REVIEW OF THE LIFE OF MAHATMA GANDHI Louis Fischer The man which all of us admiringly, lovingly, respectfully and

d reverently refer to as The Mahatama, Bapu, The Father of the Nation and by various other names was a true son of the soil, not just what we refer to today as the India, but of the whole of subcontinent and largely of all the lands wherever humans have ever treaded. The lessons that he has taught us are not to be ignored, never to be forgotten, and surely can never be abandoned for they are eternal and sans them humanity would find itself in such a quagmire that will be onerous to get out of. His teachings were abundant; there were hardly any issues on which he had not an opinion that concerned this country and humanity on the large. But more than Gandhism or any of his philosophies, what was and is more essential to us is his life for his life is a lesson for all humanity. The way he led it made each and every countryman stand up and stare up to him in awe; he was a wonder to everyone. He made no distinction not even a faint one between his public and private life by leading it out in the open. No monarch or statesman or leader of men or for the matter anyone has been ever able to portray a much truer picture of oneself. No one who survived him had tried so hard and with so much success to live a life of truth, humility, self-effacement, kindness, service and non-violence throughout a long, difficult struggle against mighty adversaries. Many in fact innumerable biographers, writers, journalists and the like have attempted to chronicle the great lesson that the life of this great soul was and have done so but few have able to present the truth that the Mahatma stood for. Louis Fischer is one among the few that have been proficient enough to do so. The book The Life of MAHATMA GANDHI is a remarkable piece of work which has since its first publication in the year 1951 changed many a lives and has enthralled millions of its readers not excluding me. The way Mr. Fischer has narrated Gandhis life presenting every finer detail of his day-to-day activities is indeed touching. It reminds one of the mans simplicity of a fraction of which too, only few of us in the present fast-changing and turbulent world seem to pay any heed to. It takes us back to the ancient Indian ideal of Ahimsa (non-violence) the sine qua non of Gandhis philosophy - that we seem to have lost somehow since millions of lives continue to be lost in the middle of conflicting sovereignties. Fischer talks of the emphasis that Gandhi

used to put on the value of truth beyond which he considered there to be no higher God. And most significantly it is reminiscent of the Unity of Being that Gandhi preached, of humanity being the highest religion of mankind the cardinal element of our mortal existence.

Mr. Fischer has started his book with that fateful day of Gandhis assassination, the day India mourned, the day the whole of world stood up and paid homage to this little brown man in the loincloth. The Republic of India was just five months old when she was bereaved of her father. Could there have been a loss greater than this; a tragedy more excruciating than the man who all his life stood for the betterment of his lot through the principle of ahimsa being assassinated? I think no. The three bullets that entered his body, writes Fischer, had pierced the flesh of ten millions. The nation was baffled, stunned and hurt that this man of peace, who loved his enemies and would not have killed an insect, had been shot dead by his own countryman and co-religionist. It was not pain, but an agony never before known and never in modern history has any man been mourned more deeply and more widely. Fischer has further given the reactions that followed his death which although not needful to glorify him but nonetheless go on to show how much revered the man was and is, of which a few are worth mentioning.
There is still hope for the world which reacted as reverently as it did to the death of Gandhi Gandhi had demonstrated, Professor Albert Einstein asserted, that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political manoeuvres and trickeries but through the cogent example of a morally superior conduct of life. Generations to come will scarce believe that such a man as this ever walked upon this earth.

Then Mr. Fischer goes to the beginning of an extraordinary man where he traces the birth and childhood and the very early marriage of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi with Kasturbai. He has frequently quoted from Gandhis autobiography My Experiments with Truth in which the Mahatma has dealt quite comprehensively with this early phase of his life. This period of Gandhis life was a normal one and any of us would easily identify with it. What more would a child in his/her very early teens do other than indulging in vices

and disobeying elders and the like, and Gandhi was no different. He once even decided to commit suicide with one of his elder cousins when suddenly wisdom dawned upon him and he thought better of it. This along with many other instances goes on to conclusively prove that only after one crosses the desert of ignorance can one quench the thirst of wisdom for without knowing wrong we cannot discern it from right. It teaches us the values of choice, of our own free will, to choose between good and evil. Next were the mans days in London where he was studying law, it was here that his experiments of dietetics began, along with his interest in religion, more in Christianity than any other. But more intriguing is what was Gandhi was trying to become while in London? It was what the Englishmen wanted to create a man brown in colour, but English in taste, habit and intellect. Gandhi tried to dress like a perfect English gentleman always with his hat on, tried to learn to play the violin and even took a couple of ball-room dancing lessons; only until he came to realize the futility of all this for he knew he would remain Indian. Therefore he became more Indian. Then came the influence of Gita in his life, and Gandhi took the Gita as it is more of a philosophical text and less of religion. He imbibed to, it would be better to say he tried to at least at that time all the lessons that the Bhagvad Gita had to offer viz. the condemnation of inaction, the even mindedness of man in success and in failure, the indifference towards the fruits of ones actions and the like. Gandhi summarized it in one word: Desirelessness. It became Gandhis goal and later on created innumerable problems for his wife and children. But I say unto you, that ye resist evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away thy coat let him have thy cloak too. These words of Christ delighted Gandhi and he was particularly very much impressed by The New Testament. Many of his then friends tries to convince him that Christ was the only one who could redeem him of his sins, to which Gandhi smilingly answered that if only he had committed any so far. Almost all of us are too familiar with the inhumane apartheid practiced and the incident that happened with Gandhi at the Maritzburg, the capital of Natal, South Africa. When asked to transfer to the third class, Gandhi protested that

he had a first class ticket and when he refused to leave he was thrown out at the railway station. To Gandhi it was a life changing event, he himself has remarked it as the most creative experiences of his life for it was only that bitter night that the germ of social protest was born in Gandhi. And it was this germ that was to destruct the greatest empire that history has ever known or seen and which lead to the independence of the subcontinent, but that was to wait six more decades. In the subsequent chapters Fischer deals with the South African phase of the life of Gandhi, the opposition he had to face from the white population in the beginnings, the hardships that he and his wife and children had to endure, his work as a lawyer, his initial speeches when he spoke with a trembled voice, how the man of non-violence took part in the Boer War by organizing an Indian Ambulance Corps, the way he fought the discrimination practiced and advocated by the South African Government, went to jail a number of times, and at last won. But regardless of the chronology and details of the events that Fischer has so arduously given I see this time of Gandhi in South Africa as his formative, nay transformative phase of Gandhis life. The influences that Gandhi had had during the period were to remain lasting and soon to be applied to revolt against the British Empire in India. Not we are to disregard his doctrine of Satyagraha which evolved here only which he called Truth Force or Love Force rather than passive resistance. Also Gandhi came in contact with Leo Tolstoy whose book The Kingdom of God is Within You left an impression on Gandhi second only to John Ruskins essays Unto This Last. Ruskin was the greatest influence on the Mahatmas life for it was from him that he instilled the idea that the life of a labour, that is, the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. Gandhi has himself noted in his autobiography that it was the turning point of my life. Touching some of the personal aspects of his life, it was in 1906 that he took the vow of Brahamcharya, which is of celibacy and he remained so till his death in 1948. This life of chastity for Gandhi not only meant abstaining from sex but also restraint in diet, speech and thought. For Gandhi this was the ultimate victory for from now on he was able to harness his much protected energies for the cause of the common weal. Fischer has commented that Gandhi always seemed to be a different man, most certainly a different politician or a leader of men but never exhibited any signs of greatness. The later Mahatma that

was to emerge in the very near future was still incipiently hidden inside him and was in a nebulous form. But then is not it an a priori truth that Men are not born great but are made great by the times they live in. The Mahatma too like all other great men was a product of his age and the then circumstances. Fischer in the Part Two of his book deals with what is referred to by the historians as the Gandhian phase of the Indian Politics the prime time of the national movement. The arrival of Gandhi in India was a spectacular affair; he was hailed as a hero, the saviour of his countrymen abroad, but still not the messiah of the poor, the downtrodden the destitute. Gandhi had to wait for a year before taking any direct part on the political scene on the advice of Gopal Krishna Gokhale whom he considered as his political guru, though not without differences. Gandhis initiation of work in India was from Champaran in Bihar where he fought for the peasants who were forced to cultivate indigo on their lands against their wishes, and won. Then he went to Kheda and from there to Ahmedabad where he used the weapon of hunger strike for the first time for the benefit of the mill workers and this was when the owners were one of his close and dear friends. He recognized no other principle than that of righteousness and truth. The Mahatma was beginning to come out of the closet. He also began to air his views against the curse of untouchability. He contested that it was not an essential part of Hinduism and if it was somehow proved that it was he said I for one would declare myself an open rebel against Hinduism itself. The Dalits were given a new name by the Mahatma the Harijans (Children of God) which they found patronizing. They asked Were we not children of God before? Nevertheless Gandhi persisted in his fight against this evil and to the extent that he succeeded is to be seen in contemporary India. Regarding the harmonious existence of all religions and refuting the fact that religion in any way constitutes nationality he said Blood connects Hindus with Moslems and Sikhs. Religion weakens the connection. Geography connects; bad communications divide. The multiplicity of language divides. Out of these elements Gandhi and his generation undertook to forge a nation. It has been perspicuously shown by Fischer that the Mahatma was a firm adherent of the British Empire in the early phases of his political career and it

was only after the Jalianwaallah Bagh massacre that he began to challenge the authority of British rule in India. The grisly murders gave an irresistible impetus to the national movement and drew Gandhi into mainstream politics. But what is intriguing to note is that he never turned his back on the British; he never wanted to make enemies of them, throughout his struggles he invariably sought for the love and friendship of the English and he wanted them to depart as friends. Gandhi must not have been unaware that India was a British creation, and although he never publicly admitted to the fact, he was too clever a man to have been ignorant of the reality. To use a modern terminology it would be apt to say that the British manufactured the parts of India but it was Gandhi who assembled them. It was Gandhi who brought the National movement to the doorsteps of each and every household, brought woman out into the fore. It was Gandhi who acted as a cohesive to bind all of India. Before him the Congress was not a movement of the masses but was of the classes. He said nearly a century ago, That India is not just a few lawyers in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras but it consists of 600,000 villages. And their politics is confined to bread and salt. Ignorant they may be, but they are not blind. How true the man was and still remains to be even six decades after independence. The national movement conjured up by Gandhi was based on the premise that foreign rule over India was evil, unjust and cruel. Gandhi in his first mass movement the Non cooperation movement grabbed the opportunity to unite the cause of freedom with that of the Muslim cause of the Caliphate (which was being abolished after the defeat of Turkey in the Great War) and thus merged the two into one. This was also the honey-moon period of HinduMuslim relations for after this they never were to remain tranquil again. It was on a scale unprecedented; the whole nation was on a move but unfortunately due to an untoward happening at Chauri Chaura where 22 policemen were butchered by the Satyagrahis he took it back and fasted as a penance. It was not the freedom that he wanted, something based on violence and blood, never was he to compromise the loss of life for the freedom of the nation. The next eventful act of Gandhi was what I believe was his swan song the Dandi March. Fishcer in the chapter Drama at the Seashore details the events that took place. He writes it required absolute showmanship to do what

Gandhi had done. Indeed, to walk miles and miles on foot to pick up a pinch of salt to defy the might of the British Empire was an act that required the mind and person of Gandhi himself. The state having a monopoly over the manufacture of salt made it a crime for any private citizen to do so, but Gandhi did it and all India followed suit. He was put into jail immediately and this time without any trial. But India had got its cue and the people were on the move. It was a wakeup call for the Empire and now they knew that they could not keep this country in chains without sitting down with this little man. In the next chapter Parleys with Rebel an account is given how Gandhi meets Lord Irwin and negotiated with him on an equal footing for the suspension of the Civil Disobedience Movement by signing the Gandhi-Irwin pact. The equality had been established. When Gandhi went to England next to attend the Round Table Conference to discuss the possible independence of India he was to meet King George V and Queen Mary. Fischer writes On the eve of the event, all England was agog over what he would wear. He wore a loincloth, sandals, a shawl and his dangling watch. The Epic Fast that Gandhi undertook to veto the award of separate electorates to the Depressed classes attracted country wide attention. Gandhi believed that it would further alienate and isolate them from mainstream Hinduism of which they were an integral part of. He undertook a fast unto death until the award was reserved and the whole nation was facing the possibility of the Mahatmas death. Of course no one wanted the man to die but what would have been worse was the moral responsibility of his death. Every one swung into action to save the great soul from despairing, Dr. Ambedkar was summoned to the Yeravada jail to open negotiations with Gandhi. And after much talks they both came to a compromise that granted the Dalits reserved seats much more than what even Ambedkar had hoped for. This enabled Gandhi to break through a thick, high wall into the immense neglected field of social reform and further accelerated the work that Gandhi had undertaken. When the world descended into war in the early forties, Indians most of them saw this as an opportunity to overrun the British at a time when they were most vulnerable. Gandhi thought otherwise, he said it would be improper and immoral to do so. He defied the principal rule of politics that it could not be done without being opportunistic. Gandhi pledged publicly that he would not

embarrass the British government. That he would also lend moral support to England and her allies; even one who disapproves of war should be able to distinguish between aggressor and defender. But still the mood of the masses and the other leaders and then the circumstances turned out to be such that Gandhi had to give in to them. And he was not slow in realizing that the time for his final encounter with the Raj had arrived. The Do or Die slogan that Gandhi gave just before the Quit India Revolution or the August Revolution as it is also known instilled in the people of the nation a sense of fearlessness and self-confidence that had hitherto been missing. With all their might they thrust themselves upon the mighty British and after the war was over the Independence of India was just a matter of time. Gandhi all the while was in jail, the movement was unorganized and leaderless but still there remain no guesses to whom the credit must go. In between Louis Fischer had devoted a chapter of his to compare two great statesmen of the 20th century Winston Churchill and Mohandas K Gandhi. These were two rivals, and the enmity between them from Churchills side was bitter but Gandhi was just the opposite. How different these two men, to explore that even a whole book would fall short of but the love that they had for their respective countries was indubitable. But their stands out one fundamental contrariety between them - that Churchill would have done anything to keep England free, but was against those who wanted India free. Fischer also talks of his week with Gandhi at his ashram where he questioned Gandhi for an hour each day and also met almost all of the leaders of the Indian National Congress and other key figures of Indian politics. He speaks at length about Gandhis love for children, her strict punctuality, the humour with which he kept everybody around glued to him and his passion for spinning and the reasons why Gandhi preferred swadeshi. But now that an independent India was imminent, Gandhi and the whole nation were faced with the dilemma of partition. This is the subject that has been explored in the chapter next entitled Jinnah and Gandhi. Jinnah liked to consider himself the opposite of Gandhi, in fact he was the anti-thesis of all that Gandhi stood for. Gandhi wanted one India, Jinnah was adamant on two; Gandhi stood not for Hinduism, Jinnah for Islam; Gandhi was unifying while Jinnah was divisive; Gandhi led even his private life in public, Jinnahs politics

was clandestine and covert. But the greatest of all the divergences between these two is also a matter of great irony not only for the subcontinent but for all of the world courtesy to the situation that has been created in the last six decades. The point is that Gandhi was a deeply religious man, a pious one while Jinnah was not. He fought for an Islamic state Pakistan for the members of the Islam without being a devout Muslim, the truth is that he hardly was. He drank alcohol and ate pork which are un-Islamic practices. He seldom visited the mosque and knew no Arabic and little Urdu. Even he went outside his religion to marry a Parsi girl. Yet he fought for the Muslims and that too single-handedly and won out a state for them. In the last part of the book Fischer has delved on the Birth of Two Nations something that the Mahatma called the vivisection of India. In spite of the best of his and his associates efforts he was not able to prevent it. And on the eve of independence he chose not be a part of the celebrations and stay quiet. The birth of India was also an abortion, an abortion of Muslim India but not of the Muslims as many, half of them had been left and many chose to stay in India. But India was burning, burning with rage, the people were in fit of madness, lunacy it was. Communal riots were taking place throughout the length and breadth of India, and Gandhi blamed it on the idiocy of both the communities. But then it was none other than Gandhi who restored peace and calm in Bengal and Bihar, the most turbulent regions, and many others but still millions of life continued to be lost and he seemed to have lost control over the people. He fasted, penanced for the sin of others, since he believed it remained his fault that he was not able to teach the people his cardinal ideal that of ahimsa. This was not the kind of freedom that Gandhi desired ever but was in complete contrast to it. Gandhis conception of freedom as he said was no narrow conception, it is coextensive with the freedom of man in all his majesty. Going back to that infamous day when yet another man bowed to him in reverence and in response to his obeisance Gandhi touched his palms together, smiled and blessed him, but then at that moment Godse pulled a trigger. Gandhi fell, and died murmuring, Oh, God.

Critique: Gandhi was a kind of man it is more convenient to forget than remember for he is much easier to admire and revere from a safe distance than to follow. While he was alive he was impossible to ignore and now that he is gone he is impossible to imitate. The principles that he stood for still are and will be very much like then significant and vital for the well being of humanity but the way he put them into practice are almost if not altogether too awkward for any of us to follow. But then, are not all good and great things difficult to achieve? Ideals are not given to us as a gift in our hand, but are to be constantly strived for. The book is indeed a true magnum opus of the many that Fischer has produced, not just because it is about a man who was a marvel but the way it has been delivered. The interpretations that Louis Fischer has given of Gandhis teachings have seldom been matched by any other biographer or writer of Gandhi. The only lacuna that I see remains that since this book was published in the 1950s, it has been not able to encompass the influences that Gandhi has had on later men of stature like Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and many others. But also besides the adulator that I have been, the question remains that whether Gandhi was a success or not? If only Gandhi himself would have been able to answer this I am more than sure that he would have replied in the negative. His love for all religions and his advocacy of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity can never be doubted but it is also a fact of history that it was during this period that communal tensions assumed new proportions. Perhaps his greatest failure lies in what he even shuddered to think the partition of India. And also the riots and murders that preceded and followed are a taint on his legacy. His teachings had been lost by his own countrymen and he himself remarked that I am a spent bullet. His resort to large scale disobedience and defiance of constituted authority has left a bad legacy behind. It has provided a convenient cloak to the unscrupulous and the anti-social elements to defy the state in the name of Satyagraha.

Nevertheless Gandhi remains and shall continue to remain a figure more towering than any other in the history of India not simply because he gave us a free India but for the values that he preached. Buddha stood for compassion, Mahavira for non-violence, Jesus for love, Mohammed for brotherhood, Harishchandra for truth, Karna for charity, but the Mahatma took all the lessons from all these great spiritual, religious, mythological figures and is remembered for all these virtues together. It is quite unfortunate that in a country of which he is the Father, he is much hated nowadays (and termed a shrew and cunning and scheming politician) for the fascist tendencies that have dirtied the political climate and stymied our moral and spiritual progress in the recent few decades. Only if we are able to reminisce and reflect on the message that the man had left for us we would be able to uplift us from the degraded, decaying and defunct state that we are in and then we shall rise and continue to rise, all together.