(by: Amolak Singh, New Orleans, LA)
The article “A Man Called Mahatma written by Leo Rosten was printed in Reader’s Digest (July 1983). Leo Rosten is the author of 36 books, including The Education of Hyman Kaplan, Captain Newman, M.D., and Hooray for Yiddish: A Book About English.
In India the hurt people often say, “British rule was much better than this- at least there was some principle.” The author Rosten, too, is clearly trying to prove that if the English were ruthless, the passive resistance philosophy wouldn’t have worked! For the information of our readers, a summary of this article is being presented below:
The success of Gandhi’s Satyagraha (force of truth) tells us as much about the English as it does about passive resistance. For despite dubious ordinances and harsh law enforcement, the English did remain committed to decency Gandhi confessed: “I doubt if I ever could have succeeded against any other nation.”
This extraordinary man called the Mahatma (Great Soul) absolutely baffled the colonial governors. They called him a crackpot, a hypocrite, a mystic, To the rajahs and Maharajahs in their palaces, he was a preposterous rabble-rouser. To the Indian politicians struggling for home rule, he was a deluded demagogue. To the incredulous Parliament in London, he was a “troublemaker in an apple.” To an Englishman who sneered, “You are a saint meddling in politics, “Gandhi replied, “No. I am a politician trying to be a saint.” In politics, Gandhi was much shrewder than he appeared.
Gandhi’s conduct in World War II was utterly bewildering to Westerners. When Japan seemed about to invade India, Gandhi advised his countrymen: let the Japanese take as much of India as they want, but make the conquerors “feel un- wanted.” With England defending India, Gandhi wanted to call a disobedience campaign to hasten Indian independence. That it would also cripple the production of arms sorely needed by Indian; no less than British, troops seems not to have disturbed him. And, in an open letter to the besieged, bombed people of Britain, Gandhi urged surrender: “Let them take possession of your many beautiful building. You will give all these, but neither your souls nor your minds.” He once wrote to the viceroy: “Hitler is not a bad More incredible is the letter Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hitler on December 24, 1941:”We have not doubt about your devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by: your opponents. But many of your acts are monstrous. We resist the British Imperialism no less than Nazism…If there is a difference, it is [only) in degrees.”
And if all this is too much to believe, the Mahatma advised the desperate Jews of Europe to rebuke Hitler by committing suicide en masse: this would be a noble martyrdom, he promised; it would “arouse” world opinion; it would leave humanity “a rich heritage.”
He was born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1869, in Porbander, India. The Gandhis were middle-class Hindus of the Vaishyas caste, ranking just below the awesome Brahmans (priest, scholars) and the Kshatriyas (nobleman, warriors). At the age of 13, he was married off to a 13- year-old girl. Sent to London to study law. The shy, melancholy young Hindu sought to turn himself into a proper Englishman.” He practiced elocution, studied French even took dancing lessons. After three years in London, he passed his law exams and returned to India. A Moslem company soon asked him to go to Sough Africa to help handle a lawsuit. At Pietermaritzburg railway station he was thrown off the train. The humiliation proved to be “the most creative experience of my life,” Gandhi said. “My active. Non violence began from that date.” In 1915, 22 years after he had arrived in South Africa, he forsook his law practice to return to India.
India? The name is misleading. For this was not a nation; it was a hodgepodge of principalities, a patchwork of faiths and superstitions, a conglomeration of creeds and cults and castes who slaughtered one another in periodic orgies of fanaticism. Even today, India harbors 312 languages 15 of them official and some 1400 dialects. Gandhi established an ashram and calmly declared that he welcomed: Untouchables! He called them “Harijans” (children of God).” His ashram grew to over 200 souls, among them atheists, racists, bigots, advocates of violence. When he startled visitor asked Gandhi how he could accept them, he replied, “Mine is a madhouse, and I am the maddest of the lot.. But those who cannot see the good in those people should have their eyes examined.”
Gandhi spent some 2100 days in Indian jails, after 249 in South Africa. “Jail is jail for thieves,” he said. “For me, it is a temple.” As a master stroke, he fasted. Nothing so haunted the satraps in Delhi or the wisest men in Parliament as the night- mare of what might happen, the length and breadth of India, if “this seditious fakir,” as Winston Churchill growled, were to die of starvation. What could one do with such a man?
India became independent on August 15, 1947, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the militant Moslem League, had long demanded the partition of India, so that Moslems would have a separate home. Land Pakistan: “I will not accept the replacement of English tyranny by the tyranny of the Hindus.” The Untouchable are marginally better off because of Gandhi. But India’s hierarchy of birth, riches and loathing still survives. Nor has India given the world a shining example of Gandhi’s ideals.
Today the story of Mahatma Gandhi seems a medieval saga. History, unlike movies, must reserve judgment on his achievement. Some scholars believe that India’s independence was imminent, and that the erratic and unrealistic Gandhi actually delayed it.
For all his beatification by the masses, for all the nobility of his purpose, Gandhi was not a saint. He had a sharp temper and prickly temperament. He would not work with many who would have strengthened a common cause. He was often autocratic. His periods of silence, to say nothing of his fasts, produced a bounty of “inner voice,” guiding (or misguiding) him. His penchant for eloquent outbursts led him to cry. “I would not flinch from sacrificing a million lives for India’s liberty!” For a man who held that to take even an ant’s life is evil, the offering of a million lives gives one pause.
Gandhi’s treatment of his family was not heartwarming. His moral demands were so harsh that they alienated his four sons, He took a vow of total celibacy at the age of 37 and ordered his two older sons to make the same lifelong commitment. When Harilal, the eldest, wanted to marry. Gandhi refused to give him his blessing. Harilal converted to the Moslem faith, become an alcoholic and died of tuberculosis.
Gandhi did not give his children much education. He also denied elementary education to his wife, who, for the 42 years after Gandhi took his vow of celibacy. Bore the burden of her husband’s compulsive rectitude. He had said of her sad expression, “It is often like that on the face of a mock cow. I see, too, that there is selfishness in this suffering of hers.”
Gandhi’s celebrated celibacy embraced some curious facts. It was widely rumored that the young girls of his ashrams slept in his bed. Not that the Mahatma violated his vows. He just let the maidens hold him in their arms while he “tested” his. Self control.
But Gandhi’s wiles and quirks do not diminish his humanity or superhuman magnitude of his courage. He launched three great mass movements: against colonialism, against racism, against intolerance. Young men like Martin Luther King, Jr., took him as their model. Albert Einstein said, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” After Gandhi’s assassination, his great disciple and chosen successor, Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke for uncountable millions when he said, “The light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere.” To the mega-millions, whatever his faults, he will forever be: the Mahatma.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 31, 1995
