Mohandas: True Story of a Man, His People

by Gandhi, Rajmohan

  His looks depended on the beholder. To some he was small and ugly. He certainly was not tall at five-foot-six. He had large ears (like Mickey Mouse’s, as a later generation would say) and ‘his fat nose pointed downwards, and his lower lip pushed up to meet it’.57

  But he also looked ‘like a polished nut, all bright and shiny, with no spare flesh’.58 An American journalist who would soon get to know him, Louis Fischer, thought the body did not suggest an old man. It had long arms and well-formed fingers and Gandhi’s hand-clasp was firm. Fischer found Gandhi’s skin soft and smooth, with a healthy glow. More than one observer called his look ‘coppery’. Meeting him in 1939, the British journalist Francis Watson thought that Gandhi shone ‘with coppery well-being’.59

  A daily oil massage no doubt heightened the skin’s quality but Gandhi, a keen and pragmatic student of health, had also looked after himself over the years, eating carefully and walking several miles a day. ‘Just as a pregnant woman takes care of her health for the sake of the baby in her womb, I take care of myself for the sake of the Swaraj that is supposed to be in my womb,’ he had said in 1930 to Kalelkar. Watson noticed ‘coiled energy in the angular body’60 when Gandhi sat. When he walked, his straight back and brisk steps became apparent.

  Most found his appearance striking rather than plain, and youthful rather than old, and remembered especially his laughter. He smiled, grinned, chuckled, crackled, or laughed heartily, and usually those meeting him also found themselves laughing. As Nehru and others found, Gandhi usually brought a breeze to a room he entered.61

  Yet Gandhi’s gaiety was perhaps secondary to his sorrow. Nehru noticed ‘deep pools of sadness’ in Gandhi’s twinkling eyes, and Hansa Mehta spoke for all who sat sensitively near him when she said: ‘There must have been something terribly pathetic about him, for I always felt deeply moved in his presence.’62

  Some of the sadness undoubtedly came from self-suppression: he couldn’t do what he had wanted to do. ‘If I have given up anything for national service,’ he had said to Kalelkar back in 1915, ‘it is my interest in English literature’.63 In that remark literature stood for a range of joys he had denied himself.

  Then there was his eldest son. Every reminder of Harilal’s distress was a knife-stab. Moreover, since Gandhi’s longings were huge, involving a large country and at times a larger humanity, life had acquainted him with disappointment going beyond his son or family.

  A toll was taken, too, by his inner conflicts—over chastity, as we have seen, but also over who at any given time were more ‘his people’ or ‘family’ than others, and over how hard or soft he should be with those close to him. An important layer of his suppressed unhappiness was formed by the tension between the voices of truth and India, a tension that at times had obliged him to live with violence.

  Yet the oft-concealed melancholy served as a spur. Any reminder of his sadness led him always to a reminder of a task that was his to complete. In him melancholy was the twin of destiny—and usually a prelude to a chuckle.

  Like his sadness, Gandhi’s gaiety, too, had inner and outer sources. He believed in the triumph, no matter how slow, of good, and found ‘delight in life… in the scheme of this universe’;64 he felt he had been given rich truths to share with the world, some of which he had seen wonderfully demonstrated; he seemed to find something of value in every person he encountered; and each day saw at least some of his wishes fulfilled, even if most others remained unmet.

  And though he sought to influence the world, he did not seek followers. In March 1940 he would tell a gathering of associates:

  Let no one say that he is a follower of Gandhi. It is enough that I should be my own follower… You are not followers but fellow students, fellow pilgrims, fellow seekers, fellow workers.65

  One way of making sense of his sleeping alongside his ‘sisters’ or ‘daughters’ is to see it as a response to the weight on his shoulders: the load of personal pain and disappointment plus the burden of his large battles. He is in effect carrying India on his shoulders. He loses balance under that impossible load, and seeks comfort in unconventional ways, but the load is never dropped.

  Though he would be called the father of India he was also India’s son, carrying India the way the boy Shravana carried his parents in the scene that Mohan saw in his childhood and never forgot. Shravana died before their death and the parents wailed as Indians would wail when Gandhi would die; but carrying the load required strange twists and adjustments. Gandhi’s practices were particular and peculiar, but the cargo was safely carried.

  Stories. In 1939, a Marathi paper claiming to be devoted to ‘the organization of Hindus’ suggested that Gandhi’s brahmacharya was ‘a cloak’ to hide his ‘sensuality’ and mentioned Sushila. And the Bombay Chronicle carried a story that Edward Thompson, a British historian interested in India, had said something similar to British MPs, on the basis, apparently, of distorted versions of Gandhi’s confessions published in some Marathi papers. Asked to reply, Gandhi wrote a piece in Harijan that included his analysis of the calumniators:

  Poor Dr Sushila Nayyar has been dragged before the public gaze for the crime of giving me massage and medicated baths, the two things for which she is the best qualified among those who surround me. The curious may be informed that there is no privacy about these operations which take over one-and-a-half hours and during which I often go off to sleep but during which I also transact business with Mahadev, Pyarelal or other co-workers.

  The charges, to my knowledge, began with my active campaign against untouchability. This was when it was included in the Congress programme and I began to address crowds on the subject and insisted on having Harijans at meetings and in the Ashram. It was then that some sanatanists, who used to help me and befriend me, broke with me and began a campaign of vilification…

  If I were sensually inclined, I would have the courage to make the confession…

  [T]he manner in which my brahmacharya came to me irresistibly drew me to woman as the mother of man. She became too sacred for sexual love. And so every woman at once became sister or daughter to me…

  I found myself enjoying the confidence of many sisters, European and Indian, in South Africa. And when I invited the Indian sisters in South Africa to join the civil resistance movement, I found myself one of them. I discovered that I was specially fitted to serve womankind.

  To cut the (for me enthralling) story short, my return to India found me in no time one with India’s women. The easy access I had to their hearts was an agreeable revelation to me. Muslim sisters never kept purdah before me here even as they did not in South Africa.

  I sleep in the Ashram surrounded by women for they feel safe with me in every respect. It should be remembered that there is no privacy in the Segaon Ashram.

  If I were sexually attracted towards women, I have courage enough, even at this time of life, to become a polygamist. I do not believe in free love—secret or open (Harijan, 4 Nov. 1939; 77: 60-62).

  Chastity, power & calling. Earlier, in a July 1938 article, he had put his beliefs, and also his doubts, into words for the public:

  [T]here must be power in the word of a satyagraha general—not the power that the possession of limitless arms gives, but the power that purity of life, strict vigilance, and ceaseless application produce.

  [A]n impure thought is a breach of brahmacharya; so is anger. All power comes from the preservation and sublimation of the vitality that is responsible for creation of life. If the vitality is husbanded instead of being dissipated, it is transmuted into creative energy of the highest order…

  My brahmacharya was not derived from books. I evolved my own rules for my guidance and that of those who, at my invitation, had joined me in the experiment. If I have not followed the prescribed restrictions, much less have I accepted the description found even in religious literature of woman as the source of all evil and temptation.

  It is not woman whose touch defiles man but he is often himself too impure to tou
ch her. But recently a doubt has seized me as to the nature of the limitation that a brahmachari or brahmacharini should put upon himself or herself regarding contacts with the opposite sex.

  I have set limitations which do not satisfy me.

  My faith in non-violence remains as strong as ever. I am quite sure that not only should it answer all our requirements in our country, but that it should, if properly applied, prevent the bloodshed that is going on outside India and is threatening to overwhelm the Western world…

  [God] will perhaps take me away when I am no longer wanted for the work which I have been permitted to do for nearly half a century. But I do entertain the hope that there is yet work for me to do, that the darkness that seems to have enveloped me will disappear, and that, whether with another battle more brilliant than the Dandi March or without, India will come to her own demonstrably through non-violent means (23 July 1938; 73: 316-20).

  Writing two months before Munich, Gandhi refers, if only in passing, to the likelihood of war in Europe and, let us mark, the possibility of another ‘brilliant battle’ in India.

  Rajkot. If ‘British’ provinces now enjoyed self-government, shouldn’t princely states move towards popular rule? This natural question had come to the fore at the Haripura Congress of March 1938, and while Gandhi remained anxious not to solidify the alliance of India’s princes with the Empire, he blessed the emergence of Praja Mandals or People’s Associations in the states and permitted some Congress leaders to lend support.

  Rajkot was in a sorry condition. Its ruler, Dharmendrasinh, feeble and irresponsible, had squandered funds and allowed Virawala, his dewan (a successor, that is, of Kaba Gandhi) to auction monopolies for selling rice, matches, sugar and cinema tickets. Imposing a fourteen-hour day on workers in the state-owned textile mill, Virawala sold a monopoly for gambling as well and proposed mortgaging Rajkot’s powerhouse.

  A young man called U.N. Dhebar, who led a people’s campaign against the monopolies and asked for a closure of gambling shops on religious holidays, was arrested, and many were beaten. Vallabhbhai Patel intervened. In September 1938 he went to Rajkot and said, ‘We are not desirous of dethroning the ruler. We wish to limit his authority.’66

  The Raj seemed to act in defence of the people of Rajkot. A British dewan, Sir Patrick Cadell, took over from Virawala and released Dhebar. But Virawala retained power as the prince’s private adviser and drafted a letter signed by Dharmendrasinh that requested E.C. Gibson, the resident for the Kathiawar states (a successor, that is, of Charles Ollivant), to recall Cadell. Gibson’s response, however, was to ask for Virawala to leave Rajkot.

  Cadell stayed on and Virawala left, but when Dhebar and his fellow activists revived their campaign they were jailed. In their support, Patel’s daughter Maniben campaigned in villages in Rajkot state. She was arrested on 5 December.

  Virawala now came up with a cunning strategy for returning to power. Telling Patel that Indians like him, Virawala and Dharmendrasinh should settle ‘without the knowledge of Cadell’, he also ensured that Gibson and Cadell were kept informed of Patel’s supposed untrustworthiness.67

  On 28 December a settlement between Patel and the ruler was announced. Dhebar, Maniben and the others were released, and Dharmendrasinh promised a committee to prepare a scheme of reforms and said it would consist of seven chosen by Patel and three by himself. However, even as Patel announced the end of the popular stir and imagined that ‘the speed and drama of the settlement had baffled the resident’,68 Gibson began complaining to Dharmendrasinh about Patel.

  Three weeks after signing the settlement, the prince revoked it. Not only that: Cadell was removed and Virawala reinstated as dewan! At Patel’s instance a struggle was announced. It was ruthlessly repressed. Newspapers were kept out of Rajkot, meetings were banned, and those defying bans were beaten and deprived of their property.

  ‘The movement for liberty within the (princely) States is entering a new stage,’ Gandhi wrote in Harijan (28 Jan. 1939). Apart from Rajkot, he noted repression in states in the Orissa region and in Jaipur in Rajputana, and the danger from caste and religious divisions in Travancore.

  Told often that his involvement with untouchability and the Hindu-Muslim question weakened the focus on British rule, Gandhi was criticized for opening yet another front. In particular, he was warned against allowing himself to be dragged into the Rajkot tangle, which coincided with Subhas Bose’s bid for re-election.

  But Gandhi had always known that the journey to independence would have to take in the princely states. As for Rajkot, the betrayal of Patel, his stalwart right hand, had to be answered. Moreover, Rajkot was his own state, and it was in his presence that Dharmendrasinh’s father Lakhajiraj had said in 1925: ‘I myself wish to be Gandhiji’s lieutenant. Why may I not surpass even Vallabhbhai?’69

  Rajkot was also where Kasturba had spent her youth. When, in December, Maniben was arrested, she asked Gandhi to let her go there. But she had fainted in Devadas’s place in Delhi only days before, and her husband thought her ‘too weak’ for the exercise. At the end of January she again asked to go. This time Gandhi let her. In Harijan he wrote (4 & 11 Feb. 1939):

  My wife feels so much… that though she is as old as I am and much less able than myself to brave such hardships as may be attendant upon jail life, she feels she must go to Rajkot (75: 1).

  She felt a personal call. She could not sit still whilst the other daughters of Rajkot were suffering for the freedom of the men and women of the State. Rajkot is no doubt an insignificant place on the map of India. But it is not insignificant for me and my wife (75: 45).

  Early in February Kasturba, accompanied by Maniben and Mridula Sarabhai (Ambalal’s daughter), entered the state. All three were arrested, detained in a shabby place and told falsely that Gandhi had taken ill in Sevagram. Reminding his wife that she had ‘now become a State guest’,70 Gandhi wrote to her every day, and she to him. She became ill, he too was unwell, and each worried about the other.

  To Kasturba, 9 February: For the time being I have given up taking help from the girls. Do not feel uneasy. Do not worry. I shall see what to do. Sushila of course continues to look after me (75: 59).

  Kasturba’s travail stirred many across India and affected her husband. At the end of February he felt he had to go himself to Rajkot. There Virawala called on Gandhi, prostrated before him, and stayed for three-and-a-half hours, but questioned the authenticity of the 28 December settlement. Also, he insisted on being present when Gandhi met Dharmendrasinh. In a letter to Gibson, the resident, Gandhi said that to think of the prince as a ‘responsible, thinking ruler’ would be ‘giving currency to a fraud’, and that Virawala, ‘the virtual ruler of Rajkot’, was ‘utterly unreliable’ (4 March 1939; 75: 148-9).

  On 3 March Gandhi started a fast and said he hoped the Viceroy would ‘induce fulfilment’ of the ruler’s promise to Patel. Recalling his mother (it was natural to do so in Rajkot), he said:

  Fast[ing] is in my blood and bones. I imbibed it with my mother’s milk. My mother fasted if someone was ill… if she was in pain… in season and out of season. How can I, her son, do otherwise?71

  Three days later an anxious Kasturba was released, as also Maniben and Mridula. More significantly, Gibson’s ultimate boss, Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, suggested in a message to Gandhi that the dispute over the end-December settlement could be referred to the Chief Justice of India, Sir Maurice Gwyer.

  Accepting the suggestion, Gandhi ended the fast four days after starting it. Given on 3 April after a presentation by Virawala, Gwyer’s ruling completely vindicated Patel, and the Viceroy declared that the Raj wanted the settlement implemented.

  Gandhi thanked Linlithgow, but the impressive victory was short-lived. Refusing to lose, Virawala fuelled minority fears in Rajkot. Many of the state’s Muslims, Garasias (landowners), and Bhayats (the ruler’s kinsmen) joined what was billed as a campaign to prevent minority interests being crushed by Patel’s nominees.

  Ri
ng of violence. There was talk of a threat to Patel’s life. Then, on 16 April, a 600-strong mob of sword-swinging Bhayats and lathi-carrying Muslims broke up a prayer meeting that a barely fit Gandhi, some months shy of his seventieth birthday, was conducting in Rajkot, and tried forcibly to disperse a cordon of unarmed volunteers around Gandhi.

  Remaining at Gandhi’s side, Kalelkar’s twenty-six-year-old son Bal, who had been a Dandi marcher in his teens, ‘suddenly noticed that Bapuji’s whole body began to shake violently’. Bal Kalelkar thought that the shaking

  was not out of fear; his face could tell how free from fear he was. The physical reaction was his revolt against the disgusting atmosphere of violence.72

  Pyarelal, who was not far, wrote what we have already quoted. He would say that the shaking was set off by a sudden attack of sharp pain near the waist, ‘an old symptom that seizes him whenever he receives an acute mental shock’. Added Pyarelal:

  For a time he stood in the midst of that jostling crowd motionless and silent, his eyes shut, supporting himself on his staff, and tried to seek relief through silent prayer… As soon as he had sufficiently recovered, he reiterated his resolve to go through the demonstrators all alone. He addressed a Bhayat, who stood confronting him: ‘I wish to go under your sole protection, not co-workers.’73

  Bal Kalelkar’s account suggests that this time the prayer was not silent, that Gandhi cried out to God:

  Suddenly he closed his eyes and started praying. I could hear him saying Ramnam with an intensity of devotion that could never be surpassed. I joined him in his prayer and to keep time to our chanting of God’s name I started patting my hand on his back…

  The prayer worked. When Bapuji reopened his eyes there was a new strength that appeared then like magic. In a firm tone he asked all the volunteers to quit that place at once and leave him absolutely alone at the mercy of the hired goondas…