Rajaji: The Humanist with a Difference

Rajaji had many queer images of him produced in his lifetime even as countless cartoonists produced a wide range of hilarious cartoons, some over-romanising his already Roman nose, some painstakingly sketching him like a sphinx to emphasize his inscrutability and some highlighting his tinted spectacles to envelop him in mystery–all investing him with an aura of mystery which in fact, never belonged to him. One of the many unfounded reputations he suffered from was that he was a conservative, that he was none-too-zealous a crusader for social reform, that he held many unpublished views on women’s education and on working women. Indeed many whose attitude towards him was ambivalent, called him an obscurantist in private conversation. Most of these prejudices stemmed from one fact namely, that Rajaji could not be approached for personal favours and those who made the mistake of asking for such, were softly turned away. Rajaji never took special pains to contradict erroneous views about him–because of his pre-occupation with matters that did matter.

Among the things Rajaji never troubled to do, was to keep pressmen in good humour. For a person who walked in and out of the chessboard of public life without rejoicing or remorse–but always with stunning abruptness, which one would think needed explaining, he was remarkably reticent. Before freedom was won he was involved in vital negotiations on behalf of the Mahatma or the Congress Working Committee–whether it was a meeting with M. A. Jinnah as to a joint front or the Cripps Mission on a compromise formula. He thus became inevitably a keeper of top secrets. The press at all times, athirst for news, found it could get nothing out of him prematurely and Rajaji’s habit of anticipating the pressmen’s questions irritated them mildly–and the outcome of it was a portfolio of mildly spiteful cartoons and conjectural reporting by those who felt deprived of news. Hence their reference to Rajaji as a cunning political mediator. With all this, he came out scintillatingly in press conferences.

It must be within the recollection of many that when partition of India came about, one press reporter, who wanted to look smart, asked Jinnah whether he did not need a corridor through India to connect West and East Pakistan that were distant from each other. Jinnah promptly answered “Yes”–though he soon found that it was an unfeasible demand to make. Rajaji at the time said that the press could complicate an already complex political situation, by indulging in the luxury of smart leading questions, irrespective of where they would lead. While he said this more in sorrow than in anger, the Delhi Press Corps felt momentarily resentful. But the cream of India’s mature pressmen had enough discernment to hold Rajaji in high esteem–as a person without vanity and totally destitute of ego-centric love of public adulation–and therefore, did not go out of the way to placate pressmen.

Rajaji was far from being obscurantist in his views of women’s education or careers or such like. Those who knew him from his Salem days would dismiss such views about him as pure drivel, because as a leading lawyer, he was among the proclaimed reformers of Salem, which gave to Salem the kindly sobriquet – “Poona of South India.” He rebelled against social injustices powerfully and against bigotry and superstition. He was the humanist with a difference – in that he was able to recognize where maximum of such injustice was perpetrated. Thus the cause of Harijan uplift – with about 70-million people living a sub-human life according to 1921 census – made a profound appeal and he decided to make Harijan uplift the major plank of his crusade. Because of what he saw first hand in the villages of India about the havoc the drink habit had wrought and the misery it brought to women and children in village houses, he decided that prohibition was to be the second article of his faith. These were macro problems, because they involved very large numbers and he decided he would consecrate his energies to these twin tasks. On women’s education, economic emancipation and such like, he held as radical views as most, who chose to wear their radicalism on their sleeves.

He was responsible for appointing one of the first women ministers, Mrs. Rukmini Lakshmipathy, in the Madras Cabinet. In a later phase of his Chief Ministership, he appointed Mrs. Jothi Venkatachalam as Health and Prohibition Minister. He believed in inter-caste marriages and his second daughter Lakshmi’s marriage to Devadas Gandhi cut across state barriers, apart from caste barriers. Many lesser known women who participated in freedom’s struggle got special encouragement from him.

There were those among our intellectuals who pointed out that he had changed his 1947/48 views later in life on subjects like Hindi and that he was inconsistent. Indeed this accusation intrigued him more than others … because he said that the liveableness of life stemmed from the experiences people garnered and the changes in one’s viewpoint that experiences bring along. Man’s continued longevity ceased to have weaning, if he failed to respond to changing environment and the mind merely stagnated and stuck on to views held forty years previously. He often indicated that growing old gracefully involved man’s continuing capacity to profit by experience and the courage he musters to acknowledge a shift in viewpoint. Nobody could have put it more lucidly than Rajaji.

Rajaji has often been hailed as a political prophet, who had unerring hunch for things that might happen a year or two later. It is true that an astonishing number of his political forecasts proved correct–though the very last thing Rajaji ever wanted, was to be branded Cassandra–a prophet of Woe. The writer is aware how distasteful his estimates of long-term consequences of assorted political or economic policy decisions often were in exalted quarters; but these did not deter Rajaji from writing or speaking about them with customary candour. In this context, the advice he gave to some of us is pregnant with the wisdom of Socrates: do not hesitate to formulate your assessments of long-term repercussions of legislative enactments, tax imposts or policy decisions as may be announced, merely because they look adverse or alarmist; but (he took care to add) if and when such forecasts come true, do not rejoice when your fellow-citizens are obliged to bear the Cross: and do not engage in boastful drum-beating that Your gloomy prophecy has been fulfilled. Such advice made us all wonder which was to be appreciated most; his 22-carat patriotism, his sublime disbelief in ego-centric exercises, or his thoughtful consideration for his fellowmen.

Over the sixty years of his public life, Rajaji tried to reach the young through short stories, unpretentiously but lucidly narrated. He was anxious to instil in them love of Indian classics and respect for the right conduct that earned victory for the heroes and heroines of such classics. His preceptivity as to what the adolescent can be expected to take in, made him avoid lofty preaching of moral abstractions, as constituting the wrong wavelength to reach the young. Many unimaginative critics twitted Rajaji on his parables and illustrations; which enabled him speedily to reach both the untutored millions of India and the young. For a wonder, among those who twitted him, to the writer’s knowledge, were some non-Christian Bible scholars, who had memorized Jesus Christ’s many parables with touching veneration. Rajaji was perhaps the one writer who had reached the largest number of foreign readers of Indian classics, published so thoughtfully by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan–his unique capacity for abbreviation and his terse but pellucid narrative style.

Those who praise his intellectual eminence tend to overlook the deep springs of emotion that, early in life, made him throw away a flourishing practice at the Salem bar and embrace the rigours and uncertainties of an austere political life under Gandhiji–that held many unspoken threats but few promises. All aging is a process of the intellect persuading emotions to accept harness and the discipline of the rein. Exhibitionism not being among his weaknesses, Rajaji kept his emotions in leash and not because he was all head and no heart. He kept his harness in good repair and it never failed him.

When this preceptor-cum-prophet felt an ethical compulsion to undertake in rather advanced years, a sojourn to distant Washington to appeal to President Kennedy to desist from nuclear test explosions as being harmful to the human race; and with no less fervour and nearer home he called on the then Chief Minister Karunanidhi to appeal against repeal of prohibition to avert a tragic reversion to the spectacle of broken homes and drunken village orgies, we saw the broad spectrum of Rajaji’s humanism. A few million hearts were touched. It made all the difference to the contemporaneous generation of Indians that they lived in his time. Carlyle said, “The clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour.”

“Here is no hammer in the Great Horologe of Time which peals through the Universe when there is a change from Era to Era”. Rajaji’s departure marks the end of an era of knowledgeable and eminent freedom-fighters, who were anxious to give the freedom that was won far deeper meaning and content than we have been able to import into it.

“About nine years ago, I was in the benign presence of the Sage, Jagadguru Sri Sankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam at Sullurpet in Nellore District. After paying my obeisance to him when I started taking leave of him His Holiness asked me, ‘Is Rajaji eighty?’ ‘Rajaji is eighty-four,’ I said. His Holiness then said in Tamil:

‘Rajaji is the first child of Bharat Varsha, If he is well and happy, then all would be well and happy with Bharat.’….”

T. SADASIVAM
–Rajaji-93 Souvenir, December 8, 1971