Gandhi’s humour

 Mark Twain once said ~ “Humour is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our harnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” Indeed, humour is one of the most important things in our everyday life. A good hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after. It is regarded as life’s essential spice, and serves as a profound source of joy and relief. Every human has an innate sense of humour.

Time magazine named Albert Einstein as its Man of the 20th century and Mahatma Gandhi as joint runner-up with Franklin D Roosevelt. Einstein was widely recognised not only as an exceptionally brilliant scientist but, according to Nobel physics laureate Werner Heisenberg, he had also a great sense of humour. Einstein had a genetic condition that made his hair look untamed, which has been documented in his photos in his lifetime. He was once scheduled to deliver a speech at Princeton on General Relativity. He started his speech with the sentence: “I suppose you think that if I know so much about gravity, why can’t I get my hair to lie down?” Another time during a lecture, he had written a number of equations on the blackboard.

A graduate student, with much hesitation, pointed out to Einstein that there might be a mistake in the equation. Einstein looked at that equation, rubbed his jaw for a second and said, “You are absolutely right. Oh well I’m no Einstein.” Once an American journalist asked the Mahatma, “Mr. Gandhi, do you have a sense of humour?” He looked at him for a while and replied, “If I had no sense of hu – mour I would have committed suicide a long time ago!” In fact, he was funny and was fond of wordplay and witticisms. One never had a dull moment with him. With children he joked like a child, with young people, he was a young man, with old people he was old, and with politicians he laughed and joked about politics. In all his jokes, there was an undercurrent of seriousness; he never said anything that he did not mean, and not a word escaped his lips that he termed frivolous. These qualities helped Gandhiji withstand the rigours of fighting for civil rights in South Africa and the arduous journey of the country’s freedom struggle.

When a repoter once asked him, “Why do you always choose to travel by third class in a train?”, he is said to have replied, “Simply, because there is no fourth class as yet”. There are several instances of his sense of humour which always chered others without hurting their feelings. In 1931, Gandhiji visited King George V at Buckingham Palace. He wore a loincloth, sandals, a shawl and his famous dangling watch.

A journalist asked snidely, “Mr. Gandhi, do you think you are properly dressed to meet the king?”. He responded: “Do not worry about my clothes. His majesty has enough clothes for both of us!” When a year later, Winston Churchill called him a ‘half-naked fakir’, the Father of the Nation thanked him for the ‘compliment’ and wrote that he “would love to be a fakir but was yet to be one.” Both the jokes had an underlying political meaning and revealed the unequal power relation between Gandhi (representing India) and the King and Churchill (both representing Great Britain). During his stay in London, the famous actor Charlie Chaplin called on Gandhiji and was surprised that the Mahatma had never heard of him. However, for the next half an hour, it was the Mahatma that kept the comedian laughing.

In Lancashire, he met a worker and asked him: “How many children do you have?” The reply was, “Eight Sir ~ four sons and four daughters.” The Mahatma said: “I have four sons. I can race with you halfway!” And there was a burst of laughter all around. In March 1937, the Mahatma was on his way to Madras for attending the session of the All India Hindi Sahitya Sammelan over which the late Seth Jamnalal Bajaj was to preside. The Grand Trunk Express by which he travelled reached Bezwada in the morning. As usual, there was a great rush at the station for the Mahatma’s Darshan. At that time, the question whether the Congress would accept office in the provinces occupied the minds of the people in the country.

One correspondent somehow appeared before the Mahatma and asked the Mahatma abruptly: “Bapuji, will the Congress accept office?” Gan dhiji cleverly dodged the press correspondent. But finding him un yielding, Gandhiji, with a chuckle of gentle humour, asked, “Why are you so anxious about this matter? Do you want to be a minister?” The whole crowd burst into laughter, and the correspondent had no option but to recede into the background. In 1942, Louis Fischer, the well-known American journalist, had to travel from Wardha railway station in a rickety tonga to meet the Mahatma at Sevagram. As soon as he entered the kutir, Gandhi sensed his discomfort and smilingly remarked, “Well, you must have travelled from the railway station in an airconditioned coach!” Fischer was able to laugh at his discomfort.

One day an Italian Bishop visited Sevagram to take a photograph of the Mahatma when he was sitting in a corner of his cottage with a mud-pack on his shaven head to beat the intense summer heat. Gandhiji greeted him with a smile and said, “Why waste your film, Father? People will ask you whether Gandhiji had broken his skull?” Gandhiji practised his wisecracks, even when he was ill. Once, in reply to an anxious enquiry about his health, he wrote: “Though the doctors say that the blood pressure is high, I notice no effects of it. And three doctors and three instruments gave three different readings yesterday: 200, 180, 160? What is to do when doctors differ?” About his doctor friend who had lost his teeth, he wrote: “What a shame that a doctor became toothless as I am!” Once he joked about his material possessions and who would inherit these.

Jawaharlal Nehru was named as his successor. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh and others joked with him. Gandhiji’s reply: “What will he inherit? My stick and my watch.” Meetings between Gandhiji and Rajaji used to be a feast of wit, wisdom and good humour. On a saltless diet, Gandhiji once said that he had lived without salt for years in South Africa and expressed his willingness to consider salt-free diets as a rule. Rajaji quipped, “When people are made to go without salt in their diet, they are likely to take to licking walls and eating clay like children to satisfy their natural carving for salt.” To this Gandhiji replied, “It will do them good, the walls will be cleaner.”

Examples of the Mahatma’s humour are legion. His simple language, his prolific writings, his meetings enriched with music and prayer, his spinning wheel, his costume ~ all are unique. Along with these, his toothless smile was one of his most famous physical characteristics. His sense of humour always reflected his intense humanity and his freedom from complexes. His lively humour and capacity to smile was as striking as his advocacy of non-violence. His American friend John Haynes Holmes observed, “Laughter was the doorway to his soul.” George Bernard Shaw called him “the only man in the East with a sense of humour”.

Source: The Statesman, JAYDEV JANA | New Delhi | October 2, 2024 8:25 am

Gandhi and Women

 Women in the Phoenix Settlement, founded by Gandhi in 1904 in South Africa, were unrestrained by social taboos and had more freedom than their counterparts anywhere in India. With his experience of South Africa behind him, Gandhi was aware of the potential of women as satyagrahis. He also firmly believed that ‘women of India should have as much share in the winning of swaraj as men.

It is an undeniable fact that the culture of a nation is expressed in the importance it gives to the dignity and rights of its women. Apart from her reproductive function for the continuation of the race, a woman has played an extremely important role since the origin of the human species.

Because by her very biological function, she creates, cares, shares, and does not normally destroy. Many firmly believe that the Chinese revolution has been primarily a woman’s revolution. That is to say, it is China’s women, more than the peasants and workers, who have benefitted from the communist revolution.

The women of today’s China are fortunate, they have a taste of freedom. The women of today’s Russia enjoy an equal position with men. Since ages, Indian women were living in abject conditions, homebound, caught in the grip of fear, illiteracy and social discrimination.

Mahatma Gandhi was concerned about the emancipation and empowerment of women from the early stages of his life. He also felt that a country could not move forward unless there was an awakening among the country’s women.

However, in the formative years, he was deeply influenced by his mother Putlibai, who imparted in him a strong sense of personal ethics and compassion that is conveyed through his favorite prayer song (bhajan) written by the 15th-century religious reformer, Narsinha Mehta: ‘Vaishnav jan to tene re kahiye je peed parai jane re’ (A godlike man is one, who feels another’s pain, who shares another’s sorrow).

Indeed, motherhood was something that was natural to Gandhi. He was involved in a number of tasks that were considered largely feminine ~ nursing, cleaning, cooking and taking care of the ashram members. He firmly believed that the difference between men and women was only physical, and they play complementary roles.

He also expressed several times in his writings in ‘Young India’ and ‘Harijan’ that in many matters especially those of tolerance, patience, and sacrifice the Indian woman is superior to the male.

Gandhi’s views regarding the man-woman relation were very similar to Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy, while reviewing the famous short story entitled ‘The Darling’ written by the famous Russian author Anton Chekhov, made some profound observations. The author made fun of women who lacked originality, and were shadows of men and whose tastes would change with a change of husbands. Tolstoy did not agree with the observation.

He believed that women had their own uniqueness and that both men and women had equal abilities and rights, although they had different roles to play in society.

Gandhi was a keen observer of the women’s movement for voting rights in the UK, which at times did not practice the principled type of non-violence that he had advocated all along.

But he had tremendous faith in women’s inherent capacity for non-violence. In his words: “If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with the women… who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than women? … God has vouchsafed to women the power of non-violence more than to men.

It is all the more effective because it is mute. Women are the natural messengers of the gospel of non-violence if only they attain high state.” Women in the Phoenix Settlement, founded by him in 1904 in South Africa, were unrestrained by social taboos and had more freedom than their counterparts anywhere in India.

With his experience of South Africa behind him, Gandhi was aware of the potential of women as satyagrahis. He also firmly believed that “women of India should have as much share in the winning of swaraj as men.”

In India, Gandhi’s first experiments with trying out the method of satyagraha was in Champaran district in Bihar in 1917. It was here that a few women such as Pravabati Devi, Rajbanshi Devi and Bhagawati Devi facilitated the entry of women into the freedom struggle.

These women led the fight against the purdah system. Social works gradually led to a political awakening among women. From Champaran Gandhi went to Kheda district (Gujarat) where peasants were protesting against unjust taxation. Gandhi was received with great enthusiasm by women everywhere.

In his historical march to Dandi on 12 March 1930, women came out in thousands. Women’s participation in large numbers in Gandhi’s mass movements was a kind of social revolution which made a breakthrough in their lives.

Gandhi is known to be one of the few people who encouraged women’s active participation in the freedom struggle – making him a rare promoter of woman’s liberation.

And his experience of participation by women in politics from his days in South Africa till the end of his life bears testimony to the fact that they never failed his expectations. In his letters and speeches to women, Gandhi repeatedly emphasized that women were not weak.

Addressing a meeting in Bombay in 1920, where women expressed their views on the atrocities committed in Punjab, Gandhi said: “I, therefore, want the women of India not to believe themselves weak. It is ignorance to call women weak, women who have been the mother of mighty heroes like Hanuman.” And he wrote in ‘Young India’ in 1930, “To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to women”.

Gandhi asked women to be fearless. As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: “The dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear-pervasive oppressing, strangling fear; … It was against this all-pervading fear that Gandhi’s quiet and determined voice was raised: Be not afraid” (Discovery of India). Not only did he inspire women to be brave, he taught men too to respect women. Gandhi did everything to correct gender imbalances and bring women to the forefront in India’s social, economic, cultural and political mainstream.

Empowerment and uplift of women and the poor became his prime concern. He repeatedly pointed out that seeking freedom by imitating men would be a mockery of freedom. In his words: “Man and woman are equal in rank but they are peerless pair being supplementary to one another.”

As a result, women became prominent during the freedom struggle. Initially, many highly-educated women took part in the women’s movement launched by Gandhi, but as the movement spread among the masses, women from middle and lower class families ~ educated, uneducated and half-educated ~ came out and joined hands with each other to strengthen the movement.

Many observers of the Indian scene during those times were amazed at the phenomenon. Depicting the picture of those days Pandit Nehru wrote: “Most of us menfolk were in prison. And then a remarkable thing happened. Our women came to the front and took the charge of the struggle.

Women have always been there, of course, but now there was an avalanche of them, which took not only the British Government but their own menfolk by surprise” [Discovery of India]. With Gandhi’s inspiration, they took the struggle right into their homes and raised it to a moral level. Women organized public meetings, sold khadi and proscribed literature, started picketing shops of liquor and foreign goods, prepared contraband salt, and came forward to face all sorts of atrocities, including inhuman treatment by police officers.

They came forward to give all that they had ~ their wealth and strength, their jewelry and belongings, their skill and labour ~ for this unusual and unprecedented struggle. During the 40 years of his political career, Gandhi only found more reasons to deepen his faith in what he wrote. He never had a specific programme for women, but women had an integral role to play in his programmes.

For this reason, women participated in all programmes overwhelmingly. “Womanhood is not restricted to the kitchen”, he opined and felt that “only when the woman is liberated from the slavery of the kitchen, that her true spirit may be discovered.” It does not mean that women should not cook, but only that household responsibilities be shared among men, women and children. He wanted women to outgrow their traditional responsibilities and participate in the affairs of the nation.

He connected women with services and not with power. In his words: “If by strength is meant moral power, then a woman is immeasurably man’s superior.”

JAYDEV JANA

Source: The Statesman, 17/04/23

We are still far from attaining Mahatma Gandhi's vision of ‘Swaraj'

 

Mahatma Gandhi’s moral weapon was the initiation of "Change of Heart”, a very effective and potent weapon that he had used efficaciously to achieve several successes.

Mahatma Gandhi’s stellar leadership of our freedom movement, based on the moral force of truth and ahimsa, brought us independence. His ideals continue to illumine all, universally. In India, the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 led by Gandhi was a watershed moment in the Indian freedom struggle.

Within a short span of time, Gandhi and his ideas had begun transforming India's social and political life. His charismatic life continues to inspire us with its message of truth as our sole religion and ahimsa, service of humanity and hate the sin not the sinner our main mantras. Glimpses of the profundity of Gandhian thought are evident in various articles of our Constitution and are still foregrounded in our intellectual discourse. Gandhian ideals, viz., Satya, Ahimsa, Satyagraha, Sarvodaya, Swaraj, Trusteeship, Swadeshi, etc. were incorporated into various provisions of our Constitution. Part 4 of the Indian Constitution deals with the Directive Principles of State Policy (Articles 36 to 51) and many of these articles could be easily imputed to being influenced by Bapu’s ideals.

Gandhi’s moral weapon was the initiation of "Change of Heart”, a very effective and potent weapon that he had used efficaciously to achieve several successes. It’s not known why this powerful weapon did not find its due place in our Constitution. It is imperative that this Change of Heart transformational concept finds its legitimate place in the Indian Constitution.

Experts, across the globe, have discovered a new management icon in the Father of our nation. The Mahatma is now being recognised not only as a political leader who gained independence for the nation but also as a master strategist whose work, philosophy and actions - all three of which were in extraordinary ethical synchronicity, have valuable lessons for reforming the administrative culture, particularly in India.

Gandhi believed that actions, founded on moral authority flowing from the "inner voice", should constitute the bedrock of conduct of any public functionary. This ethical conscientious touchstone, which the saintly "Bapu" made his credo, and embodied in every domain of his life, led Albert Einstein to assert: "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon the earth."

Gandhi's concept of non-violence and his iconic moral standards are what today's public functionaries and administrators must emulate in order to truly serve the masses and make our nation a true democracy.

Gandhi laid tremendous emphasis on “heart change” and advocated differential treatment towards those public servants/officials who admit their mistakes and want to move forward on an ethical path.

In this context, an incident narrated by Gandhi, of an Indian businessman, Parsi Rustomji, who was a client of Barrister Gandhi and his closest associate in South Africa, is extremely relevant. Rustomji always used to seek and act as per Gandhiji’s advice, but he had the tendency to hide some facts about his business. All the goods that he was trading in, were freighted through Calcutta and Bombay, where he habitually evaded some custom duty on those goods, but he never revealed it to Gandhi. Once, the customs officials caught this theft and Rustomji was sent to jail. Rustomji rushed to Gandhi and narrated the entire episode to him. After hearing it, Gandhi reprimanded him and advised him to admit his crime, even if it meant being imprisoned. Following Gandhi's advice, Rustomji immediately approached the tax authorities and admitted his wrongdoing, vowing never to commit such a crime again in the future. The tax officials were pleased with his courage to accept his misdeed, and his change of heart, and abandoned the idea of prosecuting him. The officer just imposed double the custom duty that Rustomji paid as part of his atonement. After that, Rustomji never repeated any such malpractices and lived a dignified and stress-free life thereafter.

Gandhi valued repentance. To err is human, but not showing remorse is a venal sin. The compassionate message of the Mahatma was those who accept their mistakes and are willing to repent- need to be dealt with differently.

Currently, even if a government official accepts his mistake and is willing to repent, there is no specific provision in the Constitution or law to deal with him differently and give him a chance to reform. As the current provision in Article 311 throws no light on how such a person should be dealt with, it is necessary that the law should make provisions for such an eventuality.

Our country is celebrating “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav” currently and on October 2, we will celebrate the birth anniversary of Bapu. We need to remember that we are still very distant from attaining the vision of "Swaraj” enunciated by Mahatma, who taught us to walk the talk and we need to work indefatigably towards that goal eschewing hatred, negativity and violence.

Source: Hindustan Times, 1/10/22

Recognising Gandhi the philosopher

 

K.P. Shankaran writes: The politically charged, non-violent and ethical style of philosophy propagated by Gandhi is intended to make one spiritual — a practitioner is encouraged to gravitate and work for the welfare of all other beings.

It is not often that Gandhi is portrayed as a philosopher. To me, Gandhi is as significant as the Buddha of the Nikayas and the Socrates of Plato’s early dialogues. These three men are unique because, like Confucius of China, they can be credited with inventing philosophical ways of life that were led by ethics as opposed to others led by metaphysics. The Buddha’s philosophical way of life, within a few centuries, got morphed into two different “religious” forms of life — Theravada and Mahayana. Socrates’ philosophy, however, did not suffer the same fate. Hellenistic philosophy, like Stoicism, is still capable of inspiring people the way Confucianism does in China. Unfortunately for Gandhi, the understanding that he was a philosopher is only slowly getting recognised. The credit for recognising Gandhi as a philosopher goes to two philosophers belonging to the Analytic tradition of philosophy — Akeel Bilgrami and Richard Sorabjee. The latter is a historian of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy.

My position is, however, slightly different from that of these two Analytic philosophers. Philosophy was initially practised only in three civilisations — Chinese, Greek and Indian. In these civilisations, philosophy functioned as a way of life distinct from other ways of life that were rooted in a belief in supernatural powers. But even the philosophical ways of life practised in those ancient times could be divided into two categories — a metaphysics-led philosophical way of life and an ethics-led philosophical way of life. Barring the philosophies enunciated by the Buddha, Socrates and Confucius all other philosophies propagated metaphysics-led ways of life.

The basic difference between these ways is that in ethics-led philosophy, the attempt is to transform the practitioner from his/her baser state of being to an ethically higher state of existence and in the process making him/her, at least in the case of Socrates and the Buddha, psychologically self-sufficient. The Buddha called such a condition “Nirvana”. Socrates articulated it by saying “a virtuous person cannot be harmed” to indicate the disappearance of selfishness-induced fears in the practitioner.

However, in the metaphysics-led philosophical way of life, instead of a higher ethical state of being, the philosopher tries to achieve a higher state of understanding (insight) as well as a communion with what is taken to be the “ultimate”. In the latter, ethics has only a secondary role to play.

In the 20th century, Gandhi reinvented a very original ethics-led philosophical way of life. But Gandhi’s philosophical significance has largely remained unrecognised. The reason, I think, is that once Christianity banned all non-Christian ways of life in Europe in 529CE, philosophy re-emerged in 17th century Europe as a purely theoretical discipline by shedding its life practices. With that, the idea of “philosophical ways of life” became extinct in Europe. This shift from philosophy as a way of life to philosophy as a theoretical discipline is celebrated as the birth of modern Western philosophy. By the end of the 18th century, philosophy had become an academic discipline, with only academics functioning in philosophy departments being treated as philosophers. With colonisation, these European ideas started influencing public discourse in the rest of the world. Viewed against these standards, Gandhi did not qualify as a philosopher. It was, therefore, not surprising that to the people at large, it was only Gandhi’s political dimensions that became visible. The ethical dimension and the associated way of life got subsumed under the category of “religion”. But Gandhi was not religious even though he constantly used the Vaishnava vocabulary. Nevertheless, he was spiritual, if spirituality means reduction of self-centredness. This is clear from his introduction to his translation of the Gita. His shift from “God is Truth” to “Truth is God” in 1929, was also aimed at making ethics the “first principle” of his philosophy. A precursor to this can be seen in his 1907 free translation of William Salter’s “Ethical religion” when he said, “morality should be observed as a religion”.

Gandhi, like the Buddha, was an ethical consequentialist in that the purpose of his ethical way was to reduce self-centredness and to promote a concern for the well-being of all (sarvodaya). Till the end of his life, he constantly tried to get rid of his own self-centred behaviours and thoughts. On numerous occasions he had said that he aspired to “reduce to zero”, that is, totally eliminate selfishness/self-centeredness. For the Buddha, too, the reduction of self-centeredness through the cultivation of virtues like satya, ahimsa, aparigraha, brahmacharya, etc., was crucial for fostering sarvodaya. According to the Buddha’s empirical theses, once the concern for the well-being of all (sarvodaya) is well stabilised, psychological self-sufficiency would ensue and this, in turn, would cause unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and its concomitant fears to disappear. Gandhi named that state of being as “moksha” instead of “nirvana”.

What makes Gandhi different from the Buddha is that Gandhi, apart from individual moksha, wanted development of freedoms (Gandhi’s constructive programme, if correctly interpreted, aims at the attainment of a set of basic freedoms such as freedom from hunger, thirst, illiteracy, avoidable diseases, etc.) for humanity as a whole. Only through political action, according to Gandhian ethics, can we implement this constructive programme. Therefore, Gandhi’s philosophical way of life is an explicit desire for a socialist society — since an ethics based on the reduction of selfishness can only approve a socialist way of life, for logical reasons. Anything that enhances selfishness, like a capitalist economy, is anathema to Gandhi’s philosophical way of life. As a philosophical practitioner, a Gandhian philosopher can only live in a community based on the fundamental principles of socialism, such as equality and the absence of private property. Even though socialist themes like the idea of a “simple life” were part of all philosophical schools of the Subcontinent, it was only in Gandhi that they achieved an explicit political/ideological dimension — Gandhi’s ashrams were such socialist communes. Gandhi’s constructive programme sought to generate socialist enclaves within a capitalist social set up and he called that swaraj.

The politically charged, non-violent and ethical style of philosophy propagated by Gandhi is intended to make one spiritual — a practitioner is encouraged to gravitate and work for the welfare of all other beings. I hope the philosophical way of life enunciated by Gandhi does become a substitute for religion in a post-religious world.

Source: Indian Express, 1/10/2021

Abandoning Gandhi: The idea of Truth, the reality of it, has been the biggest victim of our times

There is a tiny chance that we will look for the Gandhi in ourselves. That, indeed, would be a greater miracle than the miracle of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Have we forgotten Gandhi? In this year, when we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth, the answer has to be a resounding “No!” The spate of articles on him, the debates, discussions, lectures, the books that continue to be published on him — all these make this abundantly clear. Even otherwise, Gandhi was always very much among us. We live in an age of documentation, and all school children know about his fight for India’s freedom, his twin weapons of Ahimsa and Satyagraha. There are, besides, millions of images and pictures. Gandhi has always lent himself easily to the artist; a few lines can provide a beautiful minimalist picture, often enhanced by a tuneful, soulful Vaishnava Jana To playing in the background.

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Unfortunately, in time, even this picture becomes a cliché, and stories harden into legends, they become banal and tired. If we want to get to the real man, we need to get rid of all this clutter and go to his story as he told it: The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

It is a dramatic story, even in his own plain, unexaggerated words. From being a shy young man from Kathiawad to becoming a barrister in London, from going to Africa to earn some badly needed money for the family and becoming, overnight, another man who knitted together a whole community, from being a man who came to India looking up to giants like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and, in the course of a visit to Bihar, because of an importunate poor farmer, discovering the weapon of civil disobedience with which to fight the British and awaken a whole country — it is a roller coaster ride like none other. As if these were not enough, he branched off into matters like a vegetarian diet, sanitation (he and his team were always there to clean the latrines), brahmacharya, the swadeshi and khadi movement.

What does one make of a man who dabbled in such disparate matters? Not so disparate to him, because for him all these elements were linked to his obsession with the Truth. His deep interest in them was part of his search for the truth.

To describe the truth as it has appeared and in the exact manner in which I have arrived at it has been a ceaseless activity.

Indeed, it was a ceaseless activity. The word Truth resounds throughout the book. Over and over again, he questions himself, asks if he has strayed from the Truth. To read about the incident when he left his dying father to go to his wife because of what he bluntly calls his lust is to wonder where he got the courage to be so honest. For this was the early 20th century, when India was still caught in the grip of Victorian morality and prudery. The story of his giving in to his doctor and agreeing to drink goat’s milk is equally fascinating. Why did I agree, he asks himself. Did not my vow include all milk? What sophistry made me separate goat’s milk from the other kinds of milk? He was more scrupulous about keeping the vows he made to his mother (no meat, no wine, no women), observing them in the spirit, not the letter. When he realised he had kept back the fact that he was married from an English woman who had befriended him, he wrote to her, confessed the truth and apologised. Endless self-questioning, endless weighing himself on some unseen moral scales, and finally admitting he was wrong if he thought he was wrong.

A devotee of truth must always hold himself open to correction and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong he must confess and atone for it.

If this is the real Gandhi, the man who believed in admitting to one’s own fault and then atoning for it, we lost Gandhi long back. I doubt whether, even then, in the heyday of Gandhism, there were many who implicitly followed all of Gandhi’s teachings. There was often impatience even among his co-workers at Gandhi’s mixing up of the big issues with small ones. But nothing was small to Gandhi if it was about truth. According to Gandhi, Truth, Ahimsa and God are the same.

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This idea of Truth, the reality of it, has been the biggest victim of our times. Not only do we no longer care about Truth, we will not be able to recognise it even when it appears before us. Lies have become the common currency of public life, there is a mass culture of denial and refusal to take responsibility for one’s words. By this one standard alone, we have failed miserably, we have abandoned Gandhi. Perhaps it requires a Gandhi to have the courage of absolute honesty. In fact, this is the time of liars, of lies which prompt a person to say, I never said that, or, I never did that, or, I was misquoted misrepresented, quoted out of context.

This is a time when rapists walk with a proud swagger, men and women who cheat and loot the country brazen it out, a person in power is arrogance personified and hypocrisy is rampant. How, then, do we dare to say that Gandhi lives among us? We have had our chance. Perhaps there is a tiny chance that we will look for the Gandhi in ourselves. That, indeed, would be a greater miracle than the miracle of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

This article first appeared in the print edition on October 29, 2019 under the title ‘Abandoning Gandhi’. The writer is a novelist, whose most recent book is Shadow Play

Source: Indian Express, 29/10/2019

Gained in Translation: Gandhi’s art of disagreement

Nathuram Godse and Gandhi both had an abiding love for India but Godse was so deeply offended by Gandhi’s idea of India that killing Gandhi was, for Godse, the most satisfying way of settling this disagreement.

On the evening of October 30, 1947, exactly three months before Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot dead, one person who had come to the prayer meeting on the lawns of Birla House objected to verses from the Quran being included in the prayers. The majority of the people present were in favour of the entire multi-faith prayer and they compelled the person who had objected to leave.

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The entire episode deeply pained Gandhi. First of all, he said, all are welcome to the prayer meeting “but after coming here it is not good manners to raise any objection”.

This was no mere difference of opinion on some fleeting issue of the moment. The objector was striking at the very heart of what was most dear to Gandhi — prayer and acknowledging that all faiths are paths to the same divinity.

Yet even this did not prevent Gandhi from approaching the objector with empathy and seeing that there was pain behind his anger. At the same time, Gandhi firmly stood his ground: “…I am helpless because it (verses from Quran) is an inseparable part of my prayer.” Gandhi vowed to continue to persevere, despite this disagreement, strictly within the boundaries of nonviolence.

This story does not offer any easy copy-paste solution for our times. But it is potentially an entry point for reflecting on the delicate art of disagreement. Before we look more closely at that incident on the lawns of Birla house, 72 years ago, there is merit in re-stating some well-known fundamentals.

To be human is to disagree. Diversity of views and convictions has been an essential part of what has brought our species this far. The scale of viciousness and open hatred over social media may be new but the problem itself is very old.

Historically, disagreement has led to a wide range of responses — from killing, shouting down or ignoring the opponent to listening and attempting dialogue with the “other”.

In India, at present, it is easy to mistakenly believe that religion, caste and other forms of social identity are the main causes of violent disagreement. But some of the most famous murders in recent history have happened within the same ideology. For example, Stalin not only commissioned the murder of Leon Trotsky, his rival within the communist movement, he also presented the assassin a medal in absentia.

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Nathuram Godse and Gandhi both had an abiding love for India but Godse was so deeply offended by Gandhi’s idea of India that killing Gandhi was, for Godse, the most satisfying way of settling this disagreement.

Today it is common to hear praise for Godse’s idea of India. Those who hold this view will sympathise with the person who objected to the inclusion of verses from the Quran in the evening prayer meetings led by Gandhi.

Usually this is seen as a disagreement between the advocates of Hindutva and those who believe that to support Godse is to betray both the legacy of the freedom struggle and the very essence of what it means to be a Hindu.

January 30, Gandhi’s martyrdom day, is commonly recognised as a stark marker for this on-going dispute in Indian society. Gandhi was indeed killed for his refusal to give up his respect for all faiths. But the political urgency of this dispute can obscure the core significance of this day. Gandhi’s assassin was, above all, striking at the art of disagreement which Gandhi had so assiduously cultivated.

Gandhi’s life and his politics brought forth a truth that ordinary people knew instinctively — namely, that a mat-bhed, difference over an issue, need not become a man-bhed, a division of hearts. Among the millions who lined up to pay respects to Gandhi’s ashes, many would have disagreed with him on many specific issues but that paled in comparison with the glow left behind by his art of disagreement.

Current projections of Godse as a hero are essentially about obliterating the vital difference between disagreement over an issue and a division of hearts. In this context what are the key lessons from Gandhi’s experiments with the art of disagreement?

First and foremost we must recognise, if not celebrate, that Gandhi’s practice was not perfect. This is why it is human, accessible and replicable. For instance, Gandhi’s differences with B R Ambedkar over separate electorates are perhaps the best-known instance where Gandhi fell short. Gandhi’s fasting onto death on this issue had an internal and authentic logic, but it acted upon Ambedkar as a form of coercion and laid the grounds for a lingering bitterness.

Here then is just one version of Gandhi’s key gains in the art of disagreement.

One, engagement with the other’s views is always possible and worthwhile — no matter how obnoxious that view may appear at first glance. Two, this can and must be done while being true to the fundamentals of your own conviction. Three, this requires a willingness to both listen deeply to the “other” so as to decipher their underlying concerns and anxieties and to respond accordingly.

Of course, all of the above is possible only if we seek power with others rather than over them. When there is confidence in power with others then there is potentially strength in agreeing to disagree. It is when we crave power over others that disagreement veers towards fatal conflict and any reduction in the polarisation seems threatening because a resolution of the conflict becomes anathema.

Gandhi was able to cultivate the art of disagreement not because he was drawing on modern liberal values but because he located himself in the spiritual traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Seeing all faiths as different paths leading to the same truth was only one part of this legacy. More importantly, he was rooted in the conviction that when primacy is given to the spiritual domain then our worldly disagreements become proportionally small and fleeting.

Therefore, the shouting down of the man who objected to the Quran verses was a form of violence. That evening, on October 30, Gandhi refused to have the prayer meeting. But he was clear that “disappointing 300 persons for the sake of two or three is also a kind of violence.”

So the next day the multi-faith prayer gathering proceeded complete with verses from the Quran. In case anyone objects, Gandhi had said earlier, the rest of those gathered must put up with the objection without anger: “Because you are in the majority, you should not think that you can ignore the people who are protesting. If you think you can ignore them, you would be following the path of violence. We must be more concerned about the people who are in the minority.”

Having refused to drop the Quran verses from his prayers Gandhi invited the objectors to meet him later and explain how they were harming the Hindu religion. “Personally, I think I have only done some good to Hinduism. Through this practice of reciting from the Quran I am able to draw my Muslim friends nearer to me. I have not done anything wrong in this.” After the prayer meeting, Gandhiji thanked the objectors for remaining silent and also complimented the rest of the gathering for tolerating their protests.

Three months later, the objector took the form of Nathuram Godse and killed Gandhi.

Godse’s disagreement with Gandhi ended in murder. When the court found Godse guilty and passed a death sentence, Gandhi’s family and followers pleaded that the assassin’s life be spared.

It is for each one of us to decide whether it was violence or ahimsa that was victorious on the lawns of Birla House on January 30, 1948. As individual beings, as members of a family and as a society — we cannot hope to resolve differences of issues if we are caught in the quicksands that divide hearts.

This is an abridged text of the 46th Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar Memorial Lecture delivered at Ruia College, Mumbai on January 24. Abridged and translated from Hindi by the author

Source: 10/02/2019