There is no stopping the torrent of books on Gandhi, though he has been dead for over 65 years. No other Indian subject has fascinated researchers and writers alike as Gandhi, perhaps with the exception of the Kamasutra. Gandhi was a prolific writer and his public life started at a young age. He has left behind enough to keep a whole army of researchers busy for years together. Every time you think the final word on him has been said, somebody is sure to surprise you with new findings or a new perspective. Ramachandra Guha's latest book, Gandhi Before India (Allen Lane), focuses on his work before he returned to India from South Africa. It is lucid, insightful and, in a sense, timely. There is, right now, some sort of a scramble among political parties to lay claim on leaders of the past: Sardar Patel, Bhimrao Ambedkar et al.
Maybe, it will be Gandhi's turn tomorrow. Who knows? A thorough study of Guha's book could ignite a debate. Here's why: In November 1909, Gandhi boarded the Kildonan Castle from England to Cape Town. During the journey, he wrote furiously in Gujarati, using his left hand when the right hand got tired, and in nine days completed a 275-page draft of a book titled Hind Swaraj. It was written in the demotic mode - a conversation between a reader and the editor (Gandhi himself). This was modelled on the Bhagavad Gita in which Krishna answers the doubts raised by Arjuna.
The book was divided into 20 chapters. The five chapters on the condition of India formed its core. These condemned the railways, doctors and lawyers for the spread of poverty and disease and for escalating social tension. The railways, in particular, came in for some serious condemnation. They, Gandhi said in Hind Swaraj, promoted cash crops and therefore caused famine in the country. Of course, he also saw the railways as the carrier of plague. Lawyers stoked divisions and encouraged quarrels so that they could make money. They helped the imperial cause by making the law courts the final arbiters of the destiny of the Indian people. Doctors, by promoting pills, made people forget the virtues of a simple diet and made them prone to consuming alcohol.
If these people were bad, machines were worse. They had driven craftsmen out of business. "Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization," he wrote. "It represents a great sin." Gandhi couldn't "recall a single good point in connection with machinery". Moreover, he felt they created huge divisions between the capitalists and workers and were not suited for India at all. "It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than the American Rockefeller."
The Indian way of life, Gandhi said in the book, actually had no equal in the world. While the Indian civilisation elevated the moral being, the West tended to propagate immorality. "The latter (West) is Godless, (while) the former is based on a belief in God. So understanding and so believing, it behooves every lover of India to cling to the old Indian civilization even as a child clings to its mother's breast." The British Parliament, Gandhi said, was like "a sterile woman and prostitute" because it had not done a single good thing on its own accord.
Truth be told, Gandhi also talked of inter-faith harmony and non-violence at great length in his book. But, given the current environment where every statement of national leaders is being put under the lens, these nuggets of information in Guha's book make for some fascinating reading. The diatribe against all things modern and the virtues of Indian tradition sounds so saffron!
