The Paradoxical Mahatma

Gandhi is a man of paradoxes. It is easy to find mistakes and inaccuracies with Gandhi. His inconsistencies are part of his evolving and shifting self-concept, says a well-known Gandhian, Sunil P Ilayidom. He elucidates it with anecdotes and examples from the life of the Mahatma. Gandhi was against writing letters, for him it took away the human warmth of meeting someone personally; but Gandhi was someone who wrote thousands of letters in his life, numbers say that he wrote about 1,08,000 letters in his lifetime. Gandhi was against Railways, according to him trains would take away the serenity of Indian countryside and villages; but Gandhiji was a regular train traveler. He did not appreciate women participating in public life; but it was in his time women felt most comfortable to make their presence felt in public life and affairs. Gandhi kept shifting, changing, and evolving. Gandhi himself has said that if I have given different opinions about one thing in different times, take what I said last as my opinion; which is also an indication that it could still change.

His inconsistencies were part of his search for truth. Being honest to truth is to have the courage to time-to-time look at realities face to face, and call out aloud what you see, what you hear, and what you decipher. In life, sociological and religious compulsion to repeat forever only what you have seen and said already is against education and modernity. Gandhi, though determined, wasn’t stubborn. Many in the left and subaltern intellectual spectrum have less appreciation for Gandhi; they claim that Gandhi did not do enough to annihilate caste and untouchability and the like. Of course, there were serious difference of opinion between Dr BR Ambedkar and Gandhiji. When Gandhi was organising and consolidating the population of the entire India against the mighty British, Ambedkar felt that the casteless ones were not even counted or belonging to the country that Gandhi is struggling to free. It is not only Gandhi, every Indian and India as a whole live in these kinds of paradoxes, for we are so very plural.

The Conquest of Fear

‘Cowards can never be moral; fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality’, stated Gandhi, of course, inspired by the scriptures. In this country of self-suppression and timidity, almost bordering on cowardice, how did Gandhi become so fearless, that even his own people could not defeat him? His earlier life demonstrated a very nervous and shy Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi was so weak physically and in terms of willpower. In his writings he says, he was afraid when he saw a football; he was convinced that if he ran into kick it he would fall. The first court case he fought at Mumbai was an easy one; he only had to read out a rule and seek the judge to give justice. He took the book in his hand and he could not complete the reading. His assistant read the passage and the case was over.

The frightened and the mediocre, if opposed quits, runs away, hides, gets de- pressed, lashes out in anger, takes revenge, etc. How did Gandhi acquire the courage and will power that he possessed; his adherence to truth and non-violence may be the key. Gandhi told us that fearless resistance is possible when we are confident that we fight injustice, and do so without using violence, and with truth. The stamp of violence on our body is ineffaceable. Gandhi warned us that the power of violence over human beings must not be underrated. It is not a weapon that we can pick up and discard at will. When violence holds individuals and groups in thrall, moral disintegration follows. We can hardly conquer fear when our bodies and our souls have been tarnished by the violent unprincipled politics.

Truth and non-violence helps one to have a mind of one’s own; and it is a rare asset today. Those who speak up their mind, especially when he/she is alone or part of a minority, is even rarer. Gandhi has shown the way, and he has influenced leaders across the globe in the past and in the present. Vivek Ramaswamy, in his political campaigning told a young soul, if you are the only person in a room, be it a class room, a meeting room, or a recreation room; and you happen to be the only person who believes what you do or what you think, you have an obligation, now more than ever, to stand up and speak up, or it will be missed forever. And often enough, when you do that, the reality is that, you are not the only per- son in that room who believed what you believed, who wanted to do the way you are doing it. Your courage and clarity makes others come out of their closet too. If fear is infectious, courage is contagious.

Means Is Everything

Gandhi, arguably, wore the most embarrassing outfit as a public leader of the modern India. As an educated and as a young barrister in South Africa he was very well dressed. He even had different attire for office, evening visits, and for home. When he returned to India and began his political involvement, he decided to give up that elaborate dressing and began to dress and go about very modestly; wearing only a dhoti and a shawl. He had categorically stated, “As the means, so the end”.

Nobody knows the end. In Gandhi’s view, the only thing that is certain and under our control is the means. What we can correct, improve and put in place is the means that we employ to arrive. Gandhi did not agree with those who said, ‘means is after all means’; for Gandhi, ‘means was everything’. Whatever end we may envisage and desire, the maximum in our power to do is the means; let that be just, fair, and non-exploitative. Did his dhoti and shawl solve any pressing problems of poverty and environment? No one knows. But his means to it was just, fair, and non-exploitative. It is easy to be carried away by the end, and by many fast and furious means to that end. I have two enemies said Mahatma, one is the British Empire, and the other is a man called, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He eventually won over the British Empire, the other he died fighting.

“The light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere,” stated an overwrought Nehru on radio when he announced to his country the death of a man into whose feeble body an assassin, crazed by the excesses of his ideology, had pumped three bullets. The country mourned and the world wept. And Albert Einstein said movingly, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked the earth."

Written as TOGETHER editorial.

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