The Convictions, Loyalties and Differences That Were Forged in the Freedom Movement

After a distinguished diplomatic career spanning over three decades, T.C.A. Raghavan has emerged as a writer with a gift for reconsideration of Indian history. Besides a thoughtful work on India-Pakistan relations that draws on his diplomatic experiences, Raghavan has produced an outstanding book on the life and times of the Mughal statesman and scholar, Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, and has also written a learned tribute to two of India’s great historians, Jadunath Sarkar and G.S. Sardesai, and their student and disciple, Raghubir Sinh.

Circles of Freedom is Raghavan’s venture into the well-trodden area of the freedom movement, but here he provides the perceptions and perspectives of a second rung of heroes and heroines who had a ring-side view of the thoughts, debates and actions of the stalwarts – Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel – while making their own contributions in the struggle.

The principal actors in this story are: Asaf Ali who is the central figure in the book, Syud Hossain and Syed Mahmud, and two women activists, Sarojini Naidu and Aruna Asaf Ali. While the two women are better known, the three men are hardly remembered today even by students of modern Indian history.

Syud Hossain was the subject of a recent biography, A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo: The Life and Times of Syud Hossain, by N.S. Vinodh.

Sarojini the inspiration

Three members of this quintet – Asaf Ali, Syud Hossain and Sarojini Naidu — that Raghavan writes about, first met each other in London in 1913-14. Sarojini Naidu, fresh from publishing her first collection of poems, The Golden Threshold (1905), was at the centre of a popular and convivial salon. Syed Mahmud, from the landed gentry of Bihar, had an English law degree and a doctorate in history from Germany, and was active in Congress politics from the beginning of the century. In 1915, he met Sarojini at the Congress session in Bombay and briefly became infatuated with her. 

Sarojini maintained a lifelong friendship with these three men. Raghavan quotes Asaf describing Sarojini as “radiant and restless, full of sparkling life and laughter,” and says that he remained deferential to her all through their association. Syud Hossain, on the other hand, Raghavan notes, “was the friend she [Sarojini] had the most equal relationship with”. 

Throughout the book, it is obvious that Sarojini also retained a lifelong commitment to Hindu-Muslim camaraderie, believing that inter-communal friendships “were the basis on which Indian nationalism could be securely based”. While the others were active in the freedom struggle in India, Syud Hossain spent most of this period advocating the Indian cause in the UK and the US.

Raghavan suggests that association with Sarojini possibly encouraged Asaf Ali to become active in politics, with Delhi as his base. In January 1928, Asaf met Aruna Gangulee, whom he married after a whirlwind romance of nine months, despite their age difference of 21 years. Extrovert and vivacious, Aruna, Raghavan brings out, gradually developed her own understanding of politics and national issues in general through extensive reading and exposure to contemporary events and debates. 

Soon, however, Asaf and she began to pursue different paths: while Asaf remained the reflective constitutionalist, Aruna became a firebrand. In 1930, when Asaf was jailed for violating the Salt laws, Aruna was arrested, the author quotes from official documents, for “propagating and inciting violent action”. 

In Ahmednagar jail

The three chapters Raghavan has devoted to the incarceration of Congress leaders in Ahmednagar jail in the wake of the ‘Quit India’ movement of 1942 are both gripping and thought-provoking. As Britain was reeling from German hammer-blows in the early years of the Second World War, the Raj responded to the “Quit India” call by arresting almost all the top Congress leaders. 

While Gandhiji was detained at Aga Khan Palace in Pune, the twelve members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) – including Nehru, Patel, Pant, JB Kripalani, Maulana Azad (the Congress President), Asaf Ali and Syed Mahmud – were imprisoned together for over two years at Ahmednagar jail.

Based on extensive archival research, Raghavan has vividly shown that this involuntary and prolonged incarceration provided numerous opportunities for intense discussions, expressions of deep differences on national issues, and also anxieties about personal health and events taking place outside the prison walls. 

There were heated debates among the Congress leaders on the wisdom of the Quit India movement and whether Gandhiji had misread the British mood. Other divisive issues that agitated the imprisoned men were: the need for a fresh approach to the war; Congress’ economic programme and centre-state relations in the future political order, and the efficacy of confrontation versus accommodation in approaching the colonial ruler in order to restore Congress’ activism on the national stage.

Asaf, Raghavan’s research shows, often found himself at odds with his peers on several matters. He disagreed with mass struggle during the war and viewed the “Quit India” call as Gandhiji’s “Himalayan blunder”. He was unhappy that Nehru and Patel “rely on Gandhi to do everything for them” and fell in line even when they disagreed with him. Asaf was often irritated by Azad as well, seeing him as “an apologist of Congress policy rather than an incisive critic”.

At Ahmednagar, Asaf, Raghavan writes, also had serious worries about Aruna. In prison, Asaf read regular reports of her escapades in different parts of the country as she advocated confrontation against the Raj and evaded arrest by going underground. During the period of enforced inactivity of the principal Congress leaders, Raghavan shows that Aruna had become a revolutionary. Ahmednagar also sharpened the personal and political divide between Asaf and Aruna that could not be bridged.

Freedom and partition

Among the Congress leaders, the biggest point of difference was: how to deal with the Muslim League to safeguard the unity of the country. Raghavan quotes Nehru describing the communal problem as “a very minor problem”, the main problem in his view being the divide between the Congress as “an advanced organisation” and the League as “a politically reactionary organisation”. Syed Mahmud, despite his regard for Nehru, saw this argument as pure semantics, noting that the appeal of the reactionary organisation “is now fast becoming the conviction of the Muslim masses”. 

These discussions went nowhere, Raghavan points out, principally because the pragmatic accommodative approach to the government and the League, proposed by Asaf and Mahmud, had no takers as other leaders adopted tough positions on the demands of the League.

The final third of the book treads the familiar path towards freedom and partition. With the period defined by the communal divide, it makes for sad reading, particularly as we see Asaf, Syud Hossain, Syed Mahmud and Sarojini Naidu defeated by the communal animosities and the accompanying violence they had done so much to combat throughout their lives. 

The rest of the career of this foursome is unspectacular, reflecting their subaltern status in the struggle. Aruna, however, continued to pursue her own unique trajectory as a radical. An active member of the socialist group in the Congress, she soon joined the Communist Party; she then left the party and pursued journalism from the 1950s, setting up the Link and The Patriot. She passed away in 1996.

Contemporary reverberations

The lives of the five protagonists examined here, despite their diverse backgrounds and careers, were unquestionably devoted to the idea of a democratic, secular and multicultural nation whose rich tapestry was shaped by the distinct contributions of different peoples who had made India their home and, at independence, viewed this composite nation as their “motherland”. But challenges to this idea of a composite nation were apparent even during the freedom struggle itself. They were reflected not just in the divisive and confrontationist politics of the Muslim League, but also within the Congress itself, including its apex body, the Congress Working Committee. 

Since the book has a Muslim activist as its central figure, the sense of the communal divide emerges from Raghavan’s research much more powerfully than it might have otherwise, as was evident during discussions among CWC members at Ahmednagar jail. For instance, when Asaf proposed the idea of a “Commonwealth of India”, ie, a state with a weak centre and autonomous provinces, he and Maulana Azad were seen by some CWC members “as going one better than Jinnah”. 

Raghavan describes another experience of Asaf Ali, when a CWC member “flew into a rage” when the idea of “self-government” for Muslim-majority provinces was floated and hotly asserted: “Every inch of ground is mine – the land of five rivers and Peshawar are sacred to me.” Looking back, it is interesting to note that, while the idea of “Bharat Mata” evoked such strong emotions among several political leaders of that time, it is surprising that these votaries could not come up with practical ideas that would keep the nation together in the face of the formidable challenge from the League, whose divisive agenda was abetted actively by the Raj itself.

Also read: Do We Need to Rethink the Idea of the Bharat ‘Mata’?

Today, a century later, the country is experiencing the revival of assertions and conflicts relating to personal and national identity, redolent of confrontations of the 1920s and 1930s. As questions relating to the communal question and partition continue to be raked up all-too-frequently, modern historians should make it clear that communal divisions were pervasive and palpable all through the freedom struggle and it is futile to blame just one party or person for this costly national debacle. 

This account of the subaltern quintet is very well-researched, supported by original sources, and presented with the lucidity of a master craftsman. Issues that animated the book’s protagonists are carefully explained, with the author’s hindsight view enabling him to provide a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of controversial articulations and deeds of these actors living in tumultuous times.

For the reader, having been part of the lives of this fascinating quintet over many decades, the denouement brings with it a deep sense of anguish. This perhaps reflects the distress each of them must have felt as they saw their country sink into a communal cauldron and the Mahatma assassinated by a religious zealot within a few months after independence. 

And, yet, as the author reminds us, though supporting stars in the vast theatre of the national struggle they might have been, their lives had meaning because of “the great enterprise they chose to become part of”.

Talmiz Ahmad is a former diplomat. He holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune.