Realisation and Independence

 

It is very difficult to think about Independence Day, without thinking about Gandhi.

It is not that he alone was responsible for the Independence.  There were very many before him who had sworn the seeds, nurtured it and even went unnoticed and unsung.  There were millions who travelled along with him.  Some of them were known, many, as usual as it happens in such mass movements, have remained mere numbers.  There were several youngsters, during his lifetime itself, who worked in different directions, but towards the same goal. 

Independence from the British was a consequence of the collective efforts of all these persons.

The pulverizing of Great Britain during the Second World War might have fastened the exit of the British.  It was inevitable even otherwise.  Rajaji famously said that the British decided to hand over power because they knew that otherwise they would not have had any power to hand over.

Gandhi had however himself accepted that a non-violent struggle or a passive resistance could have had no effect, if it had been against another power like France.  It could work because the British were conscious of their image.

And the Gandhian movement, essentially was focused on making the English man feel that he was in the wrong.

Gandhi’s employment of passive resistance was directly downloaded from the Bible.  It was superimposed upon the Gita, as per his own interpretation.  That is why he said that if he did not have the Gita, he would prefer to have the Sermons on the Mount.

When there were so many others involved in the freedom struggle, why then is it that we are forced to focus on the half-naked fakir?

It is because he comes to epitomize the best possible political figure that our culture could throw up.  He is a symbol of very many great qualities, which we even shudder to think of.  Even discounting some of his human frailties, he remains unsurpassed in his stature so far.

Apart from the great regard that a sensitive and cultured person like Tagore had for him, the appreciation he was able to receive from the greats like Einstein and G B Shaw, it is the reverence he drew from a person like Vinobhaji that makes me feel his greatness all the more.  Those who have known the personality of Vinobha ji can alone be able to appreciate this. Gandhi himself called Vinobhaji his spiritual heir.  He also said that he was his Guru who had come in the guise of his disciple.

The leftists (to some extent Nehru also included in that group), those like Ambedkar (including Periyar), those opposed to passive resistance (Bose, Bhagat Singh, Sri Aurobindo), the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha were all opposed to Gandhi.  Every group had their own reasons.  Gandhi was at the center of all this.

Without that central point, the other points could not have had a connecting link.  That is the crucial role that Gandhi played.  He was not the point of compromise.  He was the point at which the extremes could come to some point of reconciliation.

And yet, the point was pecked at a very tall place.  The standards that could not be met by any other person, then nor since, in public life. The transparency that he maintained was saint like. Not that of the present-day saints.

The pangs that the man suffered, every moment of his life, till his very death, have been recorded in detail.  First by himself, in his ‘My Experiments with Truth', then by his Personal Assistants, Shri. Mahaev Desai first and then by Pyarelal and Kalyanam.  Apart from that, there are very many anecdotes, interviews and his own prolific writings and speeches.  Each one of them give an insight into the turmoil his mind was going through, in search of Truth and to gain self-rule through self-respect, for the Indian masses.  He was essentially a spiritualist, a communist and also tried to hang on to his roots, which were to some extent fundamental. Some of his most intimate turmoils have been recorded in his letters to C.F. Andrews. 

The present generation has to at least occasionally try to go through these, to understand, what a turbulent life he had led to reach where he had.

And then, one will be forced to understand that we have not come across another such person and is not possible in the near future.  

He was a person who could get the participation of the masses, without giving them any promise.  Particularly, no promise of wealth or power.  If at all he promised, it was only that they were to suffer and without any outer limit.  And in spite of that, if people gathered in huge numbers to participate in his passive resistance, the magnetism of the man speaks for itself.

Passive resistance, he had defined again and again.  It was no substitute to weakness or cowardice.  It was being able to be above them.  He himself was acutely aware that the majority of the masses were of course not above that.  Yet, he continued with his struggle.  ‘Walk alone’ was the command he got from his poet-philosopher-friend.

And, indeed, in spite of being surrounded by a mass of people, he was all alone.

And those who still claim that even without him, we would have gained our freedom, are like those who would say that a wheel can still run without an axle.

When the social fabric is under threat, now one by one of those different strands which were opposed to his position have started to find how much his stand is vindicated.  Now, we are forced to go back to him to retain whatever we have gained so far.

Better late than never.  Otherwise, we will be sucked into the abyss, never to return.