For the past few years, the characterisation of Mahatma Gandhi as a spy of the British empire has been gaining traction, especially on social media. One of the popular arguments thrust forward for this view is the British choice of the Aga Khan Palace in Pune for his two-year detention. This thinking has acquired currency among not just right wing sympathisers but also upcoming liberals and Gen Z influencers. All categories of opinion have overlooked the quintessential Hinduness and humanness of the man in every internal and external manifestation while zooming in on all the points disagreeable to them.
The Aga Khan Palace, where Gandhiji was kept under house arrest for two whole years till he was released on account of poor health, looks grand. One gets a sense of its majesty and space from the gate itself. However, as you step into its hallowed rooms, a sense of history envelops you. Plaques, statues and AVs available here and online documenting the moments of our freedom struggle bring alive the pain and anguish of the Mahatma who, among many other things, lost both his closest aides – his wife, Kasturba, and his secretary, Mahadevbhai Desai, in the very portals of this imposing edifice.
A glimpse into just his personal travails – not his political struggles – quickly shatters the myth that the palace was anything remotely resembling an idyll. Following the Quit India movement and the clarion call of “do or die” on August 9, 1942, at August Kranti Maidan, Gandhiji, Kasturba and Mahadevbhai Desai were placed under house arrest at Aga Khan palace.
The place is a grim reality check. Far from the luxurious villa that the views from the outside suggests, the interiors convey pathos. Bare rooms with gloomy walls and tall ceilings speak the saga of loss, loneliness and deprivation with their sparse furniture and empty spaces. Gandhiji, Kasturba and Mahadevbhai were lodged in separate rooms.
Mahadevbhai passed away soon after on August 15, 1942, at 50. Having been Gandhiji’s shadow, echo and pointsman for 25 years, Gandhiji was distraught. He called out to him in vain. Later, in a measure of the emotional inseparability of the master and the disciple, he said that had Mahadevbhai heard him call out to him, he would have defied death.
His statement, “Mahadevbhai did the work of 100 years in 50 years,” signifies his irreplaceable value to the Mahatma. Regarded widely as Gandhiji’s fifth and most beloved son, Mahadevbhai wanted to write Gandhiji’s biography but, as Gandhiji said poignantly, he left early “and left me behind to write his.” Gandhiji washed Mahadevbhai’s body himself and cremated him on the palace grounds.
He spent the next year and half fighting his personal demons and a ceaseless battle with the British, writing on his desk, mostly alone inside his dank room in a “palace” with sporadic health issues and a string of disappointing political developments, gamely bearing the weight of a country’s rising anticipation on his fragile and deserted shoulders.
In less than two years came his second most arduous bereavement preceded by a few tormentful days of rejected requests and soulful lament. A letter written by Gandhiji on January 27, 1944, from his detention camp to the British home secretary gives us a glimpse of the uphill battle he faced with the British during his stay at the “palace” in getting basic facilities such as medical attention. It mentions how Kasturba’s request for a doctor from Pune (then Poona) and for an Ayurvedic physician had been ignored.
The letter reminds the authorities of another request made by him to let her grandson, Kanu Gandhi, also stay on as Kasturba’s caretaker as “the patient shows no signs of recovery.” (The British had restricted Kasturba’s caregiving to one attendant.) “It would be wrong on my part, if I suppressed the fact that in the facilities being allowed to the patient, grace has been sadly lacking.” Their son, Harilal, was not permitted to meet his ailing mother.
The letter went unheeded. Gandhiji followed it up with another reminder on January 30 and then again, on February 3, as Kasturba’s condition worsened and there was no sign of any of the two doctors showing up. “I do not understand this delay when a patient’s life is hanging in the balance,” he wrote.
On the night of February 13, Kasturba’s health worsened. Gandhiji wrote to the inspector-general of prisons that had the ayurvedic physician treating her been permitted to stay with her at night, she would have got relief. He wrote, “The crisis has not passed as yet. I, therefore, repeat my request and ask for immediate relief.”
Probably in desperation, when his repeated requests went unheeded, he wrote to them at 2 am two days later to release Kasturba on parole to enable her to receive the treatment she needed in her critical condition if they could not permit the physician to take care of her. “She is oscillating between life and death.” His agony is starkly explicit in the next sentence: “If I, as her husband, cannot procure for her the help she wants or that I think necessary, I ask for my removal to any other place of detention that the Government may choose.” Apparently, he was willing to let go of the indulgences a “palace” bestowed upon him.
It should be mentioned here briefly that the same day, he sent a telegram to the government about the implications of the salt clause in the Gandhi-Irwin pact. Even in his deep distress over his dying wife, he did not slip up on his national duty. He worked relentlessly day and night in the hell hole everyone called a palace. Kasturba died a few days later on February 22, 1944, in Aga Khan Palace.
The British had imposed several restrictions for her funeral as a prisoner, much as they had for Mahadevbhai such as the choice and number of attendees. In not a little agitation, Gandhiji requested the British to accord his wife some basic concessions such as permitting their family members and so on. Kasturba was cremated at the Aga Khan palace, near Mahadevbhai’s samadhi with about 150 attendees instead of lakhs that would have poured into the country’s streets had she been free.
Gandhiji sat through the cremation, declining concerned entreaties to take a break: “This is the final parting, the end of 62 years of shared life. Let me stay here till the cremation is over.” In his reply to Lord Wavell’s letter of condolences, he said Kasturba had truly become his “better half.”
On March 4, 1944, he wrote to the additional secretary, home department, cordially acknowledging the minimal care given to Kasturba while also registering his displeasure at the way his persistent requests as well as requests by the doctors attending to her – Dr Nayyar and Dr Gilder – were ignored. He also did not lose the opportunity to remonstrate with them for not considering Kasturba’s release in spite of her critical condition. Although neither he nor Kasturba had asked for release on compassionate grounds, “the mere offer of release would have produced a favourable psychological effect on her mind. But unfortunately, no such offer was made.”
Two stalwarts of the freedom movement, who stayed solidly with Gandhiji for the largest part of their lives, suffered and sacrificed their lives in confinement at the Aga Khan palace. Gandhiji bore witness to their conditions and their eventual loss with anguish and helplessness in a cage that was not golden by any yardstick but is today feted as a luxurious palace unfit for a political prisoner. It is open for all to judge whether the discordant letters cited here sound like the gleeful notes of a spy or the struggles of a man who sacrificed his most treasured relationships at the altar of a national cause.
Belittling him and his extraordinary contribution to the country amounts to dismissing the monumental hardships thousands of leaders and activists and lakhs of citizens went through voluntarily. It is not insensitive; it is criminally harsh. Thousands of these courageous people gave their lives to the cause of freedom – many gave up jobs, many did not take up jobs, many sacrificed their families, many families sacrificed their loved ones, many stayed unmarried, many spent their entire lives bearing the brunt of their decisions that helped shaped the future of our country.
The irony is that Gandhiji could have had a luxurious life as a barrister educated abroad. He could have made his millions, enjoyed family life as well as fame and fortune but he chose not to. In an age of quick judgment and easy opinions, his is a lifestyle only a few will comprehend and perhaps even fewer will dare to follow.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
