FIVE MEN OF INDIA:

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 147, 17 April 1942, Page 10

FIVE MEN OF INDIA:

Written for "The Listener" by

A.M.

R.

6c HAT neither persua- | sion nor disturbance could compel, has now been, in the exhaltation of war’s comradeship, freely -granted." So Mr. Lloyd George hailed the long-fought-for enfranchisement of British women. There is a more realistic attitude toward the present necessity-born offer to India. At present, we are saving our breath merely to ask "Where will India g0? Whom will she follow?" At the time of writing, Britain’s offer had been neither accepted, rejected, nor amended, but whatever happens to it, the following brief pen-portraits by our contributor A.M.R., are of interest as revealing something of several Indians who have played, are playing, and may continue to play, a prominent part in moulding their country’s destiny. Who among them is likely to lead the New India? A PRINCE? 'TNDIA is the land of almost universal " poverty and of occasional immense wealth. The Duke of Devonshire, Churchill’s Under-Secretary for India, is England’s biggest landowner, having a family estate valued at £5,000,000; but the Nizam of Hyderabad, a Muslim ruling twelve million Hindus, has a yearly income from land of £5,000,000. The Indians on the Viceroy’s Council (not Cabinet, as official spokesmen now miscall this purely-appointed body), are mainly such zemindars, large landlords. India, too, with three hundred million peasants, is the land of princes, picturesque, absolute, and-frequently-ineffi-cient. When her vital part in the 1914-18 war effort (some ten million peasants died through the resultant lowering of India’s standard of life), brought forth the first promises of "Dominion Status,’ these were then the men, zemindars and rajahs, who were expected to lead. But to-day, the Aga

Khan, for all his hereditary headship of fifty million Muslims, has no political significance. Nor will the Maharajah of Bikaner, that progressive aristocrat who signed for India at Versailles, ever represent her again. Nor will the myriad tenant votes’ and rupees that made Sir Sekander Hayat Khan the Governor of the Punjab carry him to still higher office. For time marches on. And Congress marches Left. And the Indian masses afe suspicious of the landlords and princes who have lent their talents and authority to British rule. Even the noble past services of the Liberal Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and his refusal to join the Viceroy’s Council are not likely to avail him now, Almost certainly the leader of New India will be a Congress Party man. A MUSLIM? UT what about Mr. Jinnah? He is no Government supporter. When some members of his Muslim League joined the Council, he forced them immediately to resign. And he resents the Congress contention that he is a kind of Henlein, giving Britain a "con-cern-for-minorities" excuse to keep the country divided and conquered, on the lines of what happened in Czechoslovakia. "India," he says, "is two nations, Hindu and Muslim, and the independence each craves must be safeguarded from becoming a Hindu tyranny." Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Bombay’s most brilliant barrister, is, in short, mo more a possible All-India leader than is Dr. Ambedkar, champion of the Untouchables. His role corresponds to that of an Orange advocate in negotiations for a United Ireland. Various Congress leaders, however, have suggested that the first Premier of Free India should be a Muslim, for the precise reason that Hyde, a Protestant, is President of Eire. The obvious candidate is Maulana Kalam Azad, the present President of Congress. He comes from Arabia, studied Muhammadan theology at the great orthodox University of El Azhar, Cairo, and is a scholar

to his sandals. Among hi§ Hindu fellowmembers of the Congress Working Committee these last 10 years are Joshi, Patel and Prasad. But Joshi’s activities have mainly lain in organising India’s infant trade unions; Patel, who is Gandhi’s most trusted lieutenant after Nehru, is 63; and Prasad, actingPresident of Congress, is (I imagine), too much a pacifist to help anyone’s war. Bose might have been the man. But Bose has vanished. . . A QUISLING? |F Anthony Eden could not be found or Herbert Morrison evaporated, the sensation in Britain would hardly be greater than the sensation caused in India when Subhas Chandra Bose, aged 45, graduate with honours of Cambridge University and eleven British prisons, General Secretary and later President of Congress, Chairman of the All-India Trade Union Federation, and Mayor of Calcutta, suddenly disappeared a year ago. Later, rumour had it that he had turned up in Berlin via Moscow-a notimprobable move, in those days of what could have been called the Pact for Mutual Preparation, since Bose was as Left as Lenin. Now comes a report that he was killed in a Philippine air crash. But Tokio contradicts this by producing his authentic tones from Station JOAK. And since the Japanese, those worst of all speakers of English, can hardly be faking Bose’s perfect university idiom and bhery Bengal bhronunciation, he is probably now somewhere just off-stage waiting his cue to play Quisling. In the event of a Japanese victory in India, or perhaps even without it, Bose might yet fill a part in India’s destiny. A PACIFIST? OWEVER, whoever may hold highest office, the real leaders of India remain Gandhi and Nehru. This statement may surprise some to whom the Mahatma is an established world figure, but to whom the Pandit is still unknown. And it may equally surprise others who have gathered that Gandhi’s popularity

collapsed along with his programme of non-violent resistance, when India faced the grim reality of a Japanese invasion. The facts are, however, that mnonviolent disobedience was never accepted by the majority of Congress as anything more than the only weapon available against a Government that could not be attacked any way but through its conscience. Once before (in 1940),.a two-thirds majority voted to drop civil disobedience in favour of offering co-operation in the war effort-at the price of independence. It was not panic, but a desire to commend themselves to the British Public as practical persons fit to be lifted from "native subjects" to "noble allies,’ that made them recently renew that offer-again at that price. And yet, despite Press messages to the contrary, I remain very doubtful whether anyone is going to stone Gandhi, however hopelessly idealist, wrong headed, pigheaded, or reactionary many feel him to be. For Gandhi remains India Incarnate, idol of her unpolitical toiling peasant millions as Nehru is the idol of her active minority of politicallyminded intellectuals. Everyone is by now familiar with the picturesque external features of Gandhi’s life and habits-his loincloth, his goat’s milk, his days of silence, his fasts, Many know something of his idealsa purely peasant India, without wageslavery and withéut slumps, because wants are few, and all are provided for in the spare time home-factory itself; armies that win by enduring blows meekly; the re-vitalisation of Hinduism by a Christian concern for the oppressed But few appreciate the very basis of his being-non-violence. No one can hope to understand the Indian situation without trying to understand the complex personality, teaching, and influence of Mahatma Gandhi; and equally no one can hope to understand Gandhi without trying to understand what he means by "nonviolence," unpalatable though that may be to some people at this juncture. Gandhi is not primarily concerned that Indians should rule themselves or that "untouchability"’ should end (for all that he has nearly died in both causes). Neither of these objects is in (Continued on next page)

Who Will Lead ?

(Continued from previous page) fact worth having, says Gandhi, unless, in the getting and using of them, men act out of pure love of God, as a Christian might say; selflessly, passionlessly, as a Buddhist might put it. Nonviolence to Gandhi means non-assertive-ness, non-aggressiveness of motive, This is why Gandhi called off (and destroyed), his great non-co-operation campaign when it was, so many observers judged, on the point of success. This is why he withdrew from Congress leadership early in the war when a majority wished, by turning India from a British asset into a liability, to precipitate the offer which Cripps has now brought. This is why he persuaded them to reduce the intended "Mass Civil Disobedience" to a mere token series of speeches (and arrests), against India’s "enforced participation in a war for freedom which she herself did not possess." (the exact words in that quotation may not be Gandhi’s, but the idea is -his). This is why he has for over 40 years done many another deed incompatible not only with ordinary wise leadership but also with pacifism, as that term is often understood (in the sense of spiking all war efforts). And this is why he has become, and will remain, "the Soul of India." For India’s historic conviction that the spiritual in life (meaning what Gandhi means by "non-violence’’), is man’s only true and real being had become, over the centuries, distorted into superstitious and anti-social ways of living — until Gandhi appeared to purge and revitalise and re-beautify it. And to-day, India sees that historic conception of life shine forth through even this little man’s most "muddled" deeds. "Failure with Gandhi is preferable to the gaining of a temporary advantage without him,’ says Nehru. "Tt is he who has made us what we are,

and raised India once more from the depths to which she had sunk. Gandhi is India." AND NEHRU? ‘T HE relation between these two men (75 and 50 respectively), is almost that of father and son. Jawaharlal Nehru (accent the wa and rhyme Neh with "hair’), calls Gandhi "bapu" (father), and will hear of no attack on him. Gandhi says "Neither of us can do without the other. There is a heart union between us which no intellectual differences can break." Otherwise, they live in different worlds. Gandhi’s essential Hinduism is incomprehensible mysticism to the younger man, who finds in the Marxist conception of history the key to current events, and whose talk is not of ahimsa and satyagraha ("soul force" and "holding-to-truth"), but of mass-action and economic revolution. Son of a wealthy merchant, who, at Gandhi’s call, devoted his life to the nationalist cause, educated at Harrow and Oxford, writing English that is literature (particularly his Autobiobiography, from. prison), Nehru can speak a language that is understood by the young British-educated intellectuals who already find Gandhi’s thoughtforms almost as hard to’ grasp as do most Westerners. Wherever he goes, student youth cries "Pandit Jawaharlal-ji-kai." Young India must have a leader, just as any nation in process of formation or reformation must have one, But this personally very handsome "idol" has nothing of the demogogue, dictator, or fanatic about him. For one thing, Nehru shares all Gandhi’s sense of humour. For another (again like Gandhi), he insists on maintaining personal friendship with the men of the system that has imprisoned him so often. For a third, he is (unlike Gandhi now), an inveterate political realist. For what any such prophecy can be worth, if India is to have an Indian leader, it will be Nehru.