TRIPLE STREAM
Mahatma Gandhi, like Gautam Buddha is not the monopoly of India. We have no proprietory rights over him. There is special significance for his 125th birthday which is being celebrated in a befitting manner all over the world during 1994-95. He used to tell his mends with a sparkle in his eyes, that he would live for 125 years. Such was his zest for life. When his trusted secretary Mahadev Desai once sent a telegram on his birthday wishing him the life span of a centenarian, Gandhi’s reply was: “By a stroke of your pen you have removed 25 years from my life! “He would have lived that long had not the assassin’s bullet abruptly terminated his breath. Don’t we find Morarji Desai, a true Gandhian receiving birthday greetings remaining still at the wicket after making a century? It is good that Prime Minister Mr P. V. Narasimha Rao personally conveyed his greetings to the elder statesman who voluntarily retired from politics - a rare phenomenon in India.
Gandhi belongs to the whole world. It is absurd to pin him down to a pincode address of the post office. He is as old as the hills and yet as fresh as the morning mist. His message has a universal and all-time appeal. It transcends the frontiers of his country and the limits of time. “My mission”, he said, “is not merely the brotherhood of the Indian humanity; my mission is not merely freedom of India. I hope to realise and carry on the mission of the brotherhood of man.” His hope that India would be in the vanguard of all the nations in Asia and Africa was amply fulfilled.
When a press person asked him: “Gandhi, where is your family?” he replied “The whole of India is my family”. All religions belonged to him. He once declared “I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Sikh and a Jew”. Such words sound hollow in the mouths of petty politicians. But his words had the weight of substance and were reinforced by his example. To him life was a scripture. His own life was his message.
In the course of his two - decades - long struggle in South Africa he fabricated Satyagraha, a new weapon of waging relentless war against political oppression without violence. He fashioned his non - nuclear weapon slightly altering Buddha’s ‘ahimsa’ and successfully applied it to politics. Neither the racist regime in South Africa nor the mighty British imperialism could break or bend him. He was an experimenter in Truth and a pioneer of innovative strategies for the three major evils of our time - racism, colonialism and physical violence. He lived long enough to successfully combat the first two evils but violence claimed his life on January 30, 1948.
Gandhi’s time has come today when many people think that his time had passed. Never before his message of simple living and clear thinking had been more relevant than it is now in these degenerate times when money and power are reigning supreme. A new brood of aristocracy fattening on power and political patronage came to the fore as if from nowhere. Criminalisation of politics, debasement of values and a restratification of property made rapid strides culminating in a culture of the vulture Five Star Hotel Culture. As there is a ground swell of black-money with nexus with the higher-ups, inflation runs its frenzied course. Golden gates opened up for middle men, contractors, bootleggers, wheeler-dealers and scamsters. No lock can hold against the power of the gold.
According to Gandhi we must guard our lives against Seven Sins:
Let us contrast these aberrations and abominations with Gandhi’s ideas of truth, honesty, service, sacrifice and the trusteeship concept. When a newspaperman asked him, what would he do with the Viceroy’s Palace (the present Rashtrapati Bhavan with its 340 spacious rooms over 350 sprawling acres) when Independence came, he replied that only patients in a hospital were fit to occupy it. He himself set an example to others. Even when he went to attend the Round Table Conference in London, he wore a loin cloth and another piece of cloth around his shoulders. In the same dress he went to the Buckingham Palace in response to the King’s invitation. When a street urchin asked him where his trousers were, he had a hearty laugh. He never travelled by aeroplane. Even in the train he preferred to travel by 3rd Class to feel the pulse of the common man. He slept on a simple cot, and sometimes on a mat.
Once when Governor General Lord Mountbatten went to see him, he found him absorbed in conversation with poor farmers. When Lord Moutbatten told him that the purpose of his visit was to discuss State matters, he replied that he could discuss them in the presence of the visiting farmers “because it was their state”. Instances like this were galore. He countered the claims of civilisation with its basis in materialism, unchecked industrialism and mechanisation.
In 1945 he wrote in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru (who was described by John Guntherin ‘Inside Asia’ as a piece of the West operating in the East): “I believe that if India is to attain true freedom, and through India the world as well, then sooner or later we will have to live in villages, not in palaces. A few billion people can never live happily and peaceably in cities and palaces, not by killing one another, that is by violence. “He condemned urbanisation with its environmental pollution.
Cleanliness was a matter of religion with him. When someone asked him what would he do if he became a Dictator, he replied “I don’t like to be a Dictator. In case it happens, the first thing that I will do is to clean the streets of harijans in Delhi!” He did sweeping and washing where-ever he lived. Of course, we don’t expect our rulers leaders to do all these things. But there should be a limit to extravagance, power-mongering and flagrant violation of the Gandhian values.
We salute the standard - bearers of Gandhian values. The most prominent among them were Acharya Vinoba Bhave (whose birth centenary is being celebrated in 1995) and Lal Bahadur Shastri (whose birthday coincides with Gandhi’s birthday). Speaking about Gandhi, Pearl Buck, the famous American writer commented: “India! Dare to be worthy of your Gandhi.” If we look at things happening around us, Pearl Buck’s words seem to be more an admonition than caution.
I. V. CHALAPATI RAO
Editor