Mahatma Gandhi - As Gujerati Man of Letters

Mahatma Gandhi:

As Gujerati Man of Letters

Mahatma Gandhi

(From a sketch by Sjt. Kanu Desai of Ahmedabad)

There are certain aspects of Mahatma Gandhi's greatness, which are not known to the world at large. They concern primarily his own province of Gujerat and his mother-tongue, Gujerati. He loves them passionately, like any other son or daughter of Gujerat. Had Gandhiji not appeared on the literary firmament of Gujerat, Gujerati would have been much the poorer today. Gujerati was destined to be reformed and enriched at the hands of this great man: No student of contemporary Indian literature can possibly ignore his services to a tongue spoken by ten million souls in Western India.

People in general judge of a man's worth by his achievements in the sphere which is supremely his own, though his achievements in other spheres may be by no means inconsiderable. A Sanskrit scholar who has specialized in grammar is known only as a ‘Vaiyakarani’, even if he happens to be well-versed in literature and philosophy. The world admires Tagore as a Poet who has scaled heights and dived into depths undreamt of before. But besides being a short-story writer, a fine essayist, a splendid letter-writer, dramatist and actor, Tagore is one of the best song-composers of India. His contribution to the world of music is very extensive and of a very high order. Sri Thyagaraja, of South India, Kabeer, Meerabai, and Rabindranath stand on a level with one another. In softness of expression and depth of feeling, Tagore perhaps excels them all. But how many outside the intelligentsia of Bengal know of him as a hymnologist? The poet Rabindranath has eclipsed Rabindranath, the musician, even as Chittaranjan, the politician and fighter, eclipsed Chittaranjan the poet and worshipper at the shrine of ‘Vanga Bharati’.

The present article attempts to delineate the services of Gandhiji to Gujerati in a cursory manner. So far as I know, no such attempt has been made in any language other than Gujetati. It is a pity that no Gujerati writer or critic has cared to enlighten his fellow-Indians about this interesting subject. Gujerat has advertised her diamonds, her cotton and her piece-goods, but has never advertised her literature. And yet, her Narsim Mehta, Meerabai, Narbada Sanker, Dalpat Ram and Nana Lal are entitled to the same reverence, adoration and popularity as Rama Das, Tulsi Das, Chandi Das, Potana, Sarat Chandra and Va1lathol. I do not claim to possess an up-to-date knowledge of Gujerati, nor does this article pretend to be authoritative. I am just trying to introduce the readers to a subject unknown to most of them, and I hope this will stimulate a more detailed and fascinating study in English by writers like Mahadev Desai or Ram Narain Pathak of Ahmedabad.

In India, as elsewhere, social reformers and leaders of liberal thought have also been pioneers of literary Renaissance. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Veeresalingam Pantulu, Narbada Sanker, Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw, Okakura, Kakuzo and a host of others have been savants as well as builders of society. Gandhiji also is one of such reformer-litterateurs. His work in the field of social reform is well-known. His unceasing propaganda to remove the sin of untouchability, his austere fasts and penances to bring about genuine Hindu-Muslim unity, his ruthless attacks on the ‘Devadasi’ system of South India, and his heroic efforts to revive our cottage industries, are all so many attempts to ameliorate the condition of society. But this reformer of society and of Government, is also reforming his mother-tongue, albeit unconsciously. He is gradually effecting a change in the language, weeding out the unhealthy elements, introducing orderliness and purity, and making it a vehicle for the expression of the sublimest thought.

Before Gandhiji's advent, there was no dominant personality to set the standard and hold aloft an ideal. Each writer was a law unto himself. No intelligible method. was followed as regards the spelling of words; no uniformity In their very shape. If one used a soft consonant, another used in the same place a hard one. If one poet used a particular word as one of four ‘matras,’ another used it to represent five ‘matras’ by elongating one letter. No one hesitated to use ‘S’ a’ or ‘Sha’ for the dental ‘Sa’ and so on. The same disorderliness was in evidence with regard to the usage of words and idioms. Several words not meaning the same thing were used as synonymous. Little shades of difference in meaning were sometimes

neglected, and at other times given undue importance. Consequently, the reader was at a loss to find out the sense in which a particular word was used. Display of erudition and an exaggerated use of sonorous and alliterative terms were regarded as qualities of high-class literature. Circumlocution in expression was constantly adopted. Obsolete words and unintelligible colloquialisms were freely used. The Northern Kathiawaris and the Southern Suratis employed their respective slangs, and the Ahmedabadis in the middle could understand neither of them. There was thus no standard Gujerati.

In those days, the press was entirely in the hands of the rich Parsis. Though the Parsis adopted Gujerati as their home-language, they could neither speak nor write correct Gujerati. They filled the columns of their Dailies and Weeklies with their ‘Parsi-Gujerati’ an euphemism for a queer and corrupt language like ‘Mohammedan’ Telugu or Kannada. The poems published in the papers were either in a highly Sanskritised style unintelligible even to the editors and publishers, or in Persianised style in ‘Guzzle’ metres abounding in ‘Vaslo’ (union) and, ‘Judayi’ (separation) themes, which were a bore to the majority of the Hindu readers. In prose, the Hindus used a style replete with Sanskrit words, bound up by Sanskrit grammatical regulations, and the Parsis could not keep pace with them. So no one mode of expression or style could become popular and respected by the entire reading public of Gujerat.

But the autumn of the language was bound to be followed by its spring. At an opportune moment, Gandhiji entered the arena, and as with the rising of the moon, the ocean of literature surged with a mysterious thrill and joyousness. There was a regularity and rhythm in the rising and the falling of the waves. Long before Mahatmaji inaugurated the Satyagraha and Non-co-operation movements, he was known, especially to Gujeratis residing in South Africa, as a good writer in the mother-tongue. His ‘Hind Swaraj’ and the articles he contributed to the Gujerati papers in South Africa, won him great reputation. But he had to wait till the days of Non-co-operation to make his influence felt. Gujerat was then brought into the lime-light, crowned with a crownless hegemony and respected as the home-land of the world's greatest man. Millions of eyes were turned towards that small sandy site on the banks of the Sabarmati. In the palmy days of Non-co-operation, ‘Navajivan’, Mahatmaji's Gujerati weekly, had to its credit nearly twenty-five thousand subscribers, No cultured Gujerati home was without it. Reading ‘Navajivan’ and wearing khaddar were looked upon as the outer signs of an inner patriotism. ‘Navajivan’ is just a broadcasting agency. Mahatmaji steals–though he is opposed to any sort of stealing–a quarter of an hour from his pressing engagements, writes off an article and sends it to the ‘Navajivan’ press. The next day, the whole of Gujerat, from Bombay to Kathiawar, reads it, hears it, and ponders over it. It carries the fire of patriotism and the glow of Truth with it. Even in the remotest villages of the interior, people used to throng at the post-offices to get their copies of ‘Navajivan.’ Scores of illiterate peasants sat round a person while reading ‘Navajivan’ and listened patiently and seriously to the contents of the paper from end to end. And as they left the place, a tear of expiation, sympathy or emotion, would glitter in their eyes. Week after week, the people of Gujerat heard the language of Mahatmaji and got accustomed to it. They realised that his direct and simple style appealed to them more than any other. They refused to admire other styles of expression, which formerly used to exact their reluctant appreciation. This was the beginning of a reformation in the language. Mahatmaji's style was taken as the standard by which to measure the worth of other writings. This was how he was called ‘the father of neo-Gujerati prose’, though there was Ambalal Sankarlal Desai who had previously employed an equally effective and simple style. Desai could be compared to John the Baptist of the New Testament, paving the way for the coming Son of God. Thus, quietly and unobtrusively, and without sermonising on the need for new ways of expression, Mahatmaji introduced the people to a simple, effective and beautiful prose style.

Besides simplifying Gujerati prose, Gandhiji showed the ways in which it could be usefully employed. Before him, nobody dared to treat serious subjects like religion, politics and art in the mother tongue. Even when there was a stray attempt, the language could not be understood by the common people, who were thus denied all opportunity to come into touch with politics, or philosophy. Mahatmaji employed Gujerati to express even the subtlest feelings and sublimest thoughts. He dealt with all the great topics of the day. His scholarly articles on religion, ‘Varnashrama Dharma’, ‘Brahmacharya,’ and ‘Ahimsa’ and his soul-stirring expositions of Satyagraha, Non-co-operation, dietetics and economic problems, indicate that he possesses a versatile genius, a profound knowledge of men, and things, and a perfect and racy expression, that go to make him one of the greatest and noblest of Indian writers. He speaks with intuition and intelligence, and out of the abundance of his knowledge. Anyone who has followed his ‘Atma Katha’ or autobiography closely, can discern that he has a powerful yet a generous perception. He visualises all the great forces that pulsate beneath the common crises of our daily life and describes them in their beauty and their. strength.

His is a very natural style. He never wants to produce literature nor does he wish to be worshipped by future generations as an eminent literary personage. He never labours at a style. He does not pause to cull a more effective or sonorous word. This does not mean that his writings are not characterised by beautiful diction. In fact, his diction is extraordinarily virile, sensitive and illuminating, and he never selects a difficult or obsolete word in preference to a simpler and more current one. As one who spent much of his time in other parts of India, he introduced words and constructions from other Indian languages. Hindi is his main source. He uses also many Kathiawadi words and phrases, which have thus become popular and current.

Some of his descriptions of natural scenery are greatly admired in Gujerat. I shall just quote a few lines of Prof. Nagindas Parekh, a talented writer and critic of Ahmedabad. He says:

"Sometimes it (diction) is marvelous. His descriptions of natural scenery, occurring in some of his political writings, are really classical, e.g. the one of Sindhu, when he first went there during his All-India tour, The other is the one he wrote when he was sailing in a boat on the river Padma in Bengal in the same year. Really, I sometimes fail to understand how he can choose his words so correctly."

In his writings, Gandhiji does not employ far-fetched similes and hyperboles that make the sentence gaudy and ornate; but in his mild and picturesque way he adds delicacy and grace to the sentence. He is parsimonious, economical rather, in his use of words. We can present to the Telugu readers a faint idea of Gandhiji's style and diction by comparing him with Kavi Tikkana, the most celebrated of their classical poets. Gandhiji is ever fresh and green as an olive. One is never tired of reading an article of his on Khadi ‘Brahmacharya’, or untouchability, even if it be for the hundredth time that he is writing on the subject. This is because he has an unerring vision and the capacity to dive into the depths of things. He does not indulge in platitudinous verbiage. His frankness has a great deal to do with this ever-new and impressive style of his.

But curiously enough, one finds sentence after sentence in a single chapter having a purely English construction. This might shock an old Pandit, but young Gujerat believes that these constructions really add power and beauty to the sentences. This is but inevitable for one in Mahatmaji's position. We may add that several sentences with similar construction are finding their way into the various Indian languages through the writings of English-educated Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam literary luminaries. The construction and idioms are so English, that we sometimes forget that we are reading a vernacular book or article.

When Rabindranath was a guest at the ‘Gujerat Sahitya Parishad’ held at Ahmedabad some years , Gandhiji seems to have said in his address that he would consider that writer successful who was able to give a song to the water-carriers as they drew water, cartmen as they drove their carts, and to labourers as they toiled. This indicates exactly his idea of style and diction. Literature is no monopoly of any particular section of society. He has great aversion to the use of non-Indian words, especially English, in his speeches and writings. And this aversion has communicated itself to his Gujerati countrymen. This is another great service he has rendered to Gujerati, because this has led to the refinement and development of the language. But for him, Gujeratis also would have imported so many unnecessary English words into their tongue like the Bengalis. He appeared at a psychological moment and turned the tide that was threatening to rise and sweep away the purity of their language.

The Gujeratis used to nourish an idea formerly that their tongue was not fit for the expression of ‘Veera Rasa’ (the heroic). But after seeing Gandhiji's spirited articles, and especiaily the one called ‘Pariksha’, written at the time of the first Bardoli campaign, they are convinced that, when properly handled by eminent writers, their language is also suitable for ‘Veera Rasa.’ The late Michael Madhusudan Datta rendered the same service to Bengali by writing his great epic ‘Meghanadh Badho’ (the killing of Indrajit, son of Ravana).

Gandhiji also took some practical steps to improve the vocabulary. For some years now, he has been demanding from the ‘Puratatva Mandir’ (Research Society) of the Gujerat Vidya Peetha, a spelling book which should include all the current and obsolete words in the language. His idea is that the anarchy prevailing in the spelling of Gujerati should be put an end to by the compilation of an authoritative spelling-dictionary. The dictionary is now nearly ready. It includes about 60,000 words. The Vidya Peetha is also preparing a standard Gujerati Dictionary at his instance.

Gandhiji resembles Tolstoy in almost all his ‘puritanic’ ideas and preachings. Both tried to introduce religion into politics, though both seemed to have felt that their participation in politics was a dire necessity. Gandhiji observes: -

"If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircle us today like the coil of a snake from which we cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish, therefore, to wrestle with the snake…….I have been experimenting with myself and my friends by introducing religion into politics."

Though both of them are great seers, Gandhiji is certainly a greater man than Tolstoy, according to Romain Rolland and Rabindranath Tagore. The following sentences from the pen of M. Rolland will be of considerable interest to the readers: -

"Tagore has always acknowledged the saintliness of Gandhi and I have heard him speak to me with great veneration about Gandhi. When I referred to the resemblance of Tolstoy to the Mahatma, in the course of our conversation, Tagore expressed to me how much dearer Gandhi was to him (Tagore) and how much more glorious than Tolstoy Gandhi appeared to him to be–(now that I have some to know Gandhi better, I also am of the same opinion)–for, everything in Gandhi is natural, simple, modest and pure; an air of serenity surrounds his very fights, whereas in Tolstoy pride fights against pride, anger against anger: everything is violent not excepting even non-violence."

Tolstoy, while writing, gets excited and makes his sentences hyper-emotional. Gandhiji’s plain, well-thought-out sentences appeal more than Count Leo's.

In his method of argument, in weighing the pros and cons of the subject under discussion, and in wealth of thought, Maurice Maeterlinck of Belgium comes nearer to Gandhiji. Some of the latter's sentences in ‘Wisdom and Destiny’ claim an affinity with Gandhi's in ‘Young India’ and ‘Navajivan’. When Gandhiji is criticised for any of his opinions, he does not, like Ibsen, hurl at his critics more pungent remarks in order to assert his individuality. He welcomes all criticisms and replies to them courteously, yet effectively. And he never hesitates to confess himself in the wrong.

Gandhiji is a very quick writer. He writes his articles to ‘Navajivan’ and ‘Young India’ in running trains or in the midst of numerous and crowded engagements. He does not care to prune and polish his writings in order to create an impression.

Gujerat is unhesitatingly following Mahatmaji's lead and exhibiting her power of discipline and organisation. Refusal to pay enhanced taxes in Bardoli, or abstention from college as a protest against the high-handed action of an European Principal at Ahmedabad, are not mere isolated occurrences. They indicate a certain firmness and strength of mind. If Gandhiji has a Patel for his political lieutenant, he has found an equally capable literary lieutenant in Mahdev Desai. Desai, Ram Narain Pathak, Kishore Lal, Kaka Kalelker, Jagat Ram Dave and a few other segments that form the ‘Sabarmati circle’ of writers have imbibed the essence of Mahatmaji's style. There are others too who are trying to spread the cult of simplicity and directness of style, while maintaining the purity of the language. The future of Gujerati literature depends a great deal on the activities of this group of writers.

Gandhiji is a pioneer not only in Gujerati prose-writing, but also in Gujerati publication. Ten thousand copies of his autobiography in Gujerati were sold in a fortnight. His Gujerati books are incredibly cheap. In this, he is a contrast to Rabindranath. The fact that the original of his autobiography was written in Gujerati certainly elevates the status of Gujerati as a language, and a day may dawn when individual Germans, Chinese, or Russians will labour hard at learning Gujerati in order to study his autobiography in the original. Moreover, a study of his style is indispensable to all Indian students of linguistics, philology and syntax.

There is a rare charm in Mahatmaji's style. His expression of pathos is perfectly natural. It is said that ‘style is the man’, and in no other case does this adage hold good so literally as in Gandhiji's. Every sentence phrase and word speaks of his Himalayan firmness, adamantine will and death-defying determination, his high idealism and his burning love for the universe; and it is because of this that his style has acquired fluency, simplicity, strength and vigour. Restraint is one the greatest qualities of his style. Anyone who reads his articles on the sex-problem or the iniquities of the Administration cannot fail to notice this salient feature. Though he tackles all the burning problems of the day, his articles are never meant to create a sensation. They inspire, but they do not inflame. In one word, Gandhiji has democratised the language and at the same time placed it on a higher pedestal.¹

1 The writer wishes to thank Sjt Nagindas Parekh and Bhai Prabhubhai Patel, his fellow-students at ‘Viswa-Bharati,’ who took great pains to introduce him to Gujerati and its literature.