Yesterday
night I had terrific fever. With jitters
and cold shivers. Never in memory I had such seizures. Then after I took some medicines with hot
water and went back to bed, even as the fever was raging, some thoughts were
reeling in the mind.
Now, felt that those should be
recorded, because, perhaps they came from deep within.
Though I have had great regards for
Gandhi, with passing time, I had felt drawn away from his activism. It was less spiritual I had felt.
There is an instance reported in the
life of Ramana Maharshi. Gandhi had come
to the foot hills of Arunachala for a Conference. People around the Maharshi tell him that
efforts were on to bring Gandhi to the Maharshi. Maharshi is said to have stated that ‘I do
not think that they will allow him to come here’. This has been interpreted by some as a
reference to Rajaji who was a Vaishnavite and Gandhi also being a Vaishnavite
and therefore Rajaji was the person whom Maharshi refered to as ‘They’, because
Maharshi was a strong Saivaite.
But this interpretation does not
appear to be plausible because, if Maharshi had decided to draw some one to
him, whether Vaishnavite, Muslim or a Christian, he could have done it. For his stature Rajaji was nothing. That the interpretation is flawed could be
observed from another statement of Maharshi regarding Gandhi wherein he says,
‘he is like the Anchaneya, he is doing his work’. That puts it in perspective, that Gandhi was
destined for Karma yoga and the Jnana Yoga path of the Maharshi was not
prescribed for him.
Maharshi who underwent operations for
his Cancer, without anesthesia, is reported to have wept day long hearing the
AIR, on assassination of Gandhi. For
whom was he weeping?
Gandhi, who accomplished a tremendous
task by putting to rest riots in Bengal, at the time of declaration of
Independence, certified by Mountbatten as a ‘One man army, who achieved what
the entire Indian Army could not achieve in the North West Frontier Province’,
was on his way to Lahore, when he halted at Delhi. But by then he had already
understood that he had become a liability to his own Comrades in the
Congress. In his Delhi Diary, somewhere
in January 1948, he writes, ‘I feel I have become a back number’. For someone who wanted to live upto 125
years, death was being awaited as a relief.
Gandhi was disliked by many. The
Hindhu mahasabha, Muslims, Christians, SC/ST, Communists, and very secretly by
the top brass of the Congress itself. The British Government was also wary that
he may object to the Partition plan. But with all his collegues, separately
agreeing for it, he had already lost his moral strength.
And Jiddu Krishnamurthy rightly said,
‘we killed him’.
But assassination of the same person
was to continue. Those who opposed him
on ideologies, put the blame for everything on him. At the same time, Congress,
which officially subscribed to his views, did every thing possible to
annihilate his theories or dreams.
Now, after decades, when the social
fabric of the Country is under great threat, all those who had ideologically
opposed Gandhi, now try find his support for the furtherance of their
ideologies. Now the Communist, the
Clergy of other communities, and even the right wing of the Hindutva brand,
quote him and feel that only from that Co-ordinate they will be able to move
further.
Gandhi’s heart is poured out
not in the ‘Harijan’, or ‘Young India’, they are political and social. His personal feelings could be seen in his
letters to C.F.Andrews.
All those oppose him, have only
to think for a single moment, what pains and pangs that person had under gone
and whether any one of us will be willing to undertake such an ordeal even to
the extent of 1%.
Now, what happened to Gandhi
during the Congress rule is about to happen to Vivekananda also.
There was a young, sharp,
extremely intelligent, courageous, logical minded person, who was bound hand
and foot by his master and made to toil, with the keys safely kept away
secretly, to be given to him, only after the given task was finished.
The youngster who wanted to
escape to the Himalayas and spend time in silent meditation, was thrown on the
streets. He had to go like a nomad, city
to city, village to village. Born like a
prince, he had to live the life of a pauper. And as in the case of Gandhi, in
the case of Vivekananda also, his speeches are motivational, giving courage to
the people who had been enslaved for centuries and had lost their
moorings. He asked them, ‘do you realize
that descendents of Great Sages and Rishis had become next door neighbors to
bruts and scoundrels; does that make you loose your sleep, does it make your
blood boil, does it make you go without food, then you are on the first step of
Patriotism’. What a passion he had for
the downtrodden?
Yet his feelings were reserved
for private letters.
He continued to work, with
gnawing pain in his heart. He was a
Communist to the truest sense. It is not that only Marx, Engels, Mao or Fidel
Castro are Communists. A Communist is
the one who feels for the lowly and exploited.
But due to his Saffron clad
image, he has been taken over by the Hindutva brigade. However, what he stood for, what he felt, are
seldom understood.
He was the co-ordinate prior to
Gandhi. From him flowed people of action
like Sri Aurobindo, Nethaji Subash Chandra Bose, Pasum Pon Muthu Ramalingam and
even Gandhi to some extent.
From him also the elevation to
Sri Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Himalayan Saints and so on.
But he is distorted, half
quoted and portrayed in such a different light that what the ‘once upon a time
opponents of Gandhi’ feel now, will be felt of Vivekananda also, much later.
