Except from Inner Recesses Outer Spaces, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
I had a similar experience in North Bihar, the one time haunt of Buddha, with the village folk pointing out landmarks in vivid phrases where he had walked, sat, slept, as though it happened yesterday. Buddha became so real, I almost believed I could see him, hear him, happy at this reassurance of his having been with us mortals. I recollected this as I watched pictorial scenes from Buddha's life with a group of young Chinese in China, products of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I noticed the emptiness in their glances, the scenes meant nothing, evoked not even curiosity. "Buddha was a real person who lived with his people," I could not help saying in a challenging tone for their blank eyes hurt something deep within me. A cruel fate in the shape of blind leaders had deprived them of a great heritage. "I have been where he was born and lived," I went on to relate what the simple folk had said to me. For the first time interest flooded their faces. "Did those folks say that?" they asked. "Yes, it may have been a long time ago, but he was not only a powerful personality, he loved the simple people and shared his life with them. So his presence is still real to them. He helped and supported the little republics against powerful monarchy. I respect him because he was the greatest revolutionary the world ever produced." I asserted. After I moved on they were gazing at the pictures with a new interest. I saddened even more for the generations who have grown up in India to whom Gandhi means a man on whose death the school got a holiday. This is exactly what a gentleman in his mid forties, a writer who claims to be an intellectual, replied when I asked him what he knew of Gandhi when he was growing up.
When Mother Earth droops down with the weight of man's waywardness, great spurts take birth to lighten the burden, and the Lord in Song Celestial. Thus are born men overflowing with an all embracing love. "Let all beings call my name—even trees and grasses can attain enlightenment," said the Compassionate One, as he was rightly called.
One of the attractions this group of women, colleagues of mine had for me was a touch of the old world, each carrying a distinctive flavour of the region, of the community, she hailed from, her dress, mannerism, style of hospitality, each adding a distinctive beauty to a grand bouquet as it were. In these days of standardised dress, ways, talk, steamrolled into a single pattern, life has become all the duller and drabber. Whatever originality is displayed, it is one of high sophistication, an all world fashion culled from hints out of modern magazines, not the expression of a tradition, personalised through a seasoned individual.
Salt suddenly became a magic word of power as Pandit Nehru put it. However inane and formless the Salt Satyagraha may have sounded, the Dandi March, Gandhi's long journey on foot to the sea opened with a most unexpected bang. It seemed the country hardly slept waiting for the dawn of 12th March when the fateful campaign would start. The strangest army conceivable to demolish the mighty British Raj which encircled the entire globe began its historic march. An old man with a large staff in his hand was accompanied by a straggling group of 71 of varied ages, indifferently clad. Included was a recently released convict sentenced for criminal offence, over whose inclusion there had been protests which the leader overruled. "He has atoned for what he did. He feels in tune with us and this experience would help him. How can we deny him this?" Was Gandhi's verdict.
As this motley crowd marched in disciplined silence, each footfall seemed to echo and re-echo through the land. Each day the tempo kept rising. Each evening crowds gathered to hear about the progress of the march. Was Gandhi arrested? Would he be allowed to complete this strange mission, fevered speculations kept people guessing. Each night the marching party stopped at a village and Gandhi met those that had gathered and talked with them. The distance to the seaside where Gandhi was to break the law was 240 miles, from Sabarmati where he started, and was to be covered by 5th April. As the march progressed it was as though the millions of Indians were marching, keeping pace with him. The whole air became so surcharged, every nerve in the body tingled. I felt elated as part of one of the most spectacular dramas in India's political history, pulsating every moment to its subtlest nuances.
Other hopes and plans were running through my mind. As batches for the first Satyagraha were to be selected, I asked that women be included. I was told that Gandhi did not want them as he had other programmes reserved for them. I was flabbergasted. I had built up a whole edifice of hopes of involving women in this great adventure. This was to be their breakthrough. They simply had to be in it, I told myself in desperation. The only course was to get this clarified by the leader himself.
I rushed to Surat, took a bus to the village near Jambusar where he was expected to halt. Enroute I luckily met a journalist friend headed for the same destination. The heat was burning up all my insides when he handed me a water melon and I revived. Young and energetic, how could I be wilting after this short trip? Here was an old man doing on an average ten miles a day. I quailed within myself—how was I to champion the cause of millions of women? I watched him as he talked to the gathering in his chaste Gujarati, but simple enough for even the young to follow. It revolved round his present mission, what he expected of the people: "The secret of freedom is fearlessness. This gives you self-confidence. When you have self-confidence you do not resort to violence," and so he went on, expounding the need for maintaining non-violence under the greatest provocation.
My conversation with Gandhi was fairly brief. As I expressed to him the cause of my unhappiness, he cut me short, emphatically disabusing my mind of the suspicion of discrimination. "The tasks reserved for them are a tribute to the high qualities they possess, such as promotion of Swadeshi through promotion of indigenous production and their exclusive use, picketing of foreign goods, elimination of liquor from our society." The call for them was not for slogan shouting or marches, but utter dedication, which was a natural quality in women, he explained patiently. But I had to persist: "Let them do all this and also participate in direct action. The significance of a non-violent struggle is that the weakest can take an equal part with the strongest and share in the triumph as you have yourself said. This struggle is ideally suited for them." He readily conceded, only he did not want the other sector to be neglected. "Are you content," he asked as I rose. "I have one more request to make. I want you to give a call to the women asking them to join the struggle. I would like to carry the message." His eyes twinkled as he gave a hearty laugh. "You don't know your sisters if you think they need a special message." "It is because I have been in their world which is confined to their four walls. This is their one chance to emerge out and to realise their strength." He was not convinced. But as I was so insistent, he said he would. He held out a paper with a few lines on it. "All may regard this as the word from me that all are free and those who are ready are expected to start mass Civil Disobedience regarding the Salt Law from April 6th. I felt I had won the world. But the day was not far off when I was to realise how raw and immature I had been while preening myself on my experience.
Now that the question mark of women's participation in direct Satyagraha action had been resolved, it became easy for the Women's Section of the Seva Dal to issue directions and organise participants of Women Volunteers in all the programmes. One important task remained before I closed this chapter of my life: to send in my resignation as Secretary to Gretta. I wondered with a slight apprehension how she would react to this. Would she feel I had let her and the Conference down? But time was running too fast for lengthy rumination. I wrote a very brief note and moved on to other tasks. By return mail came Gretta's answer. I could not believe my eyes as I ran over the letter. I had always believed I would one day hold you to my heart as my daughter. Now you are on the march to prison and to freedom, I can do so. What more can I say except all my love and good wishes will continue to flow to you. Then came a few lines that the resignation would be accepted and the post filled. My heart swelled up and my eyes grew misty. How little I knew even those I thought I knew.
Taking advantage of the rising political fever, some of us in the Youth League began a vigorous campaign in the labour areas of North Bombay. We addressed real mammoth gatherings, met labour workers in groups enlisting their support, making plans to secure their active participation in the coming battle. As the meetings could be held only after 8:00 pm they would last until midnight, and often enthusiasm overflowed even into the early hours of the morning. In those days such activities especially involving young men and women were new and strange. But the people out to shape a new world took them in their stride, especially as they watched the labour areas ablaze with political fever.
The launching of the Satyagraha was fixed for 6th April, observed annually in memory of the agonising tragedy at Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919.
The front line unit to formally break the Salt Law in public in Bombay city was to consist of seven, five men and two women, Avantikabai Gokhale, a well known local social worker and myself (neither of us with any political background) with K. F. Nariman, provincial Congress President as leader. Avantikabai, a seasoned public worker was composed and serious. I was yet raw and felt privileged and self-conscious in my spotless khadi, conspicuously displaying the badge with the national flag colours orange, white and green, proud to have a place in the first batch of Law Breakers!
The pearl grey April morning sky was brightening into crimson as I walked down the street. Already crowds were beginning to collect and line the roadside, their faces aglow with a new excitement. It was the 6th of April, the day on which India was launching her revolution. Mahatma Gandhi, the supreme leader, had decided to initiate it by breaking the Salt Law, the law that the British imposed. To him the appropriation of this right was symbolic of the exploitation of the large masses of the country. Salt was about the only luxury the rapidly impoverished Indian peasant had got reduced to, and now even that had been snatched away from him. A tremor of revolt ran through the land. The cry filled the air: We shall defy the law.
Although India has a long illustrious tradition of women warriors, this was their first appearance in any modern militant political campaign and I could hardly suppress my excitement at the enormity of the occasion and my own good fortune to be amongst the first. As I attached my name to the pledge to devote myself to my country's freedom battle, my hand shook a little under my tumultuous emotions. It seemed such a stupendous moment in my life, in the life of the women of my country. I felt I was tracing not the letters of my name but recording a historic event.
There was not much time for thought however. The next instant we were filing out, taking the road to the sea, marching with quick steps. Great sky rending cries of 'Jai' filled the air. Heavy-scented flower-garlands almost smothered us. From the balconies and roofs unseen hands showered rose-petals until the road became a carpet of flowers. Often our march was stopped and bright eyed women sprinkled rose water from silver sprays, tipped our palms with sandalwood paste and perfume and blessed us waving lights round our heads and faces for good omen.
The long narrow strip of sand that borders the city like a white ribbon was transformed this morning into another sea—a sea of human faces that swayed and danced and bobbed about even as did the deep azure waves that rimmed the shore. The city seemed to have disgorged almost its entire population onto the sands. It was not the straggling batch of seven that was breaking the Salt Law, but hundreds and thousands now filling the water's edge. And still they kept coming, thousands of women amongst them, striding like proud warriors, gracefully balancing their pitchers of maroon red earth and shimmering brass that scattered a thousand lights as the sunrays struck them. Even as I lit my little fire to boil the salt water, I saw thousands of fires aflame dancing in the wind. The copper pans sizzled in laughter while their bosoms traced the white grains of salt as the heat lapped up the last drop of water.
The sea of women's faces shot a spasm of shame through me—Gandhi knew the women and I did not and I had boasted that I knew better. How many more such lessons I was to learn in the days to come.
The police who had looked on at this advancing avalanche of law-breakers seemed almost stupefied and had to shake themselves up as if from a trance and enter on the scene. Some of my Youth League friends joined me to form a separate salt pan of our own and formed a circle
around to guard it. The police found it hard to break through the circle so deep was it, that they charged with their batons. The human wall was still unyielding. In the meantime police on horseback charged at the general crowd, but they sat silent and immovable. I could hear the dull thud as the blows fell, faint moans as the wounded struck the ground. Still not a cry, not an angry snarl. Men and women, young and old, were all facing the attack with unbelievable composure, their faces alight with a strange composure.
We were still guarding our pans. The blows now rained like a blinding shower. They were directed either at the head or the legs, designed in either case to swiftly and effectively fell the people to the ground, and clear a pathway to the pans. I felt sick as I caught a youngster near me with a cracked skull. A rough boot pushed me aside and I came down with my arm right on the burning coals. For a while I seemed to remember nothing. When I opened my eyes it was to look into a pair of kindly eyes. They belonged to a figure in a police uniform. "Can I take you to a hospital?" The words sounded genuinely solicitous. "I have a car here." I shook my head. "According to Mahatma Gandhi you should not regard me as an enemy you know," he went on. I could hardly forbear a smile to find this police officer attempting to interpret the Gandhian philosophy to me after perhaps having battered a good few people.
The Bombay seaside spectacle was but symbolic of the entire country which had become transformed into a battlefield with millions breaking iniquitous laws. A snowballing of law-breaking and repression, the latter leading to more civil disobedience, this in turn sterner reprisals—so it went on.
The news came that Mahatma Gandhi had been arrested in the dead of night. A quiver ran through the entire peninsula. How full of fear the government had been to time it so. Was it its own guilty conscience that made the police steal like thieves in the dark?
The Congress decided on a mammoth procession to mark this. As all activities had come to be banned at the time, every move had to be in defiance of the law. The procession swelled into immense proportions even before it reached the main road. Here the police halted it, columns of uniforms forming a dead wall. Very quietly without a murmur the procession led by a woman, Hansa Mehta sat down on the road. All traffic on the main road of this vast metropolis was stopped. The early afternoon mellowed into early evening and the marchers were still there, lustily wiping their faces hot with sweat and dust, men, women and children, sitting patiently as though at an elaborate ceremonial. Evening passed into night, the police guards changed with clang and hustle. There was complete silence in the crowd. Babes sank into dreamless slumber as their mothers crooned softly over them. The city people brought nuts and fruits for the besieged, who spontaneously passed some of it across the front line to the siege layers. Like a happy family they shared a common meal, the police and the people. As the night deepened the heavens frowned and soon the trickling stream of rain swelled into a tiny torrent. Mothers sought to shelter the babies under the folds of their garments. But no one stirred. A few warm covers were tossed to them by the people in the neighbourhood. Once more they crossed the barricade and some of them went to cover many a policeman keeping his weary vigil. Fate was casting a strange cord to bind them into a happy union, the rebels and their fierce guards. New history was made that night on a weary road under a dark purple canopy of the heavens. In the early hours of the morning the spell was broken, the siege was raised, the police bowed and passed out. The procession rose and moved on to meet a new dawn, a new life, as silent in its victory as in its adversity.
The procession terminated in an open ground in the middle of which was stuck a pole. The women volunteers corps formed an immediate circle around it while the crowd surged on the outskirts of this circle. The national flag was to be hoisted before the crowd dispersed. Needless to say, the flag and the flag raising ceremony were banned by the police. The function commenced with singing of 'Jhanda uncha rahe (Let our flag fly high)' led by the women volunteers and joined in by the crowd. As the tri-coloured flag rose into the sky, lusty voices rent the air. 'Up up with the National Flag.' The police had by now forced their way into the inner circle and they struck the flag post down. But before the flag could reach the ground an old lady had snatched it and almost with her last ounce of strength waved it aloft. 'Up up with the National Flag,' the cries resounded again. A dull thud! It almost seemed to echo in my own heart. The old lady had slipped and was down on her face. As I reached out to her, I heard once again as in a faraway dream 'Up up with the National Flag'. No, I was not dreaming, there were the three coloured hands up and flying in the breeze. A little girl of eleven, grand-daughter of the old lady (as she later turned out to be) was waving it, perched high, coolly on the shoulder of a tall hefty man. 'Up up with the National Flag' the cheers kept ringing.