Crisis in the Congress

I

TRIPURI

Tripuri provided bucketfuls of paint to amateur portrait-painters; it also provided mud for muck-rakers. Bose was the arch-rebel, the leader of a ‘counter-revolution’; Gandhism was caricatured with Hogarthian relish. It was one of those controversies where issues gather clamour from the clash of personality, and the ego is all important; the personality of Achilles seemed more significant than the issues that were fought out at Troy. From the point of view of the Congress, Tripuri was an intolerable tragedy. The protagonists, at any rate, kept above the plane of personality, but even Congress publicists could not resist the temptation of throwing "rhetorical rotten eggs." Parables made the issues more complex; it became a question of boatmanship. There was an epic dignity about the fight, whatever its worth, nothing of the slovenliness of the Khare and Nariman episodes, but it was an evil hour for Congress quill-drivers. They at least should not have descended to the slap-dash methods of special correspondents who, tired of dusting the relics of round tables, had a field day at Tripuri.

Personalities apart, vital issues emerged out of all the tumult and the shouting. Firstly, it represented a constitutional crisis. Secondly, it was a clash of two schools of political thought, clouded by personality. Thirdly, it was the first taste of ‘power politics’ in Congress history. Fourthly, it was a test for the Congress Socialist Party and all blocs within the Congress. Fifthly, it represented a unity in aim, a diversity in strategy. Sixthly, it meant the emergence of Bose as a leader in his own right. Calcutta witnessed only the extension of the fight: the battle was transferred from the citadel to the suburbs.

How far was Bose’s challenge a challenge to Gandhism or to Mahatma Gandhi? To answer this question we must answer two conundrums. What is the essence of Gandhism? What does Mahatma Gandhi stand for? Gandhism, we may begin, is an undefined code of ethics and politics, an intense humanization of activity in every sphere of life. The evolution of Gandhism has depended on the experiments of Gandhi. Its fundamental interests are truth and non-violence. It is, therefore, Buddhistic in conception, Hindu in ground, Christian in association, almost eclectic in appeal. It has its roots in the idealism of Plato and the episcopaleanism of Thomas-a-Kempis or St. Augustine. It is invested with the moral grandeur of Marcus Aurelius; it has the tinge of Dante’s intensity. Mazzini and Tolstoy are its godfathers. Its moral bible is the Gita, and its economic Bible ‘Unto the Last.’ To the artistic sense alone does Gandhi not apply himself strictly. His philosophy is that of the education of the primal instincts of man; it has the incandescence of suffering, the glory of crucifixion. Its shield is non-violence; its weapon is Satyagraha. It is impossible to evaluate the essence of a creed which is in a state of evolution, without venturing into a thesis.

Gandhism, without Gandhi, is, however, a different matter; it will either become a ruling dogma for centuries or perish like a mushroom growth. It is Gandhi’s own greatness that has invested his creed with so much majesty and power. It is his daring experiments that make it the greatest pragmatic political force of modern times. Apart from this body of thought and code of action, Gandhi as a personality is unique. He has Gladstone’s complex genius and courage. His daring is phenomenal. The hero as saint is no longer a speaking parable picture. As an educator, propagandist and pamphleteer he has proved his uncommon power which makes Cobbett’s efforts seem commonplace and Voltaire’s pamphleteering seem a pose. Those sharp, pointed, solemn, little sentences have moved men to anger and pity, as only the pithiness of true prophets has moved. As an agitator he has not known external defeat. Even at this day he would say like Mirabeau, ‘I may be a cinder but I still burn.’ As a man he is intensely human. Like Francis of Assisi, he loves animals; like Jesus of Nazareth, he loves children. Men have questioned the wisdom of his strategy but no one has doubts that he is the nation’s greatest general for aggression. He is riding on the crest of the revolution he created, though it has been said that revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children.

When you take part in managing a revolution, the difficulty, said Mirabeau, is not to keep it going but to hold it within bounds.

The attitude of Bose to Gandhi and Gandhism is the attitude of the average Left-winger, whether bourgeois or socialist. They do not accept Gandhism, particularly the variations of innumerable interpreters. They are not concerned with it as an ethical code and distrust its political ambiguities. They reject the appeal to instinct, to the mystical in man, its apotheosis of soul-force. It is not so with Gandhi. They are overwhelmed by his awe-inspiring moral genius, his courage in attack, his valiancy in difficulties. But he should not take part in moulding the strategy or in shaping the aftermath of peace. It is this interpretation which the Rightists fought to reject at Tripuri. Their attitude is that Gandhi and Gandhism go together, that Gandhi’s generalship in war is not available unless you accept his leadership in peace. Faced by these terms, the delegates submitted to Gandhism at least in theory in order to secure the leadership of Gandhi. It was not after all a heavy price to pay. Into this straight fight were introduced all kinds of irrelevant considerations, personal issues and parables, which belong to the sphere of personal reminiscence and anecdotage more pertinent to biography than to politics. The following account of the French Revolution in its early stages illustrates the mass of opinion at Tripuri:

‘Soon it was just possible to distinguish a right and a left; in between came a shapeless mass bearing for some time the name of ‘Impartials’."

It was thus a fight between two schools of thought, one of which gyrated round Gandhism and the other of which believed in Gandhi’s leadership, There was no antinomy between Gandhi and Bose as such, though such an impression was created. The Congress Socialists, who go further than Bose in their opposition to Gandhi and Gandhism, surrendered when they were cornered with this false antinomy. They showed no genius for compromise, they capitulated without reserve. As a taste in ‘power politics’ Bose was out-maneuvered. That brings us to the question of the crisis in the Congress constitution which was, perhaps, the only question worth fighting about at Tripuri and its succeeding battle-fields. The election of the President and the appointment of the Working Committee were the two vital points in a controversy which must have been galling to every patriot, though the A.I.C.C. at Bombay made it seem as though these were the least important questions. The A.I.C.C. was led to purge the ranks; it should have purged the personnel of the command, high and low.

II

THE CONSTITUTION

The history of every revolution is the history of the leadership of a compact political group. The leaders of such groups in the past have, as the Czarina Catherine said, used ‘suffering humanity as paper.’ The future of the struggle depends on the leadership of that group. The Congress has become a historic body, shaping the destinies of millions, and we already see the forbears of the Jacobins and Girondins of our non-violent revolution. The organization of such a body must, apart from all military phraseology, be the concern of every patriot outside and inside it. If the organisation is loose, it will be a ramshackle structure, like the Car of Juggernaut, ready to break down to pieces; if it is mechanised, it might become a Frankenstein monster. The struggle for power becomes dominant: patriots give way to place-hunters. At critical junctures, leaders and whole blocs might have to be liquidated. Danton and Robespierre, Trotsky and Zinoniev, were victims of the monsters they created. If the Congress is to learn its lesson from history, it must see that its constitution is democratic, elastic and at the same time unbreakable, compact and at the same time not totalitarian. The election of Bose brought the matter to the fore-front, and at an opportune moment. At the time of the Khare controversy, the High Command worked with such sure precision that it was accused of acting like a Fascist Grand Council; when within a year Bose won his snap election, it looked as though the Congress, in spite of its constitution, was giving way like a pack of cards.

From the strictly constitutional point of view, the election of Bose meant that he had secured the confidence of the delegates, but could not win the support of the A. I. C. C. Apart from the violent fluctuations of opinion during the hectic days at Tripuri, it meant that the verdict of the delegates was not represented in the A.I.C.C. What would happen if history were to repeat itself? We had the spectacle of one body electing the President and quite another body trying to depose him. The political temper at Tripuri was not vicious enough to bring about the deposition of Bose, but it very nearly happened at Calcutta. It is a curious phenomenon that the A.I.C.C. which represents the delegates should not approve of the choice of those delegates. But politics is full of such oddities. It should be clear to constitutional pundits that in such a case the President should either be irremovable for his period of office, like the American President, or that the A.I.C.C. should have no voice in the matter. If not, the President’s position would be intolerable. Conventions do much to preserve the jointures of a constitution but the attack on conventions came from the Working Committee who chose Dr. Pattabhi without consulting Bose as much as from Bose himself. If the primary voters are to be the sovereign body for the Congress, then they should either be consulted in times of crisis by means of a referendum or be allowed to elect the President direct. The representative system is a clumsy and uncertain device at its best, and it is in the process of evolution, but there is no reason why the Congress should not conform itself to the best traditions of that system.

The personality of Gandhi has overshadowed these issues. He has been the guardian-angel of the Congress. His life has been its history. He has moulded it, given it a philosophy, filled it with the ardour of his agony. But it is equally true to say that the Congress, as we know it, is not his creation or creature. It has been built up on the blood of unknown volunteers; it is the crystallization of a nation’s awakening. The genius of the race is thrice-distilled in his non-violent philosophy; his sacrifices reflect centuries of suffering. While Gandhi has moulded the Congress, he has also been responding to its moods. He has been its mirror. When it favoured council entry, he blessed it. When it was tired of bastard constitutionalism, he led it on to a fierce struggle. Great popular leaders cannot escape this law of social action and reaction, flux and reflux. The hero who is born in a void and changes the course of history is a creature of Carlyle’s phantasmagoria. If not, we shall have to say of him what the French wits said of La Fayette: ‘Look at M. de La Fayette, riding into the unborn centuries.

Gandhi is a man of the centuries, and nobody would mind his anomalous position. He is not a four-anna member of the Congress–but who has questioned his representative character? There are, however, certain considerations which must compel men to see that the Congress does not become subservient to a man, however great a genius, however indispensable. It was said of Bismarck that he made Germany great and the Germans small: it should not be said of Gandhi that he made India great and the Indians small. Gandhi’s personality should not obtrude on matters which are a matter of life and death to a growing organism. When he declared that Dr. Pattabhi’s defeat was his, he was politically sound but he created a constitutional welter. When he believes that the Congress Cabinet must be homogeneous he is putting too much faith in human nature, or not making a distinction between a government machinery and a fighting political organisation. Pandit Jawaharlal rightly does not agree with it. It is impossible for the Congress to work out its destiny unless it carries the allegiance of its component elements which can be achieved only through a composite cabinet.

If the Working Committee were composed of men of all the talents, it would be a Cabinet of Incompatibles; at best it can try to be a Cabinet of Incorruptibles. Gandhiji wants to run it on the lines of the British Cabinet; it would, perhaps, be better to run it on the lines of the present National Government, as in that case it would possess, in addition, a political and moral validity which Chamberlain’s Cabinet lacks. What is the harm if members who are willing to submit to the decision of the majority are represented in it? There are at present two contingencies which have a bearing on this problem. Gandhi may lead a fight, in which case few–and only time-servers–will dissent. The greater danger is that a large body of Congressmen may be thirsting for battle, and Gandhi may hold them in check. The best of Cabinets, the best of organisations, might crack under the strain.

The A.I.C.C. at Bombay should have dealt with these problems but it preferred others in fact. The Constitutional Sub-Committee failed to concentrate on the theme which provoked a crisis and very nearly ship-wrecked the Congress. Instead, it dealt with matters which were important in themselves but had to be shelved for want of a proper perspective. Only Mr. M. N. Roy was prepared with a complete set of amendments to the constitution, some of which were good and some of which were bad, but all of which deserved attention. The prejudice against Royism should not have hindered the High Command from examining his thesis for democratizing the Congress, for if the Congress is not democratized in time it will either crack or shrivel into a caucus. It must, however, be said to the credit of the High Command that they showed an admirable spirit of compromise. The A.I.C.C., in return, responded with admirable temper.

III

THE STATES

From these cross-currents in the Congress, Gandhi drew the limelight for a time on to the tortuous whirlpool of Kathiawad politics. In Rajkot, a State as big as one of the bigger taluqas of British India, with a population of 75,000 and a revenue of 13 lakhs, he staged one of the most spectacular of his fights. It was primarily a spiritual struggle against the power and evil influence of Durbar Virawala, who may have now passed into the demonology of the Congress, but who is of a type of political adviser, the sport and despair of the Political Department. Gandhi’s fight started as a first-rate political drama, packed with tension, verging now and then on anti-climax, and finally saved from bathos only by the superb grandeur of his genius.

What is the lesson of Rajkot? It is a further demonstration of the valiancy of Gandhi’s genius. It looked as though a consummate chess player like Virawala would force Gandhi into an eternal fast. Gandhi changed his tactics and tried a new approach. This was more successful because it was a kind of ‘appeasement’ of the Thakore. The fast was a kind of declaration of war; there is something militant about Satyagraha; confession of despair was a kind of appeal to the Thakore’s sense of chivalry. Having drawn a veil over the State’s struggle just when it was gathering momentum and bursting all boundaries, Rajkot was a pleasant interlude, which, while making some contribution to Gandhian technique, held up the course of history. As a matter of political symbolism it was not worth much. The fall of the Bastille put the French Revolution on its feet. The march to Dandi was symbolic as it inaugurated a nation’s protest. The Rajkot affair was an episode which did not fit in with history. Viewed from the angle of personal destiny alone did it contribute its value as political drama. Once more Gandhi reduced the science of Satyagraha to a matter of intuition, of personal equation, and political artistry. The Rajkot affair failed to produce any reaction in other States where there are hundreds of Virawalas prowling in the political underworld. The Bhayats and Girasiyas alone seemed to play a symbolic part because they represent the Indian problem in its acutest form. If Rajkot were a straight fight between the people and the Thakore, it would have been symbolic. But Gandhi intervened like deus ex machina, and the only palpable result was that the Congress was brought face to face with the Political Department.

Significance was attached to the intervention of Sir Maurice Gwyer who is a part of the Federal machinery. It seemed to political speculators that Gandhi was toying with the Federal machinery, that he was stooping to conquer the tin-gods of Simla. The facts would, however, seem to be that it was the Political Department which, unable to deal straight with the knots tangled by Virawala, swallowed its pride in the end and welcomed the intervention of one, who had immense prestige with his countrymen and who, at any rate, was not an obnoxious extremist. The ‘Statesman’ in an editorial, remarkable for its timeliness and scintillating clarity, urged that the Thakore was an impostor who had forfeited his right to rule. It looked as though the noose was tightening round the Thakore, but the political Department, for once, preserved its poise and submitted to the Gwyer arbitration. Sir Maurice’s ‘intervention’ was only that of an eminent jurist, who, of course, derived prestige from his juristic eminence but was in no way acting as an agent of the Government of India Act. His reference dealt with an isolated document which had nothing to do with treaties or political usage. His award was admirably to the point. The whole incident was inflated beyond the importance it deserved.

The States’ Satyagraha was the wildest phenomena seen in recent times. Within the course of a year it spread like wild fire from Kathiawad in the west to the Orissa States in the east, from Kashmir to Travancore. In Hyderabad, which, as Malcolm said, is the key to the States system, it has been raging fiercely. It would be unnecessary to make a pathological examination of a process which was, some time or other, inevitable under a system described by Sir Henry Cotton in the following terms:

"They (the Princes) are powerless to protect themselves. There is no judicial authority to which they can appeal. There is no public opinion to watch their interests. There is no publicity to contest the action of a Government which is able to decide their fate as it pleases. Their rank and honour depend on the pleasure of a British Resident at their court and on the secret and irresponsible mandates of a Foreign Office at Simla."

It was the tyranny of the Political Department that made the Princes surrender to a bastard type of Federalism. But Federalism involves a type of democracy and it was as foolish to expect a democratic declaration from a body of rulers as to expect a declaration of atheism from a commission of clergymen. The decadent polity of princely India invites total annihilation and no ‘jumbled crochet-work.’ When the treaty of Versailles is being unsettled there is no reason why alleged historical truths like the contracts of the Political Department should not be unmade. Instead of that, Congress leaders were trying to squeeze ‘reforms’ out of the States system as though they were so many sponges. If the Congress had resolutely scared the Princes in unambiguous terms, Federation would have been dead long ago and not recently at Bombay. The present process is to make Indian autocracy check Indian democracy. The one surprise of the day is that the States struggle has been useful as a rear-guard action against Federation; it would have been better if Congress leaders had realised it at an early stage. "Politics," said Rivarol "is like the Sphinx in the fable; it destroys all those who cannot solve its riddles."

IV

CONSTIUENT ASSEMBLY

The Federation play seems to have become one of the lost pantomimes of Haroun-al-Raschid’s court. The Government of India Act has become as sacred as a Bible to bureaucrats, as precious as one of the lost books of Livy to bibliophiles. Congress Governments have settled down to legislative gardening. The High Command, having secured a precarious tenure, are lost between army codes and whims of the Generalissimo. Lord Linlithgow is as statuesque as ever; the Central Legislature is a Punch-and-Judy piece; and the Secretariat which freezes in Simla has no time to thaw in Delhi. The Princes, a little envious of the Thakore of Rajkot and Durbar Virawala, seem to grope their way between instruments of accession and imaginary guillotines. Only the sedate Liberals seem to be unaffected, secure in their political orphanages, finding consolation in the collected speeches of Asquith or the biographies of somnambulist statesmen.

Mr. Winston Churchill, that Grand Napoleon of the realms of rhetoric, has described the scheme of the Constitution Act for all time.

"A gigantic guilt of jumbled crochet-work. There is no theme; there is no pattern; there is no argument; there is no conviction; there is no simplicity; there is no courage. It is a monstrous monument of sham built by pigmies."

At the first R. T. C., Federalism spread like the enteric fever. Statesmen like Mr. Sastri, who had never admitted that India’s salvation lay through anything but a unitary constitution, surrendered as willing victims to it. Mr. Jinnah entered a polite caveat but found that it offered him some of his fourteen points. No one thought of making an a priori study. The Fathers of our Federation, one of whom saw himself as the Alexander Hamilton of the Indian War of Independence, had no thought for first principles. The fundamentals of the constitution were no more important than a section of the Act. They were amateur politicians posing as constitutional pundits. Having read Morley on ‘Compromise,’ they only thought of half-way houses. There was a fundamental dishonesty in the whole process; yet the Congress has tried to commit the people to principles which have not been thrashed out, postulates which must be examined. Federalism, apart from Federation, cannot be a settled fact; it is a live issue which must be discussed.

If there are any who sincerely believe in Federalism let them canvass it; let them not treat it as an accomplished fact, as an inevitable compromise. The present time is the time to re-open the issues. If India is to choose federalism it is only a Constituent Assembly that can do it in the light of the principle of self-determination and not in the thick of luminous London fogs. Yet Congress leaders have not taken care to examine these issues, their anger against the Constitution Act being too generalized. Two years of legislative power in the Provinces has very nearly brought the fight from the open field into the green-room. The States Satyagraha has been the only redeeming feature of the ‘fight for freedom.’ That fight to wrest power must go on. If purges are necessary for it, purges must be carried out. If corruption is spotted, it must be rooted out.

The position, therefore, is puzzling; but there is nothing to despair of. Every fermentation of idea has been followed by a fresh burst of national endeavour. Schism has raised its head but schism is no heart-rending thing. A revolution needs a head and a heart, and the High Command, which has been kept intact, is there to inspire enthusiasm and execute the national will. One would wish that the Right wing leaders had not shown that spirit of narrowness against Left ‘blocs.’ It shows a lack of confidence, Mahatma Gandhi is there, our saint and general and statesman, with his gnomic wisdom, his sage experience, the wonderful drift of his mind. Rajen Babu carries great ability on rather light shoulders. Dr. Pattabhi is still a political Euclid hurling his syllogisms, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is still a Mazzini in his moods. The ‘Forward Bloc,’ which has been much criticized, may fulfill the need of a ginger group in the Congress, for it is now well-known that the Rightist veterans have lost their roar even if they have kept their manes. Royism is, of course, the only alternative to Gandhism, but Mr. Roy moves like a mysterious shadow on the fringes of the Congress. The Socialists are, perhaps, sadder and wiser.

Two problems confront the country: the co-ordination of the the fight against the foreigner and the achievement of communal unity. Mr. Jinnah is still the Mahommed-bin- Tughlak of our politics and Indian politics cannot revolve ever round the Jinnah- Paramanand axis. A way must be found out and that can only come by the efforts of the Congress. There is nothing wrong in a constructive policy, but where there is so much to destroy, construction has no place. Salvation will only lie through heroic endeavour, and those who are advising caution are taking a great responsibility. It is, of course, easy to get people into the street and difficult to get them out of it. But the time demands that the whole Indian nation must march on its feet. For this our leaders must think well, and think courageously, and forget what Mr. Gladstone said in 1868 or what Mr. Chintamani said in 1933.