Discontent was brewing within the Congress and outside at the manner in which civil disobedience was terminated and at the direction in which the Congress was being led. Though respectful to Gandhi, groups like the CSP had emerged which spoke in voices not pleasant to the ears of Gandhi and his associates. Wooing the workers and peasants and harping on class contradictions were particularly distasteful and seemed subversive of the existing social order. Besides, Gandhi could anticipate that, with the pursuit of constitutional politics, the Congress would be invariably an arena of struggle between individuals and groups for pelf, power and patronage.
Gandhi felt the need for two things at this moment when he was bringing about important changes in Congress politics. First, there was the need for disciplining the Congress elements which struck a discordant note. Second, when the battle for positions and privileges would be hot, he might appear to be above the battle.
So, after consulting Rajagopalachari, Patel and other associates, Gandhi decided to withdraw into the background leaving his tough lieutenants like Patel to crush all dissent -- political and personal -- with his blessings and assuring them that his services would always be at their disposal.(115) Welcoming this decision, Patel said in a statement: "Outside the Congress, he [Gandhi] will be more powerful and more helpful to the Congress."(116) At a public meeting in Ahmedabad, Patel warned that, unlike Gandhi, he "would deal toughly with anyone who came in his way and tried to undo what Congress had done".(117)
It was a shrewd move: the policy would be Gandhi's, every step the Congress was to take would be determined by him. Yet he would not be a member of the Congress and formally responsible for the policies and measures. Whenever some questions uncomfortable for him would arise, for instance, when Jinnah asked him for a categorical answer on the communal issue, he could by-pass it, claiming that he was not even a four-anna member of the Congress. In a press statement, Gandhi announced in about mid-September 1934 that he had agreed with the Working Committee and the Parliamentary Board "that it might be safer for me to leave the Congress, if at all, after the forthcoming session". Explaining the reasons he said that there were sharp differences between him and many Congressmen on several issues -- the question of khadi, the formation of the Parliamentary Board, the formation of the CSP, the policy towards the native states, non-violence and so on. To test the loyalty of Congressmen to his ideals, he proposed to place before the next Congress session certain resolutions which were all intended to amend the Congress constitution and concentrate all powers in the Working Committee, that is, himself.(118)
While announcing his intention to leave the Congress, if Congress members did not prove sufficiently loyal, Gandhi saw to it that one of his most trusted lieutenants, Rajendra Prasad, succeeded Patel as president of the Congress for the next year. It was Gandhi who piloted the revised Congress constitution through the Bombay session. One of his proposals -- that the words `legitimate and peaceful' in the Congress `creed' should be replaced by `truth and non-violence' -- was referred to the provincial committees and the other amendments were adopted.
Besides making spinning obligatory for a Congress member, Gandhi made the habitual wearing of wholly hand-spun and hand-woven khadi an essential qualification for membership of an elected Congress Committee.
Some of the other amendments empowered the Working Committee to de-recognize elected provincial and subordinate Congress Committees, if they failed to comply "with all the conditions laid down in this [amended] constitution or any rules framed thereunder by the Working Committee", and authorized the latter to form new provincial committees. Another amendment empowered the Working Committee "to frame rules and issue instructions in matters not provided for in the constitution". By another amendment the President was authorized to select the members of the Working Committee, including secretaries and treasurers, from among the delegates to the Congress session. Obviously this amended constitution violated all democratic norms. Such an important organizational matter like dissolution of a provincial or subordinate committee and formation of a new one in its place depended on the Working Committee, not on the AICC, nor was the decision subject to ratification by the AICC or the next Congress session. Previously, half of the members of the Working Committee were elected by the AICC and half nominated by the president. The amended constitution dispensed with all election: all the members were to be the nominees of the president. And how was the president selected in actual practice? Before and after the amended constitution was adopted, the president was actually Gandhi's nominee. Rajendra Prasad, who became president in 1934, was also his nominee.(119) His prerogative to choose the president remained though he left the Congress after the revised constitution was adopted at the Bombay Congress. Only once his selection of the Congress president -- of Pattabhi Sitaramayya in 1939 -- was successfully challenged by Subhas Bose, but it proved a Pyrrhic victory for Bose. He had to pay the price by being hounded out of the Congress.
The amended constitution concentrated all powers in the hands of one man -- Gandhi -- though he was no longer a four-anna member of the Congress. It was he who selected the president and, through the president, the members of the Working Committee,(120) which was endowed with all arbitrary powers. Virtually, he became the supreme extra-constitutional authority after his so-called retirement from the Congress. Few people who knew Gandhi were fooled by his manoeuvre. "Particular leaders", writes Shankardass, "condemned the move towards excessive centralization of Congress; they saw Gandhi's retirement as a ploy to make Congress disagreeable for non-Gandhiites and regarded the constitutional changes as harmful to the Congress mass character (criticisms of Madan Mohan Malaviya, Swami Sahajanand, Acharya Narendra Dev and Satyamurthi in The Leader, 29 October 1934; Congress Socialist, 29 Sept. 1934; Bombay Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1934)."(121) In a letter to the provincial governments, the chief secretary to the Government of India, Hallett, wrote:
"By freeing himself from Congress bodies Gandhi has full power to issue a `directive' whenever he thinks fit, without any reference to anyone else."(122)
Before his so-called withdrawal from the Congress Gandhi added one more organization to the cluster of organizations which were under his sole control. On 24 October 1934 he moved a resolution at the Subjects Committee meeting during the Congress session, which stated that "Mr J.C. Kumarappa is hereby authorized to form under the advice and guidance of Mr Gandhi an association called the All India Village Industries Association as part of the activities of the Congress". Though set up by the Congress, it would be independent of the Congress like the Gandhi Seva Sangh, the All India Spinners Association, the Harijan Sevak Sangh, the Hindustani Talimi Sangh and more such organizations to be set up later with their all-India network of branches staffed by wholetime workers. They were intended to establish grassroots contact with the people and work to eliminate any chances of a revolutionary upheaval. As Gandhi told Guy Wint on 1 April 1939, he regarded "the revolt of the younger intelligentsia" and "the labour unrest" as dangers but "the agrarian unrest is a much greater danger", which, he believed, "is bound to be disciplined" provided "the Congress retains non-violence" and produced "the real type of workers for the villages".(123)
Most of his organizations were intended "to cope with" the unrest arising out of the appalling misery and oppression of the peasantry and get it "disciplined" with his weapon of non-violence. He was interested in preserving the existing social order, not in abolishing it. He hoped that the meagre palliatives that these organizations would offer to some rural people and the expectations that they would rouse would reduce the sense of iniquity and minimize class conflict. These organizations were sometimes started and always funded mainly by the big bourgeois -- Jamnalal Bajaj, the Birla brothers and so on. These organizations under the sole control of Gandhi constituted a formidable apparatus in his hands: their executive committees and office-bearers were selected by him and they enjoyed no internal democracy. "If you will be soldiers in my army", said Gandhi to his `constructive' workers, "understand that there is no room for democracy in that organization. The army may be a part of a democratic organization, but there can be no democracy in it...as there is none in our various organizations -- All India Spinners Association, All India Village Industries Association, and so on. In an army, the General's word is law, and his conditions cannot be relaxed."(124)