Impressions of Mahatma Gandhi, the Great Soul

by Dr. W.A. Abeysinghe

Over the past seven decades or so, interpretations of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, some of which are lopsided, half baked and controversial, have been many and manifold. My readers may feel rather baffled, if I disclose the fact that my studies, however humble and disorganized they may be, have commenced on far back as the latter part of the year 1958 in the last century. A jewel of a book entitled ” An Autobiography or the Story of my Experiments with Truth” (I possess up to date, though in tattered pages) which I bought at a book counter of Ananda Bhawan at Pettah, Colombo, having paid Rs.1.25 during my teacher training days at the G.T.C.Maharagama has been dated by me as 25-11-58. Simply count the many years past, since then – from 1958 in the last century to Corona ridden gloomy year of 2021 of the present century!

From the day I concluded reading the incomplete unfinished autobiography of the great Indian Sage, I remained ‘Gandhian’ in spirit, heart and soul, transcending all my later studies of Marxism – or rather, Marxism – Leninism – culminating my doubts about the so called communist utopia of a classless society annihilating the bourgeois after having established a dictatorship of the proletariat ! And now, one would be rather amused to witness how this so called dictatorship of the proletariat ended up having enthroned a heinous autocrat – corrupt to the core – in the garb of a Russian Tsar, in the emergence of a man called who dreams to build a Chinese Super Empire encompassing Asia and Africa, and a Castro type degenerated family rule which brought into being the poorest state in the whole of Latin America !

So that, as a man who witnessed all these upheavals and political changes of universal magnitude, my attraction toward ‘Gandhism’ ( if you pardon me for the term) has been unavoidable.

At a time when crude nationalism raises its ugly head in the form of racialism, communalism and many other “tribal manifestations”, in my own country the life and, most importantly, the death of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi emerges supreme in the history of mankind. Undoubtedly His death, was that of a martyr, in the compact sense of the word.

I sometimes feel that most biographers of Mahatmaji have opted to glorify his death, rather than his many-faceted political, social and reformist life.

Louis Fischer, a conscientious biographer of Gandhi, who met the great Mahatma twice – in 1942 and later, in June, 1946, begins his book with a vivid description of Gandhi’s assassination.

I quote the two opening paragraphs of Louis Fisher, verbatim:

“At 4.30 p.m., Abha brought in the last meal he was ever to eat; it consisted of goat’s milk, cooked and raw vegetables, oranges and a concoction of ginger, sour lemons and strained butter with juice of aloe. Sitting on the floor of his room in the rear of Birla House in New Delhi, Gandhi ate and talked with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Deputy Prime Minister of the new government of independent India. Maniben, Patel’s daughter and secretary, was also present. The conversation was important. There had been rumors of differences between Patel and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This problem, like so many others, had been dropped into the Mahatma’s lap.

“Abha, alone with Gandhi and the Patels, hesitated to interrupt. But she knew Gandhi’s attachment to punctuality. Finally, therefore, she picked up the Mahatma’s nickel plated watch and showed it to him. ‘I must tear myself away,’ Gandhi remarked, and so saying he rose, went to the adjoining bathroom and then started towards the prayer ground in the large park to the left of the house. Abha, the young wife of Kanu Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma’s cousin, and Manu, the granddaughter of another cousin, accompanied him; he leaned his forearms on their shoulders. ‘My walking sticks’, he called them.”

Gandhi felt completely relaxed with his “two walking sticks” and even joked with them.

“So you are serving me with cattle fare,” Gandhi said and laughed.

“Ba used to call it horse fare”, was Abha’s prompt retort.

“Ba” was their affectionate shortened name for Kasturba, Gandhi’s predeceased wife.

“Isn’t it grand for me to relish what no one else wants!” bantered Gandhi in the same jovial mood.

As many martyrs of history, Gandhi knew and even sensed that he would some day he assassinated. He didn’t fear death, for it was manifested number of times when he staged many a fast unto death. Really, he was even prepared for it.

As he was nearing the fateful day of January 30, 1948 Gandhi had once expressed thus.

“To die by the hand of a brother rather than by disease or in some other way, cannot be for me a matter of sorrow…. I would deserve praise only if I fell as a result of such an attack and yet retained a smile on my face and no malice against the doer….. All perpetrators should be won over through love.”

“Tomorrow”, he explained. “I may not be here”.

He was aware of the strengthening of the police guard on Birla House, but notwithstanding Home Minister Patel’s earnest request, Gandhi would not permit the police to search those attending the prayer meetings:

“If I have to die I should like to die at the prayer meeting. You are wrong in believing that you can protect me from harm. God is my protector.”

That was how he took death and admonished his massive following, accordingly.

On that fateful January 30th 1948, Patel and his daughter immediately left Birla House while Gandhi, a little vexed at being unpunctual, made his way to the prayer meeting. Leaning lightly on the two girls, walking briskly to make up for lost time, he mounted the six low steps up to the level of the prayer ground. As he took a few paces in the direction of the wooden platform on which he sat during services, the crowd opened to enable him to pass through, bowing to his feet as he went by. Gandhi took his arms off the girls’ shoulders and for a moment stood there smiling, touching his palms together in the traditional namaskar gesture. Just then, a stocky young man in a khaki bush jacket jostled through the crowd, roughly pushing Manu away, and when he was directly in front of Gandhi, he fired three shots at point-blank range. Mahatma’s hands, folded in friendly greeting, descended slowly. ‘He Rama (Oh, God),’ he murmured, and sighed softly as the frail old body fell to the ground. The assassin was overpowered after a short and fierce struggle, and the police quickly took custody of him.

As soon an Gandhi was pronounced “dead” by the doctors first to arrive at the Birla House was Patel, who had left his master a while ago. He managed an outward calm, despite the unexpected shock of his life. Then came Nehru, and he wept unrestrainedly by the side of his dead “Bapu”.

And among those others who arrived just then was Mountbatten, the Governor General of newly born free India and former viceroy. He had to push his way to the door through the growing crowd. Just then he heard someone shouting in a loud voice, “It was a Muslim, who did it.”

Mountbatten turned round and shouted back: “You fool! Don’t you know it was a Hindu?” Some in the crowd wanted it to be a Muslim, for they could then have a pretext to run a riot. Mountbatten’s spirited response with his characteristic presence of mind had a calming effect on the excited crowd. A member of the Governor-General’s staff remarked to him: “How can you possibly know it’s a Hindu?” Mountbatten replied: “I don’t. But if it is a Muslim we’re all finished, so it may as well be a Hindu.”

Mountbatten stood by the Mahatma’s body momentarily and then, seeing both Patel and Nehru together in the room, he acted with his instinctive sense of timing. He drew the two leaders aside and told them of his recent meeting with Gandhi, when the Mahatma had said how deeply he wished that they would resolve their differences. Nehru and Patel looked at each other, and then at Gandhi, who now lay before them on the floor, wrapped in his shroud of khadi. They moved towards each other and embraced in a gesture of reconciliation.

For a long time Manu and Abha cradled the dead Mahatma’s head on their laps, while the other women watched in silence or chanted verses from the Bhagavad Gita.

That was how Mahatma rose in death as a martyr for India’s unity.

But his death, was much more.

It was meant for the good of the entire mankind.

Never in modern history has any man been mourned more deeply and more widely.

“The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere and I do not quite know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we call him, the father of our nation, is no more,” Nehru announced the death of Mahatma Gandhi, in a hastily broadcast radio talk.

At the time Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi entered the Indian political scene, the Indian national movement was in a matured state. It was gaining momentum among the middle class Hindus and Muslims. But there existed a marked distance between the National Congress and the Indian peasantry.

Gandhi’s emergence in the national movement at that juncture, as Nehru described in his treatise The Discovery of India, was “like a whirlwind that upset many things.”

To quote Nehru:

“And then Gandhi came. He was like a powerful current of fresh air that made us stretch ourselves and take deep breaths; like a beam of light that pierced the darkness and removed the scales from our eyes; like a whirlwind that upset many things, but most of all the working of people’s minds. He did not descend from the top; he seemed to emerge from the millions of India, speaking their language and incessantly drawing attention to them and their appalling condition. Get off the backs of these peasants and workers, he told us, all you who live by their exploitation, get rid of the system that produces this poverty and misery. Political freedom took new shape then acquired a new content.”

Having fought for the liberation of the Indian community in South Africa, Gandhi returned to his native land on January 09, 1915. He brought along with him, two well sharpened political weapons – namely, passive resistance and non-corporation which during the later years of the Indian national struggle turned into Sathyagraha and a movement of civil disobedience against the British rule.

By about the dawn of the second quarter of the last century, Gandhi was the undisputed leader of the Indian national movement. Under his aegis, the national movement was geared not only toward Swaraj-home rule – but also to a wider moral, ethical and cultural movement aimed at reforming the primitive, illiterate and backward India into a vibrant new nation in the spirit of self-reliance and national awakening. His campaign of Kadhi and his struggle against untouchability and caste system should be viewed and interpreted in this context – that Gandhi was essentially a reformer.

Greatness of Gandhi lies in the fact that, unlike many other fighters for national independence the world over, he brought into being a reconciliation between political freedom and national reformation into one unified movement. His concept of future India was a far sighted and ever widening phenomenon.

The combination of Gandhi, the politician and Gandhi the reformer was remarkable indeed. To call him a saint – which is implicit in the epithet of Mahatma – does not reflect his true personality. His religious convictions and spirituality were an integral part of his personality. These attributes would, in time to come, totally eclipse the prevalent notion that Gandhi wrought the miracle of India’s freedom. Trite phrases like ‘Hindu saint’ and ‘Father of the Nation’ do not describe his true place in the history of human civilization.

Gandhi showed the world that the love of one’s people need not be inconsistent with the love of humanity. He strove to free the downtrodden from the shackles of injustice, slavery and deprivation. But he was also obsessed with the future of the entire human race. “There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of non-violence”, he wrote. “Milions like me may fail to prove the truth in their own lives; that would be their failure, never of the eternal law.”

When names of the giants of Indian independence movement are embedded in the fossils of history, Gandhi’s name shall shine for ever, for his humanist message of truth and non-violence.