Prema Jayakumar

One cannot write a column on the first of October and ignore the importance of the day that follows. Say what you may, Gandhiji still stays in the psyche of the nation, a reminder, an irritant, a point of reference.
You may reduce him to a statue and enclose him in marble mausoleums and glass cases, offer him flowers and ritual worship and try to reduce the man to a deity. Yet the man has a way of coming alive at expected (birthdays, death anniversaries, seminars et al) and unexpected times, proving himself relevant in a world that he would have been hard put to recognize. You may dust off the brooms and buckets and go through a ritual cleaning of whatever slum has been designated in a ridiculous exercise in public relations in his name. But even that somehow fails to make him ridiculous. What is it that makes Mahatma Gandhi still a standard of reference so many years after he died and the world has gone through such rapid changes?
He had a simplicity of thought that cut straight through to the heart of any problem. He had wit, not in the sense of humour, though he had that in abundance too, but in the sense of its original idea of understanding, of comprehension. His speeches and writings show this. He was no orator, moving crowds through his eloquence. He did not speak in poetic metaphor and polished periods like other political leaders. His language followed his thought, reducing knotty problems and political conundrums to simple questions that could be answered. Since he did not speak in flourishes, he learnt to say more with fewer words, and those easily understood by anyone. This is what enabled him to take on the mightiest empire of the time with two symbols that the most ignorant of his people could understand and relate to – common salt and the spinning wheel. Two great needs of any human being, rights that enabled the dignity of human life – food and clothing.
He certainly lived upto Whitman’s lines on the man of contradictions – he contained multitudes. He contradicted himself, corrected himself, set new paths for himself, reinvented himself without embarrassment. He was sure that freedom for a man or a country ‘is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.’ He was sure that he would live down the prejudices of his times regarding caste, purity, the uncleanness of certain occupations. He said that he would not ‘let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.’ And yet, he was full of prejudices himself. He was strongly prejudiced against English education, denying it to his children, against non-vegetarian food, not letting Kasturba have it even if her life was in danger without its nutrition. But the fact that he does not claim to be above human mistakes makes it easier to forget these. It is the largeness of ideas that embraces mistakes as well as certainties that makes the thought of Mahatma Gandhi relevant to us as well. The simplicity of thought and speech has given us those sentences that still echo from time to time when human greed brings tragedy. He had warned us then that the earth provides enough only to satisfy every man’s needs but not every man’s greed. He had, had the vision to see that ‘small is beautiful’ before it became an advertising slogan.
I have never revered him as the generation before me did. In fact many of his attitudes have made my reactions to him conflicted. But through it all, the greatness of his vision, his simplicity, cuts through. And the sense of humour that can laugh at anything. The image that remains in my mind’s eye (in spite of Ben Kingsley) is from a documentary, an image of Gandhiji on his voyage to England sharing a smile of pure mischief with a child. They reflect each other’s expression, both toothless, both with eyes brimming over with innocent mischief.
That look makes it believable that he did make those famous quips. You know, when asked what he thought of the Western civilization, he replied that he thought it would be a good idea, reminding the questioner that India had a civilization that had endured long. And when questioned about whether he was embarrassed about wearing so little when dining with the King, he said that the King was wearing enough for the two of them!