Book extract: When Gandhi met Golwalkar

Title: Golwalkar: The Myth Behind The Man, The Man Behind The Machine | Author: Dhirendra K. Jha | Publisher: Simon & Schuster India | Pages: 416 | Price: Rs 899 (hardcover)

By the time Mahatma Gandhi returned to Delhi on 9 September 1947, his reputation was at a new high after his triumph in Calcutta. His three-day fast, which he had started on 2 September just when Calcutta had begun detonating around him, had produced miraculous results. The fast stirred people’s conscience, and in a little more than 24 hours, the city calmed down and communal mobs vanished from the streets.

Massive crowds of all faiths turned up at his house as repentant masses, weeping and begging him to give up his fast and save his life. But he refused to yield and broke his fast only on the evening of 4 September, when the local leaders of all faiths and parties pledged that there would be no further communal trouble in Calcutta.

‘My dear Gandhiji,’ wrote Mountbatten, ‘In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and largescale rioting on our hands. In Bengal, our forces consist of one man, and there is no rioting. As a serving officer, as well as an administrator, may I be allowed to pay my tribute to the One Man Boundary Force?’

On hearing the news that Hindus and Muslims by their thousands were mingling and embracing after the fast in Calcutta, Mountbatten told Campbell-Johnson that Gandhi had ‘achieved by moral persuasion what four Divisions would have been hard pressed to accomplish by force’.

So, Gandhi’s presence carried a remarkable sign of hope amidst the dark tales that surfaced every now and then in Delhi. ‘At the railway station, he was met by Sardar Patel, for the first time without his usual smile and apt pungent joke,’ [notes] Pyarelal, Gandhi’s personal secretary (in Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Vol. X). ‘Delhi had become the city of the dead. In the car, the Sardar gave him the news. Since the 4th of September, communal riots had broken out in the capital.’

As soon as the car reached Birla House — a grand New Delhi mansion, a wing of which had been refurbished to serve as a living apartment for Mahatma Gandhi — Nehru showed up. ‘As he gave Gandhiji news, his face was pinched and furrowed with care, overstrain and lack of sleep,’ recounts Pyarelal. ‘A twenty four-hour curfew was in force in the city. The military had been called but firing and looting had not stopped altogether. The streets were littered with the dead. Pandit Nehru was indignant.’

Quickly, a conference with the available leaders was organised for Gandhi. ‘I find no one in Delhi who can accompany me and control the Muslims,’ Gandhi, according to Pyarelal, told them. “There is no such person amongst the Sikhs or among the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh either. I do not know what I shall be able to do here. But one thing is clear. I cannot leave this place until Delhi is peaceful again.”

At noon, some local Muslims visited Gandhi. He quietly listened to their tragic stories and consoled them. Around that time, someone brought the news that Muslim patients in the TB Hospital opposite the Kingsway refugee camp in north Delhi were about to be attacked by a mob. At his instruction, Dr. Sushila Nayar, Pyarelal’s sister who worked as Gandhi’s personal physician, left for the hospital.

‘On her way, she saw a mosque in flames,’ records Pyarelal. She stopped to see if there was anyone inside. “The flames prevented us exploring all the rooms. As I stood there, a shower of bullets came from the building opposite.” It was a stronghold of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The bullets were evidently intended to kill the Muslims and any of their sympathisers prowling about the mosque.’

Gandhi was learning of the situation and learning it fast. Delhi had become the focus of communal fury. “When I left Calcutta on Sunday last,” Gandhi said in his press statement issued later in the day, “I knew nothing about the sad state of things in Delhi. But since my arrival in the capital city, I have been listening, the whole day long, to the tale of woe that is Delhi today. I have seen several Muslim friends who have recited to me their pathetic story. I have heard enough to warn me that I must not leave Delhi for the Punjab until it has once again become its former peaceful self.”

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Gandhi had no illusions about the difficulties of the task he had taken upon himself. […] From the next day onwards, he spent most of his time visiting riot-affected parts of the city and various Muslim and Hindu–Sikh refugee camps. […] [He] would listen to their reactions with anxious concern and sympathy, but would often be blunt in his responses and suggestions.

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On 12 September 1947, having developed a fairly comprehensive view of the crisis, Gandhi met Golwalkar. As per the diary entries of Maniben Patel, daughter of Sardar Patel, Golwalkar visited Birla House twice that morning. He first arrived along with Hindu Mahasabha leader Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and an RSS colleague at 8 a.m. But for some unknown reason the meeting could not take place. Golwalkar again called upon Gandhi two- and-a-half hours later at 10.30 a.m.

By Maniben’s account, Mookerjee was not with Golwalkar this time. Other accounts suggest that he was accompanied by some of his RSS colleagues. In the meeting, Gandhi told Golwalkar bluntly what he had been informed, ‘that the hands of this organisation [RSS] too were steeped in blood’ (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. LXXXIX, The Publications Division, GoI, 1983, p.177). “Golwalkar denied the allegation, claiming that the RSS was ‘enemy to no man. It did not stand for killing of Muslims. All it wanted was to protect Hindustan to the best of his ability’ (Ibid.).

According to Pyarelal, Gandhi was not at all convinced by the reply, but, because of his faith in the ‘redemptive power of truth’, he ‘felt he must give everybody a chance to make good his bona fides’. (Mahatma Gandhi; The Last Phase, Vol. X) Gandhi, therefore, urged Golwalkar to issue a public statement ‘repudiating the allegations against them and openly condemn the killing and harassment of the Muslims that had taken place and that was still going on in the city’. (Ibid., p. 440)

This was a proposal totally unacceptable to Golwalkar and his associates. Instead of making any public declaration on the issue, they said Gandhi could do that himself on their behalf on the strength of what they had told him. ‘Gandhiji answered that he would certainly do that,’ recounts Pyarelal, ‘but if what they were saying was sincerely meant, it was better that the public should have it from their own lips.’ (Ibid.)

Golwalkar’s evasive replies did not seem to go unnoticed by Gandhi. […] Four days later, on 16 September, Gandhi addressed a specially organised meeting of RSS workers at Valmiki Temple in New Delhi. Although the plan for the event had been finalised during Gandhi’s interaction with Golwalkar, (Organiser, 18 Sep 1947), the latter quietly skipped it.

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[At the meeting, after Vasantrao Oak’s welcome address, in which he called Gandhi ‘a great man that Hinduism had produced’], Gandhi said, [Pyarelal notes]: ‘while he was ‘certainly proud of being a Hindu, his Hinduism was neither intolerant nor exclusive.’

Gandhi further said: ‘If Hindus believe that in India there was no place for non-Hindus on equal and honourable terms, and Muslims, if they wanted to live in India, must be content with an inferior status, or if the Muslims thought that in Pakistan, Hindus could live only as a subject race on the sufferance of the Muslims, it would mean an eclipse of Hinduism and an eclipse of Islam.’

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In his own way, he hit out at the very premise of a Hindu Rashtra, expressed as it was in Golwalkar’s We or Our Nationhood Defined.