The Essential Gandhi (28 page)

[When he passed through the prison gates, Gandhi left behind him a country full of perplexed politicians and an ashram full of two unhappy families—his personal family and his adopted family of secretaries, disciples, devotees and hangers-on. All of them, including Kasturbai, now called him Father, Bapu, or Bapuji,
the ji
connoting a Hindu mixture of respect and tenderness.

From young manhood, he had been sweet and kind toward everybody except his wife and sons. A tension marred his early relations with Kasturbai, but gradually it waned and he was able to relax with her too. As he aged, the passions submitted to more rigid rein, but he never quite learned to be a father to his sons.

A foreigner once asked Gandhi: “How is your family?”]

All of India is my family [Gandhi replied.]
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[Answering the question, what did he expect of members of the Gandhi family, he said:]

I expect that all of them should devote their lives to service, practice self-control as far as possible, give up the desire of amassing riches, give up also the idea of contracting a marriage, observe brahmacharya [continence] if they are already married and obtain their livings through service. The field of service is so extensive that it can absorb any number of men and women. Is there anything more to add?
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[Gandhi did not count on his four sons, however. “May not an artist or a poet or a great genius,” asked an interviewer, “leave a legacy of his genius to posterity through his own children?”]

Certainly not [replied Gandhi]. He will have more disciples than he can ever have children.
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[As he was more severe with himself than with anybody else, so he was severest with his own boys. Gandhi leaned over backward to give his sons, Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devadas, less than he gave other men’s sons. They felt disgruntled because their father, who had a profession, denied them a professional education.]

 … It has been my invariable rule to regard my boys as my friends and equals as soon as they completed their sixteen years. The tremendous changes that my outer life has undergone from time to time were bound to leave their impress on my immediate surroundings—especially on my children. Harilal, who was witness to all the changes, being old enough to understand them, was naturally influenced by the western veneer that my life at one time did have.… Could I have influenced him, he would have been found associated with me in my several public activities.… But he chose, as he had every right to do, a different and independent path. He was and still is ambitious. He wants to become rich, and that too easily. Possibly he has a grievance against me that when it was open to me to do so, I did not equip him and my other children for careers that lead to wealth and fame that wealth brings.…

There is much in Harilal’s life that I dislike. He knows that. But I love him in spite of his faults. The bosom of a father will take him in as soon as he seeks entrance. For the present, he has shut the door against himself.…

 … I let the world into all the domestic secrets so-called. I never make the slightest attempt to hide them, for I know that concealment can only hurt us.

 … Men may be good, not necessarily their children. Men may be good in some respects, not necessarily, therefore, in all. A man who is an authority on one matter is not therefore an authority on all matters.…
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[After Harilal’s wife died and Gandhi frowned on his remarriage, Harilal disintegrated completely. He took to alcohol and
women, he was often seen drunk in public. Once he wrote Gandhi suggesting that Manu, Harilal’s daughter, be taken away from his sister-in-law. At the end of the long reply, Gandhi said:]

I will not still give up hope of your reformation even as I do not despair of myself.… And I will continue to hope while you and I are alive, and preserve this letter of yours contrary to my usual practice so that someday you may repent of having written such a foolish thing. I keep the letter not to taunt you, but to enjoy a laugh over it if ever God is so good to me. We are all liable to err. But it is our duty to correct our errors. I trust you will correct yours.
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[Harilal, under the influence of drink, penury and the desire for vengeance, would succumb to the offers of unscrupulous publishers and attack his father in print, signing “Abdulla,” a Moslem name. He had become a Moslem.]

You must have by now heard of Harilal’s acceptance of Islam. If he had no selfish purpose behind [it], I should have had nothing to say against the step. But I very much fear that there is no other motive.…
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[Harilal] must have sensation and he must have money. He has both.…
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 … I am a believer in previous births and rebirths. All our relationships are the result of the deeds we carry from our previous births. God’s laws are inscrutable and are the subject of endless search. No one will fathom them.

This is how I regard the case of my [eldest] son [Harilal]. I regard the birth of a bad son to me as the result of my evil past, whether of this life or previous. My first son was born when I was in a state of infatuation. Besides, he grew up whilst I was myself growing and whilst I knew myself very little.… For years he remained away from me and his upbringing was not entirely in my hands. That is why he has always been at a loose end. His grievance against me has always been that I sacrificed him and his brothers at the altar of what I wrongly believed to be the public good. My other
sons have laid more or less the same blame at my door but with a good deal of hesitation and they have generously forgiven me. My eldest son was the direct victim of experiments—radical changes in my life—and so he cannot forget what he regards as my blunders. Under the circumstances I believe I am myself the cause of the loss of my son and have, therefore, learnt patiently to bear it.… It is my firm faith that man is by nature going higher and so I have not at all lost the hope that some day he will wake up from his slumber and ignorance. Thus, he is part of my field of the experiments in nonviolence. When or whether I shall succeed, I have never bothered to know. It is enough for my satisfaction that I do not slacken my efforts in doing what I know to be my duty.
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[In jail, Gandhi read the Gita, the Hindu holy scripture. On first reading the Gita in 1888–89, Gandhi felt that it was “not a historical work” but an allegory. The story it tells, of a civil war between two Indian factions, was regarded by Gandhi as “the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind.… Physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring.” The Gita is a dialogue between Krishna, an incarnation of God, and Arjuna, the warrior. “Krishna is the Dweller within, ever whispering to a pure heart,” Gandhi wrote. Arjuna, representing higher impulses, struggles against evil. The Gita showed how to avoid the evils that accompany action; this, Gandhi asserted, is the “central teaching of the Gita.” Krishna says:

I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. The field of battle is our own body.…
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[Arjuna had refused to go into battle. Krishna urged him to
fight, to fight and renounce the fruits of victory. This meant that violence and renunciation were compatible. Gandhi was troubled.]

Let it be granted [he wrote in 1929, in an introduction to his Gujarati translation of the Gita] that according to the letter of the Gita it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. But after forty years’ unremitting endeavor fully to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life, I have, in all humility, felt that perfect renunciation is impossible without perfect observance of [Non-violence] in every shape and form. [Gandhi decided that loyalty to the Gita entitled him to amend it. He often refused to be bound by uncongenial texts, concepts and situations.

The Hindu poet Vyasa wrote a commentary on the Gita which, Gandhi said, demonstrated to him the futility of war. Vyasa asks, “What if the Kauravas were vanquished? And what if the Pandavas won? How many were left of the victors and what was their lot?”
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Gandhi pressed the Gita into the service of Non-violence.]

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the “still small voice” within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.
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 … Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to
appear
consistent drives himself into a false position. That is why Emerson said that foolish consistency was the hobgoblin of little minds.…
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 … A devotee of Truth may not do anything in deference to convention. He must always hold himself open to correction, and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong, he must confess it at all costs and atone for it.
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[On the evening of January 12, 1924, Mahatma Gandhi was hastily carried from Yeravda Central Prison, where he had been lodged on March 20, 1922, to Sassoon Hospital in the city of Poona. He had
developed acute appendicitis. A British Army surgeon performed the appendectomy, which was successful. An abscess formed locally, however, and the patient’s progress was too slow. The Government thought it wise or generous in these circumstances to release Gandhi on February 5th.

To recuperate, Gandhi went to the home of an industrialist friend who lived at Juhu, on the sea near Bombay. Indian nationalist leaders conferred with him there on the ugly situation that had arisen during the twenty-two months Gandhi spent in prison.]

 … We had all kinds of news brought to us in South Africa in our jails. For two or three days during my first experience I was glad enough to receive tid-bits, but I immediately realized the utter futility of interesting myself in this illegal gratification. I could do nothing, I could send no message profitably, and I simply vexed my soul uselessly. I felt it was impossible for me to guide the movement from the jail. I therefore simply waited till I could meet those who were outside and talk to them freely, and then too … I took only an academic interest because I felt it was not my province to judge anything.… I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind. I would like you [Jawaharlal Nehru] to dismiss the outer world from your view altogether and ignore its existence. I know this is a most difficult task, but if you take up some serious study and some serious manual work you can do it.…
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