Chachaji

Sharma: After the 1930 movement, did you take part in the 1932 movement?

Chacha Ji: I was regularly in the Congress, that was my chief occupation always. But in 1932, what happened was that I had given up my service with Lala Diwan Chand few years before and I had started my own business in partnership with Pandit Kanhaiya Lal Punj. So, besides my work in the Congress and the Arya Samaj my business work occupied me to some extent naturally. My wife and I were always quarreling for one reason or the other, out of fun or for sharpening of our wits!

She said, “I am superior” and I said, “No, I am superior.” She would always say : “You do not attend to housework at all. The children are so small.” We had two small children, first was a son and second was a daughter and third one was still to be born.

And I would also say: “You are a useless person. You are in the house. You only look after the children and do just a little bit of work. But I have to go out to work for the Congress, the Arya Samaj, the business and all that. One day she played a trick on me. She gave a purgative to both the children and slipped away from the house! And now both children were purging and purging, purging and purging! I did not know where she had gone away and I could not go out of the house, I could not go out for any work, I could not go out for business and I could not go out anywhere. Anyway, the whole day I had to attend to the children and call the doctor and this thing and that thing.

I could not leave the children also to find out where she was. And I tried over the telephone somewhere, and all that. Ultimately I sent some people and found that she had gone to some of her friends. She was back and said: “Do you know now what work I have to do in the house for the children, and all that! This is a lesson that I wanted to give you.” So I said: “All right. It is quite all right.” But in two or three days she was again behaving in a different manner. And one evening she again slipped out. I could not know where she had gone. She went to Chandni Chowk, took the banner, and led a procession of ladies. And then—late in the night—I came to know that—she was arrested!

So I could not have time to think of anything in 1932, when she played this ‘trick’ on me. Soon after, she was sentenced to six-month imprisonment and was transferred to Lahore Central Jail. Both the children were with me. So, after two or three days, I went to Lahore so that she could keep the little daughter with her. The son, of course, I brought back with me. Then, in six months, many times I had to send my son also to Lahore Jail for a week or 10 to 15 days and then had to bring him back again, because I was occupied with work. My in-laws were also in Lahore. Whenever I went to see my wife in jail I stayed with my in-laws. My mother-in-law was an old type of illiterate lady. And when I went there she was very happy and she asked about my wife.

So my mother-in-law asked: “How is my daughter?” I said: “She is quite all right”. She asked: “Where is she?” I said: “She is in Lahore”. She said: “How can it be? She cannot be in Lahore. I have not seen her.” But I said: “She is in Lahore for the last one month in jail.” She said: “How can it be?” I said: “She is in jail.” She was shocked: “How can a girl from a good family go to jail? It is the girls of bad character that can go to jail. What are you saying?” Then I said: “It is a fact. You come and see.” Then next morning I took her to jail and showed: “Here she is”. And then it took her a long time to understand why those more than a hundred ladies in jail were arrested from different parts of Punjab and elsewhere—Lado Rani Zutshi, Kaushalya Devi, Swami Shraddhanand’s daughter’s daughter, Dr Prakash Chand’s wife and so many other ladies. But then after six months, she was released and came back. She, of course, had felt that because I had gone to jail I had become egoistic and thought myself as superior to her. So thus she showed that she could also go to jail and there was nothing special that I had done by going to jail! This is the story about what happened in 1932.

Sharma: You did not go to jail in 1932.

Chacha Ji: No. Because….this is what happened.

Sharma: Now, what was the nature of the movement in Delhi in 1932?

Chacha Ji: It was a non-cooperation movement, to break the laws of the Government. In Delhi processions were not allowed. Assembly of five persons was not allowed. It was generally ‘non-cooperation’ in many respects. I think, in villages it was about the taxes. In Delhi it was in that manner.

Sharma: What part did you play in this movement?

Chacha Ji: I was a member of the Congress, attending to the Congress work regularly—as a member of the Provincial Congress Committee, attending to the general organisation and whatever other work was there—day in and day out. Our president was Mr Asaf Ali, barrister. He was also a member of the Congress Working Committee. Whenever we would go to attend the Congress Working Committee meetings, we were anxiously waiting for him, to get some news.

Then in 1940, Mahatma Gandhi declared ‘individual satyagraha’. And this time also I missed going to jail. I fell very seriously ill and was reduced to a skeleton, and I could not go. But how could I say no. So I filled in my form and sent it to the Provincial Congress Committee for their permission.

In the meantime I had appointed Shri Murari Lal Parashar from Lahore as a tutor for my children, and he was with me. He was living in just a hut, where now Sri Aurobindo Ashram stands. I was convalescing and he was attending on me there.

So every day he was asking me to give up the idea of going to jail in this movement. I said: “One has to die once. Why should not one die now when such an occasion is there? If I have to die I will die here also. If I go to jail and if I die in jail, it makes no difference at all.”

But he was so sentimental that he went on insisting and insisting—keeping a hold upon me. And ultimately he overpowered me and convinced me somehow or the other. Then he said: “Alright. I will go in your place.”

He had never taken any part in Congress activities, and he was not a Congressman at all. But he filled in his own form, went to the Congress office and went for individual satyagraha. He went to jail for one year in Rawalpindi Jail. He acted in a manner as if he was representing me because my health did not permit.