Let me take this opportunity to doff my hat to the exemplary
work that Team Setu is doing in the literary field – bringing new
writers into the limelight and making commendable innovations by way of video
recordings in these despairing times of pandemic and bringing out highly
successful guest-edited special issues. Bravo!
It is indeed an honour to be asked to guest edit the special
edition on Gandhi for Setu
Mahatma Gandhi: Legacy and Relevance, an e-magazine I am very proud
to be associated with.
October 2 was the birth anniversary of a moral colossus, who
walked this earth, armed with the powerful weapons of truth and nonviolence
which, to him were as old as the hills and which he sharpened and honed,
treading from Champaran to Kheda, Dandi to Quit India Movement, winning many a
difficult battle and vaulting over many an insurmountable hurdle.
The partition of India, against which he fought tooth and
nail, had devastated him because for him Hindu- Muslim unity had to be the
bedrock of India, an epitome of communal harmony based on a union of hearts. It
seemed to be a defeat for all that he stood for, but still, this nonviolent
crusader continued using his powerful weapons, his soft, feathery voice shaking
many from a comatose stupor, shaming many into guilt and healing hearts,
exemplifying Gurudeb Tagore's words:
Trample the thorns under thy tread
And along the blood lined track walk alone
A man who turned General Smuts from an adversary into an
admirer, exemplifying the triumph of satyagraha; on his seventieth birthday,
Smuts wrote, 'It was my fate to be the antagonist of a man for whom even then I
had the highest respect…he never lost his temper or succumbed to hate…' shocked
the refined sensibilities of the aristocratic Winston Churchill, who did not
hesitate to call him the half-naked- fakir, inspired respect in Judge
Broomfield, filled King George Fifth with wrath, negotiated on equal terms with
Lord Irwin, mesmerised people with his toothless charm, was an ordinary man who
rose above all petty things to emerge as an extraordinary moral monolith, a
peace icon who inspired leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.
When Obama visited India in 2010, he hailed Gandhi as "a
hero not just to India but to the world." In 2015, visiting Rajghat, he
again hailed him, "May we always live in this spirit of love and peace -
among all people."
We had invited prose and poetry on the theme of Mahatma
Gandhi: Legacy and relevance, some broad themes being Satyagraha and Nonviolence,
Khadi and Charkha, impact of Gandhian philosophy, his principle of Trusteeship,
Sarvodaya Gandhi and youth, women empowerment and Gandhi, and the contemporary
relevance of Gandhi. The response to the call was overwhelming, submissions
poured in from all over the world, and many praised the very timely theme. So,
a thousand thanks to Team Setu
for this commendable and much-needed venture in these dark, dismal times where
violence has become the new normal, denigrating our esteemed Bapu quite the trend
and the arguments of such naysayers corroborated by fake forwards.
This extraordinary man of the unimpressive physique and poor
dress sense, invited by King George 5th at Buckingham Place in 1931, during the
Round Table Conference was asked, "Do you think you are properly dressed
to meet the King?"
He quipped, "Do not worry about my clothes. The King has
enough clothes on for both of us." This moral icon contemptuously referred
to as a seditious half-naked fakir by the suave, sophisticated Winston Churchill
was not half-naked, on the contrary, he was overdressed in the attire of love,
forgiveness, non- violence and hues of peace.
Six Nobel Peace Prize winners called him an inspiration for
their principles, multitudes ran to do his bidding, and thousands were baffled
by this sharp statesman in beggar's garb.
During the farewell, King George 5th warned him curtly,
"Remember, Mr. Gandhi, I won't tolerate any attack on my empire." In
gentle tones, the half-naked rebel rejoined, "My Majesty, I should not drag
myself into a political debate with you after having enjoyed the hospitality of
my Highness." And the two took leave of each other amicably. The man knew
how to turn enemies into friends long before it had become the trend to write
motivational books on the subject!
When I had read George Orwell's famous essay Reflections on
Gandhi, [1949] there was one sentence that had stuck to me, "I
believe that even Gandhi's worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting
and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive."
And the concluding line of his essay, "how clean a smell he has managed
to leave behind." Yes, indeed, it is this clean smell, drenched in
love, non-violence, and peace that can erase the all-pervasive stench of
vicious hatred and rancour that is destroying a world which
was meant to be bright, beautiful, and benevolent. It is high time that
we once again feel the overpowering Gandhian smell all around us because that
is the only smell that can cleanse the vitiated atmosphere.
There is a very powerful picture of Bapu, taken in 1946
in Poona [now Pune, where he had been imprisoned], by the legendary American
photographer Margaret Bourke White. Shot for the now-defunct Time life
magazine, it shows the extraordinary man in very ordinary hues-
bare-chested, loin- clothed, seated next to a charkha. This spinning
wheel which was the bone of contention between Tagore and Bapu, was, for
him, a double-edged sword. Through the homespun cotton, Bapu wanted to drive
home the point that he was a part of the poor, toiling millions, and secondly,
to encourage his countrymen to become self- sufficient by weaving their cloth,
and making it a potent tool of passive resistance. Such was his charisma that
even the elite classes burnt foreign cloth and voluntarily started wearing
coarse khadi.
In her piece, Hema Ravi, one of the earliest contributors,
says, "My one qualification to write about the Mahatma is that we, as
children have been brought up with Gandhian Values of truthfulness and
non-violence in deed and thoughts. We do not use silk sarees (that are made by
killing silkworms) and avoid leather to a very large extent."
He was a man who talked in symbols, who lived in symbols, and
in his last symbolic gesture, on 13th August 1947, just two days before India
got its independence, he moved to the ramshackle Hydari House, owned by a
Muslim to try to forge Hindu–Muslim harmony in an atmosphere ruined by the
acrid smell of communal hatred.
The haggard but intrepid figure walked on, unfazed by a shower
of stones, surrounded by strident cries of hatred. "Why have you come
here?" Bellowed the youth.
"I have come to serve Hindus and Muslims alike…you are
welcome to turn against me if you wish; I have nearly reached the end of my
life's journey. I have not much further to go. But if you again go mad, I will
not be a living witness to it."Alas, humanity did go mad, killing, and
being killed, but Bapu was not a living witness to it. Hate had gobbled
up an icon of love.
In an interactive session just some days back, I was asked,
what would Bapu have done in these pandemic times when insensitivity and
callousness have become the new normal.
That got me thinking. Maybe, he would have gone from house to
house – well-masked, well-sanitised, spreading the message of compassion,
sensitivity, and empathy. During the lockdown, maybe he would have fallen in
step with the evicted labourers, infusing in them the importance of self-worth.
I concluded by saying that maybe we need a pair of his glasses to look at the
world around.
A pair of gold-plated glasses owned by Mahatma Gandhi was
recently sold in Britain for 260,000 pounds, Gandhi was known for giving out
old or unwanted pairs to those in need or those who helped him – 'an incredible
result for an incredible item'. The auction house said that Gandhi had given
the glasses to the vendor's uncle while he was working for British Petroleum in
South Africa during the 1920s or 1930s.
Reading this news item, I fell into a brown study.
If only we could get hold of a pair of his glasses and look at
the skewed world through them. There would be nothing but love all around.
We should not forget that Bapu was a human being with his
fads, foibles, whims, and eccentricities; a frail boy afraid of snakes,
burglars, ghosts and multiplication tables, who, at age twenty-four spent an
entire night at the railway platform, mulling over color prejudice and
injustice on 7 June 1893 when he was thrown out of his first-class coach at
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa for refusing to vacate the compartment which
said, "whites only". This night was the beginning of his
uncompromising commitment to his principles, which were to make him a moral
colossus, a formidable force to reckon with on the world arena.
In her piece, Bapu in 2020, Mitali Chakravarty says,
"You need to be reborn and attune yourself to the
modern world to make the changes. Your soul will have the imprint of your last
birth and you will be able to find systems that will cure the world of its
ills. You will start your journey after your birthday bash in heaven and we
will let Kasturba go with you as a bonus! Go invent an out-of-the-box
solution!"
Yes, I am robustly convinced that Gandhi and his ideology of
nonviolence are the only antidotes to the virus of hatred that has infiltrated
the world. No matter what the critics say, Bapu is for all times – love and
peace are for all times. He has the resilience to stay, he has the charisma to
hold on with his potent weapons of love, forgiveness, and peace. If the
disintegration of the world has to be halted, we need Gandhi.
Non-violence was the first article of his faith, let us march
towards the future holding aloft the baton of love, nonviolence, and peace, or
else be ready to hurtle headlong down an abyss of despair. In the present
volatile scenario, his ideology resonates again with great moral fervour,
touching on issues of racism, inequality, and totalitarianism.
In the undercurrents of hatred, now is the time to prick our
ears to his message of love and remember that an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth will make the whole world blind. Why yearn for this
blindness?
As Alicja Kuberska [Poland] in her poem Contemporary
Mahatma Gandhi, says,
People as beautiful as diamonds are missing,
They are as hard as Damascus steel
and the Sun lights up the stars in their souls.
It's hard to be like Mahatma Gandhi and burn yourself in the fire of love.
Indeed it is difficult to be extraordinary like him, but we
can at least learn the power of love from him.
In her inimitable style, in her poem Gandhi Jayanti???!!! Padmaja Aiyenger –
Paddy says, how, we with our myopic outlook, denigrate and belittle Bapu every
day, especially on Gandhi Jayanti. In a similar vein, Laxmisree Banerjee in her
sensitively written poem, Gandhi’s Tricolour, pours her anguish thus,
As the beggar woman with a weeping, unfed child
Sits just below the pedestal
Of Gandhi's dust-worn statue.
Dr. Anita Nahal in her stunningly powerful prose -poem,
Gandhi's Chaadar puts
it so succinctly, "My chaadar did not become soiled with blood, bones,
skin and tears. Gandhi's did." And yet, we, in our colossal folly and
overweening hubris, tend to forget that soiled chaadar and the great sacrifices of
this extraordinary man, who is needed now, like never before.
The piece de resistance amongst the submissions is her piece, Mahatma
Gandhi and Chaman Nahal's four novels, The Gandhi Quartet. Chaman Nahal,
her father, and the Sahitya Akademi Awardee, happens to be the only writer
to have written four novels with Mahatma Gandhi as the central figure. Regarding
the Quartet, she says, 'it reminds us in unflinching terms of the
need to hold fast to the Gandhian ideals in a world torn apart by narrow
sectarian and communal considerations."
Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca, in her sensitive poem Spinning
Wheel, writes fondly of her father, Nissim Ezekiel,
before washing the kurtas
He washed them in salt water
A symbolic act,
Father was a lover of peace and nonviolence
Just like Gandhi, homespun men of homespun cloth.
Mitali Chakravarty asks through her immensely poignant poem, Bapu
When will they end this rage?
This hate, anguish and bloodshed?
Yes, when indeed?
The eminent historian Romila Thapar, in her new book, Voices
of dissent: An Essay [Random House and Seagull Books] says, "We
have a long lineage of persons who have argued that love should replace hatred
and that compassion should disallow violence in all social behaviour. Today,
these have become the voices of dissent. But whatever the future, may these
voices continue to be heard." We need to listen to all such voices,
especially to that one feathery, soft voice, and revive his message of
nonviolence, love, and peace.
The time is now! Or never! As Dr. Vijay Nair says so
poignantly in his powerful poem, Ruminations:
But your wheel still turns under a sky
Where our rights are often seen as wrong
Some walking sticks neither fade nor break.
Yes, his walking stick is never going to break, on the
contrary, will get a new sure-footedness with every passing day.
Before I sign off, let me thank all those who sent their
wonderful poems and prose pieces for this special issue on Gandhi, which left
me highly enriched and intellectually stimulated, also allow me once again to
applaud Team Setu
for this timely initiative. Hope
Setu keeps building bridges, going from
strength to strength.
Here is wishing the diligent Setu team all the
best for all future endeavours.
Santosh Bakaya
Guest-Editor
Setu, October 2020 issue
Bio: Amazon India.
