Lesser known facts of Gandhi

by K.D.M. Kittanpahuwa

He was Mahatma to the world at large, a man of saintly virtues, a half-naked fakir to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his arch enemy. Moreover, he was a cunning fox and a Hindu revivalist to his contemporary and a sworn enemy Mohamed Ali Jinnah who carved out a slice of his motherland. British Viceroy General Wawell saw him as a malevolent old politician, shrewd, obstinate, domineering and double-tongued with true little saintlinen.

Books on Mahatma Gandhi have been written perhaps to the Himalayan heights. Even after 66 years of his assassination still his turbulent life occupies a place in newspapers worldwide.

He was enigmatic and his idiosyncrasies were held in high esteem by his followers.

He was, in fact, a pacifist who despised violence and bloodshed. In his arsenal he had the dreaded weapons of Satyagraha or passive resistance and non-cooperation. These he liberally used against the British authority in India to secure freedom for his people.

He wore his trademark loin cloth and home-made sandals, consumed goat-milk and fruit juice.

Hartal

Hartal or bandh he organised against the British was proof of his genius for political tactics. When people have a fear for prison and gallows Gandhi said, “freedom is always found in prison walls, even on gallows; never in council chambers, courts or classrooms. When one looks at his life one wonders how a one-time nattily clad British barrister reduced himself to a bare-bodied crusader dressed only in loin cloth to fight a mighty empire.

Russian moralist and mystic Leo Tolstoy's “Kingdom of God is within you”, where he said “God's greatest gift to man was the power of universal love to overcome all conflict and hatred” made him a strong believer of non-violence.

Civil disobedience

John Ruskin's, “Unto the last” would have prompted him to seek salvation for his people when he became fully convinced of its message, “the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.”

Perhaps more than anybody else Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience had an electrifying influence on Gandhi which advocated “the individual's right to ignore unjust laws and refuse his allegiance to a government whose tyranny has been unbearable”. This became a catalyst for him to launch his struggle for national liberation.

However, Gandhi too had his fair share of weaknesses. Some writers saw him as a selfish and rigid husband to Kasturba and father to his four children.

Once when his wife Kasturba refused to handle other peoples’ night soil – the duty of the untouchables, Gandhi is said to have dragged her out and pushed out of the gate. He neglected his two elder sons, Harilal and Manilal's formal schooling in keeping with his own view of education. Harilal rebelled against his great father and married Gulab, a Muslim and converted to Islam at the Delhi Jumma Masjid Mosque and “rebaptised” himself as Abdullah.

It was a quirk of fate that an estranged Harilal, the apple of the eye, of his father became an alcholic and died penniless. Gandhi's vision of life was peculiar. When his son Devadas begged him to give penicillin to his dying mother Kasturba Gandhi questioned him, “Why don't you trust God? Why do you drug your dying mother? If God wills it, He will pull her through”.

Non-lethal weapon

The inner man in Gandhi was all-powerful, when an unarmed India could not fight the British he invented his non-lethal weapon, Charka or spinning wheel. His home-spun white cloth galvanised the Indian masses to boycott British textiles.

The greatness of the man was acknowledged even by his worst enemies. Justice Broomfield convicted him of civil disobedience and sentenced him to a jail term of six years and said,

“The determination of a just sentence is perhaps as difficult a proposition as a judge in this country could have to face.

The law is no respector of persons. Nevertheless it will be impossible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category of persons, I have never tried or am likely to have to try. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and noble and even saintly life.”

Sentencing Gandhi to six years, the judge said, “If the government reduces the sentence, no one would be better pleased than I”.

Some of his actions though, done is good faith and sincerity of purpose failed to win the heart of his friends or toes at the end. He was a harsh critic of India's age-old caste system, the contempt of those fighting for social equality.

Messiah

Dr. Ambedcar, the Columbia University acedmic and the messiah of millions of untouchables and himself one of them, violently disagreed with Gandhi despite the latter's anti-caste eredentials.

He said, “My real enemy is gone; thank goodness, the eclipse is now over” when he heard the news of Gandhi's death.

Gandhi's demands, at times, had the tinder-box effect on certain Hindus. He maintained that Muslims should be compensated for the damage inflicted on them by the Hindus.

His demand that the Indian Government should pay Rs. 550 million to Pakistan as compensation infuriated Naturam Godse, a rabid Hindu nationalist to put an end to his life. At the trial he confessed that he killed Gandhi for the sake of the Hindu nation.

He said, “my respect for the Mahatma was deep. It, therefore, gave me no pleasure to kill him. I felt convinced that such a man was the greatest enemy not only of the Hindus but also to the whole nation.”

Thus ended the unmatched life of a man who disowned everything and concentrated himself to the emancipation of his long-suffering people from foreign yoke.