Gandhi and I

M. CHALAPATHI RAU

I had felt for a long time that a man like Gandhi would not die a natural death. Such an extraordinary life, with mind and body seasoned by centuries, would not end with dysentry, diabetes or heart attack, and I often spoke of my feelings to friends. I had also an artist’s longing for an artistic end to a life so full of drama and filled with such intensity. But I had not thought of the exact end or the exact timing of it.

It was crucifixion, much more than the climax I could have desired or intended. Godse was more than Judas, a murdersome man, but with all his murderous thoughts which were a part of a far-flung fanaticism. He alone was not responsible for it, and his fellow conspirators too were not alone in it. Godse was an incarnation of the bigotry, the hatred and the narrowness of man, specially of the Hindu fanatic mind, in a overwrought condition, and the fanaticism, which took the form of a bullet and killed Gandhi, is still there, ready to be roused, and assume the form of a bullet and kill him again, if he were to come . There is something in the Manichean theory, in the almost mechnical, meaningless cycle which life has taken, in spite of the many calendars of saints. The Godses seem to be as inevitable as the Gandhis are necessary.

I had apprehended that something catastrophic would happen to Gandhi, when I saw, from day to day, after partition, the tide of anger and hatred mount against him. Even usually soberminded people seemed to lose their minds. “All the killings and suffering of partition were attributed to Gandhi; he was the friend of Muslims, the enemy of Hindus; he had ruined the country. He must even go,” some were saying. When two unusually composed correspondents were talking in this strain in my room, I lost my temper and turned them out, just in the month Gandhi was killed, and mused on the pettiness of human passions and on the thoughtlessness of people supposed to be endowed with intelligence.

Then Madanlal made his bomb attack at Birla House. I was in Delhi a day or two later and visited the scene with my friend, D. G. Tendulkar. We were horrified but we were also amused, a little thoughtlessly. Probably we thought hatred had spent itself.

Then on January 30, the news flash came, and it was brought to me in my room, in Lucknow. I was dazed. Tendulkar returned from his evening walk; soon he was informed of the killing; and we fell into each other’s arms and sobbed like children. When the funeral was reported on the radio, with Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, who had lost his father and was on his way from Masauli, before me, I was sobbing as I have never sobbed in my life.

Then it seemed I was myself shocked into sublimity, as Nehru had been shocked, and day after day, till the asthiceremony, I wrote on several aspects of Gandhi with a comprehension which I have not achieved in all these subsequent years.

That kind of pre-January 30 atmosphere I was to find in 1962, when leaders and parties were spreading hatred and bigotry and narrowness after the Chinese attack and Nehru’s life was in constant danger.

There is somewhat of a parallel in the hate campaign now carried on against Indira Gandhi.

I was always afraid of Gandhi, afraid that he might convert me to what seemed to be his fads, goat’s milk, etc., afraid that he might ask me to strip myself to his level of semi-nakedness, afraid he might ask me to spin and not do much other work. By the time I achieved political consciousness, and that was early in my life, he was a Mahatma who seemed to have descended from the mists of Heaven and was fixed on a pedestal in a Buddha-­like pose. I was more interested in those who thumped tables and the Swarajist leaders who seemed to emerge from the Roman age. Though full of the freedom movement and ready to join in all boycotts of school and college, I was a critic of Gandhi, and his Salt Satyagraha had no significance for me. The economics of Khadi were boring. Jail-going seemed a futile exercise.

I was politically rather a product of the literature of the Russian Revolution, the writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, and G. A. Natesan’s four-anna biographies. Jawaharlal Nehru, himself did not impress me when I first saw him; he seemed a Pundit, not modern enough.

Gandhi visited our place in the ’Thirties and I could appreciate the burnished bronze of his body and the unimpeded flow of his arguments. This made some appeal, but I thought Nehru was the coming man, and when he came a second time to Madras walking over the heads of huge crowds, and his autobiography was published, he was the man for me. I realized little then that I was to know Gandhi and understand him, through Nehru. Nehru himself took time to know and understand him; and as his understanding of Gandhi grew, my understanding of Gandhi was also growing. And in the climax of 1942, I admired and appreciated Gandhi, impressed and moved by his manly resistance to British imperialism. I met Gandhi and Nehru at Sevagram, after an AICC session, and though I had other opportunities of meeting Gandhi, I was rather afraid of him. I felt I was much safer with Nehru, whom I came to know closely.

At the time of the 1940 individual Satyagraha, Nehru called me to meet him at Rae Bareli to discuss a Government order against the National Herald, and then till a late hour, he was explaining to me why Gandhi had chosen Vinoba, till then almost unknown even to Nehru, as the first Satyagrahi and Nehru only as the second Satyagrahi. And Nehru seemed to appreciate Gandhi’s judgement.

It was when I edited Gandhiji, a 75th birthday volume, along with Tendulkar, noted for his monumental eight-volume life of Gandhi, and Vithalbhai Jhaveri, noted for his five-hour epic documentary film on Gandhi, that I came to understand Gandhi. The clue to understanding was his life and struggles in South Africa, which transfigured a mere man into a Mahatma. I was fascinated by this phase of his life of which I had known of no parallel to it. In a fit of enthusiasm, I talked to Devadas Gandhi; with whom I had worked, that I should like to visit South Africa, and he readily agreed, though he did not miss reminding me of the hardships he had had at Tolstoy Farm in having to walk many miles to Johannesburg to see the bioscope. This reminder of small things rather depressed me and nothing came of the proposal.

But there was even a more important proposal, from him this time. He suggested since I had left his newspaper, I should join Gandhi’s secretariat. Mahadev Desai had died, and Pyarelal was not able to cope with the work. I was fascinated, attracted, inspired. I was at Sevagram soon, along with Tendulkar, to present the birthday volume to Gandhi. He had written a fore­word for it because, as he said, the proceeds of the book were to be given to him to be spent on his favourite Daridranarayan. It was an enchanting moment, when he went through the pages of the volume, and saw photographs of himself when young. “Is it I”, he asked, that man in suit with tie and pugree and other transformations.

The volume was much liked in the camp, by Rajaji, Sarojini Naidu, Pattabhi and others, and Nehru was later to write a foreword to the second edition saying that the volume was not like other birthday volumes. In my opinion it deserves to be reprinted. The proceeds, nearly Rs. 50,000 on both editions, went to Gandhi.

Rajaji and others suggested I should go to journalism. Devadas was eager to present me to Gandhi. I asked Devadas for two days’ time; I would like to study life in Sevagram to see if I would fit in or might like to run away after some days. I did not want to be a deserter, once I joined.

The two days convinced me I was not the man for Sevagram. I saw too much pettiness there, too many faddists, too many fanatics; there was discrimination even in serving food. It was all right to work with Gandhi; it would be a great privilege; I was eager for it. But to work with the people around him seemed a different thing.

There was too much darkness around the light.
There still is.

(National Herald, January 31, 1971)