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Gandhi - The Eternal Flame

It is now 50 years since India won its independence and almost the same time since the Father of the Nation departed. Much of what Gandhi did has been compiled in his Collective Works. There is a growing feeling that he and his economic philosophy are becoming more and more irrelevant to the needs of a progressive new world.

It is true but many people think that the Mahatma and his views against the machine and wanted India to adapt to charkha or the spinning wheel as its symbol. This they feel makes him quite irrelevant considering the impact that science and technology have had on the rest of the world, including the so called third world.


If this was indeed the case and the spinning wheel is the only legacy of Gandhi, then may be they are right too. But is this his only, or even his main, legacy? Is Gandhi minus the spinning wheel nothing?


In a way, yes but that is only if the spinning wheel is taken as a mere machine. For Gandhi it was more than that; it was a symbol. For Gandhi symbols were important; so much so that many of them became part of his very being. Like shedding his upper garments (for identification with the poor) or his vows of celibacy or the selling of a handful of salt at Dandi. For many people Gandhi has become irrelevant because they have forgotten, or not cared to know, the truth behind these symbols. In fact it is people who care more for the symbols than for the truth behind them that have made Gandhi irrelevant.


It is my firm view that only if we care to find out the true meaning behind the symbols that we can understand the true Gandhi; it is only then that we can find solutions to many of our present day problems.


It is a well known fact that Gandhi called the Sabarmati Central Jail his other ashram. What is not so well known is the fact that he believed that jail conditions be accepted as suffering for truth. In that case we shall never weary of jail going. He wrote when the whole of India has learnt this lesson, India shall be free.


On the eve of the independence of the country, he was in Calcutta calming down the communal frenzy that was gripping the city. It was then that the new Bengal cabinet came to seek his blessings. Warning them of the corrupting influence of power, he advised them to be humble, forbearing and ceaselessly strive for truth and non-violence. He went on: This is a testing time for you and now is the real test: do not be trapped by power and the pomp and show that goes with it. Do not forget that power is for the service of the poor folk in the villages. One wonders how many remember this message now though, if anything, it is even more relevant now than it was at that time!


Gandhi often said that his sayings and words should be burnt at his pyre and his life should be allowed to be his message. What did he do with the donations that he got? Once he was traveling for the Congress Session to Calcutta. Everywhere the train stopped on the way, the multitudes greeted him. He spread out his palm before them for donations and all of them for donations and all of them, according to their mite, contributed, some as low as an anna or two (an anna was equivalent to four paise).


On the way, in between stations, he would meticulously make an account of all the donations received-sometime these would number more than 5000 during the course of a single journey-writing them down on the backs of envelopes or any other paper that he had. During this Calcutta trip too he collected a lot of such donations. As soon as the train reached Howrah station, he summoned, from out of the rush assembled there, Dr B.C.Roy (later to be Chief Minster of West Bengal) and asked him to take charge of the cash as also the various sundry slips of paper on which he had written the accounts.


What Dr Roy suggested that he would do so after the public reception that had been arranged outside the station, Gandhi would have none of it. First the public account and then anything else. It was only after every paisa was account and then anything else. It was only after every paisa was accounted for in the books of the West Bengal Congress Committee that B.C.Roy was allowed to attend the public functions.


It was early days for Gandhi in India after his last return from South Africa. He had set up an ashram near Ahmedabad on the lines of the ashrams that he had started in South Africa. Unlike Africa, where he had the support of rich Indian expatriates, his source of funds soon dried up. Situation came when his financial position was so precarious that he had no option but to wind up the ashram.


Most of the luggage and other items had been packed up and dispatched; now he awaited the car that would take him to his new home. Suddenly a black car drove in a and out stepped a diminutive dhoti clad person. He walked to the Mahatma and bent low before him. When he straightened up, Gandhi found a wad of notes at his feet. Even before he picked up the money, the diminutive character got into his car and drove away after telling the Mahatma that running the ashram was more important than many other things that he could do with the money.


Gandhi immediately accept the gift, got it entered in the ashram accounts and the ashram was again in business. How would you classify this gift? A bribe? A donation? It became a donation the moment Gandhi got it entered in the accounts of the Ashram. Till then it could be anything, even a bribe! I’m saying this because the identity of the anonymous donor is now known: he was none other than industrialist Jamnalal Bajaj.


Most of what Gandhi said or did has relevance today especially his views on what true freedom means. For Gandhi political freedom alone was no the swarajya of his drams. In his poorna swarajya resolution moved on January 26, 1930 at the Lahore session, freedom meant freedom from want.


Look at the sort of people that Gandhi was able to discover; from nowhere he would conjure a leader. From the Hindus and from the Muslims, from the upper and the lower castes, from the poor and from the affluent, from the north and from the south.


While many today still remember Gandhi fondly, what we have forgotten is his use of symbols. Injustice exists as much today as it did in the time of Gandhi; what we have forgotten is the way Gandhi countered it. That is the true significance of his smilingly going to jail. Or his spinning of the wheel in the face of the gravest crisis. Or his hours of silence or his fasts or even his humility. Understand now why he got out of the train to get a cup of tea for his sleeping mate? Or why he gave his commode to Nehru when he joined him for a few days at Noakhali even through he himself found it difficult to squat? Or why he took off his leather chappals when he got out of the train in Noakhali and decided to complete the tour barefoot?


It is true that much of Gandhi’s symbolism came out of genuine conviction and belief but is it also true that he clung to the symbol as much as he did to the belief that gave rise to it. It is also true that we in India cling to many of his symbols without believing in anything deeper. Still, the fact that we have given up many if not most of the symbols of his era is symptomatic of our drift. If nothing else, let us at least revive some of the symbols of his age.



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