The Third Assembly

India’s Parliament, as constituted, is like a Shavian burlesque on all the Parliaments of the world. The Legislative Assembly is tired of its verbose and superfluous existence; and the Council of State is not even a good caricature of the average Upper House. But the Assembly which was presided over by Patel, and which was the third of its series, will for a long time bear the palm for wit and oratory, for fun and fireworks. It marked the apex of the parliamentary epoch which had been inaugurated by the Duke of Connaught, with appropriate vagueness.

The Third Assembly contained galaxies and constellations and scintillated with the most brilliant stars. There were old men in their seventies and young men in their twenties. There were Swarajists in fanciful frock-coats rattling off in an Oxford accent and Executive Members smiling gently like genial Babus. There were Pandits who quoted from moth-eaten text-books written in the most luxuriant of dead languages and modern wits who recited the latest limericks. They were intrepid and alert, gay and gregarious, these epicure legislators who rose like hardened statesmen to brace up to a paper crisis and moved and talked out adjournment motions with patriotic unconcern. They had their shadow Cabinets and imitation Cabals. They ate good lunches and posed kindly to photographers as often as possible. They remembered the most ancient history and knew by heart the most recent anecdotes; and if, as Sheridan said of Dundas, they sometimes resorted to their memory for their jokes and to their imagination for their facts, they could show off, as occasion demanded, Balfourian elegance, Asquithian terseness, or Curzonian pomposity. They platitudinized and pot-boiled, they punned and parodied. They celebrated the premature death of Diarchy in a funeral of words. The debates of those days would not at all disgrace the House of Commons; while Patel presided like a Greek god over the garrulous constitution-mongers who in an year or two developed a passion for token cuts. The eloquent speakers sat to each bill as to a banquet, and if there were the inevitable bores who stammered their speeches or droned out their composed music, the members could doze or walk out at will.

There were the Laurel-and-Hardy comics of Kabiruddin Ahmed. There was Muddiman, Home Member and genial ring-master, who pleasantly pooh-poohed those adjournment motions and parodied those token cuts. Blackett could command words as well as he could command figures. Innes could speak crashing rhetoric. Motilal Nehru himself was formidable with his learned ponderosities and long-tailed perorations. Lajpat Rai was lava and brimstone when he was roused. Malaviya could coo for hours and hours going to the time when Adam delved and Eve span, and Jayakar had a silver tongue which could be sweet or sonorous. Kelkar jewelled his phrases, while Gidney extemporized and hummed and hawed, and Thakurdas could boom away like a bill of lading. Jinnah spoke with glittering polish; Chaman Lall thundered with the proper accent; Goswami erupted with grace and temper; and Shanmukham Chetti talked like the tote. The wise men of the East conversed accusing and applauding one another; the Constitution rocked like a cradle; and Patel presided over his infant Pandemonium with frowns and nods and profound silences.

‘The heads of the parties are like the heads of snakes carried on by their tails,’ said William Pulteney. Panmt Motilal Nehru, with all his princely hauteur, did not ignore the importance of the tail. He fostered his followers with loving pride and care. He took a god-fatherly interest in the brilliant triumvirate of debaters, Chaman Lall, Goswami and Chetti, whose interest in politics, however, has been more Platonic than practical. The Deputy Leader of the Party, Srinivasa Iyengar, had astounded his countrymen by his hurricane career. He went to the Assembly with a reputation for strategy, for he had out-generalled the powerful communal party in Madras and given it a ghastly defeat. At his worst, he revealed the ‘very ambiguity of ambiguity,’ but he added his quota to the "gaiety of the proceedings by his breezy manner and scintillating wit. He had a love for forcing events and making history; but history grew out of his control; it went with a headlong crash from incident to incident. While some of the Swarajists distinguished themselves during question hour, there were others who remained ornamental for the most part, for, just as some gentlemen prefer blondes some Swarajists prefer jails. It is not that they cannot talk or think. They have courage but no convictions. It was not so, however, with Jamnadas Mehta, of whom it is impossible to say whether he is a comrade becoming a millionaire or a millionaire becoming a comrade. He had a massive personality, added to a matchless wit; the one organized strikes, the other laughed at them. He spoke like an oracle on high finance, and counteracted the clear-headed but morose leadership of N. M. Joshi, whose is a model bourgeois career. Ranga Iyer was the champion gossiper; he denounced the Government from his seat in the Chamber and made up for it by his sweetness in the lobbies.

Lala Lajpat Rai was the most manful and lion-hearted of our leaders. He had led the Nationalist Party successfully against the Swarajists in Northern India, and left bitterness behind him. It is unfortunate that our leaders cannot expand within the bounds of foreign domination; but, if we are permitted to compare without being charged as parallel-hunters, we may say that Lajpat Rai had the bravery and brusque picturesqueness of Garibaldi. He always spoke as man to man, without seeking parenthesis or pot-boiled epigrams. Pandit Malaviya had battled restlessly for his country, with copious eloquence, with all the weight of his moderation and culture, without betraying either bitterness or humour. He flung his precise metallic sentences in profusion. If ‘Gladstone’s eloquence was calorific and Balfour’s circumforaneous,’ Malaviya’s eloquence was both calorific and circumforaneous. He was, according to Montagu, ‘the most active politician in any council,’ ‘a man of beautiful appearance, a Brahmin clad in white, with a beautiful voice, perfect manners, and an insatiable ambition.’ If Lajpat Rai was passion, and Malaviya was rhetoric, Jayakar was all argument. He, like Sapru, has since won fame as a part of our political Gemini. He has the gritty appearance of a dictator; but he has monumental suavity and manners, and a scholar’s love for books; he is a kind of Baldwin, without pipe or pigs. He is our grand collaborator. He collaborated with Kelkar for responsive co-operation. He collaborated with Moonjee for regenerating Hinduism. He collaborated with Gandhi for social reform and Sapru for political reform. But his career is woefully incongruous because, while he has admitted the attractiveness of the palm, he has never liked to be soiled with the dust. He is the embodiment of the musty old maxim that speech is silver and silence golden. If a man like Austen Chamberlain has suffered from the greater fame of his father, a similar thing may be said of Kelkar, whose own contribution has been overshadowed by the gorgeous fame of Tilak. He wrote and spoke with persuasive wit. He coined metaphors that smack of literature and hum our that is caustic. He is best remembered as the most enduring relic of Tilak; it is as though a temple were built over the tooth of the Buddha.

‘Jinnah is a clever man’ noted Montagu in his Diary ‘and it is an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his country.’ Jinnah’s life has been a commentary on this sentence; and it is, like similar lives in India, a life of futility. He had started his career in a blaze of idealism. He held out the promise of developing into a kind of Younger Pitt; and Sarojini Devi, in an ecstacy of vision, had prophesied that he had all the makings of a Mazzini for India. But he would not follow the consequences of his own ruthless logic; and except for a beauty of pose and an unfailing dignity of manner, he did not keep the promise of his early years. The Younger Pitt has behaved like the elder Tadpole; Sarojini Devi no longer practises the dangerous game of prophesying; he has become, as what Sapru called, a spoilt child; and disastrously enough for everybody, his brilliant qualities of analysis and dramatic impersonation made him a superb advocate of lost causes. He suffers from too high a sense of self-respect. He cannot woo like Sastri or kotow like Patro. His heart is neither with a country which has changed beyond the most daring of his dreams, nor with a Government which has no seat to offer him. He is too lordly to be anybody’s minor colleague. Jinnah’s greatness is that, in a nation of orators, he is not an orator. He is too self-conscious for that. But he is a born debater of extraordinary power. His speeches are models of expostulation. They are full of gestures and other minor graces. He is not witty or rasping in riposte; but he is grave, dignified, and studiedly sincere. The President must only give him time to perambulate from point to point, from irony to invective, from invective to prophecy, and he can score at every turn with crushing retorts and clinching perorations. We can even now read his speech on Steel Protection with thrills, and admire the stubbornness with which he defended himself and the Government against a pack of howling patriots. His interventions always enlivened the proceedings with drama. He expostulated to the Government, he turned towards the Swarajists, he bandied words with the -benchers, he warned, he threatened, he prophesied. It was done with glitter and polish; his victory was pyrrhic but it soothed his self-respect; he again and again proved his importance in the scheme of things by attacking the Government and voting for them; and, after all, he celebrated the superiority of Mahomed Ali Jinnah. It was, however, not easy for him to keep pace with Thakurdas, who spoke with punch. Thakurdas had audacious duels with Blackett; his speeches were remarkable for their matter-of-fact openings, their reasoned argument, their relay of impressive facts, and their inevitable conclusions. Jinnah’s centre party was effected not only because it was a centre party but also because it was led by a superb politician, who took to politics as ducks take to water.

‘How imperfectly did mountains exist before Wordsworth,.’ writes Aldous Huxley; and we may say with equal truth that Parliamentary life in India since Patel has been imperfect, if not extinct. Patel gave the Assembly a character which it had lacked and an advertisement which it ardently aspired for. There was nothing very remarkable about his pre-Presidential work. He was a Congress member who wanted provincial autonomy, a Mayor of the Bombay Corporation who showed a fist of mail, and a member of the local Council and then of the Assembly who often contradicted himself. But he was made of the stuff of which good ginger is made, and Montagu had to commend him in his Diary as ‘obviously the most talkative member of the Council.’ Patel, like the age in which he lived, despised rhetoric and applauded invective. Force of assertion, says Bernaud Shaw, is the alpha and omega of style, and Patel did nothing but assert. He resembled one of those Greek figures, with a face that contained all the elegies in the world, a patriarchal beard, and eyes that were unutterably sad; and when he was re-elected as President a second time unanimously, he took the Chair like bearded Jove amidst thunders and lightnings and forebodings of constitutional cataclysms.

The Third Assembly started with a sensation. Motilal Nehru moved an adjournment motion about the detention of S. C. Mitra and raised the question of the privileges of the members of the House. But Muddiman came out with his ‘thrice-told tales’ about the dangerous virtues of detenus and mythical terrorist. societies for which India is gaining an undeserved reputation. Then they plunged into the bloodless battle of the ratios, and member after member tirelessly discussed the behaviour of the rupee. The vote on the ‘Executive’ Demand provided the best fun of the session. Patel declared amidst laughter that ‘Mr. Jayakar wanted to reduce it to one rupee,. Mr. Srinivasa Iyengar wanted to reduce the demand to six pies, Mr. Kelkar to three pies, and Mr. Acharya to one pie.’ Jayakar was bitter that ‘even the carpet expense was non-votable,’ and warned the Government to ‘beware of the anger of a weak man.’ Kelkar expressed the paradox of the situation pithily when he said: ‘Yesterday we were asked to vote for 1 s. 6d. because it was a de facto ratio. Today we are asked to vote for the Government because it is a de facto Government!’ The Government itself was loth to change its vision because, as one member said, it was afraid of becoming squint-eyed in the effort. The autumn session was comparatively quiet, and the House was busy about the status and privileges of its members, postal employees, and seamen’s problems; the Government had some hair-breadth escapes; and bills like the Indian Divorce Bill were passed even without discussion.

Lord Birkenhead had brought in the rollicking spirit of Bolingbroke into twentieth century politics. He would not brook inferior intellect. His arrogance was invincible, and his apathy was such that he would refer to terrible communal riots as mere ‘collisions.’ He had made much of the fact that the country was tired of ‘the sterile and reactionary character of the creed of the rigid Swarajist,’ and that a number of the new members had come in ‘as followers of their own individual consciences.’ He declined to be ‘the slave of a date,’ and left to his successors a frightful heritage in the Simon Commission. The times were distinctly inauspicious. The country was showing unparalleled petulance. Katherine Mayo had become the most famous Miss in Christendom, and mud was exchanged between Asia and America. Lord Irwin went on delivering his Methodist speeches. But almost all the Indian leaders were sulky. The Assembly rose to the occasion in a historic debate on the Commission. There was brilliant parrying, and retort and counter-retort. The Opposition delivered themselves of their philippics. There was a jolt when M. C. Rajah seemed to make an ideal of his inferiority complex, or Gour became apocalyptic about the sanctity of Statutory Commissions. Sir Zulfikar Ali Khan tried to enlighten the House by concluding that ‘no country remained under subjection unless there were defects in national character,’ and Crerar declared pompously that ‘the issues are too clear, the facts too apparent, the omens too unambiguous.’ There was no gap in the relentless Opposition. Blackett twitted that ‘Mr. Jinnah has been assimilated by the Congress Party,’ but there was not the slightest flutter. Suhrawardy complained bitterly of ‘the All India Muslim League session at Calcutta where Pandits harangued.’ But the Opposition was overwhelmingly victorious. The credit was due to Jinnah’s steadfastness, which was unexpected and unequalled. He had been even steadier on the Army question. ‘I do not want the garrison of His Majesty’s force to insure me,’ he said, ‘I want a national army’; and at one time he burst into a passion and announced that ‘these yarns won’t do.’ There were exciting interludes. The co-operation between Jinnah and Motilal Nehru was not always harmonious. When in a subsequent session the National Demand was moved, Jinnah was found saying, ‘let us not raise a controversy among ourselves.’ ‘Who is doing it,’ said Motilal; ‘you’ said Jinnah; ‘you’ said Motilal; and the House laughed. But towards the close of its hectic life, it was the President who monopolised all the limelight of the House.

Hitherto history had seemed to be the monopoly of Premiers; but Patel showed that it was also the privilege of courageous Presidents. When Sir James Crerar became the Home Member he brought the manners of a tight-laced martinet. Hailey had been eloquent, and Muddiman genial, but Crerar was curt, tidy, and cryptic. He easily disturbed even the harmony of speech-making, and aired his affection for Public Safety Bills. Blackett was witty, though over-bearing; Schuster sang the sweetest melodies though they told of saddest budgets; Rainey had a style of making Railways interesting; the Mitras and Mitters were efficient and friendly; but they were all made ineffectual by Crerar’s cold blood-curdling recitations. He once more repeated Muddiman’s ‘thrice told tales.’ The relations between the front benches were bitter. The President had to hold the scales between a Government which was too sullen and an Opposition which was too talkative. There were many pitched battles. The President himself was shadowed. Members smelt gun-powder plots; and once Lancelot Graham was the innocent Guy Fawkes. The Assembly resounded with recriminations, and shades of future generations saw the thrilling spectacle of the first elected President making history by his histrionic talents. Patel stood up like Prospero to summon constitutional storms. He summoned them with trumpets and deliberate gusto. He distilled his anger into the most vitriolic damnation of the Government, with a picturesque variation of ambiguous epithets.

Patel behaved like a perpetual crisis. He wielded his sceptre like a birch. Once he chide the Commander-in-chief for not being present to answer a debate. Another time Blackett was heard to mutter something, and he was pulled up and asked to make himself heard. Patel’s decisions themselves burst like bomb-shells. He bombed the Reserve Bank Bill. At the time of the Meerut Trial he bombed the Public Safety Bill. The situation was made too thrilling when bombs were thrown into the Assembly and Bhagat Singh became a hero to men of words who admire men of action. The Government were rude. ‘In view of the fact that the Government are not prepared to show the Chair the courtesy of disclosing what their plans are, I refrain from giving a ruling,’ the President declared. Over the question of their control of the Assembly gallery, he again bombed and won. He, with his usual pluck, refused to follow the Congress resolution asking its members to boycott the legislatures. He explained the position of a President, ‘who doffs his vivid party colours, be they buff or blue, crimson or yellow, and wears instead the white flower of a neutral political life.’ At the time of the bitter Bardoli crisis, he declared his sympathies a little too openly and bravely. Unkindly critics whispered with bated breath that Patel was seen going home in the company of Motilal Nehru, and that the syntax and even the phrases of the President’s statements bore the oil and learning of the Pandit. Arthur Moore committed his most blazing indiscretion when he tried to move a vote of no-confidence in the Chair, but the Government preferred to butter its parsnips with elaborate euphemism, and Patel added insult to injury. When he left with a proud shrug the scene of all his political glory, muffled up in all his dignity, it was to the blare of guns and trumpets. He gave himself a hearty send-off, but an embittered Viceroy spoilt the show by ungraceful references and veiled suggestions. It was tragic to see Patel pass from continent to continent in search of health, and the tragedy was complete when, robbed of his health and thunder, a cynic to the core, a fighter to the last, he died in Vienna amidst the dust of empires.

The Third Assembly lingered on, under the Presidentship of Mahomed Yakub. ‘The weak man’ had shown his anger. The Swarajists had become once more ‘rigid,’ ‘reactionary,’ and ‘sterile.’ Malaviya too was tired of this pantomime and resigned after a time. Jayakar was left to lead the Opposition. As he rose to speak, he declared he was ‘the remnant of the old Nationalist Opposition, for the last time to sing the swan song.’ The atmosphere was quiet and ghostly. The Simon Commission Report was dragged into discussion; and there were some signs of life. Other minor problems were attended to listlessly; seamen and postal employees were disposed of quickly. The last sitting was devoted to the purchase of the Assam-Bengal Railway. A slight amendment was moved; it was accepted on behalf of the Government; and the sitting was over. The President was tremulous: ‘We are at the end of our career!’ He desired the time-old honour of shaking hands with the members. He ominously said that he did not know how many will come .’ The Assembly was dying. It had tried to make history, which it was beyond its scope and power to make. It struggled for a while, then died, slowly, imperceptibly, unhonoured and unsung.