57 Caste, untouchability, and social action: Ibid., pp. 84–88.
58 In reality, the Gandhi: Interview with Babu Vijayanath, Harippad, Jan. 17, 2009. The visit is also summarized in Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 6, pp. 124–25.
59 “He thinks I shall have to appear”: Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 6, p. 88.
60 According to a police report: Ravindran, Eight Furlongs of Freedom, p. 340.
61 In one such clash: Interview with Dr. Babu Vijayanath, Hariippad, Jan. 17, 2009.
62 Hearing of the Mahatma’s: This verse was pointed out to me by M. K. Sanoo and subsequently located by journalists at Malayala Manorama who translated it.
63 Definitely it was Gandhi: Raimon, Selected Documents on the Vaikom Satyagraha, p. 203.
64 K. K. Kochu, a Dalit intellectual: Madhyamam, April 2, 1999.
65 “I only wish”: Interview with K. K. Kochu, Kaduthuruthi, Kottayam district, Jan. 18, 2009.
66 “How many among you”: Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi, vol. 6, pp. 114–15.
67 “Gandhi was sitting cross-legged”: An excellent description, but Mahadev Desai’s contemporaneous diary note makes it clear they reached Alwaye by boat and car. Ibid., p. 118.
68 In his account: Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, pp. 109–10.
CHAPTER 8: HAIL, DELIVERER
1 Discovering they were prepared: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 2, p. 140.
2 In the pointlessness: Ibid., p. 142. Emphasis mine.
3 His reaction to this onset: Ibid., p. 327.
4 “What is one to do”: CWMG, vol. 31, p. 504.
5 He blamed “educated India”: Ibid., p. 369.
6 Next he blamed the British: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 241–42.
7 “The government of India”: CWMG, vol. 32, p. 571.
8 “I am an optimist”: Ibid., vol. 31, p. 504.
9 “appears to be my inaction”: Ibid., p. 368.
10 “I am biding my time”: Brown, Gandhi, p. 213.
11 “Give me blood”: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 261.
12 “given up reading newspapers”: CWMG, vol. 31, p. 554.
13 At a mammoth All Parties Convention: Wells, Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, p. 177.
14 “We are sons of this land”: Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists, p. 189.
15 Within weeks of this rupture: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 2, p. 334. Within two years Muhammad Ali would die in London.
16 “This is the parting”: Philips and Wainwright, Partition of India, p. 279.
17 a younger wife: Ruttie Jinnah was originally a Parsi, a member of a minority composed of Indians of Persian descent who retain their Zoroastrian religion, but converted to Islam before their marriage. On her death, she was buried in a Muslim cemetery with her former husband sobbing at her graveside.
18 Swaraj within a year: Brown, Gandhi, p. 222, draws the parallel to the 1921 campaign. January 26 is still celebrated in India as Republic Day; August 15, the date on which India actually became independent in 1947, is celebrated as Independence Day.
19 “For me there is only”: CWMG, vol. 31, pp. 368–69.
20 “In the present state”: Ibid., vol. 42, p. 382.
21 Civil disobedience, he told Nehru: Brown, Gandhi, p. 235.
22 “next to water and air”: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 303.
23 The viceroy also stuck: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 271–72.
24 “The fire of a great resolve”: As quoted in Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 309.
25 “Hail, Deliverer”: Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 273. Thomas Weber questions whether these words were ever uttered, noting their absence from contemporary accounts and arguing that the quotation first appeared in an article by a British journalist who was actually in Berlin on the day Gandhi reached Dandi. See “Historiography and the Dandi March,” in Gandhi, Gandhism, and the Gandhians.
26 “The last four months in India”: CWMG, vol. 44, p. 468.
27 Gandhi made a sly allusion: Ibid., vol. 48, p. 18.
28 “No living man”: Harold Laski opinion piece in Daily Herald (London), Sept. 11, 1931.
29 “Your Majesty won’t expect”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 127.
30 By the time Ambedkar returned: B. R. Ambedkar, Letters, p. 220.
31 betrothed to him at the age of nine: The marriage apparently took place three years later, when he would have been seventeen and she twelve, although his biographers cannot agree on their ages. Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 20, says he was seventeen; Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 6, says he was fourteen.
32 For an untouchable youth: B. R. Ambedkar, Essential Writings, p. 52.
33 When he sought to study: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 18.
34 So Bhima took: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 4.
35 One of these campaigns: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 74.
36 “When one is spurned”: Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 163.
37 “I am a difficult man”: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 119.
38 “You called me to hear”: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 165.
39 “Gandhiji, I have no homeland”: Ibid., p. 166.
40 “Till I left for England”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 52.
41 “revelatory of the stereotypes”: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 43.
42 The go-betweens who set up: Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 166.
43 Their next meeting, in London: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 43.
44 Maybe Gandhi had been: Zelliot, From Untouchable to Dalit, p. 166.
45 “Who are we to uplift Harijans?”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 53.
46 Drawing the parallel himself: CWMG, vol. 48, p. 224.
47 “Dr. A. always commands”: Ibid., p. 208.
48 “He has a right even to spit”: Ibid., pp. 160–61.
49 “Above all, the Congress represents”: Ibid., p. 16.
50 Three days later: Ibid., p. 34.
51 “I fully represent the claims”: B. R. Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, vol. 3, contains transcripts of the Round Table Conference sessions quoted here. The exchanges between Gandhi and Ambedkar can be found on pp. 661–63 of that volume.
52 “This has been the most humiliating”: Shirer, Gandhi, p. 194, cited in Herman, Gandhi and Churchill, p. 372.
53 “a more ignorant”: Narayan Desai, My Life Is My Message, vol. 3, Satyapath, p. 169.
54 Gandhi claimed to be: B. R. Ambedkar, Letters, p. 215.
55 “Mr. Gandhi made nonsense”: B. R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, p. 275.
56 As the London conference: B. R. Ambedkar, Letters, p. 215.
57 Nehru didn’t go into that: Nehru to S. K. Patil, Nov. 31, 1931, Nehru Memorial Museum archive, AICC Papers, G86/3031.
58 “Gandhi’s Good-Bye Today”: Daily Herald (London), Dec. 5, 1931.
59 Years later George Orwell: George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi,” in A Collection of Essays (Garden City, N.Y., 1954), p. 180.
60 But he was skeptical: Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 248.
61 Pope Pius XI sent his regrets: Nayar, Salt Satyagraha, p. 403; Slade, Spirit’s Pilgrimage, p. 151.
62 “No indeed”: Nayar, Salt Satyagraha, p. 403. Sushila Nayar completed the biography begun by her brother, who seldom signed himself by his full name, Pyarelal Nayar.
63 Before the letter could be mailed: Ibid., p. 405.
64 On January 4, 1932: Ibid., p. 414. The Englishman who describes this scene is the ethnologist Verrier Elwin.
CHAPTER 9: FAST UNTO DEATH
1 “The caste system supported”: Ajoy Bose, Behenji, p. 83.
2 Eventually he concluded: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 7, p. 154.
3 honor killings of daughters and sisters: Jim Yardley, “In India, Caste Honor and Killings Intertwine,” The New York Times, July 9, 2010, p. 1.
4 “I agree that Bapu”: Narayan Desai, My Life Is My Message, vol. 3,
Satyapath, p. 179.
5 “My life is one indivisible whole”: CWMG, vol. 55, p. 199.
6 This from the man: “The Removal of Untouchability,” Young India, Oct. 13, 1921.
7 The man he addressed: CWMG, vol. 19, p. 289.
8 a status he’d sometimes compared: Gandhi, Removal of Untouchability, p. 11.
9 By the time the award: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, pp. 159–60.
10 Gandhi assumed but wasn’t sure: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 295.
11 “prepared to go”: “Suicide Threat,” Times of India, Sept. 14, 1932.
12 “Our own men will be critical”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, pp. 293–94, 302. Nehru, who was in jail in this period, admitted in a note in his diary after the conclusion of Gandhi’s fast, “I am afraid I am drifting further and further away from him mentally, in spite of my strong emotional attachment to him. His continual references to God irritate me exceedingly. His political actions are often enough guided by an unerring instinct but he does not encourage others to think.” Cited in Brown, Gandhi, p. 270.
13 “What if I am taken”: Mahadev Desai, Diary of Mahadev Desai, p. 4.
14 “Sudden shock is the treatment”: Ibid., p. 301.
15 “Untouchable hooligans”: Ibid.
16 “What does MacDonald know”: Verma, Crusade Against Untouchability, pp. 38–39.
17 Then he thought temple entry: Ravindran, Eight Furlongs of Freedom, p. 79.
18 William L. Shirer: Shirer, Gandhi, pp. 208–10.
19 “With the Hindus and Musalmans”: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, p. 6.
20 “Do not believe for one moment”: Verma, Crusade Against Untouchability, p. 27.
21 Patel regularly speculated: Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose, pp. 568–69; Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel, pp. 226–28.
22 “He would not be satisfied”: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, p. 30.
23 “If God has more work”: Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose, p. 569.
24 “If we cheaply dismiss”: Tagore, Mahatmaji and the Depressed Humanity, pp. 11, 18.
25 Tagore arrived: Ibid., p. 22.
26 “Mahatmaji, you have been”: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, p. 59; Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose, p. 575; Verma, Crusade Against Untouchability, pp. 43–44.
27 “No one shall be regarded”: Verma, Crusade Against Untouchability, p. 44.
28 A parallel gathering: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, p. 239.
29 Even Nehru, who acknowledged: Nehru, Toward Freedom, p. 237.
30 “I will never be moved”: Times of India, Sept. 14, 1932.
31 He’d been in a fix: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, pp. 188–89.
32 Kasturba raised the glass: Ibid., pp. 79–80.
33 “The entire audience”: Tagore, Mahatmaji and the Depressed Humanity, p. 29.
34 The idea that untouchability: Pyarelal, Epic Fast, pp. 79–81.
35 In his speeches to untouchable: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, pp. 234, 221.
36 “the one thing that alone”: CWMG, vol. 53, p. 131.
37 “To open or not to open”: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 229.
38 “not necessary for him”: The Times (London), Nov. 7, 1932.
39 Eventually, they would both reject: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 7, p. 151.
40 “The Congress sucked the juice”: Mankar, Denunciation of Poona-Pact, p. 109.
41 When they met in February 1933: Ibid., p. 160.
42 Ambedkar had agreed to join: Verma, Crusade Against Untouchability, pp. 62–63.
43 But within a year: B. R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, p. 135.
44 “Sin and immorality”: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 229.
45 As late as 1958: Verma, Crusade Against Untouchability, p. 196.
46 In May 1933: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 201.
47 The time had come: Omvedt, Ambedkar, p. 61.
48 If any admiration: B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, pp. 84–86.
49 “Obviously, he would like”: B. R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, p. 277.
50 But there’s suggestive: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 597.
51 “a flair for action”: Nehru, Toward Freedom, p. 240.
52 He also knew that: This is made clear in a discussion between Nehru and Mahadev Desai, on August 23, 1934, summarized in an as-yet-unpublished English translation of a portion of Mahadev Desai’s diary on file at the Gandhi Memorial Library, pp. 121–24.
53 This provoked the Bengali: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 205.
54 “Life ceases to interest me”: Ibid., p. 215.
55 “If Mr. Gandhi now feels”: Ibid., pp. 215, 217.
56 He was thus maneuvered: Ibid., p. 216.
57 An early conclusion: The reports by colonial officials on the Gandhi tour are on file in the archive of the Nehru Memorial Museum. Many but not all of these reports have been excerpted in Ray, Gandhi’s Campaign Against Untouchability.
58 “I am quite sure”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 281.
59 “We can’t even say”: Unpublished English translation of a portion of Mahadev Desai’s diary, for autumn 1934, on file at the Gandhi Memorial Library. See p. 162.
60 “The only way we can”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 280.
61 Near the end of the tour: Ray, Gandhi’s Campaign Against Untouchability, p. 220.
62 It so preoccupied him: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 362.
63 “Anything more opposed”: Nehru, Toward Freedom, p. 301.
64 Tagore said Gandhi’s logic: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, pp. 362–63.
65 “Our sins and errors”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 250.
66 “I would be untruthful”: Ibid., p. 251.
67 The sanatanists were: Nayar, Preparing for Swaraj, pp. 207–8.
68 In Poona, near the end: Ray, Gandhi’s Campaign against Untouchability, p. 178.
69 “Dr. Ambedkar complained”: Ibid., pp. 46–47.
70 “the growing pauperism”: CWMG, 2nd ed., vol. 65, pp. 178–79.
71 “I have lost the power”: CWMG, vol. 59, p. 218.
72 He ended the tour at Wardha: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 282.
73 “The sanatanists are now”: Ibid., p. 283.
74 “a profound error for me”: Ibid., p. 297.
75 He was going in the opposite: Ibid., pp. 280, 296.
76 “None of them knows”: CWMG, vol. 61, p. 403, cited in Brown, Gandhi, p. 292.
77 “What I am aiming for”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 4, p. 304.
CHAPTER 10: VILLAGE OF SERVICE
1 “The villagers have a lifeless life”: Nayar, Preparing for Swaraj, p. 301.
2 “a mechanical performance”: Harijan, Aug. 17, 1934.
3 Later he allowed himself: CWMG, vol. 60, p. 58.
4 “We have to work away”: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 5, p. 245.
5 “We have to become speechless”: CWMG, 2nd ed., vol. 65, p. 432.
6 Now, by working again: CWMG, vol. 59, p. 179.
7 Once he resolved: Ibid, p. 312.
8 “Wardha became the de facto”: Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor, p. 104.
9 By the end of the decade: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 5, pp. 17–18.
10 “shame some Japanese”: Ibid., p. 14.
11 “You must not”: Ibid., p. 15. It’s not clear whether a translator, editor, or Gandhi himself was responsible for this odd misuse of the word “clout” for what might have been termed a codpiece, breechcloth, cup, or even “jewel case.” In one of its more obscure definitions, “clout” can refer to a leather or iron patch.
12 “Who knows”: Ibid., p. 347.
13 As might have been expected: Payne, Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 464–65. Also see Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, pp. 406–7.
14 “The people are completely shameless”: Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose, pp. 601–2.
15 No road, as yet: Slade, Spirit’s Pilgrimage, pp. 202–3.
16 “If you will cooper
ate”: CWMG, vol. 62, p. 332.
17 “a very charming”: Slade, Spirit’s Pilgrimage, p. 203.
18 The hut that he was to occupy: Nayar, Preparing for Swaraj, p. 366.
19 Ashram and village: Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, pp. 380–81.
20 “Oh God”: CWMG, vol. 59, p. 402.
21 Gandhi’s letters were full: CWMG, 2nd ed., vol. 65, p. 371.
22 A Christian, he was known: Kumarappa had studied economics at Columbia University with Edwin Seligman, who also taught Ambedkar.
23 the last Western economist: See reference in E. F. Schumacher, who quotes Kumarappa briefly. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (Point Roberts, Wash., reprint, 1999), p. 39.
24 “The Association”: CWMG, vol. 59, p. 452.
25 “Full-timers, whole-hoggers”: Ibid., p. 411.
26 “necessary adjustment”: Ibid., vol. 62, p. 319.
27 “So! You are already tired!”: Narayan Desai, The Fire and the Rose, pp. 602–3.
28 “If this does not work”: CWMG, vol. 62, p. 239.
29 When one of his workers: Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 4, p. 96.
30 “The only way is to sit”: CWMG, vol. 62, p. 379.
31 “Our ambition is to make”: Ibid., p. 378.
32 Soon he came down: Slade, Spirit’s Pilgrimage, p. 207.
33 A United Nations survey: Malise Ruthven, “Excremental India,” New York Review of Books, May 13, 2010.
34 What such latter-day: Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who leads the Grameen Bank in neighboring Bangladesh, is aware of similarities between his approach to rural poverty and Gandhi’s, but does not cite the Mahatma as an influence on the development of his thinking in his book Banker to the Poor (New Delhi, 2007). The same is true of Fazle Hasan Abed, the leader of the even larger BRAC Bank, also in Bangladesh, another pioneer in what is called “social entrepreneurship.” See Ian Smillie, Freedom from Want (Sterling, Va., 2009).
35 According to one of the untouchable: Keer, Dr. Ambedkar, p. 268.
36 The observation had provoked: Narayan Desai, My Life Is My Message, vol. 3, Satyapath, p. 172.
37 Within a few months: “Caste Has to Go,” Harijan, Nov. 16, 1935; CWMG, vol. 62, pp. 121–22.
38 Actually, their deepest difference: CWMG, vol. 67, p. 359.
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India Page 49
