Mahatma Gandhi, page 56
And in the middle of these orgiastic killings a drama within drama was happening—Gandhiji began to ask himself whether he had, in truth, achieved brahmacharya. Had he? To achieve Indian freedom was one thing. To achieve true freedom, the sway over self, Swaraj, the highest freedom. Had he achieved celibacy? No. It was time to test. And with his usual experimental temper and his scrupulous adherence to truth, he asked one of the young married women among his followers whether she would sleep, in the same bed, with him. Yes, she would. And day after day he slept in the same bed with her, she, young, desirable and submissive. And he discovered much to his astonishment and joy, he had no inkling whatsoever to possess this bounty beside him. Brahmacharya was at last achieved. Truly it had been. And so should freedom be. India could now be free. He wanted immediately to tell the whole world about it. He, the great Mahatma, who was quelling those gigantic massacres of India, he who was worshipped a saint—and indeed often as an avatara, an incarnation of God—by many millions of Indians, in fact by hundreds of millions of Indians, was going to tell the whole round world, brahmacharya indeed is real and achievable. It is absolute. One can therefore conquer one’s senses. Thus one could wholly be true. He wrote an article on this subject for Harijan—his weekly paper. But when the government of Nehru heard of it all, they begged him not to publish the article—for said they this would damage his figure in the eyes of India, and especially now in an India torn asunder by such deadly conflict. He did not care. A satyagrahi always stands by his truth. Truth was more important to Gandhiji than accommodation with contingent realities. Truth alone conquers.
However he agreed to keep silent for the moment. But one of his fervent followers took it on his conscience to read the manuscript, and then saintly and horrified, he threw it into the fire. Thus Gandhism was saved from Gandhi. The inquisitor wins—or thinks he does. And Gandhiji continued his march of love.
* * *
Over bamboo bridges and on boats he went along the estuary of the Ganges, alone amongst the Muslims, to give courage to the Hindus—he would chant his Hindu mantras and listen to the Muslim prayers,
Ishwara Allah Tere Nam
Ishwara Allah Thy name
and it worked miracles in the rich and once fair land of Bengal. Peace began to come, yes it came slowly. Then Delhi wanted him, for the seven million Hindu refugees pouring into India from Pakistan brought nothing but stories of dire disaster. One could bear this killing no more. Muslims were baited and killed, their mosques occupied and their houses filled with pouring refugees. He preached, did Gandhiji, love and love again to the Hindus. But they seemed not to listen. Now there was only one thing to do. He would fast unto death. Yes, death were better than this spectacle of desecration. And he started to fast. The Hindus of Delhi began to give back the mosques and the houses to the Muslims. Azad and Nehru, Mountbatten and Lady Mountbatten, Sardar Patel and Rajagopalachari, ran from one area of disaster to the other to protect human lives in thousands, by train, jeep or helicopter. Finally when the Hindus began to quieten down and listen, the Hindus and Muslims signed a pact of friendship with one another, and the Indian Government that had refused to give to Pakistan the money she owed her, that she would now, angry Nehru would now, give back that money come what may, a promise made is to be reverenced if you are a satyagrahi—thus when truth seemed to prevail, Gandhiji took, amidst prayers and tears, his first glass of orange juice. Azad, the Muslim scholar and Congress President, gave it to him. But a fanatic Hindu, proud of his heritage, was waiting beneath the wall. He could not bear this love-love business any longer. A bomb was thrown at Gandhiji. He would not care. He had said death was sweet. He wanted no protection from the police. He had God’s protection.
One day, however, on 30 January 1948, when he was walking down, still weak from his fast, to the prayer garden, Godse, a young Indian, knelt in worship to this great man, and shot him dead. Gandhiji’s face seemed sweet and holy at death. And three million people accompanied him to his pyre. The last British Viceroy squatted on the ground with his spouse, Nehru beside them, looking at the playfulness of this all-consuming pyre. Death is beautiful when the body is become ash. A palmful of this ash was given in ceremony and chant to each of the Indian rivers, and they took his remains down to the open sea. The oceans touch the round rounding of this revolving earth.
People all over the world broke down when they heard of this—peasants and workers who’d never known who he was but only what he was, so said Léon Blum. Einstein remarked he could not believe that such a one had ever walked on this, our earth. And Smuts, his old friend, said a prince among men had passed away. Satyagraha had indeed won.
1 ‘Seeing with Three Eyes: Raja Rao and the Gandhian Way’ at ‘Word as Mantra: The Art of Raja Rao’, symposium in honour of Raja Rao, University of Texas at Austin, USA, 24 March 1997. An earlier account of this conversation with Rao appeared in ‘“Clip Joint” by U.R. Ananthamurthy: A Response’, Indian Literature, 179 (May–June 1997): 124–35.
2 Makarand Paranjape, ‘First Philosopher-Novelist of Indian Fiction in English, Raja Rao, Dies’, India Today, 24 July 2006, https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/obituary/story/20060724-first-philosopher-novelist-of-indian-fiction-in-english-raja-rao-dies-782701-2006-07-24 (accessed on 21 February 2020).
3 Portions of this Introduction have appeared in my Introduction to The Best of Raja Rao (New Delhi: Katha, 1998) and my earliest essay on Raja Rao, an entry on the author published in The Survey of Long Fiction (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Salem Press, 1983), edited by Frank N. Magill.
4 Published first by John Murray in 1960, it was reprinted by Penguin Books India in 2014. Quotations are from the latter edition.
5 Quotations are from the Vision Books edition of 1988.
6 I talk about this in my book, The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Penguin Random House, 2015).
1 From Purana, legendary history, Rama and Krishna are parts of this legendary history, their stories being told in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. See Glossary.
1 In the Upanishads, akasha is ether.
2 The Bhagavad Gita.
3 Romila Thapar, Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, pp. 255-6.
4 You can see this in many a Rajput miniature today.
5 Bunder means harbour, haven.
6 Keeper of records.
7 Commissioner
8 E.P., p. 179.
9 1 October 1867.
10 E.P., p. 192.
11 Tulsidas, Ramcharitmanas.
12 E.P., p. 193-194.
13 E.P., p. 195.
14 E.P., p. 197.
15 A sort of Lent lasting four months when people fast regularly, sometimes for several days at a time.
16 A divine story.
17 One who tells a divine story in verse and prose in accompaniment to music.
18 Dakshina, a piece of silver or gold that should accompany every gift to an elder, a saint, or sage.
19 The owner of a crematorium.
20 Tulsidas, Ramcharitmanas.
21 Hospice for travellers, pilgrims.
22 Tulsidas, Ramcharitmanas.
23 Here again it is the first use of English for self-expression. These lines are taken from his London Diary. C.W., Vol. 1, p. 6.
24 C.W., Vol. l, p. 10.
25 C.W., Vol. l, p. 10.
26 C.W., Vol. 2, p. 2.
27 C.W., Vol. 1, p. 2.
28 A., p. 41.
1 C.W., p. 21.
2 Both by Edwin Arnold. One tells the story of the Buddha. The other is a poetical translation of the Bhagavad Gita.
1 The Indian Civil Service—the famous ‘Guardians’.
2 A.
3 A., p. 124–126.
4 A., p. 129.
5 The name of India, meaning Land of the Noble.
6 Sarah Gertrude Millin, The People of South Africa, p. 25.
7 C.W., p. 250.
8 Hence the London Esoteric Christian Union of which the leading figures were Anna Kingsford and Dr. Maitland, both also fervent devotees of vegetarianism.
9 Letter to the Natal Mercury, 3 December 1894.
10 C.W., p. 90-91.
11 E.P., p. 274.
12 E.P., p. 328-29.
13 Gandhi Bhai—brother Gandhi.
14 25 June 1894.
15 A., p. 173.
16 Called the Franchise Amendment Bill, 1894, which specifically stated: ‘. . . Persons of Asiatic extraction shall not be qualified . . . to vote as electors or of any law relating to the election of members to the Legislative Assembly.’
17 South India.
18 Genesis 9: 18-27; Joshua 9: 21-27 (Quoted by John Gunther, Inside Africa)
19 10 to 12 shillings.
20 Meaning the husband. The woman uses the plural as a sign of respect.
21 In those days the ships were small. See G.W. White, Ships, Coolies and Rice, London 1937.
22 The termination of South Indian names with ‘sami’ (a corruption of the Sanskrit word swami or a divine being) became one of the generic names for the Indian. Finally, the word Sami had the same connotation as the coolie.
23 Sir John Robinson, A Lifetime in South Africa, p. 75-76, London, 1900.
24 Cecil Rhodes, p. 288.
1 E.P., p. 395.
2 Natal Advertiser, 15 September 1893.
3 15 September 1893.
4 His Excellency the Hon. Sir Walter Francis Hely-Hutchinson, K.C.M.G., Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Colony of Natal, Vice-Admiral of the same and Supreme Chief over the Native Population.
5 Natal Mercury, 22 June 1894.
6 Quoted by E.P., p. 409.
7 The Royal Assent was only a matter of form.
8 C.W., Vol. I, p. 92-96.
9 E.P., p. 424.
10 The Times of Natal, 26 October 1894.
11 Eminent Indian (Christian) lawyer from Bengal.
12 1825-1917.
13 Compare Lenin’s admiration for Plekhanov which was ‘respect, reverence, infatuation’.
14 C.W., Vol. l, p. 106.
15 Letter of 27 July 1894.
16 S.S.A., p. 44.
17 From the money he was going to give Gandhi as ‘purse’ at the moment of departure.
18 A., p. 184.
19 The same severe fines were imposed by Trotsky in the early days of the Russian Revolution on chronic late-comers, and the Russians seemed not a whit inferior to the Indians in this respect.
20 S.S.A., p. 48.
21 Natal Mercury, 29 January 1896.
22 C.W., Vol. I, p. 295.
23 E.P., p. 455.
24 E.P., p. 456-458.
25 C.W., Vol. I, p. 171.
26 C.W., Vol. I, p. 149-150.
27 William Hunter, Indian Empire.
28 Max Mueller happened to be not only the greatest Orientalist of his age, but was also a trusted friend of the Queen and of the Prince Consort.
29 The Upanishads.
30 Open Letter, C.W., Vol. I., p. 158.
31 Open Letter, C.W., Vol. I, p. 161.
32 Open Letter, C.W., Vol. I, p. 163.
33 Protector of Immigrants who looked after coolies—indentured Indian labourers.
34 E.P., p. 495.
35 Natal Mercury, 12 November 1896.
36 Natal Advertiser, 7 October 1896.
37 E., p. 535.
38 Laurens Van der Post, Venture to the Interior, p. 17.
39 E., pp. 555-56.
40 The Star, 31 August 1895.
41 Natal Witness, 13 August 1895.
42 E., p. 378.
43 16 December 1895. Pamphlet printed by T.L. Collingsworth, Printer, 401 Field Street, Durban, 1895. C.W., Vol. I, pp. 256-86.
44 C.W., Vol. I, p. 256-57.
45 Natal Witness.
46 C.W., Vol. I, p. 321.
47 Ibid., p. 322.
48 E.P., p. 616.
49 A., p. 199.
50 E., p. 703.
51 A., p. 197.
1 The official name for India in the Constitution of 1947 is: ‘India, called Bharat,’ that is the land of the Bharatas.
2 ‘I am not one to go back on a pledge taken, even if the sun were to rise in the West,’ wrote Gandhiji. C.W., XII, p. 430.
3 Duryodhana’s army was probably ‘a hundred thousand strong’—this being a moderate estimate.
4 The Mahabharata, pt. 3, Translated by C.V. Srinivasa Rao.
5 The Mahabharata, pt. 3, Translated by R.C. Dutt, p. 349.
6 So far no letters or other documents have revealed the nature of this reunion with Kasturba of a changed Mohandas Gandhi.
7 A., p. 212.
8 A., p. 211.
9 Officially, under quarantine, for twenty-three days, supposedly because of plague in India. But the real reason was otherwise. The whites of Natal did not want these Indians.
10 Author of The Martyrdom of Man.
11 A., p. 263.
12 See Glossary.
13 His son, Jacobus.
14 S., p. 130.
15 S.S.A., p. 79.
16 A.
17 A.
18 Calcutta at that time was the capital of India.
19 See Glossary.
20 6 Aug. 1902, C.W., III, p. 261.
21 3 November 1902, C.W., III, p. 262.
22 A., p. 308.
23 Smuts to Emily Hobhouse, S., p. 188.
24 S., p. 120.
25 31 May 1902, when the Peace Treaty was signed at Vereeninging.
26 ‘Ex-President Kruger is dead,’ wrote Gandhiji in the Indian Opinion (23-7-1904), ‘and in him one of the most striking personalities of the nineteenth century has passed away, leaving the world poorer for it. His demeanour . . . was worthy of a great and godly man.’
27 S., Vol. I, p. 197.
28 A., p. 315.
29 C.W., Vol. I, p. 258.
30 S.S.A., p. 81.
31 S.S.A., p. 81.
32 S., p. 192.
33 A., p. 337.
34 A., p. 348.
35 The Ramayana of Tulsidas.
36 See Glossary.
37 E.P., p. 342.
38 It is now South Africa’s national day.
39 They were civilians having volunteered for military duty because of the Zulu ‘rebellion’. Col. Wylie took an important part in the opposition of the white citizens of Durban against the landing of the Indians from the sister ships, the S.S. Courland and the S.S. Naderi.
40 A., p. 386-88.
41 Literally, Brahmacharya means Way to Brahman.
42 A., p. 323-29.
43 Written in Gujarati about 20 April 1907, of which this is a much condensed English version. C.W., Vol. I, pp. 631-35.
44 A., p. 340.
1 S., p. 56.
2 ‘Holism, is the ultimate activity which prompts and pulses through all other activities in the universe.’ S., p. 304.
3 S., p. 307.
4 The London Convention (signed on 27 February 1884) between the Boers and the British, Article XIV, assured persons other than natives, full liberty of entry, travel, residence, ownership of property and trade in the South African Republic. C.W., Vol. I, p. 385.
5 S., p. 329.
6 The italics are mine, R.R. Ahimsa, non-violence in the Hindu tradition always meant love.
7 Sir Richard indeed became the first prime minister.
8 Preface to C.W., Vol. IV, p. x.
9 ‘In fairness to Lord Elgin it would perhaps be said that while assuring Botha the Act would not be disallowed, he asked him to look into the question of its operation, with a view of removing some objectionable features.’
10 This is the famous beginning of the Bhagavad Gita. Kurukshetra means the field of the Kurus—the Kauravas. It was the battlefield of the Mahabharata War, not far from present-day Delhi.
11 S., p. 321.
12 The Bhagavad Gita.
13 S.S.A., p. 162.
14 C.W., Vol. VIII, pp. 456-58.
15 From the Rig Veda. Agni, the god of fire, is the god who links earth and heaven, and carries our prayers.
16 ‘Arise, ye! Awake, ye!! obtain your books (from your teachers) and understand them! A sharpened edge of a razor hard to traverse, A difficult path is this—Poet-sages (Kavis) declare.’ Katha Upanishad. 4.3.14.
17 S.S.A., pp. 208-209.
18 The Mahabharata (Udyoga Parva).
19 The monk.
20 S., p. 340.
21 Quoted in S., p. 269.
22 ‘I do not like the natives at all,’ wrote Merriman, ‘and I wish we had no black man in Africa. But they are there . . . and the only question is how shape our course so as to maintain the supremacy of the race and at the same time to do our duty’. Quoted in S., p. 220.
23 Haji Habib was willing to accept these minor concessions but not so Gandhiji. The situation had a humorous side for Haji Habib did not understand English very well, and Gandhiji had to translate the questions of his colleague into plain English, Gandhiji of course, faithfully translating the reply of Haji Habib.
24 The famous princess who became a mystic (seventeenth century) and whose songs are popular all over North India.
25 C.W., Vol. X., p. 508.
26 This is the famous National Hymnody, Vande Mataram, the translation being Sri Aurobindo’s.
27 Here was the seed of Pakistan ahead and irrevocably sown.
