[It is difficult to write about a man who was a revered spiritual leader as well as a keen political operator. Guha, the author of “India After Gandhi” and “Gandhi Before India” (the first volume of the monumental biography that this book concludes), approaches Gandhi on his own terms while trying not to gloss over his flaws. Perhaps inevitably, with one who has been regarded almost as a saint, it is the flaws that will capture many readers’ attention. A key theme that emerges is Gandhi’s effort to control himself and those around him. This extended from his own family to his political allies and opponents.]
By Alex von Tunzelmann
GANDHI
The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948
By Ramachandra Guha
Illustrated. 1,083 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $40.
“The number of books that people write on
this old man takes my breath away,” complained the politician B. R. Ambedkar of
the proliferation of Gandhiana. That was in 1946. Ramachandra Guha must have
smiled when he quoted that line in his new book, the second — and final —
volume of his biography of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Few figures in history
have been so extensively chronicled, including by himself (Gandhi’s own
published collected works run to 100 volumes and over 50,000 pages). The really
surprising thing is that there is still so much to say.
“Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World,
1914-1948,” encompassing both world wars and the struggle for Indian
independence, is a portrait of a complex man whose remarkable tenacity remained
constant, even when his beliefs changed. It is also extraordinarily intimate.
Gandhi drew no distinction between his private and public life. He made his own
body a symbol, mortifying it through fasting or marching for political and
spiritual change. He even went public with his sexual life — and the negation
of it through brahmacharya, or chastity.
It is difficult to write about a man who was
a revered spiritual leader as well as a keen political operator. Guha, the
author of “India After Gandhi” and “Gandhi Before India” (the first volume of
the monumental biography that this book concludes), approaches Gandhi on his
own terms while trying not to gloss over his flaws. Perhaps inevitably, with
one who has been regarded almost as a saint, it is the flaws that will capture
many readers’ attention. A key theme that emerges is Gandhi’s effort to control
himself and those around him. This extended from his own family to his
political allies and opponents.
The most compelling political relationship
Guha reveals is the antagonism between Gandhi and the aforementioned B. R.
Ambedkar, the pre-eminent politician of outcaste Hindus then known as
“untouchables” and now as dalits. Guha’s book charts the two men’s interactions
over decades, along with Gandhi’s own changing views on caste.
Even while he still saw some value in the
caste system, Gandhi opposed untouchability. Guha is at pains to refute
Arundhati Roy’s dismissal of Gandhi as a reactionary on caste. He details
Gandhi’s exhaustive campaigns to allow untouchables into temples, and his many
attempts to persuade other Hindus of his caste to accept them. Certainly,
Gandhi did much brave and important work. Yet he still characterized
untouchables as “helpless men and women” who required a savior — namely, him.
As Guha says, Gandhi’s rhetoric “sounded patronizing, robbing ‘untouchables’ of
agency, of being able to articulate their own demands and grievances.”
Gandhi fought Ambedkar over establishing
separate electorates for untouchables, arguing that these would “vivisect”
Hinduism. “I want political power for my community,” Ambedkar explained. “That
is indispensable for our survival.” Gandhi’s reply, as quoted by Guha, was that
“you are born an untouchable but I am an untouchable by adoption. And as a new
convert I feel more for the welfare of the community than those who are already
there.” Gandhi cared passionately about untouchability: He repeatedly
emphasized his willingness to die if that was what it took to end it. What he
could not seem to do was let untouchables themselves take the lead.
Some of the most interesting parts of this
book concern another group Gandhi sought to instruct: women. Two sections in
particular are likely to raise eyebrows. The first is Guha’s account of
Gandhi’s relationship with the writer and singer Saraladevi Chaudhurani in
1919-20. Gandhi was, by then, celibate; both he and Sarala were married to
other people. Yet their letters speak openly of desire — “You still continue to
haunt me even in my sleep,” he wrote to her — and he told friends, “I call her
my spiritual wife.” He signed his letters to her Law Giver, which, as Guha observes,
was “a self-regarding appellation that reveals his desire to have Sarala
conform to his ways.” Gandhi’s friends appear to have talked him out of making
this “spiritual marriage” public. Eventually he distanced himself, confessing
that he did not have the “infinitely higher purity” in practice “that I possess
in thought” to maintain a “marriage” that was perfectly spiritual.
The second section that will provoke
controversy tackles an even more sensitive subject: Gandhi’s notorious
brahmacharya experiments, beginning in 1946. When Gandhi was involved with
Sarala, he was 50 and she was 47, a mature woman exercising her own free will.
Nearly three decades later, when he was 77, he made the decision to “test” his
vow of chastity by sleeping in a bed with his teenage grandniece, Manu Gandhi.
Manu was vulnerable. She had lost her mother
at a young age and had been taken in by Gandhi and his wife (who was deceased by
the time the “experiments” started). Manu grew up in an ashram in which
everyone was devoted to her great-uncle. She wrote a diary mentioning the
“experiments” that Guha quotes, though it is a compromised source: Gandhi read
it as Manu wrote it and his own writing appears in the margins.
Guha has found a letter written by Horace
Alexander, a close friend of Gandhi’s. Alexander said that Gandhi told him Manu
wanted to test her own vow of chastity. Guha suggests that this puts a new
light on the “experiments,” and that Manu may have become involved partly to
deter another man who was pursuing her romantically: “There may have been, as
it were, two sides to the story. Both Gandhi and Manu may have wanted to go
through this experiment, or ordeal. To be sure, there was a certain amount of
imposition — from his side.”
That caveat is important, for, as Guha
allows, there was an enormous power differential between Gandhi and Manu. It is
not clear that the letter from Alexander changes how we view the “experiments”:
He spoke only to Gandhi, not Manu. In the wake of #MeToo, we know that the
powerful may delude themselves about the willingness of those they manipulate,
and that their less powerful victims may go along with things they do not want
because they are overwhelmed by the status of their abuser.
Lest anyone think this applies modern
standards to a historical event, Guha provides extensive evidence of the
horrified reaction of many of Gandhi’s friends and followers at the time. Most
were appalled that a young woman should be used as an instrument in an
“experiment,” and some of his political allies, like Vallabhbhai Patel, feared
it would become a scandal. At least one, the stenographer R. P. Parasuram, left
Gandhi’s entourage when Gandhi refused to stop sharing a bed with Manu.
Guha does as much as any reasonable
biographer could to explain the “experiments” with reference to Gandhi’s
40-year obsession with celibacy. Ultimately, though, the reader is left feeling
that Gandhi’s own defenses of his behavior are riddled with self-justification,
and Manu’s voice may never truly be heard.
Gandhi posed a huge challenge to his world in
his time, and still does. Guha’s admiration for his subject is clear throughout
this book. He tries to explain controversial aspects of Gandhi’s life by
contextualizing them within Gandhi’s own thinking. Some of Gandhi’s fiercer
critics may feel this is soft-pedaling, but it does help build a fair, thorough
and nuanced portrait of the man. Gandhi spoke for himself more than most people
in history, but even the most controlling people cannot control how history
sees them. Guha lets Gandhi appear on his own terms, and allows him to reveal
himself in all his contradictions.
There is much truth in a verse Guha quotes,
written by Gandhi’s secretary, Mahadev Desai:
To live with the saints in heaven
Is a bliss and a glory
But to live with a saint on earth
Is a different story.
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