Table Of ContentGANDHI AND HIS CRITICS
By the same author
Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and
Nationalism in India
In Gandhi's Footsteps: The Life and Times of
Jamnalal Bajaj
Jawaharlal Nehru: Rebel and Statesman
Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography
The Nehrus
Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj
The Moderate Era in Indian Politics
Socialism in India (editor)
GANDHI
AND HIS CRITICS
B. R. NANDA
O X JO R D
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001
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First published 1985
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Fifth impression 2001
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Contents
Preface vii
1 The Gandhi Film 1
2 ‘A Hindu of Hindus’ 4
3 The Making of the Mahatma 8
4 Gandhi and the Caste System 18
5 The Fight Against Racialism 27
6 Amritsar, 1919 34
7 The Two Faces of Imperialism 42
8 The 1917 Declaration 49
9 Gandhi and the Raj 57
10 Religion and Politics 72
11 Gandhi and the Partition of India 77
12 The Partition Massacres 98
13 Gandhi and Non-Violence 115
14 M^n versus Machine 123
15 A Reactionary? 131
16 The Man 142
Epilogue: The Message 153
Notes 161
Index 173
To Baba
Preface
‘The man who became one with the Universal Being’— this
was the sub-title of Romain Rolland’s book, Mahatma Gandhi,
published in 1924. ‘One thing is certain’, Rolland wrote, ‘either
Gandhi’s spirit will triumph, or it will manifest itself again, as
were manifested centuries before, the Messiah and the Buddha.’
Twenty years later Albert Einstein could write of Gandhi:
‘Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such
a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.’
Magnificent as such tributes were, they would be misleading
if they created the impression that Gandhi’s career was a
triumphal procession. Indeed from the day he plunged into the
vortex of the racial politics of Natal until his assassination
fifty-four years later, he was continually in the centre of one
storm or other. In South Africa he was flayed in the European
press and jailed by the colonial government; in 1897 he was
nearly lynched by a white mob in the streets of Durban. After
his return to India he incurred the inveterate suspicion and
hatred of the British authorities. ‘It is very necessary throughout’,
Lord Willingdon, the Viceroy, wrote in 1933, ‘to view Gandhi
as he is and not what he poses to be.’ Asjate as 1946 Lord
Wavell confided to his journal that Gandhi was an ‘exceedingly
shrewd, obstinate, double-tongued, single-minded-politician.’
The British rulers of India tended to see in him an irreconciliable
enemy of the Raj, to suspect a trap in every word he uttered and
a trick in his every action.
Gandhi had to contend not only with the guardians of the
British empire. He never lacked opponents in his own country
and indeed in his own party. He was the bete noire of orthodox
Hindus who were infuriated by his denunciation of caste exclu
siveness and untouchability and by his advocacy of secular
politics. In the course of his Harijan tour he narrowly escaped a
bomb attack in Poona in 1934; fourteen years later he fell a
Rrejace
Vlll
victim to the bullets of a Poona Brahmin who charged him with
betrayal of the Hindu cause. Curiously enough, for years Gandhi
had been branded by protagonists of Pakistan as ‘the Enemy
Number One of Islam’. Within the Congress Party Gandhi had
continually to cope with rumblings of discontent. He was repu
diated by the older leadership of the Congress in 1919. In the
nineteen-twenties and thirties young radicals in the Congress
such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose and Jayaprakash
Narayan were straining at the leash: they fretted at the patient
and peaceful methods of the Mahatma. The Indian communists
dubbed him a charismatic but calculating leader who knew
how to rOuse the masses but deliberately contained and diverted
their revolutionary ardour so as not to hurt the interests of
British imperialists and Indian capitalists.
Gandhi was patient with his critics. Through his weekly
journals and innumerable letters to his correspondents (ninety
volumes of his writings have already been published) he kept up
a continual dialogue with them. In November 1929 when
Jawaharlal Nehru regretted his signatures to the manifesto
issued by Indian leaders on Lord Irwin’s declaration on dominion
status, Gandhi wrote to him: ‘Let this incident be a lesson.
Resist me always when my suggestion does not appeal to your
head or heart. I shall not love you the less for that resistance.’
Gandhi encouraged his critics to come out in opposition so that
he could attempt to carry conviction to them or, alternatively,
change his own stand.
In the first chapter I have referred to certain comments on
Gandhi made in the wake of the Attenborough film, but in this
book I am not responding only to these comments. Indeed
much of the criticism is a repetition of what was said earlier
about Gandhi, even in his lifetime. Nearly four decades after his
death it should be possible to see Gandhi and his times in better
perspective. I have posed in this work some major issues which
have been brought up and tried to examine them in the bio
graphical and historical contexts. Though my approach is
broadly thematic I have not been oblivious of chronology. I
shall feel amply rewarded if this book helps those who wish to
delve a little deeper into Gandhi’s life and thought, and at the
same time want to steer clear of deification as well as denigration.
They are likely to discover in him a degree of rationality,
Preface ix
radicalism and relevance to our times which they may not have
suspected.
I would like to thank Dr S. R. Mehrotra and my son, Naren,
for taking the trouble of going through the whole manuscript
and making useful suggestions. Professor T. N. Madan was
kind enough to read two chapters. I am indebted to my wife for
reading and commenting helpfully on every chapter as it was
being written; without her encouragement and support I could
hardly have started much less completed this book.
B. R. Nanda
