Mr and Mrs Jinnah Page 20

  Instead of giving up in disgust, these underhand tactics from his opponents made Jinnah even more determined to stop the memorial at any cost. It brought out that side of him that his friends rarely glimpsed beneath his charm: that almost inhumanly obstinate streak which refused to submit under any circumstances. The issue itself was far too local and provincial to ordinarily hold his interest for very long, but now he threw himself into the agitation, turning it within a few days of his arrival in Bombay from a local protest that could be safely ignored by the authorities, into something on a more epic scale. For the first time, he was not content to merely turn up as chief speaker at meetings, leaving it to his juniors to make all the arrangements. He took charge of every aspect of the campaign, monitoring every move his opponents made. It challenged all his faculties. He had always been fond of the game of chess—that was one of the few pleasures he had indulged in during his club life—and now he set himself to checkmate his opponents, coolly and dispassionately. It, of course, meant sacrificing both his legal work and the few hours of sleep he allowed himself at night. But then he had never been in the habit of putting his personal comfort or legal career before his political activities.

  Within his own head the conflict ran not as a clash of egos but a larger, more epic struggle it had become his sacred duty to wage. He argued persuasively that the time had arrived for self-rule and it was not just their right but their duty to fight against the government. The issue of the memorial, he decided, provided him with a timely opportunity to educate people on their political rights and duties. The War was finally over and it was time to put pressure on the government to deliver on its long-pending promise of reforms. In meeting after meeting, to ever-multiplying crowds, he began to drum the same point: allowing Lord Willingdon’s admirers to go ahead and vote for a memorial for him in their name was to shirk their duty as citizens of Bombay. The governor’s administration had flouted all principles of democracy and human decency, he said at every stop of his whirlwind campaign across Bombay. To passively accept this sycophancy towards British autocrats was to do themselves and the country a disservice. And then in that classic gesture that the crowds lapped up, he wagged his forefinger at the audience: Does the governor deserve a certificate from them? ‘No!’ they responded with an enthusiasm he had never seen before. That call to patriotism had touched a chord.

  His passion was consuming. It infected everyone around him, including Ruttie. She went with him to every public rally he addressed across Bombay, no matter how late in the night it was held. And it was no longer from a sense of duty—she wanted to be there with him, part of the action and the crowds, even if she was usually the only woman at the venue. Seeing her so enthused, Jinnah was touched. He let her become involved in the campaign at every stage. She sat in on his meetings with his juniors, listening to the reports on how the enemy side was preparing to get the memorial passed despite the protest rallies of thousands that Jinnah was busy mobilizing. Aware that the popular tide was going against them, the pro-Willingdon camp began a last-ditch attempt to collect as many signatures as they could, regardless of who it was that was signing. Most of them had not a clue what they were signing for, as the Bombay Chronicle reported. They also roped in the indispensable Suleman Cassum Mitha, a prominent Khoja Muslim leader of Bombay extremely loyal to the British whose services in providing hired crowds of Pathans had come in handy for the government on previous occasions. According to the reports, Mitha had already brought ‘battalions of foreign hirelings’ into the city, putting them up in Muslim mohallas like Bhendi Bazaar, who were ready to fill up the town hall on the appointed day. The police force was also openly supporting the pro-governor camp, using intimidatory tactics to scare off the public.

  But Jinnah wasn’t having any of this. He got up on public platforms to declare that it was everyone’s duty to come forward and vote against the memorial and if anyone told them it was against the law, he was telling them as a lawyer that it was their right to do so. Over twenty thousand people came forward at his call, ready to risk life and limb, even prepared to sleep overnight on the steps of the town hall if necessary, in order to force their entry into the hall on voting day.

  The strategy was the same on both sides: since the town hall could accommodate no more than fifteen hundred people at best, the doors were closed as soon as the hall got filled up. This meant that whichever side managed to get in first would capture all the seats and control the meeting. Obviously the pro-governor camp had the advantage. They had both the police and the administration on their side. One of the first arrangements they undertook was to build a platform inside the hall large enough to seat over four hundred VIPs. These special guests on the platform would be issued passes that would permit them to enter from a side gate that was not open to all. They also issued special badges to volunteers and stewards picked from their side. In contrast, all that Jinnah’s supporters could do was to queue up as early as they could so as to be the first to enter as soon as the doors were opened. Unsurprisingly, the authorities refused to disclose to Jinnah’s side at what time the doors would be opened on voting day. When Jinnah demanded to know in his imperious way, the answer he got was the usual bureaucratic one: ‘Don’t know. Take your chance.’

  All this raised the pitch of the battle to a level that Bombay had rarely witnessed before. On the night before the voting, the protesters gathered in the largest meeting place for public demonstrations: Shantaram Chawl. It was the biggest crowd Jinnah had drawn so far and the protesters could hardly contain their excitement. Cries of ‘shame’ and ‘hear, hear’ rent the air regularly as he spoke to them for the last time before the battle, and his appeal to them ‘to get to the town hall today as early as they could’ was greeted with loud and continuous cheers. Ruttie was there on the platform with him, listening with all her heart to the half a dozen speeches made on the occasion. She was so charged up that when Horniman put the question to the audience if they were going to the town hall, Jinnah heard her cry out with them: ‘Aye!’

  Although the town hall was no place for a woman, especially on a day when he and his supporters were going looking for trouble, Jinnah made no attempt to curb Ruttie’s enthusiasm or persuade her to stay at home. Seeing how heartbreakingly determined she was to be part of the action, Jinnah held his silence. But he did leave for the venue without telling her. The voting was to take place at 5.30 p.m., but Jinnah, anxious to oversee his supporters, got there by 7 a.m. He did not want to wake her up.

  The police had cordoned off the area around the town hall the previous night to prevent Jinnah’s followers from sleeping overnight on the steps. Since seating in the town hall was on the first come, first served rule, they wanted to ensure that the pro-memorialists would not grab all the seats by reaching the town hall before them. The authorities usually made an announcement well in advance on what time the doors of the town hall would be thrown open to the public, but this time there was no announcement. Till late in the previous night, Jinnah’s side was kept in the dark about the opening time. But that hadn’t stopped Jinnah’s supporters from gathering on the road as close to the venue as they could get. And by the time Jinnah and Horniman arrived the next morning, some two to three hundred of their supporters were already there, loudly cheering them as soon as they drove up.

  The doors were not yet open, and the steps were being guarded by a posse of pro-memorialists—‘European and Parsi gentlemen wearing badges as stewards of the meeting and various members of their committee’. Jinnah did not go up to join them as he might have otherwise done. Instead, he stood at the barrier on the foot of the steps, shouting up to the Parsi baronet Sir Cowasji Jehangir to ask: ‘What time are the doors opening?’ In better days, the Parsi knight had been a good friend of Jinnah’s. Jinnah had dined on innumerable occasions at his fabulous mansion on Malabar Hill. But now, Sir Cowasji was not forthcoming, responding coldly: ‘Don’t know.’

  Jinnah decided to wait with his supporters until the doors did
open. Only he could ensure that the governor’s camp would not intimidate his followers into a retreat. It took another hour and a half until additional men could be brought in by the pro-memorialists to match the enemy’s side. It was an assorted crowd of ‘millhands, Goanese clerks and Borahs and a number of Mohamedans of the Bhendi Bazaar mowali type’ under the charge of Suleman Cassim Mitha, according to the Bombay Chronicle. Once they got there, the police gave the order to line up and despite trying to trick them into forming a separate queue, Jinnah’s followers managed to rush to the front of the line. At about ten o’clock, the pro-governor camp had to concede defeat and open the doors for all. In a trice, Jinnah and his deputies took their place in the queue that their supporters were reserving for them, and perhaps for the first time in his long career in politics, Jinnah was the first to enter the hall at the head of the most enthusiastic following he had ever commanded. The meeting would not begin for at least another six and a half hours, and his opponents were waking up to a leisurely breakfast, unaware of Jinnah’s strenuous efforts to subvert them.

  The battle was only beginning. Forced to watch helplessly as Jinnah’s supporters grabbed the best seats in the hall, the stewards took over now. They unseated them, sending them from the central row to the back of the hall. It was an unwise move, particularly when Jinnah was around. Unusually for a town hall meeting, several hundred volunteers, mostly Parsis, had been given special badges as stewards. There was little to do, with the volunteers merely walking around, ‘more ornamental than useful’, as a Bombay Chronicle reporter wrote with rare acidity. The Parsis had not forgiven Jinnah for marrying Ruttie and the steward’s badge seemed to give them a chance to vent their feelings on him. The emotional undercurrents manifested in the form of what a Bombay Chronicle reporter described as ‘officious bullying’ by the Parsi gentlemen. It led to an argument, heated on their part, and handled with his usual composure by Jinnah. He wouldn’t give an inch. As first-comers, he argued, his supporters had first choice of seats. The stewards then had no choice but to back off. But tempers were beginning to fray on both sides.

  Within two hours of the doors opening, a scuffle broke out between the two camps. With six hours to go for the meeting and nothing to do but hang on to their seats, the rowdy gang brought in by the pro-memorialists was already beginning to get restless. They began some loud name-calling of their opponents who tried not to respond. But their restraint snapped when a Parsi volunteer lost his temper and manhandled one of the anti-memorialists. Jinnah, who had never once been tempted even in his youth to vent his anger through physical violence—it repelled him—would have preferred not to retaliate.

  But it set them all off. Men on both sides lost their composure and lifted their chairs, hurling them at each other. The stewards, except the ones involved in the fighting, scuttled to the safety of the platform. In the melee that ensued, according to Aziz Beg’s book, ‘somebody even tried to push Jinnah down the stairs’. But he kept his cool and while he and his deputies repeatedly appealed to their side to sit down, it was a while before order was restored. The offending stewards were separated and taken to another part of the hall while Jinnah’s followers took back the chairs and sat down again. Two of their side were seriously injured and had to be taken out. Jinnah found himself shaken despite himself.

  But it wasn’t long before violence threatened to erupt again. This time it was over the seats reserved for ladies. The stewards who had fled to the platform when the two factions began hurling chairs at each other returned to find their seats taken by others. Instead of unseating them, they went and sat in the rows reserved for ladies. Jinnah’s side objected vociferously to this. While the pro-memorialists were certain that no ladies would grace this meeting, Jinnah was expecting Ruttie and a few other ladies to join them at the scheduled time. Attempts were made to dislodge the men on the ladies’ seats, but they wouldn’t budge. As the Bombay Chronicle reporter put it: ‘If ladies came, they said, they would be the first to get up for them, but in the meanwhile they had the right to occupy empty seats and they would wait and see, as they did not believe any ladies were coming. And none did come.’

  But ladies did come, at least one of them—Ruttie. However, she was turned away at the door. Had she known what was going on inside, she would have been even more eager to get in—public brawls had always excited her fancy. But there was no way of getting past the Parsi stewards at the gate. Like the rest of her side who had not got in when the doors were first opened, she too was prevented from entering the hall by stewards who told her that the hall was already full. Meanwhile, Jinnah and the supporters who had managed to get into the hall were more or less trapped. If they left the hall even for a moment, the organizers were threatening not to let them in again. They had gone without food or drink since early morning. While this hardly mattered to Jinnah—he could go without eating for the entire day without any perceptible discomfort—his supporters were not so oblivious to hunger pangs. To add to their frustration, batches of their opponents were being taken to the verandah at regular intervals and returning to their seats with packets of biryani, ‘and other refreshments’. All they could do was protest, until the organizers reluctantly agreed to keep the doors shut, both to the verandah and outside, from where the hired crowd was still trickling in.

  But spirits still ran high even after six hours when finally Jinnah’s side was permitted to bring in provisions for its starving horde. Two of Jinnah’s team were allowed to step inside with baskets of food and water on the condition that they would leave the hall as soon as they delivered their supplies. Their entry was cheered vociferously.

  In fact, except for the single incident of violence, the battle so far had been confined to an exercise of vocal chords: loud shouts of protest from Jinnah’s side when the ‘biryani door’ was opened to admit a crowd of ‘some two hundred men, mostly Mohammedans, some of them Pathans of the lowest class . . . escorted by one of Mr Suleman Casum Mitha’s lieutenants and a European police officer bringing up the rear’; and even louder cries of ‘Shame! Shame!’ as the leaders of the pro-memorial side began to trickle in by five o’clock. The hall was by now uncomfortably packed. Wedged between the front row of seats where Jinnah sat with other leaders of his camp and the platform was ‘a phalanx of about a hundred European, Parsi and Anglo-Indian stewards which made it extremely difficult—ultimately it became impossible—for the leaders of the anti-memorialists to see or be seen by those on the platform’. The sheriff was the first to arrive, greeted by loud cheers from the pro-governor’s side, which were drowned immediately by prolonged shouts of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Shame Sheriff!’ The other leaders of the pro-memorial campaign—Sir Shapurji Broacha, Sir Dinshah Wacha, Sir Ibrahim Rahimtoolah, Mr Carmichael and others—were similarly hailed, with a special demonstration of vocal power reserved for Sir Narayan Chandavarkar who had been chosen to deliver the farewell speech for the governor. ‘It seemed,’ according to the eyewitness account of the Bombay Chronicle’s reporter, ‘as though the solid body of opposition in the front and centre of the hall would never tire of expressing their indignation at the panegyrist-in-chief who had come to deliver the final and parting eulogy.’

  But shouting apart, Jinnah was determined to lead this protest fully in accordance with his own principles—never digressing for a moment from the constitutional methods he believed in so implicitly. Exactly at five-thirty when the meeting was scheduled to begin, Jinnah hushed his crowd with an order to settle in quietly and listen to the proceedings. And had the pro-memorialists stuck to the rules of procedure, things would have probably never got out of hand as they did. Going by their plan, Horniman rose to his feet in protest immediately after the sheriff read out the notice convening the meeting. But instead of giving him a hearing, the pro-memorialists on the platform and near it began shouting him down. While he was still trying to be heard over the shouts of his opponents, the pro-memorialists took matters into their own hands. One of the leaders on the platform proposed
Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy to the chair, and without putting the motion to vote and ignoring Horniman’s shouted protest that they wished to propose someone of their own choice to the chair, Sir Jamsetjee hastily walked to the chair.

  Such pre-emptory tactics were beyond what Jinnah and his supporters could bear. A noisy uproar broke out, with Jinnah’s side shouting ‘No! No!’, while the stewards, volunteers and other supporters of the platform ‘shrieked and yelled in derision, hurling insults and epithets at the opposition. What was happening on the platform, the rest could not see or hear. Then the resolution was declared passed. In the general clamour, it was unclear whether the vote was actually passed, with both sides claiming victory. As the Bombay Chronicle put it, ‘It is said that Sir Jamsetjee put the resolution of appreciation of Lord Willingdon from the chair and declared it carried. It is possible. But the pretence that the resolution was carried by a meeting of the citizens of Bombay is farcical and an insult to Lord Willingdon, if he had the good sense to appreciate it.’

  The clamour went on for nearly twenty minutes, making Jinnah more anxious by the minute. This was not his idea of how the meeting ought to have proceeded. He was wary, too, that somebody might get hurt again if he did not put a stop to it. He decided to call in the police.

  But his faith in the system was to receive another severe blow. The police arrived in the hall, led by the commissioner himself, and ordered the audience to leave. But instead of waiting for Jinnah and his deputies to take their men out in an orderly way as Jinnah had expected, the police turned their batons on them, picking out the men on Jinnah’s side and assaulting them as they tried to exit the hall. And to his lasting shock, the police dealt him a few blows as well.