Irrelevant Mahatmaji

One of the reasons why Mahatmaji seems to look irrelevant is that he was always ahead of his time.  Even when he was alive and active in public service, for many he remained irrelevant and even as a riddle.¹ But he was a practising philosopher or to use Swami Vivekananda’s ideology, a ‘practical vedantian’. He never gave vain talks but implemented his principle by practising them.  He preached what he practised and practised what he preached.  But as many cannot cope with him in his practise though his teachings attracted them very much, bewildered by the sheer pain of practising like him, many thought that he was irrelevant for them.  This is one way true.  All those who are ahead of their time will remain irrelevant to their contemporaries.  But one important thing to note in the life of Mahatmaji is that, though his teachings might look irrelevant for many, still they cannot deny the fact that his life never remained irrelevant for those who wanted to follow him, though they cannot reach his height in life.  One such practice that he preached and implemented in his life was that he never ‘ran’ after people persuading them to their despair to imitate him.  He shared his ideology and set an example for others to follow.² But when it comes to leadership he remained ‘alone’, not one among the crowd but taller than them all as per the rule that ‘Being a boss is a lonely thing’.

…I shall continue to attend meetings like this till the 1st of August, but afterwards I shall stop doing even that. I shall go on pleading for swadeshi only up to the 31st of August. Afterwards, I shall give up that too. I am a practical business man. I shall go on with the crushing of any quantity of oil-seeds only as long as I believe that it is worth while doing so, and stop afterwards. I have much other business to attend to. — 14.  DISCUSSION ON BOYCOTT AT A.I.C.C.  MEETING, BOMBAY, [Before July 30, 1921], [From Gujarati]

Navajivan, 11-9-1921, CWMG, vol. 24, p. 29

1..  The following    by Mahatmaji will illustrate this very clearly:

I cannot imagine that either {Pandit Madan Mohan} Malaviyaji⁵ or the Poet {Rabindranath Tagore] is envious of me. Both lack fearlessness and are proud of their opinions and ideas. You can tolerate pride if it is not accompanied by fear. They cannot look at non-co-operation from our point of view, cannot overlook the shortcomings of non-co-operators, as we do and so may oppose us. Besides, they are confused by the novelty and simplicity of my ideas. To believe anything more than this about them seems to me positively sinful. Bipin Babu⁶ and Vijayaraghavachariar⁷ may think all sorts of things about me. Ramakant I consider but a child. He appears to have opposed me to show that he is a man of independent views. We should leave him alone and go on offering our comments as journalists without acrimony. Do point out the Poet’s and Malaviyaji’s ideas on . . .⁸ whenever there is an occasion for doing so. This cannot be done freely in Young India, but it can be easily and tactfully done in the Independent.—p. 92. LETTER TO MAHADEV DESAI, CHITTAGONG,September 1 [1921], From a photostat of the Gujarati: S.N. 11418, CWMG, vol. 24, p. 164

3. This is not available.

5.1861-1946; founder of the Benares Hindu University; President, Indian National Congress, 1909 and 1918

6.Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932); educationist, journalist, orator and political leader of Bengal

7.1852-1943; President, Indian National Congress, 1920

8A word is illegible here in the source.

2.. For example in the context of boycotting foreign cloths Mahatmaji wrote:

… If people shunt me by conveniently making me a saint I cannot help. I do not ask the public to do all the things that may qualify me as a saint. I am simply asking them to develop the soldier spirit which is so indispensable for swaraj. If to attain swaraj is to become saints then I want us all to become saints….We must subordinate the Bania {business person} spirit of calculation and bargain and like soldiers of God do pure sacrifice….—p. 91. LETTER TO REHANA TYABJI{ Daughter of Abbas Tyabji}, UNREVISED, CHITTAGONG, September 1 [1921], From a photostat: S.N. 9634, CWMG, vol. 24, p. 163

Appendix: Tagore and Mahatma

It was Tagore who first called Gandhiji as ‘Mahatma’ [but some traced that Gandhiji earned that even before that] and Mahatmaji called Tagore as ‘Gurudev’.  Though Tagore never agreed with Mahatma’s many ideologies, still they remained close to each other.  The following points will highlight this and also will show why many of his contemporaries thought that Mahatmaji was irrelevant:

Tagore went on to accuse Gandhi of manipulating the people with symbols instead of substance.  ‘But Indians by nature have always been worshippers of symbols, of images’, Gandhi countered.  When talking of economic wrongs, Gandhi said, it was legitimate to refer to foreign-made cloth as ‘impure’.  Only a word such as this would induce people to sacrifice the cloth and burn it.  For Tagore such hypnotism was a mater for shame.— Krishna Dutta & Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore, The myriad-minded man, New Delhi, Rupa Paperback, 2000. p.240

…After the meeting Tagore published a powerful essay, ‘The call of truth’.  Gandhi replied equally powerfully with ‘The great sentinel’—his name for Tagore.  The up-and-coming Jawaharlal Nehru read both essays in 1921 and found himself agreeing more with Gandhi.  ‘But the more I have read what Tagore wrote then, the more I have appreciated it and felt in tune with it’, he wrote in 1961, as prime minister.  Their exchange, in Nehru’s view, represented ‘two aspects of the truth, neither of which could be ignored.’—ibid. p.240

Gandhi had never much cared for Tagore’s artistic creations, just as Tagore could never appreciate Gandhi’s utilitarian approach to education.  In almost every department of life they differed profoundly.  Yet something held these two giants together, something higher than the patriotic duties of the time, some universal human affinity akin to that which Tagore had intuited when talking to the Bedouin chief near Baghdad.  In the final analysis it transcended their vast differences.  Within a few weeks they made up; later in 1937 Gandhi procured some more funds for Visva-Bharati; and in 1940, he agreed to Tagore’s request that he take on the needs of the institution after the poet’s death.—ibid. p.321

…As Kripalani, Tagore’s biographer put it, Gandhi had admonished the poet that he was fiddling when the house was on fire and stressed again that hunger was the argument that was drawing India to the spinning wheel.”  Gandhi was hard-hitting and blunt.  “Trace the source of every coin that finds its way into your pocket and you will realize the truth of what I write.  Every one must spin.  Let Tagore spin like the others.  Let him burn his foreign clothes; that is the duty of today.  God will take care of tomorrow.”{Krishna Kripalani, Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography, Calcutta: Visva Bharati, 1980, p. 308}

But Tagore was not willing to give the charkha a place higher than ‘one of the many necessary village crafts.’  Writing in the Modern Review on “The Cult of the Charkha”, Tagore pleaded for a “reasoned diagnosis of Indian poverty” that could be removed only by a “judicious use of the scientific technique….and not merely by a mechanical and ritualistic spinning on a primitive wheel.”{Ibid., p. 337}  He posed the question, “what would have happened if Gandhi had demanded that every peasant must grow at least one more bushel of crops in every bhiga” and mockingly anticipated the patriots’ “cry in despair that this required thought, knowledge, patience, and faith in scientific methods.”  He put it very sharply, “It is foolish to think that the country can be awakened by the inanity of ignorant minds.”  It is remarkable that despite such harsh and public exchanges, the mutual affection and regard that the two men had for each other remained constant.— Mythily Sivaraman, Fragments of Life: a family memoir, New Delhi, Zubaan, an Imprint of Kali for Women, 2006, p. 68