Mahatma Gandhi's Peace March to Bihar 1947
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Mahatma Gandhi's Peace March to Bihar 1947 ___ A Photographer’s Account Text by Peter Rühe Photographs by Jagan Mehta Copyright: Peter Rühe, Rathausstraße 51a 12105 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 (0)30 70206374, Fax: +49 (0)30 70206373, Email: [email protected] www.gandhimedia.org - 2 - Contents Foreword Introduction Epic Images of Mahatma Gandhi - by Jagan Mehta Mahatma Gandhi's Peace March to Bihar 1947 What happened later? Appendix www.gandhimedia.org - 3 - Foreword "Perfect love," the Bible says, "casts out fear." Ahimsa is perfect love. It is the farthest thing from mere sentimentality; it is a lifelong challenge, a lifelong battle within oneself, full of challenges and trials so severe that those who tread the path of love in every religious tradition have called it sharper than a razor's edge. Gandhi used to put the matter bluntly: when another person's welfare means more to you than your own, when even his life means more to you than your own, only then can you say you love. Anything else is just business, giveand take. To extend this love even to those who hate you is the farthest limit of ahimsa - nonviolence. It pushes at the boundaries of consciousness itself. Gandhi was a pioneer in these new realms of consciousness. Everything he did was an experiment in expanding the human being's capacity to love, and as his capacity grew, the demands on his love grew more and more severe, as if to test what limits a human being can bear. But Gandhi had learned to find a fierce joy in these storms and trials. Again and again, when the violence around him seemed impossible to face, he flung himself into the battle without thought of personal consolation or safety, and every time, at the eleventh hour, some deeper power within him would flood him with new reserves of energy and love. By the end of his life he was aflame with love. It burned in him night and day like a fire which nothing could quench, in which every lesser human consideration was consumed. The challenges he faced toward the end of his life were among the greatest tragedies that history has seen. On the eve of independence, Hindu and Muslim India was in the throes of civil war. All the gov- ernment forces were powerless to stop the massacres occurring almost daily on both sides. Gandhi, because he taught and lived the brotherhood of all religions, was hated intensely by many Hindus and Muslims alike. The bloodshed and destruction touched the very depths of his being. Though in his mid-seventies he went straight to the heart of the violence and walked barefoot through the remote ravaged villages of Bihar state and Noakhali as a one-man force for peace, dependent even for his food on the mercy of his enemies. Some of his most trusted followers, who had been tested in other campaigns and could be counted on not to falter in their courage and their love, he sent alone to other villages to follow his example. They had no instructions but to live the truths they went to teach: love and respect for all persons, complete self-reliance, and the utter fearlessness of ahimsa. For Gandhi it was the acid test of ahimsa, and every resource in him flared up to meet the demand. He walked, worked, wrote, and spoke sixteen to twenty hours a day. Everywhere he went, by his personal example, he dissolved the barriers erected by religious customs, superstition, and mistrust. In each community some small miracle would occur: Muslim families took the risk of giving him shelter; murderers and looters came forward to give him their weapons, return what they had taken, or offer him money for the relief of the dispossessed. In one village a notoriously fierce communal agitator came up to Gandhi in front of a crowd of paralyzed onlookers, put his hands around Gandhi's slender throat, and began choking the life out of him. Such is the height to which Gandhi had grown that there www.gandhimedia.org - 4 - was not even a flicker of hostility in his eyes, not a word of protest. He yielded himself completely to the flood of love within him, and the man broke down like a little child and fell sobbing at his feet. For those who watched, it seemed a miracle. For Gandhi, who had grown used to the "miracles" of love, it only proved for the hundredth time in his own life the depth of the words of the Compassionate Buddha: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law." Jagan Mehta (1909-2003), learnt painting under the famous Indian painter, Shri Ravishankar Raval at his school Kumar Karyalaya at Ahmedabad, Gujarat/India. However, in 1934 Mehta studied mechanical photography at Vienna, Austria. A self-developed skill in photography and the painter's insight resulted into fine compositions, sensitivity and peotic perspective in his photographs. Since the first snap taken of Mahatma Gandhi in 1933, he had the craving to document his life in posterity. Jagan Mehta joined the independence movement and was able to capture Gandhi's inner turmoil during his last peace march to Bihar in early 1947. Lateron Jagan Mehta taught photography at C.N. Fine Arts College, Ahmedabad, and was a founder member of Niharika, the club of Gujarat pictorialists. His photographs were exhibited at various places in India and abroad, and received several awards. www.gandhimedia.org - 5 - Introduction Gandhi advised the Congress to reject the proposals of the British Cabinet Mission Plan offered in 1946, as he was deeply suspicious of power-sharing with the Muslim League and the divisions and minimization of central power involved. Gandhi warned against the grouping proposed for Muslim- majority states. However, this became one of the few times the Congress broke from Gandhi's advice (not his leadership though), as not only did Congress leaders want to create a government which would take over from the British as quickly as possible, but the aim was to prevent Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the League from obtaining political parity to the more national, secular Congress Party. Between 1946 and 1947, over 5,000 people were killed in violence. The League enjoyed popularity in the Muslim majority Punjab, Bengal, Sindh, North West Frontier Provinces and Baluchistan. The partition plan was approved by the Congress leadership as the only way to prevent a wide-scale Hindu-Muslim civil war. Senior Congress leaders knew that although Gandhi would viscerally oppose partition, it was doubly impossible for the Congress to go ahead without his agreement, for Gandhi's support in the party and throughout India was wide and deep. Gandhi's closest colleagues had accepted partition as the best way out, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel endeavored to convince Gandhi that it was the only way to avoid civil war. Gandhi gave his assent and endorsed the move. Gandhi had great influence among the Hindu and Muslim communities of India. It is said that he ended riots through his mere presence. He was vehemently opposed to any plan that partitioned India into two separate countries. At a time when tension was mounting, it was imperative that the country should have a strong and stable government at the centre. The Cabinet Mission had failed in the formation of a national interim government. In July 1946, the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, once again took the initiative and called upon Jawaharlal Nehru to form the Government. Jinnah, who was approached by Nehru, refused to cooperate, was bitterly critical and announced that 16 August would be observed by the Muslim League as the Direct Action Day. On that day Calcutta witnessed a communal riot, the scale and intensity of which had never been known in living memory. The Great Calcutta Killing touched off a chain reaction of violent communal explosions in East Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab. As the news of disturbances in Bengal came through, Gandhi cancelled all his plans and decided to leave for the riot-affected areas. In East Bengal he noticed how fear, hatred and violence had come to pervade the countryside. He toured the villages, saw things at first hand, and tried to lift the issue of www.gandhimedia.org - 6 - peace from the plane of politics to that of humanity. Whatever the political map of the future, he pleaded, it should be common ground among all parties that standards of civilized life would not be thrown overboard. Gandhi’s presence acted as a soothing balm on the villages of East Bengal; he eased tensions, assuaged anger and softened. In March 1947, he left for Bihar where the Hindu peasants had wreaked a terrible vengeance on the Muslim minority for the misdeeds of the Muslim majority in East Bengal. In Bihar, Gandhi’s refrain was the same as in East Bengal: the majority community must repent and make amends; the minority must forgive and make a fresh start. He would not accept any apology for what had happened, and chided those who sought in the misdeeds. Of the rioters in East Bengal, a justification for what had happened in Bihar. Civilized conduct, he argued, was the duty of every individual and every community irrespective of what others did. Alarmed by the increasing lawlessness, Lord Wavell brought the Muslim League into the Interim Government. The formation of the coalition between the Congress and the League fanned political controversy instead of putting it out. The Constituent Assembly had been summoned to meet on 9 December 1946, but the Muslim League refused to participate in its deliberations.