CHAPTER 8: HAIL, DELIVERER

 

1   Discovering they were prepared: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 2, p. 140.

2   In the pointlessness: Ibid., p. 142. Emphasis mine.

3   His reaction to this onset: Ibid., p. 327.

4   “What is one to do”: CWMG, vol. 31, p. 504.

5   He blamed “educated India”: Ibid., p. 369.

6   Next he blamed the British: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 241–42.

7   “The government of India”: CWMG, vol. 32, p. 571.

8   “I am an optimist”: Ibid., vol. 31, p. 504.

9   “appears to be my inaction”: Ibid., p. 368.

10   “I am biding my time”: Brown, Gandhi, p. 213.

11   “Give me blood”: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 261.

12   “given up reading newspapers”: CWMG, vol. 31, p. 554.

13   At a mammoth All Parties Convention: Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, p. 177.

14   “We are sons of this land”: Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists, p. 189.

15   Within weeks of this rupture: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 2, p. 334. Within two years Muhammad Ali would die in London.

16   “This is the parting”: Philips and Wainwright, Partition of India, p. 279.

17   a younger wife: Ruttie Jinnah was originally a Parsi, a member of a minority composed of Indians of Persian descent who retain their Zoroastrian religion, but converted to Islam before their marriage. On her death, she was buried in a Muslim cemetery with her former husband sobbing at her graveside.

18   Swaraj within a year: Brown, Gandhi, p. 222, draws the parallel to the 1921 campaign. January 26 is still celebrated in India as Republic Day; August 15, the date on which India actually became independent in 1947, is celebrated as Independence Day.

19   “For me there is only”: CWMG, vol. 31, pp. 368–69.

20   “In the present state”: Ibid., vol. 42, p. 382.

21   Civil disobedience, he told Nehru: Brown, Gandhi, p. 235.

22   “next to water and air”: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 303.

23   The viceroy also stuck: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 271–72.

24   “The fire of a great resolve”: As quoted in Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 309.

25   “Hail, Deliverer”: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 273. Thomas Weber questions whether these words were ever uttered, noting their absence from contemporary accounts and arguing that the quotation first appeared in an article by a British journalist who was actually in Berlin on the day Gandhi reached Dandi. See “Historiography and the Dandi March,” in Gandhi, Gandhism, and the Gandhians.

26   “The last four months in India”: CWMG, vol. 44, p. 468.

27   Gandhi made a sly allusion: Ibid., vol. 48, p. 18.

28   “No living man”: Harold Laski opinion piece in Daily Herald (London), Sept. 11, 1931.

29   “Your Majesty won’t expect”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 127.

30   By the time Ambedkar returned: B. R. Ambedkar, Letters, p. 220.

31   betrothed to him at the age of nine: The marriage apparently took place three years later, when he would have been seventeen and she twelve, although his biographers cannot agree on their ages. Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 20, says he was seventeen; Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 6, says he was fourteen.

32   For an untouchable youth: B. R. Ambedkar, Essential Writings, p. 52.

33   When he sought to study: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 18.

34   So Bhima took: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 4.

35   One of these campaigns: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 74.

36   “When one is spurned”: Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 163.

37   “I am a difficult man”: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 119.

38   “You called me to hear”: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 165.

39   “Gandhiji, I have no homeland”: Ibid., p. 166.

40   “Till I left for England”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 52.

41   “revelatory of the stereotypes”: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 43.

42   The go-betweens who set up: Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 166.

43   Their next meeting, in London: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 43.

44   Maybe Gandhi had been: Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 166.

45   “Who are we to uplift Harijans?”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 53.

46   Drawing the parallel himself: CWMG, vol. 48, p. 224.

47   “Dr. A. always commands”: Ibid., p. 208.

48   “He has a right even to spit”: Ibid., pp. 160–61.

49   “Above all, the Congress represents”: Ibid., p. 16.

50   Three days later: Ibid., p. 34.

51   “I fully represent the claims”: B. R. Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, vol. 3, contains transcripts of the Round Table Conference sessions quoted here. The exchanges between Gandhi and Ambedkar can be found on pp. 661–63 of that volume.

52   “This has been the most humiliating”: Shirer, Gandhi, p. 194, cited in Herman, Gandhi and Churchill, p. 372.

53   “a more ignorant”: Narayan Desai, My Life Is My Message, vol. 3, Satyapath, p. 169.

54   Gandhi claimed to be: B. R. Ambedkar, Letters, p. 215.

55   “Mr. Gandhi made nonsense”: B. R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, p. 275.

56   As the London conference: B. R. Ambedkar, Letters, p. 215.

57   Nehru didn’t go into that: Nehru to S. K. Patil, Nov. 31, 1931, Nehru Memorial Museum archive, AICC Papers, G86/3031.

58   “Gandhi’s Good-Bye Today”: Daily Herald (London), Dec. 5, 1931.

59   Years later George Orwell: George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi,” in A Collection of Essays (Garden City, N.Y., 1954), p. 180.

60   But he was skeptical: Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 248.

61   Pope Pius XI sent his regrets: Nayar, Salt Satyagraha, p. 403; Slade, Spirit’s Pilgrimage, p. 151.

62   “No indeed”: Nayar, Salt Satyagraha, p. 403. Sushila Nayar completed the biography begun by her brother, who seldom signed himself by his full name, Pyarelal Nayar.

63   Before the letter could be mailed: Ibid., p. 405.

64   On January 4, 1932: Ibid., p. 414. The Englishman who describes this scene is the ethnologist Verrier Elwin.