A Flag, a Song and a Pinch of Salt Freedom Fighters of India

In 1936 when he returned, he was immediately involved in the election campaign of the party for provincial governments to be formed after the Government of India Act of 1935. Nehru as president of the party went on a long campaign across the country. He travelled by train, plane, car, bicycle, cart, steamer, horse, elephant, camel and on foot on an indefatigable marathon of public gatherings. When the results were declared, out of eleven provinces the Congress had won absolute majority in five and was the largest single party in three. What was even more surprising was that the Muslim League had won just five per cent of the Muslim vote, convincing Nehru that communalism had no place in India’s politics. The negotiation with Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the League on the sharing of power failed as the Congress, with a winner’s overconfidence, insisted that the League would have to join the Congress. Soon after, Jinnah came up with his battle cry of ‘Islam is in danger’ that would one day lead to the partition of the country. When the war began, the viceroy Lord Linlithgow made India an ally to Britain in the war without consulting the Congress. He also made it clear that all discussion on the future of India would have to wait till after the war. The Congress ministries resigned in protest. This left the Muslim League as the only party in direct contact with the officials. Jinnah declared his loyalty to the government and his support for the war, and would get active support from British officials when he began his campaign for a separate nation. The Congress now started a Satyagraha by individuals and Nehru was soon under arrest again. His sentence of four years surprised everyone by its harshness and was criticized even in England. Gandhi was arrested soon after. Then Japan entered the war, its armies swept through Asia and were soon threatening the borders of India. Now the government’s attitude began to soften towards the Congress. The leaders were released and the Cripps Mission arrived to discuss India’s future, Cripps offered Dominion Status after the war was over. It was an offer that came too late as by then the Congress was willing to accept only complete independence. They were also angered by the attempt to divide the people, with Muslims and princely

states being given separate rights. The Congress as a secular party fighting for a united nation could not accept this. Linlithgow’s refusal to listen to the Congress’s point of view meant that the Cripps Mission failed. The Congress met in Bombay on 8 August 1942 and Gandhi gave the call of ‘Quit India’. Nehru spoke of how India was claiming its right to defend itself against any invasion. Many leaders were arrested that night, and Nehru—with Maulana Azad, Patel and Rajendra Prasad—was sent to Ahmednagar Fort. Once the war was over they were released and the Cabinet Mission arrived for more negotiations. It was accepted that India was to get independence, but now the vexing question was as one or two countries or worse, as a land fragmented into many? Jinnah was demanding Pakistan, made of the regions with a Muslim majority. The princely states wanted the right to choose whether they remained independent or joined either country. The government did its best to create divisions between the Congress and the League, and keep its loyal princes happy. The Congress team led by Azad, Nehru, Patel and Rajagopalachari faced weeks of complex negotiations. Gandhi, who was deeply disappointed by talks of partition, had withdrawn from the debate and left the decision to them. The Muslim League supported by the viceroy Lord Wavell obstructed every effort to find a solution. The League first refused to join the Constituent Assembly. Then an interim national government was formed in 1946 with Nehru as Prime Minister. He invited the Muslim League to join, hoping that a united effort would make Jinnah soften his stand. However, the League members did their best to obstruct the functioning of the government. Meanwhile, in 1946, he again put on his barrister’s gown after twenty-five years to join the team of lawyers led by Bhulabhai Desai to defend the three officers of Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army at the trial held in the Red Fort. When Lord Mountbatten took over as viceroy, Nehru and Patel finally bowed to the inevitable and the partition of the country became an accepted fact. Jinnah demanded all of Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir, and was disappointed by the size of the country that finally became the new Pakistan. The bloodbath that followed may not have surprised many of the

communal parties, but it deeply shocked Nehru who had always believed in his idealistic and romantic manner that all Indians were inherently tolerant. Just like Gandhi in Noakhali, he spent relentless weeks travelling across north India trying to calm the people and stop the carnage.’ At midnight on 15 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of India in the Constituent Assembly. His poetic speech has become a part of national memory as only he could have looked at the moment and seen India’s ‘tryst with destiny’. In many ways he was a very unusual freedom fighter. Looking patrician even in rough homespun khadi, he did not rise from the poor but still had the greatest empathy for the life and struggles of the peasant. More than anyone else, he recognized that the fight was an economic one and that the only way poor Indians could prosper would be through freedom. His love for the land and its people was deep and abiding, and for him Bharat Mata was not just the land but even more so, the people. People sensed this and gave back a love and trust nearly as deep as the one they gave to the Mahatma. Unlike Gandhi, Nehru was a modern man, who thought of technology and scientific development as being essential for the progress of the nation. He was proud of our ancient history and culture but there was no nostalgic looking back to the past. He was also our finest ambassador to the world— charming, sophisticated and erudite, he put India on the international map. In those early, nervous years of our Independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the leader who made sure that India was put on the path of becoming a truly secular, democratic republic.

Vallabhbhai Patel I had imagined that the government would shower bullets, but it indulged in a lathi charge, which is a new thing. The government it seems is civilized, and so it shows its sophistication in various ways. Yet this is only the beginning of war. We have yet to go a long way. Then why worry about going to jail? —Vallabhbhai Patel One day in 1915, four lawyers were playing bridge at the Gujarat Club in Ahmedabad. They were successful men, prosperous, in tailored suits and

ties. Then a thin, frail-looking man wearing the clothes of a Kathiawar peasant, a homespun dhoti, long jacket and turban came up to their card table and politely requested that they come and listen to his lecture. One of the lawyers, Vallabhbhai Patel, turned his heavy-lidded eyes towards the man, listened, dismissed him as another crank and went back to his bridge game. However, he read a copy of the lecture and, out of curiosity, went and listened to this man from South Africa everyone was talking about. What he heard from Gandhi was a logical, carefully reasoned plan of action that he called Satyagraha. Logic and strategy always worked with Patel and he finally found the cause and the leader that he would follow for the rest of his life. Vallabhbhai Patel was born on 31 October 1875 into a small landowner family in Nadiad in Gujarat. His father Zaverbhai had fought in the Uprising of 1857 in the army of Rani Lakshmi Bai and Vallabhbhai grew up listening to stories of the brave exploits of the rebels. So patriotism and a commitment to the country was a family tradition and his older brother Vithalbhai too would join the freedom struggle. Both the brothers managed to go to England to study law. Vallabhbhai saved for years to get his barrister’s degree from the Middle Temple in London. He walked ten miles every day from his lodging to save the bus fare, then completed the course six months ahead and topped his class. On the day he got his degree he walked to the port and booked a passage to India. He never left his country again. The brothers chose different paths in the freedom movement. Vithalbhai believed in the old constitutional way where one gained political rights through joining the Legislative Assembly and by petitioning the government. He joined the Swaraj party with CR. Das and Motilal Nehru. For Vallabhbhai the inspiration came from Gandhi’s Satyagraha, which meant campaigns of boycott and civil disobedience, building up a mass movement. When Patel first met Gandhi, he was still talking about the strategy of Satyagraha that he had used in South Africa but he did not know if it would

work in India. Patel became his organizer of two campaigns in rural Gujarat, at Kheda and Bardoli, where the strategy was tested on the ground. Patel gave up his lucrative law practice, threw his hats and suits into a bonfire, and donned the plain khadi dhoti and kurta. And that’s how we remember him—the straight, spare body and the calm visage with craggy features that seemed carved out of granite. He became Gandhi’s right-hand man, fund-raiser and party boss, the pragmatic realist who ran the unwieldy party machine with ruthless efficiency. In 1917 Gandhi was elected the president of the Gujarat Sabha and Patel became the secretary. A year later the farmers of Kheda District came to them for help. Heavy rains and floods had destroyed their crops and killed their cattle. They had requested the administration to annul the taxes but the officials had refused. Patel, a farmer’s son, knew what they were going through. He first petitioned the government once again and only after another refusal did he start the Satyagraha. The Kheda Satyagraha was a ‘No Tax’ campaign. Farmers were told not to pay any taxes but stay peaceful even if the government retaliated. Patel moved in among the villagers, living with the farmers and sharing their food, suffering all their daily deprivations. After Gandhi in Champaran, where the indigo planters had protested against the government’s exploitative policies, this was the first time that a leader had lived among the peasants and it gave them courage. The police was sent in, government agents seized land, crops and cattle, but the farmers did not yield. Finally the government gave in, an enquiry was held, the taxes were cancelled and the farmer’s properties returned. Gandhi was delighted at how well Patel had organized the Satyagraha and kept it peaceful in spite of great provocation. During the Non-cooperation Movement, Patel helped Gandhi with raising funds and organizing boycotts and demonstrations. He completely trusted Gandhi’s political instincts and was one of the few who supported him when he suspended the agitation after the violence at Chauri Chaura. The political scene became very quiet after this as Gandhi withdrew to concentrate on his social reform activities. Then the Satyagraha at Bardoli

exploded on the national scene and this was completely Vallabhbhai Patel’s show. A bigger challenge came at Bardoli in 1928 and it caught the attention of the entire country. Officials regularly assessed the taxes to be paid by farmers and in Bardoli a new assessment by an official named Jayakar suddenly raised the taxes by thirty per cent. When the farmers protested, it was lowered to twenty-two per cent but even then it was much too high. Once again Patel moved into Bardoli, in the Surat District of Gujarat, and started a No Tax campaign. This time it was a long drawn out, nerve- wracking battle of wills between the farmers and the Bombay government. Land revenue was one of the biggest sources of earnings for the government and officials felt that if they gave in to the Bardoli farmers, then other regions would also make similar demands. At first sight, it was a highly unequal struggle. Hundreds of farmers were arrested and jailed. Land, crops, cattle and even carts and ploughs were confiscated. Trying to create a rift in the agitation, government began to offer concessions to farmers who paid up. Bands of armed Pathans were sent into villages to bully the farmers into paying and it took all of Patel’s persuasive skills to prevent the situation from turning violent. At his suggestion, whenever the government agents arrived, the farmers withdrew into their homes with their cattle, dismantled their carts and ploughs and buried them. By then the national press had begun to report about Bardoli and other regions began to join the protest. Factory workers in Bombay threatened to go on strike in support of the farmers. The most effective strategy was of social boycott. The farmers who were weakening found the whole village boycotting them. Even the families of government officers were not spared. Barbers, sweepers and washermen refused to work for them. They were not supplied with milk or vegetables unless they produced a chit from the local Satyagraha committee. Donations poured in from across the country as volunteers came to help. They published a daily report, Satyagraha Patrika, distributed free in the villages. Pamphlets were given out and women moved from house to house spreading the word. As a matter of fact, it was the women of Bardoli who

anointed Vallabhbhai with the title of ‘Sardar’ that he carried with great pride for the rest of his life. The battle for the mind and heart of Bardoli went on for six long months. Patel was successful in keeping the peasants united in spite of their differences and divisions of caste and religion. The farmers began to migrate by the thousands to the neighbouring districts. Patel expected to be arrested, so Gandhi moved into Bardoli, ready to take his place. Meanwhile, Vithalbhai brought the situation at Bardoli to the notice of the Central Legislative Assembly and finally got the attention of the viceroy. An enquiry was held and taxes lowered to earlier levels, farmers were released from prison, and their land and property returned. Bardoli had won. After Chauri Chaura many had doubted that Satyagraha could work in a complex land like India. Champaran, Kheda and finally Bardoli proved that a peaceful mass movement could succeed if it was organized and controlled properly. It also built greater political awareness among peasants who realized that the Congress was willing to listen to their grievances and fight for their rights. With the efforts of Gandhi and Patel the Congress finally moved out of the drawing rooms of the cities and became a truly national party. Congress offices opened in every district as Gandhi led a planned effort to widen the membership of the party. Patel was beside Gandhi in every Satyagraha as one of the crucial organizers of campaigns across the huge landscape of India. Even when he disagreed with Gandhi, he never rebelled openly. In 1929 he was the favourite for the post of president of the Indian National Congress but Gandhi wanted Nehru, so Patel gracefully withdrew. Then in 1930 he got busy again, organizing the Dandi March, taking care of every detail from the route to the food and shelter for the marchers. He was arrested soon after. In 1931 he was elected the president of the party and jailed again in 1932. This time he shared his jail sentence with Gandhi at Yeravada prison in Poona. The two old friends spent time spinning at the charkha, having long discussions, and Gandhi taught him Sanskrit. In 1939, fearing that Subhas Chandra Bose would break up the party, Patel led the rebellion of the Working Committee by threatening to resign. In 1942 he was

imprisoned at Ahmednagar Fort with other leaders and later said that he had a relaxed break reading and playing bridge. During the long and complex negotiations of the Cripps Mission and the Cabinet Mission, to discuss and finalize plans for the transfer of power from the British to Indians, Patel was one of the crucial players with Nehru and Maulana Azad. Jinnah had demanded the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, but Patel fought to keep the Hindu majority areas in India. He was also realistic enough to accept a partition of the country as being the only way to keep the country united, though he faced criticism from both Gandhi and Azad for this tough, realistic assessment. During the communal riots that followed, he worked ceaselessly to maintain peace. For instance, when the police in Delhi was accused of not protecting Muslims, he brought in south Indian army regiments to control the situation. He became independent India’s first Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister, Minister for States, and Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Being Home Minister during the chaotic days after Partition was the hardest job in the cabinet, but Patel’s greatest contribution to a united India was as Minister for States. In 1947 the map of India was like a patchwork quilt with over five hundred princely states dotted across the subcontinent. Some were as large as provinces like Hyderabad and Kashmir, others just a cluster of villages, but they all had to be legally brought into the Indian Union. The maharaj as, raj as and nawabs had to sign the Instrument of Accession immediately. Except for Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir, all the states made a smooth transition from monarchy to democracy mainly because of the persuasive skills of this ‘Iron Man of India’. Clearly it was not easy to refuse the Sardar. In the case of Junagadh and Hyderabad, Patel used the threat of an armed invasion to bring the rulers in line. Only Kashmir has remained controversial till today. On 30 January 1948, Patel was the last person to meet Gandhi before he was assassinated. He was devastated by the loss and was deeply hurt by a whispering campaign that accused him of not taking enough precautions for the Mahatma’s safety. In fact, he had been begging Gandhi to allow guards, but Gandhi, with his unswerving faith in ahimsa, had always refused.

Patel’s health, already fragile, soon began to deteriorate and he died in Bombay on 15 December 1950. During the crucial final years of the freedom movement the Congress party could not have done without the skills of Sardar Patel. He was the courageous, practical, disciplined and organizing core of the movement; the calm, practical balance to the charisma and passion of leaders like Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. If they could sway the people with their emotional speeches, he could make them nod and smile with his ironical comments. He was the party boss who kept the unwieldy machine of the Congress moving smoothly and was tough enough to keep its fractious members in line. Among all the leaders, his loyalty to Gandhi was absolute. During those chaotic years of Partition, Patel kept the administration working by the pragmatic decision to continue with the the civil and police services. He was criticized for doing this because the ICS was considered loyal to the British and there were demands that they should all be sacked. Patel knew that at this crucial juncture he needed their skills to keep the country running and this foresight laid the foundation of our administrative services. If today we have a united country without feudal rulers, with democratic institutions and a functioning bureaucracy, it is because of a man the women of Bardoli recognized as the Sardar.

V.O. Chidambaram Pillai He was ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’–the Tamilian who sailed the sea. – M.P. Sivagyanam, biographer of V.O.C. Pillai It was a special day in the coastal town of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. On 9 February 1949, the Governor General of India C. Rajagopalachari had come to launch a ship. To the cracking of a coconut, loud cheers and a band playing, the ship slid into the water and the watching crowd all read the name painted on its bow—Chidambaram. The ship had been named after

V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, the man who took the Swadeshi Movement to the sea. Vulaganathan Ottapidaram Chidambaram Pillai was born on 5 September 1872 at Ottapidaram in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. He was the son of Vulaganathan Pillai—a lawyer—and his wife Paramayee. He first studied in a primary school started by his father and then completed his schooling from St. Francis Xavier High School in Tuticorin. He studied law at Tiruchirapalli and then began his practice at the magistrate’s court in Ottapidaram. Popularly known as ‘VOC’, Chidambaram Pillai often took on the cases of the poor, knowing very well that they would not be able to pay him high fees. He would at time plead cases even against his father who preferred more affluent clients. Soon Pillai began to protest about the corruption in the law court and was furious at being offered a bribe to withdraw a witness in a case. Then in 1900, when he proved corruption charges against three sub-magistrates, his father’s anger made him leave home and start practising law at Tuticorin. Pillai joined the Indian National Congress and in 1905 he became involved in the Swadeshi campaign led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. When Pillai led the Swadeshi agitation in the Salem region, first his own foreign clothes, even pens, knives and combs went up in a bonfire. Then shops selling foreign goods were picketed and processions taken out against the partition of Bengal. He even walked out half-shaven from a barber’s shop on discovering that the man was using a foreign razor! Pillai travelled from town to town, giving passionate speeches and building awareness of the Swadeshi campaign, and soon the government took note of his activities. Pillai had grown up near the sea and he now thought of the great tradition of south Indian maritime trade. At one time the ships of the Pallava and Chola kingdoms had voyaged across the Indian Ocean to reach places as far away as Cambodia and Java. Now the British steamship companies monopolized shipping along the eastern coast. Pillai had already started Swadeshi stores where Indian-made goods were sold, and now moving one step further, decided to compete with these shipping companies. When the

news spread that he planned to start a shipping line, some of the wealthy local merchants came forward to help him with loans. On 12 November 1906 V.O.C. Pillai formed the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company by renting two ships. Later he bought two ships—the SS Gaelia and SS Lawoe—and won the praise and support of Tilak and Aurobindo Ghose. The ships began regular service between Tuticorin and Colombo, carrying passengers and goods. So far this route had been hogged by the British India Steam Navigation Company and their local agent A&F Harvey. They had expected Pillai’s venture to fail but soon found they had a tough competitor. The British company first lowered its passenger fare to just one rupee; Pillai responded by charging a fare of eight annas. Unfortunately, the British company had deep pockets and began to offer free passage and Pillai’s ships began to run empty. By 1909 the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company was close to bankruptcy. At this time Pillai had also begun trade-union activities and, in 1908, he led a strike at Coral Mills, demanding higher wages for the workers. This textile mill was also owned by A&F Harvey and at their complaint the administration moved swiftly and arrested Pillai. The response surprised everyone—there were violent protests in Tirunelveli and Tuticorin, and four people were killed in police firing. Panic struck the British and finally the textile company gave in and agreed to raise wages. However, Pillai was not released. Pillai’s arrest and trial was also a result of the recent events in the Congress. As a supporter of Tilak, Pillai had attended the Surat Congress in 1907 with the poet Subramania Bharati and was present when the party split into Extremists and Moderates. This unfortunate division badly weakened the party and it became inactive for some years. The government took advantage of this sudden cessation of the Swadeshi Movement and arrested and jailed many leaders. Tilak was sent to the prison in Mandalay in Burma, and Pillai was arrested and kept at Coimbatore Jail. There was an unprecedented public outcry at Pillai’s trial, with protests all across the region. Madras newspapers covered the trial proceedings and even the Ananda Bazar Patrika of Calcutta carried daily reports. Funds

flowed in, not just from across the country but even from Tamils in South Africa. During the trial Pillai was charged with sedition; Subramania Bharati and the freedom fighter Subramania Siva appeared in his defence. When Pillai was found guilty, the severity of the sentence shocked the nation. He had been sentenced to forty years, the length of two life sentences, and was to be sent to the notorious Cellular Jail in the Andamans. Pillai appealed to the High Court. At the same time Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India wrote to the viceroy, Lord Minto, saying that he feared unrest in Tamil Nadu unless the sentence was reduced. The case finally went up to the Privy Council; the sentence was reduced to six years of rigorous imprisonment. By then this long and expensive legal battle had financially ruined Pillai’s family. In Coimbatore Jail, Pillai was treated like a common criminal and forced to do hard labour. In unbearable heat he had to break stones, even pull an oil press in place of bullocks and was given little to eat. His health began to fail, and by the time he was released in December 1912, he was a broken man. Pillai had gone to prison a hero with huge crowds out in the street in his support. He came out to discover he had been forgotten. The country was quiet, Tilak was still in jail, the Swadeshi Movement that had created such excitement was over and there was no activity in a weakened Congress. His ships had been auctioned to pay off debts and the shipping company had been liquidated. For the rest of his life Pillai continued to work in the Congress but struggled constantly with poverty and ill health. He completed his autobiography in Tamil verse that he had begun while in prison and now wrote erudite commentaries on Tamil classics and even translated English novels into Tamil. He carried on a long correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi, though he never quite approved of Gandhi’s Satyagraha. His admirers used to call him ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’—the Tamil who sailed the sea—and ‘Chekkiluththa Chemmal’, the man who pulled an oil press for his people. V.O. Chidambaram Pillai died on 18 November 1936 at the Congress office at Tuticorin, a fitting place for the last goodbye of a

man who showed India that with enterprise and courage Swadeshi could succeed.

Lajpat Rai My friends, I must tell you that henceforth we should recognize it as a fundamental doctrine that the unity of the Hindus and Mohammedans will be a great asset to our political future. —Lajpat Rai The order of the judge was that the prisoner be kept in total isolation. Even when he went for a walk around the prison compound he had to stay within sight of the guards. No one was allowed to talk to him and in six months not a single visitor had come to meet him. To make this solitude even more severe, he was not allowed any newspapers and his letters were heavily

censored. The guards would have been very surprised to discover that the quiet, lonely man in fact had many friends at the jail in Mandalay in Burma. Every morning before he came to shave the prisoner, a Bengali barber would memorize the headlines from the day’s papers and give a quick report while he soaped and scraped the man’s face. Later in the day when the water carrier came to replenish the drinking water, he would pull out a newspaper from the mouth of the water pot and the prisoner would take a quick look at the news from his homeland. The guards could keep him away from people but not companions. Lajpat Rai had a pair of kittens, a puppy and a family of mynahs to keep him entertained. The six months of solitary confinement were soon over. Lajpat Rai was born in the village of Dhudike in the Ferozepur District of Punjab on 28 January 1865. His father Munshi Radha Kishan Azad was a schoolteacher and a widely read man who was interested in many religions. Lajpat Rai’s love of books and interest in education can be traced back to his admiration for his father. He said about his father, ‘In India, I have never come across a better teacher. He never taught, but helped the students to learn in their own way.’ Throughout his life he was involved in founding schools and colleges and at times even donated his savings to them. Educated in Ludhiana and Lahore, like his contemporaries Tilak and Gokhale, Lajpat Rai qualified as a lawyer. He practised law at Hissar and Ludhiana, but he was always more interested in education, social reform and the freedom movement. He had an open, liberal mind, so even though he was proud of India’s culture, he did not think everything in Indian society was worth admiring. He knew that the caste system, the state of the untouchables and condition of women, all needed improvement and for him the answer lay in education. If one was illiterate, one accepted whatever the priests and upper castes said, but education gave one the confidence to question and fight for one’s rights. He said pragmatically, ‘Everything ancient was not perfect or ideal. We do not want to be mere copies of our ancestors. We wish to be better.’ So in the schools he founded, education was a blend of the ancient and modern. He was keen to revive good traditions like the guru-shishya

parampara where the teacher took personal care of his pupils and students were taught about Indian culture. At the same time subjects like science, technology and economics were also in the curriculum. He was a founder of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools, the Punjab National Bank and an insurance company. It is this spirit of enquiry that drew Lajpat Rai to the Arya Samaj Movement of Swami Dayanand Saraswati that was trying to reform society and remove superstitious religious practices. At this time there was a wave of such progressive reform movements led by enlightened and courageous men like Rammohan Roy in Bengal and G.R. Ranade in Maharashtra. Dayanand wanted to modernize society and preached the equality of all; he fought the domination of priests, was against expensive religious rituals and completely rejected the caste system. He wanted women to be educated and approved of the marriage of widows. Within the Arya Samaj there was no worship of idols, all religious rituals were simplified and worship did not need the intervention of priests. Lajpat Rai was still in college when he joined the Arya Samaj and it became a lifelong passion. Many years before Gandhi began his work among the Harijans, Lajpat Rai was at work among the Dalits, running schools for their children, visiting their homes and sharing their meals as he tried to understand their problems. He was always ready to go to the rescue of people facing a crisis. He worked in the villages during the famine of 1896 when government measures failed to help the peasants. During a terrible earthquake in Punjab he was up in the hills of Kangra, rescuing people buried under rocks. He founded the Servants of the People Society in 1921 to gather a team of young people who took social work seriously. His popularity soared and soon people were calling him ‘Punjab Kesari’ and ‘Sher-e-Punjab’—the Lion of Punjab. Lajpat Rai joined the Congress party when he was twenty-three and soon was one of its most powerful orators, travelling all across north India, addressing public rallies. He made sure his voice was heard loud and clear. In 1897, at a time when famine was ravaging villages, the Lahore administration planned to install a statue of Queen Victoria to celebrate the

golden anniversary of her reign. Lajpat Rai caustically commented that the Queen would be remembered with more love and loyalty if the money were used to help children orphaned by the famine. His sway over public opinion was so strong that the administration became unnerved and the proposal was quietly abandoned. Lajpat Rai was the ‘Lal’ of the ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ trio with ‘Bal’ Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra ‘Pal’. They were dubbed the Extremists within the Congress party as they were in favour of a more aggressive form of protest against the government. He agreed with Tilak that the time had come to take the freedom movement to the people and start an India-wide campaign of boycott and Swadeshi. His reply to all talk about slow, quiet, constitutional protests was an impatient comment: ‘No nation was worthy of any political status if it could not distinguish between begging political rights and claiming them.’ However, in spite of being called an Extremist, he was never keen on extreme measures, always preferring dialogue and compromise. Just after the partition of Bengal, he proposed a giant demonstration of a lakh people at the Benaras session of the Congress saying that it ‘will carry more weight and will impress the people in England more than any number of congresses’. Lajpat Rai wanted action, but he was not keen on a split between the Moderates and the Extremists in the party, and worked hard to avoid it at the Surat session in 1907. Like Tilak he knew that a divided party would only play into the hands of the government, but others did not listen to his sensible advice. He was deeply disappointed when all his efforts at mediation failed and the session had to be abandoned after unruly scenes. He knew such a break would only weaken the nationalist movement and he was right, as for nearly a decade the party went into decline. It would take the public outrage at the Jallian walla Bagh massacre and the appearance of Gandhi to revive it. Right after Surat, Lajpat Rai was arrested for leading a revolt by farmers in Punjab against the raising of water taxes and land revenue. He spent six months in solitary confinement at the jail in Mandalay in Burma, where later Tilak would spend six years. He kept a diary that he later published as

The Story of My Deportation. On being released he went to England in 1914 as a representative of the Congress and was planning to tour Europe when the First World War broke out. So he left for the United States where he carried on his propaganda work to make people aware of the nationalist movement in India. Working with great energy he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America, wrote in newspapers and started a journal Young India. At that time Lala Hardayal had started the Ghadar party in America with Punjabi immigrants and Lajpat Rai also worked with him. When Lajpat Rai returned to India in February 1920, he found Punjab traumatized by the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh and a country in an uproar of protest. He was soon at the centre of the struggle and was elected the president of the Congress at Calcutta. After Tilak died in August, Lajpat Rai began to tour the country to raise money for the Tilak Swaraj Fund. When the Non-cooperation agitation was started by Gandhi, Lajpat Rai joined it and Punjab was next only to Bengal in its Swadeshi spirit and the effectiveness of its well-organized demonstrations. However, Lajpat Rai was not totally convinced by Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa and was a bit wary of the cult of adoration and obedience that the members of the Congress were building around Gandhi. He was arrested again and the following two years of imprisonment badly affected his health. While he was in prison, some Congress leaders like Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das had formed the Swaraj party as they wanted to stand for elections to the Legislative Assembly. The Congress had decided to boycott the elections. Lajpat Rai came out and joined them and was elected unopposed. He was also involved in the campaign for the rights of factory workers; in 1920 he was elected the first president of the All India Trade Union Congress and said at the conference, ‘The greatest need in this country is to organize, agitate and educate.’ In 1928 the Simon Commission, with Sir John Simon as its head, came to India to discuss India’s future. The Indian leaders were furious at discovering that the Commission did not have a single Indian member. The Congress decided to welcome the Commission with hartals and black-flag processions with people shouting indignantly, ‘Simon, Go Back!’ On 30

October 1928 the Commission was to arrive at Lahore and Lajpat Rai was leading a procession towards the railway station. In spite of the fact that it was a peaceful march, the police began to beat them up, and even though people tried to shield him, Lajpat Rai was hit on the chest by the lathis. He was already unwell and the beating made him seriously ill. Lajpat Rai died on 17 November 1928 and many believed it was because of his injuries. Punjab did not forget their lion and a month later a young revolutionary named Bhagat Singh shot dead the police officer named Saunders who was responsible for ordering the attack on the procession. Bhagat Singh and his friends were hanged in 1931. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, ‘Bhagat Singh … did not become popular because of his act of terrorism, but because he seemed to vindicate … the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation.’ Lala Lajpat Rai was a true man of action who soldiered on through many adversities, bad health and imprisonment. He was impatient with the slow pace of constitutional protests and believed that people just had to rise up and demand their rights. Tough-talking and practical, he had radical views about religion and society, and worked to make a difference in the lives of people. He had the courage and charisma to inspire and lead people to change their lives and his work still survives in all the schools and colleges he opened in north India. The Lion of Punjab knew how to lead by example and the people followed with absolute faith, knowing that he would never let them down.

Chakravarti Rajagopalachari Fear in citizens is the enemy of freedom from domestic misrule. Whatever your age and your profession might be, do not murder the truth that arises from time to time in your heart. —Chakravarti Rajagopalachari Everyone at the small school in Hosur near Bangalore was waiting for a visit by the Inspector of Schools. The classrooms were spic and span, the teachers looking busy and the students all ready to spring up to answer any questions the visitor asked. When the Inspector entered a class and began to ask questions, the smartest boy in class stood up to answer. The Inspector suddenly asked, ‘Now tell me, what is the colour of God?’

The boy thought for a moment, then replied, ‘It’s blue, sir.’ The Inspector frowned, ‘How can you be so sure?’ ‘Because the sky is blue and the ocean is blue.’ The Inspector laughed because he had finally met a student quick-witted enough to answer an unanswerable question. All his life Chakravarti Rajagopalachari successfully faced every intellectual challenge with his agile, logical mind and sharp wit. Chakravarti Rajagopalachari was born on 10 December 1878 in the village of Thorappalli in modern Karnataka. His father Chakravarti Iyengar was the village munsif. When Rajagopalachari was five, the family shifted to Hosur where he completed his matriculation at the age of thirteen. He graduated from Bangalore at sixteen and then studied law at Madras University. He began his practice at the Salem Bar and soon became a very successful lawyer. Then the nationalist movement beckoned and Rajagopalachari joined the Indian National Congress and attended the Calcutta session of 1906 as a member of the Madras delegation. This was the time when the agitation against the partition of Bengal was reaching its peak and so was the battle between the Moderates and the Extremists in the Congress. However, it was only with the arrival of Gandhi on the national scene that Rajagopalachari became more politically active. Meanwhile, he had been appointed the chairman of the Salem Municipality and immediately took measures against untouchability. He made sure that Dalit children were admitted into schools and Dalits could draw water from all the wells. There were the usual howls of protest from orthodox Hindus and one man came up to Rajagopalachari and asked angrily, ‘Will you then touch a scavenger in his dirty clothes?’ Rajagopalachari politely replied, ‘My friend, I will touch even you.’ His efforts at reforming society always offered practical solution. When a man came to him asking for help for his widowed daughter, Rajagopalachari advised that the girl should be married again. When the Brahmin priests refused to perform the marriage ceremony Rajagopalachari, a Brahmin, learnt all the mantras and presided over the marriage himself.

Rajagopalachari shifted to Madras and all the while he was watching Gandhi’s campaign at Champaran with great eagerness. He was quick to recognize the appearance of a very different kind of leader. When Gandhi came to Madras is 1919, Rajagopalachari invited him to stay in his home. There was an instant rapport between the two—both clever, subtle, witty men, and this led to a lifelong friendship that survived many disagreements. It was Gandhi who began to call him ‘Rajaji’ because he said Rajagopalachari was too much of a mouthful! In March 1919 the government passed the Rowlatt Act, which imposed ‘emergency measures’ to control public unrest. It authorized the government to imprison without trial anyone they thought was ‘conspiring’ against them. At this time Gandhi was brooding over a way to organize an effective protest against the Act that would make the government sit up. He said the idea of an India-wide hartal came to him in dream while he was staying with Rajaji. The two friends worked out the strategy together, and then as he was leaving, Gandhi gave Rajaji a charkha as a parting gift. One day Gandhi’s son Devadas would marry Rajaji’s daughter Lakshmi. As Gandhi’s leading lieutenant in the south, Rajaji led the hartal in Madras and it was a successful non-violent protest. From then on he played a leading role in the various campaigns of the Congress party and the party members soon recognized his skills as a negotiator and strategist. For instance, when the Montagu—Chelmsford Reforms were proposed by the government in 1919, involving some measure of self-government, the Congress was divided over how to respond. As leaders struggled over the exact phrasing of the resolution, in the words of C.R. Das, ‘We were worried. Then came on the scene this thin Madrasi, who put a comma here, a semi-colon there, inserted a phrase here, removed one there, and within a few minutes, to the astonishment and joy of everyone, he was able to give us an acceptable resolution.’ During the Non-cooperation Movement Rajai was among the band of eminent lawyers like C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel who gave up lucrative practices to join the freedom struggle. This was the time when the Prince of Wales was visiting India and the government banned all

public meetings. Rajaji promptly addressed a gathering in Vellore, and was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison. Like many of his comrades he spent the time with books, teaching himself Sanskrit and writing a book Life and Death of Socrates in Tamil. Then Gandhi stopped the Non-cooperation agitation after the violent incident at Chauri Chaura. This led to a hiatus in the freedom struggle and for six years Rajaji concentrated on his social work. He established a Gandhi Ashram in Pudupalayam near Salem and worked in villages. It was a happy time as he taught modern farming methods, encouraged spinning, opened schools, and lectured on hygiene and sanitation. He sat in village courtyards talking about the evils of caste and religious intolerance. He also started a magazine Vimochanam. During the years of rural retreat he donned his lawyer’s gown only once, when he successfully defended a Dalit who had been arrested for entering a temple. In 1930 Gandhi decided to launch the Civil Disobedience movement with the march to Dandi. Many Congress leaders were highly sceptical of the effectiveness of his plan as they felt that people would not be interested in defying the Salt Law. Rajaji was the quickest to recognize the cleverness of the strategy and the real aim of the march and said shrewdly to Gandhi, ‘It is not salt but disobedience that you are manufacturing.’ On 30 April 1930 Rajaji led a group of volunteers to the sea beach at Vedaranyam, near Tiruchirapalli. The District Collector of Thanjavur, a British officer named Thorne, immediately declared the march illegal. Hearing of his order Rajaji quipped, ‘… Thorns and thistles cannot stem this tide of freedom.’ The moment he picked up a handful of salt at Vedaranyam, he was arrested and sent to Vellore Jail. His arrest was aimed at scaring people but it had the opposite effect—people in thousands now trooped to Vedaranyam to defy the Salt Law. Rajaji was in favour of Gandhi joining the Second Round Table Conference in London. However, in 1932, when the government announced the Communal Award that gave separate electorates to Depressed Classes, there was an impasse between Gandhi and the leader of the Dalits, B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi, believing that this was yet another clever ploy of the

government to divide the ranks of the nationalist movement, went on a fast at Yeravada Jail, further complicating the situation. At this impasse it was Rajaji who shuttled between the two and negotiated an agreement. In 1935 the Government of India Act allowed elections for provincial governments to be run by Indians, elected by a limited electorate. The Congress decided to take part in elections and formed the government in a number of provinces. On 14 July 1937 Rajaji was sworn in as the Premier of the Madras government. He took this as an opportunity to carry out many of the social reforms that were important to him. During his years of working in the villages he had seen poor, illiterate farmers being exploited by moneylenders who charged them such high interests that they never managed to pay off their debts. So among his first reforms was the Debt Relief Act, which said that if the original loan had been paid twice over through the interest payments then the loan stood cancelled. He also introduced prohibition—which made the finance department protest because taxes on liquor were a big source of income for the government. In reply, Rajaji introduced a sales tax on expensive goods that made up for the loss and was aimed at taxing the rich. This was the first time that a sales tax was introduced in Asia. He also passed laws to allow free entry into temples for everyone. His government had to resign when the Congress decided to withdraw in protest at India being involved in the Second World War. Rajaji did not agree with the decision as he felt that they could demand further power later if they supported the government in the hour of crisis, but he had to obey the orders of the party. The Muslim League gained an advantage at this time by being in the government while the Congress was out of power. Rajaji made his disappointment clear to Gandhi and withdrew from active politics for a while. So he was not present at Bombay when the Quit India resolution was passed in 1942. The last decade before Independence was a time of great turmoil with the Muslim League stridently demanding a separate nation—Pakistan. There was great distust and unrest among the Hindus and Muslims that the Muslim League and Hindu parties like the Hindu Mahasabha and the

Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh did their best to whip up. The Congress was deeply divided between people like Rajaji and Maulana Azad who felt that they should negotiate with Jinnah, and those who did not want to because that would acknowledge Jinnah as the sole representative of the Muslims. As a matter of fact, a large part of the Muslim population did not support the Muslim League and Jinnah knew that very well. Rajaji faced a lot of opposition and criticism for his stand and was shouted down at meetings. After Gandhi was arrested in 1942, Rajaji made another attempt at an agreement. His proposal was that the two-nation problem should be sorted out only after Independence. He suggested that there would be a plebiscite in areas with a Muslim majority and if the people voted for a separate homeland then the Congress and the Muslim League would hammer out a division of the country. Rajaji managed to convince Gandhi to try the new plan but Jinnah, unsure of his actual strength among the Muslims, would not agree. He kept raising new demands and then finally rejected the plan. After Independence, Rajaji was appointed as the governor of Bengal. This was a terrible time with Calcutta facing devastating communal riots. Gandhi came to the city and his presence finally checked the carnage and led to a semblance of calm. Rajaji was deeply worried at Gandhi’s fasting for peace and visited him often. Gandhi then returned to Delhi at Nehru’s call and the next piece of news that Rajaji heard was that he had been assassinated. A sorrowful Rajaji said of his old friend and comrade, ‘He was killed because he preached all faiths were one and all names were God.’ Lord Mountbatten was the first governor general of Independent India, and when he left in 1948, Rajaji was appointed to the post. He was the first Indian to occupy what was the home of the British viceroy and now became our Rashtrapati Bhawan. On 26 January 1950, when the new Constitution came into effect, he handed over the reigns of office to Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India. Rajaji continued in politics—he joined the cabinet of Prime Minister Nehru, had a second stint as the chief minister of Madras and later started a

new political party called the Swatantra Party. He remained a trusted adviser of Nehru, and at the time when there was much agitation over making Hindi the official language, he suggested that both Hindi and English be selected and that Hindi be introduced only gradually in non- Hindi speaking states. At the same time, he became a popular writer; his delightful retelling of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are popular even today. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1954. He was the calm, reasonable voice in the most turbulent of times. With a brilliant, analytical mind and razor-sharp wit, he would cut to the core of every problem and find a workable solution. He was never afraid to protest and often disagreed with both Gandhi and Nehru but remained their friend. After a long and eventful life, C. Rajagopalachari, the elder statesman of our freedom movement, died on 25 December 1972. The scholar Suniti Kumar Chatterjee called him, ‘the still, small voice of India’s conscience’.

Bhagat Singh The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas. —Bhagat Singh He was a very unusual revolutionary. His life was less about guns and bombs and more about ideas and ideals. He loved books and wandered around with them in his pocket, lending them to anyone who was interested. He spent hours in the Dwarkadas Library in Lahore, reading about the revolutionary movements of the world and dreaming of leading a revolution in India. He set up a library for his fellow revolutionaries and they would

hold long discussions on socialism—especially Marxism—and the purpose of a mass uprising. He is said to have popularized the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ When he was in prison, Bhagat Singh’s lonely jail cell was packed with books that kept him company. Bhagat Singh was born on 28 September 1907 in Khatkar Kalan village in the Lyallpur District of Punjab. His father Kishan Singh Sandhu was a farmer. His uncle Ajit Singh was a revolutionary who had escaped abroad to avoid being arrested and was a source of inspiration for young Bhagat Singh. He was educated at the Dayanand Anglo Vedic School and College in Lahore, and while still a teenager, he was joining protest marches against the British government. Later he wrote for and edited Urdu newspapers in Amritsar and continued to write till his death. Like many patriotic young men of the times, Bhagat Singh was first drawn to the Congress party but soon became disenchanted by their political strategies. He was an enthusiastic participant in the Non- cooperation Movement, but when Gandhi suspended the agitation after Chauri Chaura, he was deeply disappointed. He was not convinced by Gandhi’s belief in non-violence and began to look for another path to freedom—he came to believe that revolutionary action was the only answer. Young men in Punjab, the United Provinces and Bengal, inspired by the revolutionary movements in Russia, Ireland and Italy, began to join secret societies. They started the assassination of unpopular British officials, and looted banks and the government treasury to finance their propaganda campaign as well as the buying of arms and training of terrorists. Among the secret societies were Yugantar and Anushilan in Bengal. The revolutionaries of the north met at Ferozshah Kotla in Delhi in 1928 and formed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. In Bengal, the most daring act of the revolutionaries was the raid of the Chittagong Armoury, led by Surya Sen. They knew very well that a small band of fighters taking on the armed might of the British Army had little chance of succeeding, but they wanted to show the people that it was possible to challenge the power of the government. On the night of 18 April 1930 one group led by Ganesh Ghosh captured the police armoury at

Chittagong, while another led by Lokenath Paul took over the Auxiliary Force Armoury. They captured a number of guns but could not find the ammunition, and this hindered their campaign. They realized they could not hold on to the armouries once the army arrived and sixty-five revolutionaries escaped into the Chittagong hills where they were soon surrounded by thousands of troops. In a fierce battle eighty British soldiers and twelve freedom fighters were killed. Surya Sen managed to escape and continued with the struggle, often given shelter by poor peasants of the region. The exploits of the revolutionaries fired the imagination of the younger generation. This was also the time when women came forward to join the revolutionaries. When Surya Sen was eventually captured, a girl called Kalpana Dutt was captured with him. He was hanged in 1934 and Dutt given a life sentence. There was also Pritilata Waddedar who died during a raid; two schoolgirls Suniti Chowdhury and Santi Ghosh shot dead a District Magistrate. Bina Das, while going up to receive her degree at a university convocation, shot point-blank at the governor of Bengal. Sadly, these individual acts of courage may have fuelled passions against the British rule, but in real terms they did not do much to weaken the British government’s hold on the country. Then in the United Provinces there was a train robbery at Kakori railway station, which electrified the nation. Ramprasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Lahiri and Chandrashekhar Azad held up the 8- Down Mail at the small station of Kakori just outside Lucknow and escaped with the railway treasury. The government immediately cracked down on the revolutionaries and all of them except Chandrashekhar Azad were captured. Four were hanged and twenty-one young men sentenced to jail in the Kakori Conspiracy Case. Chandrashekhar Azad would then join Bhagat Singh in Punjab for a while till he was killed in a shoot-out in a park in Allahabad. In 1928 Lala Lajpat Rai had died in Lahore probably from injuries sustained after a beating by the police while leading a procession against the Simon Commission. Bhagat Singh idolized Lajpat Rai and it led him,

Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandrashekhar Azad to assassinate a police officer named Saunders who had ordered the lathi charge. The original plan was to kill the police chief, but they killed Saunders instead. The Hindustan Socialist Republican Army put up posters justifying the revolutionary policy of personal assassination by saying, ‘the murder of a leader respected by millions of people at the unworthy hands of an ordinary police official … was an insult to the nation. It was the bounden duty of young men of India to efface it … we regret to have had to kill a person, but he was part and parcel of that inhuman and unjust order which has to be destroyed.’ After a while, there was change in the thinking of the revolutionaries, especially those led by Bhagat Singh. He and his comrades, who were all educated, thoughtful young men, were gradually coming to the conclusion that single acts of terrorism could get them publicity, but they would not lead to freedom. They had finally realized that for a freedom struggle to succeed people had to rise together and overwhelm the colonial power, and that was not happening. So they felt more propaganda for their cause was required. On 8 April 1929 Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt went into the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi and threw bombs and leaflets into the well of the chamber from the visitor’s gallery. The bombs were small explosives that did not hurt anyone and Bhagat Singh said they were thrown ‘to make the deaf hear’. The plan was to get arrested and promote their cause during the trial. Soon the authorities discovered Bhagat Singh’s connection to the Saunders killing, and Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were also arrested. Soon their names were on every ones lips. As Jawaharlal Nehru writes, ‘He became a symbol; the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village in Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name.’ Bhagat Singh’s aim of creating awareness had succeeded brilliantly. The whole country watched the trial with bated breath as Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev used every opportunity to popularize their cause. They would enter the court fearlessly shouting ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ and

singing Bismil’s song, ‘Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil me hai’ (our hearts are filled with the desire for martyrdom) and ‘Mera rang de basanti chola’ (dye my clothes in the saffron hues of courage and sacrifice). At that time Gandhi and the viceroy Lord Irwin were negotiating issues, leading to the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. In spite of the fact that he did not agree with Bhagat Singh’s strategy of violence and terrorism, Gandhi pleaded with the viceroy for his life but failed to convince the government. Gandhi faced a hostile reception when he arrived in Karachi for the Congress session as many felt that he had not done enough. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were found guilty and hanged on 23 March 1931. Bhagat Singh was only twenty- four years old. He was a man of action, but also an intellectual whose beliefs were still evolving. Bhagat Singh was a surprisingly mature thinker for someone so young and his voracious reading had by 1929 already led to his doubting the usefulness of terrorism and individual acts of assassination. His study of socialism and Marxism had made him believe that any freedom struggle could succeed only if the people rose up in protest. He began the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha in 1926 to take this message to the peasants in the rural area and the factories workers in the towns. Bhagat Singh was also very aware of the dangers of communalism and at many public meetings he told the people that it was as dangerous as colonialism as it could divide the nation. As a matter of fact, he even criticized his hero Lajpat Rai when Rai began to take on the role of the spokesman of the Hindus. Among the rules of the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha was: ‘To have nothing to do with communal bodies or other parties which disseminate communal ideas’ and ‘to create a spirit of general toleration among the public considering religion as a matter of personal belief of man’. A week before his death he wrote an article titled ‘Why I Am an Athiest’ and in it he said he was ‘trying to stand like a man with an erect head to the last; even on the gallows’. The revolutionary movement created a band of immensely popular young martyrs, but the movement slowly died in the face of a systematic and ruthless government crackdown. The revolutionaries failed because even

though their individual acts of bravery and martyrdom were idolized by people, they did not lead to a mass uprising. As a matter of fact, they did not know how to organize such a movement among people. What they did achieve was create a greater awareness of the freedom struggle. They filled the hearts and minds of the people with a passion for independence and the courage to step out and embrace every sacrifice. They made Indians conscious of their rights and inspired them to take pride in their martyrdom. It was this selfless, fiery eagerness to court even death for his convictions that made ‘Shaheed’ Bhagat Singh an inspiration in his life and a legend afterwards.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.’ —Bal Gangadhar Tilak At the prison in Mandalay in Burma, the prisoner was kept in virtual solitary confinement in a tiny, claustrophobic cell. In the six years he stayed there he taught himself French, German and Pali, and wrote a 900-page study of the Bhagavad Gita. As the prison warders rationed the supply of paper and pencil, he would use every scrap of paper and write till the end of the pencil lead. When he was finally freed, there were four hundred books stacked around his cell.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born on 23 July 1856 in the coastal town of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. His father Gangadhar Pant was a schoolteacher. Young Tilak had a quick, impatient mind and in school he would irritate his teachers by solving maths problems even before the teacher had finished writing it down on the blackboard. After a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the Deccan College, Poona, he studied law but instead of becoming a lawyer, chose to teach. Later he became involved in journalism with G.G. Agarkar and G.M. Namjoshi. The three friends felt that the first step towards gaining independence was modern education. At that time illiteracy was widespread and traditional education was outdated as it put more emphasis on the study of ancient literature. Students spent their time memorizing Sanskrit shlokas, not studying science and mathematics. Tilak and his friends started the New English School in Poona in 1880, where both traditional and modern subjects were taught. Then with the support of Sir James Fergusson, the governor of Bombay, a college named after their patron was inaugurated in the city. Today Fergusson College is one of the finest institutions in the country. More than education, it was journalism that became Tilak’s way to reach out to people. In 1881 he launched two newspapers—the Kesari (Lion) in Marathi and the Mahratta in English. The prospectus of the Kesari announced boldly, ‘There is undoubtedly a growing tendency towards flattery under the British rule, and all honest people would admit that this tendency is undesirable and detrimental to the interests of the people. The articles in the proposed newspaper will be in keeping with the name given to it.’ Probably unnerved by this militant declaration, their landlord refused to allow a printing press in the newspaper office. So overnight they carried the machine to the premises of the New English School, then worked all night to assemble it. Next morning copies of the paper, literally hot from the press, were distributed door to door. Agarkar was the first editor of the Kesari but it was the hard-hitting and topical writings of Tilak that caught the imagination of the people. Tilak wrote editorials openly critical of the

government, something most journalists avoided doing in those days. He never minced his words: one editorial asked scathingly, ‘Has the Government Lost Its Head?’ Within a year Kesari had the highest circulation for any Indian-language newspaper in the country. At a time when we take a free press for granted it is hard to understand how courageous Tilak was. This was a time when the British were considered mai baap, the faultless and benevolent powers whose actions were not to be questioned. The Europeans had encouraged the belief that they had come to India to raise a backward country out of the dark ages, and Indians suffered from a deep sense of inferiority. And here was Tilak looking the ‘superior’ British straight in the eye, finding them wanting and demanding the rights of the people. And he made the people aware that colonialism was for the profit of the colonial power, not the benefit of the colonized people. The Europeans were in India not to save them but to make money. It was the poor Indians who were paying for the palaces of the aristocracy in England. Tilak knew that no nationalist movement could succeed without the support of the masses and he was seeking a way to unite people and revive their pride in being Indians. The first was the celebration of the Ganesha Festival. For ten days there were puja and lectures on scriptures, tamasha dances and music—and cleverly hidden between them were messages of nationalism. Then he felt that young people needed an Indian hero who would inspire them; he chose Chhatrapati Shivaji and launched an annual festival to celebrate Shivaji as a symbol of bravery and independence. Soon these festivals were being celebrated in cities as far away as Calcutta, Karachi and Madras, and Tilak was being called ‘Lokmanya—one who is revered by the people.’ In 1896, Tilak came into direct conflict with the government when there was a famine and farmers received no help from the administration. Tilak wrote about the money in the Famine Insurance Fund, which was not being used to help the farmers. Then he asked the farmers to refuse to pay their taxes. The official response was truly bizarre. Instead of starting famine relief, they arrested many of Tilak’s followers.

Then in 1897 bubonic plague broke out in Poona. As this was a highly contagious disease, patients had to be quarantined quickly. The job of locating and quarantining patients was given to an officer named Rand and he and his men acted with great insensitivity. In those days women lived in purdah and there was also the belief in untouchability, so when the soldiers entered homes without warning and took away people roughly, there was a huge uproar. Indians working to help the plague victims were harassed. Tilak tried to suggest ways to solve the problem but Rand refused to listen. Even though the city was ravaged by the epidemic, on 22 June 1897 the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria’s reign was celebrated with a grand party at the Government House. While returning from the celebrations, Rand and his assistant Lt. Ayerst were shot dead and the killers fled into the night. Poona was put under curfew as the police started searches. The administration suspected that Tilak was part of the conspiracy because he had written critical editorials against Rand. Later, when Damodar Chaphekar was arrested and confessed to killing Rand, he insisted that he had acted alone, but the government’s distrust of Tilak persisted. The police could find no evidence to connect Tilak to the murder, yet there were shrill editorials in the pro-government Anglo-Indian press demanding his arrest. Finally the government prosecutor charged him with sedition, saying his writing incited people to violence. Tilak was arrested and put on trial in Bombay. The six Europeans in the jury found him guilty; the three Indians declared him innocent. Tilak was sentenced to eighteen months of hard labour and sent to Yeravada Jail in Poona. In 1905 the partition of Bengal and the agitation that followed catapulted Tilak to the national stage. The province of Bengal was a huge one, including Orissa, Bihar and Assam, and the government stated it was being divided only to make it easier to govern. The Bengalis were not convinced. They were suspicious because the Bengali-speaking population had been divided on the basis of religion. The area with a Muslim majority had been separated and made the new province of East Bengal with its capital at Dacca. They felt this was an attempt by the government to divide them

because they were so vocal in their criticism. There were widespread protests led by men like Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose. Tilak was the first leader to realize that the agitation in Bengal could be transformed into a national movement. He declared that the best way to make their voices heard was through economic and political boycott. He said that all foreign goods should be rejected and foreign cloth burnt in bonfires, and that everyone should encourage Indian industries by using Swadeshi goods. This he felt was the way to attain Swaraj—self- government. There were three leaders of this militant plan of action—Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai of Punjab. Their ardent followers called them ‘Lal, Bal and Pal’. There was a storm in the Congress party. So far, the party led by men like Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Banerjea and Gopal Krishna Gokhale had been a very elite body of western educated men who felt that the only way to gain self-government was through constitutional means. So for twenty years they had been politely petitioning the government, requesting political reforms. Most of the time, the government did not even bother to reply to their letters. These leaders felt that India was not ready for any form of self-government and people had to be educated first before they talked of Swaraj. Tilak, on the other hand, was convinced that the only way to make the government listen was to take their agitation to the streets and launch a mass agitation against the partition of Bengal. Tilak’s call for a militant but peaceful protest struck a chord among people who could never relate to the westernized and very ‘propah’ Congress leaders. Unlike the leaders who felt that the people were dumb masses that had to be led very gradually towards freedom, Tilak spoke directly to people and his popularity soared. In 1906, when he went to attend the Congress session in Benaras, he was welcomed at the railway station by a noisy crowd of thousands. Here, addressing the people, he declared his political strategy was ‘militancy, not mendicancy’. Stop begging; stand up and fight. The younger generation that had been drifting away from the Congress were enthused by Tilak’s call to arms and among them was Aurobindo

Chose. At the session, Tilak spoke of a strategy of ‘passive resistance’ because he knew well no armed revolt could succeed. Lajpat Rai explained ‘passive resistance’ as having three goals: ‘To awaken the masses and liberate them from the ‘hypnotic’ spell of the British rulers, to create a love of liberty and a spirit of sacrifice for the nation’s freedom cause, and finally to gain independence.’ The idea was that people should make it impossible for the government to operate by not paying taxes, by refusing to join the army and by boycotting foreign goods. One day Gandhi would name similar protests ‘Non-cooperation’ and ‘Civil Disobedience’. The Congress now became divided between the old guard led by Gokhale, called the Moderates, and Tilak and his allies—dubbed the Extremists. Both Gokhale and Tilak, being shrewd and experienced politicians, were keen to work together and willing to compromise. They understood that a rift in the national movement would only benefit the government, but the young members refused to listen to reason. Next year at the session in Surat, the young hot-heads disrupted proceedings with loud protests; amid chaotic scenes a shoe came flying up to hit Banerjea and the police had to be called in. The session had to be abandoned and the party ended up divided, to the great satisfaction of the government. The government now passed an act that gave district magistrates the power to confiscate a printing press if they felt it was printing seditious material. Newspapers like the Kesari and Aurobindo Ghose’s Bande Mataram immediately came under scrutiny. The Bombay Government then decided to prosecute Tilak for ‘… bringing or attempting to bring into hatred and contempt and exciting or attempting to excite disloyalty and feelings of enmity towards His Majesty and the Government …’. At the trial Tilak’s counsel was Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Tilak spoke in his own defence. When he was sentenced to six years’ deportation the government had hoped the sentence would instil fear in people. It had the opposite effect —people came out into the streets to protest and Bombay went on strike. Tilak spent six years in jail in Mandalay and it ruined his health. He was welcomed back enthusiastically by the Congress. The party had become very inactive after Surat and most members had by then realized that Tilak’s

strategy was the right one. He was given a standing ovation and even addressed the Muslim League. He also formed the Home Rule League— this was different from the one started by Annie Besant, but the two organizations worked together. In 1918 Tilak went to England to fight a libel case he had filed against Sir Valentine Chirol, who had written slanderous things about him in a book. Tilak lost the case but took the opportunity to address many public meetings and meet influential intellectuals like the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the philosopher Sidney Webb of the Fabian Society. Fighting the case had financially ruined him, but to his delight he came back to discover that the people of Poona had collected three lakh rupees for him. Tilak died soon after on 1 August 1920. Gandhi and Lajpat Rai were among the mourners at his funeral at Chowpatty in Bombay. Soon Gandhi would carry forward many of the ideas that the Lokmanya had initiated. He was the first leader to realize that no nationalist movement could succeed without the support of the masses. He worked to raise the political consciousness of the people and make them proud of India’s heritage and culture. However, unlike his contemporaries Gokhale and G.R. Ranade, he was not very keen on the social reform of Hindu society. There was an anti- western streak in him that made him suspicious of any attempt at social reform by the government, like the raising of the age of marriage of girls. Gandhi was equally convinced that our freedom movement had to include the masses and he even took his Satyagraha to the villages but he also worked to reform the ills in society like untouchability and the inferior condition of women. It was Tilak who spoke first about passive resistance, the boycott of foreign goods, non-cooperation with the government and the campaign of Swadeshi to win Swaraj. All these principles were at the heart of Gandhi’s Satyagraha. And one day, like Tilak, Gandhi too would travel to Britain to win the support of the British people. Fiercely independent, an eloquent speaker and a subtle and forceful writer, Tilak was a man who could feel the pulse of the people and

communicate his vision to them with clarity and power. The Lokmanya was the first truly mass leader of our freedom movement and one of India’s greatest champions of the people.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah & the Partition of India ‘Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation- state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.’ —Stanley Wolpert There is an old saying about Delhi that whenever any king builds a new capital city here, the days of his dynasty are numbered. One wonders if the British knew about this when, at a glittering durbar at the Red Fort in 1911,

King George V announced the shifting of the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi. Some ancient ghosts must have watched in amusement as the new red sandstone city rose arrogantly over Raisina Hill. It was formally inaugurated in 1930 and in less than two decades the British had packed their bags and left India. They left behind a country divided into two nations, and worse, a land and its people in the grip of a carnage that left hundreds of thousands dead, cities and villages plundered and destroyed, millions of lives darkened by the tragedy of loss—of families, land and homes. The legacy of the partition of the country into India and Pakistan is a bitterness that still colours the relationship between the two countries many decades later. The story of the Partition of India is inextricably woven with the life and work of one man—Mohammed Ali Jinnah. To understand how and why India was divided we have to first study Jinnah’s life and the extraordinary transformation of his character. He began his public life as a nationalist and a genuinely liberal and secular man who was hailed as a champion of Hindu–Muslim unity. He metamorphosed into a demagogue who declared that the two communities could never live together and demanded a separate nation on the basis of religion alone. Mahatma Gandhi discarded his suits and hats for a khadi dhoti because he lost faith in the justice and fair play of the British government. What made Jinnah give up his pinstriped suits for the sherwani and the fur cap? Mahomedali Jinnahbhai was born in Karachi, Sindh, on 25 December 1876, the eldest son of Mithibai and Jinnahbhai Poonja, a Gujarati businessman. Sindh was a province of the Bombay Presidency of British India then. Young Jinnah passed the matriculation examination from the University of Bombay at the age of sixteen. The same year he left to work at the London office of Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, which had dealings with his father’s Karachi firm. But he left it to study law at Lincoln’s Inn in London and became, at nineteen, the youngest Indian to be called to the bar. In London he became an admirer of Dadabhai Naoroji—he had just been elected to the House of Commons and Jinnah heard his

maiden speech from the visitor’s gallery. The constitutional approach towards, Indian self-government that men like Naoroji, Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta espoused appealed to him and on coming back to India in 1896, he chose to stay in Bombay. The city had a cluster of outstanding lawyers and in 1906 Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress. He soon became one of Bombay’s most successful lawyers, shooting to fame when Pherozeshah Mehta asked Jinnah to defend him in what was known as the ‘Caucus Case’, and built a mansion on Malabar Hill. Jinnah was not rigidly religious and lived a westernized life, being very much the brown sahib, always impeccably clad in pinstripes and preferring to speak in English instead of his mother tongue Gujarati. When Tilak was put on trial for sedition, he hired Jinnah as his defence lawyer. Jinnah’s spirited defence stated that it was not sedition for any Indian to demand freedom from a foreign power. In spite of Jinnah’s efforts, Tilak was found guilty and jailed. In the Congress Jinnah was soon among the rising young leaders, admired for his elegant speeches and legal logic. Like most Congress members at the time, he thought India would achieve a gradual self- government through petitions and acts of parliament. He was comfortable within the Congress that was like an old-boys club with westernized, urban gentlemen giving leisurely speeches in English. Most of India, especially in the villages, was unaware of their activities. The problem was that the government did not take these gentlemen too seriously and reforms came in reluctant drips. The first rebellion against this conformist style of politics came from Tilak and the Extremists, and it had led to the split in the Congress in 1907 at Surat. The arrival of Gandhi changed the character of the Congress in a way that Jinnah could not accept. Gandhi was talking about gaining Swaraj immediately, while Jinnah did not think the country was ready for it. He thought the plan to widen the movement and start mass protests would lead to violence. Gandhi’s use of Hindu symbolism like Satyagraha and ahimsa made him uncomfortable as he was convinced it would divide Hindus and Muslims. He even wrote agitatedly to Gandhi, ‘Your extreme programme

has for the moment struck the imagination of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means complete disorganization and chaos. What the consequence of this may be, I shudder to contemplate.’ In 1918 Jinnah was the rising star of the party, being applauded for his well-reasoned, erudite speeches. Then this odd-looking man in a tilting turban arrives from South Africa full of anarchic ideas about non-violent protest. Instead of joining their urbane political discussions in drawing rooms, he begins to wander in the villages, talking directly to the people. As Jinnah watched in horror, the party cadre was completely swayed by Gandhi’s ideology, and joined in his various social and political campaigns with great enthusiasm. In 1920 at the Nagpur Congress when Jinnah stood up to criticize the plans for a non-cooperation campaign, he was booed off the stage. He left the gathering immediately and resigned from the party soon after. The contrasting characters of the two men and their attitude to the freedom movement coloured all the important events from then on. Gandhi was the quintessential man of the people while Jinnah was a rather patrician figure, uncomfortable in crowds. Leading demonstrations, facing police lathis and going to jail was not the path for a constitutionalist like Jinnah. Unlike the Congress leaders he fastidiously stayed away from any unorthodox action that could invite arrest or a term in jail. Gandhi’s interest lay equally with the political movement and social reform while Jinnah was completely focused on his goal of a Muslim nation. As historian John Keay writes, while he was ‘lacking the charm of Nehru, let alone the fire of Bose or the popular appeal of Gandhi … Jinnah possessed a formidable mind in which intimidating resolve combined with unequalled skills as a tactician.’ Jinnah, who is described as a ‘lofty and awesome figure’, came up with the slogan of ‘Islam in danger’ to stoke the fears and misgivings of Muslims and built up the image of the Congress as an antagonistic ‘Hindu’ party that would not let Muslims survive in independent India. It defeated Gandhi’s lifelong efforts at creating a united, secular nation. Jinnah’s biographer Stanley Wolpert calls this man who was to later become Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam (Father of the Nation) the ‘jilted gentleman’.

Intriguingly, both Gandhi and Jinnah would end up on the rupee notes of their countries. Initially Jinnah had refused an invitation to join the All India Muslim League as he felt that the party was too feudal and communal for his taste. It had been formed by a group of rich landowners and Muslim princes who had grievances against the British but had little popular support. Jinnah joined the party in 1913 and for a while was a member of both the Congress and the League and everyone hoped he would become a bridge between the two organizations. He played a leading part in the Lucknow Pact in 1916 that created an alliance between the two parties. As a matter of fact, when the Congress supported the Khilafat movement, he had protested as he felt that religion should not be injected into a political movement. However, by 1939 he was convinced that Muslims should have a separate nation. One of the reasons was the growth of Hindu communal parties like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS). These parties declared that Hinduism was in danger from Islam and accused the Congress of giving in to Muslim demands. The RSS wanted independent India to be a Hindu nation, where Muslims lived as second- class citizens. After leaving the Congress Jinnah became the president of the Muslim League. At the time of the Simon Commission, the League demanded that Muslims should get separate seats in the legislature while the Nehru Report presented by the Congress was in favour of common electorates. Jinnah was not personally in favour of separate electorates, but drafted a compromise putting forward ‘Fourteen Points’ that he felt would satisfy the parties. They didn’t, and the talks failed over this impasse. Then he attended the Round Table Conferences but once again could not make any progress towards his goal of getting more power for the League whose disunity he was now getting upset with. In frustration he decided to quit politics and settled in London to practise law. He came back to India in 1934 at the request of the Muslim leader Aga Khan and the poet Mohammad Iqbal. The League fought the elections in 1937 for the provincial assemblies and in comparison to the Congress its performance was dismal. The

Congress swept the general seats, and even in the areas with a Muslim majority like Punjab, the League did badly. Jinnah had hoped to win enough seats to compel the Congress to agree to his demands but now that was no longer possible. He offered to join the Congress governments in an alliance against the British but insisted that they accept the League as the sole representative of the Muslims. The Congress could never do so; it was a national party and had Muslim leaders within its ranks. Jinnah wanted to turn the Congress into a Hindu party and that would have had disastrous consequences for the country. The Congress made a counter offer—that the League should merge with the Congress. Jinnah refused and from then inexorably took up the cause of a separate nation for Muslims—Pakistan. The idea of Pakistan first appeared in 1932 in a pamphlet printed in Cambridge by some Muslim students. It was to comprise Muslim majority states like Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Kashmir and Sind, though oddly enough Bengal was not included. Pakistan meant ‘the land of the pure’. Iqbal talked about it at public gatherings, but it was still an idea on the fringes of the freedom movement. Iqbal’s idea was of religion-majority nations—India and Pakistan—and he felt that the less undiluted the majority, the better. He played a big role in convincing Jinnah that Muslims needed a separate nation to protect their rights. However, it was only after the 1937 elections that Jinnah picked it up and made it the core of the League’s goals. He did it with much ambiguity in the beginning, never openly using the name, but gradually as Independence drew closer as a reality, his attitude hardened and he refused to agree to anything except a partition of the country. Jinnah unveiled his ‘Two Nation Theory’, which said that Muslims and Hindus were two different peoples by religion and culture and that Muslims would become second-class citizens in ‘Hindu’ India. Having now embraced the idea of separate electorates and the right of the League to exclusively represent Muslims, he reiterated that ‘Islam was in danger’ from a ‘Hindu’ Congress and that all Muslims should unite behind the League and support its demand for a separate nation. Every utterance took on a religious timbre as he declared, ‘a vote for the League and Pakistan

was a vote for Islam’. By 1946 the League had a much larger share of the Muslim vote. It is hard to imagine this was the same man who once spoke of being an Indian first and not a Muslim, but then as historian Bipan Chandra writes, ‘Once the basic digits of communal ideology are accepted, the ideology takes over a person bit by bit.’ At the League session at Lahore in 1940 the ‘Pakistan Resolution’ was passed, making it the main goal of the party, though the word ‘Pakistan’ was not mentioned. It was rejected by Muslim leaders like Maulana Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan as well as the Jamaat-I-Islami party. Both Ghaffar Khan and Maulana Azad would face the wrath of League leaders for their secular stand, being described as traitors to the Muslim cause. In 1939 when India was involved in the Second World War, the Congress governments resigned in protest, but Jinnah offered his support to the government. He declared this the ‘Day of Deliverance’. During the war years the government did not want to antagonize the League and this led to the League getting its tacit support in all later negotiations. All through the negotiations with the Cripps Mission of 1942 and the Cabinet Mission of 1946 the core of the deadlock between the League and the Congress lay in Jinnah’s demand that only the League represented the Muslims. The Congress as a national party could not allow Jinnah to turn it into a party only of Hindus and thus betray its Muslim members. More seriously, it feared that it would lead to a division of the country along religious lines with various parties springing up, claiming to represent various religious communities. As leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Maulana Azad knew so well, the only way the country could stay united was as a secular, democratic nation. At one time Jinnah would have agreed with them. Not any more. The League had left the hard work of winning freedom to the Congress, and now that Independence was on the cards, they came forward with their demands. Gandhi held long talks with Jinnah but failed to convince him. Jinnah called for ‘Direct Action’ on 16 August 1946 to ‘achieve Pakistan’. For years tensions between Hindus and Muslims had been stoked by various communal parties belonging to both communities; now it exploded

into honific violence. Calcutta saw devastating riots; the Noakhali District in Bengal calmed down only when Gandhi walked from village to village talking of peace as thousands died in Bihar. Bengal had a League government but Jinnah blamed Gandhi for the riots. One last attempt at a national coalition was made in 1946 when the League reluctantly joined an interim government under Nehru. Jinnah did not join himself, but Liaquat Ali Khan, a League leader, became the Finance Minister. The League members acted more like an opposition than allies and the distrust between the two parties had become too overwhelming for them to work together. The fear of a civil war grew and finally the Congress leaders agreed to a division of the country. Gandhi withdrew from a future that negated his lifelong quest for unity and religious harmony and allowed Nehru, Maulana Azad and Patel to work with the new viceroy Lord Mountbatten to partition India. Pakistan had been created in the hope that it would avert a civil war. What Partition brought, in fact, was human tragedy of a magnitude no one could have anticipated. As millions crossed the borders, violence erupted in Punjab and Bengal and spread across north India. The two new governments of India and Pakistan struggled with the sudden arrival of thousands of homeless, penniless, traumatized refugees. Even then a large population of Muslims refused Jinnah’s call and chose to remain in India. In 1971 East Bengal broke away from Pakistan and declared independence as the new nation of Bangladesh. What was once envisaged by Gandhi as one, great, many-hued nation, was fractured into three countries. Jinnah became the first governor general of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam, Father of the Nation. In 1917 Sarojini Naidu had written his biography and titled it—Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity. Now he headed a nation built on religious division. He seemed to believe that once he had got a separate country it could go back to being a secular one, but history has proved him wrong. By Pakistan’s Independence Day on 14 August 1947, Jinnah was seriously ill, suffering from tuberculosis and lung cancer. He died on 11 September 1948 and was buried in a huge mausoleum in Karachi. He had