The second part of Ramachandra Guha’s opus on the subject, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1914-1948 has already been reviewed widely by experts and scholars.

I am neither an expert nor a scholar. All I can say is that it is a matter of constant amazement how a spoilt, clingy child with a hearty dislike of school found, in the words of poet EE Cummings, “the courage to grow up and become who [he] really [was]”. This book offers one more opportunity to find answers to this question.

Of course, it helps that the narrative is engaging in style and content, and the fact that it draws from the latest collection of Gandhi papers released to scholars by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) is a bonus.

It is now common knowledge that Pyarelal Nayar, who was Gandhiji’s secretary after Mahadev Desai died in 1942, collected all the documents from the ashram in Sevagram, but did not put them in public domain. Nor did his sister, Sushila Nayar, who was Gandhiji’s physician. It was only after they died that the NMML made this invaluable material available to researchers; Guha got there first.

What are some of the things that recommend the book? Why is Gandhiji still so relevant?

The best part is that what we’re reading is real, lived history; it is our legacy; we can own it. Its pages unravel the threads of several stories that clear up, clarify, iron out complex issues and relationships, and enable us to understand people and their actions in their time and ours.

As Guha writes: “By the standards of our time … Gandhi must be considered conservative. By the standards of his own time, however, he was undoubtedly progressive, proof of which is the involvement of women in Congress meetings, in his satyagrahas , and in his programmes of constructive work. By contrast, there were few women active in Jinnah’s Muslim League, or in Ambedkar’s Scheduled Caste Federation, or in the Indian Liberal Party of Sapru and Srinivasa Sastri. And if we widen the comparative frame to take in countries other than India, many more women joined the freedom struggle led by Gandhi than the movements of Lenin, Mao, Ho or Castro.”

Multifaceted Mahadev Desai

In many narratives about the freedom struggle and Gandhiji in particular, Mahadev Desai is merely Gandhiji’s secretary.

Guha allows us to see him as he was: an intellectual, a scholar, a linguist, a freedom fighter, Gandhiji’s fencing partner and conscience-keeper, a man of ready wit and personal charm whose “role in the making of the Mahatma deserves to be far better known than it is”.

The author shows us several instances of how Gandhiji was willing to change if the circumstances so demanded. For instance, from initially being supportive of the caste system even as he condemned untouchability, he eventually began to “question the very basis of the caste system itself”; this remained integral to his long-term plans for self-determination despite some leaders feeling that it distracted from the goal of getting the British out. But he was not one to bear grudges.

The American journalist John Gunther “came to the conclusion that perhaps the most striking thing about Gandhi was ‘his inveterate love of compromise… Surely no man has ever so quickly and easily let bygones be bygones. He has no hatreds, no resentments; once a settlement is reached, he co-operates with enemies as vigorously as he fought them.’”

Ambedkar vs Gandhiji

The relationship between Ambedkar and Gandhiji gets special attention and is especially insightful in light of the continuing partisan debate that prevails.

You laugh wryly when Ambedkar is quoted as saying, upon seeing posters publicising Krishanlal Shridharani’s book, The Mahatma and the World : “The number of books that people write on this old man takes my breath away”, and telling journalist Vincent Sheen “that if Americans loved Gandhi so much, they should import him to the United States so that Indians would at last be rid of him.” Perhaps, as the author suggests, we need both if we are to end caste discrimination in India.

The oddities

Guha doesn’t avoid the odder aspects of Gandhiji’s personality, for instance his obsession with conquering sexual desire, and his taking up with Saraladevi Chaudhrani whom he called his “spiritual wife”. Only some straight-talking from C Rajagopalachari weaned him away from a path that would bring “unutterable shame and ruin”.

When, living amongst the riot-affected in Noakhali, he invited his grand-niece, Manu, to “join him in the bed he slept in… Somehow, the idea had entered his mind that the rise of religious violence was connected to his failure to become a perfect brahmachari . The connection was a leap of faith, an abdication of reason, and perhaps also an expression of egotism”.

Even if Manu was a willing partner in this experiment, it was nevertheless strange and unbecoming. Gandhiji, as always, wrote openly and truthfully about it. He was ever the teacher, the patriarch, sometimes annoyingly so, but also an open book.

The weapon of fasting

While he led by example in most instances, there would be agreement that fasting for a cause was a unique component of his non-violent armoury. This weapon was never discharged randomly, not certainly to hold an ‘enemy’ to ransom.

As Gandhiji himself explains: “You cannot fast against a tyrant. Fasting can only be resorted to against a lover [by which Gandhiji meant ‘one you love’], and not to extort rights but to reform him, as when a son fasts for a parent who drinks. My fast at Bombay, and then at Bardoli, was of that character. I fasted to reform those who loved me. But I will not fast to reform, say, General Dyer, who not only does not love me, but who regards himself as my enemy.” Emotional blackmail? It worked, particularly in bringing the carnage in Calcutta to an end.

Immature historians and the passage of time may reduce the freedom struggle into one long continuous, seamless journey.

A complex journey

The reality is that it was fraught with difficulties, and dissensions from clashing personalities with opposing politics, and painstakingly negotiated through dialogue. Talks failed. There was infighting. There was a battle for leadership. There was Gandhiji, there was Jinnah, there was Ambedkar, there was Netaji, there was Sardar Patel, there was Nehru. There was Godse too.

And if there was a Sarojini Naidu, there was a Miraben; if there was a Saraladevi Chaudhrani, there was Kasturba. But giving in sometimes is not giving up. This is a lesson for our scarily polarising political and social world.

When we revile each other over religion, for instance, Gandhiji reminds us to recall the injunction that “when interpreting or judging a religion, one must trust its best practitioners rather than its most powerful”.

At a time when our leadership is busy stirring up emotions by renaming towns and cities, Guha’s conclusion that “…truth may in fact be Gandhi’s most remarkable achievement” is prescient because altering names cannot erase the history of a land and its people. That’s the truth.

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