It was twenty-five years ago in those palmy days of
our dynamic politics, when we were released from the erstwhile,
perpetually-moving prayer wheel of our arm-chair advocates of India’s
independence by the advent of Gandhiji–that embodiment of unfading and
unfailing faith in Freedom and of ever-fortified fearlessness in winning it now
and here.
Overnight, as it were, at the time, we found in the
country a band of unknown young and old patriots whom the Master’s
life-changing magic wand had at once transformed into so many apostles of
cultural light and political liberation. Like the Galilean Teacher of old he
had said to them, “Follow me through the vale of tears to the hill-crested
Temple of Truth,” and they had obeyed lamb-like, being cajoled into doing so by
his shining sincerity and spiritual strength.
One evening it was announced in the press that a
member of this glorious Gandhian group had arrived in Karachi and would be
expounding the gospel of his leader on the following day. And so several
hundreds,–some actuated by ardent interest in the political sage of Sabarmati
and his message, while others–and these were in a very large majority, out of
sheer, inert curiosity flocked to the public-hall long before the appointed
hour.
Exactly at the stroke of seven there walked in a
tall, lean man with the pride of a Roman visibly stamped on him from head to
foot. As the chairman introduced him to the audience, the speaker surveyed at a
single sweep the faces of the people sitting in front of him in row after row.
There was an inkling of irony in his eyes and a smile of severity around his
thin lips which seemed to say to them, “Ye babes in bondage!”
Then he rose on his feet and began his address. It
was one long chain of arguments in support of thc philosophy and practice of
the spinning-wheel, which could, be summed up in about half a dozen words! “Be
simple, be self-reliant, be strong.” His hearers admired the lightning movement
and magic of his logic, but so far as its integrating effect was concerned, his
reasoning turned out in the end to be only a rocket. The fault was, of course,
not his; it was the audience, who had been instructed in the school and college
in the art of servillity in everything from ideas to apparel and from morals to
manners, that could not appreciate and endorse the originality of what he had
said. For, after his address was over, most of the queries that were put to him
for answer or elucidation revealed that the interrogators believed in the line
and love of least resistance as if one day Freedom would drop like manna into
their mouths from heaven! And how he tore thread-bare their text-book
syllogisms, to which they held firmly like the Pharisees and the Philistines!
The general impression he created on the
University-turned-out towns-folk in the capital of Sindh was thus expressed by
a local poetaster;
“A Zealot all centred in his new found self,
Without the veneer of the Holy Book
Or the dulcet ding-dong of the temple-bell.”
And some of his friends are inclined to think that
the above description of the speaker of that evening,–it was Acharya J. B.
Kripalani, newly elected President of the Indian National Congress,–is up to a
point still correct, for the Acharya has neither the seeming sanctity of the
pontiff nor the softening sweetness of the priest. But then there is something
Pauline in his rudeness of speech to which he himself would not be at all
ashamed to confess, because, well might he parody St. Paul and exclaim, “If I have
the gift of tongues but speak not truth, I am base like brass.” They say,
however, that since he married his speech has lost a little of its blistering
sting, thanks to the emotional exuberance of his Bengali better half!
The Acharya looks an ascetic but at heart he is
fond of the good things of life and often when there has been an opportunity
for self-enjoyment, he has indulged in them. But on such occasions there is
nothing in the least of the greedy or long-famished glutton in him, for he
takes it all as a part of the game. The fact of the matter is that he shuns
puritanism as it were some fell or foul disease. Hence his innate sense of
humour and spacious humanity.
He is happy and at his best, however, whenever he
is wrestling with an opponent in argument or with a puzzling situation which
gives him an edge or urge to forestall the moves or machinations of those who
are responsible for making the mess. And had he not come under the influence of
thc arch-apostle of Non-Violence in our war-stricken worm, he would have been
today perhaps, an ex-Major General of the now defunct Indian National Army.
For, in a way his motto has ever been, “If you want peace, be prepared for war”
(of course, a weaponless war, such as all votaries of Truth volunteer
for).
The Acharya’s election to the highest honour in the
gift of the nation is another demonstration of the veracity of the view
embodied in the adage, Every soldier carries in his haversack the baton of the
Field-Marshal”. For a humble soldier in the non-violent army of Gandhiji, he
has never aspired to the position of the commander. And, yet, if this
distinction has come to him, it is a case of1greatness being thrust on some
people in spite of themselves.
The Aaharya has the intellect of a Roman Emperor, but
the heart of a St. Francis. And as years pass the head is learning more and
more to bow to the hushed holiness of the spirit. He is, indeed, a king turned
commoner or a commoner touched with the Kingliness of Kingship!