Publisher: Niyogi Books, 2013 (First)
ISBN: 9789381523315
Pages: 555
Gandhi wrote prodigiously in many formats such as letters, articles, telegrams, comments to friends and general audience alike. And there are no shortages of books on the father of the nation even after seven decades after his death. This book comes right at a time when discussions are on to examine whether Gandhi is still relevant after the social, economic and political landscape had undergone much change in the last quarter century. This book’s intention is to link Gandhi’s moments of greatness with his dependence on all his co-workers who facilitated his task in India and South Africa and who made it easy for him to spiritually transform into some kind of semi-divine personality. All events described in this book are suffused with a personal touch in the sense that the subjective factor seems to override all other considerations – even ideological – on some occasions. This book also attempts to connect with and discuss Gandhi’s ‘big moment’ through the lens of his relations with many people of diverse backgrounds who were around him and in different kinds of relations with him along these events. This throws light on emotions that drove events or that were at their background and helps to better understand what affected and shaped Gandhi’s politics and the role these relations played in it. Mushirul Hasan is an historian, author and former vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He was the director-general of the National Archives of India. He was awarded Padma Shri by the Congress government in 2007.
Hasan enumerates the external influences that went into Gandhi’s metamorphosis into a nonviolent satyagrahi with rural roots, while residing in South Africa. Ruskin’s ‘Unto This Last’ transferred Gandhi from a city-dwelling lawyer into a rustic far away from Durban in a farm. Tolstoy furnished a basis for nonviolence and ideas of the moral value of physical labour and of natural diet. Kallenbach introduced elements of the Kibbutz movement and Kropotkin the idea of a country of village communes. In the final analysis, he shaped the country for his causes. Needless to say, this was highly subjective. He read treatises on religion which encouraged him to put into practice whatever appealed to him. One of them was to amalgamate ideas of quite different religions and cultural practices into a hybrid model. Gandhi’s choice of words and images inspired others because it contained ‘the rhythm of restrained emotions, self-abnegation, moral fervour and concern for the downtrodden’. He felt that politics bereft of religion kills the soul. He spoke freely in short, incisive sentences and listened as he spoke. The conversation with him took the form of question and answer and the interchange of opinions rather than rapid give and take. Mira behn – an English lady named Madeleine Slade – captured Gandhi’s engagement with the masses. The people were excited just to set their eyes on him as a holy man, a saviour on whom they had pinned all their hopes. They had no other thought than to obtain a darshan of him.
Gandhi’s total dedication to what he deemed to be true and just was legendary. He was willing to lay down his life rather than do something that negated what he regarded as supreme. Satyagraha symbolized the triumph of moral right over arbitrary power. The nonviolence creed revealed the possibilities of a new type of warfare to the millions. Even when Congress accepted office under the 1935 Constitution, Gandhi espoused utmost value to hand-spun khadi, Hindu-Muslim unity, rural education, decentralization of production and distribution rather than play with the instruments concomitant to power. His assertions or intellectual apprehensions on the goals and objectives of an industrial civilization require extensive research to prove or disprove them. However, their beauty lies in looking at life through the eyes of childhood with all its power of illusion and hope (p.80). That’s how the author weakly rationalizes what appears to be a crucial input in formulating national policy. Does such a critical thing can find traction on the flimsy bases of illusion and childish hope? Hasan prefers to leave the answer for the reader to find out himself. Gandhi was sometimes brutal in moral force to the others who argued for compromise on the issue of violence. He refused to approve the Karachi AICC resolution urging the government to commute the death sentence to Bhagat Singh (p.144). Motilal Nehru, who was always in thrall of Gandhi, went one step further and refused to allow even a motion of sympathy for Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, who threw bombs in the Central Legislature hall, at the July 1931 meeting of the AICC. This was glossed over on the excuse that it contravened Gandhi’s nonviolent creed. Gandhi endorsed this with his remark in Harijan that ‘Bhagat Singh worship’ had done incalculable harm to the country. Gandhi’s candidate for Congress presidency lost by 203 votes in the Tripuri session. Gandhi described it as his own loss which deepened intra-party factionalism. He eventually managed to eject Subhas Chandra Bose from the party. However, the author plays down the opposition to Gandhi in the Congress party.
The book’s prime focus is in describing Gandhi’s engagement with and developing attitudes towards Muslim nationalism, Islam, various Muslim leaders, politicians and intellectuals going back to his days in South Africa. Khilafat was the only issue in which Muslims sided with Gandhi. After he withdrew from non-cooperation under the pretext of Chauri Chaura violence, they turned enemies. Muslim theologians then regarded abstinence or self-denial as a form of ingratitude to Allah, unless there were compelling reasons for it (p.379). Deoband ulema was also friendly at first but their enthusiasm waned over time. They found his views on conversion, inter-community dining and purdah as unwarranted intrusion. They resented coupling the name of ‘Ram’ with ‘Rahim’ and of ‘Krishna’ with ‘Allah’. Gandhi’s opposition to religious conversion and affinity to Hindi language over Urdu further alienated the Muslims. But this did not mean that he was dear to the nationalists who addressed him as ‘Mahmud Gandhi’. The Mahatma engaged mainly with traditional Muslim theologians because he thought the liberal and modernist narratives in Islam were weak and not deserving of much political support.
Hasan provides a sanitized review of the teachings of Islam in this book along with how Gandhi understood them. Readers feel that Gandhi relied solely on hagiographies of the Prophet and his religion because he could not read Arabic. Hence, he saw only the noble facets. He looked up to the Prophet and remarked that his tenets are compatible with ahimsa (p.325)! Ali ibn-i Abu Talib, the fourth caliph, was presented as an exemplar of satyagrahis. In spite of this, many of Gandhi’s Muslim associates were first-rate bigots. His bosom ally, Muhammad Ali, professed in 1923 that he subscribed to the creed that “even a fallen and degraded Muslim is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim, irrespective of his high character, even if the person in question were Gandhi himself” (p.345). In several places like Masimpur and Noakhali, Muslim audience walked out of his prayer meetings when Ramdhun was sung (p.376). May be it was due to all these incidents heaping one over the other in his mind that he remarked the Muslims a bully and Hindus as docile to the point of cowardice.
Mushirul Hasan rightly touches on some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in Gandhi’s ideology and character. The Mahatma disregarded the inequities of village life. He was interested only in the general picture which was idealized and mostly imaginary. Specifics did not figure in his expositions. He believed that the wealth of Indian cities was extracted from the blood of the poorest. This erroneous notion came from the fallacious socialist idea that wealth-creation was a zero-sum game or a see-saw. Meanwhile, Gandhi was feasted and accommodated by rich businessmen. He did not want to usurp zamindari and taluqdari tracts but asked only to regulate the relations between landlords and peasants because he did not want to kill the goose that laid golden eggs (p.236). His pursuit of goals was in alliance with the capitalists, big business and captains of industry. It was a combination of both dependence for resources and personal friendships. It’s curious how Jawaharlal Nehru coped with this open frolicking with capitalists. This book includes a section on the special relationship between the two. We feel that Nehru depended totally on Gandhi for furthering his career prospects. The Mahatma was the trunk on which the Nehru creeper clung and grew. Some of Nehru’s letters to his patron are included which are full of praise and flattery, even while appearing opposed to his action plans. The letter on page 227 contains wholesome praise of Gandhi such as ‘may I congratulate you’, ‘your magic touch’, ‘epic greatness’, ‘wonderful efficacy of nonviolence’ and ‘country has stuck to [nonviolence] wonderfully’. Each line is literally rolling in with fulsome praise! As a quid pro quo, Gandhi eased Nehru’s opponents out of the Working Committee of the party. Again, the author simply reproduces the original text and leaves the readers with the burden of joining the dots.
This book makes a short survey of the two-nation theory put forward by Muslim League which was the cornerstone for the creation of Pakistan. It also gives a polished view of Pakistan’s heroes, Jinnah and Iqbal the poet. Even though both were zealots at heart and caused much bloodshed, the author confines his research only to their milder political utterances. Even then, Hasan is forced to concede that Iqbal had a pronounced Islamic vision, but bails him out by the claim that much of what he said in his 1930 presidential address to the League should be discounted. However, he does not mention what Iqbal actually said and hence the readers reach the conclusion that he is sugar-coating poison. Some of Iqbal’s poems are also said to pass into the realm of fantasy and betray his emotional immaturity (p.408). Strangely, this book lists out only the atrocities committed against Muslims in Punjab during the early days after Partition. Hasan’s one-sided eloquence appears all the more galling when compared to his total silence on the horrible crimes perpetrated against Hindus and Sikhs in the same region. The ideological core of the demand for Pakistan was moulded in those provinces which stayed on in India. UP and Bihar were the regions where the cream of Muslim intelligentsia repeated the Pakistan demand vociferously. But when the country was actually partitioned, most of them stayed back in India. One Islamic scholar remarked them as ‘a sword of Islam resting on a secular scabbard’ (p.418). The Muslim League’s arsenal was formed of landowners of Sind and Punjab, the Awadh taluqdars, the zamindars of Bihar and the Aligarh students. In the end, the author comments presciently on Pakistan that ‘seldom in history did so few err so monumentally in using religion for the purpose of creating a nation’.
Prima facie, the book attempts to maintain an impartial perspective on the politics of the day which was marred by sectarianism into two distinct streams for Hindus and Muslims. In spite of this facade, the author masks the real causes of historical incidents if it sullies the Muslim cause. Lord Curzon is reported to have partitioned Bengal because of his disdain of the Bhadralok whose material interests were tied to land in East Bengal. This narrative is silent on the Muslim demand for a split. However, in the very next page, Hasan concedes that its revocation in 1911 worsened Hindu-Muslim relations in Bengal (p.59). If the partition was not effected according to Muslim wishes, why should its withdrawal create problems between the two communities? In many places, the author stresses on the reform measures urgently needed in the society. It is curious to observe that Mushirul Hasan’s craving for social reforms is limited to the Hindu community. Regarding the Muslims, he would settle for half-hearted measures and proclaim them as path-breaking. In 1937, NWFP ministry passed a significant law on women’s inheritance under which the daughter inherited a share equivalent to half of that of her brother (p.162)! It’s amazing that the author – writing in 2013 – has the nerve to pronounce this as revolutionary. This is nothing but what is ordained in Sharia law and had changed nothing. At the same time, the author also notes that Bombay enacted a law to remove disabilities on Harijan temple worship. Hasan’s sympathies extend to Muslim politicians of the last two centuries and even to medieval Muslim invaders as well. He falsely comments that Mahmud Ghazni’s saga of plundering raids to Somnath temple was in great part apocryphal (p.306).
This book includes some rare pictures of Gandhi. The accounts of many people on what brought them to the leader are narrated, the most prominent among them being Mira behn. Gandhi was not a member of the Congress in the formal sense, but he controlled the party as its vital force. The Congress placed him on a pedestal, listened to him respectfully, but bypassed him on serious policy matters. Even though the book runs to more than 500 pages, it has not done enough justice to its grandiloquent title. Gandhi’s unstinted loyalty to Hindu faith is prominently described, and this steadfast relationship is alleged to be the reason behind his allegiance to many of the religion’s outdated practices such as the caste system. Being a religious man himself, he allowed rival faiths to also enjoy the unquestioned loyalty from their adherents. A good part of the book examines his relations with Muslims, which appear to be non-committal in nature regarding expressing an opinion on its nature. The author seems to belong to the progressive section among the community; Gandhi always sided with the traditionalists and kept the progressives at an arm’s length. The progressives returned the favour. However, this inner tension is not covered in this book which should have been its prime reason for existence. The author also informs on some of the quirks of the great man. His experiments to test his ‘brahmacharya’ were notorious, but Gandhi stuck to it with a clear conscience. It is noted that Mira behn decorated Gandhi’s room to which he retired after a hectic day in Wardha ashram. Kasturba’s room was next to Gandhi’s (p.122). It is odd to observe that one who tried experiments by sleeping with other women to test his will and power of abstinence did not try it with one’s own wife!
The book is recommended even though it is very tiring for most readers.
Hasan enumerates the external influences that went into Gandhi’s metamorphosis into a nonviolent satyagrahi with rural roots, while residing in South Africa. Ruskin’s ‘Unto This Last’ transferred Gandhi from a city-dwelling lawyer into a rustic far away from Durban in a farm. Tolstoy furnished a basis for nonviolence and ideas of the moral value of physical labour and of natural diet. Kallenbach introduced elements of the Kibbutz movement and Kropotkin the idea of a country of village communes. In the final analysis, he shaped the country for his causes. Needless to say, this was highly subjective. He read treatises on religion which encouraged him to put into practice whatever appealed to him. One of them was to amalgamate ideas of quite different religions and cultural practices into a hybrid model. Gandhi’s choice of words and images inspired others because it contained ‘the rhythm of restrained emotions, self-abnegation, moral fervour and concern for the downtrodden’. He felt that politics bereft of religion kills the soul. He spoke freely in short, incisive sentences and listened as he spoke. The conversation with him took the form of question and answer and the interchange of opinions rather than rapid give and take. Mira behn – an English lady named Madeleine Slade – captured Gandhi’s engagement with the masses. The people were excited just to set their eyes on him as a holy man, a saviour on whom they had pinned all their hopes. They had no other thought than to obtain a darshan of him.
Gandhi’s total dedication to what he deemed to be true and just was legendary. He was willing to lay down his life rather than do something that negated what he regarded as supreme. Satyagraha symbolized the triumph of moral right over arbitrary power. The nonviolence creed revealed the possibilities of a new type of warfare to the millions. Even when Congress accepted office under the 1935 Constitution, Gandhi espoused utmost value to hand-spun khadi, Hindu-Muslim unity, rural education, decentralization of production and distribution rather than play with the instruments concomitant to power. His assertions or intellectual apprehensions on the goals and objectives of an industrial civilization require extensive research to prove or disprove them. However, their beauty lies in looking at life through the eyes of childhood with all its power of illusion and hope (p.80). That’s how the author weakly rationalizes what appears to be a crucial input in formulating national policy. Does such a critical thing can find traction on the flimsy bases of illusion and childish hope? Hasan prefers to leave the answer for the reader to find out himself. Gandhi was sometimes brutal in moral force to the others who argued for compromise on the issue of violence. He refused to approve the Karachi AICC resolution urging the government to commute the death sentence to Bhagat Singh (p.144). Motilal Nehru, who was always in thrall of Gandhi, went one step further and refused to allow even a motion of sympathy for Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, who threw bombs in the Central Legislature hall, at the July 1931 meeting of the AICC. This was glossed over on the excuse that it contravened Gandhi’s nonviolent creed. Gandhi endorsed this with his remark in Harijan that ‘Bhagat Singh worship’ had done incalculable harm to the country. Gandhi’s candidate for Congress presidency lost by 203 votes in the Tripuri session. Gandhi described it as his own loss which deepened intra-party factionalism. He eventually managed to eject Subhas Chandra Bose from the party. However, the author plays down the opposition to Gandhi in the Congress party.
The book’s prime focus is in describing Gandhi’s engagement with and developing attitudes towards Muslim nationalism, Islam, various Muslim leaders, politicians and intellectuals going back to his days in South Africa. Khilafat was the only issue in which Muslims sided with Gandhi. After he withdrew from non-cooperation under the pretext of Chauri Chaura violence, they turned enemies. Muslim theologians then regarded abstinence or self-denial as a form of ingratitude to Allah, unless there were compelling reasons for it (p.379). Deoband ulema was also friendly at first but their enthusiasm waned over time. They found his views on conversion, inter-community dining and purdah as unwarranted intrusion. They resented coupling the name of ‘Ram’ with ‘Rahim’ and of ‘Krishna’ with ‘Allah’. Gandhi’s opposition to religious conversion and affinity to Hindi language over Urdu further alienated the Muslims. But this did not mean that he was dear to the nationalists who addressed him as ‘Mahmud Gandhi’. The Mahatma engaged mainly with traditional Muslim theologians because he thought the liberal and modernist narratives in Islam were weak and not deserving of much political support.
Hasan provides a sanitized review of the teachings of Islam in this book along with how Gandhi understood them. Readers feel that Gandhi relied solely on hagiographies of the Prophet and his religion because he could not read Arabic. Hence, he saw only the noble facets. He looked up to the Prophet and remarked that his tenets are compatible with ahimsa (p.325)! Ali ibn-i Abu Talib, the fourth caliph, was presented as an exemplar of satyagrahis. In spite of this, many of Gandhi’s Muslim associates were first-rate bigots. His bosom ally, Muhammad Ali, professed in 1923 that he subscribed to the creed that “even a fallen and degraded Muslim is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim, irrespective of his high character, even if the person in question were Gandhi himself” (p.345). In several places like Masimpur and Noakhali, Muslim audience walked out of his prayer meetings when Ramdhun was sung (p.376). May be it was due to all these incidents heaping one over the other in his mind that he remarked the Muslims a bully and Hindus as docile to the point of cowardice.
Mushirul Hasan rightly touches on some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in Gandhi’s ideology and character. The Mahatma disregarded the inequities of village life. He was interested only in the general picture which was idealized and mostly imaginary. Specifics did not figure in his expositions. He believed that the wealth of Indian cities was extracted from the blood of the poorest. This erroneous notion came from the fallacious socialist idea that wealth-creation was a zero-sum game or a see-saw. Meanwhile, Gandhi was feasted and accommodated by rich businessmen. He did not want to usurp zamindari and taluqdari tracts but asked only to regulate the relations between landlords and peasants because he did not want to kill the goose that laid golden eggs (p.236). His pursuit of goals was in alliance with the capitalists, big business and captains of industry. It was a combination of both dependence for resources and personal friendships. It’s curious how Jawaharlal Nehru coped with this open frolicking with capitalists. This book includes a section on the special relationship between the two. We feel that Nehru depended totally on Gandhi for furthering his career prospects. The Mahatma was the trunk on which the Nehru creeper clung and grew. Some of Nehru’s letters to his patron are included which are full of praise and flattery, even while appearing opposed to his action plans. The letter on page 227 contains wholesome praise of Gandhi such as ‘may I congratulate you’, ‘your magic touch’, ‘epic greatness’, ‘wonderful efficacy of nonviolence’ and ‘country has stuck to [nonviolence] wonderfully’. Each line is literally rolling in with fulsome praise! As a quid pro quo, Gandhi eased Nehru’s opponents out of the Working Committee of the party. Again, the author simply reproduces the original text and leaves the readers with the burden of joining the dots.
This book makes a short survey of the two-nation theory put forward by Muslim League which was the cornerstone for the creation of Pakistan. It also gives a polished view of Pakistan’s heroes, Jinnah and Iqbal the poet. Even though both were zealots at heart and caused much bloodshed, the author confines his research only to their milder political utterances. Even then, Hasan is forced to concede that Iqbal had a pronounced Islamic vision, but bails him out by the claim that much of what he said in his 1930 presidential address to the League should be discounted. However, he does not mention what Iqbal actually said and hence the readers reach the conclusion that he is sugar-coating poison. Some of Iqbal’s poems are also said to pass into the realm of fantasy and betray his emotional immaturity (p.408). Strangely, this book lists out only the atrocities committed against Muslims in Punjab during the early days after Partition. Hasan’s one-sided eloquence appears all the more galling when compared to his total silence on the horrible crimes perpetrated against Hindus and Sikhs in the same region. The ideological core of the demand for Pakistan was moulded in those provinces which stayed on in India. UP and Bihar were the regions where the cream of Muslim intelligentsia repeated the Pakistan demand vociferously. But when the country was actually partitioned, most of them stayed back in India. One Islamic scholar remarked them as ‘a sword of Islam resting on a secular scabbard’ (p.418). The Muslim League’s arsenal was formed of landowners of Sind and Punjab, the Awadh taluqdars, the zamindars of Bihar and the Aligarh students. In the end, the author comments presciently on Pakistan that ‘seldom in history did so few err so monumentally in using religion for the purpose of creating a nation’.
Prima facie, the book attempts to maintain an impartial perspective on the politics of the day which was marred by sectarianism into two distinct streams for Hindus and Muslims. In spite of this facade, the author masks the real causes of historical incidents if it sullies the Muslim cause. Lord Curzon is reported to have partitioned Bengal because of his disdain of the Bhadralok whose material interests were tied to land in East Bengal. This narrative is silent on the Muslim demand for a split. However, in the very next page, Hasan concedes that its revocation in 1911 worsened Hindu-Muslim relations in Bengal (p.59). If the partition was not effected according to Muslim wishes, why should its withdrawal create problems between the two communities? In many places, the author stresses on the reform measures urgently needed in the society. It is curious to observe that Mushirul Hasan’s craving for social reforms is limited to the Hindu community. Regarding the Muslims, he would settle for half-hearted measures and proclaim them as path-breaking. In 1937, NWFP ministry passed a significant law on women’s inheritance under which the daughter inherited a share equivalent to half of that of her brother (p.162)! It’s amazing that the author – writing in 2013 – has the nerve to pronounce this as revolutionary. This is nothing but what is ordained in Sharia law and had changed nothing. At the same time, the author also notes that Bombay enacted a law to remove disabilities on Harijan temple worship. Hasan’s sympathies extend to Muslim politicians of the last two centuries and even to medieval Muslim invaders as well. He falsely comments that Mahmud Ghazni’s saga of plundering raids to Somnath temple was in great part apocryphal (p.306).
This book includes some rare pictures of Gandhi. The accounts of many people on what brought them to the leader are narrated, the most prominent among them being Mira behn. Gandhi was not a member of the Congress in the formal sense, but he controlled the party as its vital force. The Congress placed him on a pedestal, listened to him respectfully, but bypassed him on serious policy matters. Even though the book runs to more than 500 pages, it has not done enough justice to its grandiloquent title. Gandhi’s unstinted loyalty to Hindu faith is prominently described, and this steadfast relationship is alleged to be the reason behind his allegiance to many of the religion’s outdated practices such as the caste system. Being a religious man himself, he allowed rival faiths to also enjoy the unquestioned loyalty from their adherents. A good part of the book examines his relations with Muslims, which appear to be non-committal in nature regarding expressing an opinion on its nature. The author seems to belong to the progressive section among the community; Gandhi always sided with the traditionalists and kept the progressives at an arm’s length. The progressives returned the favour. However, this inner tension is not covered in this book which should have been its prime reason for existence. The author also informs on some of the quirks of the great man. His experiments to test his ‘brahmacharya’ were notorious, but Gandhi stuck to it with a clear conscience. It is noted that Mira behn decorated Gandhi’s room to which he retired after a hectic day in Wardha ashram. Kasturba’s room was next to Gandhi’s (p.122). It is odd to observe that one who tried experiments by sleeping with other women to test his will and power of abstinence did not try it with one’s own wife!
The book is recommended even though it is very tiring for most readers.
Rating: 2 Star
