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Ved Mehta’s earlier books include a Portrait
of India and a study of his own father (Daddyji).
Now he has written about the officially acclaimed father of the
Indian nation, and the result is an outstanding book, which rescues
Gandhi from the dead hand of the hagiographers, without offering
him as a human sacrifice to trendy cynics and debunkers.
Interview is one of Mr. Mehta’s favourite techniques, and
he uses it extensively in this book. The first chapter consists
of a long and meticulous description of Gandhi’s daily routine
at his Sevagram ashram, near Wardha, based upon the recollections
of an unnamed female apostle who travelled with the author through
the villages of central India. This brings Gandhi to life in all
his sublimity and crankiness.
Next, by a fine stroke of art, Mr. Mehta introduces us to the
contemporary Gandhi cult and to some of its high priests. We visit
the Gandhi Cremation Ground, the Gandhi Exhibition, the Gandhi
National Memorial Museum, the Gandhi Peace Foundation and the
offices of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (which occupy
about 30 rooms of a large government building). We meet Gandhi’s
chief secretary, Pyarelal, who is writing his master’s life
at stupendous length and can hardly hope to complete it. How strange,
Mr. Mehta reflects, that one "who lived in such starkly simple
circumstances should be so encumbered after death."
The opening section of the book ends with chapters entitled
"Family" and "Benefactors." In the latter,
there is a fascinating interview with the octogenarian G. D. Birla,
who was one of Gandhi’s chief financial backers and in whose
garden he was assassinated. Mr. Birla says that he never agreed
with Gandhi’s economic notions—his opposition to industrialism,
or his emphasis upon peasant cultivation and crafts—but demurs
when Mr. Mehta suggests that he is claiming to be more modern
than Gandhi: "No, he was more modern than I..."
In the middle section we are given a brief but lucid account
of Gandhi’s career. Mr. Mehta is no Pyarelal; he tells the
story in little more than 100 pages. But though the narrative
moves swiftly, it omits nothing essential, and is throughout aglow
with illuminating detail.
We are told of Gandhi’s restricted, if not exactly unprivileged,
origins in a small princely state In Western Gujarat, and how,
at the age of l9—already married and the father of two children—he
left home and travelled on his own to London to study law. In
1888, Indians were very thin on the ground in England, and this,
therefore, was the first of many acts of heroic moral courage.
By crossing what were known as the "black waters,"
he lost caste in the eyes of orthodox Hindus. But he had no time
for the caste system and was particularly appalled by the relegation
of millions of his fellow-countrymen to the status of out-castes,
or untouchables. It became a vital part of his life’s mission
to purge Hinduism of this ancient stain, and no other man could
have succeeded to the extent that he did.
During his long period in South Africa, where he organised the
Indian community in a non-violent struggle against racialism,
he evolved the philosophy of resistance which, on his return to
India in 1914, became that of the Indian national movement under
his inspiration. As Mr. Mehta says, "political and religious
aims became increasingly identified in [hisj mind, with the result
that those who encountered him, whether as an opponent or as an
ally, found him unpredictable but always disarming."
He had the unique vision to perceive that independence of alien
rule would be worthless without true spiritual independence, and
consequently he fought even harder against what he saw as the
evils in Indian society than he fought against the British. Indeed,
his non-violent methods almost certainly delayed India’s
political liberation by more than a quarter of a century, but,
at the same time, educated the Indian people to cherish values
which have enabled them to remain free, despite many difficulties
and setbacks.
At the moment when power was transferred, Gandhi was so heart-broken
by partition and the attendant massacres that he took no part
in the independence celebrations. Years before, he had formally
withdrawn from Congress politics to concentrate upon teaching
the good life by precept and example. But it does not follow that
he was more saint than politician, because it is hard to separate
Gandhi the Mahatma ("Great-Soul") from Gandhi the nationalist
leader. If J. S. Mill was the saint of rationalism, Gandhi was
the saint of nationalism.
The last section of Mr. Mehta’s book contains a number of
interviews with surviving Gandhians, including the eccentric Madeleine
Slade who, it appears, was fixated on Beethoven before turning
to Gandhi 50 years ago, and has now turned back again to Beethoven.
Among political Gandhians, Mr. Mehta unfortunately chose to interview
Gulzarilal Nanda, who is no longer active, rather than Morarji
Desai—thus missing a notable scoop.
Perhaps because he is blind, the author goes out of his way,
as in previous books, to convey the visual effect of every person
and every scene. Some may feel that he slightly overdoes this,
but the descriptions are often revealing and, at times, very funny.
Clearly, Gandhi’s apostles are far less interesting than
he was, and we hear from C. Rajagopalachari—one of the ablest
of Congress politicians, and father-in-law of Gandhi’s youngest
son—that the Mahatma "was starved for good conversation."
Perhaps it was the same with Jesus Christ and other religious
leaders. Living with simple-minded fanatics may be a necessary
self-imposed discipline for such rare spirits.
As we read of Gandhi’s renunciation of all earthly goods
and passions (which, as Mr. Mehta justly observes, hurt his wife
and children more than it hurt him), we may be reminded of Lytton
Strachey’s challenging inversion of a famous text, in his
essay on William Blake: "What is a man profited, if he shall
gain his own soul and lose the whole world?" But the challenge
surely fails, because we have to admit that the world could get
along very well without its Lytton Stracheys, but would never
have got anywhere without its Gandhis.
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