League’s composition as a party now dominated by Muslim zamindars
whose main strength lay in the United Provinces (Muslims were a
minority there) and was resented by Muslims in Bengal, where they were
a majority, although a majority comprising mostly poor peasants. The
assumption behind the Lucknow Pact was, of course, that elite groups
would agree among themselves on what to demand from the government,
unproblematically arrogating to themselves the right to represent ordinary
people.
The Nehrus supported both Home Rule Leagues, though for reasons of
personal connections were closer to Annie Besant’s league. Tilak’s rival
league was more radical, demanding that a concrete date be named for the
granting of self-rule (still defined as self-rule within the Empire). Besant’s
league utilised the organisational network of the Theosophical Society
both for agitational purposes and in order to draw in the intelligentsia.
Motilal Nehru joined Besant’s league as a response to the repression of the
movement by the government (Besant herself was interned in June 1917)
and – in accordance with his status – became president of its Allahabad
branch, even as many of his fellow Moderates dropped out of the move-
ment. Jawaharlal campaigned for Besant’s Home Rule League, but was
more sympathetic politically to the Tilak league. This was a time of
emotive nationalism. ‘My vague socialist ideas of college days,’ Nehru
wrote, ‘[had] sunk into the background’: the inspirational moments he
remembered from the war years were the Easter Rising in Ireland, with
Roger Casement’s speech at his trial in June 1916 seemingly describing
‘exactly how a member of a subject nation should feel’.^4
Life for the Nehrus was however not substantially disrupted by this
burst of political activity. In February 1916, Jawaharlal’s long-awaited
marriage took place, an event to which he had a traumatic relationship –
several years later he could still only refer to it in a somewhat abrupt,
awkward and embarrassed way, giving the event just two lines in his
autobiography.^5
Meanwhile, in 1915, some interest was aroused in India at the return
to India of a man called Gandhi, fresh from his political victory over
General Smuts on the matter of better treatment of Indians in South
Africa. Gandhi knew Gopal Krishna Gokhale, one of the leading intellects
of the Moderate group and of the Indian nationalist movement, and had
stayed with him in the winter of 1901–2 in Calcutta. On his return to
India, in 1915, Gandhi clearly had intentions of joining politics in India,32 THE YOUNG GANDHIAN