A Vision of United India

Chapter 6

The advent of Gandhi

In the next phase, it was Gandhi who dominated the scene. From the time that Gandhi entered politics, the Congress was only an expression and mouthpiece of the ideas and principles of Gandhi.

This period is of great importance in the history of India as it gave a new direction to Indian politics; whether this direction was the right one is debatable and the battle regarding this is still going on. What is needed now is clarity of vision and understanding that will help in putting the right values in the right perspective of the Indian background and thus prepare for the future evolution of India. But before we come to that stage, we shall see what the basic principles of Gandhi were.

The basic principles on which Gandhi founded his movement were Non-violence, Hindu-Muslim unity and Non-Cooperation or Satyagraha. At a later stage he added as one of his aims the uplift of the Harijans. We are concerned here only with the Hindu-Muslim problem. In order to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity Gandhi was prepared to go to any extent to please the Muslims. He believed that since the Hindus were the majority community they should be prepared to sacrifice their interests and values in order to bring about this unity. As a consequence, he was prepared to sacrifice even fundamental national interests; the concept of the divinity of the nation seemed to be completely missing from his vocabulary. Here is an illustration: On Aug. 4, 1920, Mahatma Gandhi had written in Young India: "My advice to my Hindu brethren is: Simply help the Mussalmans in their sorrow in a generous and self-sacrificing spirit without counting the cost and you will automatically save the cow. Islam is a noble faith. Trust it and its followers. We must hold it a crime for any Hindu to talk to them about cow-protection or any other help in our religious matters, while the Khilafat struggle is going on".

Similarly he interpreted the concept of non-violence as one of the fundamental tenets of the Hindu way of life. These were in direct opposition to those of Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. Gandhi put all these ideas into practice in the Khilafat movement. Let us then see what the Khilafat movement was.

The Khilafat Movement (1919-23)

Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, the Allies were loudly proclaiming their sympathy for smaller and weaker nations. Worried that Turkey might join the Germans in the War, the British government in order to win its support gave assurances of sympathetic treatment at the end of the war. The British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, declared on Jan. 5, 1918 that the Allies were "not fighting to deprive Turkey of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race". And President Wilson too endorsed this view in his message to the American Congress. These specific assurances by leading statesmen of Allied countries led the Indian Muslims to believe that whatever happened in the war, the independence of Turkey and her territorial integrity so far at least as her Asiatic dominions were concerned would be maintained. But all these hopes were doomed to disappointment - the reason, the terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920, after the end of the war. Thrace was presented to Greece, and the Asiatic portions of the Turkish Empire were put under the control of England and France in the guise of Mandates. While Turkey was dispossessed of her homelands, her ruler, the Sultan, was deprived of all real authority even in the remaining dominions as he was placed under the authority of

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a High Commission appointed by the Allied Powers who really ruled the country. The Muslims of India regarded this as a great betrayal on the part of the British; a storm of indignation broke out and seething with rage, they yearned for bold action. This was the beginning of the Pan-Islamic movement and it gathered force in 1919.

The All India Muslim League led by the brothers Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali launched an agitation for the Khilafat Movement and they got the full support of Gandhi. In supporting the Khilafat Movement, Gandhi saw "an opportunity of uniting Hindus and Muslims as would not arise in another hundred years". Little did he realise that this movement would only strengthen the Pan-Islamic movement and weaken the national movement.

On March 20, Gandhi recommended to the Congress that Non-Cooperation be adopted as the method to get the demands of the Khilafatists granted. He had also promised to get Swaraj in one year. In December 1920, the Congress at its Nagpur session unanimously accepted the recommendation. But right from the outset Gandhi made it clear that the Khilafat question was in his view more important and urgent than that of Swaraj. He wrote: "To the Musalmans, Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question.... It is impossible not to sympathise with this attitude.... I would gladly ask for postponement of Swaraj activity if thereby we could advance the interest of the Khilafat."

It is evident that this Khilafat Movement was a movement that had nothing to do with Indian Nationalism. It encouraged the Pan-Islamic sentiment and thus went against the very grain of Indian Nationalism. It accentuated the sentiments of the Muslims that they were Muslims first and Indians afterwards. The Pan-Islamic sentiment behind the Khilafat Movement was clearly indicated by the mass migration of Muslims from India to Afghanistan. This planned movement, known as hijrat, started in Sindh and gradually spread to the North West Frontier Province. It was estimated that in August 1920, nearly 18,000 people were on their way to Afghanistan. But unfortunately for the Khilafat Movement, the Afghan government, which was inspired more by national than Pan-Islamic sentiment, forbade the admission of the Indian Muhajirs into Afghanistan. This was a severe blow to the Khilafat Movement. Soon, the British Government arrested the Ali brothers. The Hindu-Muslim alliance, founded as it was on a momentary hostility towards the British, could not endure for long. After the arrest of the Ali brothers, Gandhi seized upon an incident at Chauri Chaura, a remote village in U.P., to call off the movement. Then, Turkey herself took the fateful decision to abolish the institution of Khilafat in March 1924. Mustapha Kemal, whose nationalist forces deposed the Sultan in November 1922, proclaimed Turkey a republic a year later and finally abolished the office of the Caliph in early March 1924. The Khilafat Movement in India thus died a natural death; but it had encouraged and succeeded in strengthening the Indian Muslims' sense of separateness. This Turkish decision robbed the movement of its raison d'etre and the Khilafat Movement came to an end with the Muslims sinking to a state of utter despondency and helplessness. But the movement mobilized the Muslims politically at the grass-root level for the first time, and this experience came in handy later during the subsequent Pakistan movement. Since the Khilafat Movement was launched for the advancement of an Islamic cause, it helped strengthen their Islamic sensibilities and orientation and quickened their communal consciousness. This sense of separateness finally led to the formation of Pakistan.

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It will be of interest to note the role of the Ali brothers in the Khilafat Movement. The Ali brothers in their speeches emphasized the fact that the interests of the Indian Muslims lay more with the Muslims everywhere in the world, whether in Tripoli or Algeria, rather than with Hindus in India. When there were rumours that the Amir of Afghanistan might invade India, Mohamed Ali said: "If the Afghans invade India to wage holy war, the Indian Muslims are not only bound to join them but also to fight the Hindus if they refuse to cooperate with them." Gandhi also said: "I claim that with us both the Khilafat is the central fact; with Maulana Mohamed Ali because it is his religion, with me, because in laying down my life for the Khilafat, I ensure the safety of the cow, that is my religion, from the knife of the Muslim." It is thus evident that the Hindu-Muslim split had been fostered and encouraged by the policies of the Congress. It also signalled the beginning of the policy of appeasement of the Muslims by the Congress party.

This is what Sri Aurobindo had to say: "What has created the Hindu-Muslim split was not Swadeshi, but the acceptance of the communal principle by the Congress, (here Tilak made his great blunder), and the further attempt by the Khilafat movement to conciliate them and bring them in on wrong lines. The recognition of that communal principle at Lucknow made them permanently a separate political entity in India, which ought never to have happened; the Khilafat affair made that separate political entity an organised separate political power. It was not Swadeshi, Boycott, National Education, Swaraj (our platform) which made this tremendous division, how could it? Tilak .was responsible for it not by that, but by his support of the Lucknow affair - for the rest, Gandhi did it with the help of his Ali brothers".

During the height of the Khilafat agitation, which had for its aim the Hindu-Muslim rapprochement, the country was rocked by some of the worst communal riots in Kerala. These riots known as the Moplah Riots took place in August 1921 and sent shock waves throughout India. It was the most prolonged and concentrated attack on the Hindu religion, life and property; hundreds of Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam, women were outraged. Gandhi who had brought about this calamity by his communal policy kept mum. He did not utter a single word of reproach against the aggressors nor did he allow the Congress to take any active steps whereby repetition of such outrages could be prevented. The façade of Hindu-Muslim unity had to be maintained and anything that would displease the Muslims had to be avoided. All this only encouraged the Muslims to be more stubborn in their demands.

This trend of turning a blind eye to the Muslim atrocities continued right through the Freedom Movement till India got its independence and, unfortunately, goes on even today.

Let us see what Sri Aurobindo had to say on the Hindu-Muslim problem. In the course of a conversation, a disciple observed: "There is also the question of Hindu-Muslim unity which the non-violence school is trying to solve on the basis of their theory".

Sri Aurobindo replied: "You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live with a religion whose principle is 'I will not tolerate?' How are you going to have unity with these people? Certainly Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be arrived at on the basis that Muslims will go on converting Hindus while Hindus shall not convert Mohammedans. You can't build unity on such basis. Perhaps the

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only way of making the Mohammedans harmless is to make them lose their faith in their religion". 11

Later he said:

"The attempt to placate the Mohammedans was a false diplomacy. Instead of trying to achieve Hindu-Muslim unity directly, if the Hindus had devoted themselves to national work, the Mohammedans would have gradually come of themselves.... This attempt to patch up a unity has given too much importance to the Muslims and it has been the root of all these troubles." 12

Again in 1923 Sri Aurobindo remarked:

"I am sorry they are making a fetish of this Hindu-Muslim unity. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself, it would automatically solve the problem. Otherwise we are lulled into a false sense of satisfaction that we have solved a difficult problem when in fact we have only shelved it." 13

In 1926, Sri Aurobindo remarked:

"Look at Indian politicians: all ideas, ideas-they are busy with ideas. Take the Hindu-Muslim problem: I don't know why our politicians accepted Gandhi's Khilafat agitation. With the mentality of the ordinary Mahomedan it was bound to produce the reaction it has produced: you fed the force, it gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require Supermind to find out, it requires common sense. Then, the Mahomedan reality and the Hindu reality began to break heads at Calcutta. (This refers to the riots in Calcutta the previous month). The leaders are busy trying to square the realities with their mental ideas instead of facing them straight."14

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