History Recalled
By Mahadev Desai*
(London Newsletter, Young India)
Some will say the reception at Buckingham Palace (On November 5, 1931) was an important event. Well, with all respect to Their Majesties, I cannot say so. Do these receptions mean anything? Do their Majesties meet people in the real sense of the term? Do they transact any business? Can they? Or is it not more or less like a pantomime show? And yet, someone will say, Gandhiji went there. Why did he? If it were so meaningless, why did he not abstain from it?
Also read: History Recalled: The late Munshi Premchand
Shall I try to give the readers an inkling of his state of mind? He described it at the Friends’ meeting. “I am here,” he said, “in an embarrassing position. I have come as the guest of this nation and not as the elected representative of my own nation. I must, therefore, walk warily and I cannot tell you how warily I am walking. Do you think I relished the Prime Minister’s minority speech in the Minorities’ Committee? I would have repudiated it there and then, but I sat mum. I came home and wrote a letter of gentle reproach. And now, this week I am faced with a moral problem. I have an invitation to attend His Majesty’s reception. I am feeling so heart-sick and sore over the happenings in India that I have no heart in attending such functions, and if I had come in my own right I should not have hesitated to come to a decision. But, as I am a guest, I am hesitating; I can do nothing hastily. I have every moment to consider the morality of the thing and not the legality.”
And, it is the morality of the thing that decided him to go, and when he did so, he wrote a courteous letter to the Lord Chamberlain thanking him for the invitation and intimating to him that he and his companion (Mahadev Desai, who had also been invited) would attend the reception in their usual dress. He usually excuses himself from all social functions, but he had to make an exception in favour of this as in some others, as he would do nothing which would be regarded in the nature of a discourtesy. He would not refrain from doing anything that might be turned against him.
*Mahadev Desai was an eminent freedom fighter and Mahatma Gandhi’s personal secretary; article courtesy his grandson, Nachiketa Desai
