“Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire
burn and cauldron bubble.”
Gandhi’s
Democracy
Hi,
Everyone! There was a clear policy in the Congress: follow the dictates of the
Mahatma, or be kicked out. As Gandhi put it, “Anyone who does not believe in
the fundamental policy of Congress [read Gandhi] should leave and work outside
it.”
And
if the person did not leave willingly, he was “persuaded” to do so by underhanded
scheming against him!
The
next five posts are going to illustrate Gandhi’s shenanigans, his scheming, in
the case of K. F. Nariman, Dr. Khare, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Dr. Lohia,
and Bhulabhai Desai.
I
quote from Dhananjay Keer’s Mahatma Gandhi: Political Saint and Unarmed Prophet,
pages 633-34. The time is mid 1937:
“At this
juncture Gandhi was involved in a long, bitter public controversy which raged
for over six months in the Bombay presidency. At the instance of Sardar Patel
the Congress members of the Legislative Assembly of the Bombay Province,
deprived K. F. Nariman of his opportunity to be the leader of the Assembly
Party. Nariman was a selfless, fearless, brilliant, patriotic leader and was
looked upon as the natural leader of legislative Party.
Nariman had
riled the Gandhian Right wing leaders by his book Whither Congress. Sardar
Patel preferred a docile Maharashtrian solicitor B. G. Kher, to a strong leader, Nariman . . .
Gandhi stood by Patel. . . .”
Here
I would like to add I have ordered both, Whither
Congress and What Next from the
library. It would be interesting to find out what Nariman wrote that required
his brutal eviction not only from the Congress, but the political scene of
India! To continue:
“For months
Gandhi had been assuring Sardar Patel that Nariman would come to harm . . . and yet Gandhi wrote
to Nariman his silence had been in the interests of Nariman! Gandhi agreed to
be the sole arbitrator in the dispute. Nariman helplessly agreed.
Gandhi in his
foregoing letter said that if on the examination by Bahadurji or Madgaonkar,
his findings were against Nariman, he should have an opportunity of tendering
an apology and making a full and frank confession of his weakness and the wrong
done to the public, the Sardar and other colleagues. But if he found Nariman
unjustly dealt with by the Sardar, Gandhi observed, he would try to undo the
mischief. . . .
Partial as he
was to the Sardar, Gandhi evidently assumed that sardar was innocent and
Nariman guilty: for he mentioned no punishment to the Sardar if he was found
guilty.
On September 26
he wrote to Patel that he should try to forget the Nariman affair. ‘You have transferred.’ he replied
reassuringly, ‘your worries to me and I have passed them to Bahadurji.’
. . .
Gandhi was confident of what his judgment would be.
In the second week
of October, Bahadurji decided against Nariman on both the counts, his action in
the election of 1934 and his action in the present dispute.
Gandhi endorsed
the decision and sent it to Bahadurji who read it in his office to Nariman in
the presence of Mahadev Desai.
All kinds of pressures were brought on
Nariman. To increase the tempo
of it, a telegram had been sent
to Nariman on the previous day
conveying the news that Gandhi’s health was affected and would not be
completely restored till this episode had been satisfactorily ended.
Overpowered by
the anxiety for the Mahatma’s health, Nariman lost his grit and balance. He
signed an apology which had probably been drafted by Gandhi and signed his
political death warrant.
Soon after,
Nariman recanted. But it was too late.
Gandhi, who had agreed that the enquiry
would be private and even the Working Committee need not know about it, sent
all the records to the Working Committee; and without giving Nariman a chance
to reply, they all got together to guillotine Nariman politically.
He was declared unworthy of holding any position of
trust and responsibility in the Congress organization.
The rest of his
life Nariman spent reading What Next
and saying, ‘Had I served
my Lord as faithfully as I served Congress, He would not have deserted me.’”
Here
you have the Mahatma of the Indians, the man to whom “Truth is God” and who
would “sacrifice freedom for truth,” who publicly denounced the revolutionaries
for their “secret” agendas, scheming without batting an eyelid!
Quite
a few of Gandhi’s letters tracing this sorry tale are available here:
Anurupa
Mahatma
Gandhi Facts: Gandhi Revealed.
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