Gandhi's Independence day

Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes in the Hindustan Times about the meaning of Independence day- which India is currently celebrating.

He tells us of how his distinguished grandfather- whose humble request that 'thinking Indians' give up sex was, tragically, denied by his sons and grandchildren- celebrated India's independence. Happily, this does not include sordid descriptions of the old kook sleeping naked with his grand niece- which is one way he got his jollies. But, it is repugnant in a different way.

Independence — his goal of decades — was round the corner. As was Partition, an anathema.

Gandhi's aim was Hindu-Muslim unity. He failed. Hindus voted overwhelmingly for Congress, Muslims for the Muslim League, in 1946. Gandhi had lost salience. His own people were in no mood to listen to him. However, he still needed money for his Ashrams and would go wherever there was suffering so as to raise money in the name of the victims.  

But the mayhem and murder, presaging those two events, were all around him when, late in the night of November 6, 1946 , Mahatma Gandhi reached Chandpur by ferry. He was to stay a full four months in the stream-washed wetlands of Noakhali, East Bengal, heeding to calls from brutalised Hindus.

What was the outcome? Hindus were ethnically cleansed. However Gandhi did raise some money. There is a memorial to him there.  

No sooner did he reach that first stop in the tour came news of Muslims in Bihar having been counter-attacked, mercilessly. Grieved and ashamed, Gandhi said, “The Independence of India is today at stake in Bengal and Bihar. Biharis have behaved as cowards. If the Biharis wanted to retaliate they could have gone to Noakhali and died to a man”.

Or they could have ignored Gandhi- which is what they in fact did. Nehru wanted to send planes to bomb the Biharis. This was silly. What neither man did was say 'all those involved will be prosecuted. Their membership of the Congress Party will be cancelled. Just you wait- we'll put you in jail'.  

Two deputations met him the next day — the first, Muslim, maintaining that no disturbances had taken place at Chandpur and the second, Hindu, seeking police and military protection. Addressing a gathering of some 15,000, mainly Muslims, at Chandpur that evening, he said, “ I have heard of forcible conversions, forcible feeding of beef, abductions and forcible marriages, not to talk about murders, arson and loot. People have broken idols. Muslims do not worship idols. Neither do I. But why should they interfere with those who wish to worship them? These incidents are a blot on the name of Islam.”

Did the Muslims believe Gandhi was an authority on Islam? No. They ignored him and finally chased away the old fool.  

The fires having been doused, if not extinguished, in East Bengal , he left on March 3, 1947 to the “opposite theatre” — Bihar.

East Bengal did full scale ethnic cleansing. Nothing was doused. Gandhi failed in Bengal and went to Bihar where again he failed. Then he went to Delhi but got shot despite the fact that it would have been easy to protect him- if that is what the Government really wanted to do.  The problem with setting up as an autocrat- even one of a purely moral or spiritual type- is that autocracy is tempered by assassination if, as in Gandhi's case, it is utterly worthless. Interestingly two other autocratic cretins surnamed Gandhi were slaughtered, to salutary effect in living memory.

In the village of Bir, he learnt of the brutalities visited on innocent Muslims. Speaking to a gathering in that village, he could barely control his fury. “I wish to ask you, how could you live to see an old woman of 110 butchered before your eyes ? I will not rest nor let others rest. I will wander all over on foot and ask the skeletons what happened. There is such a fire raging in me that I will know no peace till I have found a solution for all this .”

Gandhi said he knew who was behind the killings. It was Congress Party members. Did Gandhi suspend them from the Party? Did he try to prosecute them? No. He raised some money and left.  

As steps towards the transfer of power to the two dominions began taking final shape, Gandhi remained firmly away from all of that. His feet took him where his heart said he should be — among the victims of the trauma surrounding the change. And, in early August, he went back to Bengal from Bihar. His specific intention was to return to the still-smarting Noakhali.

But the East Bengalis didn't want him back. 

In Calcutta, a big Muslim delegation urged him to stay on in the city to help quell the riot-like situation there.

But Gandhi's pals- like the Birlas- had already ensured that the Muslims were beaten in Calcutta, which is why it remained with India.  

He agreed on two conditions: One, those Muslims in Calcutta urging him to work for peace in the city must do what they can to ensure the safety of Hindus in Noakhali.

That didn't happen.  

Two, he would live in a Muslim locality in the city where Hindus must ensure the safety of its Muslim residents.

The Hindu business interests had already won. They didn't want their labour force running away.  

Hydari Manzil in the Beliaghata suburb of Calcutta was identified.
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“It was a very shabby house,” Manu Gandhi records, “without any sort of facility…open on all sides…only one latrine…every inch of the place covered with dust and muddied by rain…Only one available room where everybody and everything had to be accommodated including Bapu himself…”

Yet he was safer there than in the Birla Mansion in New Delhi! Why? Because he could work no mischief in a place where nobody cared about him.  

An officer of the information department met him on August 9 and asked him for a message to the nation on August 15. Gandhi declined to give one. The officer persisted, “It will look kharab if you do not”. Gandhi replied, “Hai nahin koyi message, hone do kharab (There is no message, let it be kharab).”

This sums up Gandhianism. It has no message. Why? It didn't really care whether everything turned to shit.  

On August 14, there was a change in atmosphere — for the better, it seemed. This day being his last in office, premier HS Suhrawardy sought and got the privilege of driving Gandhi around parts of the city to see the eager anticipation of Independence, the departure of the last British governor, the induction of the first Indian governor and the Congress government headed by PC Ghosh.

Shurawardy lost control of the Bengal division of the Muslim League on this day. He had earlier tried to get a United Bengal but this was rejected. He would remain in India till 1949, which is why he needed Gandhi's support, after which he went to Pakistan to start the Awami League. He did have some political power- even serving as Prime Minister for a year.  

And then a message did come. It was in the shape of a reflection. “Tomorrow we will be free from bondage to the British, but from midnight tonight Hindustan will be broken into two pieces. So tomorrow will be both a day of rejoicing and mourning”.

Yet Nehru asked a Britisher to stay on in the top job. In Pakistan, Jinnah took it for himself. It seems India's 'bondage' to the British had some advantages for it. On the other hand, Gandhi and Congress had completely failed to create a non-confessional Nationalism such that minorities were safe. This was entirely Gandhi's fault. On three separate occasions his unilateral, and very stupid, actions had destroyed Congress's claim to represent the whole country. In 1922 he betrayed the Muslims on Khilafat. At the Round Table Conference of 1932, he united all the minorities- including Sikhs and Dalits- against Congress.  And finally, when Japan was at the gates, he issued the 'do or die' 'Quit India' call. But he and his acolytes did nothing and wouldn't die. Congress wasn't just Hindu- it was stupidly so. 

For him, August 15 1947 was a day to fast.

It must be said, fasting seems to have been good for his health.  

Too much was gnawing at his heart. And he recalled his son-like secretary Mahadev Desai who had died on that day, in 1942. Thousands flocked to his Beliaghata room. These included the new ministers to whom he said : “Do not fall prey to lure of wealth”.

It was too late. Congress corruption had been burgeoning for a decade.  

On the next day, August 16, 1947 John Kellas, principal of Scottish Church College asked him, “What is the relation between a nation and religion?”

Christians were, quite naturally, worried that the Hindus would force them to drink cow urine or something of that sort.  

Witness to mutual slaughter in the name of religion, devotee of Rama who believed Ishvara and Allah were two names for the same, Gandhi gave a reply that echoes, re-echoes with a new urgency today. “A nation does not belong to any particular religion or sect. It should be absolutely independent of either.”

Nations should not do stupid shit. That's all that matters. Some are confessional, others aren't. But all should tell stupid crackpots to go fast themselves to death rather than wander around talking bollocks.