A well-known figure in India, who was known to Mahatma Gandhi, is collecting questions on Gandhi at present. He is going to arrange them, and as a part of his social work to give them his answer. The following are my questions sent to him at his request.
Questions on Gandhi
H.Yamaguchi
His sense
of mission in life
Gandhi said, quite often, that he was
trying to educate and train the Indians according to his ideas. He already said at the time of the Kheda
struggle in 1918 that his mission was ‘to train and prepare the country’. Did he already have this sense of mission
when he returned to India in 1915? Was
it the purpose of his return? Was it his
idea that he was the only person capable of doing so? Otherwise what motivated him to return to
India, largely unknown to him then, for good?
Gandhi,
Jinnah and the Muslim League
Gandhi once said after the tension between
the Congress and the League intensified that Jinnah ‘has hated me’ since he
criticized Jinnah for not using the Gujarati language. Was it so?
Can we say that the Congress-League tension was further deepened by the personal
animosity between Gandhi and Jinnah?
On Gandhi-Jinnah talks of 1944, it is very
questionable to me if Gandhi was right to back up the “Rajaji Formula”. It was a plan for the partition of
India. Therefore it is difficult to say
that Gandhi was against the partition.
Moreover the Gandhi-Jinnah talks, at which Gandhi based his idea on the “Formula”,
made it known to Jinnah that the Congress was not dead against the
partition. It is debatable whether the
League’s Pakistan Resolution was serious in intention or rather a bargaining
counter, but even if it was a bargaining counter, the “Formula”, when backed by
Gandhi, made it more than that. Some
first-rate intellectuals like Srinivasa Sastri expressed their apprehension,
but of no use.
Communalism
and the Constructive Programme
The All-India Spinners Association (AISA)
took care of thousands of spinners and khadi weavers, and many of them were
said to be Muslims. Was it not enough to
prevent the Muslim masses from going over to the League?
But later Gandhi had a long talk with
Jajuji and told him that from then on khadi should be mainly for home
consumption rather than for sale. The
sale of khadi then must have gone down and the income of the spinners/weavers
also. Why this change?
Gandhi’s
brightest and darkest moments
Would it be possible to indicate the
particular period(s) in Gandhi’s life when he was most high-spirited? To me, one such period was the few years
leading to the Salt March, including his return to politics, Sardar Patel’s Bardoli,
Eleven Points sent to Lord Irwin, planning the March and picking up the
fellow-travellers. He even talked, ‘in
confidence’, of his readiness to be the first President of the future Indian
republic, saying ‘I should make a fair effort to shoulder it’ (Young India, 21 November 1929). The several months leading to the Quit-India Resolution
may have been another such period, but this time he was arrested much too soon.
On the other hand, it would appear that his
lowest moment was when he said on the eve of Independence that ‘Sabarmati is
far off, Noakhali is near’. His
greatness was, however, that he was not discouraged by the darkness around him.
Harijans
One of the subjects which Ambedkar put
forward against Gandhi was that the Harijans were excluded from the management
of the Harijan Sevak Sangh. Gandhi had
his own reasons for doing so. He thought
it was first and foremost the caste Hindus’ work. He also said the Harijans were ‘so completely
helpless’ and could not plan themselves.
Still, did it not unnecessarily antagonize Ambedkar?
Communists
Gandhi asked some Communists to come to Sevagram
to ‘study me’. He even offered to show
his papers to them. This was a very
Gandhi-like behavior. In your knowledge
were there any Communists who did so, and published their observation?
The
Partition
Was it correct for Gandhi to advise Ghaffar
Khan to abstain from the crucial voting in deciding the fate of the NWFP in
1947? He said that the choice should
have been between Pakistan and Pakhutunistan.
That may have been ideal, but he must have known that it existed only in
his mind and was not a realistic possibility.
What
motivated the assassination of Gandhi
At the end of 1947, he wrote of the opening
of the Pandharpur Temple in Maharashtra, and the visit by a large number of
Harijans. He also talked about the
unhappiness on the part of many Brahman priests, who even went on fast. Usually the assassins of Gandhi were said to
be motivated by their hatred of Gandhi because of his allegedly pro-Muslim
attitude. Did his allegedly pro-Harijan
attitude also motivate them?
