MUTINY AND THE MAHATMA

The way Nehru urged the curbing of 'the wild outburst' with respect to the RIN Mutiny is indication of where his allegiance lay. The Mahatma had earlier in his assumed superiority chastised the mutineers as setting an ‘unbecoming example’. Gandhi and Nehru sealed the fate of India at a time when Netaji could have saved her from dismemberment. Nehru, for sure, tried to make amends for this loss by making us Member of the British Commonwealth! Surely, this ought to have been adequate recompense for the dismemberment otherwise!

Patel hastened aboard the ships on mutiny to pacify the wrath of the sailors and in return pleaded with Auchinlek to spare the mutineers court-martial. Just imagine the sheer power of Auchinlek to punish the mutineers months after he was forced by revolutionary reaction rife within the nation to let the three convicted INA generals scot-free of all charges of the notorious Red Fort Trial!

The opportunist and hypocritical Nehru, briefless barrister that he was, now put up a show of pleading on behalf of the INA generals to steal the limelight after his earlier traitorous declaration to meet Netaji with unsheathed sword in hand were he to appear at the gates of India with Japanese forces in alliance.

And Patel now pleading on behalf of the mutineering sailors! Hilarious!

Gandhi and his brigade fully saw to it that the simmering movement did not erupt into a full-scale armed revolution that would sweep away British power from India, for sure, but would plunge the country into a chaos they could scarce control. They feared loss of their political hegemony to the armed forces, --- disunited and disparate in the absence of leadership but potent enough to precipitate a Balkanization of the country ---, for they had not heeded Bose's portentous warning from Haripura in 1938 about the imperative of having a disciplined army of Congress workers, an organisation and a machinery to hold the reins of the revolutionary movement about to ensue in the wake of the warring developments in Europe. In Tripuri they had allied to encircle Bose in betrayal and, flouting all democratic norms, the Machiavellian Mahatma had plotted the downfall of the duly elected President of the Congress.

Now when Netaji was needed most to steer the nation to solidarity and safety in securing freedom, he was no more available to the 'saintly' plotter. All that they could do now was to extinguish the fire of revolution and stifle the last chances of securing an independent integrated India while striking the deadly deal of compromise with the British and the Muslim League.

The fell deed was done : the revolution had been betrayed. The Mahatma's myth was built up but even the Mahatma was betrayed by his beloved protege, Jawaharlal.

In his dying days the Mahatma must have mused what a terrible tragedy had befallen his countrymen and he had been instrumental partly in unleashing the forces that had brought about the cataclysm of Partition.

Or, did he?

Perhaps, ignorance deep like his delusive dreams and his distorted desires seized him in his twilit consciousness and he died a man who had failed to realise the full import of what a terrible price his motherland had to pay for his vanity of non-violence and truth, both of which he never truly was the votary of, for he simply lacked the transparency of nature and the purity of character needed to play the part of a true Mahatma.

Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!