It is Gandhi Jayanti today.
As always, some scholarly and thoughtful people have been discussing his importance, his relevance, his wisdom or otherwise in the media. I thought I might scribble a few lines myself.
There are some problems with discussing such men these days – even with supposedly educated people, especially if they are below forty. First, many of them believe that nobody should be called a ‘great’ man: great men do not exist. It goes without saying that I believe them to be, in the Dalai Lama’s favourite word, ‘foolish’. Secondly, however stupid this might sound, many actually believe that a man cannot be great unless he is rich: so Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are great men (to be forgotten within a decade, of course), but it would take ‘boring’ explanation to justify the same tag about, say, Newton or Mozart or Lincoln or Tagore. Third, you do not have to know anything to have strong opinions about any man. And finally, that people, including great men, come in clear black and white – so one was either a genius or an idiot, either a ‘good’ man or ‘bad’, did only harm or only good. This monumental imbecility, this inability to form nuanced opinions based carefully on a great deal of (often contradictory-) facts and reasoning which was once associated with children in primary school is now so common even among post-graduates that I often hesitate to take the trouble to put my own thoughts in writing: why bother? Still…
To remind my readers, it was a man of the stature of Tagore who titled Gandhi ‘Mahatma’, Subhas Bose first called him ‘Father of the Nation’, Einstein said future generations will scarce believe that such a man really existed, Bernard Shaw said his assassination confirmed the belief that in this world it is always too dangerous to be too good. How deeply Charlie Chaplin was affected by Gandhi’s views on industrial civilization is unforgettably portrayed in his movie Modern Times. Yet – and to my mind most remarkably – none of these men, themselves geniuses of the highest order, blindly hero-worshipped him. Indeed they openly, publicly, sharply disagreed with many of his ideas, sometimes even going so far as to rebuke him or regret his intransigence. Only, in the gentlest, most respectful language, because, being great themselves, they knew deep within that they were talking about, or to, a very, very great man.
Well, that, in a nutshell, is my own position. A very great man, yet, alas, deeply flawed in ways that affected all of south Asia, maybe even the whole world. I believe I know too little about him, but what I definitely know would still fill a small book: I am not going to attempt that here. However, let me mention a few things at least.
I regard him with awe for the way he personified his own ideal of the life of plain living, high thinking and intense, unrelenting activity. I admire his views on environmental guardianship, which were two or three generations ahead of his time. I still wonder at his incredible charisma and organizational ability that long before the age of the internet, and without guns and goons and mind-numbing propaganda, in a land where the vast majority could not read newspapers, he could make the largest ever mass political movements in human history happen, which inspired so many other leaders in so many other countries. I almost worship his ability to go it alone whenever he found too few followers to rally around. I could go on, but interested readers should at least reflect on these few things.
I have remained very ambivalent about many things he did or said, including his attempts to find a perfectly non-coercive marriage between the best of capitalism and socialism, and his prescriptions for ideal womanhood, for instance, which sound too stultifying and demeaning to me, yet at the same time encouraging women to become ‘modern’ in many senses of the word, from getting an education to taking active part in politics. Again, I could lengthen the list considerably.
I believe some of his views had truly tragic consequences on a vast scale. I shall mention only two here: not throwing his whole weight behind Subhas Bose when it could have made a huge difference to undivided India, and refusing to believe that there was anything like a problem of overpopulation.
Let there be a renewed debate. And I shall urge everyone I know to read Nathuram Godse’s Why I killed Gandhi, just as I urge every history-minded person to read Mein Kampf. Only, let them read much, much more, and ask many more questions, before they start forming and airing their ‘opinions’. Right now, most people below forty know, like Munnabhai, only that Gandhi’s is the face we see on all our currency notes, and we are not allowed to sell or buy liquor on his birthday. Of late, I have even been hearing that Gandhi – of all people! – was responsible for the partition of India. That is the situation that needs to change.
5 comments:
A little late in the day, but I read Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, My Experiements With Truth, this year. I did so because during the CAA-NRC movement in India, I saw and participated, unknowingly, in a non-violent movement, and experienced on a very small-scale, the impact and practicality of non-violent agitation. Sitting at the August Kranti Maidan, where Gandhi ji started his own movement many years ago, I was able to understand the obvious merit of a huge, unarmed gathering. Cops and police vans surrounding the place were given no valid reason to make arrests. Office goers, students, people outside of the political sphere or the aam janata as we call it, had a place and platform to add to the voices.
While reading the book I was stuck by the man's normalcy, flaws, confusions, guilts, just like any other human being. Something that one would, perhaps subconsciously, not attribute to a man put on the impossible pedestal of a Mahatma. That in itself was of the greatest appeal.
Few things that stayed with me with regards to his public life was that he believed that social work must be sustainable and not free, he understood the importance of subscription-based news rather than government-funded models. And how to create noise without wasting one's voice screaming at the wrong places. His use of the western media, especially the British media, to make the local condition an international talking point, before television and social media, was pure brilliance and a lesson in 'use your words wisely'.
Yes, the times were different, the ask was different, but the things the man did by my age, on a personal level, makes me feel minute. That's reason enough to look up to another and be inspired.
He was a regular man operating at his higher human potential, if not at the highest. The book was a remember that all of us, with our flaws, fears and average-ness, are capable of moving beyond our base selves. Some reach there, while most of us will perish without knowing of such a possibility.
Sir,
Like your, "What would have happened if Sachin Tendulkar had been born in China?" conundrum, I would like to ask what would have happened had Gandhi been born in Japan, a country clean as a whistle, for centuries before Europeans even learned the basic forms of cleanliness. Vivekananda has written extensively about this. I wonder if anyone could actually give an answer... Europeans and Americans are yet to learn the art of cleaning their bottoms while the Japanese toilet with its "washlet" is highly sophisticated even in the commonest of Japanese homes, airplanes, and bullet trains. Whether you are a CEO or a new employee, toilet cleaning here is considered to make a better person and even enhance the beauty of women!
Most Indians I meet, talk only about the past. It makes me wonder whether there is a present or a future even worth considering, after all.
I have read both the books that you have mentioned. Unfortunately, I wish I hadn't. I am very sorry to contradict your views. My fervent apologies in advance.
If you would kindly allow me to share, let me introduce a book that really inspired me. "Quit India - The Impossible Indian - Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence," by Faisal Devji.
All best to you and your family.
Warm regards,
Rajdeep
Dear Sir,
I just finished reading R. Guha's "Gandhi Before India", which I had mentioned to you I was reading back when we spoke on the phone a few months ago. The book wasn't as fast-paced as "India After Gandhi" but it was very well-researched and presented.
It was interesting to learn that even at the time (late nineteenth century) London was a very metropolitan city and that the English in London were way more open-minded than the English living in the colonies. I came to know a bit about the Boer War and how the antagonism between the Boers and the English was kept aside when they had to deal with the common problem of the "Asiatic invasion". Some of the things they said about the Asiatics (over a hundred years ago) are uncannily reminiscent of the words used by politicians of the current dispensation (in India and, in quite a few occasions, in the West) when referring to groups of people they don't like! So much for progress. A pet peeve seemed to be "these foreigners, who work too hard, spend too little, and throw us out of business"!
It was personally gratifying to learn about how MK Gandhi became the man he did in spite of belonging to a conservative family. At the end of the book, R. Guha summarizes this very well in the chapter "How the Mahatma Was Made". An interesting tidbit, though not of great consequence, is that Gandhi's friend Pranjivan Mehta might have been the first person to refer to Gandhi as "Mahatma" in a letter in 1909. When I think of historical figures, in my head they are already great people. But it is only upon reading a biography that I realise that they weren't born that way. Circumstances were perhaps ripe, they happened to be at the right place at the right time, and, of course, thanks to their characteristics, they happened to be the right people to set history in motion.
If Gandhi's demands for his clients in South Africa had been met straightaway, if people like Milner and Smuts and others in the government had relented and abolished the tax on the Asiatics, let them conduct business wherever they wanted, allowed them free movement and so on, simply upon writing petitions, Gandhi would have never had to resort to passive resistance and he wouldn't have known of its power. Over a decade of successful experiments with civil disobedience and volunteering to go to prison convinced him and others in South Africa (and India and elsewhere in the world) of its potency as a tool to meet political objectives.
As you mentioned, it required a lot of patience and perseverance and incremental demands. The number of trips he made to cities within South Africa by train and to India and England by ship is just staggering. As it is to realise that the only means of communication and sending word out was by letters, telegram and newsletters. It is indeed incredible how he was able to mobilize so many people in the pre-internet era to go on strike or burn their certificates or volunteer to go to prison, and all in spite of supposedly being a very mediocre orator. There's something weird and wonderful about Gandhi using the prevalent tools such as petitioning and going to court, and the white colonists indulging him in spite of being racist: they could have simply dismissed him outright and not entertained his petitions or anything else because he was a person of colour, but the didn't!
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I also learnt of some of his idiosyncrasies, including some of his less savoury views. Early on in South Africa, he did think that the "Kaffirs" (native South Africans) were an inferior race and that they needed to fight their own fight. Although later, he did temper his views about them and had meetings with native South African leaders. He had very high demands and expectations of himself and of those close to him. I think he was a terrible husband and a father, although (ironically) he's the Father of the Nation! His aversion to modern medicine and complete faith in a simple diet (often consisting of merely fruit and nuts) and naturopathy (mud packs and such) to cure all kinds of diseases (including cancer) seems preposterous. His obsession with celibacy would have been just a quirk had he not demanded the same of his sons and his close friends (like Kallenbach). On more than one occasion, he rebuked his son for "giving in to lust".
I also find it bewildering that he managed to juggle so many roles at the same time. He was fighting cases for his clients, writing petitions, going on hunger strikes, going to prison, teaching himself Tamil, learning the Bible and the Quran, travelling to India and England and meeting influential people there, running a newspaper, setting up Tolstoy Farm, raising money for the farm and for families of men who had volunteered to go to prison, and creating waves in South Africa and elsewhere. It's just staggering what one person did in a decade: and now it pains me even more when I see the kind of vile filth the current dispensation spreads on WhatsApp. On this note, it is curious that they use Gandhi as a world icon and an Indian gem outside of India but revile him within. Of course, I'll concede that they are masters of manipulating perceptions. That, and winning elections. Anyway, that rant's for another day.
It was also very gratifying to learn about the people who were so close to him that they considered him their brother, father, mentor and so on. They were of different faiths, from different countries and backgrounds too: Ritch, Kallenbach, Henry and Millie Polak, Sonja Schlesin (all Jewish), Pranjivan Mehta, Cachalia, Thambi Naidoo, Rustomjee. In Millie Polak and Sonja Schlesin he found female role models he could hold as examples in the struggle for equality. Polak often challenged him on the views he held on women and might have been instrumental in changing them for the better. There were other white people who were not only sympathetic to his views but very vocal in their support for him. That must have helped him see people as individuals instead of a group or a tribe to be liked or disliked en masse.
I wasn't aware that his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, is a famous historian and has written (very unbiased, if reviewers are to be trusted) books on Gandhi and other stalwarts like Rajaji and Patel and a couple of books on influential Muslim leaders from modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I've put them on my list. I started listening to Godse's article on Youtube but couldn't proceed beyond the first few minutes. I'll try to keep my feelings aside some day in order to go through all of it critically.
Another long comment. I do hope some of the readers pick up the book by R. Guha or R. Gandhi in a bid to learn more about MK Gandhi beyond what we learnt in a few pages of our history books. I am all the richer for it.
Sincerely
Nishant.
I so, so wish that I had many more comment writers here of your calibre, Nishant, meaning people who make an effort to be well informed before they start clacking at the keyboard, who look at a complicated issue from many different angles before forming opinions, who add solid nuggets of new information to my store, and who take the time and patience to express themselves in articulate, persuasive and civilized language. What I realize is that in today's zamaana, that's a very tall order: you'd get hordes of twitterati instead if I once opened the door a wee bit wider. So thank you.
Remember, while I do say I profoundly respect Gandhi, and am actually in deep awe of him, I have also said, repeatedly, that I wish he had not been so irrationally intransigent over so many issues, that I believe he made gigantic mistakes from which hundreds of millions are still suffering, and that, in Nirad Chaudhuri's words, he was in some ways at least a worse dictator than Hitler! Yet no guns and goons, ever, remember, no mass scale mind bending propaganda, only threats of fasts unto death which could not 'go viral' within a day or two in pre-internet days. Ever heard of any other man who could sway tens of millions into obeying his dictates that way? Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Caesar, Chenghiz Khan, Narendra Modi...?
Sir
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