This country, and my fellowmen, which includes me as well, have hardly emulated the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. Though, within the larger collective consciousness, his life and writings are a powerful presence. One knows for a fact that his works are widely read. For example, his famous autobiography, “An autobiography or My Experiments with Truth”, is available in almost all Indian languages, and has apparently sold over 50 lakh copies. I thereby assume that a minimum of one crore people have read Gandhi. This old and familiar book is out in a new edition (Penguin, 2018), edited by Tridip Suhrud, a Gandhian scholar who headed the Sabarmati Ashram for a couple of years.
This 800-page new edition has achieved two things that the earlier editions did not. The editor, Suhrud, provides a list of variations between the Gujarathi original and the English translation (and even between the different editions) in the left and right columns of the entire text. Along with this, to make it convenient for today’s readers, he provides detailed footnotes. Secondly, he writes a 34-page long introduction which is not intellectually stodgy, but lucidly explains how Gandhian thought like Satyagraha, Ahimsa, Brahmacharya, Swarajya and Aparigraha flow seamlessly into the narrative without being stated as dogmas.
For those who have read it before, and for first time readers as well, the book throws up new meanings. Without going into a detailed analysis of this edition, I will touch upon one aspect that moved me profoundly, through which I want to express my joy of reading this book.
As we are aware, Gandhi never wrote this autobiography in a book form. Between November 25, 1925 and February 3, 1929 he wrote this weekly column as a 166-part series in Navajivan , the journal he edited. To bring up a trivial similarity between Gandhi’s autobiography and our television serials of today, Gandhi, like our TV serial writers, wrote each episode on the day it was published. He neither planned his next episode, nor did he imagine how it should emerge as a book. In fact, Gandhi did not even plan the end. When he took up this writing, he was in thick of Indian politics. Among the hundred other things he did, he wrote. For a large part of this writing period, Gandhi remained at the Ashram and accorded this ‘experiment’ equal importance with all his other political and public commitments.
Right at the beginning of his work, Gandhi explains why he embarked on this project. Gandhi, through this experiment, wished to place his successes and failures for public scrutiny. He also wished to say that this was not the tale of a great man, but by telling his story, he wanted to instil faith in people that “what was possible for him, was possible even for a little child”. However, in “Intimate European Contacts” in Part IV, Gandhi discusses his model of writing, something that his readers do not anticipate. In Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar’s Kannada translation of Gandhi’s work, this is how his words appear:
“In the midst of writing this chapter, I have felt the need to explain to my readers how I write this story week after week. When I set out to write, I have no plan before me. I neither have dairy jottings, or letters for reference -- no evidence whatsoever. I write as urged by my Antaratma.”
The source for the Kannada translation is perhaps Mahadev Desai’s English translation, who translates it from the original in Gujarathi. As I read this new edition, I figured that there is one important word that appears differently in all these three versions. Gandhi uses the word antaryami , Desai in his translation says spirit , and in Gorur it is antaratma . Tridip Suhrud recognises that the word antaryami is not only an important word in Gandhi’s writing, but also finds an important place in his persona itself. Because, Gandhi says that the episodes from his life that got written was the choice of the antaryami .
Moreover, the antaryami that Gandhi alludes to was not a force that steered his autobiography, in fact, it was something that controlled his life – it formed the vitality of his soul. “It will not be wrong to say that all my life’s actions - big and small -- are determined by antaryami .” Gandhi, therefore, makes it the representative word to include the realms of his work and action.
What then is this antaryami ? How does one analyse it? Where does this thought originate from? As one tries to answer these questions, it is easy to wonder if it came from the Bhagavad Gita , a text that was dear to Gandhi. One finds that in the Gita there are several words that come close to it in meaning, but the word antaryami itself cannot be found. Interestingly, in the several interpretations of the Gita by Vaishnava scholars, this word has been extensively used and it is possible to assume that Gandhi gets the word from there. Moving on, one finds that the meaning and interpretation Gandhi ascribes to the word is entirely his own, it cannot be found elsewhere. Just as we have compartmentalized life into the worldly and spiritual, conveniently spilling over to either sides, Gandhi uses the word antaryami in a similar way. He expands its meaning by applying it to more than the spiritual-inner category.
Gandhi says:
“I have not seen God. Don’t know him either. I’ve made mine the faith that this world reposes in him....”
You therefore realize from his words that the antaryami is constituted by his reading of faith and not as it exists in this world. Gandhi’s antaryami did not always act in a transparent manner, on many occasions it was confusing and mysterious. There are several such examples from Gandhi’s life and works: Suhrud cites one such in his introduction. In 1933, when he was in the Yerawada jail, all of a sudden, one day, he announced he would fast. ‘I am prompted thus by my antaryami,’ he declared, providing no other reason. It was a moment of awkwardness to those around him; even to Vallabhabhai Patel he could not explain beyond this. “Is it always possible for a man to express his thoughts, or express them completely?” This explanation from Gandhi did not convince those in his inner circle. His last son Devdas Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari tried to figure out the reason for this, concluding that ‘the suffocating environment of the prison had dulled his mind.’ Gandhi nevertheless emphatically maintained that the decision was made by his antaryami .
Gandhi heard the voice of his antaryami in many tough situations of his life. Does it carry pointers to his way of thinking? Suhrud hints at this, and answers it in his introduction. I, on my part, have tried to amalgamate the resonances that took place within me as a reader, and attempt to offer my readings to Gandhi’s modes of thinking.
Let’s start with a simple question. What is this process called thinking with which we are all so familiar with and have often experienced? Thinking is a silent conversation that takes place in the mind, amongst the many selves that is subsumed within us. If we extend this detail to Gandhi, then the inner conflict he speaks of is an argument between his many selves. These multiple voices create a chaos in his mind, but that clear voice which he hears amidst the noise is what he calls antaryami : that which puts an end to all his confusions.
What then is this antaryami? Is it one among the many voices Gandhi heard in the beginning? Or is it a new voice that towered over all of these voices? Or is it something unique that was born as a result of the dialogue between many voices? These are the kind of possibilities one often encounters in the discourses of kavya mimamse and philosophy. According to me, Gandhi’s use of the Gujarathi word antaryami leads us to the third possibility. Hence, the word spirit that is used in the English translation, or antaratatma of the Kannada translation are not appropriate. Antaryami indicates an inner movement or an inner conversation, and that is the most suited for the meaning that Gandhi proposes.
Among all the voices that Gandhi hears, how did he identify that a particular voice was that of the antaryami ? If we cast this question into our common lives, how do we recognize that voice, and separate it from the rest? It is not Gandhi’s messages that makes him special, but the way in which he answers this question.
In his introduction Suhrud captures this precisely. For Gandhi, the voice of the antaryami can be recognised not by increasing one’s capacity to think, but by practising external disciplines such as brahmacharya, astheya, aparigraha, asvaada etc. To use his own metaphor, “only then can you recognize if it is the voice of Rama or that of Ravana.” He calls this the voice of truth. His famous quote -- Truth is God – is not mere sermonizing but something that emerges from his experience. His experiments with truth is the realization of the antaryami: the freedom struggle et al. are only by products of this experiment.
Gandhi’s mode of thinking analysed the word truth itself in a new way. What is truth, if you ask, question appears simple but the answer is not an easy one. Several scholars have tried to logically answer, finally saying: “Truth is the unity between speech and reality” (i.e. that the statement rose is red is true if the rose is red). Gandhi brought a major change to this model of looking at truth. If the word that is born inside (and the actions that complement it) corresponds to the actions of the outer world it was called truth, but Gandhi brings outer action also to the inner world. And by doing so, he provides a fresh and contemporary interpretation to the famous quote from Gita: “I am within everyone and everyone resides in me”. By unifying the interior and exterior worlds, and making them a singular pursuit, he makes it impossible to classify him in any one category such as thinker, ideologue, activist, political worker, spiritualist etc. So, for modern minds that perceive and understand this world in binaries, Gandhi is more misunderstood than understood: that is hardly a surprise.
For a man like me living in these present times, Gandhi is useful for this very reason and hence I construct this narrative of the antaryami. In this age of the market, what we seem to believe is ‘our mind’ is mostly not ours. It is determined largely by ideology, advertisements, and consumer forces. Even if there is a small portion of it left in us, we have neither the skill nor discipline to separate it from ‘not our own mind’. Therefore, all great thinkers, including Gandhi, now appear to us as carriers of a message or preachers. Our mind -- as defined by the current yuga dharma (the law of the epoch) -- is shaped by market forces and we are consumers constantly struggling to make use of it. The strange irony of these times is that we only have the skill to consume what is packaged, and have forgotten to think on our own.
I am grateful to Tridip Suhrud for making me think.
Translated from Kannada by Deepa Ganesh
