C. Rajagopalachariar

C. RAJAGOPALACHARIAR *

Sri Chakravarti Rajagopalachariar generally and affectionately known as ‘Rajaji’–has already received Honorary Degrees from several Indian universities. Men in his position–men of his attainments–collect degrees and honours as a matter of course, and that is as it should be. Greatness doesn’t suffer by being recognized over and over again and universities, being intellectual corporations, have the right and duty to recognize eminence and give a formal shape to such recognition. On the other hand, by honouring such men as Rajaji, the universities in a measure also honour themselves.

Rajaji has already crammed half a century of aspiration, striving and achievement into his life. The successful mofussil lawyer and efficient municipal administrator who migrated to Madras nearly thirty-five years ago seeking a wider field for self-expression, was presently caught in the seething storm of non-co-operation. The Mahatma came, saw, and conquered–but it was a victory for Rajaji as well. Henceforth it was his destiny to be the Mahatma’s understudy in the south, it was his vocation to act the competent Bhashyakara to the Mahatma’s unpredictable intuitions and resounding battle-cries, and it was his singular privilege to be the Mahatma’s ‘keeper of conscience’. Rajaji was thus the nearest and most relentless of the Mahatma’s critics and also the closest and most unswerving of his followers. If an organizing will, the most steely we have known in India in our time, was the great Sardar’s mark, if unobtrusive high endeavour and reassuring moral authority emanate from our saintly Rashtrapathi. if a purposive idealism, half emotional half intellectual, is our Prime Minister’s distinguishing characteristic, then the clue to Rajaji’s greatness is an intellect that is nimble, quick and subtle. With age, however, has come a marvellous mellowing, the intellect has opened itself to the warmth of the Spirit, and the politician, administrator and statesman is now exceeded by the moralist, humanist and man of God.

Rajaji has played many ‘roles’ which make a formidable sum. He is without doubt one of the makers of the new India that is rising before us. The intrepid non-co-operator of the early twenties, the stormy petrel of the Gaya Congress, the careering Achilles of the no- changers, the silent builder of the Tiruchengode Ashram, the unwearying propagandist of Khaddar and prohibition and Harijan uplift, writer of short stories, commentator on the Gita, the Upanishads and the Mahabharata, translator of the Kural and of Marcus Aurelius, the organizer of the ‘march’ to the Vedaranyam salt pans, protagonist of parliamentary activities, the seagreen incorruptible premier of Madras, the celebratred author of the ‘Poona Offer’, the misunderstood ‘appeaser’ of the Muslim League, the exile, self-exiled, at once within and without the Congress, Cabinet Minister, Governor, Governor-General, Cabinet Minister again, and now premier again...where is the Calculus that will integrate these ‘parts’ into a single unequivocal expression?

It was appropriate that Chakravarti Rajagopalachariar should in the fulness of time become India’s Governor-General, the supreme honour that the Mother newly-awakened from the long nightmare of slavery could confer on her children. It is appropriate again that, indifferent to the toil and the hazard, he should have agreed to put his shoulder to the wheel of our provincial administration. “Nothing in his own grand life”, says his life-long friend Sri Navaratna Rama Rao, “was grander than his relinquishing his rest, and with bruise of many days, accepting a burden which none but he could shoulder–tired, old, but unconquerable.” John Gunther has called Rajaji the ‘Brahmin Savanaroal’, others have described him as the wily Odysseus of the Congress, wise, long-suffering, and most resourceful, still others have compared him to philosopher-statesmen like Kautilya and Vidyaranya, and indeed he exercises in Mr. Alan Campbell-Johnson’s words, “immense moral authority...without any outward gesture”. Even as Rajaji had courted imprisonment without vanity or bravado, he has accepted honour and position without pride or exultation. He has repeatedly shown himself unafraid of unpopularity, a burning trait as glorious as it is rare, his self-restraint on certain crucial occasions has been as extraordinary as his volubility others. He thinks clearly, and writes and speaks, apparently with little effort, but always with unfailing lucidity. His white clothes and black glasses, by the sharp simplicity of their juxtaposition, have made him a figure of infinite potentialities. His parables are his Brahmastras, and finer parables, than ever–parables forced on the anvil of divers knowledges and disciplines–now tumble from his lips. Above all, he is quietly sure of himself, and hence he is sure of his words, and certain of his sense of direction. His clarity of vision and expression and his unfaltering sense of direction are accordingly of immeasurable value to Madras, now unhappily caught in the narrows, and to the country itself as a whole.

* Citation written (in 1952), when the Andhra University proposed to confer an honorary degree on Rajaji then Chief Minister of the composite State of Madras. But he couldn’t come and aimed the presentation was therefore not made.

“He was the last of that generation of Indian leaders who brought about the transfer of power peacefully and in friendship. Without the support of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajagopalachari and their immediate colleagues, I could never have found a workable solution, which was hailed in the British Parliament as “A Treaty of Peace without a War.”

“Rajaji’s name will be held in honour not only in his beloved India but throughout Great Britain.”
–EARL MOUNTBATTEN OF BURMA.