“How can we,” asked the Buddhist philosopher Jayant Bhatt (C.E 800-950) in his Nyayamanjari, discover a new fact or truth in philosophy? One should consider only our novelty in rephrasing older truths expounded by the ancients in modern terminology. Ram Guha knows much has been written on Gandhi. Yet he has authored this weighty biography because he wants to narrate Gandhi’s life for today’s generation. It is a courageous and worthwhile endeavour, even if Guha admits in the epilogue that we have forgotten the lessons Gandhi taught us: the value of religious pluralism, and the virtues of non-violence and civil disobedience.
History through stories
Guha is the quintessential story teller. The philosopher Hannah Arendt suggests in The Human Condition (1958) that the ability to tell a story is the way we become historical. History allows us to understand where we have come from, and how we have got to where we are. Some story tellers entertain, others disrupt the categories we think with. These are not Guha’s projects. He displaces Gandhi from the pedestal generations have placed him on. He shows us a man who was known for taking political time by the forelock, for shaping history, and for his readiness to admit his own mistakes.
Gandhi’s life was not without flaws. He wanted to control people’s lives. When Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, Tagore’s niece with whom he had a complicated relationship, writes to him, she speaks of love and longing. When Gandhi replies, it is as the ‘law giver’. Or when Mahadev Desai asks Madeleine Slade, who left her home in Britain to work with Gandhi, to teach him French, he quickly puts an end to that particular ambition. When we are engaged in a life and death struggle, he asked his secretary, how can you think of learning French?
Guha recounts a lengthy and a seamless tale. At times this style of writing biography proves discomfiting. On Baisakhi day, April 13, 1919, a mass murder was committed at Jallianwala Bagh. Guha narrates the tragedy in two and a half pages, and just as we expect to read how Gandhi reacted to this unparalleled violence, he rapidly moves on to the development of the journal Young India , and the art of spinning and weaving. Guha returns to Jallianwala Bagh many pages later, but the thread is lost. The tragedy is marginalised in the voluminous tome.
Embedded critique
Adopting a chronological mode of narration, our story teller refuses to interpret. If we want to figure out why Gandhi responded the way he did to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, or Muhammad Ali Jinnah, or other significant figures, we have to interpret why things happened ‘this’ and not ‘that’ way. It is even more difficult to locate Guha’s criticism of Gandhi; but it is there, embedded deeply in the narrative.
At the end of the story we have to ask what the source of Gandhi’s magic was. Was it, as Guha suggests, his readiness to adopt a simple lifestyle, wear coarse cloth, and come, thereby, nearer to the people? Or was it his ability to discover and hold fast to the Indian tradition of pluralism and respect for all religions. He certainly paid heavily for his commitments. The saddest part of the story is told in the penultimate chapter — Martyrdom. Guha chronicles the vicious insistence of the Hindu right: that all Muslims should leave India after Partition. But there was Gandhi, agonising over the safety of Muslims in independent India, fasting for communal harmony, and speaking of love and brotherhood. On January 18, 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru remarked aptly at a large public meeting in Subzi Mandi, Delhi, that “there is only one frail old man in our country who has all along stuck to the right path.”
On January 20, the general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha declared that his organisation would never accept Gandhi’s insistence that the Muslim minority in lndia should be treated equally, whatever be the treatment meted out to Hindus in Pakistan. Disregarding such statements, Gandhi made preparations to visit Pakistan. This was not to be. He was killed by a rabid Hindu fundamentalist on January 30. The world wept. Some of us still mourn Gandhi’s senseless death.
Guha cites a tribute appearing in the News Chronicle : “The hand that killed the Mahatma is the same hand that nailed the Cross... It is your hand and mine.” The author of the tribute proved prescient. Are we not complicit in making Gandhi irrelevant for our day and age? Violence no longer affects us. We lead lives without thought or care for the disadvantaged. Guha enables us to understand that once there was a man in India who motivated people not only to change their own lives but also the lives of others. We have to remember the man and his mission. For the same hands that fed Socrates hemlock, crucified Christ, and assassinated Gandhi, continue to maim and brutalise our own people.
Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1914-1948 ; Ramachandra Guha, Allen Lane/ PRH, ₹999.
