by Robert Payne
He was in a restless mood, suffering from high blood pressure, unable to concentrate for any length of time. He attended the annual Congress meeting at Lucknow in April, but took no part in it. He was strangely reserved and remote, and was sometimes abrupt when people came for his darshan, and to those who knew him well he spoke of his hunger to live unnoticed in some obscure village. On his way to Wardha he attended the All-India Literary Conference at Nagpur, and there again he spoke of abandoning the ashram at Wardha and living like a simple peasant He had often asked his followers to live in villages, and felt that unless he settled in a village himself he had no right to make this demand on them. Above all, he wanted to recover his health, for he foresaw endless difficulties unless he was in full command of his faculties.
When he reached Wardha, he decided to live in the nearby village of Segaon, where Mirabehn was living. It was a village of about six hundred people, given over to farming and fruit-growing. A small cottage would be built for him, but meanwhile he would live in the open under a tree, with some frail bamboo matting to protect him from the sun. They chose a place where there was a well with crystal-clear water, for around these wells it is always a little cooler.
He liked Segaon, and thought of spending the remaining years of his life there, but many of his followers protested. There were no roads, no post office, no telegraph, only the winding lanes carved out of the black soil. For his cottage Mirabehn chose a site in an open field toward the high ground, a scattering of dark rocks north of the village. It was not a particularly inviting place, but there were fruit gardens nearby.
One day toward the end of April Gandhi set out from Wardha. He walked the first four miles, but growing tired he made the rest of the journey in a bullock cart. It was still early in the morning when he arrived at an empty field where some workmen were bringing stones from the hills to form the foundations of his house. In that barren field there would eventually arise another ashram, and people would come from all over the world to see him there. But now there was only the thick grass, the snakes, the huddled village, and the rocks. He had thought of this place as a hermitage far from civilization, a place where he could be alone with himself, free from all distractions, in a harsh and dangerous landscape which reflected his mood. The place was infested with malaria, and among the snakes were kraits, the most poisonous in the world. In this wilderness he thought he would escape civilization altogether, but soon a motor road had to be built and the telegraph wires were being strung between the trees. Here he built the fourth of his communal colonies, and called it Sevagram, meaning “Service Village.”
He spent a few minutes walking with Mirabehn around the barren field, and then sat down to work under the frail bamboo matting which served as a roof.
The Return of Harilal
IN THE LONG and unhappy life of Harilal there were few days which he remembered with pleasure. He was sweet-tempered, gentle and unassuming when young; his brothers adored him; and he made friends easily. In middle age he became a drunkard, and lost his friends as quickly as he made them. He had been handsome when he was a youth, but now his ravaged face was blotched and faintly sinister. He was one of those men who seem to be always running away from the ghosts of the past.
When Gandhi introduced the Satyagraha movement to South Africa, Harilal had thrown himself into the battle with a kind of ferocious idealism. He spent more than a year in prison. Some of the Indians went mad in the South African jails, and some of them died in prison or as a result of the privations they suffered. In 1911, while the Satyagraha campaign was still going on, he rebelled against his father and made his way to India alone, determined to acquire the education which his father refused to give him. At various times he wanted to be a lawyer, a teacher, a writer. Instead he became a company promoter and a commercial traveler, an occupation he despised. After his wife died in 1918, he made his peace with his father. It was a time when his father was leading a Satyagraha movement in India, and once more the call went out for youthful idealists to offer themselves for imprisonment. Harilal joined the movement and in December 1921 he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. He did not complain, for he felt that he had nothing to live for after his wife’s death. His father sent him a telegram of congratulations, but a few days later when it became known that the sentence had been reduced, Gandhi was inconsolable.
In Gandhi’s eyes Harilal was disobedient, insubordinate and rebellious. He had dared to assert his independence, and refused to follow the path his father had mapped out for him. He had married too young against his father’s wishes, and never accepted the doctrine of brahmacharya. On the contrary he had enjoyed his wife, loved her passionately, and refused to be parted from her. She gave him two daughters, Rami and Manu, and two sons, Kanti and Rasik. They were handsome children, the apples of Kasturbai’s eye. Rasik, the younger son, was thought to possess special qualities of intelligence and gentleness. He was only seventeen when he died during a typhoid epidemic in 1929.
In the eyes of the world Harilal committed even more serious crimes than those which his father believed he had committed. At one time he embezzled thirty thousand rupees; he was not arrested, for the money was stolen from a, Madrasi merchant, a friend of his father’s. The matter was hushed up. It was hoped that he would turn a new leaf. He opened a business in Calcutta which failed. After his release from prison in 1922, he gave himself up to a life of debauchery and was rarely sober. He had charming manners, and could always borrow enough money for drink. He quarreled with his brothers and called them “charlatans” for following blindly in their father’s footsteps, and sometimes when he was in his cups he would write long accusing letters to his father, saying that he was a tyrant to his sons and far from being the Mahatma. He would threaten to send these letters to the newspapers, but rarely did so. Instead, he sent the letters to his father’s friends.
Years passed when no member of his family saw him, and none knew where he was living. He wandered across India in rags, gaunt and disheveled, with staring eyes, as much a wanderer as his father. When he was young, he was proud of his hair, which was parted in the middle with long locks falling over his forehead. Now his hair fell down to his shoulders, and he could be taken for a beggar. He went on foot and in third-class carriages, often hungry. When he fell ill or was starving, there would always be someone to look after him. “He was self-willed and obstinate, but people could not help loving him,” wrote Devadas, his youngest brother. “There was something in him which attracted them to him, and they forgot his faults.”
Devadas became the managing editor of the Hindustan Times, published from Delhi. Kanti, Harilal’s son, became a doctor in Bombay. Harilal had a host of friends in Calcutta, for he had spent many years there. So he traveled between the three cities and was always sure of finding someone to nurse him whenever he fell ill with malaria, the disease which had killed his wife. According to Devadas he traveled by train as much as his father, who sometimes spent six months each year traveling up and down India.
The gutter press wrote about him; unscrupulous company promoters would give him money for the use of his name; and some Muslims pondered the advantages that might come about if he were converted to their faith. When he was drunk, he would borrow money and give his name to any cause which would pay him. No one who knew him believed that he would ever be converted to the Muslim faith, for—and in this too he resembled his father—he was continually studying the Bhagavad Gita and especially admired the commentary by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He never traveled without the book, although he knew it by heart.
In May 1936, about the time Gandhi was founding his new settlement at Segaon, Harilal entered the Muslim faith in a ceremony which took place in the midst of a large congregation in a Bombay mosque. It was his supreme act of defiance against his father. The news was broadcast across India. To his mother he wrote that he had taken this step “in order to become a better person.” In her grief she dictated to Devadas a letter to Harilal, who had now assum
ed the name of Abdulla Gandhi:
DEAR SON, HARILAL,
I heard lately that some time back for some disorderly behavior at midnight, you were hauled up before a Magistrate in Madras, and he fined you, though only one rupee. This shows that the Magistrate was merciful to you and had also regard for your father. But I have been deeply pained by what you did. I do not know if you were alone at the time, or if you had some friends with you. I do not know what to say to you. For years I have been pleading with you to lead a good life, but you have gone from bad to worse.
Alas! we, your father and I, have to suffer so much on your account in the evening of our life. What a pity that you, our eldest son, have turned our enemy! But what has grieved me greatly is your criticism of your father, in which you have been indulging nowadays. Of course, he remains silent and calm. Only if you knew how his heart is full of love for you. That is why he has again and again offered to keep you with him and me, and cater, too, to your creature comforts, but only on condition that you mend your present ways.
You are so ungrateful. Your father is no doubt bearing it all so bravely, but I am an old weak woman, who finds it difficult to suffer patiently the mental torture caused by your regrettable way of life. I cannot move about with ease among friends and all those who know us. Your father has always forgiven you, but God will never forgive you.
Every morning I open the daily newspaper in fear, lest it might have some further report of your evil doings. And often when I have sleepless nights, I think of you and wonder where you are these days, what you are eating, where you are staying, etc. Sometimes I even long ardently to meet you. But I do not know your whereabouts. But even if any time I chanced to meet you, I am afraid you might insult me.
Further, I fail to understand why you have changed your ancestral religion. However, this is your own personal affair. But why should you lead astray the simple and the innocent who, perhaps, out of regard for your father, are inclined to follow you? You consider only those people as your friends, who give you money for drink. And what is worse, you even ask the people from the platform to walk in your footsteps. This is a self-deception at its worst. But you cannot mislead the people for long. So I beseech you to mend your ways calmly and courageously. When you accepted Islam, you wrote to me that you did so to make yourself better. And willy-nilly, I reconciled myself to it. But some of your old friends, who saw you recently in Bombay, tell me that your present condition is worse than before.
In all her life Kasturbai never wrote another letter so filled with terror and anguish. Almost out of her mind with despair, she brooded interminably on the prodigal son who had given himself up to a life of debauchery and drunkenness, amusing himself by writing occasional venomous articles against his father. Unlike Gandhi, who could turn his mind quickly from one subject to another, never permitting himself the luxury of dwelling very long on any single subject, Kasturbai could not prevent herself from brooding. She prayed for her son, longed to see him, and was terrified at the thought that she might encounter him; and when she wrote that “Your father has always forgiven you, but God will never forgive you,” she meant that she could not find it in her heart to forgive him, but still loved him, as a mother always loves her firstborn.
Writing to Mirabehn at the end of May, Gandhi found himself wondering at Harilal’s motive. “You must have by now heard about Harilal’s acceptance of Islam,” he wrote. “If he had no selfish purpose behind, I should have nothing to say against the step. But I very much fear there is another motive behind this step. Let us see what happens now.” Two days later, writing to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, in one of those letters in which he addressed the Princess as “my dear Rebel” and signed himself “Tyrant,” he showed that he had already come to the conclusion that Harilal had changed his religion for the worst possible motives—sensation and money. “You must have seen Harilal having adopted Islam,” he wrote. “He must have sensation and he must have money. He has both. I am thinking of addressing a general letter to Musalman friends.”
A few days later a long letter addressed to “my numerous Muslim friends” appeared in the pages of Harijan. It was written calmly, but he made no attempt to hide a lingering bitterness and a sense of bewilderment. He had known, and could not help knowing, a good deal about the unsavory life of his eldest son. He was under no illusions about the way his enemies would use his son’s apostasy against him. He was aware that he had powerful enemies, and now his son was added to their ranks. There was not the least doubt that Harilal was exacting a fearful vengeance and was deliberately attempting to harm his father.
There had been a hint of the coming storm, for while Gandhi was at Nagpur in April, presiding over the All-India Literary Conference, there had been a brief meeting with Harilal, who spoke about the attentions that were being paid to him by missionaries of rival faiths. Harilal seemed to be amused by their attentions, and Gandhi was under the impression that his son, who told stories well, was merely amusing himself at the expense of the missionaries. Now, confronted by what he regarded as a fraudulent apostasy, he wrote as calmly as a man can about a disaster within the family.
The letter should be quoted at some length because it reveals Gandhi grappling with a problem which was, as he must have known, almost beyond solution. There was not the slightest possibility that Harilal could be brought back to the fold. All he could do was to explain the facts as he saw them and deal with them as objectively as possible. He would ask the Muslims to examine their consciences and ask themselves whether Harilal had embraced Islam in good faith. He wrote:
If this acceptance was from the heart and free from any worldly considerations, I should have no quarrel. For, I believe Islam to be as true a religion as my own.
But I have the gravest doubt about this acceptance being from the heart or free from selfish considerations. Every one who knows my son Harilal knows that he has been for years addicted to the drink evil and has been in the habit of visiting houses of ill fame. For some years he has been living on the charity of friends who have helped him unstintingly. He is indebted to some Pathans from whom he has borrowed on heavy interest. Up to only recently he was in dread of his life from his Pathan creditors in Bombay. Now he is the hero of the hour in that city. He had a most devoted wife who forgave his many sins including his unfaithfulness. He has three grown-up children, two daughters and one son, whom he ceased to support long ago.
Not many weeks ago he wrote to the press complaining against Hindus— not Hinduism—and threatening to go over to Christianity or Islam. The language of the letter showed quite clearly that he would go over to the highest bidder. That letter had the desired effect. Through the good offices of one Hindu councillor, he got a job in Nagpur Municipality. And he came out with another letter to the press about recalling the first and declaring emphatic adherence to his ancestral faith.
But, as events have proved, his pecuniary ambition was not satisfied, and in order to satisfy that ambition, he has embraced Islam. There are other facts which are known to me and which strengthen my inference.
When I was in Nagpur in April last, he had come to see me and his mother, and he told me how he was amused by the attentions that were being paid to him by missionaries of rival faiths. God can work wonders. He has been known to have changed the stoniest hearts and turned the sinners into saints as it were in a moment. Nothing will please me better than to find that during [Gandhi probably meant to write between] the Nagpur meeting and the Friday announcement he had repented of the past and had suddenly become a changed man, having shed the drink habit and sexual lust.
But the press reports give no such evidence. He still delights in sensation and good living. If he had changed, he would have written to me to gladden my heart. All my children have had the greatest freedom of thought and action. They have been taught to regard all religions with the same respect that they paid to their own. Harilal knew that if he had told me that he had found the key to a right life and peace in Islam, I would have put no
obstacle in his path. But no one of us, including his son, now twenty-four years old, and who is with me, knew anything about the event until we saw the announcement in the press.
My views on Islam are well known to the Musalmans, who are reported to have enthused over my son’s profession. A brotherhood of Islam has telegraphed to me thus: “Expect like your son, you a truth-seeker to embrace Islam, truest religion in the world.”
I must confess that all this has hurt me. I sense no religious spirit behind this demonstration. I feel that those who are responsible for Harilal’s acceptance of Islam did not take the most ordinary precautions they ought to have in a case of this kind. Harilal’s apostasy is no loss to Hinduism and his admission to Islam a source of weakness to it, if, as I fear, he remains the same wreck that he was before.
Surely conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows His creatures’ hearts. And conversion without a clean heart is a denial of God and religion. Conversion without cleanness of heart can only be a matter for sorrow, not joy, to a godly person.
My object in addressing these lines to numerous Muslim friends is to ask them to examine Harilal in the light of his immediate past and if they find that his conversion is a soulless matter, to tell him so plainly and disown him, and if they discover sincerity in him, to see that he is protected against temptations, so that his sincerity results in his becoming a god-fearing member of society. Let them know that excessive indulgence has softened his brain and undermined his sense of right and wrong, truth and falsehood. I do not mind whether he is known as Abdulla or Harilal, if by adopting one name for the other he becomes a true devotee of God, which both the names mean.