The prayer meeting of 16 September 1947 had to be discontinued. One of the members of the audience had objected to the verses of the Koran that had just begun to be recited. The man who created the disturbance shouted, ‘To the recitation of these verses, our mothers and sisters were dishonoured, our dear ones killed. We will not let you recite these verses here.’ Others in the audience raised anti-Gandhi slogans, ‘Gandhi murdabad’ (death to Gandhi) (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 382). Order could not be restored; the meeting ended. On the following day, 17 September 1947, Gandhi was back with a response in a brief but very important speech:
I have decided not to hold the prayers till every man present in the audience is ready for it. I have never imposed anything on anybody, then how can I impose a highly spiritual thing like prayer?
(Ibid.)
Gandhi was persuasive, even peremptory in his loving commands, but never coercive, never dictatorial.
Carrying on, Gandhi repeats that he understands the anger and the anguish of Hindu and Sikh victims of the Partition, especially those driven out of their homes and villages in West Punjab. He understands, in other words, why they are objecting to the recitation of the Koran. But he does not want to abandon a prayer that he believes in, or change its format just because some people object to it. ‘It appears’, Gandhi observes ‘that millions of people have been benefited’ from his prayer meetings (ibid.: 383). But ‘Either the prayer should be heartily accepted as a whole or it should be rejected … the recitation from the Koran is that part of the prayer which cannot be discontinued’ (ibid.).
Gandhi comes back to this problem the following week, in his prayer meeting on 23 September 1947, after some semblance of order and normalcy have been restored. His argument is that the Koran itself needs to be separated from what the Muslims of that time were doing:
because the Muslims are harassing the Hindus and Sikhs and killing them, should we get angry over the Koran? What the Muslims have done is not good, but what harm has the Koran done?
(Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 410)
Gandhi then asks if we should stop praying simply because one believer has done wrong: ‘If one devotee of God commits a sin, shall we stop repeating His name?’ (ibid.). If the practitioner of one religion is the wrongdoer, should the text of that religion be rejected? ‘If the devotees of God say that what the Hindus have done is bad, does it also mean that the Gita is bad?’ (ibid.). Similarly, ‘If the Sikhs have done bad things, should we stop reading the Granth Saheb? What harm has the Granth Saheb done?’ (ibid.). By the same logic, the wrong-doing of some Muslims cannot be used to ban recitations from the Koran in the prayer meeting.
Allowed to continue, Gandhi offers a radical departure from his usual line of promoting non-violence: ‘I am not proposing to you my method of non-violence, much as I would like to, for I know that today no one is going to listen to my talk about non-violence’ (ibid.). What, then, is an alternative to non-violence? It is, according to Gandhi, faith in the government, in democracy, and the rule of law. As opposed to this, if ‘every man takes the law into his own hands’ there would be anarchy; it would mean the end of social order; the state itself would not be able to function. ‘That’, warns Gandhi, ‘is the way to lose our independence’ (ibid.). To drive out the Muslims just because the Hindus and Sikhs were driven out is also against any notions of justice: ‘You cannot secure justice by doing injustice to the Muslims’ (ibid.). Moreover, if wrongs were done to Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab, wrongs were also inflicted on Muslims in East Punjab. So no side is entirely innocent. What had to be worked out, at the earliest, was a settlement between the two feuding parties. If a settlement were not possible, Gandhi, good lawyer that he is, suggests arbitration, with both parties agreeing to the verdict of an impartial adjudicator (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 410). If even this did not work, Gandhi warns, what would ensue is war, which is of course loathsome not just to him but perhaps to his listeners too (ibid.). The undesirability of war taken as self-evident, Gandhi says that the only way left is for people to ‘give up their madness and come to their senses’ (ibid.), a phrase that he repeats a few moments later (ibid.: 384).
Seeing disaster staring him in the face, Gandhi gives his viewers a final ultimatum: ‘I have decided not to live to witness the country being ruined by fratricide’ (ibid.). He is ‘constantly praying to God’ that ‘He should take me away before any calamity befalls this sacred and beautiful land of ours’ (ibid.). Gandhi would prefer to die rather than witness the destruction of India and Pakistan in a communal conflagration. Here he introduces a new theme, that of his own death, into his daily discourse. It is a theme that never quite leaves him; indeed, he reiterates it to almost his dying day.
The very next day, Gandhi, as mentioned in an earlier section, gave a speech to Muslims in a Daryaganj mosque. He asked them to ‘issue a public statement that all Hindu women abducted by the Muslims in Pakistan should be restored to their families’ (ibid.: 385). So that no one in the Indian union should doubt their loyalty, he also urged them to
unequivocally condemn the Pakistan Government where it had departed from the civilized conduct and demand that all those Hindus and Sikhs who had to leave their homes in Pakistan should be invited to return with full guarantee of their safety and self-respect.
(Ibid.: 386)
So that it did not remain confined to a small live audience, Gandhi also published his speech in the Harijan of 28 September 1947. Why, it bears asking, didn’t the Hindu nationalists read these statements? Why did they refuse to see Gandhi’s impartiality, his equal love for all communities? Why did they spread lies and hatred against Gandhi by calling him a partisan of the Muslims, set on weakening the Hindus?
In the prayer meeting that evening, Gandhi, for the third time, repeats the phrase, ‘Today we have all lost our senses’ (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 387). Is that how he explains the violence, the hatred and the bloodshed of the Partition, as a temporary stupidity; a madness? Is his whole effort directed at bringing two nations back to their senses? Is violence itself a sort of bout of senselessness, like a frenzy? Is that his theory of violence, as a form of derangement of the normal state of order? In any case, what he insists on is breaking the cycle of reciprocal violence and replacing it with one of reciprocal peace. If the Indians declare a unilateral and unambiguous cessation of hostilities, Gandhi believes that the other side is bound to follow suit. In making his argument, again, Gandhi admits: ‘I am told that the whole thing was started by the Muslims. It is true. I think there is no doubt that the trouble started from their side’ (ibid.). ‘But’, he adds in the very next breath, ‘what is the point in harping on it all the time?’ (ibid.). Isn’t it better to do what we must to stop this mutual destruction? To harp on others’ wrongdoing repeatedly foments hatred and counter-violence. Instead, Gandhi says, ‘I have to see what needs to be done today’ (ibid.). He admits that he is almost helpless: ‘I am just skin and bones. What can such a man do? Whom can he convince?’ (ibid.). But if Gandhi is weak, God is not: ‘God can do everything’ (ibid.).
Throwing himself at the mercy of the almighty, Gandhi invokes the story of Gajendra Moksha, which he had alluded to in the prayers recited earlier. The reference is to a famous bhajan by Meerabai, rendered so movingly by M. S. Subbulakshmi:
doobte gajraaj rakhyo
kiyo baahar neer
(You saved the drowning elephant king,
Removed him from the waters.)
(Sanyal 1973)
The story is found in the eighth Canto of Srimad Bhagawatam, the most important text in the cult of Krishna. In the story, the king of elephants, Gajendra, goes to cool off in a lake, only to have his leg caught in the jaws of a crocodile. No matter how hard he tries, the elephant cannot free himself. Finally, he begins to tire and despairs of ever escaping the clutches of the crocodile. In sheer desperation and abjectness, he surrenders to the Lord, calling out to Him to save him, pleading that he has no other recourse.
Iconographically, this is often represented as the beautiful white elephant, dragged down into the lake by the crocodile beneath the murky waters, offering a lotus flower in his truck to Vishnu, the saviour Lord.
Considered a powerful allegory for man’s inability to escape sin by his own efforts, this story is very important in Vaishnavism. It certainly illustrates God’s mercy, for Vishnu, heeding to the call of his devotee, descends from the heavens and beheads the crocodile with his sudarshan chakra (divine discus), thus saving the elephant. But it also shows that sincere and utter surrender to divine mercy is the only way human beings can be free. Otherwise, the urge to err is so strong that none can turn their mind to the divine. Certainly, by man’s own efforts he cannot resist the draw of depravity; only the Lord can free him, making him sinless. The crocodile stands for the pull of sensuality, all that is alluring, all that binds and enslaves us. No amount of effort on our part can free us. But if God helps us, then we will be saved. We are drawn almost compulsively to such bondage from which only surrender to God can liberate us.
This is the purport of Meera’s bhajan. Gandhi, rather cryptically, turns it into a metaphor for India’s condition, so afflicted by the crocodile of communal hatred and the frenzy of retaliatory violence. The great nation of India, with its hard-fought and precious independence, is now prey to all the lower passions and baser drives. Without God’s help, how would India, the elephant king, be saved? Describing the plight of India, Gandhi says: ‘Hence, night and day, I turn to Him. I say: “O God, come. Gajaraja is sinking – India is sinking – save her” ’ (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 86: 387). Gandhi continues to have high expectations from India and Indians, as he did from the days prior to Hind Swaraj. Somehow, he feels Indians understand his message, that spiritual force is greater than military might, that we must forswear violence in order to save our souls. ‘What’, he asks, ‘if everybody in Pakistan is depraved? I would say, let our India be the sea in which all the inflowing dirt may be washed away. We cannot do bad things because others do them’ (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 86: 387). He is sure that if Delhi is won, Pakistan will also turn. He tells his audience, ‘When I go to Pakistan I will not spare them. I shall die for the Hindus and the Sikhs there. I shall be really glad to die there’ (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 388). Hindu nationalists do not usually quote these words. Some persist in the canard that Gandhi favoured the Muslims and turned a blind eye to the sufferings of Hindus. They claim that Gandhi wished to pacify and weaken the Hindus by asking them to be non-violent while Muslims were martial so as to make the Hindus an easy target. But it is clear that Gandhi did not wish to weaken the Hindus; it was simply that the kind of strength he wished to awaken in them was not the strength of arms.
Once again, Gandhi reiterates his resolve to die rather than see India and Pakistan destroy each other: ‘I shall be glad to die here too. If I cannot do what I want to do here, I have got to die’ (ibid.). Gandhi is trying his utmost to save India and Pakistan. In his prayer meeting of 21 September 1947 he says: ‘Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims cannot continue to live the way they are living now’ (ibid.: 400). The situation is intolerable to him: ‘It pains me very much and I shall do everything humanly possible to remedy the situation’ (ibid.). But if he cannot make a difference he would prefer to die than to be a helpless witness to the destruction of India: ‘Let me tell you that if I cannot do what my heart desires, I shall not feel happy to remain alive’ (ibid.).
As he repeats in his prayer meeting a month later, saving India – and Pakistan too – is his top priority:
if for some reason or other we are unable to forge friendship between Hindus and Muslims, not only here but also in Pakistan and in the whole world, we shall not be able to keep India for long. It will pass into the hands of others and become a slave country again. Pakistan too will become a slave country and the freedom we have gained will be lost again.
(Gandhi 1999, Vol. 98: 360)
The erosion of the sovereignty of Pakistan has been all too evident over time. First, it suffered under a series of military dictatorships, then it became almost a satellite state of the US, funded to fight the latter’s war against communism in Afghanistan, and now it is torn by sectarian strife between Islamic extremists and the civil society. The roots of both the authoritarianism and loss of Svaraj, if Gandhi is to be believed, go way back to the very genesis of that nation. India, on the other hand, has gone towards a different kind of communal politics, where vote banks and identity politics hold the nation to ransom. That much of this politics is cynical, exploitative and divisive is all too evident.
On the following day, 22 September 1947, Gandhi returns to the theme of what might happen if India is lost. It is a matter of grave concern and anguish to him. To Gandhi India has always been a symbol of the higher aspirations of colonized people; it has risen not just for herself or her own selfish interests, but for all the nations of the world. India’s independence is not at the expense of others. That is why he says,
If India fails, Asia dies. It has been aptly called the nursery of many blended cultures and civilizations. Let India be and remain the hope of all the exploited races of the earth, whether in Asia, Africa or in any part of the world.
(Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 408)
That is why India’s adherence to decency, good conduct and non-violence, even in the face of provocation and adversity, is so crucial. Saving India, to Gandhi, is also a way to safeguard the interests of the other subaltern and downtrodden nations of the world. It is to show them that one can win and secure one’s freedom through the proper means, without attacking and destroying other nations and peoples in the process.
This would demonstrate the viability of international relations on a different footing, not just self-interest or the domination of others. A few days before his death, Gandhi repeated what the loss of India might mean to the rest of the world. Saving India would mean ‘the regaining of India’s dwindling prestige and her fast-fading sovereignty over the heart of Asia and therethrough the world’ but if India were lost, ‘the loss of her soul by India will mean the loss of the hope of the aching, storm-tossed and hungry world’ (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 98: 219).
Gandhi was preoccupied with how grave the threat to the country was. In his speech at the prayer meeting on 24 September 1947, he referred to India, following one of the bhajans recited, as a ‘wrecked boat’:
We can all describe ourselves today as ‘wrecked boats’. And then we pray to God that He may bring us to the shore; that is, without His grace our boat cannot reach the shore. This is the condition of our country today and I see it everyday.
(Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 417)
The very next day, he likened India to an infant nation faced with ‘a sudden calamity’: ‘Our freedom is not even one-and-a-half months old. What can a child of a month and 10 days do?’ (ibid.: 428). Then he returned to the theme of the leaking boat:
I told you yesterday, and I am telling you today, that ours is a wrecked boat. It is quite true that God alone can bring it to the shore. But we also must make efforts. If the boat has a hole somewhere we must try to stop water coming in with whatever may be available to us. But I have seen that if water starts flowing into the boat, they throw it out with the same speed. The boat then continues to sail in spite of the leak. But this can happen only if God helps. With God’s grace it moves and reaches the shore, but if God does not help it sinks. That is why I would say that man should make effort and seek the help of God.
(Gandhi 1999, Vol. 96: 430)
The two metaphors of the dying elephant king and the wrecked boat show the seriousness of the threat, as Gandhi perceived it, not just to India’s sovereignty but to her very existence. The nation could not survive without God’s help, but each citizen had to do his or her best too. Like a great helmsman, Gandhi wishes to steer this precarious ship of state, that has sprung so many leaks on its maiden voyage, to the safety of the shore. Then he can afford to lay his oars to rest.
Partition, as he acknowledged in a letter two months later, was a big mistake: ‘I realize what a blunder we have committed in partitioning the country’ but as if that was not enough, ‘we continue to make more and more blunders’ (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 97: 389). What was the way out? He points out the way in a letter to an unnamed correspondent, ‘If heart unity is not restored in Delhi, I can see flames raging all over India’ (ibid.: 343). Restoration of peace in Delhi was the first step; neighbourly relations with Pakistan the next. That was the only way to save both countries:
What happens in Delhi will happen in the whole of India. And what happens in India will happen in Pakistan. … When that happens India and Pakistan will unitedly be able to serve the world and make the world nobler. I do not wish to live for any other purpose. A man lives only to raise humanity. The only duty of man is to move towards God. … Let us uphold another’s religion as we uphold our own.
(Ibid.: 260)
It was crucial to be both brave and wise, not only good (Gandhi 1999, Vol. 98: 38). He takes pains to explain what being wise and brave might mean, especially in the context of those times. It gave him a chance to expound his theory of non-violence, trying to show his audience why it would still work, despite being so severely tested. This, perhaps, is one of the most important projects of his last days and saving India was its cornerstone.
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