Nehru's Word: Gandhiji’s bid to purge majority community’s hearts of hatred

Seventy-four years ago, on this very day, the man whom Subhas Bose named the Father of the Nation, was killed by the bullets of an assassin who subscribed to the ideology of hate advocated by communal organisations loyal to the British colonial power. It was against this divisive ideology that Mahatma Gandhi performed his last great political act, when he undertook a fast from 13 January 1948, just 17 days before his murder. The fast was, as he put it, his address “to the conscience” of all communities in both India and Pakistan where the communal situation was growing worse.

Gandhiji was also distressed over the Indian Cabinet’s decision to withhold payment of Rs. 55 crores, payable to Pakistan as assets of Partition, until the settlement of Kashmir, as it feared that Pakistan would purchase arms with that amount to sustain fighting in Kashmir. Gandhiji broke the fast on 18 January when the representatives of various organisations and communities in Delhi gave an assurance that peace and amity would be ensured in the Capital, and after the Indian Cabinet decided to release the amount to Pakistan. We bring to you today extracts from the very moving letter that Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to the Chief Ministers of all the provinces on 17 January 1948 explaining to them the context of the fast.

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"Since I last wrote to you, everything that has happened has been completely overshadowed by Gandhiji’s fast. It has come on us suddenly and stunned many even of us who know him well. I am writing this letter with a prayer in my heart —which I have not ceased to make ever since I first heard of the fast —that we may be spared the supreme tragedy.

It is not necessary that I should write and explain to you the significance which Gandhiji attaches to the fast; he has done it himself and it is impossible for others, however closely associated with him, to interpret his unique approach any more clearly than he can. There is, however, one aspect which may be useful for me to mention, particularly to those Premiers who are far removed from the gruesome events of Punjab and Delhi.

The last prolonged fast which Gandhiji undertook was in 1943 when he was a prisoner. That fast was for a purpose which the man in the street understood and wholly sympathised with. His recent fast in Calcutta was also for an easily understood purpose which had the support of the overwhelming bulk of the people. (He began a fast on 1 September, 1947 to draw attention to the need to protect the Muslims and broke it after 73 hours when he was satisfied that conditions in Calcutta had returned to normal).

The fast which he has now undertaken is less easy for the general public to understand; and in fact there are sections of them more particularly among the refugees, who do not sympathise with it and are in a sense antagonistic to it. (On 14 January 1948, some demonstrators at Birla House in Delhi where Gandhi was fasting had shouted “Let Gandhi die”.

There were demonstrations in other parts of Delhi also against what was thought to be his policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. At some places, peace marches for communal harmony were attacked). Therein lies its significance and supreme courage.

We are faced, particularly in East Punjab and Delhi, with the psychological problem created by the events of the last few months. These have created in the minds of people, not merely among the refugees but also among others, a bitterness, a sense of desperation and a desire for retaliation —in short, a serious spiritual malaise. This is wholly understandable but nonetheless extremely dangerous.

We have all of us done our best to cure it but have not succeeded except only to a limited extent. The difficulties have been partly due to our inability to effectively tackle the problem of rehabilitation about which I shall write further in this letter, and partly to the continuing evidence of hostility and barbaric conduct towards the minorities in Pakistan.

The result has been that sections of the Hindu community are not in tune with and do not understand Gandhiji’s approach to the Muslim problem in India. They resent his approach and think that it is somehow or other inimical to their own interests. And yet any person with vision can see that Gandhiji’s approach is not only morally correct, but is also essentially practical. Indeed, it is the only possible approach if we think in terms of the nation’s good, both from the short and long-distance points of view. Any other approach means perpetuating conflict and postponing all notions of national consolidation and progress.

This is not the occasion to analyse —no one can analyse them —the complex of urges which must have driven Gandhiji to take this supreme step but quite clearly its main purpose is to make the majority community in India search its heart and purge itself of hatred and the desire to retaliate. In the atmosphere in which it has been undertaken, it displays a degree of heroism of which only Gandhiji is capable.

The ordeal has been made worse for him by the tragic events that have occurred in Pakistan in the last few days —the murder and wholesale looting in Karachi and the revolting attack on a non-Muslim refugee train in Gujrat in West Punjab. But these incidents, in Gandhiji’s conception, are not merely wholly irrelevant but only increase the urgency of the step that he has taken.

I am sure you will mobilise all your resources to emphasise to the people of your province, by every possible means, the meaning and purpose of the fast and thus help to create a situation in which Gandhiji may break it. I regard the emergency created by the fast as at least as grave as the disease that has given rise to it; and if we do not go all out to meet it, history will not forgive us.”

(Selected and edited by Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum & Library)

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)