Lecture On Gandhi

Ahimsa, Bhakti and Saintliness in Politics: Mahatma Gandhi’s continuation of a uniquely Indian tradition _____________________________________________________ Sixty years after his assassination by a Hindu fanatic, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s importance to South Asian civilization has not diminished. Even those who ridicule some of his ideas are compelled to explain his charisma and his ability to communicate with the masses in the sub-continent through a mixture of words and deeds, gestures and stances, and even through his sartorial simplicity and minimalism. Winston Churchill sneered at him and called him a half-naked fakir. Rabindranath Tagore used the epithet ‘Mahatma’ to describe him. ‘Mahatma’ means a ‘Great Soul’ or the ‘Great Spirit.’ Both descriptions are right. Gandhi was a fakir --- a half-naked mendicant whose needs were simple and basic. His figure represented a shunning of worldliness and an indifference to wealth. For centuries, individuals who renounce worldly life and material concerns in search of spiritual truth have been revered by Indians. Tagore called him ‘The Great Spirit’ perhaps because he saw in Gandhi the meekness of his millions of followers transformed into the might of a rich and deep civilization standing up to face colonizers from a different culture. He was the collective spirit of an India aroused and awakened in the 20th century world. What made Gandhi such a charismatic leader holding sway over millions of Indians, most of them poor and illiterate people from the hundreds of thousands of villages that comprise rural India? We know from the existing audio recordings of his speeches that he spoke in a feeble monotone with hardly any flourishes. He spoke mostly in basic Hindustani in a land divided by many languages belonging to different language groups. He travelled constantly, often on foot or by rail, with a small band of followers. He addressed his audiences in prayer meetings that started or ended with multilingual prayer singing. He was scantily dressed in a hand-spun cotton loincloth and a loose piece of cloth covering his chest and thrown over his shoulders. Gandhi’s style of dress sharply contrasted with that of other contemporary Indian leaders’. Recall the princely North Indian dress of Nehru, or the Western formal attire of Jinnah and Ambedkar, and Gandhi’s sartorial style

stands out as the closest to the common Indian man. In his refusal to visibly rise above the people he led Gandhi was making a profound statement about his style of leadership itself. Though he was a householder with a wife and children, he had taken pains to raise those relationships to another level by renunciation. He preached and practised celibacy. He preached and practised simplicity and self-reliance in daily life. He cleaned toilets, swept floors, washed his own clothes, at times cooked for himself and others, and created an example of what he considered an authentic lifestyle or truthful living for his followers. It was his practice of life, in full public view, that authenticated Gandhi the politician. People felt he would never cheat them. People also felt that he would not hurt even his opponent. They were convinced that Gandhi’s character was expressed in his doctrine of non-violence. There are some conspicuous exceptions, historically recorded and ever since debated, such as the confrontation between Ambedkar and Gandhi when Gandhi’s fastunto-death shook Ambedkar and made him relent and reluctantly agree to the Yerwada pact. Many of his critics have blamed Gandhi for emotional blackmail whenever he offered satyagraha or insistence on truth. Gandhi’s concept of ‘truth’ has itself been questioned. However, the Indian public saw in Gandhi a saintly being and a moral authority above the dirty world of politics. Gandhi’s own character and personality are derived from a long Hindu tradition---the protestant Bhakti movement against oppressive Brahmanical Hinduism that marginalises women and the variously ‘polluted’ and ‘polluting’ castes. Though there seem to be four castes and many jati divisions among each caste, the segregation between the Brahmins and the rest is inflexible and absolute. Bhakti---the way of realizing a personal God through devotion----is an alternative to people denied access to the sacred texts in Sanskrit and to the right to perform religious rites without the priestly mediation of Brahmins. Thus Bhakti sabotages the hierarchical structure of religious politics with the Brahmanical elite at its top and the untouchables at its bottom. Gandhi adopted as his credo a song created by Narsi Mehta---a 15th century devotee of Krishna and therefore of Vishnu whose avatar Krishna is supposed to have been. The Gujarati song ‘Vaishnava jana to tene kahiye jo peed parayi jaane re’ in my translation or, rather paraphrase, reads:

A Vaishnava is he who feels the other’s pain Remaining oblivious of the good he does to the other, taking no pride in his deed He shuns the world whether it praises or damns him for what he is He is not lured by women nor attracted by wealth, praise such a man who is the jewel of his family, He is the same to everyone, devoid of desire, treats the wives of others as his mothers, He never speaks falsehood, nor casts a covetous eye on another man’s wealth, He is not enslaved by passion or bonded to any possessions, and the spirit of renunciation is his supreme ruler, His heart is attuned to the Lord, whom he yearns to meet, his body is really nothing but a pilgrim’s cover, He is not greedy, nor wicked, nor driven by desire or fury, Says Narsi, such a one and his entire family will be freed from the wheel of re-birth. Narsi Mehta’s song is just one among the jewels of Bhakti poetry written from the South to the North and from the West to the East of the Indian subcontinent signalling waves of humanism and spiritual liberation in a longoppressed society. Bhakti encompasses teachings from Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic sources and lays the foundation of a syncretic, inclusive culture that uniquely defines South Asia. Gandhi intuitively understood the spirit of Bhakti and identified with it. Arousing the conscience of a devotee and raising the level of his awareness of life was the crux of the agenda of Indian saints. Most of them, as Gandhi himself was, were householders who raised families before answering the call of a higher human conscience that they identified with their personal deity. Bhakti is religion devoid of theological sophistry and scriptural hermeneutics. It does away with rituals that ordinary people do not understand. It advises people to lead a simple and good life, be sensitive not only to the human but also to every other form of life, to shun all forms of aggressive behaviour, to share and to care for one another in the spirit of true community.

Devotees come together after a hard day’s work to sing bhajans or to listen to a keertan discourse. Gandhi’s evening prayer meetings were modelled on this. He took care to quote from the Q’urraan or the Bible to his audiences. He took pains not to leave anybody out on the basis of religion or caste. Ever since his return from South Africa and till his assassination, Gandhi’s life was one continuous pilgrimage. His image as a saint and a pilgrim will outlive his legend as a political leader. He was perceived as a political leader only by the Western-educated upper classes and by outsiders unfamiliar with the Bhakti movement. Gandhi’s concept of Svaraj, about which volumes have been written, is impossible to translate into English in one word. The Sanskrit noun swa refers to the ‘self’ or ‘own’ ( for which the other, more metaphysical term is atman). Raj means ‘rule’, ‘regime’, or ‘domain’. In Gandhi’s usage, svaraj variously meant ‘self-rule’, ‘autonomy’, ‘domain of the self’, or ‘own regime’. ‘Governing the self’ or ‘being ruled by one’s conscience’ is a spiritual and an ethical idea. ‘Ruling one’s own domain’ or swadesh is a political idea. The fusion of the idea of spiritual selfhood with political nationhood best describes Gandhi’s peculiar vocabulary and its ramifications. Gandhian economics laid stress on the manufacture and consumption of svadeshi goods to become independent of imports and their exploitative nature. Sva---the ‘self’---was the cornerstone of Gandhi’s thought, belief, and action. His idea of truth was a return or a recourse to one’s self as a part of a larger cosmic self or ultimate being. This is the thread that connects Hindu philosophy with Bhakti, which is devotion to praxis---the responsibility to lead an authentic life based on one’s innate goodness that is a part of universal goodness. Gandhi and one of his main companions Vinoba Bhave have interpreted The Lord’s Song or Bhagawadgita from the perspective of Karma-yoga or doing one’s duty without expecting any benefit. This is just how Narsi Mehta defines the role of a Vaishnava in his song quoted earlier. The goal of a devotee is to personally experience God and s/he achieves this by sacrificing one’s personal ego to realize ‘the greater self’. The saints, however, saw in the service of humanity----particularly the most exploited and humiliated people---a way to realize God. Gandhi was a Bhakta and a

Saint precisely in this sense; and his ordinary contemporaries perceived him as such. I am a Marathi speaker and I live in Maharashtra that has a rich tradition of saints who also composed and sang songs that are now considered the foundation of Marathi literature. The most famous of Maharashtra’s poetsaints---or Bhakta poets---is Tukaram. Tukaram, like Gandhi, was a Vaishya or trader because of his family profession; and he was also a Kunbi or a farmer. Today, he would be included among the Bahujansamaj Marathas; some would put him in the O.B.C. or other backward castes category. However, in 17th century Maharashtra, the Brahmins considered Tukaram a Shudra, and he used that stigma to get even with them through his poetic genius. Although he started composing songs rather late in his life, he achieved phenomenal popularity as a poet and a performer of kirtans wherever Marathi was spoken. Tukaram’s poetry, protestant in spirit, critical of religious bigotry, Brahmanical hypocrisy, and ritualized religion in which the priestly class held all the strings in society had been irritating the Brahmin ordthodoxy. His apotheosis and stature as a saint infuriated them so much that they officially pronounced his works as blasphemous and ordered his entire collection of poetry to be sunk in the river Indrayani at Dehu, where he lived. According to oral ( and later written) tradition, Tukaram’s manuscripts were sunk in the river and lay there for thirteen days during which period Tukaram performed a satyagraha appealing to his deity Pandurang for a restoration of all his life’s work. Tukaram went on a fast-unto-death, not even drinking a drop of water. After thirteen days, by a miracle, his manuscripts came up undamaged. On the other hand, Tukaram’s chief Brahmin detractor and tormentor---Rameshwarbhatt Wagholikar---suffered from an inexplicable inflammation all over his body until he fell prostrate in front of Tukaram and asked for his forgiveness. Tukaram’s plea to God was that his poetry was inspired by God, addressed to God, and was about God. Its ‘truth’ depended on the truth of God’s existence and His acceptance of his devotee’s faith. Whether we believe in the miracle or not, we must understand that the public perception of Tukaram’s righteousness and vindication is a part of the Bhakti tradition and its rich folklore.

Its remarkable resemblance to Gandhian methods of persuasion need not be stressed any further. The few occasions on which Gandhi went on a fast unto death, the attention of the entire nation was focussed on his act of satyagraha putting his own life at stake for the sake of principles. The act was addressed to both his followers and his antagonists. Tukaram was one of Gandhi’s favourite poet-saints. While in the Yerwada prison, Gandhi translated sixteen of Tukaram’s abhangs into English and he later persuaded his followers to translate selected works of Tukaram into Gujarati and Hindustani. Gandhi was a Vaishnava--- a worshipper of Vishnu and his avatars Rama and Krishna--- and so was Tukaram. Assuming that Gandhi had read at least some of the most quoted of Tukaram’s poems, I would like to quote in my own translation three of these as they define the spirit of a Vaishnava saint and his engagement with society: 1. “He who identifies With the battered and the beaten Mark him as a saint For God is with him The good man’s mind Is soft outside And soft inside Say it’s like butter He holds Every forsaken man Close to his heart He treats A slave As his own son Says Tuka I won’t be tired To repeat again Such a man Is God In person.”

2. “We slaves of Vishnu Are softer than wax We are hard enough To shatter a thunderbolt Dead yet alive Asleep but aware Ask for anything We shall give it We strip ourselves naked To clothe the needy We strike down the wicked Without batting an eyelid We are more loving Than natural parents We are deadlier Than mortal enemies We are sweeter than the tonic Of immortality And more bitter Than the deadliest poison Says Tuka Ours is a wholesome flavour As good as anyone That wishes to savour” 3. “We battle all day We battle all night We battle with the world and with our own mind We remain alert For a sudden assault

We have to make A constant stand Says Tuka The power of Your name Gives us the strength To thwart them all” Other than his classic early autobiography in Gujarati Mara Satyana Prayogo ( My Experiments with Truth) Gandhi always came out in the open with facts of his personal life and his constant effort to cleanse himself, to not only keep his conscience clear but also lead a transparent life. Many of his experiments such as celibacy were ridiculed or analysed using modern psychoanalytic tools. Erik Erikson (1969) and later Wolfenstein used post-Freudian methods to analyse and explain what Gandhi was about in theory and practice. Wolfenstein, contrasting Gandhi with Lenin and Trotsky as revolutionaries, observed that while the two Russian revolutionaries emulated strong, masculine father-figures, Gandhi emulated the persuasive methods of a seemingly weak mother-figure. Some of his Indian detractors too described Gandhi’s satyagraha as ‘emotional blackmail’. Militant non-violent protest, though, is a leitmotif in the lives of Indian saints who gave up the idea of ‘selfrealization’ through ‘sannyasa’ and turned instead to social transformation by arousing human conscience. A more human ordering of human society was the objective of saints. They practised a politics of ahimsa or opposition to the prevailing oppressive and violent social order by empowering the weak and by enlightening the ignorant and the confused. The brilliant Indian philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi (incidentally a grandson of the Mahatma) has compared the advaitin mystic Ramana Maharshi with Gandhi in his monograph Moksha and Martyrdom. He has further clarified the Gandhian concept of Svaraj in his outstanding discourse on art Svaraj: A Journey with Tyeb Mehta’s ‘Shantiniketan Triptych.’ Moral dissent, passive resistance, civil disobedience and conscientious

objection were perhaps concepts Gandhi had borrowed from his Western mentors. However, the scale on which he used them to oppose British colonialism and the measure in which he succeeded in transforming meek subject people into citizens demanding their rights is simply mind-boggling. That he found a native idiom to propagate his ideas is worth stressing because that is what brought him millions of followers including women and the oppressed castes who lacked political weapons and social recognition as citizens before Gandhi gave them a voice. Gandhi’s mission was more comprehensively social than just political. He urged his followers to find strength within themselves-----the roots of Svaraj (self-rule) in their mind’s refusal to suffer injustice. Gandhi’s ‘truth’ was synonymous with ‘justice’ which he believed was divine in its origin and social in its human implications. Gandhi’s comprehensive agenda comprised of realizing the self through social action. He found the vocabulary for this neither in the writings of Ruskin and Thoreau nor in the practices of Tolstoy. He found it in his own Indian tradition. His principle of ahimsa is derived from the teachings of the Buddha and Mahavir still practised by Buddhists and Jains. His militancy, however, can be traced to saints such as Tukaram. It comes close to the spiritual jihad of which the Prophet Muhammad spoke: a constant internal struggle before one’s small ego is eventually sacrificed to the universal spirit of Allah. And, of course, Gandhi’s spirit is equally close to the teachings of Jesus. This is exactly the stance of Indian saints who opposed caste hierarchy and pleaded for universal spiritual equality and brotherhood. These paradigms are rooted in Indian history and culture and they help us to understand Gandhi in his local context though they have a universal relevance as well. _________________________________________________ (text of a lecture delivered on July 28, 2008 to the participants of Fulbright-Hays Group Studies Abroad at the Kasturba Samadhi Hall, Aga Khan Palace Pune. Copyright 2008, Dilip Chitre).