DURING our description of this period, we have omitted any description of one major actor, whose peculiar character and role were almost as crucial to the Congress in this stage as were those of Gandhi: Jawaharlal Nehru, scion of a rich Allahabad family of Kashmiri Brahmin descent, and son of the prominent lawyer and Congress politician Motilal Nehru.
Jawaharlal was brought up in the typical style of the Indian elite. He attended the prestigious English public school, Harrow, and thereafter Trinity College, Cambridge. It was here that his intellectual attitudes were shaped. He developed an interest in Fabian Socialism (an English nonrevolutionary school of "socialist" thought which thought that scientific socialism could be introduced by gradual, parliamentary methods); a dabbling in various other intellectual schools and problems; a woolly faith in Indian nationalism; and an attachment to an upper-class English life-style. On his return to India, and with his immediate projection in politics as "Motilal's son", two further ingredients were added: a fascination with the sound of his own voice and appearance, and an irresistible attraction to political office.
Jawaharlal attained prominence in the 1920s because of his association with the militant peasant movement in the Rae Bareli- Pratapgarh region of U.P. But even here he already displayed his reluctance to go beyond certain limits.
Nehru's typical role is seen in his own description of how, in 1921, as thousands of Rae Bareli peasants were marching on the town to protest the detention of their leaders by the police, Nehru rushed to the scene with the sole intention of avoiding violence. (He was unsuccessful, due to the intransigence of both the police and the peasants.) After the 1921 agrarian riots in the region, Nehru reacted even more gingerly. His autobiography also records his remarkable speech during the kisan movement in Fyzabad in 1921, where he persuaded all the agrarian rioters who had reacted violently to raise their hands - knowing full well that the police who were present, were sure to arrest those who raised their hands. Similarly, in 1931 he was to effectively collaborate in driving out the militant peasant leader, Kalka Prasad, from the Rae Bareli district Congress.
Nevertheless, Jawaharlal's nominal connection to this movement (which was actually organised by local leaders such as Baba Ramchandra) earned him a name as a militant, and as a mass leader. Nehru said it was in this period that he first felt "the power of influencing the mass (and) began to understand a little the psychology of the crowd... though their want of discipline often irritated me.... I took to the crowd, and the crowd took to me, and yet I never lost myself in it; always I felt apart from it." (An Autobiography, London, 1936) Here is the young Jawaharlal in nutshell: intoxicated by political power, intoxicated by his hold over the masses, braver and braver in his radical words, and yet all the more apart from the masses and dissatisfied with their undisciplined ways.
With the abrupt abandonment of noncooperation, and the emergence of a body of young Congressmen dissatisfied with the Mahatma's inscrutable surrenders, Nehru (along with Bose) emerged as their leader, with the added advantage over Bose that he was Motilal's son. As the youth movements of 1926-28 sprang up, Jawaharlal saw his opportunity, rushing to address every youth league and youth conference. When, in 1926, he learned of a proposed Congress of Oppressed Nationalities (which took shape as the League Against imperialism), he immediately got the Congress to send him as its delegate. His eloquence was in full flower. He delivered an impassioned address on how "India is maltreated, repressed and plundered". He predicted that when India became independent "It is certain that the British world-empire will cease to exist". He soared to further heights in drafting and moving the resolution on India: "this Congress further trusts that the Indian national movement will base its programme on the full emancipation of the peasants and workers of India, without which there can be no real freedom."
The League against Imperialism had been formed at the initiative of Communists worldwide, and the prestige of the new-born U.S.S.R. was evident from Jawaharlal's speeches. At the Bengal Students' Conference in 1928 Jawaharlal praised Russia as "the greatest opponent of imperialism" and reaffirmed his belief in communism "as an ideal of society. For essentially it is socialism, and socialism... is the only way if the world is to escape disaster". Fast fashioning himself as a leader of the rapidly-rising youth, he told the Bombay Youth Conference that "Society ... must alternate between revolution and consolidation. It is the function of youth to supply this dynamic element."
In 1928, Nehru and Bose set up the Independence for India League as a pressure-group within the Congress to campaign for accepting complete independence as a goal, after Jawaharlal's father's Nehru Report advocating dominion status had been brought out. Every year, between 1921 and 1925, a resolution had been proposed defining Swaraj as complete independence, but Gandhi had blocked it. In the 1928 Madras session, however, with Gandhi away, Jawaharlal proposed the resolution "the Congress declares the goal of the Indian people to be complete national independence." It was passed.
The resolution infuriated the Mahatma; but he wrote to Jawaharlal on January 4, 1928, in an affectionate tone. "You are going too fast. You should have taken time to think and become acclimatised. Most of the resolutions you framed and got carried could have been delayed for one year." Gandhi advised him to concentrate on party unity.
A short while later, sensing Jawaharlal's remorse at having angered his political mentor and sensing his fear at any public split with him, Gandhi asked Jawaharlal to openly state his views for a public debate to be published in Gandhi's Young India. Jawaharlal did not take up the challenge. Instead, he drew back. "Am I not your child in politics, though perhaps a truant and errant child?" he wrote back on January 24, 1928.
The taming of Jawaharlal was evident also in the 1928 Congress session itself, when the Motilal Nehru Report was praised by Gandhi. Gandhi proposed that its proposals be accepted in their entirety, and the deadline for its acceptance (refusal of which would mean civil disobedience would be renewed) be placed for December 1930 - two whole years away. Jawaharlal argued that civil disobedience should be started if complete independence were not granted by December 1929, and condemned the acceptance of dominion status. The majority of delegates seemed to be with him.
Earlier in the same session, of course, Hasrat Mohani had demanded that the Congress adopt complete independence as its goal. Immediately, an emergency session of the party leadership was held. Although no record of the meeting survives, it is clear that Jawaharlal was persuaded by the leadership. The following day, Gandhi withdrew his resolution and proposed a new one giving London one year to accept the dominion status formula. Nehru, the proponent of the alternative resolution, conveniently absented himself! Nehru was opposed to the resolution, said Gandhi, but "he is a highsouled man. He does not want to create unnecessary bitterness of words. He seeks deliverance out of it by putting a self-imposed silence on himself".
Bose, who had been excluded from the earlier inner-circle discussion of the leaders, was not satisfied. He followed with an amendment explicitly rejecting dominion status, and the rank-and-file were with him. Nehru was forced to support Bose, "though", as he himself admitted, "I did so half-heartedly". Gandhi replied with a vicious attack on the proponents, and appealed to the delegates on the basis of personal loyalty. He won the vote by only 1,350 to 973.
Hereafter, Gandhi was to pursue an increasingly sophisticated strategy to tame the nationalists. During the 1929 upsurge, it was clear that Gandhi could not, on his own strength, control the Congress, especially its growing Left-nationalist sections. On the crucial issue of the election of a President for the 1930 Congress, therefore, Gandhi intervened. Of the 18 P.C.C.s, 10 proposed the Mahatma for Presidency, five nominated Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and three Nehru. Gandhi withdrew his name, persuaded Patel to withdraw, and threw his weight behind the 39-year-old Nehru. On July 6, 1929, he informed the Press of his reasons with his typical brutal frankness: "The battle of the future has to be fought by younger men and women, and it is but meet that they are led by one of themselves..." Secondly, "responsibility will mellow and sober the youth, and prepare them for the burden they must discharge." And finally, and most revealingly, "those who know the relations that subsist between Jawaharlal and me know that his being in the chair is as good as my being in it."
Nehru fully understood what role he would now be made to play. "I would have rejoiced if I had been elected in the ordinary way. But I did not come to it by the main entrance or even a side entrance; I appeared suddenly by a trap door and bewildered the audience into acceptance.... My pride was hurt, and I almost felt like handing back the honour."
Gandhi wrote in his magazine to reassure the conservatives that Jawaharlal was his man:
"Some fear in this transference of power from the old to the young the doom of the Congress. I do not.... In bravery he (Nehru) is not to be surpassed.... `He is rash and impetuous', say some. This quality is an additional qualification at the present moment. And if he has the dash and the rashness of a warrior, he has also the prudence of a statesman. He is undoubtedly an extremist, thinking far ahead of his surroundings. But he is humble enough and practical enough not to force the pace beyond breaking point.... The nation is safe in his hands". (emphasis added)
Gandhi was to demonstrate his hold over Nehru when in October 1929 came the absurd "Irwin offer" (the entirely vague promise of dominion status some day). Gandhi pressurised Nehru to join him and the Liberals in signing a manifesto which accepted the goal of dominion status and joining a delegation to the Viceroy - all a direct contradiction of Nehru's speech a year earlier.
"As was not unusual with me", noted Nehru in his Autobiography, "I allowed myself to be talked into signing". He later felt remorse at this "retreat from principle", but "a soothing letter from Gandhiji and three days of reflection calmed me". How accurate was Gandhi's assessment of his protege!
However, the League Against Imperialism did not find itself as easily soothed about this surrender. The General Secretary of the League wrote to Nehru: "Internationally your position will be quite untenable unless you do what great leaders have often done, namely, publicly admit a mistake and take the right line.... Your signature of the Delhi manifesto was a betrayal of the Indian masses in the struggle for Independence."
Nehru simply issued a sharp denial of any such betrayal, and rebuked the League for presuming to give him advice. Nehru was expelled from the League. In reply, he issued a directive to the A.I.C.C. Secretariat: "No further communications are to be sent to the League Against Imperialism from this Office." (Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, Bombay, 1959)
The 1929 Lahore Congress, and the experience of presidency over it, washed out all remaining doubts. There, 300,000 people had gathered to view the proceedings. Nehru was ecstatic. He was hardly 40, and one of the Congress's youngest Presidents. On the opening day, he rode through the streets on a white charger, surrounded by a detachment of the Youth League and followed by a herd of elephants. Vast crowds acclaimed him.
In his speech at the Congress, while deliberately echoing Bhagat Singh's organisation's name (by called himself "a socialist and a republican"), Nehru made sure not to alarm anyone. He acknowledged that the Congress could not adopt a full socialist programme now. Change was to be gradual: "India will have to go that way... if she seeks to end her poverty." And while he seemingly disagreed with the Mahatma regarding the theoretical rectitude of the use of violence ("Violence is bad, but slavery is worse") he rejected it on "practical grounds... if we reject the way of violence, it is because it promises no substantive results". As for class struggle, he put all goals of socialism secondary, as "All these are pious hopes till we gain power, and the real problem, therefore, before us is the conquest of power". As will become clear, he meant winning power using the methods of the Congress.
With the taste of power came "responsibility". At the crucial moment of the 1929 Congress, during the debate on Bose's alternative resolution, when he could have employed the power of his presidency to push for a militant freedom struggle, Jawaharlal remained silent. Gandhi's predictions had come true; and during the 1930s, this "young extremist" was to prove more and more adept at doing somersaults for his mentor. Of that, we shall have more to say later; for the moment what we need to reflect on is Gandhi's political genius.
Sensing the threat of an upsurge among youth and workers Gandhi picked the very man who was apparently at least a representative of both those sections (Nehru was also president of the All India Trade Unions Congress in 1929) to preside over one of the most crucial sessions of Congress history! The choice reflected a profound understanding of not only Jawaharlal's character and ambitions, but of the aspirations of the broad masses, and of how to deflect them.
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