Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  I am not presuming to urge what the action needed is. But when Dr Ambedkar returns very shortly to India will you not invite him to come and see you? He will not seek such a meeting himself I know; but I have good reason to believe that he would respond to your call.

  The letter was redirected to Gandhi in Srirampur. In his reply (which is not in the Collected Works), Gandhi told Heath that Ambedkar

  represents a good cause but he is a bad advocate for the simple reason that his passion had made him bitter and made him depart from the straight and narrow path. As I know to my cost, he is a believer in questionable means so long as the end is considered to be good. With him and men like him the end justifies the means. Have you read his book [What Gandhi and the Congress Had Done to the Untouchables]? It is packed with untruths almost from beginning to end. I am sorry to have to say this of a countryman who has himself been obliged to put up with insults which have embittered men mightier than Dr. Ambedkar. You need not take all I say as gospel truth. I have written this to you in order to give you my [view] that if I do not go out of my way to seek contact with Dr. Ambedkar it is not for want of will or want of regard for you and friends like you but because I know that such seeking will, in my view, harm the cause [rather] than help it. I can say that the question of prestige has never interfered with my doing that I believed was a duty. I have laboured to show that in this case duty points the other way.42

  Through the 1930s, Gandhi had shown an indulgent, generous attitude towards Ambedkar’s criticisms of his work. That generosity had waned in recent years, in part because of Ambedkar’s joining the viceroy’s executive council when Gandhi and his comrades were in jail, in part because Ambedkar’s latest book had dismissed, in what many considered a cavalier fashion, the twenty years (and more) of hard, patient work for the abolition of untouchability that had earned Gandhi much hostility and abuse from orthodox circles, this manifest not only in words but also in physical attacks, as in the failed assassination attempt in Poona in June 1934.

  Gandhi would not take the initiative in effecting a reconciliation with Ambedkar—at least not yet. His letter to Carl Heath on this subject showed an unyielding attitude missing in (for example) his correspondence with Muslim League critics such as Maulvi Hamiduddin Ahmed.

  VIII

  Gandhi’s walks, talks and prayers in Noakhali continued. In a meeting in Srirampur on 10 December, he said no religion was ‘without its blemishes’. Islam had forgotten its ideals and taken to violence, Christians very often forgot that their master asked them to love their enemies, while, as the status of ‘untouchables’ showed, ‘in Hinduism, too, diabolical wrong has been perpetrated in the name of religion’.43

  On Christmas Day, Gandhi chose for his prayer meeting an excerpt from the New Testament, which in English read: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’ Nirmal Bose translated the passage into Bengali for the audience.

  Later the same week, Jawaharlal Nehru and J.B. Kripalani came to see Gandhi in Srirampur. They discussed the Hindu–Muslim question not only in Bengal but also in other parts of India. Gandhi was keen that, in the Congress-ruled state of Bihar, an impartial inquiry committee be set up to report on the cause of the riots there. Nehru then tried, unsuccessfully, to get Gandhi to leave Noakhali and return to Delhi to help with the crucial negotiations on the transfer of power that lay ahead.44

  On 2 January 1947, Gandhi left Srirampur. He had spent forty-three consecutive nights in the hamlet, the longest period in any place in India apart from his ashrams in Ahmedabad and Sevagram (and the jails in Poona). He now resumed his walking tour, going from one village to another. As he left the village, ‘one Muslim elderman of Srirampur stopped him and presented him four oranges and requested [him to] come again in their midst’.45

  At his first stop, Chandpur, Gandhi spoke about how, rather than pit one religion against another, the people of Bengal should work on ridding their homes of dirt and disease, on increasing the productivity of their lands, and thus ‘convert their villages into cleaner abodes of peace and prosperity’. In another village, Karpara, he reminded Hindus and Muslims that both ‘are nourished by the same corn and live under the same sky, quench their thirst by the same water, in [natural] calamities that overtake the country are afflicted in the same way, irrespective of their religious beliefs’.46

  Gandhi spent the night wherever possible in a Muslim home. One meeting had ‘a large gathering of Muslims’; in another, ‘he got a grand ovation by a large number of Muslims’. Both Hindus and Muslims had begun to warm to him. As one enthusiastic reporter wrote, the villagers of Noakhali ‘have begun to wonder as to the fire Gandhiji’s life is made of….[M]en, women and children, Muslims and Hindus, come out of their huts and look at him. An old man of 76 with a bamboo stick marches in brisk pace and in his way whoever comes [he] greets always [with] an immediate smiling response.’47

  In the village of Bhatialpara, a Hindu family who had fled during the riots asked Gandhi to reinstall their family deity in the home they had returned to. Gandhi agreed, thus performing the duties of a priest for the first time in his life. As he came out of the shrine, ‘three influential Muslims greeted him and said: “Now that you have installed the image of the family deity here, we will stand surely for its protection.” Mr. Gandhi replied that it was just what was expected of them.’48

  On 20 January, Gandhi reached the village of Sirandi. His disciple Amtus Salam was based here. In the last week of December, after three ceremonial swords used in Hindu prayers were stolen, Amtus Salam went on a fast. She said she would not eat until the swords were returned.

  Two weeks into her fast, Amtus Salam was struck by a high fever. She had a bad cough, bringing up large quantities of sputum. She was now extremely weak.49

  A local police inspector was called in to persuade the Gandhian to break her fast. He convened a joint meeting of Hindus and Muslims, which was followed by the recovery of two of the stolen swords, given back by two young Muslims. Amtus Salam said she would break her fast only when the third sword too was recovered, ‘whereupon she was reported to have been abused in filthy language by one Muslim’. The search recommenced. The suspicion fell on a man called Kasem, who had, however, absconded from the area and could not be traced.50

  When Gandhi reached the village of Shirandi, Amtus Salam had been fasting for twenty-five days. Her fever and cough remained, and she found it hard even to drink water. But, as the doctor at her side (Sushila Nayar) noted, she was ‘at peace and cheerful’, had ‘completely resigned herself to God’, and insisted on the ‘Koran and Gita being read to her daily’.51

  Gandhi sought to succeed where the policeman had failed. He called a meeting of the residents of four villages in the neighbourhood (Shanktola, Shirandi, Rajarampur and Madhyapara), and drafted a pledge which, once it was translated into Bengali, he got them all to sign.

  The pledge ran as follows:

  With God as witness, we solemnly declare that we bear no antagonism towards the Hindus or members of any other community. To each one, to whatever faith he might belong, his religion is as dear as Islam is to us. There can, therefore, be no question of interference by anybody in the observance of the religious practices of others. We understand that Bibi Amtussalaam’s object is the establishment of Hindu–Muslim unity. The object is gained by the signing of this pledge. We wish, therefore, that she should give up her fast.

  Gandhi took the signed pledge to Amtus Salam, and persuaded her to break her fast, which she did, by accepting a glass of orange juice from him.52

  Gandhi’s colleagues in the Congress were again urging him to come out of Noakhali. The ministers in the inter
im government wished to consult him; and they could scarcely make regular trips to the deepest corners of East Bengal. In early February, Abul Kalam Azad wrote beseechingly to Gandhi, asking him to at least move his base to Calcutta ‘so that we may have the privilege of coming and seeing you and seeking your valuable advice on important questions. We have for years become accustomed to act on your advice that it has now become difficult for us to take any decision without your guidance. Jawahar[lal] is also feeling the same thing every moment. He also is anxious that there may be some way to be near you as early as possible. I hope you will give your sympathetic consideration to my appeal.’53

  Gandhi heard the appeal, but rejected it. The ministers would have to fend for themselves. Noakhali needed him more than they did. In early February, he was joined by Phillips Talbot, an American journalist based in India. Talbot’s friends in Delhi, both Indian and British, saw ‘the aging leader’s absence from today’s political arena as a demonstration of weakness and caprice’. One official told him Gandhi was ‘dotty’ not to be in Delhi when the crucial transfer of power talks were taking place. Meanwhile, the Muslim League newspaper, Dawn, was demanding that their chief minister in Bengal, Suhrawardy, expel Gandhi from the province.

  Talbot went to Noakhali in early February 1947. He followed the Mahatma around from village to village, writing that ‘the Gandhi march is an astonishing sight’. It began just before dawn, with Gandhi setting off on the road, accompanied by a party of about a dozen aides, among them a ‘Sikh attendant who fawns as much as Gandhi permits’. Then, as the sun began to climb, peasants from hamlets on the way came along, ‘swelling the crowds as the snows swell India’s rivers in spring’. They joined in the singing of hymns of prayer and of peace. The peasants pressed in on Gandhi, men and women, young and old, and many children too. ‘Here, if I ever saw one,’ wrote the American journalist, ‘is a pilgrimage. Here is the Indian and the world’s—idea of sainthood: a little old man who has renounced personal possessions, walking with bare feet on the cold earth in search of a great human ideal.’54

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Strangest Experiment

  I

  When Gandhi went to Noakhali, he was closer to eighty than to seventy. The terrain in deltaic East Bengal was not exactly conducive to a walking tour; badly maintained village roads intersected by rivulets that one crossed over on a string of bamboo poles masquerading as a bridge. Sometimes, Gandhi walked from place to place; at other times, he took a country boat, which ferried him through canals green with water hyacinth. The huts in the villages were more modest than even in Sevagram; and there were many more flies and mosquitoes, some carrying malaria. To walk through these parts so recently soaked in blood was an act of heroism, or, as the visiting American journalist had it, of saintliness.

  But recall Mahadev Desai: ‘To live with a saint in heaven is bliss and glory / To live with a saint on earth is a different story.’ In the midst of this heroic, saintly pilgrimage for peace, Gandhi was conducting the strangest of his experiments with (as he had it) ‘truth’. The goal of the experiment was his old, continuing, obsession with brahmacharya—the instrument, his grand-niece Manu.

  Sometime in late December 1946, Gandhi asked Manu to join him in the bed he slept in. He was seeking to test, or perhaps further test, his conquest of sexual desire. Somehow, the idea had entered his mind that the rise of religious violence was connected to his own failure to become a perfect brahmachari. The connection was a leap of faith, an abdication of reason, and perhaps also an expression of egotism. He had come round to the view that the violence around him was in part a product or consequence of the imperfections within him.

  When Gandhi commenced his experiments with Manu, his Bengali interpreter Nirmal Kumar Bose objected. Bose was a man (and scholar) of conspicuous independence of mind. Although he admired Gandhi and had compiled an important anthology of his writings, he found this latest experiment both puzzling and indefensible. He urged Gandhi to abandon it, but without success.1

  The other person in the entourage, the stenographer Parasuram, was also unhappy with the experiment. He expressed his anguish in a long letter, where he asked why Gandhi could not practise celibacy without having to prove it in such a public manner. Thus Parasuram remarked:

  Apart from the question of any effect on you what about the effect on girls. They might imagine that instead of an old man there is a young and handsome man lying nearby. You know how in India girls marry themselves to stone images of Krishna and are content by visualising that Krishna is their real husband.

  Leave this also. Let there be no effect on the other party or on you. Even then the whole thing is considered wrong by the world. I do not like it. Nirmal Babu does not. Sucheta ben [Sucheta Kripalani, one of Gandhi’s educated women disciples] does not like it and said ‘However great he may be, he cannot do such things. What is this?’ You must admit that there is something in our objection. You cannot waive it aside.

  Parasuram continued:

  As far as Manu is concerned I must say she is a good girl. She won’t become neurotic. But I must say the thing is bad. Why should you do it. Your brahmacharya should be like of [the legendary sanyasi] Suka. He did not experiment. He did not boast of it. Yet he was a perfect brahmachari. The Apsaras bathing in the water without clothes did not feel shame when he passed by. Yet they felt shame and put their clothes on when Vyasa his father passed by in search of his son. Your brahmacharya should be like that of Suka. It should be felt by other people without your effort.

  Parasuram had joined Gandhi hoping to serve him until the end of his life. He knew, as he told Gandhi, that ‘the good things you have done are so innumerable. You have taken us so far along the path of freedom and independence. You have shaken the Hindu’s concept of untouchability etc. which even slavery under 1000 years of Muslim rule did not do.’ But now, unless Gandhi discontinued the practice of sharing a bed with Manu, he would have to leave. Gandhi refused to abandon the experiment, so Parasuram left Srirampur and made his way back to South India.2

  Some of Gandhi’s oldest disciples were also opposed to his sharing a bed with Manu. These dissenters included Narhari Parikh, who had joined Gandhi as far back as 1917. The criticisms of those close to him prompted a remarkable letter written by Gandhi to Satish Chandra Mukerji, a patriot who was one of the pioneers of the national education movement in Bengal. Mukerji was several years older than Gandhi; and, perhaps more significantly, had renounced worldly pursuits to become a sanyasi, taking renunciation so far as to discard his clothes altogether (earning him the affectionate appellation, ‘Nanga Baba’, or naked saint). Gandhi and he recently had an exchange on the meaning and purpose of Ramanama, the repeated uttering of the name of Rama, a practice favoured by both men. Now, writing to Mukerji on 1 February, Gandhi said:

  I put before you a poser. A young girl (19) who is in the place of granddaughter to me by relation shares the same bed with me, not for any animal satisfaction but for (to me) valid moral reasons. She claims to be free from the passion that a girl of her age generally has and I claim to be a practised brahmachari. Do you see anything bad or unjustifiable in this juxtaposition? I ask the question because some of my intimate associates hold it to be wholly unjustifiable and even a breach of brahmacharya. I hold a totally opposite view. As you are an experienced man and as I have regard for your opinion, I put the question. You may take your own time to answer the question. You are in no way bound to answer it if you don’t wish to.3

  It is not known whether Mukerji answered this ‘poser’. But we do know that, following the criticisms of Bose, Parikh, Sucheta Kripalani and Parasuram, Gandhi himself was conflicted about his experiment. The day he wrote to Mukerji, he was reported in a speech as having ‘referred to “small-talks, whispers and innuendos” going round of which he had become aware. He was already in the midst of so much suspicion and distrust, he told the gathering, that
he did not want his most innocent acts to be misunderstood and misrepresented. He had his granddaughter with him. She shared the same bed with him. The Prophet [Muhammad] had discounted eunuchs who became such by an operation. But he welcomed eunuchs made such through prayer by God. His was that aspiration. It was in the spirit of God’s eunuch that he had approached what he considered was his duty. It was an integral part of the yajna he was performing and he invited them to bless the effort. He knew that his action had excited criticism even among his friends. But a duty could not be shirked even for the sake of the most intimate friends.’4

  A week later, Gandhi wrote to his long-time disciple Vinoba Bhave, a man he valued highly for his scriptural learning, and for being a more thoroughgoing ascetic than himself. Bhave had never married, never had a relationship with a woman. Even in matters of diet, clothing and transport, he was far more abstemious than his master. Gandhi now told Bhave that ‘the friends in our circle have been very much upset because of Manu’s sleeping with me’. These friends included Narhari Parikh, who had been with Gandhi as long as Bhave, and K.G. Mashruwala and Swami Anand, who had also been in the ashram for decades. But these criticisms notwithstanding, Gandhi said ‘my own mind, however, is becoming firmer than ever, for it has been my belief for a long time that that alone is true brahmacharya which requires no hedges’.