Gandhi in the grip of violence

In the Ashutosh Mookeriee Memorial Oration delivered in Calcutta on 4 July 2005, the Governor of West Bengal and grandson of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gopalkrishna Gandhi — diplomat, bureaucrat and thinker — spoke on the Mahatma's experience at the giving and receiving end of violence.

 There is almost a practice with us, of putting our good and great, including our unorthodox reformers, on a pedestal, enshrining them, and thereby creating new orthodoxies. In India, iconoclasts become icons themselves and idol-breakers become idols. Atheists have temple-like shrines built to them, non-conformists want conformism among their followers, dissenters seek assenters. As a people we take to praising when appreciation would do, adulating, deifying and worshipping when honest, sincere acknowledgement is all that is needed. Cults are wrong; they obscure the human being in the aura of veneration.

Among those who have suffered iconisation is Gandhi. While he will always be hailed the world over as 'Mahatma Gandhi', the fact remains that he was never comfortable with that description. And, in Bombay in 1921 when he was greeted by crowds comprising both Hindus and Muslims with 'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai', he said the word 'Mahatma' grated on his ears for the very same crowd had been violent, looting and humiliating the microscopically minority communities — Parsis, Eurasians — for not joining the Congress-led boycott of the Prince of Wales and had even killed some policemen on duty. "I must refuse to eat or drink anything but water till the Hindus and Mussalmans of Bombay have made peace with the Parsis, Christians and Jews," he said. Boycotting the Prince of Wales was a political duty. But turning that boycott into violent action aimed at vulnerable innocents was despicable.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the man who felt, who agonised, who could be angry and enraged, who could err but never lie, was infinitely more real than the idolised and logo-ised Mahatma. Infinitely more than the one we see in statues, on stamps and — incongruously for an anasakta with a revulsion for Mammon — imprinted on currency notes. Gandhi is farthest from the thoughts and deeds of economic offenders — who personify a kind of aggression — but he lies in stack upon stack of notes undisclosed in the vaults of those offenders.

The receiving end

Let me share some instances — in Gandhi's own words — when he was at the giving end of physical force — yes! at the giving end, like any unredeemed mortal might be.

Sheikh Mehtab was three years older than Gandhi. This swashbuckling childhood friend from Rajkot had introduced teenaged Mohandas to smoking, to meat and even tried taking him to a brothel. Mehtab was, to put it bluntly, unworthy of the future Mahatma's friendship but the friendship was retained. Two years after he arrived in South Africa, Gandhi invited Mehtab to join him there and stay in the Gandhi household, an opportunity that was readily seized by Mehtab until one day…

Durban, 1895

"I saw it all. I knocked at the door. No reply! I knocked heavily so as to make the very walls shake. The door was opened. I saw a prostitute inside. I asked her to leave the house, never to return".

MKG (turning to Mehtab): Is this how you requit my trust in you? From this moment I cease to have anything to do with you. I have been thoroughly deceived and have made a fool of myself You cannot stay here any more …

(Reconstructed from Pyarelal's Mahatma Gandhi: Early Phase, p 492-493.)

Kasturba and Mohandas were, in his memorable description, 'a couple out of the ordinary'. But not because they were similar-minded. Gandhi has recorded:

Durban, 1898

When 1 was practicing in Durban, my office clerks often stayed with me … One of the clerks was a Christian, born of panchama parents.

The house was built after the Western model and the rooms rightly had no outlets for dirty water. Each room had therefore chamber-pots. Rather than have these cleaned by a servant or a sweeper, my wife or I attended to them. The clerks who made themselves completely at home would naturally clean their own pots, but the Christian clerk was a newcomer, and it was our duty to attend to his bedroom. My wife managed the pots of the others, but to clean those used by one who had been a panchama seemed to her to be the limit, and we fell out. She could not bear the pots being cleaned by me, neither did she like doing it herself. Even today I can recall the picture of her chiding me, her eyes red with anger, and pearl drops streaming down her cheeks, as she descended the ladder, pot in hand…I was far from being satisfied by her merely carrying the pot. I would (also) have her do it cheerfully. So I said, raising my voice: I will not stand this nonsense in my house.

The words pierced her like an arrow.

She shouted back: Keep your house to yourself and let me go. I forgot myself. I caught her by the hand, dragged the helpless woman to the gate, which was just opposite the ladder, and proceeded to open it with the intention of pushing her out. The tears were running down her cheeks in torrents, and she cried: Have you no sense of shame? Must you forget yourself? Where am I to go? I have no parents or relatives here to harbour me …

I put on a brave face, but was really ashamed and shut the gate. If my wife could not leave me, neither could I leave her.

(Autobiography, p 168-169)

Sonja Schlesin (1887-1956) joined Gandhi's Johannesburg office as a steno-typist in 1903, and served him and the cause of Indian South Africans with rare zeal. But she was her own person. Gandhi writes:

Johannesburg, 1903

Miss Schlesin in her folly started smoking a cigarette in my presence. I slapped her and threw away the cigarette … (She) wrote to me afterwards saying that she would never do such a thing again and that she had recognized my love.

(CWMG Vol LXXXIV, p 295)

In all these episodes we see Gandhi employing force, the personal force of his mind-actuated body. We see a Gandhi who is putting his hands to a use we did not quite associate with him. He is no different here from the rest of us who have used or do use force in one form or the other when outraged, disdained or insubordinated by those we feel we are somehow in charge of. And it is significant that it is not Mehtab, or Kasturba, or Schlesin who have complained to the world about their experience. It is Gandhi himself who has recorded the incidents as being part of those experiments which made up the sum-total of his evolving personality.

Gandhi's openness to public scrutiny was unique, perhaps unprecedented. It was startlingly different from the concealment we see the world over today. And his ability to see his errors — as in the episode with Kasturba — and to own it in writing was extraordinary.

His use of force on Mehtab was, in my view, not only justifiable but in fact too lenient; on Kasturba, totally and self-admittedly misapplied; on Sonja Schlesin, disproportionate and of the kind that, today, would attract civil ire. But in each of these cases, it was used for stressing a norm — abusing hospitality was wrong, even by a friend; engendering caste discrimination was wrong, even by the person closest to you; smoking was harmful, and to be curbed, especially in the young. When Gandhi used the strength of his arms and of his personality, it was because something affecting his values was outraged. But lest it be thought that Gandhi stood for the use of physical force in those or similar circumstances, let me say that Gandhi, as he evolved over the years, did not advocate it. He was constantly making new tools for his satyagrahic intervention, tools which used his sense of outrage but sublimated it into something other than rage, into a greater and more potent energy, a capacity to turn the arrow of hurt into himself, to bear the resultant pain and use that pain to transform people and circumstances.

There were also episodes when Gandhi was at the receiving end, in his own words, of course. The first of these is celebrated.

31 May 1893

The train reached Maritzburg, the capital of Natal, at about 9 p.m. Beddings used to be provided at this station … (an) official came to me and said, 'Come along, you must go to the van compartment.'

'But I have a first class ticket,' said I.

`That doesn't matter. You must leave this compartment, or else I shall have to call a police constable to push you out.'

'Yes, you may. I refuse to get out voluntarily.'

The constable came. He took me by the hand and pushed me out. My luggage was also taken out. I refused to go to the other compartment and the train steamed away …

I began to think of my duty. Should I fight for my rights or go back to India, or should I go on to Pretoria without minding the insults, and return to India after finishing the case? It would he cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial — only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. Redress for wrongs 1 should seek only to the extent that would he necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice.

So I decided to take the next available train to Pretoria.

(Autobiography, p 67)

Let us consider Gandhi's reaction. He was humiliated. He could have turned resentful, glowered, vowed vengeance. But no. His thoughts turned to a larger issue. He must root out the cause of the disease which led to his experience. Root out the cause. But the story continues. Let us follow his journey.

1 June 1893

The train reached Charlestown in the morning. There was no railway, in those days, between Charlestown and Johannesburg, but only a stage-coach …

At about three o'clock the coach reached Pardekoph. Now the leader (the white man in charge of the coach) desired to sit where I was seated, as he wanted to smoke and possibly to have some fresh air. So he took a piece of dirty sack-cloth from the driver, spread it on the footboard and, addressing me, said, 'Sami, you sit on this, I want to sit near the driver.' The insult was more than I could hear. In fear and trembling I said to him, 'It was you who seated me here, though I should have been accommodated inside. I put up With the insult. Now that you want to sit outside and smoke, you would have me sit at your feet. I will not do so, but I am prepared to sit inside'.

As I was struggling through these sentences, the man came down upon me and began heavily to box my ears. He seized the by the arm and tried to drag me down. I clung to the brass rails of the coachbox and was determined to keep my hold even at the risk of breaking my wrist bones. The passengers were witnessing the scene, – the man swearing at me, dragging and belabouring me, and I remaining still. He was strong and I was weak.

(Autobiography, p 68)

In an interview to Dr John Mott, an American missionary, Harijan, December 1938, Gandhi said, "My active non-violence began from that date."

The next episode, too, is known widely.

Durban

13 January 1897

Reuters' representative in England had sent a brief cablegram to South Africa containing an exaggerated summary of my speeches in India … When Europeans in Natal read the distorted summary they were greatly exasperated against me … Some youngsters recognized me and shouted 'Gandhi, Gandhi' … Then they pelted me with stones, brickbats and rotten eggs. Someone snatched away my turban, whilst others began to batter and kick me.

A burly fellow came up to me, slapped me in the face and then kicked me. I was about to fall down unconscious when I held on to the railings of a house nearby. I took breath for a while and when the fainting was over, proceeded on my way. But I remember well that even then my heart did not arraign my assailants.

(Autobiography, p 117 and Satyagraha in South Africa, p 54)

The following episode is not that well-known. It relates to the time when, controversially, Gandhi asked Indian South Africans to voluntarily register as Asiatics with the government.

Johannesburg

10 February 1908

When at a quarter to ten on Monday morning I set out towards the Registration Office … I did feel that there might be an attack on me. In fact, I had spotted two of the assailants near the office. They walked alongside of us. I then became surer. But I decided that I should not, as I had declared earlier, mind being assaulted by my own brethren.

Some way ahead, one of the men asked, "Where are you all going?" … "I am going [to the Registration Office! To give my finger-impressions. The others, too, will do the same. If you want to give your thumb-impressions [only], you can do that.- My only recollection of what followed is that I received very severe blows.

I took severe blows on my left ribs. Even now I find breathing difficult. My upper lip has a cut on one side. I have a bruise above the left eye and a wound on the forehead. In addition, there are minor injuries on my right hand and left knee. I do not remember the manner of the assault, but people say that I fell down unconscious with the first blow which was delivered with a stick. Then my assailants struck me with an iron pipe and a stick, and they also kicked me. Thinking me dead, they stopped. I only remember having been beaten up. I have an impression that, as the blows started, I uttered the words He Rama! …

(Indian Opinion, 22.2.1908; CWMG Vol VIII, pp 93-94)

***

When I regained consciousness, I saw Mr. Doke bending over me. 'How do you feel?' he asked me.

'I am all right,' I replied, 'but there is pain in the teeth and the ribs. Where is Mir Alam?'

'He has been arrested along with the rest.'

'They should be released'.

(Satyagraha in South Africa, p 153-154)

And this following episode is hardly known at all. it deals with a jail experience, the first for Gandhi.

Johannesburg

1908

I had one further unpleasant experience in the Johannesburg Gaol. In this gaol, there are two different kinds of wards. One ward is for prisoners sentenced to hard labour. The other is for prisoners who are called as witnesses and those who have been sentenced to imprisonment in civil proceedings. Prisoners sentenced to hard labour have no right to go into this second ward … I was told by the warder that there would be no harm in my using a lavatory in the second ward. I therefore went to one of the lavatories in this ward. At these lavatories, too, there is usually a crowd. Moreover, the lavatories have open access. There are no doors. As soon as I had occupied one of them, there came along a strong, heavily-built, fearful-looking African prisoner. He asked me to get out and started abusing me. I said I would leave very soon. Instantly he lifted me up in his arms and threw me out. Fortunately, I caught hold of the door-frame, and saved myself from a fall. I was not in the least frightened by this. I smiled and walked away; but one or two Indian prisoners who saw what had happened started weeping. Since they could not offer any help in gaol, they felt helpless and miserable.

(CWMG Vol IX, p 161)

The Calcutta fast

Gandhi, it needs to be noted, was at the receiving end in South Africa from men of all three predominant sections — White, Black and — most lethally — his own, Brown. In the three decades, from 1915 to 1947, during the Mahatma's epic struggle in India, attempts were made on his life, but he did not suffer direct bodily injury. But here, in the city of Kolkata, a fortnight after India became free, violence came to his very doorstep. Riots had torn the city apart. A mob of youths brought on 31 August, 1947, to his Beliaghata lodgings a bandaged man and said he had been attacked by some Muslims.

Gandhi writes This was about 10 p.m. Calcutta time. They began to shout at the top of their voices. My sleep was disturbed but I tried to lie quiet, not knowing what was happening. I heard the window-panes being smashed. I had on either side of me two very brave girls. They would not sleep but without my knowledge, for my eyes were closed, they went among the small crowd and tried to pacify them. Thank God, the crowd did not do any harm to them. The old Muslim lady in the house endearingly called Bi Amma and a young Muslim stood near my matting, I suppose, to protect me from harm.

The noise continued to swell. Some had entered the central hall, and began to knock open the many doors. I felt that I must get up and face the angry crowd. I stood at the threshold of one of the doors. Friendly faces surrounded me and would not let me move forward. My vow of silence admitted of my breaking it on many occasions and I broke it and began to appeal to the angry young men to be quiet. I asked the Bengali grandniece-in-law to translate my few words into Bengali. All to no purpose. Their ears were closed against reason.

I clasped my hands in the Hindu fashion. Nothing doing. More window-panes began to crack. The friendly ones in the crowd tried to pacify the crowd. There were police officers. Be it said to their credit that they did not try to exercise authority. They too clasped their hands in appeal. A lathi blow missed me and everybody round me. A brick aimed at me hurt a Muslim friend standing by. The two girls would not leave me and held on to me to the last. Meanwhile the Police Superintendent and his officers came in. They too did not use force. They appealed to me to retire. Then there was chance of their stilling the young men. After a time the crowd melted.

This led Gandhi to start his historic Calcutta fast. He did not call it 'a fast unto death'. He simply said "I therefore begin fasting from 8.15 p.m. tonight to end only if and when sanity returns to Calcutta". How his fast had an electrifying effect on the city, bringing calm to commotion, sanity to mayhem is well-known. The fast which began at 8.1.5 p.m. on 1 September began almost at once to have affect. Hindus and Muslims met and together took out marches for peace. Remarkably, about 500 members of. the North Calcutta police force, including Britons and Anglo-Indians, themselves went on a 24-hour sympathy fast while remaining on duty. A Peace Brigade, or Shanti Sena, came into being, comprising young men undertaking, at great risk to their lives, to personally intervene in clashes.

A professor later recalled that university students came up and said if anybody had to suffer for the continued killing and betrayal in the city, it was not Gandhiji. Rammanohar Lohia, the Socialist leader, brought to the fasting Gandhi a group of Hindu youths who admitted to complicity in the violence and proceeded to surrender a small arsenal of arms. Many, including the then-Governor had said the riots were the 'work of goondas and Gandhi should not fast against goondas. Now a gang of goondas followed and asked for "whatever penalty you may impose," only "you should now end your fast." Gandhi asked them to go "immediately among the Muslims and assure them full protection."

At 6 pm on 4 September a deputation of Hindu Mahasabha, Muslim League and Sikh leaders came, led by Suhrawardy, whose name will ever be linked with the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946, to Beliaghata. Give up your fast, they pleaded. Gandhi asked them if they would risk their lives to prevent a recurrence of communal killings. The deputation fell silent, withdrew to another room, conferred, and returned to say yes, they would. After reminding them that "above all, there is God, our witness," Gandhi broke his fast, which had lasted 73 hours.

Not forgetting to thank the people of Calcutta and acknowledge the extraordinary martyrdom of two young men — Sachin Mitra, killed on 1 September while defending Muslims, and Smritish Banerjee — killed on 3 September while protecting a peace procession — Gandhi boarded, on 7 September, the train that took him to Delhi. As the train steamed, Suhrawardy sobbed like a child. He was grateful — as every resident of Calcutta was — to Gandhi for having saved Calcutta from disaster, and to God for enabling Gandhi to leave this city alive.

Delhi

What happened subsequently in Delhi, we all know. To quote from Rajmohan Gandhi's masterly account of it (The Good Boatman, Viking, 1996):

Gandhi stood up to go to the southern end of the Birla House grounds where he had held prayers every evening since his arrival in Delhi the previous September. Hurrying his feet into his chappals, he placed his hands on the shoulders of Abha, who was on his right, and Menu, to his left, and advanced for the prayers about 770 yards away.

`Your watch must feel very neglected. You would not look at it,' Abha said to Gandhi as he quickened their pace. 'Why should I when I have two timekeepers?' he replied. 'But you don't look at the timekeepers either,' said one of the girls. Gandhi laughed but said, 'It is your fault that I am ten minutes late. It is the duty of nurses to carry on their work even if God himself should be present there. If it is time to give medicine to a patient and you hesitate, the poor patient may die. I hate it i f I am late for prayers even by a minute.'

With this the three and those walking behind them fell into complete silence, for they had reached the five curved steps that gently led up to the open prayer ground. It was Gandhi's stipulation that small talk and laughter had to cease, and all thoughts turn to their sacred purpose, before they put their feet on the prayer site.

Behind their backs the winter sun was setting. A 32-yard path lay between the steps and the platform where Gandhi used to sit for the prayers. The women and men who had come for the prayers lined the path on both sides. Removing his hands from the shoulders of the girls, Gandhi brought them together to acknowledge the greetings of the congregation.

From the side to the left of Gandhi, Nathuram Godse of Pune roughly elbowed his way towards him. Godse had been on the scene ten days earlier for the abortive attempt to kill Gandhi, had slipped away, travelled to Bombay, and returned with a fresh plan of assassination. Thinking that Godse intended to touch Gandhi's feet, Menu asked Godse not to interrupt Gandhi, added that they were late already, and tried to thrust back Godse's hand.

Godse violently pushed Manu aside, causing the Book of Ashram Prayer Songs and Gandhi's rosary that she was carrying to fall to the ground. As she bent down to pick the things up, Godse planted himself in front of Gandhi, pulled out a pistol and fired three shots in rapid succession, one into Gandhi's stomach and two into his chest.

The sound 'Rama' escaped twice from Gandhi's throat, crimson spread across his white clothes, the hands raised in the gesture or greeting which was also the gesture of prayer and of goodwill dropped down, and the limp body sank softly to the ground. As he fell, Abha caught Gandhi's head in her hands and sat down with it …

A haste to pray. A hush on entering holy ground. A sense of the Eternal. Lines of fellow-worshippers. A gesture of goodwill. Rude elbows. A smell of attack. The ring of three bullets. 'God! God!' Possibly a silent, 'God! Forgive them.' Loving hands underneath. Earth, moisture, grass. The open sky. Rays from the dipping sun. A perfect death.

The satyagrahic method

Facing violence, dealing with violence in his own life, and in the world around him and becoming, from a barrister to a Mahatma, and then Father of the Nation, he was and remained Mohandas. Human as human can be. Given to anger, even to rage, he strove to rein that trait in. But more, to sublimate it. Aware that fasting had a moral impact, he undertook it to further public causes, never a personal grievance. And if he resorted to a fast for a non-public end, it was for his own self-purification.

Gandhi's practice of the satyagrahic method is often used by agitating groups today. When I pointed out to some youths recently the difference between Gandhi's method and theirs, the earnest young men said, "Ours was not a fast, Sir; it was a hunger-strike." I appreciated their frankness. What distinguishes a fast from a hunger-strike? I put this apparent divergence to the Sarvodaya leader, Narayan Desai, for elucidation. Narayanbhai said the following in Hindi (I quote from memory): "The point is a fine one. A fast is meant to change the heart-mind of the other side, and is undertaken as a final resort after all other steps have been exhausted. It is persuasive, rather than coercive and does not permit even a trace of enmity towards the person or persons at whom it is directed. A hunger-strike is meant to obtain a favourable decision in the course of a countdown."

"The way of peace is the way of truth," Gandhi had once said. The same can be said of justice, of equity. The end must be right and just; in other words, true. And so must the means. If either — ends or means — are flawed, then honest reparation can unflaw them. The Gandhian thing to do, as I see it, would be for both sides to a dispute to own up errors of aim or method and proceed without recrimination or suspicion towards a solution, force or coercion being eschewed by both.

Today the issues that confront us in India are complex. Truth is not one glowing piece of crystal; if it were, our choice would have been easy. In South Africa, for Gandhi, the problem was clear: racism was wrong; it was evil. Even when fighting the British Raj, the broad issue at least was clear. Today, we grope in a vast zone of grey. India is free; it is a democracy with institutions that are available for redressing public and private grievances — there is the judiciary, so well-respected, and the media so free and vibrant. And yet, we see movements, underground and on the streets, agitations, protests, satyagrahas. At one level, this is the hallmark of an open society. At another, does it show some other problem? Are we as a society and a polity equal to the volume of aspirations, the quantum of grievances, the mass of mutually conflicting human sentiments that are spiralling around us? Or are our preoccupations with limited goals, narrow aims, restricted affinities, blinding us to the larger human conditions in India?

Enforcers of law and order are under great pressure; they have a strong sense of decorum and discipline. But civil society is also under pressure — the pressure of its burgeoning needs; it has a sense of hurt, many hurts. Both, or either, may go beyond optimal lines of action and re-action. Both or either may need to introspect. These are the fracturings of truth. Gandhi once said with an economy of words he was master of: "Those that seek justice must come with clean hands." No sooner is justice sought today than there arises, at once, a demand for another counter-justice. There is no dearth of hands raised in protest. But how clean are those hands?

Naxalite violence saw, among other things, Gandhi statues and pictures being defaced in many parts of India, not just Bengal. This is not surprising. If, instead of iconising Gandhi, those who wanted to follow his path had addressed the problems of India's immiserated peasantry, perhaps Naxalism would not have arisen — at least not in the virulent form it did. And it must be said here that, as an individual, Jayaprakash Narayan tried the most in this respect.

Gandhi took the law into his own hands. So did Naxalites — and do. But one should not miss the difference: Gandhi's hands were unsullied by blood — innocent or guilty. They were ready to clasp other hands in friendship, understanding, accommodation. And they were never raised violently against the enforcers of the law, even in self-defence.

There are today many individuals and organisations belonging to what is called the 'Left'. Many of these see themselves as standing to the Left of our main Communist Parties, the CPI(M) and the CPI. But there is one position even to the left of these, beyond which there can be no further Left. And that is the 'truth'. That is not a point on a latitudinal scale, but a position that can be seen and reached from anywhere or everywhere — north or south, left or right.

Current concerns

The dissolution of violence — the horrendous asuric violence of 1947 in the city of Calcutta — was by the action of one man who 'took charge' without a single political agenda to serve, a personal score to settle or an ego to nurse. "Gandhiji has achieved many things," Governor Chakravarti Rajagopalachari had said on 5 September 1947, "but in my considered opinion there has been nothing, not even independence, which is so truly wonderful as his victory over evil in Calcutta."

There are seven issues in which, today, I believe Gandhi would have intervened non-violently. These are (1) quelling communal violence when and where it occurs; (2) furthering dialogue with Pakistan; (3) tackling extremist violence; (4) protecting women's rights and honour as a national priority; (5) addressing looming ecological crises, particularly over water; (6) countering economic offences against the poor; and (7) opposing commercialism and corruption. His protest would not only have been totally non-violent, but would have warded off all coopters. And it would have had no personal ego driving it.

The absence of ego, but, equally, the absence of false modesty, in Gandhi was beautifully demonstrated when he declined to deliver the Kamala Lecture endowed by Sir Asutosh in 1928, saying he did not have the credentials for it. He wrote, from the Sabarmati Ashram on 1 May 1928, to Dr B C Roy who had extended the invitation to him:

Dear Dr. Bidhan,

Your letter flatters me, but I must not succumb to my pride. Apart from the fact that as a non-co-operator I may have nothing to do with the University that is in any way connected with Government, I do not consider myself to be a fit and proper person to deliver Kamala lectures. I do not possess the literary attainment which Sir Ashutosh undoubtedly contemplated for the lecturers.

You are asking me to shoulder a responsibility which my shoulders cannot bear. I am keeping fairly fit. I am biding my time and you will find me leading the country in the field of politics when the country is ready. I have no false modesty about me. I am undoubtedly a politician in my own way, and I have a scheme for the country's freedom. But my time is not yet and may never come to me in this life. If it does not, I shall not shed a single tear. We are all in the hands of God. I therefore await His guidance.

"My time is not yet". What a remarkable utterance that is! Few know of that letter to a great son of Bengal in the context of the Kamala Lectures. When Gandhi wrote that letter, Beliaghata was 20 years away, freedom was 20 years away. His time did arrive in Calcutta in 1947. And then in Delhi. He had said, had he not, that he would oppose what he called the "vivisection" of India with his life. He wanted to die with the dying in that communal frenzy, if he could not stop it. And so, with the words "I hate it if I am late," he rushed to join those who had died — innocents, all of them.

But his real time is yet to come, in terms of a national consensus on ends and means. "Gandhi in the Grip of Violence", is how I have titled this oration. But in the end it was violence that came into Gandhi's grip. He will always be ahead of us, ahead of the violence in and around us, there, on the margent of truth, where North and South, Left and Right converge and a pure light alone remains.

Tagore's great song has the line, jodi alo na dhare … Gandhi has held out that alo for all time to light the path for the true.