Book Club, one of his initiatives (modelled on the Left Book Club
in Britain, of which he was a member), proposed to provide ‘socialist
classics’ suitably ‘abridged’ for Indian readers.^25 (Nehru’s membership of
the Left Book Club was more notional than real; many of its books did
not get to him due to Indian censorship regulations that empowered
Customs to confiscate books that were deemed subversive: ‘apparently Mr
Gollancz’s [the publisher’s] name is not liked by the customs officials
in India’).^26
In 1936, Jawaharlal, once again Congress president, made further
radical statements of a socialist nature, alarming a number of right wing
Congressmen and businessmen, who came out in the press against his
preaching of ‘class hatred’. Gandhi, who had once again been instrumental
in elevating Jawaharlal to the presidency, calmed them down, thereby
averting a major crisis in Congress unity, pointing out that the Working
Committee was dominated by ‘Gandhians’, and that Nehru continued to
be bound by the principles accepted by the Congress and by the office
to which he had been elected. Gandhi was firmly of the belief that the
best way to control Jawaharlal’s radicalism was to imprison him within
the Congress’s higher ranks. This would confine his activities to words.
Nor did Gandhi necessarily take his political commitment very seriously.
‘I would,’ he wrote to the Quaker, Agatha Harrison, one of the coordi-
nators of the case for Indian independence in Britain, ‘strain every nerve
to prevent a class war. So would he, I expect. But he does not believe it to
be possible to avoid it. I believe it to be perfectly possible if my method
is accepted.’^27
Whether or not Gandhi was correct in attributing to Nehru a fear
of actual class war, he was correct in one respect. Jawaharlal had a remark-
able capacity to sacrifice his own professed political convictions for the
sake of consensus and compromise. The Congress Socialists’ dependence
on him to give them a voice with the so-called ‘Congress High Command’
was misplaced, as his commitment to party unity completely overrode
his commitment to the left. The pivotal role in the Congress continued
to be played by Gandhi, who had apparently retired from public life
to concentrate on ‘constructive work’ in the villages. The right’s great
respect – and need – for Gandhi, the left’s for Nehru, Nehru’s unwill-
ingness to take steps that might bring about an open conflict with Gandhi,
and Gandhi’s intermediary role became the basis of Congress’s func-
tional unity. Indian business interests, reassured by Gandhi, decided they
‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39 83