Word: gandhis
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Both Britain and India wanted a decision. The Raj lifted the ban on Mohandas Gandhi's All-India National Congress, restored its funds, was about to free its members still in jail. The Moslem League's president, shrewd, suave Mohamed Ali Jinnah, was already campaigning in the Punjab, heart of the hypothetical Pakistan state. The Congress Party prepared its biggest campaign. Jawaharlal Nehru (see BOOKS) and other leaders would make a platform tour that would take in towns and villages in all the voting provinces...
There has never been any doubt about the inner urge of India's cultured, handsome Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who wrote these words (from jail) to his sister, Krishna. This great & good friend of Mohandas K. Gandhi has spent nearly half of his 55 years in British prisons. Not nearly so familiar is the fact that his entire family-father, mother, two sisters, wife and brother-in-law-have also gone to jail in the cause of India's freedom. Krishna Nehru's brief, informal autobiography provides an intimate introduction to the First Family of Indian passive resistance...
Father Motilal, an intelligent, fiery-tempered man who knew what he wanted and usually got it, did not at first share his son's devotion to Gandhi and the doctrine of non-violent resistance. But on April 13, 1919, following a series of disturbances in the Punjab, British Brigadier General R. E. H. Dyer threw a detachment of soldiers around a forbidden public meeting in an enclosed square, and ordered his men to fire until their ammunition was exhausted. Result: 379 Indians killed. 1,200 wounded. That massacre (at Jalliamvala Bagh) changed Father's mind...
When he changed, he went whole hog. Before joining Satyagraha Sabha (Gandhi's "League of People Holding to the Truth"), he gave up his law practice, and with it most of his income and all of its luxurious appurtenances. Life in the Nehru household became a chaos of conferences and political comings & goings, punctuated by arrivals of the police to pack Jawaharlal or his father off to jail. Says Krishna, "This was the beginning of a new life-a life of uncertainty, of sacrifice, of heartache. . . . Since then, going in and out of jail has become an incurable habit...
Back in India, the exhausting cycle of congresses and incarcerations began again. Motilal's hard-driven health was failing, and in 1931 he died. His funeral was an occasion for a tremendous demonstration of Nationalist-minded Indians. Said Gandhi : "What I have lost through Motilalji's death is a loss forever...