I bought Jawaharlal Nehru’s autobiography 10 years ago on a visit to Rajghat, but started reading it only the night when Kanhaiya was beaten up in court. I read only a chapter or two a day, and yesterday afternoon, I was on Chapter 16: An Interlude at Nabha. It’s a startling account; makes you wonder whether India has moved at all in these 93 years.
In 1923, Nehru, AT Gidwani and K Santanum visited Jaito in Nabha, Punjab to witness a peaceful chain protest by Sikhs. The Sikhs used to come in batches called jatthas. Each jattha was beaten up by police and bundled away in carts. But another came to take its place.
When Nehru and his companions arrived, the British administrator of the state ordered them not to enter Nabha (they were already inside), and if they had entered, to leave immediately (not possible, there was no train at that hour). So they were arrested for breach of the administrator’s order. For a couple of days they remained in an insanitary jail, and then their trial started.
Late one evening, they were taken to a different court room. “I inquired where we were and what was happening. I was informed that it was a court-room and we were being tried for conspiracy.”
Nehru writes the more serious charge of conspiracy was trumped up to make an example of them. “It was evidently thought that the maximum sentence for this breach (of order) being only six months was not enough punishment for us and a more serious charge was necessary.”
But the law said a conspiracy needed to have at least four conspirators, “so a fourth man, who had absolutely nothing to do with us, was arrested and put on his trial with us. This unhappy man, a Sikh, was not known to us, but we had just seen him in the fields on our way to Jaito.”
Nehru protested that the conspiracy trial had been started without notice and he would have liked to arrange a lawyer. The court told him to choose one in Nabha. “When I suggested I might want some lawyer from outside I was told that this was not permitted under the Nabha rules.”
The government was only trying to intimidate them. The jail superintendent made them an offer on behalf of the administrator: “If we would express our regret and give an undertaking to go away from Nabha, the proceedings against us would be dropped.”
The trial was a farce. “On the last day, when the prosecution case was closed, we handed in our written statements. The first court adjourned and, to our surprise, returned a little later with a bulky judgment written out in Urdu. Obviously this huge judgment could not have been written during the interval… The judgment was not read out; we were merely told that we had been awarded the maximum sentence of six months for breach of the order to leave Nabha territory… In the conspiracy case we were sentenced the same day to either eighteen months or two years, I forget which.”
The trial had been held in complete secrecy. “No newspaperman or outsider was allowed in court. The police did what they pleased, and often ignored the judge or magistrate and casually disobeyed his directions.”
They were sentenced, but, “We did not know what the judgments contained… We asked for copies of the judgments, and were told to apply formally for them.”
That same evening, the administrator “suspended” their sentences, without attaching any conditions. Note, the sentences were merely suspended, not revoked. Nehru never came to know what his sentence said. But his chief worry was that it hung like a sword over him. “For aught I know, these sentences may still be hanging over me, and may take effect whenever the Nabha authorities or the British government so choose.”
What became of the Sikh, their co-conspirator?
“We found out that he was one of the old ‘Komagata Maru’ lot, and he had only recently come out of prison after a long period. The police do not believe in leaving such people out, and so they tacked him on to the trumped-up charge against us.”
Story sounds familiar? Be the change.
