[Note: This interview was published in 2024 on rediff.com. We are republishing it in GG’s honour and memory.]
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[Dr G G Parikh, or GG as he’s known, belongs to a disappearing species: Not only is he a freedom fighter who went to jail, but he continues to live out his Gandhian beliefs.
On December 30, 2023, GG turns 100, and such is his popularity that his supporters have had to arrange two celebrations, one in Mumbai, and the other in Tara, Panvel at the Yusuf Meherally Centre, which he has been running for the last 63 years.
The lanky, bearded figure has been a familiar face at street protests specially since 2014. The Mumbai police covered themselves with glory this year when they stopped this Quit India veteran on August 9 as he was about to start on the peace march to the August Kranti Maidan that he organises every year to commemorate the 1942 movement. Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde was to be at the maidan at the same time, so how could a freedom fighter share space with the current head of government?
GG was the chief guest at the RedInk Awards ceremony held on December 2 in Mumbai. He started his speech with the words “I’ve sleepwalked into this event”, and went on to wonder what the organisers were thinking when they invited him, only to answer this himself in his typical self-deprecating fashion: “I am almost 100 and I’m one of the few freedom fighters left who’s still active. This rare combination must have worked with the organisers.” For the winners, it was a rare honour to receive their award from one who had gone to jail for freedom.
In a long interview with Jyoti Punwani, the freedom fighter spoke about his experiences during the freedom movement, his work at the Yusuf Meherally Centre and life as a Gandhian Socialist.]
Part I: ‘Those days, ‘jail-returned’ was like ‘foreign-returned’, something to aspire for’
Jyoti Punwani: What inspired you to join the freedom movement?
G.G. Parekh: Thanks to the atmosphere at home, on both my mother’s and my father’s side, we were introduced to the freedom movement from childhood. I got a chance when I was just 8 years old to get a darshan of Gandhiji in his kutir. He put his hand on my head and blessed me. Whenever he came to Kanpur, I would go to get his darshan.
When I was just a student, I decided I’ll do what I can for freedom. Since in those days going to jail, and even taking a lathi or bullet was something that was talked about, people of my age started preparing themselves for jail.
Secondly, in Kanpur, Bhagat Singh and Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi (the freedom fighter-editor who was killed in 1931 while trying to stop a communal riot in Kanpur), were talked about a lot. Without understanding much, youngsters started thinking of emulating them, of fighting for freedom.
Alongside these ideas, the idea of communal harmony became important in my life. A small incident took place which left a big impact. While returning to my school in Dausa where my father was posted, I stopped at a classmate’s home, who happened to be Muslim. The next day, I was slapped by my teacher for this. Interestingly, my parents didn’t say anything. This stayed in my mind.
JP: How did you land up in jail?
GG: The AICC meeting took place in Mumbai on August 7, 8 and 9, 1942. I was then a student at the St Xavier’s college and staying in its hostel.
I attended the meeting, saw the flag being hoisted by Aruna Asif Ali and the police trying to prevent it. That was the first time tear gas was used in India. We managed to get out with handkerchiefs on our faces.
The next day, some of us decided to close down our college in protest and we started picketing at the college gates to stop students from entering. When that was a success, we thought why not stop trains from running. So we went to Churchgate station. There I got arrested.
JP: You were not afraid when you decided to stop trains?
GG: Gandhi had given the call ‘Do or Die’. And with all the leaders arrested, you had to be your own leader. Besides, the decision to stop trains was spontaneous, spurred by our success at picketing. We were infused with the spirit of ‘Quit India’.
The funny thing was that at the police station, the officer thought I was the leader of the group, though I was not. I became somebody only because I went to jail!
That realisation came when I came out of jail and students started looking at me differently. Till then, I was just a lean, tall and ugly student, so this was a new experience. In those days, ‘jail-returned’ was like ‘foreign-returned’, something to aspire for.
In this way, some accidents in my life contributed to my becoming what I have.
JP: How did your parents react to your arrest?
GG: My father accepted it; my mother was unhappy.
JP: After you were released, did you continue with your political activity?
GG: In jail, some of us such as Dinkar Sakrikar, Prabhakar Kunte, under the guidance of Congress Socialists and trade unionists such as G L Mapara, G D Ambekar and Raja Kulkarni, used to discuss what we should do after our release.
We decided three things. By then we had fallen out with the Communists, so we decided: i. We’ll either capture the All India Students Federation, which was controlled by the Communists, or set up an alternate body; ii. The All India Trade Union Congress was already captured by the Communists, so we needed to set up a nationalist trade union movement; and iii. We needed an alternate to IPTA (the Indian People’s Theatre Association). Later Rohit Dave, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (in Delhi) and some others set up the Indian National Theatre (INT).
When we came out, all the top Congress leaders were in jail, so by default, we became the BPCC (Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee). So whatever happened in the movement was done by us. Be it the Bombay Dock explosion (1944) or the (1946) RIN mutiny — we were active. The people supported us. We ran a number of relief camps after the dock explosion. Our student body soon became an all-India body: The All India Students Congress.
Because we got a chance to run the movement without interference of the top leadership, we became somebody! We had an advantage — there was a pro-freedom movement atmosphere in Mumbai. So we were respected and we could succeed in whatever we tried to do.
JP: Was your wife part of the freedom movement too?
GG: Yes, she was in Thane jail during the 1942 movement, I was in Worli temporary jail.
My wife got admission into the JJ school of Art and later Santiniketan. She got admission into Santiniketan because of Yusuf Meherally, a founder member of the Congress Socialist Party.
JP: What was Yusuf Meherally like? Not too much is known about him.
GG: Meherally was a colourful personality, respected by all. He was a leader of students, known all over India. ‘Simon Go Back’ and ‘Quit India’ were slogans coined by him. When he came to know the details about the Simon Commission’s arrival (1928), he and his friends dressed up as coolies and as the steamer came into the docks, they raised black flags and shouted ‘Simon Go Back’.
There was nothing we couldn’t get done in his name. The Indian Merchant’s Chamber, Birla Matushri — we never had to pay for their use, because of him. Everyone was his friend. There was no college hall in Bombay that wasn’t available to us; all artists were willing to come on our platform thanks to Yusuf Meherally.
He was a good speaker, a hard worker, and a friendly person who helped everyone.
JP: You named your Centre in Mumbai and Tara after him. Did that create any problems later, since he remained a forgotten freedom fighter?
GG: Yusuf Meherally died in 1950, at the age of 47. JP would always tell S M Joshi, we must do something in his memory. We tried to commemorate Socialists, but failed to commemorate Socialists belonging to the minorities.
With the linguistic reorganisation of states, Socialists had become divided. There was a desire to create a platform to come together. So we thought we should create one named after him.
Of course, it helped that he was very popular across ideologies, so we knew that if we worked in his name, even those who didn’t agree with us would get attracted.
After the demolition of the Babri Masjid, we took out a communal harmony yatra in his name in Gujarat and parts of Maharashtra. We got a very good response.
You know, in the Yusuf Meherally Centre’s constitution it’s written: Anything can change, but not the name of the Centre! And we’re running it in 10 states.
Part II: ‘Unity in diversity has helped us survive’
[In the second part of the interview, he talks about life after Independence, his work at the Yusuf Meherally Centre and his experiences during the Emergency.]
JP: How long did the euphoria of Independence last, before disillusionment set in?
GG: Our role during the freedom movement was so great that the euphoria remained a long time.
At the same time, personally I felt the leadership betrayed Gandhi. We had been told that after Independence, rulers would be the servants of the public. But they started imitating the British. That was the first betrayal.
It’s not that we turned anti-Nehru, but we felt bad that Gandhi was forgotten so soon.
JP: Even the development model was different from what Gandhi wanted. Nehru had always been in favour of big industry, unlike Gandhi.
GG: At that time, Socialists were not opposed to industrialisation. For us, ownership was important. We assumed that as long as industries are nationalised, things will automatically change. History was on our side, we thought, samaajwaad annewala hai. Agriculture, industry, then the service sector — these were the stages of development according to Socialism too.
What we forgot was that this was not a God-given rule, but a man-made one. It could be changed had we had the will. In the tussle between will and matter, matter prevailed, while for Gandhi, will always prevailed.
We realised that just because ownership changes, it doesn’t mean that man also changes. That’s one of the reasons I concluded that Gandhi’s method — of changing people — was correct.
JP: But you did try an alternate model of development at the Yusuf Meherally Centre at Tara.
GG: At the Centre, we studied urbanisation and concluded that in the Third World, the problems of the city could only be solved in the hinterland. 50% of the urban population in all Third World countries live in slums, so you have to find a way that slums don’t come into being.
But the type of urbanism that was being promoted to build a market for the West would never allow cities to be slum-free, hence rural development was a must.
We realised that the pattern of economic development adopted by us would not generate jobs for rural people. We had to go back to Gandhi; deploy local resources.
At Tara, we experimented a lot. We promoted alternate building materials — at that time, Laurie Baker was very popular; we tried to solve the problems of small and marginal farmers. We got S A Dabholkar (educationist and agriculture researcher) to help. A new experiment was done to enable a farmer owning just one-fourth acre of land to live a decent life. We started organic farming.
We set up a dairy. Realising it was too expensive to maintain exotic breeds of cattle, we experimented to find out whether a dairy could be kept going with the help of cow dung. We implemented `waste to wealth’ and set up a bio gas plant.
We did all this decades ago!
For non-farm employees, we tried to see if village industries could work. But markets for the goods produced became a problem.
JP: Were funds a problem?
GG: Initially, we thought we’d take just enough to run the place. That was Gandhi’s influence on us.
Later, we started collecting more funds, but without compromising. A German who used to help us offered to become a donor if we stopped village industries. That’s when we decided we’d rather forego his help and raise our own income.
JP: Was there any resistance from the villagers to you town people coming there?
GG: Not resistance, but we encountered problems.
There were a lot of bonded labourers when we started work. We worked with them, but that antagonised the farmers for whom they worked.
We worked among women. We trained 100 women for a year, telling them you need to be self-sufficient. But when we started a small industry, only 9 of them signed up and then only 3 came!
Our experiment trying to get Adivasi workers to stop working long hours at brick kilns and instead, work for us, also didn’t quite work out. We finally realised that we shouldn’t work for a section, but for everybody.
Then there were cultural practices of the villagers. To get over them was hard work. We realised that rural society is divided, but becomes one against outsiders. To get acceptance for our urban volunteers required a lot of effort.
But we kept learning. For instance, the collector gave us a dilapidated dharamshala for medical work. We took it, but in the name of the panchayat. We decided that whatever we do, the ownership should be local. That helped.
Today we’ve become part of the villagers. We run a free school, and students are picked up from home and dropped back in our bus. We run a free hostel for Adivasi girls, one of the best in Maharashtra. Our hospital is heavily subsidized.
We have also been running Sagar Shalas on the coast for children of salt pan workers and fisherfolk.
JP: That’s a lot!
GG: Yes, but our weakness is not being able to function as an advocacy group. We haven’t been able to promote the idea that people must pressurise the government to do all this, that panchayats must provide free education, that it’s the duty of the government to provide subsidised housing and free health care.
We’re doing what the government should be doing. We’ve failed to create that spirit in the beneficiaries to demand this of the government.
JP: Has the government helped at all?
GG: When Sharad Pawar was CM, he sanctioned a 12 lakh grant for our hospital. We used to get a grant for school expenditure, but that stopped.
JP: You went to jail during the Emergency too. How was that experience different from your 1942 jail stint?
GG: During the Emergency, when the police came to arrest me, I found they had every type of information about what I’d been doing.
That’s when I realised the difference.
In 1942, people would get beaten but not give out anything. Jagdish Ajmera (the Socialist who later became leader of the Railwaymen’s Federation) ended up with a limp because despite the police beatings, he didn’t reveal what he was doing.
But in the resistance to the Emergency, that sort of character wasn’t there.
In the freedom movement, you had to be mentally prepared to go to jail. You had to fight for everything, face a lot of hardship, even beatings. Yet, our morale remained high.
So many people had gone to jail in the 1930s. We knew their experiences. They had told us about the 3rd degree methods used by the police. So we were mentally prepared to get beaten but not answer the police’s questions.
People had forgotten this spirit in the JP movement. That training wasn’t there. A few did have the necessary character, such as Mrinal Gore.
Still, I found the Socialists were better prepared to face jail than the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). The RSS kept on apologising.
(Madhukar Dattatreya ‘Balasaheb’) Deoras (RSS Sarsangchalak from 1973 to 1994) was with me in Yerwada jail then. I sensed that he and the RSS people had not anticipated going to jail. Baahar kaise bhi jaana hai, (we have to get out anyhow) that was the thought in their minds always.
I don’t think they read anything in jail beyond the Gita, while we read everything. Professor G P Pradhan (editor of the Socialist magazine Sadhana and English professor in Ferguson College) would take classes on all kinds of topics.
JP: How were you treated in jail?
GG: In Yerwada, because we were away from Delhi, the fear of Indira Gandhi was less. So the jail officials were sympathetic. Actually even in 1942, the officers were pro-freedom but they had to do certain things as part of their job.
JP: The Jayaprakash Narayan movement is blamed for bringing the RSS into the mainstream.
GG: JP sincerely thought he could change them. People forget that earlier, he had tried to change dacoits (200 dacoits, including those carrying rewards on their heads, surrendered thanks to his persuasion in 1972) and Naga militants. But he failed in changing the RSS.
JP: The way communal thinking has surfaced today, makes us wonder whether not enough attention was paid to countering it post-Independence.
GG: Because of the influence of Marx, we believed that religion was an opium. We neglected the importance of religion in changing man, and also of reformists who worked hard to change man.
One of the main aims of the Yusuf Meherally Centre was to promote communal harmony. We called it the unfinished task of the freedom movement.
But we made one mistake — in a plural society, the leadership must also be plural. The face of every institution in a plural society should represent plurality. Socialist institutions didn’t throw up a composite leadership. No political party succeeded in doing so either.
Gandhi gave us this mantra — unity in diversity, but we didn’t take it to its logical end. This mantra has helped us survive and it is this the BJP is trying to change.
Where we have failed is in being able to connect with Hindus; and in convincing Muslims to talk of communities other than their own. Whether majority or minority — both must work for all.
Nehru did try to work towards communal harmony, so did the Socialists. In communal riots, the role of Socialists wasn’t too bad. (Ram Manohar) Lohia was there with Gandhi in Kolkata.
Part III: ‘Today is Worse Than British Times’
[In the third and concluding part of the interview with Jyoti Punwani, Quit India veteran Dr G G Parikh dissects the exceptional qualities as well as the failures of the Socialists, with whom he spent his life; analyses why he considers Gandhian thought as most relevant; and talks about how to come out of the “dark night” in which the country finds itself today.]
JP: We spoke of communal feelings being on the rise. Even in matters of caste, people are far more intolerant today, compared to earlier? Why is that?
GG: When Socialists started defining their doctrine, they spoke of a casteless and classless society. By then, the reality of caste had started sinking in. Those suppressed for centuries had to be uplifted; not merely the SCs and STs, but also the other so-called lower castes.
The realisation also dawned that the so-called upper castes had cornered the maximum land share, and therefore some sort of positive action was necessary. Reservations had to be extended to the OBCs.
Once this thought came into their minds, two things happened:
- Socialists realised the danger that this kind of thinking presented to the objective of creating a casteless society. Hence (Ram Manohar) Lohia, apart from focusing on caste, said we must focus on women across castes.
- Gradually, movements that promoted inter-caste marriages increased. We hoped these could create a new class of citizens who would be casteless, and thereby provide a balance to the heightened caste consciousness brought in by reservations.
This work would have gone on, but then Socialists started accepting that to bring social change, power was necessary. That shifted the emphasis, resulting in a dilution in Socialist thinking and character.
All over India there were Socialist cadres with excellent character, scrupulously honest, those who never used power for personal gain. But fighting elections affected their character. The Socialist and democratic character which they were trying to develop in their cadre got short circuited.
Power became so important that all else was neglected, even Vinoba Bhave’s experiment, Bhoodan, wherein he got more land freed than under the Zamindari Abolition Act. Only JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) and a few others continued that movement.
Everyone knows power corrupts, but we did not realise the extent to which it does, despite all our readings of history. We had seen the Communists in the USSR became like the czar. Yet, gaining power became so important that our ideology got diluted, and manipulating castes to get power became more important for some leaders who came from intermediate castes.
Socialists forgot that Gandhi was never in power, yet he managed to change so many.
JP: Wasn’t the Rashtra Seva Dal (the Socialists’ youth wing) supposed to counter both casteism and communalism?
GG: It was a sort of counter to the RSS. It created a cadre which promoted inter-religious and inter-caste marriages. In fact, this was the only body that did so. This had happened during the freedom movement too, but it was much more in the Dal. Almost everyone there married outside their caste.
But the split in the Socialist movement affected the Dal. Both factions tried to control it. So though the cadres remained casteless they could not focus on spreading their ideas.
The cadres are still casteless; I think the Rashtra Seva Dal cadre is far better than those of other organisations.
JP: Later, didn’t the JP movement also try to eradicate caste identity among its participants?
GG: Yes, the movement consciously made an effort to do so, and succeeded. But many of those who joined it became interested in power, hence the idealism of the movement gave way to the opportunism of elections.
Even now, a large number of people are committed to JP’s ideas. But the energy has reduced, and most of the cadre have become some sort of intellectuals promoting the ideology but not going to the masses. This is true of Communist cadre too.
Only the RSS goes to the people all the time.
JP: You think the Rashtra Seva Dal can be revived? Or a group like it can be set up?
GG: It can. In the early period, the objective was freedom from the British and also social evils, thanks to Mahatma Gandhi. Today, all the activists we have are either Communists or Socialists or Gandhians. With these kinds of people available, a social movement can be revived.
But now if we want to revive it, the organisation must talk of the environment. If it gets converted to a green movement, the younger generation would get attracted.
Unfortunately the Socialists are not giving that much importance to global warming. The solutions lie in Gandhian thinking, in swadeshi, in using minimum resources.
JP: This year, you were stopped from proceeding towards August Kranti Maidan on August 9. Has this happened before?
GG: Once, (freedom fighter and Gandhian) Ushaben Mehta, Pramila Dandavate, Mrinal Gore and I were stopped at Nana Chowk. So we simply sat down there. Later, some ministers came to persuade us to give up our dharna.
Our 1942 group (who were in jail during the Quit India movement), including (journalist) Dinkar Sakrikar, Prabhakar Kunte, Rohit Dave and I, had decided that on August 9 and January 30 every year, we’d take out a silent march (to commemorate the Quit India movement and Gandhi’s assassination). Somewhere, the January 30 march was given up, but August 9 is done till today.
JP: This time, did anyone from the government contact you to apologise for the police preventing you from the march?
GG: No.
JP: Do you think today is worse than the Emergency?
GG: Yes. Worse than British times even. The British had some conscience. Gandhi was kept alive, provided a phone, allowed to travel.
Even Indira Gandhi did not arrest (senior Socialist leaders) N G Goray, S M Joshi. That meant she always intended to bring back democracy.
Today, the BJP is using power in such a manner that they not only crush the Opposition, but even their own supporters can’t rebel.
JP: At the RedInk awards, you described the current time as ‘a dark night’. Yet you also said you haven’t lost hope, that the people still believe in the ideas of Gandhi and the freedom movement, Where’s the evidence of this?
GG: The terrible thing today is that those who never accepted the dawn of freedom, or the Preamble which says that everyone is equal, are now in power. Yet, despite all their efforts, only 40% of the people are supporting them. The rest are still resisting.
In such a situation we have to emphasise the ideas of the freedom movement and work hard to see they are accepted. While doing so, we must remember our socialist values: Free education, subsidised housing, free medical care. employment being more important than GDP…
The people’s resistance can get galvanised only if we go to the masses with the issue of global warming. In Mumbai, we can easily say the city is being built for motorists alone. We will then get the support of a lot of people. Unfortunately, we’re not using that kind of thinking.
Instead, parties are using soft Hindutva. In Nehru’s days, there was no such thing. If you believe in a plural society, you should make it clear.
JP: You interacted with all streams of the freedom movement, but finally, you remained a Gandhian. Why?
GG: In jail, where I was probably the youngest and hence looked after very well by everyone, I got introduced to many things. I started reading Marx, Freud… Like everyone of my age, I became some sort of fan of Marx.
The Communists had concentrated their student activity in St Xavier’s and I used to sell the Communist Party weekly called Imperialist War. But after the party changed its stand on the war (World War II), they changed the name of the weekly to People’s War. I got confused and also disillusioned.
By then I had also started reading what was happening with the Left in Europe. I realised in quite a few ways, their actions went against Marxist thinking. The first was the characterisation of WWII as a ‘people’s war’.
Secondly, they didn’t support the freedom movement. They opposed the Quit India movement because they wanted the Congress to support the war effort.
But that wasn’t the only thing. As I started reading more and more, I came to the conclusion that the Marxist or Anglo Saxon model of relationship between employer and employee was unlikely to yield the type of world we aspired to.
I was attracted to the Gandhian trade union model. The Champaran struggle inspired me, as did the Ahmedabad textile strike.
I realised Gandhian thinking had two aspects. It encouraged people to fight for their rights, but it also tried to change the oppressor. The relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed was mediated at two levels: The oppressed had to assert themselves, but the oppressor had to change too.
Much later, I found that if you want a modern ideal world, the possibility of realising it lay more in Gandhian than Marxist or even Socialist thought, (barring a few individuals such as Acharya Narendra Dev or JP).
JP: Why?
GG: I saw how Socialists fared after Independence: Sane Guruji committed suicide in 1950 out of disillusionment; Achyut Patwardhan whom I admired, left the movement; and JP, for many reasons, left the Socialist movement and joined Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement.
The Socialists were a fine group of people. Committed to changing both the system and man, they left everything for the cause. But they lacked a democratic character.
We were good Socialists, but not good democrats. Socialists, when they disagree, do not accept the majority decisions of the party. They split the party. This happened so many times.
You should be willing to accept the majority view. You can leave, but don’t split the party. That’s why I admire Madhu Dandavate and Rohit Dave. Though many a time they were in a minority, they accepted the majority decision.
The Socialist movement didn’t create the type of leaders that Gandhi created. The irony is that all these Socialists were Gandhi’s creation and all of them, at the end of their lives, went back to his ideology.
[Jyoti Punwani is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist who writes on communalism, human rights and the media. Courtesy: Rediff.com.]
