Excerpt. Might and manes

A New Mode of Dissent

[From Inner Recesses (1985), pp. 47–50]

When Gandhiji entered the Indian political arena I was still a young student but becoming politically awake, perhaps earlier than the generations before, for great upheavals had begun to take place specially in the context of a global war.

I was fortunate to have grown up in a keen politically and socially aware atmosphere. For Mother was politically very alive and kept abreast of current affairs and our political hunger was continuously fed on highly surcharged literature. But freedom was still a vague term.

By now my unhappiness over social and economic inequalities had burgeoned into resentment embittering my life and injecting strain in my social relationships.

I was fascinated by the Champaran struggle conducted by Gandhiji. Here was something in which the real people of the country were involved. Exploitation was no vague term, it was concrete and meaningful to my own growing sense of the ills in our society. I was excited and intrigued by Gandhiji’s mental attitude towards problems, his deep involvement with the depressed section of society, his positive postures that indicated his personal reaction to situations as they arose and his strong grip on the basic and vital need of the country: freedom, of which he never lost sight. To him all problems radiated from this central focal point. To me they had almost a personal answer as they seemed related to my own internal conflicts over discrimination against women.

The righteousness of the world war had been trumpeted throughout the years of conflict. India’s contribution had been tremendous. More soldiers had been killed on the battlefields of Europe than the total number recruited from all the British colonies and dominions put together, around 1,200,000. Also a hundred million pounds given outright while in addition 20 to 30 million pounds contributed to war expenses!

The political stirrings generated by the war aims got accelerated demonstratively when the country swung back to status quo! This roused the wrath of the rulers, who incorporated harsh and repressive clauses in the grim Defence of India Act, historically termed the Rowlatt Act. Then followed the convulsions from the unbelievable massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh. Instantly came Gandhiji’s call for a day of fast and prayer to prepare for the big plunge: Satyagraha. Self-purification before going into any great venture is an ancient custom. But here the action projected was original and novel. The application of this concept of Satyagraha as a political weapon was startling and exciting. It was like viewing a new instrument, simple yet promising to be powerful in operation.

I heard that Gandhiji was starting a Satyagraha Sabha whose members would pledge to oppose and disobey unjust laws and court imprisonment. Gandhiji was to be in Bombay for it.

This meeting was to enable the would-be Satyagrahis to pledge themselves to not only civil disobedience, but also to adhere to swadeshi, communal unity, above all to observe complete non-violence and truth. I found myself in a small group, so different from the vast concourse of the previous day who had gathered on the Chowpatty sands. I discovered later that not everyone who was ready to fight the British was prepared to strictly adhere to the leader’s other conditions. Gandhiji, himself, as he read out the pledge, commented on how exciting events drew crowds while for silent constructive work only a few serious people came.

It was the first time that I was hearing him speak. He expressed himself in chaste literary phrases and I was to realise later that he did it with all the languages in which he spoke. There is the famous incident of the Viceroy Lord Irwin who, after a few negotiations with Gandhiji, confessed, “The English he speaks sometimes drives me to consult the dictionary.” His words came slowly but emphatically, as though each word was weighed and phrased before it was uttered. Though he talked in a gentle tone there was a steely ring in it. “This is going to be a great struggle with a powerful adversary,” he reminded. “If you want to take it up you must be prepared to lose everything and train yourselves to the strictest non-violence and discipline.”

I had by now begun to become something of a doubting Thomas on the practicability of maintaining complete non-violence. Moreover, who had ever in history won freedom without violence and struggle? Such doubts kept plaguing me and I communicated them to a lady who was close to Gandhiji. She evidently warned him against persons like me who hung on the fringe but were not steeped in non-violence. I was surprised one day to receive a card from Gandhiji in which he asked me not to join the movement if I did not have faith in non-violence. Of course, the occasion for it was not to arise for over a decade.

It is now part of history how the big movement that was to be launched was called off by Gandhiji because of the outbreak of violence in Chauri Chaura. The irony of it is that at this very stage the answer of the government to this was to arrest him for writing what is undoubtedly an exquisite literary piece in English titled ‘Shaking the Manes’ describing the British lion shaking its mane. There can be few compositions in the English language comparable to this in its sheer beauty of imagery. Alas, it was lost on the prosaic magistrate who admonished him with a jail sentence. When the curtain was rung down on an agitated political scene, an unusual lull descended. So my thoughts went back to the foreign study I had prepared myself for.