WHY GANDHI STILL MATTERS
ALSO BY RAJMOHAN GANDHI
Understanding the Founding Fathers:
An Enquiry into the Indian Republics Beginnings
Prince of Gujarat: The Extraordinary Story of Prince Gopaldas Desai: 18871951
Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten
A Tale of Two Revolts: India 1857 and the American Civil War
Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire
Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns
Revenge & Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History
Rajaji: A Life
The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi
India Wins Errors: A Scrutiny of Maulana Azads India Wins Freedom
Patel: A Life
Understanding the Muslim Mind
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WHY GANDHI STILL MATTERS
AN APPRAISAL
OF THE MAHATMAS LEGACY
RAJMOHAN GANDHI
For Tara
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
First published in India in 2017
by Aleph Book Company
7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110 002
Copyright Rajmohan Gandhi 2017
All rights reserved.
The author has asserted his moral rights.
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts are as reported by him, which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Aleph Book Company.
ISBN: 978-93-86021-15-1
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
CONTENTS
AUTHORS NOTE
This book originated in the fall of 2015 during a conversation in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, at the home of good friends Akshay and Anar Shah, where another friend, Dr Barindra Desai, was also present.
As is true for several others from India now living in the United States, the families of Barindra Desai, Akshay Shah and Anar Shah were proud participants in Indias freedom movement, embracing long years in prison and other hardships.
During the conversation, Akshay recalled lectures on Gandhi given years earlier at Columbia University by the American scholar Dennis Dalton, adding that Daltons powerful lectures had drawn standing-room-only audiences, and asked me to offer a fresh series of Gandhi lectures for newer times. His wife Anar and Dr Desai backed the proposal.
Within weeks of my expressing willingness, Sherman Garnett, the dean of James Madison College at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, invited me, on his universitys behalf, to deliver the lectures, which I did in fall 2016.
This book offers, in revised form, the eight lectures given at MSU, plus an additional piece on the author Gandhi. Focusing on Hind Swaraj, this ninth and concluding chapter, The Enduring Truth in his Writings, is based on a paper presented in 2009, exactly a hundred years after Gandhis famed text was written, at an international conference convened in Delhi by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
Those interested in comparing the text of this book with the MSU lectures, which were recorded by the university on video, should know that The Legacy of Gandhi, the chapter with which this book opens, was at MSU the subject of the eighth and final lecture. Otherwise the book and the lectures observe the same sequence.
I thank Sherman Garnett, Akshay Shah, Anar Shah and Barindra Desai for their roles in this books emergence.
From his remarkable archive Aditya Arya very kindly provided the photograph used on the back cover. For enthusiastic publishing and helpful suggestions, I thank David Davidar and his talented team at Aleph.
R.G.
Gurgaon
March 2017
INTRODUCTION
WHY GANDHI STILL MATTERS
Is Gandhi of interest to the India and world of today? The year 2017 marks the hundredth year of the Champaran satyagraha, and 2019 will see the 150th anniversary of Gandhis birth. Do these dates establish Gandhis relevance for a polarized nation and a violent world?
If Gandhi was all that persons like Einstein and Tagore, Gokhale and Nehru and Patel and Martin Luther King, Jr said he was, and what Barack Obama says he was, then why (it may be asked) was India besmirched by Partition and carnage in 1947?
Also, why do corruption and animosities mark India in 2017? As for nonviolence, can anyone look at Syria and still talk of its applicability?
It says something for a person when his relevance is measured by success or failure in leaving behind a perfect world. In India, Gandhi has been criticized not only for not overcoming all the challenges of his time, including the partition demand, but also for not solving all the problems of our age!
In fact, this interest, two entire generations after his time, in what Gandhi failed to accomplish speaks of what he inspired India to expect of him, which was everything, miracles included. He, too, on his part, claimed that if he were perfect, the world around him would change to his liking. Since it did not, we have proof that he was not perfect. Which is exactly what Gandhi always tried to say.
This short book hopes to present a relevant, fallible, amazing and accessible Gandhi. We can agree that perfection and relevance are not the same thing. A person becomes relevant not by solving all contemporary and future problems (which even God seems unable or unwilling to do) but by offering hints for making life more bearable or interesting, or by showing a way out of a forest.
Gandhi showed Indians how to demand freedom without humiliating themselves as petitioners, and without inviting reprisals on fellow Indians, which was the outcome, often, of the pre-Gandhian method of assassinating the Rajs functionaries.
Relevant or not, Gandhi remains interesting. If nothing else, his contradictions give him appeal. As one of his American friends, E. Stanley Jones, remarked, Gandhi was of East and West, the city and the village, a Hindu influenced by Christianity, simple and shrewd, candid and courteous, serious and playful, humble and assertive. While the savour is sweet, added Jones, the preponderating impression he leaves is not sweetness but strength.
In his final years, a close associate of this lover of the name of Rama was the staunch atheist and fighter for caste equality, Gora (Gopalraju Ramachandra Rao), a Telugu Brahmin. To give another example of Gandhian irony, when Gandhi arrived in Delhi in September 1947 (on the way, so he thought, to carnage-hit Punjab), he stayed in the home of his wealthy friend Ghanshyam Das Birla, but one of the first men he talked with on the day of his arrivalto obtain a true picture of what was happening on the streets of Delhiwas the Communist leader, P. C. Joshi.
Gandhi was to then travel by train from Delhi to Wardha before making another journey, agreed to by Jinnah, to Pakistan. Earlier in the day, the historian Radha Kumud Mookerjee had given Gandhi a copy of his latest book.
This man of actionthe man who turned down a plea for a treatise by him on nonviolence by saying, Action is my domaintold his close aide Brij Krishna Chandiwala on the last day of his life, Ask Bisen [another aide] to pack Professor Mookerjees book with my things.
