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OCTOBER 2nd - MK GANDHI TO MAHATHMA GANDHI
Sometime in May 1893, the westernised suited booted young lawyer, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was travelling in a train, from Transvaal to Pretoria, in South Africa, on a first class ticket. On the way, in comes a railway ticket checker (TC). Finding the Indian coloured barrister, the white T.C. gives him a sharp stare. Yes he was occupying, the whites only territory. Young Gandhi tells the T.C. ‘I am holding a first class ticket’ while showing the ticket. He had a ‘ration card’ alright, but the cold stare of the T.C. conveyed ‘you are a squatter’. As the Pietermaritzburg station was approaching, a railway constable opened the door of the compartment wherein Gandhi was sitting. As the train pulled up at the station, he was thrown out of the train ‘lock, stock & barrel’, for his refusal to move into 3rd class compartment. It was past midnight.
Sitting on the platform, in the cold shivering night, he wrestled within himself, having endured the insult, whether to return to India or fight back to the bitter end. Before the day broke, he made up his mind. Fortunately for the world, he was determined to play the man. And the man he did play, as no other living being could have ever played. As Albert Einstein would reiterate one day, “Generations to come would scarce believe that such a one as this, in flesh and blood, ever walked upon the earth”. Yes he stood upto the might of British empire, and left for the benefit of posterity, unmistakably indelible mark in the history of human movements, the world over.
Louis Fischer, the American journalist, wrote post 30th Jan. 1948, “He died as a private citizen, without wealth, without property, without official title, yet men with governments and armies behind them paid homage to the little brown man in a loin cloth. The Indian authorities had received 3441 messages of sympathy from foreign countries”. General Douglas McArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied forces said “In the evolution of civilisation, if it is to survive, all men cannot fail eventually to adopt Gandhi’s belief that the process of mass application of force to resolve contentious issues is fundamentally not only wrong, but contains within itself the germs of self destruction”. “Mahatma Gandhi was the spokesman for the conscience of all mankind” was the take of U.S. Secretary of State, General Marshal.
Yes, Gandhiji was probably a kind of reminder to these men of eminence, of their own inadequacies, when they paid glowing tributes to the uniqueness of the man.
Born on 2nd Oct. in 1869, in Porabunder, young Mohandas grew like all of us. Even late until adulthood, there was hardly any indication of his eventual universal personality. However two of his traits, truthfulness and resistance to authoritarianism, found even during his schooldays, singled him out in his search for an identity that created a unique niche that remained unequalled even to this day.
Social discrimination, - racial, coloured, cultural etc - has a history as long as the human civilization. South Africa was not only not an exception, it was also pretty bad. In the South Africa of 19th century, society was sharply divided by colour, class, religion and profession. Young Gandhi’s experience on the way to Pretoria made him realise the utter helplessness of the coloured people there. He knew, he had to fight and fight to finish.
That he fought his way through, despite heavy odds of all kinds in an alien land is a stuff of incredibly multiple dimension. But what singled him out as a unique human being was his complete lack of hatred. Despite having experienced personal brutalities in the hands of whites in South Africa, he bore no ill will against any of them.
Prof Edward Thompson of Oxford wrote “Gandhi ought to have hated every white face to the end of his life. But Gandhi forgave the whites in Durban who assembled to lynch him and forgave those who mauled and beat him. His soul kept no record of past sins against his body. Instead of prosecuting the guilty, he persued the more creative task of improving the lot of his countrymen.
Thus the question that occupied Gandhi’s mind was “Do you want to punish them or do you want to change them”. To Gandhi addressing the issue of colour prejudices was greater than punishing the guilty.
In the India (of) To-day, we all suffer from fixation syndrome – whether it is the media, the legislature, the executive or even the judiciary. We want to fix somebody and spend our precious time and money in finding out who is wrong or who is at fault. We are conditioned this way only, rather than thinking and debating what is the fault or what is wrong in the system. Our accumulated problems are result of this mind set. Yes we need to overhaul our very approach of managing our issues.
Thus, according to Mahatma, it was the issue that troubled him. It was his concern that inspired him to act. This is the most relevant aspect of Mahatma’s public life.
In 1959, Dr Martin Luther King, a Nobel Laureate, the most celebrated American civil rights activist came calling ‘on a pilgrimage to the land of Mahatma’. After the sojourn of a month, as he was leaving, he was addressing a press conference. A cynical journalist asked a question “WHERE IS GANDHI TO-DAY? WE SEE HIM NO WHERE! His answer completely put at rest any misgivings our ‘very intelligent & smart’ journalistic fraternity would have entertained. We quote “Gandhi is inevitable. If humanity is to progress Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of a humanity evolving towards a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him only at our own risk” unquote.
Isn’t it sad that we need to quote Dr King, to talk about the relevance of our very own Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi?
However, it was TJS George, a very eminent journalist, who paid a very touching tribute to this great soul, the Mahatma, in his write-up “MAN OF THE MILLENNIUM”. Comparing Gandhi’s contemporaries like, Nehru, Patel and Jinnah, he writes, “Gandhi soared above them all because he dealt essentially with ideas and theories relevant to all mankind. Like Buddhism, Gandhism lost ground in the land out of which it evolved. But, like Buddhism, it has been embraced by distant people who see in its tenets the promise of a meaningful life. It was as though Gandhi’s involvement with India was merely incidental to his larger involvement with what he persistently called Truth. Raja Rao put it pithily when he wrote: ‘For Gandhi India was only the symbol of a universal principle. All countries were, for Gandhi, India.’ When we look at him in this perspective, we realise that it was his universality, the transcendent quality of his life and thought, that made Gandhi, Gandhi.
He will be greater than not just Stalin and Hitler – two characters who are rather too one-dimensional to be contrasted with the vastness that was Gandhi. Gandhi personifies the greatness of the time-honoured proposition that Love is superior to Hatred, that Good is better than Evil. Great personages of history who based their “greatness” on Hatred and Evil, on conquests and oppression, have all gone under. The Byzantines and the Ottomans, the Mongols and the Mughals, the British and Spanish once strode the earth as if they owned it. Today only Britain and Spain survive, and that too as second-class entities confined to Europe. Alexander, the first king in history to be called “The Great,” died a lonely death as a disillusioned and defeated man at the incredible age of 33. Nothing of his greatness remains today even in his native Macedonia which is now but an appendage to the horrible tragedy of Yugoslavia.
Greatness built on murder and acquisition passes. Greatness rising out of compassion and service abides. The Buddha abides. Christ abides. The great unknown thinkers of the Upanishads abide. Gandhi carried that tradition through to our times. He might have been let down by the “Gandhians” who, armed with political power, have turned India into a mess. That too is parallel to the way quarrelling Buddhists, exploitative Christians and lately-intolerant Hindus have been letting down their preceptors. But their smallness does not detract from the true greatness of the sages who opened the path of enlightenment for them and for the world. They abide because they gave without taking. They were not men of arms. They were men of ideas. Parithraanaaya saadhunam, they appear from age to age. They appear to teach us that the world can be conquered, not with force, but with ideas. It was the lesson of this Millennium too – taught by the Man of the Millennium”.
And what were those ideas that Gandiji propounded? In the words of one of our former President R. Venkataraman “Some of Ganhdiji’s ideas have acquired a new relevance in our own days. He was an apostle of non-violence in world in which violence prevailed. He was a great national leader, but equally he was great internationalist. His warnings against ruthless exploitation of nature have been exemplified by the looming ecological disaster that faces the world to-day.” Writing for Bhavan’s journal Dr Dubhashi wrote “Gandhiji must be considered to be the harbinger of the modern movement of environmental preservation. As far back as 1927, he warned against indiscriminate exploitation of the natural resources in the name of raising the material standards of living. For him uncontrolled consumerism is totally unjustified and could not lead to human happiness. Thus Gandhiji must be considered to be the originator of modern concept of sustainable development.” Hasn’t he famously observed that “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for everyone’s greed”, which is epochal in its sweep.
Ganhdiji believed in political and economic decentralisation. He wanted the village Panchayat to be the basis of the Indian polity. Although constitution makers under Dr Ambedkar ignored it. Within few years, through 73rd amendment Panchayat Raj was given its rightful place, since it was greatly felt that development work in a large country like India should be under taken through village level. Economic decetnalisation through khadi and village industries, Ganhdiji felt can alone generate adequate employment opportunity and sustain village economies. This could have been a good source of eradicating unemployment at village level. Here it needs to be recollected that despite 64 years of planned economic development if our Human Development Index is very low, unemployment and underemployment have been a major factor. Our developmental approaches have never been people centered as Gandhiji envisaged. We went for Nehruvian mass production instead of production by masses.
Thus it is becoming increasingly clear if we had followed the idea of Gandhiji, we could have better Gross National Happiness (GNH) rather than better Gross National Product (GNP) with low level of happiness. So economic managers and policy makers have to decide whether they want more happiness or more productive less happiness. Yes, both need to be combined with a newer approach.
The Non-violent civil disobedience is another of his very powerful idea. If Sept.11, 2011 had been a weird kind of watershed in the contemporary world history, when a new page was written on global terrorism, the Sept. 11, 1906 gave birth to the civil disobedience as an instrument of people’s movement. World has never been the same since then. Replicating his South African action plan in India, on 16th April 1917, Gandhiji attempted to “Cock a Snook” at the British authorities at Champaran in Bihar spearheading the farmers agitation. That was the first attempt at challenging the British in India after 1857 war of independence. The Champaran episode was the turning point for Gandhiji and to Indian freedom struggle. It sent unmistakable signs that we could take on British at our own terms.
“What I did,” he explained "was a very ordinary thing. I declared that British could not order me about in my own country". His logic was, if he could stand upto the British in South Africa, an alien land, in India he was on a more firm ground.
The problem was, English landlords were facing an English barrister of Indian origin for the first time, in place of illiterate farmers, and they didn’t like. Authorities restricted Gandhiji’s movements in the face of swelling crowd. He refused to obey the order and offered himself to be imprisoned. Now this was an odd situation that district administration had never handled. Thus Ganhdiji became a new factor and a force they found difficult to counter. His acts of disobedience and willingness to go jail was a new phenomena. Lt. Govenor of the province ordered the case to be dropped since there was no apparent crime. Thus the civil disobedience for the first time had triumphed in India under British. At one point officials felt powerless without Gandhiji’s co-operation to manage the surging crowd. He helped the authorities regulate the crowd. Hegave British a concrete proof that their might hitherto unquestioned and feared, could be challenged.
So can we live without invoking Mahatma in the day to day life of the nation? He lived all his life truthfully, but our leaders, be they political, social or religious, even trade union leaders and members of the 4th estate live mostly by mouthing lies, whole lies and nothing but lies. History of free India’s 64 years is replete with instances of injustice, exploitation, discrimination, violence and above all fall in moral values represented by corruption, deceit, hunger for power, power broking, killing and many other myriad facets of decadence. All because we forgot Mahatma.
Look at what happened at THE WEEK. It was rather weird that a book reviewer columnist writing for the weekly, even didn’t know that M K Gandhi is same as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. A book on the English publications in the country “HUNDRED YEARS OF ACTIVE WITNESS TO HISTORY – FEEDBACK". It was reviewed by one Murkot Kunhappa, and he writes in THE WEEK “Greatest number of letters to the Times of India appears to have been written by one M.K. Gandhi and he stands first” “he scored his victory on great men like Tilak, Gokhale……”etc. What you call this, amnesia or hybrid!
Fortunately, there were others on the global stage, like Dr King, in the US, and Mr Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or even Lech Walesa of Poland, who tried and succeeded in realising the change in their society just by replicating Mahatma’s ways and means. Thus his relevance is universal.
And comes Anna Hazare, an Indian Army driver, who left the army after seeing dead bodies all around him and comes back to his dusty underdeveloped village – Ralegan Siddhi and transforms the landscape therein adopting Gandhian ways. He has been around for some time in the Marathi news being a ‘soul pricker’ of people in power. No politician, if corrupt, ever liked him. But the humongous and ever growing corruption in our national life catapulted him to national fora. And suddenly he caught the imagination of the entire country, disgusted at the rot that has set into the national socio/political landscape. Suddelnly Mahatma Gandhi reappeared in the drawing rooms of millions of Indians fed up with the goings on in the body politic of the country. Of course Anna Hazare is no barrister from Lincon’s Inn, but fortunately there were young and old, Kejriwals, Bedis, Patkers and Bhushans who gave their best to Anna. How much this revival of Gandhian way of life would translate itself into a national awakening may not be easy to fathom, but the seedling, the Ankur is already there. Hope it is properly watered and nurtured to grow into a Banyan Tree for a rightful place for India in the comity of nations as a beacon of hope for the entire humanity, lest the Apocalypse overtake the world.

J.Shriyan

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