THE HUMOUR OF GANDHI
S.
DURAI RAJA SINGAM
Gandhiji’s humour–or his mirth, as Mrs. Sarojini Naidu prefers to call it–was always to the point, it was sometimes sly but quite without malice, sometimes whimsical, and sometimes, when he made a joke to cap a discussion on a question of morality or ethics, it was inclined, as Mrs. polak has told in “Gandhi the Man,” to leave his questioner feeling baffled if not exasperated. He made no jokes about people which could not be repeated in their presence without giving offence.
His readiness to laugh endeared him to people of all ages and outlook. As with all people of a happy disposition, he liked human company. He liked people who had a sense of fun and could see the funny side of things. It was in a burst of mutual laughter that the long and intimate friendship of Muriel Lester and Gandhiji began.
Rajaji said in a B. B. C.
programme, “Talking of Gandhi”, that “he was a very
companionable man, and he liked company very much. He was a man
who liked to laugh, and he liked people who laughed, he liked children, he
liked women, he liked good and cheerful company.” Rajaji
called him “a man of laughter”, and this is how millions remember him.
Since
his humour was often touched off by given situations
or what was said to him, it cannot be fully appreciated unless the setting is
kept clearly in mind. If this is done, it is possible to savour
the depth and keenness of his humour, and to realise why the people who were involved in his flashes of
fun never forgot this lovable quality of his mind.
All
who knew him recall how he could crack a joke even when the outlook seemed
gloomy. During the Round Table Conference in
On
the return Voyage in the “Pilsna” he had spent
Christmas rather alone, which was unusual. Landing in
Like
many great men, Gandhiji had trained himself to need the minimum amount of
sleep. Once, when he was in hospital, his doctors asked whether he could sleep
well at any time and keep his mind blank and free from worrying thoughts.
Gandhiji wittily replied, “Napoleon used to sleep on horse-back: I can sleep on
the back of a camel!” He added, “Yes, I can sleep without having any dreams and
without any thought whatsoever in my mind.”
I
was seventeen when I first met Gandhiji, and he captivated me at once with his
beaming smile and his sense of fun. I always remember him as ‘The Smiling One’.
He had just returned to
It
was Rajaji who helped me then to meet Gandhiji. When
I told the Mahatma, in tones of awed respect, that I had come from
When
Gandhiji came to
He
was ready to joke even when the situation was serious and his intimates and
friends, not to mention people in general, were anxious on his behalf. At his
first meeting with the Press after he had entered Yeravda
“palace”, just after beginning his historic fast, he characteristically said
that he was an irresistible optimist and that everything would come off well
unless God had forsaken him.
He
was extremely cheerful while being questioned by the newspapermen and often
broke out into boisterous laughter. When one of the pressmen suggested that he
should allow himself to be photographed, Gandhiji quipped “Do you expect that I
am going to die and be buried inside the jail!”
It
was probably the mis-reporting abroad of his humorous
approach to serious situations like this which caused some of his critics to
cast doubt on his sincerity. They could not understand, as we could, that
without a strongly developed sense of humour, a
capacity to see the funny side of grim reality, Gandhiji might not have been
able to endure the trials and tribulations of the spirit and the flesh which
destiny had prepared for him. As Mrs. Sarojini Naidu well put it, “Few people realised
that Mahatma Gandhi’s laughter was the only relieving factor in his life and he
needed to laugh because he was wise. He needed to laugh because he was called
upon to bear the world’s burden.”
One
of Gandhiji’s English friends once sent him five
questions, one being whether he thought a sense of humour
necessary in life. Gandhiji’s revealing reply was
that, if he had had no sense of humour, he would long
ago have committed suicide. He was a modern saint with a sense of humour, a rare combination.
He
reflected in his eyes more than any other man the agonies of the world, thought
Robert Bernays, but he could joke about little
inconsequential things as though without a care, or jest about his own
fate. He rarely played with words, but on one occasion he punned with the
expression “yarn spinning.” Speaking about the need for spinning, he remarked
that they had “spun” many a “yarn” on Congress platforms, but had yet to begin
to spin real yarn for Indian Swaraj. Another time, speaking of the need for
work rather than speech-making, he said, “Next I come to my ends friends who
talk, but who ‘toil not, neither do they spin’!”
Stories
are numerous about his merciless extraction of money and goods from individuals
and crowded gatherings for his Harijan Fund. We can imagine
the Mahatma, travelling third class as usual on the
Grand Trunk Express, suddenly confronted by a correspondent of the Associated
Press seeking an interview.
“Yes,”
smiles Gandhiji, “you can interview me–but give me some money first for my Harijans.”
Mahadev Desai described
another occasion when Gandhiji seized the opportunity to “make money.” For the
voyage to
As
he chided his colleagues for putting on this show of wealth in the cabin of the
liner, Shuaib Qureshi, the Nawab of Bhopal’s private secretary, came in. Gandhiji
turned to him and said, “Well, Shuaib, if someone in
His Highness’s party is in need of a
Although
he often used humour to point a moral, he also made
fun for the sheer delight of it. When a beautiful shawl was presented to him by
a Chinese, the Mahatma was full of praise for the fine workmanship. “Well”, he
exclaimed with a smile, “if there is any girl living in
A
note of whimsicality is occasionally struck in Gandhiji’s
letters to Mira Ben. In one letter, complimenting her for “taking in hand” a
staunch Ashramite, Surendra,
who had apparently badly neglected his physical needs, Gandhiji wrote, “It is
criminal how he neglects his body. Even St. Francis, though he called his body
an ass, took some care of it. And after all, the ass is a most useful and
patient animal. The brother ass can be equally useful if properly treated and
neither pampered nor neglected.”
In
another letter he described with some quiet humour
the activities of “our cat family”, some of whom “have a fancy for the mal of
the wheel. One of them destroyed it the other day. They begin musical
operations at meal times and stop only after Vallabbhai
has served them. The mother has a fancy for vegetarian dishes She enjoys dal and rice and especially vegetables. We
have an addition to the family, did I tell you? There was a human touch about
the mother whilst she was in pain and two or three days after delivery. She
would caress us and insist on being caressed. It was a pathetic sight. The care
she bestows on the ‘baby’ is very wonderful.”
In
his letters to Mira Ben he was always most solicitous for her health and wellbeing, and again and again discussed questions of diet
and health, so that when very occasionally he writes in a strain of gentle
satire, the complexity of the man is startlingly revealed. In one letter he
joked that, although fasting, he was eating “eight meals a day.”
“I
am dictating this immediately after the 3-30 a. m. prayer,” he wrote, “while I am
taking my meal such as a fasting man with prescribed food can take. Don’t be
shocked. The food consists of 8 ozs. of hot water
sipped with difficulty. You sip it as poison, well knowing that in result it is
nectar. Strange to say, this time I am able to take about eight meats of this
poison tasting, but nectar-like meal. Yet I claim to be fasting and credulous
people accept it! What a strange world!”
Often
in a single sentence he made just the right kind of half-humorous, half-serious
observation to set everyone at their ease and bring people nearer each other.
One of the best examples of this gift occurred soon after Lord Mountbatten became the last British Viceroy. Lord Mountbatten was anxious for Lady Mountbatten
to meet Mrs. Asaf Ali, whose antipathy towards
Britain was very pronounced. Telling the story, Madelaine
Masson, in her book “Edwina: The Blography
of the Countess Mountbatten of Burma,” wrote: “A
courteous invitation was dispatched to her. This was courteously but firmly
declined. Impasse. Edwina wondered what her next move should be. She did
not have long to wait. Gandhiji came to talk with Lord Louis, with him was Mrs.
Asaf Ali. ‘I heard she wouldn’t come’, he said, ‘so I
brought her with me’. Gandhiji, with his sure touch, had broken
the ice.
Gandhiji’s humour,
like a diamond, had many facets. It was as far removed from clever, Shavian, or
Voltairian wit, or the epigramatic humour of Oscar
Wilde, as sunshine is from rain. Rabindranath Tagore said of Gandhiji’s humour, “His is a liberated soul. If anyone strangles him,
I am sure he would not cry. He may laugh at his strangler, and if he has to
die, he will die smiling.”
It
is surely a lesson for all of us that Gandhiji’s humour never entirely deserted him, even when it seemed
that all he had worked for was collapsing and he himself was near to death.
During his “fast unto death” in 1948, as a penance for the communal riots
following partition of the sub-continent, the Mountbattens
called on the frail, weak figure lying in a cot on a porch at Birla House. In a voice as thin as a thread, Gandhiji said
to Lord Louis with a Flash of his old humour, “It
takes a fast to bring the mountain to Mahomed!”
A
man whose words were cabled round the world by scores of resident and visiting
pressmen, Gandhiji got on well with newspapermen from a dozen
different countries, all of whom have recounted examples of his lively good humour. They noted how he had the capacity to come away
from weighty discussions with a smile on his face and a cheerful word for them–but
no revelations of discussions which had to remain confidential. Once, emerging
from his talks with the Cabinet Mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps,
he was met by a group of eager journalists who sought his comments.
Gandhiji
smiled at them and remarked, “Oh, you are here. You will be the first person I
shall meet when I go to heaven!”
He
well knew which correspondents reported him faithfully, which were inclined to
be tendentious and misrepresent him. To those who accurately reported his words
and correctly interpreted his meaning, he was always available when they wanted
to see him. At the same time he would sharply chide any correspondent who,
having falsified his remarks at a previous interview, again sought more “copy”.
Once
he pulled up the correspondent of a British paper to substantiate some of his
vague insinuations. The correspondent began to beat about
the bush, when Gandhiji said, “Mr….you are
perambulating round the suburbs of veracity!”
The
correspondent of another well-known British paper was being taken to task on
another occasion. “Why did you say that the gift from a British colonel of a
woman’s corset annoyed me, when I said that I was amused by it? “ Gandhiji
asked him.
The
correspondent replied, “Amusement perhaps meant annoyance.”
“Well,
then,” said Gandhiji, “I may tell you that I have a sense of humour which saves me from annoyance over these things. If
I were lacking in it, I should have gone mad by now. For instance, I should go
mad over this article of yours. It is up to me to say that you have packed this
article with things which are far from the truth and I should have nothing to
do with you. But I do not do so and will continue to give you an interview as
often as you come.”
He
was never rude or discourteous in his humour, and if
there was a rebuke implied in some of his answers, it was administered with
such good natured laughter that his questioner was able to join in the general
mirth. For example, an American lady once asked Gandhiji when he was likely to
pay a visit to her country.
“Not
in the near future,” the Mahatma told her.
“But
the people over there are crazy to see you,” insisted the lady.
“Yes,
I know,” Gandhiji rejoined amid roars of laughter, “the people over there want
to put me in their zoo!” The American lady joined in the merriment at the
spectacle conjured up by Gandhiji of himself behind American zoological bars.
His
mind lost none of its quicksilver alertness as the years went by, nor did his humour lose any of its sparkle even when the final
tragedy-laden chapter of India’s struggle for freedom was being written
in so much blood and tears. Alan Campbell Johnson, Mountbatten’s
Press Attache during the last Viceroyalty, saw how Gandhiji’s “ever present
sense of humour” continued to express itself even
when momentous issues affecting the destiny of India were in the balance.
Far
from being “an old man in his dotage,” Gandhiji impressed himself on this
shrewd and sophisticated British official as man who “lives with the intensity
of youth and retains the boyish sense of fun which tragedy and the passing of
time cannot wither.”
Mrs.
Sarojini Naidu, herself a
vivacious woman with a lively sense of humour and
knew Gandhiji in all his many aspects, remembered above all “that happy laugh
of his,” which “seems to hold all the undimmed radiance of the world’s
childhood in its depths.
“To
be greeted by his smile early in the morning,” she wrote, “is sufficient to set
you right for the day. He is the most delightful companion full of mirth–I think
‘mirth’ is the right word, a sort of infectious gaiety, too light for humour, too tolerant and genial for wit, perhaps ‘amused
love’ would be a possible description. He has a charming trick of humorous
self-deprecation, as when he calls himself a ‘crank’ or a ‘quack’ and chuckles
at some recollections of outraged authority which he has ignored. This habit of
mirth draws children to him, naturally, inevitably. He delights in their
company, as he delights in all the Franciscan joys–birds, flowers, animals, the
whole of nature.”
There
is, surely, a lesson to be learned from Gandhiji’s
laughter, as much as from his application of the philosophy of non-violence
conflicts of mankind. If we could laugh a little more at our own imperfections
and shortcomings, perhaps the fears and passions which divide the nations in
this nuclear age would begin to disperse and allow the tender plant of
tolerance to blossom. For if you can laugh at yourself and with others without
malice or the dsire to hurt, you begin to find, as
Gandhiji taught, that fundamentally all men are brothers.