A Snapshot of the Congress President

It was twenty-five years ago in those palmy days of our dynamic politics, when we were released from the erstwhile, perpetually-moving prayer wheel of our arm-chair advocates of India’s independence by the advent of Gandhiji–that embodiment of unfading and unfailing faith in Freedom and of ever-fortified fearlessness in winning it now and here.

Overnight, as it were, at the time, we found in the country a band of unknown young and old patriots whom the Master’s life-changing magic wand had at once transformed into so many apostles of cultural light and political liberation. Like the Galilean Teacher of old he had said to them, “Follow me through the vale of tears to the hill-crested Temple of Truth,” and they had obeyed lamb-like, being cajoled into doing so by his shining sincerity and spiritual strength.

One evening it was announced in the press that a member of this glorious Gandhian group had arrived in Karachi and would be expounding the gospel of his leader on the following day. And so several hundreds,–some actuated by ardent interest in the political sage of Sabarmati and his message, while others–and these were in a very large majority, out of sheer, inert curiosity flocked to the public-hall long before the appointed hour.

Exactly at the stroke of seven there walked in a tall, lean man with the pride of a Roman visibly stamped on him from head to foot. As the chairman introduced him to the audience, the speaker surveyed at a single sweep the faces of the people sitting in front of him in row after row. There was an inkling of irony in his eyes and a smile of severity around his thin lips which seemed to say to them, “Ye babes in bondage!”

Then he rose on his feet and began his address. It was one long chain of arguments in support of thc philosophy and practice of the spinning-wheel, which could, be summed up in about half a dozen words! “Be simple, be self-reliant, be strong.” His hearers admired the lightning movement and magic of his logic, but so far as its integrating effect was concerned, his reasoning turned out in the end to be only a rocket. The fault was, of course, not his; it was the audience, who had been instructed in the school and college in the art of servillity in everything from ideas to apparel and from morals to manners, that could not appreciate and endorse the originality of what he had said. For, after his address was over, most of the queries that were put to him for answer or elucidation revealed that the interrogators believed in the line and love of least resistance as if one day Freedom would drop like manna into their mouths from heaven! And how he tore thread-bare their text-book syllogisms, to which they held firmly like the Pharisees and the Philistines!

The general impression he created on the University-turned-out towns-folk in the capital of Sindh was thus expressed by a local poetaster;

“A Zealot all centred in his new found self,
Without the veneer of the Holy Book
Or the dulcet ding-dong of the temple-bell.”

And some of his friends are inclined to think that the above description of the speaker of that evening,–it was Acharya J. B. Kripalani, newly elected President of the Indian National Congress,–is up to a point still correct, for the Acharya has neither the seeming sanctity of the pontiff nor the softening sweetness of the priest. But then there is something Pauline in his rudeness of speech to which he himself would not be at all ashamed to confess, because, well might he parody St. Paul and exclaim, “If I have the gift of tongues but speak not truth, I am base like brass.” They say, however, that since he married his speech has lost a little of its blistering sting, thanks to the emotional exuberance of his Bengali better half!

The Acharya looks an ascetic but at heart he is fond of the good things of life and often when there has been an opportunity for self-enjoyment, he has indulged in them. But on such occasions there is nothing in the least of the greedy or long-famished glutton in him, for he takes it all as a part of the game. The fact of the matter is that he shuns puritanism as it were some fell or foul disease. Hence his innate sense of humour and spacious humanity.

He is happy and at his best, however, whenever he is wrestling with an opponent in argument or with a puzzling situation which gives him an edge or urge to forestall the moves or machinations of those who are responsible for making the mess. And had he not come under the influence of thc arch-apostle of Non-Violence in our war-stricken worm, he would have been today perhaps, an ex-Major General of the now defunct Indian National Army. For, in a way his motto has ever been, “If you want peace, be prepared for war” (of course, a weaponless war, such as all votaries of Truth volunteer for).

The Acharya’s election to the highest honour in the gift of the nation is another demonstration of the veracity of the view embodied in the adage, Every soldier carries in his haversack the baton of the Field-Marshal”. For a humble soldier in the non-violent army of Gandhiji, he has never aspired to the position of the commander. And, yet, if this distinction has come to him, it is a case of1greatness being thrust on some people in spite of themselves.

The Aaharya has the intellect of a Roman Emperor, but the heart of a St. Francis. And as years pass the head is learning more and more to bow to the hushed holiness of the spirit. He is, indeed, a king turned commoner or a commoner touched with the Kingliness of Kingship!