Hi, Everyone! With
Gandhi, inevitably, one discovers there is one face for the Indians and another
behind the scenes, whether it be in the Congress or before the Viceroy.
We have already seen a
large sample of it in during the time of his Kheda Satyagraha. The sentiments
he avowed publicly then were:
“Champaran and Kaira affairs are my
direct, definite, and special contribution to the war. Ask me to suspend my
activities in that direction, and you ask me to suspend my life.”[1]
What he said to the
Viceroy in a secret letter sent in the same envelope:
“Further I desire relief regarding the Kaira trouble. Relief will
entirely disengage me from that preoccupation which I may not entirely set
aside. It will also enable me to fall back for war purposes upon my co-workers
in Kaira and it may enable me to get recruits from the district.”
Not only did he express
a desire to be relieved from the “Kaira trouble,” he suggested a bargain that
would that would, he hoped, induce the British to do so!
And when questioned by
people re the content of his secret letter, he said:
“My
first letter to His Excellency the Viceroy was meant for him alone. I cannot
give publicity to the views which I expressed to him as to a gentleman and a
friend.”
[From Gujarati]
Mahadevbhaini
Diary, Vol. IV
We have seen again in
the time of the Noncooperation Movement how Gandhi fired up the Indians into
fighting for what they thought was their freedom, signified in the term
“Swaraj.”
But
we have seen that the Swaraj that Gandhi was fighting was not freedom and
certainly could not have led there.
He strenuously opposed
any definition of the word “Swaraj” that could mean freedom or democracy. He
even made a statement, while his Noncooperation Movement was actually in
progress:
“It
will be unlawful for us to insist on independence. For it will be vindictive
and petulant. It will be a denial of God.”[2]
Things didn’t change
much as time went by. Viceroy Lord Linlithgow’s biography, The Viceroy at Bay, by John Glendevon, has very revealing sidelights
on Gandhi.
Page 116:
“Linlithgow admired the ability
with which Gandhi succeeded in ousting Bose although his methods were ‘of the
most questionable constitutional validity,’ and getting his own nominee,
Rajendra Prasad, elected in Bose’s place.
Yes, the Man of Truth,
the Mahatma, was certainly never above scheming and plotting to get his way.
There was Truth and then there was Gandhi’s “Truth.”
Ibid, page 116
“Meanwhile the Viceroy had conveyed
to Birla and Mahadeo Desai his surprise at the contrast in tone between
Gandhi’s personal letters to him and the kind of statement which the Mahatma
was making in public. On being assured that he need not take the latter remarks
too seriously, as they were meant to appeal to the public, he suggested that
Mr. Gandhi might reserve his sharper arrows for his private correspondence and
appear in his more human and gentle guise in the statements he released for public
consumption.”
At the time these
events and others in the freedom movement were taking place, there was no way
for the duped Indians to know of the two faces of their Mahatma: the public one
they saw, and the private one for carrying on the actual politics.
But today, when so much
documentation is available, and what was private is also now public, there is
no reason for Indians, or anyone else, to still be burying their heads in the
sand.
Anurupa
Mahatma Gandhi Facts: Gandhi Revealed
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