Autumn 2010

Gandhi's Invisible Hands

by Ian Desai

Behind the rise of Mahatma Gandhi was a little-recognized team of followers he carefully recruited including his secretary, Mahadev Desai, pictured at his desk in 1940.

On September 4, 1915, in the sticky heat of late summer, Mahadev Desai and Narahari Parikh walked without speaking along the Sabarmati River, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, a city in northwestern India. Desai and Parikh were best friends who shared everything, so the silence between them was uncharacteristic. Their day, however, had been highly unusual, and they were both lost in reflection on what had transpired. When they reached the Ellis Bridge, which spanned the surging waters of the Sabarmati and supported a steady flow of carriage, mule, foot, and, occasionally, car traffic from the bustling city, they stopped and faced each other. They were both thinking about a meeting they had had a few hours earlier with a 46-year-old lawyer who had recently returned to India after living for two decades in South Africa.

Desai finally broke their prolonged silence: “Narahari, I have half a mind to go and sit at the feet of this man.” This statement, in which Desai contemplated abandoning his nascent legal career in order to devote himself to the service of someone he had met for the first time that day, changed the course of his life. It also helped change the course of history for a colonized nation seeking freedom and its entrenched imperial rulers. With these words, the 23-year-old Desai began a journey that would produce one of the most important partnerships the modern world has known. The lawyer they had met had extraordinary ambitions that were growing by the day, and he had started to assemble a team of gifted individuals to help him achieve his visions. That lawyer’s name was Mohandas Gandhi, and in Mahadev Desai the future Mahatma had found a crucial partner for his historic cause.

In March 2005 I was in Ahmedabad, now a major industrial metropolis. It had not rained for nine months, and the temperature hovered above 100 degrees. Although the room I was in felt like an oven, it happened to be a library housed in a museum on the site of Gandhi’s former residence, the Satyagraha Ashram. Wiping my hands clean, I reached for a book from the rusting metal case in front of me. Gently brushing off dust, cobwebs, and an insect from the surface of the volume, I opened it and examined the elegant signature on the inside cover identifying its owner as “Mahadev Desai.” What the signature didn’t tell me was that this book, along with several thousand others, was read, used, and shared jointly by Desai (no relation to me) and his boss, Mahatma Gandhi.

As I explored the old, dust-caked books in this startling collection over the following weeks, months, and years, a story of Gandhi’s life and work unfolded before me that diverged from the accounts I knew. The very presence of such a substantial collection of books in proximity to Gandhi—who famously espoused a philosophy of non-possession—suggested that the image of simplicity and detachment long associated with the Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” was misleading: There was clearly a hidden degree of complexity to Gandhi’s life.

From the heart of this library, I began to learn that the common conception of Gandhi as a solitary, saintly hero who stood up to the British Empire and led India toward independence was incomplete. Gandhi was actually an energetic and effective director of one of the 20th century’s most innovative social enterprises. He was, in essence, an exceptional entrepreneur who relied on a tight-knit community of coworkers—and an extensive store of intellectual resources—to support him and his work.

The origins of Gandhi’s enterprise stretch back into the 19th century, well before he became known as the Mahatma. Gandhi was born in 1869 in Porbandar, a city on the Kathiawar Peninsula in Gujarat Province, facing the Arabian Sea, 250 miles west of Ahmedabad. The youngest child of a successful political administrator, Gandhi grew up in a part of India shaped by a rich tradition of cross-cultural exchange. Despite being a shy and diffident student, the young Gandhi made a dramatic decision to leave his homeland and seek his future abroad by enrolling in a law program in London in 1888. Almost immediately following his return to India three years later, he accepted a job as a lawyer for a Gujarati trading firm in South Africa.

At the turn of the 20th century, South Africa was home to a sizable population of Indian immigrants, primarily indentured laborers, who were often treated as second-class citizens. Accustomed to respectful race relations from his time in London, Gandhi was startled and outraged by the racial discrimination he experienced and witnessed while living in South Africa. He resolved to fight the racial injustices around him, and by the time he finally moved back to India in 1915, two decades later, he had transformed himself from a relatively unknown provincial barrister into a political powerhouse and social reformer with an international reputation.

It was during a campaign for the rights of the Indian community in South Africa that Gandhi first came to rely on the support of a cohort of eccentric and talented men and women. Most of these collaborators—who were of both Indian and European backgrounds—were volunteers, and were housed at Gandhi’s two experimental communities in South Africa, the Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm. These institutions, loosely based on ancient Indian religious communities called ashrams, became the headquarters for Gandhi’s activism, which was based on his philosophy of Satyagraha, or “truth force,” and its attendant practice of civil disobedience.

Gandhi’s collaborators not only assisted him with the practical elements of his political campaigns and residential communities; they also served as his intellectual companions and introduced him to the writings of a variety of authors. Although he was busy juggling his legal career and increasingly high-profile political work, Gandhi took advantage of his frequent travels around South Africa to immerse himself in books on religious history, literature, politics, and other subjects of interest to him.

Though philosophically he disavowed material possessions, Gandhi became a savvy and serial collector of books and people. When he returned to India, he brought a number of his coworkers from South Africa with him as well as almost 10,000 books and pamphlets. Once in India, he chose a secluded spot outside Ahmedabad on the banks of the Sabarmati River as the site of a new ashram. The Satyagraha Ashram quickly became the focal point of Gandhi’s social and political endeavors around India and a hub for his burgeoning community of coworkers.

Gandhi’s nephew Maganlal had been a linchpin of his communities in South Africa, and he continued to serve as a foreman of sorts for Gandhi in India, leading his experiments in agriculture and other fields involving physical work that were key components of his ideal of self-sufficient living. Yet Gandhi still needed someone who could match his tremendous intellectual, social, and spiritual capacities, who would work for him and sustain his causes. He found such a person later that year, when he met Desai. Despite the rapport immediately felt on both sides, Gandhi instructed the young man to wait a year before joining his movement: The work he was about to start would be all-consuming.

Desai officially joined Gandhi in 1917, fulfilling the vision of his future he had first shared with Narahari Parikh on their walk by the Sabarmati River. From the outset, Desai’s daily routine was grueling. He woke before Gandhi arose at 4 am in order to work on the Mahatma’s schedule and make other preparations. He was by Gandhi’s side throughout the day, taking notes on his meetings and various activities and helping him draft correspondence and articles. (Desai’s son Narayan, who grew up working with Gandhi and his father, recalled a number of occasions when Gandhi had only one change to make to Desai’s articles: He replaced Desai’s authorial initials, M.D., with his own, M.K.G.) Finally, after Gandhi had retired, Desai wrote a diary account of the Mahatma’s day so that no important detail went unrecorded.

In addition to Desai, who performed his role under the title of personal secretary, and Gandhi’s family members—especially his wife, Kasturbai—the Mahatma’s inner circle in India came to include a second secretary named Pyarelal; an English admiral’s daughter who abandoned life in Britain to live in the austere environment of Gandhi’s community after reading a biography of the Mahatma; and Columbia University–trained economist J. C. Kumarappa, among others. As many as 200 people lived with Gandhi at the Satyagraha Ashram at the institution’s zenith.

Ever since reading Unto This Last, John Ruskin’s 1877 paean to the dignity of manual labor, in South Africa, Gandhi had had a credo to match his Victorian attitude of industriousness. Accordingly, he transformed his ashram into a workshop where each member engaged in substantial amounts of communal service, from working in the community’s kitchen to teaching in the ashram school to cleaning the shared latrines. The latter task was one of Gandhi’s favorite chores, both to do himself and to assign to others. He saw a person’s readiness to clean latrines, a major taboo in India, as an indication of a willingness to transgress deeply embedded social values in service of his movement’s larger ideals.

This regimen underscored Gandhi’s central philosophical tenet: For India to achieve true independence, it needed a widespread ethos of service. More than political freedom from the British, independence to Gandhi implied the ability of a society’s system of self-governance to serve the interest of its citizens completely and without corruption. Gandhi was determined to show India (and the British) exactly what he meant by such service. A demonstration of selflessness and self-sufficiency, then, was the first crucial responsibility of Gandhi’s enterprise. However, given the nature of his social and political campaigns, it was by no means the only one.

Of all the political events in Gandhi’s life, perhaps none is more famous than the Salt March of 1930. That theatrical act of defiance—in protest of the heavy tax on salt imposed by the British in India—catapulted Gandhi to new heights in his political career, as the image of this frail individual challenging a mighty empire captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of people around the world.

Yet like many popular conceptions of Gandhi, this image is incomplete. Absent are the 78 members of the Satyagraha Ashram who accompanied him on his march, as well as numerous aides, lieutenants, and volunteers who worked behind the scenes to stage the historic event. There would have been no Salt March, no iconic Gandhi images, without them.

A month before the march, Gandhi’s colleague Vallabhbhai Patel led a team that canvassed arid Gujarat Province to determine the best route. Chief among their considerations were the route’s proximity to salt deposits and to towns where local government officials would be likely to resign their posts on Gandhi’s arrival in support of the protest, as well as easy access for the news media so that it could report on the march’s progress. Gandhi had become a master of employing media coverage to make his efforts successful, and he and his team orchestrated the march so that it would be a sustained media event. They plotted a trail for a three-week trek from Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad south toward the Arabian Sea, paralleling the railway line, which would be the primary means for maintaining communication—by both post and messengers—between the marchers and the ashram headquarters, as well as the conduit for the media covering the march.

Meanwhile, at the Satyagraha Ashram, Gandhi’s secretariat was busy marshaling evidence demonstrating the link between the salt tax and the degradation of Indian society, and publishing it in Gandhi’s weekly journals Young India and Navajivan, where the arguments could be picked up by mainstream media outlets. Parikh and Desai scoured the vast print resources in the ashram—not only Desai’s personal library, but the main library, which housed the thousands of books that Gandhi had brought back from South Africa—for statistics about salt and the Salt Act. Desai used these figures in articles in Young India as well as in Gandhi’s communications with the imperial government and the speeches he helped Gandhi draft. Gandhi himself contributed to the information-gathering efforts, urging associates to send him publications and other sources of information on salt and related subjects.

Gandhi’s personal accounts and other articles from the Salt March and Desai’s pieces in Young India and Navajivan detailing the narrative drama of the march, along with reports and photographs in the mainstream news media,put the Mahatma and his cause before a growing audience in India and around the world. Yet the organizational sophistication behind Gandhi’s dramatic march never got a mention in the headlines the enterprise worked so hard to produce. Its invisibility was partly by design: By effacing their own efforts, Gandhi’s associates reinforced his image as a simple and self-reliant crusader.

While most traces of Gandhi’s enterprise were indeed erased from the historical record, Mahadev Desai’s library is a notable exception. Gandhi’s team compiled and utilized an extensive variety of intellectual resources to support the Mahatma’s mission. Desai was the heart of this intellectual operation, helping Gandhi refine his philosophy over the course of his career and providing him with concrete information to use in his ideological struggle with British imperialism.

As I studied Desai’s library, it became clear to me why these books were important to Gandhi: If you were living in the first part of the 20th century and your goal was to oust the Raj from India and establish swaraj, or self-rule, on a national scale, these would be the books you would want on your shelves.

Desai’s library covers almost the full spectrum of human topics, and the books in it were used as general references on particular subjects as well as sources for specific facts. First are books that represent the collective knowledge the British had amassed about India since the beginning of their engagement with the subcontinent in the 17th century. The second category of material comprises volumes that convey Britons’ knowledge about their own society and history. Understanding how the British understood India as well as how the British understood themselves was a vital component of Gandhi’s strategy. A third category within Desai’s library embraces thousands of works that might come under the heading of “indigenous knowledge”: by Indians, for Indians, and about India. These books were especially relevant to Gandhi’s mission of building a self-sustaining and self-governing Indian nation in the wake of imperial rule.

Rounding out the collection is a dizzying assortment of books on subjects close to the heart of Gandhi’s work: imperialism and counter-imperialism, health and nutrition, education, religion, literature, philosophy, economics, and world history. Scanning the shelves of Desai’s library, I picked out works as diverse as the writings of Winston Churchill, the plays of William Shakespeare (in a beautiful miniature vellum set), the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vincent Smith’s History of India (1907), Reynold Nicholson’s Mystics of Islam (1914), and William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience (1911) alongside titles such as R. D. Ranade’s A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy: Being a Systematic Introduction to Indian Metaphysics (1926), Tulsidas’s version of The Ramayana (in an edition published in 1922), and S. R. Narayana Ayyar’s Experiments in Bee-Culture (1938).

Once I grasped the scope of the collection before me, I was puzzled by two questions: When did Desai and Gandhi have time to read all of these books, and how did they get them in the first place?

The answers to both questions were, in fact, inside the books themselves. A variety of dedications from friends and admirers in India and around the world, stamps of Indian and British booksellers, and other notations revealed a staggering number of sources. These books were the fruits of the transnational intellectual network in which Gandhi and company were active participants.

Still, what good is a great library if its contents are never consulted? Given how little free time Desai and Gandhi had, it is hard to imagine when they found the opportunity to read in this vast collection.

Two important types of evidence shed light on not only when but how these books were read. On the inside covers of hundreds of the volumes are small indigo stamps surrounded by a series of dates and signatures. These are Indian prison stamps, recording when each volume entered and exited the penitentiary. Here was the missing time needed to read so many books: when Gandhi, Desai, and their coworkers were locked in jail for acts of civil disobedience. As Gandhi himself noted, “In this world good books make up for the absence of good companions, so that all Indians, if they want to live happily in jail, should accustom themselves to reading good books.”

Because Desai, in particular, was an active reader, we can follow his progress through many of the books in his library and see how he mined these intellectual resources for material useful to Gandhi’s movement. Furthermore, writing in the margins and other parts of the books indicates that many of them were read by more than one person within Gandhi’s circle, including the Mahatma himself. Indeed, Gandhi’s political colleagues, including Vallabhbhai Patel (who became independent India’s first home minister) and Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s first prime minister), sent books to Desai while he was in one prison and they were each in another. Far from stymieing the work of Gandhi’s enterprise, by repeatedly arresting Gandhi and his coworkers the British unwittingly supported it.

In his lifetime, Gandhi was arrested 14 times on two continents. By the time of his final incarceration, in August 1942, at the start of the Quit India movement to force the British out of the subcontinent once and for all, his enterprise and stature had grown to such an extent that the British had to take special care to keep him and his assistants confined without further agitating the public. Gandhi was imprisoned along with his wife, Mahadev Desai, and several other aides in the Aga Khan Palace in the city of Pune.

The strain of organizing Quit India agitation had taken a toll on the entire group, as the demand for complete and immediate independence had brought a swift and heavy response from the British around India. Desai particularly worked himself into a frenzy of concern about the 73-year-old Gandhi’s fragile health. Nevertheless, after settling into the palace prison, Desai and Gandhi got back to their regular work routine of reading and writing. Eight days after their arrest, following a morning spent taking Gandhi’s dictation, Desai began to feel lightheaded. Within minutes he suffered a massive heart attack, and died shortly thereafter in Gandhi’s arms. Just 50 years old, he had spent half of his life serving Gandhi and his mission.

By the time Gandhi was released, in 1944, Kasturbai—his life partner and wife of 64 years—had also died. Without Kasturbai and Desai, Gandhi’s enterprise lost its twin engines, and sputtered as it tried to support the Mahatma during the dramatic run-up to independence in 1947 and the accompanying chaotic partition of the subcontinent into two countries, India and Pakistan. As tensions increased over the issue of dividing the subcontinent, Gandhi assumed the responsibility of mediating between the vying political factions while also trying to calm an increasingly anxious and aggravated citizenry. While the first part of Gandhi’s vision of swaraj was fulfilled with the peaceful transfer of power and the departure of the British, India’s political freedom did not free it from religious strife. Violent episodes of communal antagonism erupted as millions of people migrated in both directions across the new borders separating the eastern and western halves of the Muslim state of Pakistan from Hindu-majority India.

Gandhi spent most of the last part of his life—both before and after independence—traveling from one fractious part of India to the next, attempting to halt outbreaks of violence, particularly between Hindus and Muslims (and often succeeding, in ways the government could not, leading the last viceroy of British India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, to call him a “one-man boundary force”). As he walked through devastated villages, he was often physically assisted by his two grandnieces, who supported him on either side and whom he called his “two walking sticks.” Although they helped him stand until the end, his grandnieces and the other remaining members of his entourage could not replace the likes of Kasturbai and Desai, and the Mahatma’s power was accordingly diminished. The girls, Abha and Manu, were at his side when he was shot and killed in New Delhi in 1948 by a Hindu extremist who believed that Gandhi was being too conciliatory toward Muslims.

Despite the contributions of Gandhi’s enterprise to his life and work, it continues to be overlooked in both popular and academic studies of the Mahatma. Consequently, we often draw the wrong lessons from Gandhi’s story. The real magic of the Mahatma was not a trick of popular charisma, but in fact a deft ability to recruit, manage, and inspire a team of talented individuals who worked tirelessly in his service. Gandhi himself was one of the few people to recognize how this phenomenon worked. “With each day I realize more and more that my mahatmaship, which is a mere adornment, depends on others. I have shone with the glory borrowed from my innumerable co-workers,” he wrote in 1928 in Navajivan.

Recognizing this fact does not diminish the rare and valuable qualities Gandhi himself possessed. Rather, it acknowledges that great work is the product of collaborative processes, and that many hands working together toward a common purpose can achieve monumental results. In Gandhi’s case, it was the relationship between a visionary leader and the team supporting him—and their collective use of the right resources, such as the books in Mahadev Desai’s library—that paved the way for extraordinary and lasting accomplishments.

• Ian Desai is a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in South Asian studies and history at Yale. He received his doctorate from Oxford, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.

Malatidevi Choudhury: My Grandmother

Malati Choudhury (née Sen) was born in 1904 in an aristocratic Brahmo family. She had lost her father, Barrister Kumud Nath Sen, when she was only two and a half years old, and was brought up by her mother Snehalata Sen.

Malati’s family originally belonged to Kamarakhanda in Bikrampur, Dhaka, (now in Bangladesh), but her family members had settled in Simultala, Bihar. Snehalata Sen’s father was Beharilal Gupta, ICS. Ranjit Gupta, ICS, former Chief Secretary of West Bengal was Malati’s first cousin. His brother, the famous parliamentarian and former Home Minister, Indrajit Gupta is also her first cousin. Malati’s eldest brother, P. K. Sen Gupta,former Income Tax Commissioner, belonged to the Indian Revenue Service, and another brother, K. P. Sen, former Postmaster General, was from the Indian Postal Service.

(Photo on the left: On the cover of The Illustratred Weekly of India)

Being the youngest child of her parents, she was a darling of all her brothers and sister. Her mother Snehalata was a writer in her own right, and had translated some works of Tagore, as is seen from her book Jugalanjali. It is hard to believe that coming from a highly westernized and aristocratic family, Malati Choudhury could adopt a completely different life style.

(L-R P K Sen Gupta (her brother), Nabakrushna Choudhury, Surekha Sen Gupta nee Tagore (her sister-in-law and grand niece of Rabindranath Tagore), and Malatidevi Choudhury)

In an article entitled ‘Reminiscences of Santiniketan’, her mother had written: “Malati was very happy and benefited much from her residence at Viswa-Bharati as a student. The personal influence of Gurudev and his teachings, his patriotism and idealism, have influenced and guided Malati throughout her life.”

She had been fortunate enough to have been deeply influenced by both Tagore and Gandhi. It was the former at whose feet she learnt and acquired some rare values and principles of education, development, art and culture, which had been the guiding principles in her life; and it was the latter who had a magic spell on her and at whose instance she plunged herself in the freedom struggle. Malati came to Santiniketan in 1921, when she was sixteen, and lived there for a little more than six years. In those days Santiniketan was small and beautiful.

There were nine girls of her age living in the hostel called Notun Bari (new house) – Manjushree, Surekha (who later on became her sister-in-law), Eva, Satyabati, Latika, Saraju, Tapasi, Amita (mother of Professor Amartya Sen) and herself. They were attending classes in the open under the trees, learning embroidery, handicrafts, music, dancing, painting and gardening. Leonard Knight Elmhirst, an Englishman, was in charge of the Agricultural Institute at Surul in Sriniketan, and he used to encourage them in gardening.

Mr. Pearson, another Englishman, was also teaching them. It was from him that Malati got the inspiration to work for the tribals. Gurudev used to take classes on Balaka, when he was reading his poems from his book ‘Balaka’, and was explaining the same to them. Miss Stella Kramisch, who came to India at Gurudev’s invitation, taught them the principles of Indian Art and dancing. They were really happy in those days at Santiniketan.

During her stay at Santiniketan as a student, a young man from a well known family of Orissa, Nabakrushna Choudhuri, came there as a student. He came from Sabarmati Ashram at the instance of Gandhiji, to study at Santiniketan. There was also G. Ramachandran, B. Gopala Reddy, and Syed Mujtaba Ali. They are no more.

She got engaged to be married to Nabakrushna Choudhuri, and left Santiniketan in 1927. This was a turning point in her life. After her marriage, Orissa became her home and her area of activities. They settled in a small village named Anakhia, now in the Jagatsinghpur District of Orissa, where her husband started improved sugarcane cultivation. Apart from agriculture, establishing rapport with the surrounding villages was their main concern. In their concept and scheme of rural reconstruction, it is the people who were at the center of activities. Their development depended on their empowerment, which was again the result of education. They had started adult education work in the neighbouring villages.

Soon came the Salt Satyagraha, and they jumped at that. It was the greatest movement of mobilization and motivation, which were the dynamic components of adult education. During the freedom struggle they were activists using the principles of education and communication in creating a conducive environment for Satyagraha. Even as prisoners in the respective jails, they continued the educational activities like teaching fellow prisoners, organizing choral singing and disseminating Gandhiji’s teachings.

(House that Nabakrushna's father Gokulanand Choudhury built in Cuttack on the bank of Kathjodi river)

Malati Choudhury and Nabakrushna Choudhuri, in February 1933, organized the Utkal Congress Samajvadi Karmi Sangh, which later became the Orissa Provincial Branch of the All India Congress Socialist Party. After independence, Malati Choudhury got opportunities of translating her ideas into practice. As a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, and as the President of the Utkal Pradesh Congress Committee, she tried her best to emphasize the role of education and adult education in rural reconstruction.

When Nabakrushna Choudhuri became the Chief Minister of Orissa in 1951, she was assertive enough to focus the plight of the have-nots, particularly those belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Eventually she decided not to join politics, because Gandhiji had advised that all Congress activists need not join politics, but should work for and with the people with service as their goal.

(Chief minister Nabakrushna Choudhury with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru)

Gandhiji used to call her \"Tofanee\" She was Tagore's favourite \"Minu\" As a young student at Santiniketan, she was quite famous for her outgoing personality, taking active part in Gurudev’s dance dramas and music sessions, as well as initiating innocent mischiefs in the community. Proverbial courage, sheer dynamism and a strong zeal to fight for the rights of the oppressed and have-nots were the dominant features of her character. She was frank and outspoken, and was never afraid of calling a spade a spade.

In 1934, she had accompanied Gandhiji in his “padayatra” in Orissa. After a daylong walk, he was obviously too tired to visit a Harijan village which was in his itinerary. The villagers, who had waited long, were disappointed, but were prepared to forgive Gandhiji for the minor lapse. Malati Choudhury did not spare Gandhiji, and told him point blank, “Bapu, you have not done the right thing.” Gandhiji apologized, and cooled her down with his disarming smile.

Even before Independence, she had established the Bajiraut Chhatravas at Angul in Orissa in 1946, and the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, also at Angul, in 1948. The Bajiraut Chhatravas had its genesis in the Prajamandal Movement ( the resistance movement organized and sustained by the people ) and its initial activities were geared towards providing residential facilities and educational opportuinities to the children of Freedom Fighters.

(Malatidevi with Mahatma Gandhi in Noakhali, East Bengal)

Over the passage of time, there was a societal demand on the Bajiraut Chhatravas to provide educational facilities to the children belonging to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes and under-privileged sections of society coming from all over Orissa. Established in the memory of the twelve-year old boy Bajiraut, who sacrificed his life by disallowing the British forces to cross the river Brahmani by boat, the Bajiraut Chhatravas has become an institution of national importance. The Utkal Navajeevan Mandal is a voluntary organization of repute, engaged in rural development and tribal welfare in the rural and tribal areas of Orissa.

The State Resource Centre for Adult Education, which was established by the Government of India, under the auspices of the Utkal Navajeevan Mandal, at Angul in 1978, had done pioneering work in Adult Education.

Honours and Awards came to Malati Choudhury in quick succession: National Award for Child Welfare (1987), Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1988), Utkal Seva Sammaan (1994), Tagore

Literacy Award (1995), Honour by the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly (1997), Honour by the State Social Welfare Advisory Board (1997), Honour by the Rajya Mahila Commission (1997), and last but not the least, the ‘Deshikottama (D.Litt. Honoris Causa) from her Alma Mater, Viswa-Bharati.

(Malatidevi's home in the campus of Bajiraut Chhatravas, Angul)

In 1988, she refused to receive the prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Award from the hands of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, because, according to her, Rajiv Gandhi had not done anything to promote Gandhian values.

On receiving the Tagore Literacy Award given by the Indian Adult Education Association, she had said: “I feel doubly honoured to receive the Award, which is named after Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore, to commemorate his memorable achievements in bringing a synthesis among culture, music and aesthetics in evolving and practising his unique philosophy and principles of education. Like Rousseau, Gurudev did not want purposefulness, belonging to the adult mind, to be forced upon the children in school. He believed that once purposefulness was introduced, it brought torture to the child, as it went against the purpose of nature.

"According to Tagore, nature was the greatest of all teachers for the child. He had tremendous faith in the educational value of natural objects. Natural events like the beautiful sunrise and sunset, blossoming of flowers and singing of birds are the learning resources for children possessing the natural gift of learning things very easily."

"He had a great faith in the children’s natural way of learning. He did not insist on forced mental feeding as a result of which lessons become a form of torture. Gurudev considered artificial feeding of the mind to be of man’s most cruel and wasteful mistakes. According to him, the greatest possible gift for children was their own freedom to grow. Tagore also wanted the children to have another kind of freedom – the freedom of sympathy with all humanity, a freedom from all national and racial prejudices. Thus, his philosophy ofeducation is based on the ideal of the spiritual unity of all races.”

She had also said, “ Rabindranath was always following the ideal to realize, in and through education, the essential unity of man. The way in which he achieved that unity gave him a deep insight into the object of education and its problems.”

Malati Choudhury had organized the ‘Krusaka Andolana’ (Farmers Movement) as a part of the freedom struggle against the Zamindars, Landowners and Moneylenders, who were exploiting the poor. She had seen and experienced the untold sufferings of the people while walking through many villages in Orissa. She had also realized that women were victims of many superstitious beliefs, and they alone were to fight against the same for their own empowerment.

As a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, she used to feel restless, because she was not in tune with the wavelength of other members; and when Gandhiji’s famous Noakhali yatra began, she joined the same at the instance of Thakkarbappa. A dynamic person like her did not slow down her efforts after the Bajiraut Chhatravas, Utkal Navajeevan Mandal and the Postbasic School at Champatimunda, near Angul, were established. She had joined the Bhoodan Movement of Acharya Vinoba Bhave.

During the Emergency she raised her voice against the anti-people policy and oppressive measures adopted by the Government and was imprisoned. Malati Choudhury was a legendary figure. She had lived an eventful life of ninety-three years.

(Malatidevi with Naxalite leader Nagabhushan Patnaik whose death sentence she got commuted by President N Sanjeeva Reddy, who had served as office secretary of Orissa Congress when she was the state party president)

Homage and Heritage -3

Overwhelmed and humiliated, the anguished Father, bent under the infirmities of age, runs once more to their succour, even like the hen covering her brood under her wings against death. He takes his abode among the sorrowing. He faces the Fiery Ordeal again and again and works miracles. He repeats to them his lasting message: "Not through hatred and ill-will ye shall seek to avenge yourselves. 'Vengeance is mine' sayeth the Lord. Grieve not; forsake your fear; work and strive for goodwill and unity. For know ye who are afflicted, that Love exalteth, Love alone triumphs."

And he gathered them around him evening after evening as was his wont, and prayed with them for the purification of their hearts, beseeching them and admonishing them and instructing them with his words of wisdom and cheer. They gathered in the ancient city under whose precincts mighty empires lay in dust and in whose neighbourhood his Great Predecessor taught Eternal Wisdom to Man from His Chariot on the battlefield.

But so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled, and that the world's Martyrdom may attain its perfection, behold! there comes on the scene, once more, the infamous Ashvathama - the perverse Assassin of Ages, the vile Brahmarakshasa with the eternal wound on his mangled head and condemned to everlasting life of a roving ghost, - the embodiment of the accumulated evil of his race. He comes unrepentant and unrelenting, aye, even with a gusto within, for his unholy design, and accomplishes his foul deed of calculated cold murder before the eyes of a staggered multitude, to the everlasting shame and humiliation of his nation.

To Thee, Father of our Nation! we pay our grateful reverent homage. We salute Thee. We rejoice in the midst of our tears and our shame. We rejoice rather than sorrow and are grateful that the mericful Providence spared Thee to us to accomplish our deliverance, however shameful and agonizing the aftermath. We glory in Thy having walked our earth. For Thou hast given to mankind new values and compelled obeisance from a recalcitrant world by challenging it once again to measure its own stature against them. Thou art indeed in the line of Thy recurring Predecessors - the Great Saviours of mankind. Thou didst come to fulfil the Scriptures and to fulfil the pledge made in the Song Celestial:

"For the protection of the Good, for the descruction of the Wicked, and for the firm establishment of righteousness on Earth, I am born again and again."

Even so through ages hast Thou lived and laboured again and again. All Thy life didst Thou wear Thy Crown of Thorns and dist bear Thy Cross, finding life's final fulfilment in surrendering it as a ransom for our own sins and shortcomings. Greater love, indeed, hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for goodwill among his fellowmen.

We salute Thee, Father of our Nation! None that hath received Thy Light shall walk in darkness.

(End)

Swami Anand

Homage and Heritage - 2

They came from distant lands and from across the seven seas. They came from all parts of the earth. And he taught them all and made them good men and women. Even like one of his great predecessors, - The Guru Gobind - he would make the sparrow hunt down the hawk, but with a different weapon. With patient labours of a lifetime extending over half a century and spread over the entire land, he worked on his people to forge his weapon and to temper it.

Out of dross he made precious metal; out of earth-clods he made material to challenge and defy the might of an insolent empire; to whose people he bore the greatest friendship, and yet whose end he ordained, even as Krishna had ordained the end of the arrogant Jadavas. He called upon the foreigner to quit the land which he had bled white and in which he had worked much inequity.

And behold! For the first time in human history the world witnessed an epic struggle of a whole nation locked for three decades in non-violent combat with the alien rulers so that her chains should break. A saga of peaceful peasantries challenging the might of established authority, armed to the teeth, by refusing to submit to its unjust levies, inviting upon themselves untold sufferings and living under conditions of a siege till the privations turn them and their cattle white; of millions throughout the length and breadth of the country defying salt laws in the face of lathis, tear-gas, horse-hoofs; women refusing to part with their pinch of salt till their bones dislodge; men tying their own hands with iron wires to prevent slackening of their grip on raided salt; of gallant men who would be counted among the very peak of any army, offering to be beaten or pounded to death, by official myrmidons, without so much as raising their eyelids in protest; of statesmen, savants, tribunes of their own people - objects of world adoration, leaders of men and of an age, who would adorn the halls of any international assembly -- accepting cheerfully to surrender long indefinite years of their great lives to be wasted in cold, dark, solitary dungeons on a par with felons; of the nation's Bards pouring forth the agony of an age before sobbing magistrates in crowded court-rooms; of apostles who walked the land bare-foot, broadcasting the New Gospel carrying neither purse nor shoes nor yet staves, pleading guilty against their accusers and urging the courts to inflict on them maximum penalties; of wandering monks offering to starve themselves to death in protest against outraged whomanhood through long agonizing fasts without a trace of ill-will towards the guilty; of frail little men offering to lay down their lives denying themselves in their prison cells all food and water till death do deliver them, and in the meanwhile coasxing their captors to administer 'without blame' 'some suitable poison' when their sufferings did annoy them; of street urchins proudly mounting the gallows after being court-martialled for bold pranks; of village peasants naively facing military reprisals, with no better armour than plywood planks hung in front of their chests; of whole masses of unarmed, undrilled men and women flinging themselves in blind abandon against bayonets, bullets, guns and bombs.

Righteousness the world over wailed in oblivion. Untruth was in excelsis. Naked Fascism masquerading in the garb of aggrieved innocence stalked the land. It maligned virtue with impunity. Truth was lynched. The stars in high heavens wept over the inequities and the vileness of man.

And against it all, in his indiganation, the Father of the Nation lay crouched and twisted on his Bed of Fire for the tenth time, challenging his accusers from behind the prison. And his protest rang through the world pentrating the Iron Curtain. His Great Disciple, who was to him more than his own son, and 'with whom my Father is well pleased', lay in a handful of ashes at the prison corner. And the gentle Mother of the Nation was to meet her millions no more. Outside the prison raged Revolution. The Empire shook, and his mighty accusers trembled. They fell flat. Their chagrin knew no bounds.

And behold! The Titan collapsed under the weight of his own inequities.

And he quitted; but not without upholding the disruptionist who clamoured for rending his own Mother's garments. Freedom came, but Her face was ghastly. Brother flew at the throat of brother, and women wept. Millions were uprooted and flung on the roadside. Men lost all their sense and shame, and they burned and killed and perpetrated unmentionable abominations. Cities swelled with fleeing men and wailing women. They cursed and called aloud for retribution.


(More to follow)

Homage and Heritage: Swami Anand

Two thousand years ago the Prince of Peace atoned for the sins of his fellow-men on earth by mounting the Cross with words of forgiveness and love for his persecutors. And though man felt ashamed and humiliated he did not mend his ways.

The primitive man hunted for food; in the middle ages he killed for glory. The supermen of our age stalked the globe with a technique of slaughter and enslavement in the wake of greed and exploitation. The earth was rent with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Humanity lay prostrate under the agony of unnamable outrages.

In the midst of all this clash and conflict came, once more, a Wise Man from the East. Like the Good Shepherd he shouldered the ailing sheep, the insulted indentured Indian, toiling far away from home, and comforted him and his tribe. With words soothing and life-giving, he sayeth unto them: "Come ye that grieve and are heavily laden. I bring to you good tidings, --the Gospel of Resistence."

And he shepherded his flock and ministered unto them in their afflictions with tenderness and affection. He taught the worm to turn. He taught little mothers to stand upright and resist racial arrogance and insult, marching with babes in their arms and courting prisons.

He sat among overbearing foreigners and pleaded his people's cause, disarming them with his courtesy and his integrity. He evoked their sympathy with his gentle sufferings and earned a great renown.

And behold, he returns homeward to his own people and concludes with them, once more, a new Covenant: "It has been said by those of old: 'Ye resist not evil', or 'resist evil with evil'. But I say unto you, resist evil within and without you, with the whole might of your soul; resist it with Non-violence, resist it with Truth, resist it without malice. Repent ye, and do penance for your sins, collective as well as individual. Eschew all violence, eschew all hatred, shed all fear and forge yourselves into finest weapnos of resistence. You are the salt of the earth. Ye are to establish once more, by testifying to it in and with your lives in this holy land of synthesis, the supremacy of soul over matter; of God over Mammon; of service over self-interest. And ye are to carry the Gospel of this non-violent resistance to the farthest ends of the earth. In this redeeming task, he who shall lose his life shall find it, and he who shall seek to save his life shall lose it."

And he sayeth unto them again:

"Despise no man; but believe in his innate goodness. Harbour no ill-will against him; only resist the evil that has seized him. Resist and suffer cheerfully with no thought of returning evil for evil. Shun all fear. Be brave and wield the weapon of Truth and non-violence, which is Love abounding. They are but the obverse and reverse of the same coin. To me there is no God other than this. It is my sole weapon and my refuge. And know ye, that it is not the weapon of the weak. It is for the bravest. Learn ye, therefore, to wield it against all your ills. It shall sustain you against the mightiest. For it is forged on the anvil of Love that exalteth and that abideth in God."

And behold! Great multitudes followed him.

And he covered the entire land with his journeys, plying his wheel, and with its thread linked men with men, - whole masses of them.

The toilers came from their fields and spinners from their hovels; fishermen left their nets, tradesmen their counters. Rich men, encumbered with large possessions, came too, in search of solace, and he lightened their burdens. Women came resurrected and awakened to the true dignity of their state. The untouchables came with their limbs withered and their souls crushed under the weight of age-old inequities. And he ministered unto them with all the passion of his soul and made them whole. He made them God's Chosen. Came also the publicans, the hated ones -- servants of Government -- who served the alien rulers and worked against their own country for a mess of pottage. And he called upon them to repent and turned many into humble servants of the dumb millions. Lepers came and he built them shelters and himself washed their wounds. Came also the pharisees, the learned ones, negotiators and peace-mongers. And he suffered them all and treated them with unfailing patience and tenderness.

(This is the first part of an unpublished manuscript of the writings of Swami Anand, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi)

Ram and Rahim

When in 1906, young barrister Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi launched his satyagraha in South Africa against the discriminatory treatment being meted out to people of Indian origin, his chief lieutenants included Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Dalits and Christians. Among his colleagues were also Chines, British and Germans. Indeed Gandhi was a Vishwamanav (global citizen) whose quest for truth could not be constricted by the consideration of caste, creed or colour.

When he set up the Satyagraha Ashram on the bank of the Sarbarmati river in Ahmedabad a decade later, Gandhiji nominated Imam Abdul Kadir Bawazeer, a Muslim priest who had courted jail in 1910 as a Satyagrahi in South Africa, as the vice-chairman of the ashram's managing committee. Bawazeer succeeded Gandhiji's secretary Mahadev Desai as the chairman of the ashram after the latter was arrested during the Salt Satyagraha in 1930. And, when Gandhiji was arrested, he nominated 76-year-old Justice Abbas Tayyabji to lead the Salt Satyagraha.

Gandhiji's Satyagraha ashram was a global village. Its inmates included Hindus, Jains, Muslims, Parsis and Christians. Even Miraben, the youngest daughter of an admiral of the British Royal Navy, was an ashram inmate, such broad was Gandhiji's concept of universal brotherhood.

When in 2002, a group of concerned citizens gathered at the satyagraha ashram to discuss ways to promote communal harmony, it was attacked by a mob crying 'Jai Shri Ram'. A few days back, the mob that had destroyed the mausoleum of Vali Deccani, a.k.a Vali Gujarati, the great poet credited with founding the composition of shaayari, was also shouting the same very war cry of 'Jai Shri Ram'.

Gandhiji had popularized the singing of the hymn:
"Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram, Pateet Paavan Sita Ram
Eeshwar, Allah Tere Naam, Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwan"

The Muslim, Christian and Parsi inmates of the satyagraha ashram sang the hymn with equal devotion as it was a prayer to one God who was known by different names and whose blessings the hymn sought so that good sense prevailed among all human beings.

But since December 6, 1992, when fanatic Hindu mobs demolished the Babri mosque at Ayodhya as an act of revenge against the 15th Century Moghul emperor, Babar, the chant of 'Jai Shri Ram' has assumed violent connotation, striking terror among the non-Hindus, specially Muslims whom the Hindu fanatics chided as 'Babar ki Aulad' (Descendants of the Moghul emperor).

Hey Ram

Savarkar had seeded the idea of partition by propounding the theory of 'Hindurashtra' in the 1920s, much before Mohammed Ali Jinnha came up with his two-nation theory. When the country was partitioned in 1947 and India decided to remain a secular state, the followers of Savarkar were angered that India had not become a 'Hindurashtra'. So, one of them, Nathuram Godse, killed Mahatma Gandhi who was a living symbol of universal brotherhood and secular India.

The Muslims who had opted for Pakistan were far less in number than those who had chosen to stay back in India. It was their conscious decision to opt for the citizenship of a secular and democratic nation. But for the followers of Savarkar's ideology, a secular and democratic India was neither palatable nor acceptable. They had no reasons to celebrate either the Independence Day or the Republic Day.

When the Union government banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, there was no sympathy for the Hindutva forces. The dogmatic Hindutva was stoutly rejected by the country's diverse religious, linguistic and ethnic people, who have had coexisted peacefully for centuries, enriching their respective cultural heritage through inter-mingling and sharing.

The Hindutva forces, represented in the political arenda by the erstwhile Jan Sangh (renamed later as the Bharatiya Janata Party), were rebuffed by the Indian electorate in all the successive elections to the Parliament and various state legislative assemblies but for the elections held in 1977.

The 1977 general elections proved a turning point in the post-independence political history of India. The elections were held under the shadow of a dictatorial rule. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, indicted by a court for indulging in corruption during her election and facing a country-wide protest movement led by youths, had declared a state of emergency and suspended all the fundamental rights of the citizens, gagging the press, arresting her opponents and unleashing a reign of terror.

The Indian voters expressed their anger against the dictatorial rule through the ballot papers, routing the Congress party and electing to power the Janata Party, a newly formed coalition of opposition parties. Mainly because they had joined the Janata coalition that most of the Jan Sangh leaders got elected to the Parliament.

It was a negative vote against the dictatorial rule of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and not a positive vote for the Hindutva ideology that helped the Jan Sangh gain political legitimacy in the country. When the Janata government fell due to bickering among the constituentsand fresh elections were held, people voted Mrs. Gandhi and her Congress party back to power. The biggest loser was the Jan Sangh that had renamed itself as Bharatiya Janata Party. Only two BJP candidates managed to win their seats in the Lok Sabha.

From the subsequent events and developments, it would become clear that the BJP gained more political mileage from the follies of the Congress than from the popularity of the Hindutva ideology. It was because of fragmentation of opposition votes due to the presence of a large number of political parties in the election fray that the Congress was managing to win a majority in the Parliament and in state assemblies. Else, the popularity of the Congress party was fast depleting on account of corruption in high places, rising inflation, the culture of sycophancy and perpetuation of one family rule - that of Mrs. Indira Gandhi.

Partitioning Hearts - Part II

How could the armed mobs, out on the roads to retaliate the killings of VHP activists, track down Muslim business establishments throughout the state in a matter of hours?

The VHP leader Pravin Togadia's disclosure in an interview he had given me for the Calcutta daily, The Telegraph, on January 10, 1992, flashed through my mind. Togadia had boasted that the VHP had undertaken a census and land record survey to take stock of the real estate ownership pattern among Hindus and Muslims in over 18,000 villages, towns and cities of the state.

The survey, he said, would provide the VHP leadership with the necessary data that would help formulate short-term and long-term strategies for 'protecting' the interests of the Hindu community in 'sensitive' areas.

The survey, he said, would help the VHP draw up a 'boundary' line in all the major towns and cities beyond which the Muslims would not be allowed to expand. "We will establish border check posts manned by Bajrang Dal volunteers to instill a sense of security among the Hindus," he had disclosed in the interview.

The large-scale rioting that occurred in the run up to the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 and thereafter witnessed how property owned by the Muslims were mde target by arsonists and plundering mobs.

By drawing up a boundary line, the VHP is trying to create a 'Hindustan' and a 'Pakistan' in almost all the villages and towns of Gujarat, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi who lived and died for love, peace and non-violence.

The VHP has put up signboards at the entry points of all major towns in the state welcoming visitors to 'Hindurashtra's such and such town.' The unstated message in these signboards is louder: The country belongs only to the Hindus; all others have place in it.

(Part I)

A Leaf from Mein Kampf - Part I

One had only read about Fascism and Nazism in books of history and fiction. But had never experienced living under a Fascist state. One had lived under the constant fear of arrest and police torture during the 19 months of the Emergency. But what the Muslims in Gujarat experienced in 2002 must have been much more dreadful than that.

There were massacres of Muslims, gang rapes of Muslim women and looting and arson of shops and establishments belonging to them.

Armed mobs, led by known Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers, were on a killing spree, targeting Muslims to avenge the burning alive of over 50 VHP volunteers returning from Ayodhya by train on February 27 near the Godhra railway station.

Instead of providing protection to the Muslims, the police aided and abetted the killer mobs. Worse, the police refused to file First Information Reports in several cases and where it became unavoidable to register a case, the FIRs were so doctored as to help the killers, rapists, arsonists and looters escape unpunished.

Gujarat had become unsafe for Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims fled their homeland, Gujarat, after the mayhem. Many enterprising, forward-looking, well-to-do Muslims, like the members of the Chelia clan from north Gujarat, who owned over 400 restaurants, most of them serving only vegetarian food and bearing pronouncedly Hindu names, sold their establishments to move to Hyderabad and Bangalore.

These popular restaurants, other shops and business establishments doing flourishing business in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in central and north Gujarat were singled out, plundered and then set on fire by the Hindu mobs in the aftermath of the Godhra carnage.

(Introduction)

When It Rained Blood - Introduction

When I returned to Gujarat after eight years, in June 2002, the muddy water of the Sabarmati River had already turned bloody. The sword of the Saffron Brigade had drawn enough blood from Muslim men, women and children to redden the azure blue water of the Narmada that had been fed into the Sabarmati.

The Sangh Parivar, comprising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had exploded the saffron bomb successfully in Gujarat to prove before the world that Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace and non-violence, can be defeated in his own home land.

The Sangh Parivar had been preparing to wage a war against the humanity since 1920 when its ideologue Savarkar propounded the theory of 'Hindurashtra' (Hindu nation). When in 1947, their dream to convert India into a Hindurashtra failed, the Sangh Parivar contracted Nathuram Godse to kill Gandhi, who symbolized universal brotherhood.

The next assault on secular India was made on December 6,1992 when a fifteenth century mosque was razed to the ground by a fanatic mob, a section of which had been trained in demolition techniques in a camp in Gujarat.

Having covered Gujarat as a journalist for over two decades, I was a witness to the Sangh Parivar's Fascist methods and its devastating effects on the life and psyche of the people. I will try here to trace the roots of fascism that culminated in the genocide of 2002.