“So you have got detained in Calcutta and that too in a quarter which is a veritable shambles and a notorious den of gangsters and hooligans. And in what choice company too! It is a terrible risk. But more than that, will your health stand the strain? I am afraid, it must be terribly filthy there. Keep me posted about yourself.” This was the communication from Sardar Patel to Mahatma Gandhi on 13 August 1947 in reply to the Mahatma’s message saying, “I have got stuck here and am now going to undertake a grave risk. Suharawardy and I are going from today to stay together in a Muslim quarter.” Pyarelal, a secretary to the Mahatma quotes the exchange of communication between a disciple and Guru in “ Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase”. The Independence of India was just two days away and the Father of the Nation, as the title was coined by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1944 for the first time, was not to participate in the celebration at Delhi.
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was a Calcutta politician, a man who had just been Chief Minister of undivided Bengal, a sharp critic of Gandhi, whom he described as “that old fraud”. Gandhi now invited Suhrawardy to join him in the attempt to bring peace to Calcutta. “Hyderi Mansion”, a deserted Muslim house was found in the section of the city called Beliaghata and someone got the keys. Here Horace Alexander, who wrote the biography of Gandhi – entitled “Gandhi Through Western Eyes” published in 1969, joined Mahatma Gandhi and his new partner, suhrawardy, on the afternoon of 13 August.
Alexander writes: “Earlier in the day Gandhi had found a moment to tell me personally how he intended to spend Independence Day. He said nothing about the division of the country into India and Pakistan. Nor did he, at that moment, suggest that the independence was unreal. But he was concerned that the people of India should put first things first and not turn the day into a mere jollification. Those who were with him at that moment would join him in prayer and fasting. At every decisive moment in the national life, the appropriate thing was to turn first to God, in thanks giving that he had brought the country this far on the road, and to pray for the courage and wisdom to continue in the paths of justice and right action.”
The total change that came upon Calcutta on the morning of 15 August 1947 as a miracle depends perhaps chiefly on the meaning attached to the word “miracle”. It was certainly and extraordinary event, quite unforgettable to those who experience it. There can also be varying opinions about the extent to which it was due to Gandhiji. But it is difficult to believe that the year of mutual hatred and distrust the two great religious communities of Calcutta would so suddenly have turned to goodwill and trust without the example of the extraordinary pact of friendship made by Mahatma Gandhi with his bitter critic Suhrawardy. As Pyarelal records, on the Independence Day, Gandhiji woke up at 2 a.m.- an hour earlier than usual. It being the fifth death anniversary of Mahadev Desai also, he observed fast. Rajaji, the Governor of West Bengal, came to see Gandhiji and ‘they exchanged sallies of wit, jokes and words of mellowed wisdom for an hour’. Unfortunately, after Suhrawardy, jointly with Sarat Bose, the elder brother of Netaji, failed in his efforts for ‘Sovereign United Bengal’ opted for Pakistan and became the fifth Prime Minister.
Next Column: Lord Krishna’s Ghazni connection
(The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail: [email protected] )
Photo-line:
Mahatma Gandhi and Suhrawardy at Hyderi Mansion
