I discovered Gandhi through Tolstoy. In my 20s, I was being freed from my textbook impressions of Gandhi; I was beginning to hate his ways; I was angry with him. Publications affiliated to the Left movement I was then part of printed a series of articles criticising Gandhi and his politics. His ahimsa was of particular interest to the critiques. My comrades and I found one line in a piece particularly fascinating: “It is a myth that India achieved Independence only because an old, fragile man made salt.”
The political situation seemed to justify the criticism.
During my 20s (1975-80s), Indian politics was transformed into a gambling arena by various factors — the excesses of Emergency promulgated by then prime minister
Indira Gandhi, bureaucratic actions rendering democracy into a myth, the display of greed soon after Emergency was withdrawn, the betrayals etc. Everything was heralded and headed by those who claimed to be Gandhi’s followers.
The new political democracy in the aftermath of Emergency nurtured new hopes. There was a dream about a new India. Like millions of Indians, I was immersed in the dream. That it was shattered in two or three years is personal experience soaked in historical tragedy.
My imaginations about democracy began to gain the hues of revolution. I believed India was waiting for a revolution. I began to collect historical evidence that would support and sustain my hopes. It was available in abundance — the Paris Commune, October Revolution, Mao’s Long March, the peasant uprising in Telangana, the failed armed revolution headed by B T Ranadive, murder of farm workers in Keezhvenmani and such. These would suffice to light the fire of revolution in the heart of a youngster from an oppressed community struggling with the ordinariness of everyday life.
Like myriad hues on a large curtain, my dream had different shades — journalistic debates, critiques, poems and short stories in literary magazines, plays and films. I was struggling to determine my goalpost as a writer.
For ages, literature has been empathetic to human existence in conflict with mundane exigencies of life. From epics like Mahabharata to Silappathikaram and Manimegalai, to writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, U R Ananthamurthy, Puthumaipiththan, Jayakanthan, Sundara Ramasamy, Ashokamitran, Poomani, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, the struggles of human existence were untiringly recorded.
I was trying to learn the art of literary language from them. I began to associate myself with movements and ideologies that sought to bring about social change through writing. About 80 per cent of people were driven by poverty, caste, religious and ethical divisions, and the hatred in an individual mind.
Blood was being spilt somewhere in this country, for some reason. Corpses were strewn all over. Violence was becoming a virtue… I was consistently shifting my points of inquests. I began to wonder if violence could be an alternative. The doubts were invested in my mind by Tolstoy.
It was the end of the 80s.
I had already read his Resurrection, some short stories and novellas. Now I had read Anna Karenina too and then his biography. His writings were having a deep influence. They demanded that I reconsider my thoughts on life and society. At around the same time, communal fundamental forces began gaining ground. Ram Janmabhoomi was becoming an important political issue. The lives of minority communities, Dalits and women were becoming unsafe. I thought the country was becoming victim to a dangerous political situation. In the backdrop of the Godhra clash, I was beginning to feel hopeless and became averse to violence. I was inevitably reminded of the clashes during Partition.
I did not have to work hard to identify Gandhi as a leader who could have valiantly walked on the ashes of this history. It needn’t be the spiritual belief that a Mahatma would appear when humankind is caught in an inexplicable web of oppression. But history has evidence to show it as a natural order. Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is such evidence. He could be kept on a par with Jesus and Buddha. He confronted with love the fire of hatred burning a society divided by language, caste and race. He turned simple, ancient terms like truth, love and mercy into powerful weapons. He was an ordinary man who had profound understanding of the fact that ahimsa was a natural characteristic of human beings.
But just as it had happened after Jesus and Buddha, several fake leaders have appeared in Indian political and spiritual fields. They walk up and down, dressing like him, spinning like him and bearing new copies of the Bhagvad Gita like him.
The time has come to free ourselves from the desperation for a not so trustworthy, almost superstitious natural order seeking a Mahatma to change the course of a country that has now become unsafe and abandoned.
