Gandhi’s Prisoner?

Title: Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s Son Manilal

Author: Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie

Publisher: Permanent Black, 2005 (First published 2004)

ISBN: 9788178241166

Pages: 419

Gandhi and Nehru are the leaders who led India’s freedom struggle to victory. Their lives and actions fired up the imagination of the country’s masses that elevated them to larger than life personages. However, the dissimilarities are as yawning as the gap between their ideals. Gandhi always stood for the principles he believed in, whether you liked it or not. Nehru, on the other hand, was a man of convenience and found no harm in bending the rules to suit his quest for absolute and hegemonic power. Gandhi totally neglected his family in his political life, while Nehru sponsored his own kin into powerful and lucrative positions within the new government he headed. He unabashedly made his daughter Indira his political heir, making the Congress party his personal fief. In fact, the dominance of the Nehru family in the Congress party is still absolute, that some of the worst corruption scandals in the country’s history are attributed to the family’s stranglehold on the higher echelons of power. One would be amazed at the comparison of Nehru’s children with Gandhi’s. This book is about Manilal Gandhi, the Mahatma’s second son who lived all his life in South Africa, upholding his father’s philosophy and giving a practical application to Gandhi’s favourite weapon – passive resistance. Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie is the granddaughter of Manilal Gandhi and is professor of history at the University of Western Cape in Cape Town. The book is consequently a biography as well as family history.

Living as the Mahatma’s son was no mean task. Manilal could never forget whose son he was. Such was the pressure from family and peers to conform to the path set out by his father. Gandhi never inflicted physical punishment on his sons such as beating the child for a misdeed. Instead, he imposed hardships on himself such as avoiding food for a considerable period of time in full view of the child who would be filled with remorse. Such emotional blackmail was so effective that Gandhi soon extended it to his political life as well when he moved his sphere of activity to India in 1914. Gandhi steadfastly clung to his ideals however foolhardy there were felt to be by others. Once, ten-year old Manilal fell ill with typhoid and pneumonia, which was fairly common in those pre-vaccination days. The doctor advised eggs and chicken soup to be served to the patient to strengthen him. But Gandhi refused it on account of the strict vegetarianism he practiced. According to him, nature cure was the best way of healing and resorted to a combination of fasting and hip baths for the young boy. It took forty days for him to recover from the ordeal. Then again, Gandhi wanted character building of an individual which he believed was not possible in a formal educational institution. So he denied his sons education in the conventional sense. They were not sent to schools and were taught by Gandhi himself and his friends. Manilal often complained to Gandhi about his lack of education, which denied him a career outside the Gandhi orbit. This also forced Manilal to forever be under financial dependence to his father, but he soon seemed to have grown out of the handicap and was a true disciple of his illustrious father. He was by no means a prisoner of Gandhi.

Coming from the granddaughter of Manilal, the book is quite frank about the lapses on his part and how it was handled by Gandhi. Manilal stayed for some time at Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad, but he was banished from there hardly a year after as he had sent his elder brother Harilal some money from the ashram’s funds. Harilal had fallen on bad ways and days and had requested the money to support his family. He was sent to Madras to make up the financial loss to the ashram by working as a hand-weaver. Gandhi treated all religions as equal and everyone had free and unfettered access in his household. However, he was a devout Hindu at heart and subjugated private emotion to public duty. When Manilal fell in love with a Muslim girl in South Africa, who was also a longtime friend, Gandhi opposed their marriage. This was in spite of the full support of the girl’s family for their match and who were themselves following enlightened ideals on the religious front. But Gandhi compared it to ‘putting two swords in one sheath’. He was in fact worried more at the powerful impact it might have had on the delicate issue of Hindu – Muslim relations he was handling in India. Finally, Manilal backed out, much to disdain of the girl’s family and married another girl through the formal arranged-marriage route common in India even now.

The book tells the story of a totally obedient and devoted son, whose real life began only after the death of his celebrity father. When Gandhi set up Phoenix Settlement near Durban, everyone had to work in the fields. With the money thus saved, he founded ‘Indian Opinion’, a weekly newspaper Manilal would serve for the rest of his life. After some time, Gandhi decided to stay back in the city to find time for his other work, leaving his family to manage the farm and the paper. He founded the Tolstoy Farm a short while later to practice the fabled idea of community living. Life was hard here, with prison-like amenities and a managed diet having no trace of salt or sugar. Gandhi believed that elimination of these staples purified one’s own blood. He gave up milk also, in the belief that it had an effect on sexual urges. Inhabitants of the farm walked to the city even though a convenient railway station was situated nearby. They started at 2 am in the night, reached the city six or seven hours later and returned in the same evening after attending to the matter at hand.

Manilal was an eager participant in the Satyagraha movement in South Africa protesting against the racial segregation regime of the whites. He cheerfully served prison sentences that came in the way. He participated with equal vigour in the agitations in India whenever he visited the country. He took part in the Salt Satyagraha and Dandi March, for which he was jailed for a year. Even after Gandhi and his other sons had relocated to India, Manilal continued his career in South Africa as the editor of ‘Indian Opinion’. His life was dedicated for the uplift of the Indian community in that country. He breathed his last there at the age of 64. However, the author affirms that his life was not a negative one and the jails and police of the South African state held no terror for him, neither did the prospect of death in defense of a just cause. He absorbed some of the finest ideas of Gandhism and one of the consequences of his upbringing was that he knew absolutely no fear when faced with injustice.

A lucid reflection of the political life of Indians in South Africa is offered in this book. Two distinct phases can be discerned in the struggle. While Britain ruled both India and South Africa, Indians asked for civil rights both in their natural and adopted homes. South Africa gained independence in 1931 and the racist regimes which ruled it thereafter abolished all civil rights of the black and coloured people. Gandhi cut his Satyagraha teeth in 1906 when the Transvaal government proposed a new law that required Indians and Chinese over the age of eight to apply for a registration certificate. These would bear a person’s photo and finger- and thumb-prints. They were required to carry it always on their person and needed to show it to inspecting authorities. Satyagraha was first employed in this issue but protests petered out after some time as usual. The Indian community continued to use passive resistance methods even after Gandhi’s return to India. A deal, which can be termed somewhat decent in the circumstances, was reached in 1927 and was known as Cape Town Agreement. This book also displays the fissures that developed among the community in response to the demand for Pakistan. The people who fought united till that time was quickly bifurcated into two separate channels. A newspaper titled ‘Indian Views’ was set up to raise voice for Pakistan and to counter the arguments of ‘Indian Opinion’ which treaded a nationalistic line. Natal Muslim Youth League was formed to find political expression for the new state of Pakistan. After the Second World War, formal apartheid was imposed on the non-European population against which non-violent protests didn’t go well. Manilal himself was arrested and jailed for a total of ten times, but nothing could be shown as an achievement out of it. This indicates the futility of Satyagraha against a barbarian government which was fuelled by theories of white racial supremacy instead of liberal thought.

The book is neatly structured and opens up all aspects of the protagonist’s life. A remarkable feature of the narrative is its candidness. No one would expect a granddaughter to discuss about certain aspects of her grandfather’s youth which most families would quietly sweep under the carpet. Of course, there is nothing to be ashamed of, as every man is bound to succumb to the temptations of his age at some point in their lives. Still, the open and bold description adds brilliance to the image of the man it portrays. Moreover, the author seeks ‘primarily to understand rather than judge’. A good number of photographs are inserted, which are organized at the end of each chapter and covering the events mentioned in it. This is an excellent way of structuring a collection of very old images. The book is also gifted with a large number of Notes, an impressive bibliography and a commendable index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

Title: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

Author: Tarek Fatah

Publisher: Kautilya, 2016 (First published 2008)

ISBN: 9788192998770

Pages: 403

The world is witnessing incidents of jihadi violence by the hour. Even though Islam is often touted as a religion of peace, non-Muslims and an increasing section of Muslims perceive it to be otherwise. A noted feature in the discourse on terror and its religio-political inspiration is the total absence of the voice of the moderates in the Muslim community. Surprising it may seem to us, but the extremists occupy centre stage in the debate and spread a false sense of victimhood among young Muslims. The radicals want to assert that the whole Muslim community in the world is a monolithic nation, called ‘Ummah’, irrespective and irrelevant of the national, ethnic, racial and linguistic barriers that divide them. They abhor parliaments and other law-making machinery offered by the Western civilization and want to go back to a presumed golden era that flourished in the seventh or eighth centuries CE when the supposedly Rightly Guided Caliphs ruled from Medina. This book presents the pitfalls inherent in such a ludicrously simplistic evaluation of what ails the Muslims of today. Instead of living in a state of Islam, in which every Muslim is entitled to live peacefully and joyfully as per the fundamental tenets of Islam that cares about the spiritual needs of the individual, Muslims are shepherded to outrageous notions of political supremacy of Islam over other religions of the world and authoritarianism of cleric-politicians as enshrined in an Islamic state. By looking back at the history of Islam and the status of implementation of the Islamic state in a few countries, the author affirms the illusion of an Islamic state that occurred anywhere in the world in the present or in the past. Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani author and journalist based in Canada. He has authored many books. He was an activist in Pakistan, and was twice imprisoned by successive military dictatorships. In the aftermath of 9/11, Fatah founded the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), a secular and liberal Muslim organization dedicated to the separation of religion and politics, opposition to Islamism and jihadi extremism.

Fatah begins by requesting his Muslim readers to attempt to answer a few questions in the privacy of their solitude, when they need not be on the defensive and have no fear of being judged. Presenting the difference between an Islamic state and a state of Islam, he argues that the 150 million Muslims in Pakistan live in an Islamic state, while an equal number of Muslims in India live in a state of Islam. The author makes a clear distinction between Muslims and Islamists, who work for the imposition of an Islamic state based on Sharia. They have brought out Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in 1990 roughly in line with the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1948. However, the Cairo one envisages all rights and freedoms subject to Sharia, and provides for second class citizenship to the non-Muslims who have the misfortune to live in an Islamic state. It legitimizes the notion of racial and religious superiority and allows for multiple levels of citizenship and widespread and systemic discrimination against racial and religious minorities living within a state’s borders (p. 17). The Liberal-Left is now hand in glove with the Islamists under the untrue impression that they oppose the US and its hegemonic world policy. However, Islamists are not against the West’s imperial ambitions or capitalist greed. They were the West’s handmaidens throughout the cold war and waged a jihad on America’s behalf against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Islamists take sustenance from the writings of Sayyid Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat Islami and Hassan al-Banna and Syed Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood. Maudoodi had noted that the West’s ‘unfettered freedom’ and individual liberty are to be opposed. This put the leftists in an awkward position.

The book then examines the blatant discrimination present in the Islamic states of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. Religious minorities are not given equal status anywhere. Pakistan’s constitution, in its Article 41(2) states that only a Muslim can become its president. When Justice Rana Bhagwandas, a Hindu, was sworn in as acting chief justice of Pakistan, he had to take his oath of office with a Quranic prayer, “May Allah Almighty help and guide me, Ameen”. Imagine such a thing happening to a Muslim anywhere in the secular democracies like India or western countries! Also imagine the tremendous hue and cry such an incident will cause among human rights groups! But in this instance, nothing happened and the seculars turned a blind eye to it. The supreme leader of Iran – velayat e-faqih – can only be a person of Arab ancestry. Imams of the superior pedigree don a black turban while others wear white headgear. He advises the Palestinians to view Islamists with deep suspicion, especially the ones in Marxist attire who espouse support of the Islamist Hamas while living in and unwilling to give up residence or the comforts of the US (p. 74).

Part 2 of the book that deals with the genesis of the faith and its political institutions present the true face of history the Islamists often sweep under the carpet. Three out of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs had fallen victim to an assassin’s knife in an orgy of tribal and racial enmity. After the Prophet’s death, the claim of the Quraysh tribe was proposed by Abu Bakr, who became the first caliph and a member of the tribe. Notions of equality were discarded at that stage itself. The second caliph Omar followed a policy of sabiqa which determined people’s level of piety on a sliding scale of when they accepted Islam. War booty was divided by Omar unequally. Those who followed Muhammad to Medina were given the highest entitlement and the lowest for those who accepted Islam after the fall of Mecca. In the sixth year of Omar’s reign a famine struck Arabia. The relief effort was also based on the principle of graded inequality – Meccan Quraysh the most, then Meccan Arabs, then the Aws tribe of Medina over the Khazraj and the non-Arab Muslims and slaves. The non-Arab Muslims were disparagingly called Mawalis and the Umayyad dynasty of caliphs (661 – 750 CE) taxed Jizya from them as noted by Maudoodi. Sectarian and familial jealousy overruled the early caliphate. Muawiyah instituted the practice of cursing Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law during Friday sermons, which is still followed during the Hajj pilgrimage (p. 159). The forward thrust of Arab culture into Europe was stopped in 732 CE when Charles Martel defeated the Berber – Arab army in Poitiers, France. Muslims could never cross this line again. When the flow of war booty from expansion subsided, dissensions broke out in the Islamic camp. The Islamic states of the past failed to establish a norm for rightful succession that led to the unhappy situation in which lasting political institutions didn’t develop. Fatah categorically affirms that the idea of the caliphate or Islamic state has no basis whatsoever in either the Quran or the traditions of the Prophet.

The third part of the book is earmarked to expose the deviant agenda of Islamists in the West and their political manifesto. Their agenda is what Maudoodi declared: “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere in the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam. If the Muslim party commands adequate resources, it will eliminate un-Islamic governments and establish the power of Islamic governments in their stead. (p. 252). Fatah brings to light the backhand deals in Canada in which Islamists tried to sneak in Sharia for the country’s Muslim minority and the true face of Islamic banking which is another front of extremism. The religious bigotry of the Islamists is nauseating. They swing into action only when a Muslim country or individual is attacked. In 1999, New York police intercepted a Black man named Amadou Diallo and shot him down in a case of highhandedness. Civil rights groups began protests but the Islamists kept mum. A few days later, the man’s full name was published in the newspapers as Ahmed Ahmedou Diallo, a Muslim. Islamists took up protests only at that point. In the Vietnam War, they sided with the US government and only join the action when a Muslim state is at the receiving end of US foreign policy.

As I noted earlier, the voice of the moderate Muslim is nowhere heard. This book changes all that, and Tarek Fatah’s lone voice rumbles through the debating bodies as a voice of sincerity and reason. It is to be noted that he never says anything against the Prophet or the Quran, but attacks the false interpretation of the Islamists. Readers open a rich treasure trove of new information from this book that blunts the sharpness of Wahhabi-funded Islamists masquerading as free thinkers and human rights activists. The book uses footnotes instead of attaching a glossary at the end. A veritable collection of Notes and a long list of books for further reading make this a must-have for all classes of readers. A comprehensive index elevates the book to the level of a reference work.

When you grow old, it is rare that you come across a book which gives you a flood of details you never knew existed. Most books show a new sidewalk or an unexplored by-lane to the city centre which you are thoroughly familiar with. But this book showcases an entirely new city, which justifies its Five Star rating.

The book is most highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star

Islands in Flux

Title: Islands in Flux – The Andaman and Nicobar Story

Author: Pankaj Sekhsaria

Publisher: Harper Litmus, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9789352643981

Pages: 268

The Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands are the largest archipelago system in the Bay of Bengal, consisting of about 500 islands with a total area of approximately 8200 sq.km. Only 38 of these islands are inhabited and the archipelago is separated from mainland India by 1200 km of open sea. The nearest landmass from the island chain is Sumatra, located at a distance of 145 km. All these factors make them unique and extremely important in the case of social and strategic implications. This book is a selection of articles published by the author between 1998 and 2016, which are related to conservation of the fragile ecology, rights and changing nature of the tribal communities, tourism development and questions on development planning and policy in the islands. This book builds upon what the author’s ‘Troubled Islands’ offered in 2003. Pankaj Sekhsaria is a researcher, writer, photographer, campaigner and academic. He has worked extensively in the fields of environment and wildlife conservation with a particular focus on the A&N Islands. His debut novel was also based in the Andamans.

A&N Islands retain most of the original names given by the British. Many of them commemorate administrators and military leaders. Hugh Rose cornered Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi and his name is given to Rose Island. Demands are afoot to rename the island as Lakshmi Bai Dweep. Similarly, Havelock Island is named after the general who retook Lucknow from the mutineers, which could be renamed as Nana Sahib Dweep. In addition to these, the local names used by the indigenous tribes can also be used. The book contains an interesting list of local names. We must not lose sight of an important fact in this renaming spree. These islands were never a part of the political and social milieu of the mainland, and the annexation of the island chain to India was a gift of the British. Without their colonizing it first, it is highly likely that those islands would now have become the naval base of some of the prominent maritime powers like what came about in Diego Garcia.

Sekhsaria paints the picture of a very successful intervention by environmental groups on the economic life of the islanders. They were instrumental in bringing out a verdict from India’s Supreme Court in 2002 which ordered a stop to felling of trees from the island’s evergreen forests, closure of the wood-processing industry, banning traffic on the Andaman Trunk Road and a host of other far reaching observations. Timber extraction had peaked in 1980-81, which then tapered down and went totally blank in 2002-03 after the judgment. The book targets tourism as the single activity that can wreak havoc with the ecology of the islands. He attacks former President A P J Abdul Kalam for proposing the idea of using tourism as a plank in development. He even asks how a person with such good education can become so little informed on environmental concerns! Sekhsaria criticizes the government order to allow airfare as part of LTC (Leave Travel Concession) scheme of government employees. This was designed to increase arrival of tourists in the aftermath of the killer tsunami of 2004. It is estimated that one per cent of the total population of the islands perished in the tsunami. However, the subsidized tourism – also disparagingly called LTC tourism on account of the meager spending of such tourists – has been a bone of contention of the local tourism industry as well. As the number of tourists goes up, the carrying capacity of the islands get filled up. Port Blair is now witnessing rationing of water in summer.

A number of indigenous tribal communities still inhabit the islands, outside the reach of civilization and modern amenities. The earliest aborigines are thought to have colonized the islands 40,000 years ago. On such a vast time scale, the British period is hardly a page and India could only be a paragraph in the book of the human habitation of Andaman. Some of the tribes are said to be cannibals but the author doesn’t make a mention of this. The Jarawas are a prominent tribe that is now showing symptoms of becoming adapted to modern civilization. The Sentinelese are still hostile, but the author argues that on this hostility ‘stands the tribe’s best chance of surviving as an independent human community for some more time’ (p.24). The author elevates the ethno-medical knowledge of the tribes even greater than contemporary scientific practice and is apprehensive of the bio-prospectors and pharmaceutical multinationals ‘stealing’ that information. Most of the islands are out of reach of foreigners.

Sekhsaria and other environmentalists of the lot treat the local tribals as little more than an endangered animal species which needs to be protected from poachers rather than as fellow human beings. Mind you, these aborigines are roaming the steamy, disease-ridden tropical jungles stark naked – men, women, children and all. They don’t have recourse to education, medical facilities or any other convenience which technology has gifted to us and which we take for granted. Interaction and intermixing with the external society is strongly protested by these environmental fundamentalists. In fact, this is the only option to save them from sexual and physical exploitation as evidenced in a 2012 video shot by a tourist which pictured Jarawa women dancing around a tourist vehicle, begging for ‘exotic’ food. The head count of the tribes has come down drastically over the decades. The population of the Onge tribe is only about 100 and the Jarawas number around 500. It is a well known genetic fact that as the number of people in an endogamous society declines, inbreeding takes place and this leads to serious congenital disorders for future generations that are also usually lethal. Commonsense dictates that it is high time for the tribals to mix with the outside world – including marital relationships – and live a happier and more prosperous life. This will definitely cause them lose their ethnic purity, no doubt, but the days of racial purity and eugenics are long gone. Education is the primary requirement and right of such a society, to prepare its children to the vagaries and pitfalls of modernity. But the author and his fellow hard-line environmentalists want to hold them down to their jungle fastnesses and are content with tossing coconuts, bananas and packets of biscuits over to the tribals when they venture out of the forest in search of greener pastures.

The book is a collection of items that appeared in newspapers and journals over a span of nearly two decades. Naturally, repetitions abound in the 25 chapters arranged over six broadly defined fields ranging from the environment, tribal communities, military significance and the dreaded tsunami which devastated the Nicobar group of islands in 2004. The earthquake which caused the tsunami had made some startling tectonic shifts on the islands. The northern part of the island had experienced an up-shift of 1.5 m, while the southern part had subsided by as much as 4.5 m. Such scope for change in the geological foundations of the islands justifies the title of the book. A very nice collection of colour photographs add much value to the book. As no credits are expressed for the photographs, we may suspect that the author has taken these pictures himself. The book includes a good index and a very informative historical timeline.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star