Suniti Kumar Ghosh: His Contributions to Indian Historical Studies–III

(The Role of the Big Bourgeoisie)

Amit Bhattacharyya

After the fall of Rangoon and the Japanese occupation of Burma, when the Japanese invasion of India seemed imminent, the Indian Big bourgeoisie, like the Congress leadership, was a divided house.

According to Ghosh, one section including Walchand Hirachand, the Gangalbhais, Lalbhais, and Sarabhais, sure of victory of Axis powers, preferred a change of masters and waited to welcome the Japanese.

The second section, consisting of Thakurdas, Cowasji Jehangir and many other millowners did not lose faith in the ultimate British victory and remained loyalists.

There seems a third section which included the Birlas and Tatas who, while not enthusiastic about precipitating any conflict with the raj and serving British imperialist interests to the best of their ability, enriching themselves in the process, contributed liberally to the Congress funds and offered secret help. G.D. Birla’s letter of 14 July 1942 to Mahadev Desai was far from optimistic as regards “Bapu’s movement”. Rather, it painted the darker aspects of the political situation in India, which were not conducive to the success of the struggle. A memorandum submitted in late July or early August to the Viceroy, which was sponsored by Thakurdas and signed, among others, by J.R.D. Tata and Birla, said that as businessmen their interest lay “in peace, harmony, goodwill and order throughout the country”. It further stated: “We have always believed in creating a firm and solid foundation for building up a permanent friendship between England and India, and throughout our public career most of us have endeavoured to work for this object” (Birla to Mahadev Dasai, BapuI V, pp.316-7, cited in Ghosh, ibid, p.238).

Quite correctly did Suniti Kumar Ghosh observe: “At the crossroads of history, the question before the Indian big bourgeoisie and their political frontsmen was not one of achieving freedom from imperialist domination but of choosing between rival imperialist masters” (Ibid, p.238).

A note prepared by the GOI’s Intelligence Bureau entitled “Congress and ‘Big Business’,’’ dt. 28 February 1944, contains reports from chiefs of intelligence and police of various parts of India that the congress was receiving financial help from Indian big business. It also states: that ‘‘when Herbert Mathews, a New York Times correspondent, visited Ahmedabad in March 1943,

“The local millionaires deplored what had been happening in the country and pointed out that their object in life being to make money, like most Indian businessmen, they were keeping one foot in the Congress camp, which they expected to see running the country, and another in the British camp, which is running it now and gives them fat orders” (Cited in Ghosh, p.240).

According to this note, “in the course of the statements made to the police after his arrest, Jaya Prakash Narayan said: “…in fact, I hate their (the Birlas’) dual policy. On one side they claim to be nationalists while on the other they have all the military contracts” (TOP, IV, pp.765-71).

When the calculations of this section of the big bourgeoisie went wrong, they tried quickly to re-establish the old relations with the raj. Interestingly, “perhaps to expatiate their ‘sin’ of 1942", the Ahmedabad mill-owners celebrated the victory of the British and their Allies by offering a “Victory Bonus” to workers in 1945 (Eastern Economist, 21 September, 1945, p.433). Actually, as S.K. Ghosh correctly observed, the Indian big bourgeoisie was “then eager not only to serve British capital as before but to hitch its fortune to the more resplendent star of US monopoly capital” (Ibid, p.240).

Gandhi and His Charisma
There is no doubt that Gandhi was a charismatic leader; he could attract, influence and inspire devotion among people. However, charisma, as Ghosh points out, does not presuppose that the policies of a leader possessed of it necessarily serve the interests of the people. Hitler enjoyed charisma among the Germans for some time. But few could agree that their policies were right. In fact, a complex of factors contributes to a leader’s charisma.
Ghosh first dwells on the limits within which Gandhi’s charisma worked. First, Gandhi’s charisma failed to work on the Muslims. Second, a large section of the scheduled castes and tribes remained untouched by his charismatic influence. Third, his ability to influence and inspire the politically inclined youth of India was very much limited. Fourth, towards the end of his life, his charisma ceased to work on his close associates who had cherished implicit faith in him before.

There were, in his opinion, three main factors which contributed to the making of Gandhi’s charisma.

A) A Superb Cocktail of Religion and Politics:
Gandhi’s charisma among the Hindus owed much to his capacity to make a cocktail of religion and politics. “His continual references to God, to ‘inner voice’ and to the religious scriptures and epics, his claims that his steps were guided by God (that for instance his fasts were undertaken at the call of God), his ashramasand his ascetic’s robe swayed the Hindu masses powerfully… His harking back to a mythical past, the Ram Rajya, had an immense appeal to the backward-looking Hindus, especially the peasantry emmeshed in feudal ties…” (S.K. Ghosh, II, Appendix, p.363).

When Rabindranath Tagore met Romain Rolland and his two friends in June 1926, Tagore dwelt on Gandhi’s “variations and contradictions, the compromises he has accepted and that sort of secret bad faith which makes him prove himself by sophistries that the decisions he takes are those demanded by virtue and the divine law even when the contrary is true and he must be aware of the fact”(Romain Rolland’s Diary, 29 June 1926 in Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence—emphasis added. Cited in Ghosh, II, p.363).

Besides his ashram as and ascetic garb, the prayer meetings Gandhi held every day, “where he blended prayers and politics, were a powerful weapon of his with which he swayed the mass mind” (Ibid, p.363). Kanji Dwarkadas said that Gandhi “was exploiting for political purposes these public prayers to keep and continue his hold on ignorant and superstitious people” (Kanji Dwarkadas, India’s Fight for Freedom, 1913-1937, Bombay, 1966, cited in Ghosh, ibid.)

Subhas Chandra Bose observed that in the land where the ‘Spiritual man has always wielded the largest influence”, Gandhi “came to bw looked upon by the mass of the people as a Mahatma before he became the undisputed political leader of India” (Subhas Bose, The Indian Struggle, p.207, cited in Ghosh, ibid).

David Petrie, Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Government of India, from 1924 to 1931 said that the appeal of Gandhi as a leader to the masses “was semi-divine” and “his influence was far more religious than political” (David Petrie, Communism in India 1924-1927, p.289, cited in Ghosh, ibid.).

According to Ghosh, “Gandhi did his best to turn the gaze of the people backward, to revive the obscurantist ideas and faiths of the past and to blunt the power of reason. When it suited him, he talked of the “sinfulness” of foreign cloth or of the Bihar earthquake in 1934 as having been caused by the caste Hindus’ sin of untouchability. His “moral” outpourings on modern civilization, industry, medicine, etc. had their appeal in a colonial and semi-feudal society, who groaning under the impact of a bastard civilization felt yearnings for the supposed pristine glory of a vanished age. Gandhi knew how credulous the masses were. “If one makes a fuss of eating and drinking and wears a langoti”, said Gandhi, “one can easily acquire the title of Mahatma in this country” Again he said: “in ou VIII, p.29, cited in Ghosh, Vol. I, p,364).

In this connection, Ravinder Kumar commented: “More significantly, the religious idiom of Gandhi’s politics widened the gulf between the two major communities of the sub-continent, and was probably one of the reasons behind its division into the two two states of India and Pakistan in 1947". (Ravinder Kumar, Introduction to Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919, cited in Ghosh II, p.364.

B) Deification of Gandhi
S. K. Ghosh avers that systematic efforts were made by interested classes and individuals to deify Gandhi—not without his knowledge. During the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 (See Ghosh’s India and the Raj, Vol.I, pp.286-9) which opposed the government’s enhancement of land revenue “affecting a small but dominant landed class”, Vallabhbhai Patel and others including Gandhi “deliberately used a religious idiom in their speeches and writings”. Those reluctant to join Satyagraha were warned that “it would be difficult... for them to face God after death on account of their unholy actions”. Support of the various social groups was sought “on caste and religious grounds”. The tribal people of the Bardolitaluk many of whom serfs of their landowners and who constituted nearly half of the said taluk, were told that their gods Siliya and Simalia, who had grown old, had sent Gandhi, “their new god”, to look after them. (See Ghanasyamdas Shah, ‘Traditional Society and Political Mobilization: The Experience of Bardola Satyagraha (1920-1928)”, Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS), No.8, 1974—emphasis added, cited in Ghosh, ibid, p.365).

The following was one of the verses of a Gujarati song: “Oh Englishman, the God Gandhiji came in the end and your days have been numbered” (David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat, p.244, cited in Ghosh, II, p.365).

This deification of Gandhi was not confined to Gujarat; it spread to Gorakhpur, Bihar and other areas and the news were published in such papers and journals as Pioneer, Swadesh etc. Ghosh points out that Pandit R. S. Shukla, the then Prime Minister of the Central Provinces and Berar, made it obligatory by an order issued in September 1938 to use the word ‘Mahatma’ before Gandhi’s name in all official papers. ‘Gandhi-worship’ was also prevalent in some places of that province. (CWG, LXVII, p.410).

In present-day Koraput in Orissa, Ghosh argues, rumours were spread early in July 1938 that Mr. Gandhi would visit the area soon and those do not produce congress tickets would suffer from ailments!’ An official Congress publication stated: “The Congress had built up an organization and acquired a hold over these backward tribes[in Koraput] by making attractive promises… they also played on their superstition, and in some places Mr Gandhi was deified and temple ritual took place at the Congress office” (GOI, Home Poll, File 18/7/1938, cited in Bisvamoy Pati, ‘Storm over Malkangiri’ in G. Pandeyed, Indian Nation in 1942, p.193: for more references, see Ghosh, p.374).
Soon after 8 August 1942, a circular was issued in the name of the Congress reproducing Gandhi’s message to the people on the eve of his arrest. It was entitled Six Commandments of Gandhi Baba. (Congress Responsibilities for the Disturbances 1942-43, pp.80-81, in GOI, Home Poll, File no,18/7/1938, cited in Biswamoy Pati, op.cit.).

Exercises in Gandhi’s Image Building
Suniti Ghosh observes that myths about Gandhi which have no semblance of truth were consciously built up and propagated by his associates. Let us cite the statements coming from two of them. Nehru wrote: “Crushed in the dark misery of the present, she [India] had tried to find relief in helpless muttering and in vague dreams of the past and the future, but he [Gandhi] came and gave hope to her mind and strength to her much-battered body, and the future became an alluring vision” (Nehru, An Autobiography, p.254)

Ghosh holds that Nehru here deliberately falsified the history of the anti-colonial struggle before the advent of Gandhi on the political scene. Those struggles were not diversionary ones like those in which Nehru participated under the leadership of Gandhi. The reality is that it Gandhi’s mission to shackle all anti-government and anti-feudal struggles, not to organize or lead them. “The future that Gandhi was striving for—self-government within the British empire and the preservation of the social status quo—was indeed ‘an alluring vision’ to the Nehrus and the Birlas”(ibid, p.366).

Much-hyped Gandhi’s Visit to Noakhali
Let us now turn to the much-hyped Gandhi visit in 1946 to Noakhali—a region torn by communal clashes. Rajendra Prasad wrote: “Gandhi went to Noakhali[in 1946], The result was that the Hindus recovered their courage and morale. The Muslims who, to begin with, suspected his bona fides, began slowly to be affected by his presence and his speeches and saw the error of their ways. That was one of the marvels of non-violence in action” (R. Prasad, At the Feet of Mahatma Gandhi, p.299, cited in Ghosh, p.366).

“No doubt, this was a marvel of untruth”, Ghosh responds. “The Muslims, who at first flocked to Gandhi’s meetings, soon boycotted them and put every conceivable pressure on him to leave Noakhali and how could the apostle of non-violence restore a sense of security to the minds of Hindus when he himself moved about under the best possible armed protection provided by the Bengal government?” (Ghosh, ibid, p.367). The fact is that ordinary Muslims were not responsible for the communal riots, and the section that was actually involved in such acts was led by a gangster—Mian Ghulam Sarwar—who had unsuccessfully contested the 1946 Assembly election backed by Congress funds (Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi The Last Phase I, p.240, cited in Ghosh, p.367). Ghosh, in this connection, brings our attention to the fact that the Muslims of the neighbouring district of Tripura (Comilla) organized themselves—not under the influence of Gandhi—and successfully prevented the gangsters from spreading the riots in the district. (ibid, p.367).

Ghosh provides us another interesting and breathtaking sample of image building so essential for the success of Congress politics. According to Gandhi’s biographer and disciple, Tendulkar, After reading the first volume of Marx’s Capital in the Aga Khan Palace at the age of seventy four, Gandhi commented: “I would have written it better as assuming, of course, I had the leisure for study Marx has put in”. In this context what Frances Gunther wrote to Nehru is quite interesting: “Essentially ignorant—his ideas on science, food, sex, education, back to the village, etc. are crack potted and assigned by another man would arouse nothing but a yawn” (Gunther to Nehru, March 1938, JN Papers, cited in B.N. Pandey, op.cit,, p.224 and Ghosh, p.367).

In Suniti Ghosh’s opinion, the charisma around Gandhi was the product of his astuteness and the ability to utilize people’s religious superstitions and beliefs. There were some other factors. Edgar Snow was not wrong when he said: “Nobody else in India could play this dual role of saint for the masses and champion of big business, which was the secret of Gandhi’s power” (cited in Ghosh, p.369). Ghosh adds that a negative factor that sustained Gandhi’s charisma was the weakness of the working class and the Communist Party of India.

Epilogue: In this path-breaking work, Suniti Kumar Ghosh has refrained from touching, as he writes at the end, one aspect of Gandhi, i.e, his personal life. He has done it deliberately. That part is related to Gandhi’s personal life. This part has “invited severe criticism, even condemnation, from his former ‘yes-men’ and others”. However, he has given the sources that will throw light this part. Anyone who is interested to in knowing Gandhi, the man may consult the following sources: CWG, LXVII, 61, 69, 104-5, 117, 166, 416; LXX, 81-2, 95, 312-5; LXXIX, 212-3, 215-6, 238; LXXXI, 82-3; LXXXVI, 452-3, 465-6; LXXXVI, 89-92, 108, passim; also Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi, 133-4, 154, 158, 174, 179, 184; and Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Penguin Books, 1977 for Sushila Nayar’s statement.

[Even though Suniti Kumar Ghosh opted not to talk about Gandhi’s personal life, I would quote in full the relevant portion of an article captioned “On Gandhi” written by Saroj Datta, his close comrade-in-arms. It published in Deshabrati on 6 June 1970. This portion was rendered into English for me on my request by Suniti Kumar Ghosh himself a long time ago. Saroj Datta was butchered after being arrested by the police in Kolkata on 5 August 1971]

“I do not propose to dwell here on the tactics with which Gandhi sought to preserve the decadent culture that had its roots in medieval religious superstitions and that is the best aid to colonial rule. Nor do I intend to offer an elaborate account of the manoeuvres by which, in the name of religious and social reforms he deflected time and again the revolutionary struggles of the people from their objective. Today I would not enter into an analysis of the moral character of this imposter of an ascetic nor into the sensational accounts of this libertine’s practices in the name of brahmacharya (continence), which the orthodox Gandhian, Professor Nirmal Bose, has given in his memoirs and of which, in an excess of reverence, he has given a Freudian interpretation. Even though I may not tough on such questions, facts will gush out of the dark cavern since the boulder that was placed at the mouth of it has been removed by the revolutionary youth and students. These facts will shatter many long-cherished illusions of the people and make these bastards of the father of the nation tremble in fear. Now it is for the revolutionary intellectuals to undertake the task of research, to carry forward the struggle in the realm of culture that the revolutionary youth and students have taken the historic initiative to begin”.

[Concluded]

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