Person beyond reform

Harilal Gandhi:

by K. D. M. Kittanpahuwa

"My dear son Harilal, I have read that recently in Madras, policemen found you misbehaving in a state of drunkenness at midnight in an open street and took you in to custody.

Next day you were produced before a bench of magistrates and they fined you one rupee..

Even the magistrates showed regard for your father in thus giving you only nominal punishment.

Now you are making my very existence very impossible. Think of the misery you are causing to your aged parents in the evening of their lives. Though born as our son you are indeed behaving like an enemy.

I am a frail old woman unable to stand the anguish you are causing. You are my eldest son and now fifty years old. I am even afraid of approaching you lest you humiliate me. Your daughters and son-in-law also bear with increasing difficulty, the burden of sorrow your conduct has imposed upon them."
-Kasturba

A grief-striken mother Kasturba Gandhi wrote to their son Harilal, who was their apple of eye. Mahatma Gandhi and wife Kasturba were gifted with four sons. Gandhi, the barrister-at-law, ascetic, wily politician, crusader and freedom fighter miserably failed to groom a family successor to carry forward his Message to the future generations. None of his four sons Harilal, Manilal,Ramadas and Davadas were given a formal education despite their father being a learned man. Gandhi had a peculiar philosophy of education which denied his children the formal schooling. By education he meant, SADACHAR KI SHIKSHA, the character building-no high or professional careers such as lawyers, doctors, engineers. Highly ambitious Harilal wanted to go to England and qualify as a barrister-at-law and follow in the steps of his great father. When Harilal pleaded with his father to finance his education in England the latter rejected it outright. Instead he sent his two cousins Maganlal and Chaganlal to England for higher education.When Harilal found his utopia crumbling before his own eyes, his inner trauma rebelled against his father, who was a no-nonsense task master to his siblings since their formative years. Frustrated and embittered in his prime of life as early as 18, the angry son changed his ancestral faith, Hinduism and embraced Islam and got married to a Muslim woman named Gulab-nick named "Chinchi" by her father-in-law.Released from the clutches of an ascetic father the rebellious on stepped in to the world of joy and happiness. Frolics of his three children-son, Kanthi and two daughters Ramibehn and Manibehn were a source of exhilaration and enjoyment. His Hindu nephews who never forgave his conversion to Islam humiliated him, "Harilal Kaka". Reflecting on his somber past, Harilal once remarked, "The curse of illiteracy had just two avenues to junior Ghandis. Either they must become Bapu's disciples or sell salt in paper packets that carry Bapu's photographs". Harilal accused his "Sarvajanaik father", the "heartless ringmaster who exploited his family members to serve his own ends".

Harilal's brother too suffered the rigours of their father. When he came to know that his son Manilal was involved with a married Hindu woman knowing no bounds to his rage, Gandhi coerced the woman to shave her hair and pledged he would never allow his son to have his way. Manilal's subsequent love affair with a Muslim woman named Fatima turned out to be still-born one in the presence of his father's overpowering personality.

Misfortune struck Harilal when his beloved wife Gulab died of flu epidemic. When he tried to contract a second marriage Gandhi castigated him. Harilal's father who married at the very tender age of 13 and practised continence at 37, miserably failed to understand the man's primeval urge for lust. The yawning abyss in the relations between father and son turned sour and narrower. When once a train that carriedGandhi and Kasturba stopped at a station a feeble voice broke in , "Kasturba ki jai" instead of ubiquitous " Gandi ki jai". Harilal in rags and with teeth gone approached and offered an orange to his mother Kasturba. When Gandhi asked what did he bring him, Harilal exploded in to toothless anger and said, "If you are so great, it is because of Bar(Mother)".

Nilam Parikh, Harilal's surviving granddaughter who prefers Gandhi and Gandhi ,but disowns Gandhi Vs. Gandhi has her own version of father-son tragedy.

"The pain Harilal inflicted on his parents and children by his drinking, womanizing and his much publicized(if short-lived) "stunt" of converting to Islam was due to his being misguided by Gandhi's many enemies. " Harilal went looking for a father but always found Mahatma instead" Parikh reiterated. When mother Kasturba was fatally ill, Harilal arrived but could not talk to her as he was fully drunk. His presence at his great father's funeral went unnoticed. Gandhi died on January 30,1948 at the hands of an assassin.

End came to Harilal on June 18,1948 in Shivari Tuberculosis Hospital in Bombay with his two daughters and son in law by his bedside, as Sheela Reddy says.

Harilal's last words, " I am not a person who can be reformed. Tell Kanthi (Son) to pardon me".