(This article has been co-authored by Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh and Dikgaj)
The nephew of revolutionary freedom fighter, Chandrasekhar Azad, Sujit Azad has recently claimed that Jawaharlal Nehru had provided British specific information about his whereabouts which helped them accost him leading to his martyrdom [1]. Sujit Azad also contends that Azad had handed over HSRA funds to Nehru hoping to free Bhagat Singh in exchange; Nehru received the funds but did not deliver. Given the statures of both Nehru and Azad, the contention is startling, to say the least. But, surprisingly Azad’s claim received almost no coverage in main stream media. Yet, the claim even if true would be consistent with the long record of collaboration between top Indian National Congress leaders with the colonial occupiers they were claiming to fight, the British. Gandhi had regularly received “confidential’’ information from the British who even shared secret files on then Congress President Subhas Bose’s movements with him [2]. Patel and Nehru had betrayed the naval mutineers of Mumbai, 1946 in collusion with the British [3]. The government of India under Nehru had spied on Subhas Bose’s kin and had even shared such intelligence information with British intelligence post the transfer of power in 1947 [7]. Nehru is also suspected of complicity in the disappearance of the INA treasures [5]. It is therefore imperative that the allegations of Sujit Azad be investigated with utmost gravity.
Following up on Sujit Azad’s claim, we present our findings from primary sources and available documentations on the interaction between Nehru and Azad. We can incontrovertibly establish that Nehru revealed strong animosity against Azad to the extent that he denigrated him through dubious and likely fraudulent contentions. Nehru also used the public empathy for Azad’s organization for his own political furtherance only to engage in exercises to push them into oblivion when the opportunity arose, consistent with the wishes of the highest echelons of the British Governmnt. It also emerges that British intelligent sources have mentioned that they had access to a highly placed source hailing from Allahabad (Nehru’s ancestral source) who had helped them infiltrate AICC (All India Congress Committee). The source was not named in the documentation we could access, but it would become evident that great care was taken to preserve his identity.
Nehru has confirmed in his autobiography that Chandrasekhar Azad, had come to meet him in his residence in Allahabad in early 1931 before the Gandhi-Irwin negotiations commenced: “I remember a curious incident about that time, which gave me an insight into the mind of the terrorist group in India. This took place soon after my discharge from prison, either a little before father’s death or a few days after. A stranger came to see me at our house, and I was told that he was Chandrasekhar Azad. I had never seen him before, but I had heard of him ten years earlier, when he had non-co-operated from school and gone to prison during the N.C.O. movement in 1921. A boy of fifteen or so then, he had been flogged in prison for some breach of gaol discipline. Later he had drifted towards the terrorists, and he became one of their prominent men in North India. All this I had heard vaguely, and I had taken no interest in these rumours. He had been induced to visit me because of the general expectation (owing to our release) that some negotiations between the Government and the Congress were likely. He wanted to know, if in case of a settlement, his group of people would have any peace. Would they still be considered and treated, as outlaws; hunted from one place to place, with a price on their heads, and the prospect of the gallows ever before them? Or was there a possibility of their being allowed to pursue peaceful vocations? He told me that as far as he was concerned, as well as many of his associates, they were convinced now that purely terrorist methods were futile and did no good. He was not, however, prepared to believe that India would gain her freedom wholly by peaceful methods. He thought that some time in the future a violent conflict might take place, but this would not be terrorism. He ruled out terrorism as such, so far as the question of Indian freedom was concerned. But then, he added what was he to do when no chance was given him to settle down, as he was being hounded all the time? Many of the terroristic acts that had occurred recently, according to him, were purely in self-defence.
I was glad to learn from Azad, and I had confirmation of this subsequently, that the belief in terrorism was dying down. As a group notion, indeed, it had practically gone, and individual and sporadic cases were probably due to some special reason, act of reprisal, or individual aberration, and not to a general idea. This did not mean, of course, that the old terrorists or their new associates had become converts to non-violence, or admirers of British rule. But they did not think in terms of terrorism as they used to. Many of them, it seems to me, have definitely the fascist mentality.
I tried to explain to Chandrasekhar Azad what my philosophy of political action was, and tried to convert him to my view-point. But I had no answer to his basic question: what was he to do now? Nothing was likely to happen that would bring him, or his like, and relief or peace. All I could suggest was that he should use his influence to prevent the occurrence of terrorist acts in the future, for these could only injure the larger cause as well as his own group.
Two or three weeks later, while the Gandhi-Irwin talks were going on, I heard at Delhi that Chandraskhar Azad had been shot down and killed by the police in Allahabad. He was recognized in the day-time in a park, and was surrounded by a large force of police. He tried to defend himself from behind a tree; there was quite a shooting-match, and he injured one or two policemen before he was shot down.’’ pp. 261-262, [11].
There are multiple inconsistencies between Nehru’s accounts and contemporary politics as narrations by others.
- First, Chandraskhar Azad had by 1931 become a renowned revolutionary. His fellow revolutionaries Manmathanath Gupta and Jogesh Chandra Chatterji have respectively referred to him as the leader of revolutionaries of Northern India, p. 129, [8] and “hero of Kakori, Lahore and Delhi cases’’ p. 447, [14] (all of which were over by 1930). Allahabad was one his main regions of operation, as also Nehru’s ancestral home. Azad had participated in the Kakori train robbery on 9 August 1925. His group looted the Number 8 Down Train travelling from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow when it was approaching the town of Kakori, now in Uttar Pradesh. The train was supposed to carry the money-bags belonging to the British Government Treasury. Seeking to fund their organization, they looted only some of the above bags, and not Indians (Indian big business would not contribute to their cause unlike they did to Gandhi’s). One passenger was killed by an accidental shot. British launched a massive manhunt arresting 40 revolutionaries from Agra, Allahabad, Banaras, Bengal, Etah, Hardoi, Kanpur, Lahore, Lakhimpur, Lucknow, Mathura, Meerut, Orai, Pune, Raibareli, Shajahanpur, Pratapgarh. Jawaharlal Nehru’s father Motilal Nehru had formed a defence committee for the Kakori accused under the leadership of Govind Ballabh Pant p. 308 [14] (lifelong close aide of Jawaharlal Nehru). Jawaharlal Nehru himself was a member of this committee [15]. Jagat Narayan Mulla, close friend and relative of the Nehrus, was the public prosecutor for this case (Motilal Nehru had requested him to defend the accused, earlier, but he had cited inability to devote himself fulltime to this trial) pp. 308-309 [14]. At the end of the trial, Bismil, Thakur Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqullah were sentenced to death by hanging, Sacchindra Nath Sanyal and Shacchindra Nath Bakshi were given life imprisonment, and Manmath Nath Gupta, Yogesh Chandra Chatterji, Bhupen Nath Sanyal and others got various terms of imprisonment. There were widespread protests against the verdict all over the country, and members of the Central Legislature even petitioned the Viceroy, the Privy Council, and M. Gandhi, to help commute the death sentences given to the four men to life sentences. Azad became famous by evading arrested for the Kakori conspiracy, and contemporary revolutionary Jogesh Chandra Chatterji who was tried and was awarded a long jail sentence for this conspiracy called him “the hero of Kakori’’ p. 447 [14] . So, given the publicity the Kakori conspiracy received, and Nehrus’ and Pant’s involvement in the legal defense, it is unlikely that Jawaharlal Nehru would not have heard of Azad. Next, Azad had led the Saunders assassination in 1928, in which Bhagat Singh had participated, and which had shook the political landscape of North India. Azad’s fame as a revolutionary by that time can be seen through fellow-revolutionary Manmathanath Gupta’s narration of the incident: “Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru ambushed the police Superintendent Saunders responsible for injuring Lajpat Rai and shot him dead along with his Indian orderly. The police at once knew and we in the prison knew that Azad must be behind the scenes.’’ p. 278 [8] Finally, Azad’s stature as a revolutionary is borne out of the fact that, within two-three weeks of the meeting between Nehru and Azad, later Congress President and Bharat Ratna and then close colleague of Nehru, Allahabad-based Purushottam Das Tandon, went in person to claim Azad’s body on hearing of the encounter, and when police refused to oblige him, he right away commuted in person from Allahabad to Delhi to inform Nehru of Azad’s encounter-death and also seek his advice on the decline of his request refusal to hand over Azad’s body to him. Subsequently Tandon and Kamla Nehru attended Azad’s funeral. Dharmendra Gaur, who became a director of intelligence in British India, wrote a book (in Hindi) after independence on how Azad was betrayed by his comrades, based on the information he discovered in intelligence files. He has written that Purushottam Tandon had gone to the site of the encounter to claim Chandrasekhar’s body after the encounter. The English officer refused to hand over Chandrasekhar’s body to Tandon and told him that they would perform his last rites. Tandon immediately went to Jawaharlal Nehru (who was then in Delhi per his own autobiography as also from the letters he wrote a day after Azad’s martyrdom) to apprise him of the circumstances. There was no visible impact on Nehru (Gaur attributes his lack of reaction to the demise of his father about two weeks back). Mrs. Kamala Nehru was present there. She immediately left with Tandon to follow up. They attended the last rites conducted in Rasulabad under the supervision of police. p. 222 [10] All these would not have been the case for a revolutionary as incognito as Nehru describes Azad to be, one he would have only vaguely heard of through rumours in which he took no interest. So, Nehru had deliberately underplayed in his autobiography Azad’s stature as also the meeting itself.
- Nehru gave the impression that Azad and his comrades had lost faith in terrorism and would readily avail of an opportunity to “settle down’’ in a “peaceful vocation’’ rather than be `hounded all the time’’. But Manmathnath Gupta has narrated, from personal knowledge of Azad, an incident in 1924, in which Azad shows strong distaste for a relatively smooth but slow life pp. 137-138, [8]. Azad was asked to build cover as a holy man (as he had some Sanskrit training) and was sent, by Ramakrishna Khatri, to work as the chief disciple of a Mahant to build up his cover and for use of the ashram for arms practise and other party work. However, the restless nature of Chandrasekhar Azad rebelled against the forced inactivity, because as, Manmathnath Gupta puts it, `From handling pistols and revolvers and a swift moving adventurous life, to settling down to read and learn by rote scriptures was a very long way, and Azad disliked it very much.’. p. 137,[8] Azad got so sick of the life of the disciple that he sent Khatri a letter saying `I am sick of all that I am supposed to do. Please come immediately, and please bring Gupta with you.’ pp. 137-138, [8] Gupta and Khatri did visit him in the ashram (which was actually a fort) and tried to persuade him to adapt, but in vain. A few weeks, Azad fled the ashram without informing anyone and returned to his revolutionary life. The revolutionary in Azad does not appear to have burnt out by the time he had met Nehru in early 1931; for, as late as June 1930 Azad had planned a daring attempt to free Bhagat Singh from jail which was scuttled, and had led a successful dacoity in July 1930 for funding his revolutionary activities. Within a few weeks after the meeting with Nehru, Azad bravely fobbed off a large police force, all alone and with one pistol as long as he could, and used the last bullet for himself – he did not surrender alive in search of the peaceful vocation that Nehru has suggested he was after. He remained a revolutionary to his very end. In fact, Azad’s fellow-revolutionary Jogesh Chandra Chatterji has written that “It was Azad’s strongest determination that he would never step into a jail. He was ever alert for that and told so to friends often.’’ p. 447, [14] Surely, Azad would have known that he could not settle down in a peaceful vocation without stepping into a British jail as an intermediate state. Thus Nehru’s description was yet another attempt to undermine Azad as a revolutionary, and the likely concoction reveals his inability to understand a revolutionary mind.
- Nehru derided Azad and his ilk as fascists. As Manmathnath Gupta, an eminent revolutionary of Azad’s organization had later observed “When the book (Nehru’s autobiography) appeared, it was the fashion to brand one’s political opponents as fascists. To brand a set of people as fascists it is necessary to prove them hired trigger-happy agents of the big monopolists’’ pp. 322-323, [8]. Yet, Azad was not exactly Nehru’s political opponent as he had never participated in mainstream politics. As Jogesh Chandra Chatterji has written “There was not the least justification for him (Nehru) to make such a remark about persons who had created history in this slave country by shedding their blood drop by drop on the scaffold, in the solitary cells of the Andamans, in various Indian jails of different provinces and by facing bullets.” p. 500, [14] Why did the suave Nehru exhibit such unseemly hostility against Azad still? Nehru’s castigation of Azad as a fascist may have a deeper connotation. Nehru had repeatedly collaborated with the British to the point of threatening physical violence against those who opposed British under the pretext of opposing fascism. During the second world war, he had supported the Cripps mission sent by the British to secure Indian support in its war effort (on the pretext that he was attached to democracies) p. 58 [19]. In a book dedicated to friend and Comrade, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad’s description of Nehru’s position during these turbulent times is rather revealing: “Jawaharlal gave an interview to the representative of the News Chronicle soon after Cripps left. The whole tone and attitude of the interview appeared to minimize the differences between Congress and the British. He tried to represent that though Congress had rejected the Cripps offer, India was willing to help the British, and could not offer full support only because of the policy the British Government had adopted. I also learned that there was a proposal that Jawaharlal should make a broadcast from All India Radio. From what I knew of his attitude, I was afraid that his statement might create confusion in the public mind. Jawaharlal had already left for Allahabad and I had also made arrangements for returning to Calcutta. I decided that I would stop on the way and have a further talk with him. I did so and told Jawaharlal clearly that now that the Working Committee had passed a resolution, he must be very careful about what he said. If he gave a statement which created the impression that Congress was not going to oppose the war effort, the whole effect of the Congress Resolution would be lost. The Congress stand was that India was willing to help Britain but could do so only as a free country. I was sure that this was also his attitude. If therefore he said anything which created the impression that India was willing to support the war effort regardless of the British attitude, then the Congress resolution would become meaningless.I therefore requested him to refrain from making any statement. At first he argued with me but in the end he came to see my point of view. I was therefore very glad when he declared that he would make no statement at all and would cancel the broadcast which he had promised to make. I want to make it absolutely clear that Jawaharlal’s attitude was not due to any doubt regarding India’s freedom. His attitude was a natural result of his understanding of the international situation. He was from the beginning a confirmed anti-fascist.His visit to China and his discussions with Chiang Kai-Shek had strengthened his antipathy to Fascism. He was so impressed by China’s struggle against Japan that he felt that the democracies must be supported at any cost. In fact he felt genuine grief and anguish that India was not fighting by the side of the democracies. I may also mention that Jawaharlal has always been more moved by international considerations than most Indians. He looked at all questions from an international rather than a national point of view. I also shared his concern for the international issues, but to me the question of India’s independence was paramount…..During the meeting of the Working Committee, Jawaharlal came to me one evening. Our discussions convinced me that he was in favour of accepting the Cripps offer even though there was no change in the British stand. He argued that in view of the favourable assurances given by Cripps we should not hesitate. Jawaharlal did not say this in so many words but this was the trend of all his arguments.’’ pp. 65-67 [19] Between April 29 to May 2, 1942, Nehru had forced the modification of a Congress Working Committee resolution (to which he had agreed earlier) to remove the demand asking the British to withdraw pp. 200-201 [18]. Nehru had opposed Gandhi’s proposal for Quit India in the Congress working committee meeting p. 201 [18], p. 76, [19] and reversed his stand only when Gandhi asked him to resign from the August body if he could not reconcile himself to supporting it p. 204 [18], p. 312, [20]. Nehru was the last in the Congress Working Committee to agree to Quit India p. 308, [20]. Last, but perhaps the most significant, Nehru had spoken of conducting a physical warfare against Subhas Bose on the plea of his opposition to Fascism. On 12 April 1942, he declared that he would ““even oppose Subhas’’ on the battlefield’’ p. 307, [20]. In an interview that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, he said, `Asked for his reaction to the possibility of an army coming to India under Subhas Chandra Bose, former Congress party Left wing leader, who is now an exiled propagandist in Axis countries, Nehru said, “Any force that may come from the outside really comes as a dummy force, under Japanese control.” Saying that Indians may have to take up guerilla warfare [against the Japanese forces], he disclosed that the Congress party had started some time ago, a programme of organising `regional self sufficient units which would carry on [fighting the Fascist forces] even though rail and motor transport failed.’ … `A fundamental error’, he concluded, `is distrust or dislike of the British government.’ `This was shortsighted’, he said and `a slave’s sentiment’ [16]. It is quite clear that Nehru would go to great lengths to resist what he perceived as fascism, including collaborating with imperial masters as necessary and resorting to physical violence against the individuals he considered fascists. Given that Nehru had termed Chandrasekhar Azad and his ilk fascists, the yardstick that he had provably applied later would allow him to collaborate with the British to stop them (whether he actually resorted to that recourse against Chandrasekhar Azad remains to be established). It is of course another matter that neither Azad, nor the party he had led, the Hindustan Socialist Replubican Army (HSRA), exhibited no fascist tendencies; the pertinent information here is that Nehru perceived them so.
- Nehru omits an important specific pertaining to the meeting. He mentions that Azad had come to meet him hearing of the impending Gandhi-Irwin discussions. Azad’s closest comrades, eg, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru were then languishing in jail sentenced to death by hanging. Azad had risked his life to free them about 6 months back. Was it therefore possible that Azad would not request Nehru to seek the release of the trio, but rather seek peaceful vocations for himself and a vague denomination as in his “group of people’’? Manmathnath Gupta has unequivocally negated Nehru’s version of the meeting: “Chandrasekhar Azad, the great revolutionary leader, himself went to Jawaharlal Nehru to press the release or at least the commutation of their sentences. A garbled version of their interview is present in An Autobiography (by Nehru, p. 262, [11]), I say garbled because he [Nehru] completely misrepresented the revolutionaries, charging them with fascist tendencies. When the book appeared, it was the fashion to brand one’s political opponents as fascists. To brand a set of people as fascists it is necessary to prove them hired trigger-happy agents of the big monopolists’’ pp. 322-323, [8]. Satyanarayan Sharma who had been in communication with Azad’s fellow revolutionary, Durgawati Devi, the wife of Bhagwati Charan Bohra martyred about six months before Azad and a key member of his group, has also confirmed that Azad met Nehru to have the death sentences of Bhagat Singh commuted p. 126, [10]. Why did Nehru prevaricate about this crucial content of their meeting ?
- Nehru has also misinformed his readers on how Chandrasekhar Azad died – he was not “shot down’’ as Nehru claims, he used the last bullet he had on himself preferring death to capture. Azad’s valor, revealed in the manner he chose his end, was highlighted all over contemporary political discourses. So it is unclear how Nehru could misrepresent this crucial reality.
- We also know from Dharmendra Gaur’s book that the news of encounter-death of the freedom fighter Nehru met only a few weeks back had no visible impact on him p. 222 [10]. Gaur attributes his lack of reaction to the demise of his father about two weeks back p. 222, [10], but we know that Nehru was composed enough to participate in discussions leading to the Gandhi-Irwin pact that time.
The inconsistencies and distortions in the above reveal a subtle, or perhaps not so subtle attempt to denigrate the conviction and valor of the revolutionaries in general and Azad in particular. This attempt may be magnanimously attributed to a guilty conscience in Nehru, assuming he had one. Nehru was an integral part of the discussions that led to the Gandhi-Irwin pact, which excluded revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh (then waiting for execution of the death sentence on him) from its ambit, and thereby sent them straight to the gallows. Quoting Manmathanath Gupta, “It was expected of Jawaharlal, who passed as a youth leader, that he would put pressure on Gandhi in this matter [on forcing the British to release or commute the execution sentence for Bhagat Singh while he was negotiating the Gandhi-Irwin pact]. We inside the prison expected that Jawaharlal would advise Gandhi to break with the viceroy, but he did nothing of the sort. I agree with [Subhas Chandra] Bose, who wrote [in p. 222, [6]] “the responsibility of Pandit Nehru is very great. Besides being the President of the Indian National Congress, he was the only member of the Working Commmittee who could be expected to understand and advocate the left wing point of view and his refusal would have been sufficient to prevent the final acceptance of the pact by Gandhi and the Working Committee. Unfortunately, he gave in and so the Pact was approved by the Working Committee and the next day, March 5th, the Mahatma put his signature to it. When the publication of the Pact created an uproar in the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru came out with the statement that he did not approve of some of the terms – but as an obedient soldier, he had to submit to the leader. But the country had regarded him as something more than an obedient soldier.”‘’ p. 325, [8], [4]. Gandhi-Irwin pact was considered a betrayal by a large section of Indians, and Gandhi had to face vociferous public dissent and black flags after Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged. The seasoned political player in Nehru would not want to remind his readers of his complicity in the hanging of Bhagat Singh by acknowledging that Azad sought his intervention to save Bhagat Singh; he may also have sought to delegitimize the revolutionaries like Azad (and Bhagat Singh by association, though not directly as he was far too popular around the time Nehru wrote his book) through subtle denigration.
Nehru’s animosity against Azad may be driven in part by the charges Azad levied on Nehru in their above confirmed meeting. Satyanarayan Sharma has written that when Azad asked Nehru if Gandhi would speak to Irwin about annulling the death sentence on his three comrades (Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru), Nehru had responded that he was unable to answer his question as at that point Gandhi was not inclined to act in any way in the interests of the revolutionaries. Azad had then angrily retorted that that was grave injustice to patriots like them. His three comrades are going to be hung to death. They have received nothing but rejection from Nehru and his ilk. Nehru and his ilk were also subjected to arrests like the revolutionaries, but the former would inevitably be released while the latter would be hanged to death. The conversation ended with Nehru saying he did not have any answer to the question Azad had posed. pp. 125-126 [10].
Nonetheless, it is intriguing to note that the only part of the description where Nehru was specific was that he was in Delhi when he received news of Azad’s death in Allahabad. On wonders if this specificity among all the vague generalities owes to an attempt to disassociate from talks to the effect that Nehru had passed on information about Azad to police – if so it would at least indicate that Azad’s descendants have only said out what many at that time had believed to be true and deserves investigation.
We now show how Nehru and his key aide Pant reaped political mileage out of the plight of the comrades of Azad, only to seek to push them into oblivion at a convenient time, the latter part was consistent with the wishes of the highest echelon of the British Government. Revolutionaries sentenced to prison terms due to participation in the Kakori dacoity in 1925 were released in 1937. We learn the following from a letter written on 26th August, 1937 by M. Gandhi’s secretary, Mahadev Desai, to G D Birla: “You know the Kakori Dacoity prisoners who were convicted some years ago of the most violent and unpardonable crimes. Pantji [G. B. Pant] has released them all. It is a feather both in his cap and that of Haig [Governor of the United Provinces] who might well have objected to their release. But the moment their release was announced, our idiotic Congress makes an announcement of taking these people out in procession. Poor Pantji was absolutely at sea. He was persuaded to be firm. He made it clear that if they persisted it would not be possible for him to do any such thing in future. Jawaharlal did not give any encouragement to the Congress enthusiasts. And so everything ended well.’’ p. 206, [9]. So, G. B. Pant, who led the defence, and Nehru, who publicly offered support, privately sought to prevent a procession in honor of the revolutionaries; they did not however succeed in preventing the public processions and the felicitations despite their best attempts. As Yogesh Chandra Chatterji, who was one of the Kakori dacoity prisoners released in the occasion has written, “Despite the strict directive of Nehru that there should not b any demonstration and despite the drizzling rains the whole day, thousands gathered before the Naini jail on haring the news of the release of Kakori prisoners. We were brought to Allahabad in a procession and there was a public meeting at Purushottam Das Park that evening. The next day we were given receptions in the Ward Congress Committee and from 3 p.m. till dusk we were in the Anand Bhawan with Jawaharlal Nehru. For two and a half hours we were closeted with Nehru in a hall on the first floor and his sister, Mrs. Vijay Laksmi Pandit, was sitting by his side all along….Then we came downstairs and there was a grand tea party to which all the notable Congress leaders of Allahabad were invited….When Nehru started criticizing the revolutionaries adversely he was openly questioned as to why he himself gave a tea party in Anand Bhawan to the released Kakori prisoners. As a reply to this, he gave a public statement that there was no party. Some of the prisoners were known to him, they came to his place and he gave them tea. The readers are only to judge whether the function was like that or it was at an attempt at belittling it. ’’ pp. 490-500, [14] Chatterji has described the desperate attempts by Nehru and Pant to stop the processions and felicitations: “In the meantime telephonic talks were going on between Nehru and Pant, the Chief Minister. The people of Kanpur and Lucknow, too, were preparing for our reception but these two leaders were nervous about it. Their apprehension was that if too much importance was given to us, the revolutionaries, their absolute leadership may be in jeopardy in the long run.. Nehru phoned to Balkrishna Sarma, the President of City Congress Committee at Kanpur that there should be no demonstration.. Sharmaji said there would be a big demonstration even without the Congress participating in it. Congress and Sharmaji himself would only be condemned by the public. So he and the Congress could not keep aloof in such a matter. Pant sent for him; but he sent a friend and himself remained at Kanpur to receive us. The Kanpur demonstration was unique in the whole history of Kanpur. The whole city welcomed the released men with open arms. Balkrishnaji himself led the crowd at the Railway Station and he was with them very where. The procession and the meting at parade grounds was huge. More than a lakh of people attended the meeting. Next day the reception in the morning by Ward Congress Committees, the reception by the Municipal Board, the Congress Workers’ meeting at the Tilak Hall and the labour meting at Goaltuli were of the same type as of the previous day. The Governor was upset at this. The second day he went to Kanpur and sent for the Congress leaders at the Circuit House, and asked them if a revolution was going to take place. The leaders impressed on him that there was no question of any revolution…. Lucknow, too, did not lag behind in the demonstrations. Huge crowds waited at the Railway station under the leadership of C. B. Gupta, the then President of City Congress Committee. Here, too, the procession and the meeting at Aminuddaula Park were unexpectedly big. …The meeting at Chowk the next day was also very big, though it was spoiled by heavy showers of rain. The University students of Lucknow gave us a very hearty welcome the next day. The gathering was fairly big.’’ pp. 490-493 [14]
Nehru’s daughter and political successor (albeit not immediate) had rewarded Yashpal, a key comrade who had betrayed Azad. Sukhdev’s brother Thapar has alleged that Yashpal was a police informer: “He used to gather all information from Jai Gopal and then pass it on to the police. Though now dead a few years, he is fondly remembered by his admirers as a great revolutionary and a Hindi writer of no mean significance.” [12]. In his autobiography, Yashpal has indeed confirmed that HSRA (the revolutionary party led by Azad) central committee had issued an order for shooting him dead believing him as likely to betray the party p. 77, [13]. Yashpal had attributed the decision to resentment against his romantic relationship with a woman member of HSRA. It is pertinent to note that Yashpal, who by his own account was supposedly a top leader of HSRA, was neither executed like Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad nor incarcerated under trying circumstances like in Cellular as another leader, Sachindranath Sanyal, was. Furthermore, while most revolutionaries were severely persecuted in jails, Yashpal was treated exceedingly well in British jails. He was sent from the jail to a sanatorium to recover his health (in contrast Sanyal was moved from Cellular to Gorakhpur only at the terminal stage of tuberculosis) p. 85, [13]. Yashpal was also allowed to marry while serving his jail sentence, the first ever in the history of Indian jail, and a British deputy commissioner performed the civil ceremony. p. 86, [13]. A new section was subsequently added in the Indian penal code to prevent such ceremonies for prisoners. But the clinching evidence that Yashpal was a police informer was provided by Dharmendra Gaud, director of intelligence in British-Indian administration. Based on the intelligence files he could access in his professional capacity, he had named Yashpal as one of the men who passed on information about Azad’s whereabouts on the day of the fateful encounter [10]. In addition, Gaud had produced the following intelligence correspondence in his book (p. 195, [10]) written by F. R. Stockwell, S.P.S.D. to Central Intelligence Officer, E. Walsh, I. P. on 10 March, 1947: “We have three most important sources in the RSPI/CPI, Muslim League and the AICC. They are being handled separately by the senior officers of this branch. Yashpal, the defunct-HSRA leader, who covers both the RSPI and the CPI, is being handed over to you by Nasir Khan in the first instance. Yashpal’s brief history is as under for your immediate guidance: Is a Punjabi Hindu from Ferosepore. Age 44 years in 1947. Got early education in Western U.P. and then post-matric at Lahore, where he came in contact with the revolutionaries and terrorists. Casually supplied valuable information to the department in 1930-31. Imprisonment – 1932-38. Was again won over in 1941 and got several CPI and other absconders arrested with arms and ammunition, printing machines and objectionable literature. Is a loyal and faithful fellow. The other two hail from Saharanpur and Allahabad respectively. They may take some more time.’’ p. 195, [10]. Yashpal was never investigated in free India for treason. He was instead allowed to flourish in a literary career, and was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1976 and a Sahitya academy award in 1970 – a bulk of such awardees were Nehru-Gandhi family loyalists. Equally pertinent, the identity of the “most important’’ source who hailed from Allahabad and covered AICC (consider the sequence of presentation) was guarded in the above correspondence. Justice demands that India identifies the concerned individual and tries him for treason even posthumously.
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