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Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

Page 40

by Gandhi, Rajmohan


  On crucial questions of Indian nationhood—Hindu-Muslim relations, militarization, the use of violence, and an Indian flag—the RSS ideology was thus fundamentally opposed to Gandhi’s. The ideology was incorporated in the RSS programme, which indicated, among other impulses, a concern among Brahmin elites at Gandhi’s popularity with peasant-caste and other ‘low-caste’ masses and their increased assertion.

  Whereas Gandhi saw ‘the awakening among the masses’ as ‘a tremendous gain’, Hedgewar lamented that following non-cooperation the ‘Brahmin/non-Brahmin conflict was nakedly on view’.13 As a counter-strategy, the RSS would strive to unite all Hindu castes against the presumed threat from Muslims.

  Gandhi was aware of differences among Hindu nationalists. Unlike the RSS, men like Shraddhanand and Lajpat Rai seemed as keen on independence as on the Hindu interest, while Malaviya (like Lajpat Rai a member of the Central Assembly) was opposed to violence in any Hindu-Muslim confrontation. And though Lajpat Rai thought that Muslim history and Muslim law constituted ‘an effective bar’ to Hindu-Muslim unity, he did not prescribe a second-class status for Muslims or Christians.

  With Shraddhananad, Lajpat Rai and Malaviya, Gandhi had built excellent personal relations and a partial ideological rapport. Unlike Savarkar or the RSS, these three would probably have shared a sentiment that Gandhi expressed in May 1925:

  I have had in my life many an opportunity of shooting my opponents and earning the crown of martyrdom, but I had not the heart to shoot any of them. For I did not want them to shoot me… I wanted them to convince me of my error. I was trying to convince them of theirs (Young India, 7 May 1925).

  Yet, in December 1926, Swami Shraddhanand was assassinated by a Muslim in Delhi, and a Hindu-Muslim alliance became even more difficult. Lajpat Rai would die in 1928, after being hit by police lathis in a pro-independence demonstration.

  A year earlier (in August 1927), in a letter to Ghanshyam Das Birla, Lajpat Rai had this comment to make about Gandhi:

  The best man to learn manners from is Mahatma Gandhi. His manners come very near perfection, though there is nothing perfect in this world. Great as he is, the greatest of us all, he is very particular in his behaviour towards his friends and co-workers.14

  But Gandhi’s manners and reasoning proved insufficient to restore trust. Frustrated but unrepentant, he would say in 1925:

  I cannot accept that Malaviyaji and others are enemies of Muslims. Nor can I agree to calling [Muhammad] Ali an enemy of the Hindus. I can never agree to the rule of blood for blood and temple for a mosque. But who listens to me? (35: 317)

  The Raj did not allow Gandhi and the Ali brothers to visit Kohat. In December 1924, Gandhi visited Rawalpindi without the Ali brothers and met refugees from Kohat. The following February, he and Shaukat Ali together visited Rawalpindi, where some Muslims came from Kohat to present their version, but the two investigators reached different conclusions. Shaukat Ali underlined the Hindu poet’s inflammatory verses. Gandhi emphasized the condoning by Kohat’s Muslim leaders of killing, abduction and forced conversions.

  Though Shaukat Ali expressed his opposition to forced conversion, he was not willing to put his signature to Gandhi’s findings. Going against Ajmal Khan’s advice, Gandhi published the two separate reports in Young India on 29 March 1925. A public that had closely followed the joint visit to Rawalpindi was in his view entitled to know the result, even if it was split.

  The Ali brothers slowly drifted away from Gandhi. ‘We still love one another,’ Gandhi wrote after publishing the differing reports. Yet their partnership was coming apart, and many Muslim minds entertained the thought that Gandhi had become, or perhaps always had been, a leader of and for Hindus.

  Later in 1925, when word came from Kabul that an Ahmadi would be stoned to death—in accordance, it was claimed, with Islamic law—and Gandhi expressed, in Young India, his unhappiness with that form of punishment, another Khilafatist leader, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, said that if Gandhi wished to retain his prestige among Muslims, he should not comment on matters internal to them. Gandhi answered that he sought not prestige but love, which he would strive to win through service.

  But he was no longer winning Muslims. Although men like Ajmal Khan, Ansari, Azad and Ghaffar Khan remained with Gandhi and dismissed the notion that he was merely a Hindu leader, the days when Muslims were exhorted to ‘fill the jails at the bidding of Gandhi’ and to ‘follow Mahatma Gandhi unflinchingly’ had ended.

  Withdrawal. Reviving Hindu-Muslim partnership or launching another strike against British rule looking unlikely in the near future, Gandhi was free to focus on khadi and untouchability and on his writing. The political arena was more or less abandoned by him, though he had agreed, when asked by both wings of the Congress, to preside at the body’s end-1924 session, held in Belgaum.

  However, president Gandhi dropped C.R., Patel and Bajaj from the Working Committee he formed. These leaders would be honed through constructive work for future battles that Gandhi fully expected; and the Swarajists would not confront an adversarial Working Committee.

  Rajagopalachari started an ashram in Tiruchengode in the Tamil country. Prasad was associated with Patna’s Sadaqat ashram, started in the early Twenties by Gandhi’s friend from his student days in London, Mazharul Huq, and Bajaj undertook to keep these and other ashrams viable. The ranks of spinners and weavers grew, as did campaigns against untouchability and liquor, and ‘untouchables’ were enlisted into the ashrams.

  With Gandhi’s blessing and approval, Vallabhbhai entered and chaired the Ahmedabad municipality, and Jawaharlal the Allahabad one—unlike the glamorous provincial councils, city municipalities ran schools and employed numbers of people, including ‘untouchables’, and offered tangible opportunities for assisting the public.

  These men had not renounced the fight for independence. As C.R. explained in March 1926 in Patna, where Prasad had invited him to address students of Patna National College, soldiers like him had not retired. In their ashrams they were making ammunition for future battles. The nation’s ability to suffer was this ammunition but it had been used up. Some days later, in Ahmedabad, Rajagopalachari again used a militant metaphor: the spindle that made cotton thread was, he said, the Indian masses’ pistol.

  Satyagraha against untouchability. After 1924 Gandhi reached out again, in Gujarat and elsewhere, to push his campaigns for khadi and against untouchability, dowry and liquor. At most meetings caste Hindus and ‘untouchables’ sat in different enclosures; on occasion the former would remove the dividing cordon and make history; at other times hosts would purify their vessels after Gandhi and his companions had polluted them—having consorted with the ‘untouchables’, the Gandhi party too was deemed tainted.

  At the port town of Mandvi in Kutch, the chairman of the reception committee threw, from a distance of several feet, the welcome address at Gandhi, who could be honoured but not touched.

  Gandhi backed a satyagraha begun in 1924 in the town of Vykom (Vaikkam) in the princely state of Travancore against a longstanding denial to untouchables of the use of public roads adjacent to a temple and to Brahmin homes. Though forced at times to stand in waist-deep floodwater, the satyagrahis kept up their opposition for months, peacefully entering the forbidden streets and picketing barriers. Visiting Vykom, Gandhi proposed a referendum of caste Hindus on the question—he was certain that only an orthodox minority would defend the prohibitions.

  The demand was rejected but in June 1925 prohibited roads on three sides of the temple were thrown open to the ‘untouchables’. The victory was incomplete, for the road to the temple’s east was still closed to ‘untouchables’, but all of India had seen the obduracy of the orthodox and followed the Vykom satyagraha, a milestone in the battle against untouchability.

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  Gandhi’s Satyagraha in South Africa was serialized in Navajivan and Young India during 1924 and 1925; and from the end of 1925 the Autobiography began to appear in the two journals. The lull
in politics made the writing possible; associates had always urged him to recall his life story; his illnesses may have supplied arguments for recalling it; and writing it would be an exercise in reflection and introspection.

  But we may surmise that Gandhi also saw political value in relating a story that confirmed the image of a servant of truth and a loyal Hindu. For a little over three years—from the end of 1925 to February 1929—the two journals carried a weekly autobiographical instalment. Titled ‘My Experiments with Truth’, the account ended with the Nagpur Congress of December 1920.

  Mahadev or Pyarelal translated into English Gandhi’s weekly instalments; at times the translation was revised by Gandhi. Many of the lapses, petty thoughts and struggles in Gandhi’s life from childhood to 1920 were frankly related in an autobiography which in its personal honesty seemed to have very few precedents. ‘It is not without a wrench that I have to take leave of the reader,’ he wrote in the final piece, adding, ‘I have spared no pains to give a faithful narrative’.

  Yet some things were left out. In the first instalment he referred to things ‘known only to oneself and one’s Maker’ that were ‘clearly incommunicable’ and would not find a place. We can only speculate on what these were. Bitter complaints to the Almighty, unbecoming in an iconic believer? Aches about unfulfilled hopes? Immodest apprehensions of a special calling? We do not know.

  Some things known to a few others were also left out—for instance the episode involving Saraladevi, who was very much alive and would have been wounded afresh by any account of it. The events involving Sheikh Mehtab were recounted but, as noted earlier, he was not named.

  The Gita. For nine months in 1926-27 he gave discourses in Gujarati on the Gita, which were published in Navajivan . This exercise too was part of his battle to clarify, and win, the Hindu mind, and not merely his tribute to a text that meant much to him.

  Gandhi’s core arguments in the Gita commentaries, which he presented at the end of morning prayers at the ashram, were as follows: The battlefield setting of the Gita is allegorical, not historical. The chariot in which Krishna and Arjuna ride is not real either. The human body is the true chariot, Arjuna the human mind, and Krishna the Indwelling Guide. God as Krishna wants humans to fight in their hearts the daily battle of courage against meanness, not a bloody battle against enemies. After exhorting repeatedly against anger and hatred in the Gita, why would Krishna ask for killing, a deed inseparable from anger or hatred?

  True, the Gita’s first chapter and the start of the second describe a battle, but the rest of the eighteen-chapter text is a treatise on self-control and on union with the divine; no one could call the Gita a course-book on warfare. Finally, since the message of the Mahabharata was the folly of war, which killed most characters in the epic and left the world a virtual void, how could the Gita, if it was part of the epic, plead for its opposite?

  Aware of the Gita’s influence in India, Gandhi wanted to enlist that influence on behalf of satyagraha and against violence.

  CAGED LION

  In November 1925 he wrote to Dr Ansari that he felt ‘like a caged lion’, that there were things ‘buried deep down in my bosom’ that were far weightier than what he wrote of in his journals, and added that he did ‘not fail to advertise them daily before the Unseen Power’ (33: 208).

  He was alluding to, among other things, the Hindu-Muslim polarization and the self-imposed embargo (‘not before March 1928’) on himself. But he seemed to feel that before long he would lead a big battle again, and was sustained by faith in his bond with the masses. In January 1926 he wrote:

  Between the masses and myself there is a bond which defies description, but is nevertheless felt alike by them and me. I see in the fellowship with them the God I adore… Whether I live in the Ashram or in their midst, I work for them, think of them, and pray for them. I want to live only for them—and so for myself (Young India, 7 Jan. 1926).

  Always reminding himself of his humanness, he said in February 1927, ‘Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself: “I have also erred”; when I see a lustful man, I say to myself, “So was I once”; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world’ (Young India, 10 Feb. 1927). A month later he wrote:

  The Mahatma I must leave to his fate. Though a non-cooperator, I would gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me Mahatma and to touch my feet. Where I can impose the law myself, i.e. at the Ashram, the practice is criminal (Young India, 17 March 1927).

  Yet he refused, in his mind, to abandon a destined role:

  When I think of my littleness and my limitations on the one hand and of the expectations raised about me on the other, I become dazed for the moment; but I come to myself as soon as I realize that these expectations are a tribute not to me, a curious mixture of Jekyll and Hyde, but to the incarnation, however imperfect but comparatively great in me, of the two priceless qualities of Truth and Nonviolence (Young India 8 Oct. 1925).

  And in March 1927 he seemed to sense that something might again stir the masses:

  Whether [my message] will produce an impression in my lifetime or not, I do not care, and as the days roll on and as the agony of the masses become prolonged, it will burn itself into the heart of every Indian who has a heart to respond to the message (Young India, 24 March 1927).

  The man conscious of a destiny, of a bond with the masses and of their agony, was also, however, a friend to individuals. Ghanshyam Das Birla has recorded a conversation at four one morning ‘in the bitter winter of 1926’ at a railway station in Delhi, where Birla, whose wife Mahadevi was critically ill, had gone to see Gandhi, who was arriving from the Punjab and booked on a connecting train to Ahmedabad.

  At the station Birla asked Gandhi (‘in a warm, easy way’), ‘Will you be stopping over?’ Gandhi: ‘No, I have to be on my way.’ Silence from Birla. Gandhi: ‘Why did you ask?’ Birla: ‘Oh, nothing.’ Gandhi: ‘No, you had a reason.’ Birla: ‘I mean, there’s a lady, she’s on her deathbed. She desires your darshan, but you are not stopping over, how can I ask you to come.’ Gandhi: ‘I won’t stop over but I will come with you.’ Birla: ‘It’s bitterly cold, and the place is nearly twelve miles from here.’ Gandhi: ‘Nothing to worry about. I’ll come and catch my train at the next station.’ Arguments from Birla. Gandhi: ‘Not one word more. Get inside the car.’

  Continues Birla’s story:

  In those days we didn’t have the closed cars we do now. It was really wintry, and imagine the icy wind along with it [for] ten miles through the jungle. Arriving, he asked the ailing lady, ‘How are you?’ Her eyes opened in surprise… She said, ‘You are here. I am so happy… I can die in peace.’ He replied. ‘Take God’s name and be at peace.’ He stayed there ten minutes and boarded his train at the next station… Such was the man who captivated me.15

  Marking time, and the Swarajists’ problems. In June 1925 Das unexpectedly died in Darjeeling, within days of Gandhi’s visit to him, when a bond had been formed. ‘I realized not only how great [Das] was, but also how good he was,’ Gandhi wrote in Young India (18 June 1925; 32:5).

  His response to the death was to announce a posthumous concession to Das, who, despite the Das-Motilal pact with Gandhi, had never liked the link between spinning and Congress membership. Gandhi said he was now willing for people to pay cash if they could not spin. Rajagopalachari and other No Changers felt terribly let down, but Gandhi wanted to honour Das and win his supporters.

  On Gandhi’s advice, the Swarajists chose Sarojini Naidu as the Congress president for the end-1925 session in Kanpur; Srinivasa Iyengar, who had resigned his post as advocate-general in Madras, for the end-1926 session in Gauhati; and Dr Ansari for the Madras session of December 1927. To show his support, Gandhi attended the sessions but they lacked fervour, largely because in the legislatures the Swarajists were obstructing one another, not the Raj.

  After Motilal Nehru accepted a nomination to a committee of the Raj on cadet training, and Vithalbhai Patel became pres
ident of the Central Assembly, Tambe, a Swarajist leader in the Central Provinces, went further and in 1925 joined the provincial executive council. When Motilal condemned Tambe’s action, he was counter-criticized by other Swarajists.

  ALLIES AND INTIMATES

  In October 1924 Manilal, who was slowly winning difficult battles in South Africa to keep Indian Opinion and Phoenix going, made a brief visit to his father in India. That year Romain Rolland, eminent novelist, pacifist and admirer of Tolstoy, published a study of Gandhi that commanded wide and sympathetic attention in Europe; and in the following year Gandhi was joined at Sabarmati by Madeleine Slade, an English admiral’s thirty-three-year-old daughter, who having read Rolland’s book was encouraged by him to go to Gandhi.

  Gandhi admitted Miss Slade into the Ashram. Tall, authoritative and plain, but also enthusiastic and musical, Miss Slade Indianized herself, wore a khadi salwar and kameez, learnt to spin, speak Hindustani and clean lavatories, and accepted the name that Gandhi gave her, Mira, after the medieval Rajput princess who renounced everything for God. Gandhi greatly liked her. To Rolland he wrote:

  13 Nov. 1925: What a treasure you have sent me!.. I shall leave no stone unturned to assist her to become a bridge between East and West. I am too imperfect to have disciples. She shall be fellow-seeker with me and as I am older in years and therefore presumably in spiritual experience, I propose to share the honour of fatherhood with you. Miss Slade is showing wonderful adaptability and has already put us at ease about herself (33: 218).

 

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