From The Pages of The Hindu "Mahatma Gandhi" (The Last 200 Days)

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Item Code: NAK130
Author: V.Ramamurthy
Publisher: Kasturi and Sons Ltd
Language: English
Edition: 2022
Pages: 552 (7 B/W Illustrations)
Cover: Paperback
Other Details 9.5 inch x 7.5 inch
Weight 960 gm
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Book Description
Foreword

Mahatma Gandhi's life, attitude and political action were informed by the highest moral principles and compassion. Uniquely among public men, he sought to analyse and explain events and his own reaction in terms of these principles through his talks, statements, writings and interviews. The moral force that he brought to bear on the political discourse was compelling and inspired large sections to take up the cause of freedom.

When freedom finally did come, it was no doubt a cause for celebration. Tragically, though, it was also a traumatic time that witnessed large scale killings and transfers of population across the new boundaries drawn up by Partition. At no time was moral force more badly needed and at no time was it more sorely tested than in these difficult times. Mahatma Gandhi stood unflinching as a moral force and sought to douse the raging passions.

The events surrounding his life and action in these times provide an object lesson in living morality. The last 200 days of his life in particular, provide a fascinating lesson in applying moral principles to situations which seemed totally out of control, when prejudice was all encompassing and even well-meaning advice of restraint to a friend could be mistaken for hostility.

For rendering a day-to-day account of the last 200 days ending with January 30, 1948, no person was better suited than Mr. V Ramamurthy, retired senior IAS officer, a writer of great scholarship and sensitivity whose activities extend from cricket commentary to teaching courses in management science and whose writings touch upon a vast range including Carnatic music and Tamil literature. His daily contributions drawn primarily from the archives of The Hindu and supplemented from other sources were published over a period of 200 days ending with January 30, 1998.

It was with some hesitation and some measure of doubt whether present day readers would be interested in the details of happenings in an earlier era that this series was started. Within weeks, however, the reader response was so overwhelming that all such doubts disappeared. The accounts presented in a historical context with all its drama and richness of detail seemed to fascinate the young who had only a vague idea of the events of the time, and seemed to touch a nostalgic chord in the old who had lived through those times.

Soon after the series ended, there were suggestions that the accounts be compiled in a book as the material was of lasting interest. Indeed, some readers had painstakingly made their own compilations of the newspaper clippings. It is a matter of great satisfaction for us that the book has finally come into being and we hope it would be of widespread interest. In these communally charged times, the message of peace and the uncompromising application of moral principles to political action would seem to be of particular relevance.

 

Preface

It will be in order for me to write a few words giving the background of how I came to write the articles collected in this book. For reasons that go back to childhood, I developed deep fascination for the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

I was born in Calcutta. In January 1948, I was twelve years old. My father R. Viswanathan and my mother Bhageerathi had moved from Cacutta to Karachi in 1936, in Karachi we lived in reasonable comfort. My sister, Raji, was born there in 1938, and that city was our home for as long as we could remember. My parents has a fair circle of friends. No ripple seemed to disturb the course of our life. My father believed that, like Muslims in India, Hindus in Pakistan too could live in peace despite Partition. Let me go back little.

My father and mother had given me an Ansco 'Shur-shot Junior' box camera, and a framed picture of Mahatma Gandhi with stand for keeping on a table. The independence of India was in the offing in 1947, but there was no sign of anything coming to upset the even tenor of our life. We used to visit friends, or have them come home. We went to school, shopping, to movies, and to the Mahatma Gandhi Garden, where fresh rose-flavoured Gulabi grapes could be bought cut freshly from the vine.

Independence Day came and went. We celebrated the occasion. It was a holiday. At 5 p.m. every day we used to listen to a programme in Tamizh, broadcast by the External Services of All India Radio on short wave from Delhi. The programme began invariably with a piece of fine nagaswaram music. Later I learned that it was 'Vatapi Ganapathim Bhajeham' in raga Hamsadvani, in a 3-minute 78 r.p.m. record of Thiruvengadu Subramania Pillai.

As the months went, uneasiness grew in the air. When I went out on my new Norman bicycle displaying a tricolour flag, I was thrown down by some people and the flag roughly seized and rudely torn. The calm of our lives was about to be disturbed profoundly. Though Partition had taken place, we did not register the fact that suddenly we lived no more in India, but in a new country, Pakistan.

. Refugees started to flow into Karachi. Uprooted Muslim evacuees coming in large numbers from East Punjab were more or less at liberty to walk into any Hindu house and take it over. The police would not interfere.

We lived in the extension part of the city close to the. cantonment, and yet it was suddenly no longer safe to venture into the streets. My sister and I used to ride on the bicycle to fetch groceries, butter etc. These little trips became hazardous and we were told we should not go out any more. I went to St. Patrick's School and my sister to the St. Joseph's Convent School beyond Sadar. Going to school also stopped. My father's Muslim driver, Yaseen, and servants, Mahmood and Basharat, the latter a strong strapping Pathan, were coming as usual. We didn't think of them as Muslims and of ourselves as Hindus. They helped in the house and often joined in when we fed the one-eyed parrot, Mitu, in his cage, and had fun with the cat Toppy, and a black tom-kitten, Whoopee.

My father went daily to Malir near Drigh Road aerodrome, where he was in charge of an Army Contract business which was doing well. Father had earned praise from no less a person than the Commander- in-Chief of India, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck when he visited the station. Father used also to go to Mauripur airport. He was driven to and from work by driver Yaseen, and often returned home late at night.

Mother used to be on tenter-hooks till he came back. I remember that the gates used to be locked and we would be in the puja room praying. There were occasions when curfew came into force at 7 p.m. and if my father hadn't returned by then, we knew he could not do so till the next morning - and we were all alone in the house. One night he came back past eight p.m. and said that Yaseen had decided to make a dash for it all the way from Malir, since it might be unsafe to stay the night far away from the city. It was an instinctive, wise action by Yaseen. The next day we learnt there had been violence on the road, blood had been shed, and lives taken.

Gradually it dawned upon us that my father's hopes of continuing to live in Karachi were far-fetched., My father's friend D'Sa, a lawyer, advised us to prepare to leave Karachi and look for a new life in India. The only unchanged thing was our listening to the 5 p.m. A I R broadcast.

It is strange to think that Raji and I felt that things would still settle down. We had a naive belief, probably reared on what our parents had told us, of the strength Mahatma Gandhi commanded - to work miracles and bring peace back wherever trouble brewed and grew. We prayed as much to God as to Mahatma Gandhi for Karachi to become again the beautiful and fine place we had known it to be. We could not think of leaving it at all.

The blow fell on the Friday the 30th of January, 1948. We tuned in to Delhi as usual on our small General Electric table radio. On 19 metres we picked up All India Radio's External Broadcast. At around 5.15 p.m. the programme was interrupted, and a voice from Delhi station asked us to stand by for an important announcement. Soon the news came that Mahatma Gandhi had been shot while going for his prayer meeting in Birla House. Strains of sombre music came over the air. Within a few minutes, the news of the Mahatma's death was announced in a heavy voice. The world had come crashing about our ears.

All of us wept through the night. We didn't eat or sleep. In "The Daily Gazette" and "The Sind Observer" the next morning, we read the headlines and saw the pictures. We listened to details of Gandhiji's funeral procession on radio. Every home felt bereaved. In a few days, we went to the sea-shore at Clifton, where Indian High Commissioner Mr. Sri Prakasa led the ceremony of immersing the Mahatma's ashes into the ceaselessly moving waters of the Arabian Sea.

On the 6th of February 1948, a fearful orgy of killing stained the streets. Many Sikhs, and some Hindus were massacred. The brother of our Muslim milkwoman Sakeena was killed for serving Hindu and Sikh households. On the 27th of March, 1948, in a daze, we bade good-bye to Karachi losing all that we had. (In 1979 I went to Karachi to broadcast for AIR on the India-Pakistan Cricket Test Match, and visited the old scenes and places I had known. I was able to go to St. Patrick's School in the distinguished company of Sri. L.K. Advani, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, who too was an old student of St. Patrick 's.)

We started a new life from scratch in Madurai, the temple city. In October 1948, I bought from Sakthi Karyalayam, a copy of Mahatma Gandhi's Autobiography, "My Experiments with Truth". Over many years I gained understanding from it as I grew in age. Meanwhile, I collected many other books and pictures about the Mahatma, and his quotations, whenever I could. The photographs of Gandhiji touring riot-torn Noakhali, of his walking to his prayer meetings, and of his face ever so serene in death haunted me deeply.

I felt that in the closing phases of the Mahatma's great life a Greek tragedy had unfolded.

Early in July 1997, J had a meeting with Sri N. Ravi, Editor of The Hindu, in his office. I asked him if he would like a serial to be published; on life as it unfolded day by day for Gandhi'ji in his last 200 days, leading up to the 30th of January 1948. By coincidence, the 30th of January 1998 was to fall on a Friday, as it had done fifty years earlier. Sri Ravi welcomed the idea and asked for a drawing to be done by Keshav, the paper's' cartoonist and illustrator, and arranged for the serial to be started with that drawing.

The articles were published daily from the 15th of July 1997, under the title "Mahatma Gandhi - The Last 200 Days". Information for the articles was collected from the vast archives of The Hindu and The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Publications Division, Government of I ndia). The serial was well-received, and many readers wanted to know when the articles would be published as a book.

Originally, the plan was for the unedited longer articles sent by me to be published in book form with useful supplementary information. But many preferred to see the pieces as they had appeared daily in The Hindu. And that. is how the articles appear now in this book. A set of photographs has been added, and the full texts with translation given of 'Vaishnava Janato' and 'Raghupathi Raghava Rajaram' (Ram Dhun).

Gandhiji's message was his life itself. In the days that preceded and followed the lS'h of August 1947, he went through episodes which tormented him to the very core. But they did not overwhelm his hope or erode his faith. To the end he thought, spoke, wrote, and worked for what he felt were the vital, eternal values of human life. Today, India, and the world, can yet benefit from many of his teachings.

I do believe that the account in this book - based on material of the day with supporting background information - of the last 200 days of Gandhiji' s extraordinary life may rekindle interest in his teachings and set off further enquiry, research, and new writing relevant not only to the times that we live in now, but for all time.

I am deeply grateful to The Hindu, and to Editor Sri N. Ravi, in particular, for publishing these articles as a serial, and for now bringing them out in book form. I humbly dedicate this book to the souls of my departed parents and my son Ranjit Kumar.

My wife Kamala especially, and innumerable friends, have helped me in writing the pieces in the first place in 1997-1998, and now in preparing them to be brought out in this edition. I thank every one of them most sincerely.

 

Introduction

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a child of mid-19th century Porbander in India. Student of law in London qualifying as a barrister of the Inner Temple fighter for minority rights in south Africa, canny politician, social reformer, insatiable soul ever in quest of the truth, speaker, writer and soldier extraordinaire in the fight for India's freedom from foreign rule, was in his 78th year in most of 1947. He would enter his 79th year on October 2.

Mahatma Gandhi had believed that he would live to be 125. In a life packed with crowded events and noted for its ceaseless toil, struggle, and self-denial, he took reasonably good care of his health with a combination of diet, physical exercise meditation religious devotion and nature cure methods. His zest for life and energy were remarkable for a man of his age, but not surprising in one given over so strongly to rigorous self-discipline.

When India was on the verge of attaining freedom, but at the cost of being separated into India and Pakistan, some of Gandhiji irrepressible zest or living seemed to come down. The flare up of fratricidal communal violence in parts of India, where the prospect of Partition unleashed bestial violence in the name of religion, had him ceaselessly toiling to contain the spreading contagion, often at peril to his safety about which he was completely unconcerned. But even as he thought, prayed, wrote, travelled and spoke, appealing everywhere to the conscience of his fellow citizens, his thoughts were taking on a note almost of resignation. He expressed, at times, as horror of living long if it was only to see more and more of the Human tragedies that were unfolding all around.

The story of the last 200 days of the life of this great apostle is packed with a spirit of drama. Those days marked what few at the time realised was to be the rendering of the swan song of a great life of our times.

We commence this diary events starting on the 15th of july.

One month remained for Indian to attain the freedom for which he had fought for so long. Two hundred days remained to be played out in the life of the man who had been christened Mohandas Karamchand long years ago, in 1869, in the Kathiawad region of British India. It was a nation ruled by the most powerful Empress of her time, the grand Queen Victoria. That rule by Britain was drawing to its close in July 1947.

 

Contents

 

1 Living with a fait accompli" 1
2 "Live to make the world richer" 2
3 Conscience and right action 3
4 Politics is Dharrna 4
5 "Leaders must serve the public" 6
6 "What happy Independence really is" 8
7 A summer of no illusion 10
8 What price violence? 12
9 Living well 14
10 Realising truth in unity 16
11 Poorna Swaraj is so far off 18
12 "Constructive work is the foremost need" 20
13 "If injustice be done to the people .... " 22
14 "The debate in my mind" 25
15 Duty calls - from Kashmir 27
16 "God will help true public service" 29
17 Love in a running train 32
18 On to Kashmir 34
19 A busy day in Srinagar 37
20 "He was his own Sun" 39
21 Tme leadership 41
22 Resides "Inside the power" 44
23 "Fear not even death" 46
24 "Let us all wake up, now" 49
25 "Learning to serve with love" 52
26 "Loving and striving alone matter" 54
27 Bapu postpones Noakhali visit 57
28 "Interest is everywhere where service is" 60
29 A strange partnership is launched 63
30 Following maternal freedom 65
31 The turning point 68
32 Independence Day 70
33 After poison - sweet nectar 73
34 God, morals, and mortals 76
35 Love and discipline 78
36 Flagging in peace 81
37 Realisation never pays 84
38 The Noakhali recipe 87
39 A new reconstruction 90
40 Praise the Lord for Peace 93
41 "To trust is the honourable way" 96
42 Helping East Pakistan 98
43 Dicing with God 101
44 "A brush with a Dewan" 104
45 Soldiering in peace 106
46 Hope survives in humanity 109
47 The Law of Harmony 112
48 The merit of voluntary giving 115
49 Bapu is challenged again 117
50 Fasting again for peace 119
51 "The willing spirit" 122
52 When is coercive fasting justified 125
53 Bapu breaks his fast 128
54 Cold rain and a warm reception 131
55 Off to Delhi 134
56 Working and dreaming on wheels 136
57 Troubled Delhi challenges Bapu 138
58 0, What is this freedom? 141
59 Hoping in the ruins 144
60 See clearly, live well 146
61 Dharma is returning good for evil 148
62 Independence is self-reliance 150
63 Avenge wrong by doing good 153
64 True religion is free from hate 156
65 Take me whole, or not at all 159
66 God grant me my dream 162
67 Intolerance is irreligion 164
68 In tune with God the real 167
69 How happy the birds! 170
70 If India fails, Asia dies 173
71 The burden of leadership 176
72 The way is long and time is short 179
73 To serve, to pray, and to grow 182
74 "Am I an Anachronism out of place?" 185
75 The will to transcend 188
76 "Let us prove Mr. Churchill wrong" 191
77 To swerve not from duty and truth 194
78 Get well - and fast! 197
79 Right religion must be from the heart 199
80 Of memories and a prayer 202
81 Suffer to make others happy 205
82 By his tears, he travelled 208
83 The heart's warmth against winter's cold 211
84 The deep healthy springs 214
85 Smiling his way through 218
86 Remain civilised! 220
87 The heaped plate overflows 223
88 Safety lies in self-reliance and sound management 226
89 May God right the wrong the British did 229
90 A practical friend 231
91 The tide slowly turns 234
92 "There is no third alternative" 237
93 "Violence helps no one - even in language" 229
94 "I have very little power" 231
95 Truth alone should triumph 245
96 A faith not to be forsaken 248
97 "After me, not total silence" 251
98 "I value people who abuse me" 254
99 Purity of heart 257
100 Everyone a trustee of public welfare 260
101 Indifference must stop 264
102 "I am not God. Why worship me?" 267
103 Bapu - A refugee among the refugees 270
104 The Eternal Law: Love is tested amidst hate 272
105 Do or die for unity 275
106 Fight for peace and honour 278
107 We should not become robbers 281
108 "God is really testing me" 284
109 Let light of sacrifice dispel darkness 286
110 "Let our hearts be temples of love" 289
111 True to oneself at any cost 292
112 Light and shade in life is welcome 295
113 Softer than a flower, harder than granite rock 298
114 "If every word of mine becomes potent. .. " 301
115 The traveller longs for rest 304
116 Serving man is serving God 308
117 Work will ward off mischief 311
118 Of causes and courtesies 304
119 Dispel discontent and fear 318
120 "Every worthy enterprise carries its own blessing" 321
121 A cheerless Diwali 324
122 Let Sri Rama's victory be in our hearts 327
123 "Will the Congress listen to me?" 331
124 "God gives me strength" 334
125 Blunt advice to the Congress 337
126 "Own your failings" 339
127 The Congress resolves as Bapu wanted 342
128 In death vitality is reborn 345
129 When will a real dawn rise? 347
130 "We need light, not darkness" 349
131 Nothing happens without God's will 351
132 Freedom is not licence 353
133 All rights emanate from duties 355
134 The immorality of ignorant power 357
135 May God grant good sense to all 358
136 To be fearless 360
137 Dharma and peace we cannot lose 362
138 Let us begin a new chapter 364
139 "1 pray for a New India" 366
140 Self help 368
141 Help to bring Ram Rajya 369
142 The soul force of Ahimsa 371
143 A Nation must defend itself 373
144 "Consider the Truth" 375
145 Good must be returned for evil 377
146 "Enmity cannot be our dharma" 378
147 Prayer is the food of the soul 380
148 Lawlessness is a terrible disease 383
149 Everything depends on God 385
150 Needed: A revolution in education 387
151 Man was not made to kill 389
152 "Rock of purpose, light of truth" 390
153 Building the kingdom of God on earth 392
154 "True wisdom leads to mukti" 394
155 Safeguarding the dignity ofIndia 396
156 Supervening unity ofIndia 398
157 "My heart I unburden to you" 400
158 Only industriousness will bring lustre 402
159 "Non-violence, the legacy of all religions" 403
160 Decent cooperation a must for democracy 405
161 Citizen responsibility - the essence of .democratic government 406
162 "Fear only God" 408
163 Advice to the minorities 410
164 "God dwells in the human body" 412
165 "If we want to retain freedom we need decent conduct" 414
166 Government must be by popular will 416
167 Oneness of word and deed 418
168 The soldier in winter 420
169 Religion and science are complementary 422
170 True Swaraj 424
171 Social work, simplicity and faith 426
172 "I find myself in a fiery pit" 427
173 Knowledge, action and devotion 429
174 Who knows what will happen tomorrow? 431
175 Prime desideratum for Free India 433
176 Khadi: The livery of Freedom 435
177 He wept not for himself, but for India 437
178 "A voice in the wilderness" 439
179 Hindustani as Language of India 441
180 Sanity, the only saviour 442
181 "When patience is lost, the battle is lost" 444
182 "Emulate the good, eschew the evil" 446
183 A fast against wrong 448
184 Throwing down a gauntlet 450
185 Be pure and wise 451
186 Disinterested action 453
187 "Friendship should replace enmity" 455
188 The Mahatma yields 457
189 The end of the fast 459
190 Achieve peace through love, not arms 460
191 Tribute to Nehru and Patel 462
192 Make your heart a temple of God 464
193 India's status is moral 467
194 Scrutiniser of his own motives 469
195 "I should die with Rama nama on my lips" 471
196 "The salt of Indian earth" 472
197 Exploit not the Nation 474
198 Right means for right ends 476
199 Let us turn to constructive work 478
200 In Lord Rama merges the Mahatma 480
  The favourite Bhajans of Bapu 485
  Glossary 489
  Index 519

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