyed two million human beings in the process. Pandit Nehru now professes again and again that the Congress stands for a secular State and violently denounces those who reminded him that only last year he agreed to a communal and theological State, his vociferous adherence to a 'Secular State' is nothing but a case of 'my lady protests too much'.

20. The 'Quit India' movement had to be abandoned, the Congress support to the war against Japan had to be assured and the Viceroy Lord Wavell had to be accepted as the head of the Government of India before the Congress was to be called into the Conference Chamber.

21. This section summarises the back-ground of the agony of India's partition and the tragedy of Gandhiji's assassination. Neither the one nor the other gives me any pleasure to record or to remember, but the Indian people and the world at large ought to know the history of the last thirty years during which India has been torn into pieces by the Imperialist policy of the British and under a mistaken policy of communal unity The Mahatma was betrayed into action which has ultimately led not to the Hindu-Muslim unity, but to the shattering of the whole basis of that unity. Five crores of Indian Muslims have ceased to be our countrymen, virtually the non-Muslim minority in Western Pakistan have been liquidated either by the most brutal murders or by a forced tragic removal from their moorings of centuries, the same process is furiously at work in Eastern Pakistan. One Hundred and ten millions of people have become torn from their homes of which not less than four millions are Muslims and when I found that even after such terrible results Gandhiji continued to pursue the same policy of appeasement, my blood boiled, and I could not tolerate him any longer. I do not mean to use hard words against Gandhiji personally nor do I wish to conceal my utter dissent from the disapproval of the very foundation of his policy and methods. Gandhiji in fact succeeded in doing what the British always wanted to do in pursuance of their policy of 'Divide and Rule'. He helped them in dividing India and it is not yet certain whether their rule has ceased.