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TRANSCRIPT
The Mahabharata has influenced the lives of Indians
through the ages in some particular way. Writes V.S.
Sukthankar about the importance of the epic for Indians:
Next to the Vedas, it is the most valuable product
of the entire literature of ancient India. Venerable
for its very antiquity, it is one of the most
inspiring monuments of the world and an inexhaustible
mine for the investigation of the religion,
mythology, legend, philosophy, law, custom and
political and social institutions of ancient India . . . (Deshpande 1) .
Its characters denote and illustrate certain sharply
definable qualities that we see so often in life irrespective
of the age in which we live. Says Deshpande: "Call a man
Bhishma, Karna or Abhiimanyu and any Indian will immediately
understand your estim.ate of the character of the person
concerned" (3). That Thalroor living in the twentieth century
should look towards the ancient epic for inspiration is hardly
surprising as innumerable literary works have been inspired by
the episodes from the Mahabhar* - even from the days of Bhasa
(circa B C 400) 1 2 ) . According to E. P. Rice, the Mahabharata
which is often considered as a "literary monster," is four
times as big as Valmiki's - RaInayana, eight times the size of
the Iliad and the Odyssey - put together, and three and a half
times the entire Bible. As the highly acclaimed Critical
Edition states, it contains about 73,900 couplets. The
northern and southern recensions which differ in some respects
with each other have 82,136 and 95,585 stanzas respectively
(Despande 3) . Even though most scholars have pronounced it impossible
for a single author to create such a voluminous work alone, in
the epic itself at least three poets are mentioned as having a
definite hand in its composition. According to Deshpande:
[the Mahabharata] -- . . . was composed by Vyasa, the
natura: grandfather of the heroes and villains of the
epic, in 24,000 verses working on the talk for three
years. The epic was then taught to five of his pupils
who made their: own recensions. One of these five,
Vaisampayana recited it on the occasion of the
serpent sacrifice performed by King Janamejaya, the
great grandson of the heroes in the presence of the
original author who was the grandfather of the great-
grandfather of the host. Lomaharsana heard it and in
his turn sang it in the 12 year sacrificial session
of a sage Saunaka in the Naimisa forest.
Vyasa's original worl.: as taught to Vaisampayana and other
pupils have been lost. The epic we have at present is in
dialogic form between Vaisampayana and Janamejaya which itself
is reported to Sage Saunaka by the bard Sauti (Deshpande 7 ) .
Although Dahlmann upholds the theory of single authorship
for the epic, Winternitz blasts it:
In truth, he who would believe . . . that our
Mahabharata in its present form, is the work of one
single man, would be forced to the conclusion that
this man was, at one and the same time, a great poet
and a wretched scribbler, a sage and an idiot, a
talented artist and a ridiculous pedant - apart
from the fact that this marvellous person must have
known and confessed the most antagonistic religious
views and the most contradictory philosophical
doctrines (Deshpande 9).
Even though controversy rages regarding the probable date
of composition of the epic, Deshpande points out the
references to the Yavanas or Greeks as definite indicators
that it cannot have beer1 composed before the fourth century
B C. He therefore states that the date of composition of the
Mahabharata must be placed between 400 B C and A D 400.
Scholars have clearly identified what has come to be
regarded as southern and northern recensions of the epic. And
understandably, they have been far from pleased with either of
them as they have been al-leged to be biased in favour of the
religious interests of some particular group over the other.
It was M. Winternitz who first pointed to the need of a
critical edition of the Mahabharata at the Eleventh -
International Congress of Orientalists held at Paris in 1897.
It was the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute of Poona
which undertook the task of preparing the Critical Edition of
the Mahabharata in 1918. It was under V.S. Sukthankar's
supervision that the work was completed in 1966. As Sukthankar
himself states, the Critical Edition has taken into
consideration ail the important versions of the epic, with
critical footnotes. He therefore calls it 'a veritable
thesaurus of the Mahabharata tradition" (Deshpande 11). --
As we have had a dip of knowledge regarding the various
versions of the Mahabharata, -- which being one of the primary
target texts of Tharoor's parody, is vital for an
understanding of the GIN, we should now revert our attention
to M.K. Gandhi and all tinat he signifies, for equally central
to our study is the fragile figure on the pedestal whom
Tharoor has sought to demolish through his parodic art: the
man whom Tagore chose to call the Mahatma.
Tharoor's Ganga Datta, a subversive representation of
Bhishma, is first introduced to us as a "handsome lad" brought
home by King Shantanu and ma'3e the heir-apparent. At this
stage the reader is provided with no inkling of his future
Gandhian stature, except for the occasional appearance (in Ved
Vyas' narration) of Gandhian vocabulary such as 'satyagrahis'
in an essentially epic milieu. Images and subtle reminders of
the influence of the Raj often crisscross in the background.
Gangaji, also like Gandhiji, immersed himself in the
Vedas and the works of Tolstoy, Manu and Ruskin. Like the
latter, the former also renounces sex. Gangaji also believes
in the efficacy of enernas (like Gandhiji himself). Again, the
physical descript~on of Gangaji subverts all the glory which
any fictional or hist'oriographic depiction of Gandhiji had
claimed till date, for Ganga Datta is as thin 'as a papaya
plant," balder then than the narrator Ved Vyas himself was in
his old age, "peering at you through horn-rimmed glasses that
gave him the iook of a startled owl" (35). He is also
described as the "saint:ly loinc1,oth-clad figure" ( 4 4 ) , and 'a
star - hairless, bon.y, enema-taking, toilet-cleaning Ganga,
with his terrible vow of celibacy ..." (GIN 52).
The British Resjdont Sir Richard is irritated at
Gangaji's seditious speeches and his rhetoric about equality
and justice. He does not understand why the crown prince is
bent on doing what the 'untouchables' used to do; that is,
insisting on cleaning his own toilet. Sir Richard, also, does
not approve of Gangaji inviting an 'untouchable' each week to
his room for a meal with him. Sir Richard's attitude in this
respect is understandabLe as the British as a colonizing power
in India had made it their official policy not to disturb the
social fabric of Indian society which, divided as it was on
the lines of caste and religion, suited them eminently.
Presently, as Gangaji endeavours to break the centuries-old
invisible divisive walls of Indian society, Sir Richard's
exasperation is very real. The British themselves, as will be
seen later on in this thesis, strove to distance themselves
from the natives.
Gandhiji's penchant for recording every detail of his
personal life is r~diculed by Tharoor:
What a :life Gangaji led, and how we know of it, for
in the end he spared us no detail of it, did he, not
a single thought: or fear or dream went unrecorded,
not one hope or lie or enema (46).
The narrator Ved Vyas wonders how Gangaji even in the midst of
his busy life managed to write his innumerable letters to his
disciples, critics, government officials and others, and how
he managed to communicate his ideas to 'every prospective
biographer or journalist" (46) even by means of writing with a
pencil-stub on the backs of envelopes, a habit the father of
the nation is known for. Gandhiji's practice of sleeping naked
with young women in order to test the strength of his celibacy
is also alluded to. 'Tharclor also refers to Gangaji's birth
centenary which was celebrated all over the country with the
charade of speeches made with "tireless verbosity" (46),
exhibitions and seminars conducted, touching every aspect of
his life:
They even pulled out the rusting wood-and- iron
spinning wheels he wanted everyone to use to spin
khadi instead of having to buy British textiles, and
they all weaved symbolic centimetres of homespun (GIN
47).
Equally farcical acts were held nation-wide during Gandhi's
birth centenary ce 1ebrat:ions.
Antony Copley says that khadi became Gandhi's obsession
in the 1920s. He urged ev'eryone to take up handspinning trying
to make them see the spiritual and economic value of manual
labour, especially the peasantry who often endured famine
during the off-season. He a1583 felt that handspinning would
alleviate the problem of unemployment and wanted it to be a
qualification for membership in the Congress (60).
Tharoor also highlights Gangaji's apparent irrelevance
among the younger generation when schoolchildren, in spite of
lessons in school textbooks, 'despite all the ritual
hypocrisies of politicians and leader-writers," still managed
to give only ridicula3us answers to questions about the
loincloth-clad salnt. While one ten-year-old answered that
Gangaji was the father of "our Prime Minister," another wrote
that he was a saint who looked after cows. Another suggested
that he was a character of the Mahabharata, while a fourth
schoolchild thouyht that Gangaji was too poor to wear more
than a loincloth (GIN - 4 7 ) .
There can be no doubt that Tharoor actually intended
Gangaji to act as a parody of Gandhiji himself as he states
that "Gangaji was the kind of person it is more convenient to
forget," and that his principles "were always easier to admire
than to follow. While he was alive, he was impossible to
ignore; once he had gone, he was impossible to imitate" (GIN
47). Speaking about Gandhiji in India: From Midnight to
Millenium, Tharoor repeats the same idea using the same words
(17).
Gandhi's concern wit:h his idea of Truth and the lengths
to which he would go to have it practised in personal life is
well-known, that he even named his autobiography The Story of
My Experiments with Truth. -- Here Gangaji's addiction to Truth
"with a capital T" :is highlighted. For Gangaji (as for
Gandhiji),
Truth was h i cardinal principle, the standard by
which he tested every action and utterance. No
dictionary imbues the word with the depth of meaning
Gangaji gave it. His truth emerged from his
convictions: it meant not only what was accurate, but
what was just and therefore right. Truth could not be
obtained by 'i~ntruthful' or unjust, or violent means
(GIN 4 8 ) .
The narrator Ved Vyas understands Gangaji's Truth better than
anyone else, surely better than some of the British who had a
repulsive habit of describing his philosophy as a kind of
'passive resistance." The narrator thinks that Gangaji's
resistance was not passive at all; in fact, it demanded a
great degree of activj.srn. One had to be prepared to suffer
physical hardships in order to preserve Truth. 'It was
essential to accept punishment willingly in order to
demonstrate the strengt.h of one's convictions" (GIN 48).
Speaking of Gandhiji i,n India: From Midnight to Millenium,
Tharoor attempts to explain Gandhian philosophy using the same
words (18). Tharoor also cracks fun at the originality of
Indians who "have a groat talent for deriving positives from
negatives. Non-violence, non-cooperation, non-alignment, all
mean more, much more, than the concepts they negate" (GIN 48).
In order to live the way of life that he preached, Gandhiji
founded an ashram. Shortly after his renunciation, Gangaji
also started living an austere life in an "ashram" which the
British Resident preferred to call "that commune" in order to
avoid using a native word.
Like Gandhiji, Gangaji always travelled in a third-class
railway compartment. It is in this manner that Gandhi reached
Motihari in North Bihar t:o take up the cause of Indian tenants
operating under the tyranny of British indigo planters.
According to Gandhi, Rajkumar Shukla was an agriculturist in
Champaran and it was the latter who urged him to visit
Motihari. Shukla's request was actually made at the thirty-
first Session of the Indian National Congress held at Lucknow
in December 1616 where the resolution made by Babu Brajkishore
Prasad was unanimously passed (The Story of My Experiments
with Truth 336). In Tharoor's GIN - also, the request is made by a "peasant" called Rajkurnar and his request to Gangaji was to
visit his district Motihalri (name unchanged). However, Tharoor
dramatizes this scene to good effect. Raj Kumar in fact fell
prostate at Gangaji's feat. It. was soon realized that he had
actually collapsed from over-exhaustion for he had not eaten
for three days and he had padded more than a hundred miles
( 4 9 ) .
When Gandhiji visited Motihari in 1917 it constituted
only a part of Champaran district which extended east-west
from Muzaffarpur in Bihar to the Devaria district of Uttar
Pradesh. While the %ran District of Bihar limited its
southern boundary, in the north it extended till the Tarai
region of Nepal. It was only in 1973 that the Champaran
district was divided into two, Betia and Motihari by the Chief
Minister of Bihar at the time, Kedar Pandey. There was popular
opposition to the nomenclaturing of the newborn districts as
it was felt that the name 'Champaran' was too associated with
Gandhiji's agitation to be ignored (3-4). In fact Gandhiji
launched his first Satyagraha from Champaran making it
particularly important. However, Tharoor has avoided using the
name 'Champaran' and instead adopted 'Motihari' throughout the
depiction of this event. Motihari had earlier been the
headquarters of Champaran district. The European landlords of
Champaran had devised a special system called the 'Tinkathia'
which enabled them to exploit the indigenous Champaran
planter. According to this system, a third of every acre of
his holding was to be used for the cultivation of indigo which
the colonists needed. As Singh puts it:
. . . it was th.e prerogative of the zamindar (British) to select the portion of his land where indigo was to
be cultivated, and it also depended on the sweet will
of the white landlord as to what price, if any, was
to be paid to the farmer for his labours and for
using hls land for indigo cultivation. The system had
virtually reduced the farmers to a level of serfdom
( 3 ) .
Writes Tharoor in his Motihari episode:
Three-tenths of every man's land had to be
consecrated to indigo, since the British needed cash-
crops more than they needed wheat. This might not
have been so bad had there been some profit to be had
from it , but there was none. For the indigo had to be
sold to British planters at a fixed price - fixed,
that is, by the buyer (GIN 50).
A comparison of the above couple of passages reveals the exent
to which Tharoor has made use of the details of the original
historical event.
Through the eyes of a discerning Gangaji, Tharoor has
succeeded in capturing the ruthless intensity of the
colonizer-colonized divide, gazing at the Planter's Club where
he was denied entry and turned away. Tharoor contrasts quite
effectively the fatigue-laden faces of the men, the dirty
saris of the women as they did not have another to wear while
they washed the first, and the empty but deceptively distended
bellies of the children of Motihari against the gaiety and
extravagance of the colonizers at the Planter's Club.
On hearing that a tenant had been ill-treated by a
British zamindar, Gandhiji set: off to see him in the company
of others. Their mode of transport was the elephant. In
Gandhiji's words: "An elephant, by the way, is about as common
in Champaran as a bullock-cart in Gujarat" (The Story of My
Experiments with Truth 371). Gangaji also sets off in similar
fashion in the -- GIN 'on the back of a gently swaying elephant
- for elephants were as common a means of transport in
Motihari as bullock-carts elsewhere" (51). Just as Gandhiji is
overtaken by a messenger from the Police Superintendent to
serve a notice on him to leave Champaran (Experiments 371), a
similar message from t:he district police is served on Gangaji
even as he was travelling on t:he back of an elephant. But the
seriousness of Gandhi's narrative is subverted by Tharoor as
Ganga "bends myopically to look at it [the piece of paper]
before sliding awkward:,^ down the side of his mount (GIN 51).
Tharoor's account of the Motihari satyagraha also closely
resembles Louis Fischec's narration of the Champaran struggle
against the imperlal zamindars (see Fischer 191-193).
Perhaps for the sake of enhancing the effect of
novelization, Tharoor portrays the trial scene of Gangaji as
one that is marred with violence as the armed police charge at
the peaceful but noisy protesters. They wade in,
iron-shod hooves and steel-tipped staves flailing.
The crowd does not resist, does not stampede, does
not flee. Ganga has told us how to behave, and there
are volunteers amidst the crowd to ensure we maintain
the discipline that he has taught us. So we stand,
and the blows rain down upon us, on our shoulders,
our bodies, our heads, but we take them
unflinchingly; blood flows but we stand there: bones
break but we stand there; lathis make the dull sound
of wood pulping Elesh and still we stand there, till
the policemen and their young red-faced officer, red
now on his hands and in his eyes as well, red flowing
in his heart and. down his conscience, realize that
something is happen~ng they have never faced
before . . . (GIN 52).
However, the interaction with the officials themselves and
Gandhiji was markedly different as he himself verbalizes in
his autobiography:
A sort of friendliness sprang up between the
officials - Collector, Magistrate, Police
Superintendent - and myself. I might have legally
resisted the notices served on me. Instead I accepted
them all, and my conduct towards the officials was
correct. They thus saw that I did not want to offend
them personally, but that I wanted to offer civil
resistance to their orders. In this way they were put
at ease, and instead of harassing me they gladly
availed themselves of my and my co-workers' co-
operation in regulating the crowds. But it was an
ocular demonstration to them of the fact that their
authority was shaken. The people had for the moment
lost all fear cmf punishment and yielded obedience to
the power of love which their new friend exercised
(372).
In the GIN, the government-pleader tries to get the trial
postponed, but Gangaji announces the futility of a
postponement as he desires to plead guilty. Consequently, he
is ready to accept any sentence imposed on him by the court.
The magistrate Looks helplessly at the unprecedented scenes
being enacted in front of him. He gives permission to Gangaji
to read his own statement, which looks remarkably similar to
Gandhiji's statement rea.d out at the trial at Champaran:
I have entered the district ... in order to perform a humanitarian service in response to a request from
the peasants of Motihari, who feel they are not being
treated fairly by the administration, which defends
the interests of the indigo planters. I could not
render any useiful service to the community without
first studying the problem ... (GIN 53). Compare this with Gandhiji's words extracted from his
statement:
I have entered the country with motives of rendering
humanitarian and national service. I have done so in
response to a pressing invitation to come and help
the ryots, who urge they are not being fairly treated
by the indigo isl'anters. I could not render any help
without studying the problem (The Story of My
Experiments with - Truth - 373).
Again Tharoor writes, as Gangaji continues his statement:
Iam here in the public interest, and do not believe
that my presence can pose any danger to the peace of
the district. I can claim, indeed, to have
considerable experience in matters of governance,
albeit in another capacity (GIN - 53). The resemblance with Gandhi's account continues to be
striking:
I have no other motive, and cannot believe that my
coming can in any way disturb peace and cause loss of
life. I claim to have considerable experience in such
matters (The -- Story of My Experiments with Truth 3 7 3 ) .
Tharoor again seems to depend heavily on Gandhi's
narrative:
As a law-abid.in.9 citizen . . . my first instinct, upon receiving an instruction from the authorities to
cease my activities, would normally have been to
obey. However, this instinct clashed with a higher
instinct, to respect my obligation to the people of
Motiharl whom I am here to serve. Between obedience
to the law and obedience to my conscience I can only
choose the 1att:er. I am perfectly prepared, however,
to face the (::onsequences of my choice and to submit
without protest to any punishment you may impose (GIN
5 3 ) .
Gangaji concludes his argument with a rhetoric flourish:
I refuse to obey the order to leave Motihari.. . and
willingly accept the penalty for my act. I wish,
however, through this statement, to reiterate that my
disobedience emerges not from any lack of respect for
lawful authol-illy, but in obedience to a higher law,
the law of duty (GIN - 5 4 ) .
Now let us go through Gandhi's narrative in order to know
the extent of Tharoor's dependence on the Mahatma's
autobiography:
AS a law-abiding citizen my first instinct would be,
as it was, to obey t.he order served upon me. But I
could not do so without doing violence to my sense of
duty to those for whom I have come. I feel that I
could just now serve them only by remaining in their
midst . . . It is my firm belief that in the complex
constitution under which we are living, the only safe
and honourable course for a self-respecting man is,
in the circumstances such as face me, to do what I
have decided to do, that is, to submit without
protest to the penalty of disobedience.
I venture to make this statement not in any way in
extenuation of the penalty to be awarded against me,
but to show t:hat I have disregarded the order served
upon me not for want of respect for lawful authority,
but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the
voice of conscience (373-374).
In spite of Ganqaji's protest, the confused magistrate
postponed the judgement. Before long, the Lieutenant-Governor
ordered the magistrate to drop all charges against the ex-
Regent and also instructed the local administration to give
all possible help to Gangaji's inquiry. Gandhi also writes
about the "surprised* Maqistrate postponing the judgement only
to be instructed later on by the Lieutenant-Governor himself
to withdraw the case against him. The Collector wrote to
Gandhiji personally offering all the help he needed for his
inquiry. Final1 y, on]. y after successfully abolishing the
'tinkathia' system did Garidhi leave Champaran. It is
worthwhile to add tha.t Tharoor does make a mention of
Gangaji's "candid autobiography" in the - GIN (104).
In the Fifth Book of the GIN entitled 'The Powers of
Silence" Tharoor narrate.3 an agitation organized by Gangaji at
Budge Budge outside Calcutta against the colonial jute-mill
owners who were of Scottish origin. In fact Gangaji is
assisted by an Englishwoman Sarah Moore who was the sister of
one of the jute-mill owners, Montague Rowlatt. Whereas in
Gandhi's account, the :;trike happened not in Bengal but in
Gujarat; precisely speaking, not in Calcutta but in Ahmedabad.
In this case also it was a sister fighting against the
injustice meted out tc, workers in her brother's mill. But the
only difference was that the owners were not colonial; they
were very much Indian. Gandhiji was requested by Anasuyabhai
to fight against her own brother Ambalal Sarabhai. Having
failed to make the mill-owners see reason, Gandhi resorted to
his last tactic - fasting unto death. Finally, after a fast
for only three days, a settlement was arrived at between the
mill-owners and the workers, and Gandhi was able to conclude
his agitation successfully. In Tharoor's GIN, Gandhi's famous
penchant for arbitrat:ion is subverted as Gangaji arbitrates
with the mill-owners and finally wins for them a wage-rise of
thirty-five percent, and this too after a highly effective
fast unto death (103). The details of the settlement which, by
the way, Gandhi has omitted, is laid out in detail and to
devastating effect in Tharoor's work. The thirty-five percent
hike in wages ordered b:y the British Government was only for
the first day after the strike was over. On the second day it
was brought down to twenty percent, to please the mill-owners.
And for every subsequent day a hike of 27.5 percent was
granted. Comments Thar'oor through his narrator Ved Vyas:
The 35 percent ended Ganga's fast and the workers'
strike; the 20 percent ensured that the mill-owners
did not have to concede defeat, which might have
encouraged other workers to contemplate strikes; and
the 27.5 percent appeared to be fair to both sides
while giving the arbitrator the most obvious figure
for his so1ut:ion. The workers of Budge Budge, who had
started off wanting 80 percent, had come down to 50
percent and t:hen reconciled themselves to claiming 35
percent, finally had to settle for 27.5 percent (GIN
104-1051.
The Salt March organized by Gandhi from Sabarmati to
Dandi is subverted by Tharoor into The Great Mango March.
Pandu (read Subhash Chandra Bose) who is shocked by what he
considers Gangaji's eccentric preoccupation with trivial
issues interrupts Gang,aji while he is scrubbing a latrine in
Hastinapur (Sabarmati) ashram. But Gangaji exudes enough
confidence in himself and brushes him aside. As a prelude to
his disobedience, Ganga writes a lengthy letter to the Viceroy
himself in a style which is remarkably similar to that of
Gandhiji before he emt~arked on the historic Salt March. Even
the salutation used, '"Dear Friend," resembles Gandhi ji's
practice. Writes Tharoor"~ Gangaji:
Dear Frlend,
As you are aware, I hold the British rule to be a
curse . . . . I do not intend harm to a single Englishman
in India.. . (GIN 11.91.
Now let us consider Gandhi's letter to the Viceroy:
Dear Frlend,
. . . Whilst . . . I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman.. . (Fischer 333).
Again, in Ganga's letter, we find the following reminder:
"Do not forget, dear friend, .chat your own salary is more than
five thousand times that of the average Indian you tax...";
and earlier, 'I plead with you on bended knee to repeal this
law" (GIN 119).
Compare this with Gandhi's verbiage: "Take your own
salary . . . you are getting much over five thousand times
India's average income. On bended knee, I ask you to ponder
over this phenomenon" (Fi.scher 334).
Again, to look at the conclusion of andh hi's letter:
My ambition is no less than to convert the British
people through non-violence, and thus make them see
the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek to
harm your people. I want to serve them even as I want
to serve my own.. . (Fischer 334).
What really stuns us in Tharoor's version is the
concluding lines of C;angals letter to the Viceroy which is
nothing but a carbon copy of :he Mahatma's letter:
My ambltion is no Less than to convert the British
people through non-violence, and thus make them see
the wrong they have done to India. I do not seek to
harm your people. I want to serve them even as I want
to serve my own (GIN -- 120).
If it were not for Tharoor's general parodying intent
observable in the GIN, it would have been plagiarism!
Gandhiji's penchant for publicizing all his activities is
ridiculed by Tharoor as prior to his Mango March he asks the
entire correspondence between the Viceroy and himself to be
given to the Indian and foreign press respectively, and
particularly to his potential biographer, "that very pleasant
young man from The New - York Times who came to see us last
week," probably alluding to Louis Fischer who worked for The
New York Times (GIN 120).
The narrator Ved Vyas marvels at Gangaji's brilliant
sense of the theatrical. Even though mangoes could be found
anywhere, Gangaji insisted on making a long 288-mile march to
the particular grove specially selected for the purpose so
that he could grab worldwide attention for twenty-four days as
he inched towards his destination. Obviously, Tharoor has
slightly changed his statistics related to Gandhi's Salt
March. But similarities are also evident. According to
Fischer, Gandhi and lni,s seventy-eight disciples walked two
hundred miles in twenty-four days. Interestingly, Tharoorrs
figure for distance covered, 288 miles in twenty-four days
would demand a target of 12 miles per day. Fischer quotes the
Mahatma dismissing the arduousness of the journey thus: "Less
than twelve miles a day in two stages with not much luggage ... Child's play!" (336).
Gandhi's breaking of the oppressive Salt Tax was a simple
act of reaching the beach at Dandi and picking up some salt
left by the waves. But. it was the slow and deliberate build-up
to that particular ac-t of defiance that fires the imagination
of Fischer and probably the rest of the world. It required
ingenuity to walk for twenty-four days and catch the attention
of the whole country and at t:he end of it, on having reached
his destination
to pick up a pinch of salt in publicized defiance of
the mighty Government and thus become a criminal,
that required imagination, dignity and the sense of
showmanship of a great artist.
According to Fischer, the success of this Gandhian act
appealed not only to the illiterate peasants but also to his
sophisticated critics like Subhash Chandra Bose (337).
Tharoor subverts Gandhi's act of law-breaking at Dandi
very effectively. At the climax of the Great Mango March, the
narrator Ved Vyas fears that the "Mahaguru" would be crushed
up by the crowd as he moved towards the oldest and biggest
mango tree in the grove. However, the narrator's fear was soon
assuaged as Gangaji's followers had erected a little platform
for him to pluck a mango, having simply to ascend seven simple
wooden steps. Just as Gandhi had picked up a little salt at
Dandi in a simple symbolic act of defiance, Gangaji plucks the
mango in a ludicrous act:
. . . with a decisive gesture, he reached out a bony
hand toward a ripe luscious Langda mango dangling
from the branch nearest him and wrenched it from its
stalk. As the crowd erupted in a crescendo of
cheering, he turned to them, his hand upraised, the
golden-red syimbol of his defiance blazing its message
of triumph ( G I N 123).
According to Fischer, the salt picked up by Gandhi was
bought in an auction by a certain Dr.Kanuga for a sum Of one
thousand six hundred rupees. In the - GIN, the particular Langda
mango plucked by Gangaj:~ in :his act of defiance against the
oppressive Mango Tax of the Raj was sold for an identical
amount in an auction (124).
Gandhi had started his Salt March from Sabarmati on 12
March 1930 and reached Dandi on 5 April 1930. He marched to
the seashore to pick up the salt the following morning. The
Mahatma's Salt March ~lerlerated a mass-movement of salt-making
throughout the country with several people getting arrested.
While in the aftermath of Gangaji's Great Mango March about
50,000 people had got themselves arrested, Fischer puts the
figure for the arrests made following the Salt March as
anywhere between 50,000 and a hundred thousand. Fischer also
states that even though India at large was seething with rage
at the general British injustice, there was no violence
(except at Chittagong) similar to the incidents that had taken
place at Chauri Chaura in 1922. But Tharoor deliberately
employs the devlce of anachronism in this particular instance.
Following the Great Mango March in a place called Chaurasta
(the resemblance to Chauri Chaura being perhaps not entirely
innocent), an angry mob massacres two young policemen. This
leads Gangaji into suspending the successful agitation much to
the chagrin of hls follo.wers.
The internment of Gandhi and his followers in the wake of
the Dandi March had become a source of embarrassment for the
Viceroy Lord Irwin as, following the Congress refusal to send
delegates to the Firsit Round Table Conference in London in
November 1930, i t had failed. At this juncture, Prime Minister
Ramsay MacDonald himself expressing the hope at the closing
session of the Round Table Conference on 19 January 1931 that
Congress would send delegates to the second Round Table
Conference, Viceroy Irwin, taking the cue, released Gandhi
unconditionally. According to Fischer, it was Gandhi who wrote
a letter to the Viceroy asking for an interview in
appreciation of his gesture (347). But in Tharoor's GIN, it
was the Viceroy who invited Gangaji to tea (127).
On one occasion, Gandhi ate his dinner which consisted of
forty dates and a pin< of goat's milk in the presence of the
Viceroy. It was laid out by his trusted follower Mirabehn
(alias Miss Slade) (Fischer 349; see also Nanda 458). In the
GIN, while waiting for: the Viceroy, Gangaji is offered tea by
Sir Richard who was then Pri.ncipa1 Private Secretary to the
Viceroy. The Mahaguru informs him that he had brought his own
and motions to Sarah--behn, the lady of British descent who
holds a stainless steel tiffin-carrier in her hand. It
contained goat's milk, Gangaji's favourite drink.
Tharoor goes to the extent of subverting Gandhiji's
"dietary predilections" to a point of ludicrity. Gangaji
endeavours to educate t:he uninterested and haughty Sir Richard
about the reason for his opting for goat's milk. He had a
nightmare, he informed the Englishman and goes on to explain
it. He dreamt that a large, sad-eyed white cow with a long
down-turned mouth had wailed to him about being milked by all
sorts of people. But :instead of milk it was blood that had
come from the cow's udders. From that moment he had resolved
not to drink milk again. He continued to inform the baffled
and by now helpless Sir R.ichard that "The cow is our mother ... Yours and mine (GIN 129) .. As she provides nourishment for all
of us, was it right that. we should cause her pain, he asked
the bewildered Englishman. Gangaji having refused to drink
cow's milk fell ill and was dying because of malnourishment
when the doctors pressed him to have cow's milk at any cost,
which the Mahaguru refused stoutly. It was at this juncture
that Sarah-behn suggestecl a satisfactory alternative for the
'dying' Mahaguru - goat's milk.
When Sir Richard offers Gangaji cucumber sandwiches, the
latter smiles impishly and tells him that he had brought his
own food, triumphantly showing him a perfectly ripe mango
plucked during the Great Mango March and says adding insult to
injury: "To remind us of a more famous Tea Party . . . In -
Boston, was it not?" (GIN -- 130).
Fischer also reco:cd:s a similar incident. On a particular
occasion, in the course of a conference, Lord Irwin asked
Gandhi whether he would have tea. The Mahatma thanked him
while retrieving a paper-bag out of a fold in his shawl. He
informed the Viceroy, rather mischievously, that he would put
some of "this salt [from Dandil to remind us of the famous
Boston Tea Party" (349). While in this case, Lord Irwin is
recorded as having laughed with Gandhi, Sir Richard in the - GIN
probably did not. But there is no way of ascertaining his
response as Tharoor ends the chapter abruptly for effect.
The manner in which Gangaji systematically forces Pandu
(Subhash Chandra Bose: to resign from the post of Kauruva
Party President puts a question-mark on the tactics of Gangaji
and his tendency to achieve his idea of Truth at any cost, his
partiality towards the blind Dhritharashtra (Jawaharlal Nehru)
being apparent. The narrator Ved Vyas actually exposes
Gangaji's (and in that: way subverts Gandhiji's) predilection
for his idea of Truth: "No great man ever achieved greatness
by sincerity of purpose alone," and goes on to add, giving us
more insight into what he considers to be Gangaji's concept of
Truth: 'If Gangaji believed in Truth, it was his Truth he . believed in; and by extension the actions he undertook were
founded on the same belief." And Pandu symbolized a challenge
to his unfailing search for his Truth. He had been at odds
with the Mahaguru on various occasions, especially before the
Mango March when he considered it a trivial cause and also in
the wake of its unexpected nationwide success when the
Mahaguru decided to susipend the agitation just because two
English policemen had been killed at Chaurasta where the
agitation turned violent. Thus the Mahaguru had employed
questionable means in the name of 'dharma' and Truth to
eliminate the dissenter (Pandu) and hoist his own favourite
(Dhritharashtral in hi.s place. In a master-stroke of
subversion, Tharoor puts it through the narrator Ved Vyas'
words thus:
There is nothing particularly new, or even cynical,
about that. Our own traditions prescribe such action
- not just i.n the Machiavellian handbook for royal
survivors, the G h a s h a s t r a , but in our epic
political treatise the 'Shantiparvan' of my namesake
Vyasa (174-175).
However, when Tharoor speaks of Gandhi's truth in a
straight-forward manner, that is, without employing
subversion, he speaks in a somewhat different vein in India:
From Midnight to Millenium: -- No dictionary imbues truth with the depth of meaning
Gandhi gave j.t. His truth emerged from his
convict.~ons: it meant not only what was accurate, but
what was just and therefore right.
However, in one thing the tactics of the Mahaguru and the
Mahatma are identical. They do not enjoin violent means for
achieving their ends: "Truth could not be obtained by
'untruthful' or unjust means, which included inflicting
violence upon one's opponent" (India: From Midnight to
Millenium 17). The Mahaguru also does not believe in having
the dissenter Pandu
hit on the head ir. the dark by hired thugs, nor
[defeated] by cheating at the elections ... No
violence done, no blood spilled - but.. . what hurt and humiliation, what sadness and suffering can be
caused in the defence of Truth (GIN 1 7 5 ) .
In this connection it must be added that Gandhi's remark
about his idea of Truth is noteworthy:
Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more
fruit, the more you nurture it. The deeper the search
in the mine of truth, the richer the discovery of the
gems buried there, in the shape of openings or an
even greater variet-y of service (The Story of My
Experiments with Truth 206).
In the course clf the farcical discussion between the
Viceroy and his Principal Private Secretary Sir Richard, in
the wake of the outb:ceak of the Second World War, regarding
the form in which India. should declare war against the Axial
Powers, the latter advises his superior that the Indian
leaders need not be consulted. The Viceroy had put forward the
view that the Mahaguru had been on the side of the British
previously: 'Don't forget that Ganga Datta was on our side the
last time round, quite actively in fact - the Ambulance
Association in Hastinapur, was it not?" (GIN 202). Gandhi
speaks of his participation in the Boer War in his
autobiography. He was of the view that it was his duty to
participate in the Boer War in Britain's defence as he had
been fighting for rights as a British citizen earlier on. So
collecting as many Lndians as possible he formed an ambulance
corps after much difficulty (The Story of My Experiments with
Truth 203).
Gandhi had long beliaeved that independence was impossible
to attain without Hindu-Muslirri unity. He had, however, been
pained to see the ugly head of communalism soar ever higher
and higher on the Indian firmament. In early 1942 there was
also the threat of Japanese aggression. According to Nanda,
the Quit India movement was only Gandhi's answer to these twin
menaces ( 4 5 9 - 4 6 0 ) . There was also no other way to unite the
people and to fill them with patriotic fervour. However, the
Viceroy Lord Linlithgow, having secured the full support of
the British Cabinet, worlced to crush the agitation of the
Congress. The prevalence of v~olence in many parts of the
country also helped the Elritish to crush it. Significantly,
Nanda is of the view that even though the Congress may have
been defeated by British tactics for the time being, the Quit
India movement eventuaily led to the fall of the British rule
in 1947 (469).
Tharoor also seems to view the Quit India movement as a
failure. He agrees: 'The words beat a staccato tattoo on
British ears; they were the heartbeat of a national awakening,
the drum roll of a people on the march." But he also concedes
that it lasted only tcierity-four hours. The British arrested
the main leaders within hours of the Quit India call. Within
hours the lower-Level organizers of the movement also found
themselves behind bars. And leaders like Jayaprakash Drona
[Jayaprakash Narayanl who reso.rted to violence - blowing up
bridges and derailing goods trains - found themselves
imprisoned in a maximum-sectirity prison. And the only
important thing that they achieved from their action, writes
the narrator Ved Vya:; rather humorously, was that the
education of his grandsons suffered (GIN - 206). Collins and Lapierre are also critical of Gandhi's timing
and tactics for the Quit India movement. They think that the
Quit India movement moved overwhelmingly in favour of the
Moslem League by removing the leaders of the Congress from the
political scene at a crucial hour:
While they languished in jail, their Moslem rivals
supported Britain's war effort earning by their
attitude a con:iiderable debt of gratitude. Not only
had Gandhi's plan failed to get the English to quit
India; it had gone a long way to making sure that,
before leaving the country, they would feel compelled
to divide it (613).
Collins writes of "a private drama" in the latter part of
the Mahatma's life
whose dimensions would eventually scandalize some of
his oldest associates, alarm millions of Indians, and
baffle the historians who would one day attempt to
comprehend all the facets of Mohandas Gandhi's
complex character. It would also produce one of the
gravest personal crises in the life of the 77-year-
old man who was the conscience of India ( 6 4 ) .
It was connected not with India's fight for freedom but with
Gandhi's great-niece, nineteen-year-old Manu, and his life-
long struggle to sublimate his sexual urge. After his wife
~as'turbai's death he considered himself a mother to the girl.
One day, Manu informed him that she had never felt the sexual
impulses normal in a girl of her age. He thought that he could
make her his ideal female non-violent follower if she mastered
the sexual urge. But she would have to submit to a rigorous
discipline and a 'test." It would mean sleeping together naked
every night in each other's arms. If Gandhi was truthful in
his vow of chastlty and she had not lied to him about her not
feeling sexual urges, then they would not be aroused by such
intimate physical proximity. If Manu passed the test, a
transformation would take over her, enabling her to think and
communicate with infinite clarity: 'A new spirit would Suffuse
the girl, giving her a pure, crystalline devotion to the great
task which awaited her" (Collins 6 5 ) .
Gandhi's concept of 'brahmacharya' differed from the age-
old Hindu idea of a true 'brahmachari.' He did not believe in
avoiding the company of women or living in some lonely
Himalayan cave w l t h the object of preserving chastity. His
paradigmatic 'brahmachari.' was a person who had sublimated his
sexual instincts to such an extent that he would be able to
move freely in the company of women. For Gandhi, for whom an
erection at the age of 6'7, thirty years after he had sworn his
Brahmachari's vow had been a calamity, Manu's admission had
been a challenge of sorts. He also wanted to rid himself of
the last traces of sexuality present in his being. Thus he
began his controversial experiment. He started sleeping with
his great-niece Manu. E:arlier he had extended his range of
physical contact. with women, nursing them personally when they
were ill and having himself massaged by young women even as he
lay practically naked. He had also started bathing in full
view of his disciples, irrespective of their sex. Comments
Collins:
For Gandhi, secure in his own conscience, there was
nothing improper or even remotely sexual in his
relations with Manu. Indeed it is almost
inconceivable that the faintest tremor of Sexual
arousal passed between them. To the Mahatma, the
reasoning which had led him to performwhat was, for
him, a duty to Manu, was sufficient justification for
his actlon (67-68) .
Even though the bortd that attached the Mahatma to this
shy, devoted girl Manu was only spiritual, the shocked
Congress leaders, who were on the verge of beginning crucial
talks with India's new Viceroy, sent a frantic series of
emissaries discreetly to persuade Gandhi to abandon his
practice of sleeping with his great-niece; but he refused.
Finally, it was Manu herself who suggested to him that they
suspend the practice of sleeping together:
She was renouncing nothing of what they were trying
to achieve. T:he concession she proposed was only
temporary, a concession to the smaller minds around
them who could not understand the goals he sought.
It was with great reluctance and sorrow that Gandhi agreed
(Collins 69) .
Tharoor also narrates Gangaji's "nocturnal experiment
which was to cause sc3 much needless controversy amongst his
later biographers" (GIN 227-228). However in this case, the
revered leader Gangaji sleeps not with his great-niece, but
with his British fem~ilc? follower Sarah-behn. Having suddenly
lost his "incredible physical self-sufficiency that had let
him stride up the steps of Buckingham Palace in the English
winter in his dhoti," he was given to frightful bouts of
shivering. The narrator Ved Vyas conjectures that perhaps it
was only the result of am old man feeling cold at night, "but
Gangaji attributed no such simple motive to the decision that
he, with characteristic lack of embarrassment, announced to
his entourage one mo~:ning." His followers listened in
consternation as he informed them that Sarah-behn would be
sleeping with him from then on. He tried to placate them by
saying:
Do not. fear, my children. Sarah-behn is like a
younger sister to me. But I have asked her to join me
in an experiment that will be the ultimate test of my
training and self-restraint. She will lie with me,
unclad, and cradle me in her arms, and I shall not be
aroused. In that non-arousal I hope to satisfy myself
that I have remained pure and disciplined (GIN - 2 2 8 ) .
Even though Collins writes in detail of the deviant
behaviour of the Mahatma in t.he twilight of his life, he does
not seem to take too critical a view about the matter. In
fact, he even makes a pretence of understanding him. He
attributes his odd bshnviour to loneliness after having lost
his wife and the support of his oldest followers. Moreover he
had failed as a father to his own sons.
Conversely, Tharoor .is merciless in his ~ a r o d i c portrayal
of the father of the Nation:
The Mahaguru, at his venerable age - an age when
most normal me:n should have been dandling great-
grandchildren 0x1 their arthritic knees - thinking,
and speaking, of testing his capacity for arousal!
Tharoor also refers to the "tight blanket of loyal censorship"
undertaken by the foLl(3wers of the Mahaguru to save the
reputation of thelr leader in the face of vicious gossip about
his relationship with t.he "formidable" Sarah-behn (GIN 228).
Collins also narrates how Gandhi when assailed by rumours
about his intimacy wi1::h his great-niece sent his explanatory
message to his newspaper Harijan to be published:
Two of the editors quit in protest. Its trustees
fearful of a scandal, did something they had never
dreamed of doing before. They refused to publish a
text written by the Mahatma (68).
As mentioned earlier in this thesis, Tharoor enacts a
rather complex multiple act of parodization in the GIN.
Nowhere is this strategy more apparent than at the death of
Gangaji (Gandhi j i i in the tell-tale eleventh book entitled
"Renunciation - or, The Bed of Arrows." Tharoor had made it
clear in the flrst book of the GIN itself, in the vow-taking
scene of Ganga Datta, that he was not the Bhishma of straight-
forward narration but only a subverted depiction of that epic
figure. Picking up the fallen flowers supposedly showered from
the heavens by the admiring gods but really only the result of
the force of a stray wind, one of the courtiers had declared:
"The heavens admire your courage, Ganga Datta! From now on you
should be known as Bhish:ma, the One Who has Taken a Terrible
Vow" (24).
The age-old depiction of Bhishma as a warrior who was
more than equal even to Parasurama himself and who was said to
have Grecian proportions in his physique suffers at the hands
of Tharoor, for Gangaji is depicted as being as thin as a
papaya plant (g 35). Even though the spiritual comparison
between Bhishma and Gandhi projects the latter almost on an
equal plane, especially their vow of brahmacharya, the
physical comparison makes the act look ludicrous.
Even though the depiction of Gandhi's assassin Nathuram
Godse as Sikhandin may seem unfair to those who admire him,
Tharoor may have been compelled to the act by sheer novelistic
necessities and perhaps by the fact that Godse had also, like
Gandhi, having taken a vow of brahmacharya, steadfastly
abhorred and avoided [any form of sexual relationship (Collins
366). Like Sikhandin, the one mission of his life was to kill
Gandhi.
In the original version, Amba, having been humiliatingly
turned down by her lover Salva, the king of Saubala, pleaded
of Bhishma to marry her in order to save her from being
disgraced. But Bhistima refused to break his vow of
brahmacharya. The sorrow-stricken Amba, after spending six
tear-laden years hoping vainly for happiness, approached
several princes who would confront and finish off Bhishma for
her. But even the greatest warriors, being fearful of him,
refused. The determined Amba, after undergoing tough
austerities, succeedeci in getting the grace of Lord
Subrahmanya, who offered her a garland of ever-fresh lotuses,
the wearer of whlch would become the enemy of Bhishma. As
every warrior who was approached by her refused to take up her
mission, she hung the garland at King Drupada's palace-gate
and went away to the forest where she succeeded in getting the
sympathy of Parasurama who agreed to fight Bhishma. However,
he was defeated by the latter at the end of a long and equal
combat.
Filled with ange.r and disappointment, Amba, after
practising severe austerities, succeeded in getting a boon
from Lord Shiva himself, who announced that she would slay
Bhishma in her next birth. Impatient for her rebirth, Amba
committed suicide by plunging into a pyre. Consequently, she
was reborn as the daughter of King Drupada. A few years after
her birth, seeing Lord Subrahmanya's garland of never-fading
lotuses still hanging at the palace gate, she put it round her
neck. Her shocked father, k:nowing very well that the wearer of
that particular garland would bring on himself/herself the
wrath of the powerful Bhishma sent his daughter in exile. She
underwent strict austerities in the forest and was
consequently changed into a male, adopting the name Sikhandin.
In the GIN also, Amba, after being rejected by King
Salva, approached Ganga Datta with the request of marrying
her. But the latter's advice to her is typically Gandhian, but
perhaps subversive of Bhishma's advice in the original epic:
You know, I wouldn't be so upset if I were you. . . A life of celibacy is a life of great richness. You
ought to try it, my dear. It will make you very
happy. 1 am sure you will find it deeply spiritually
uplifting.
And Amba's reactlon to the above is well in keeping with the
general parodic: spirit inherent in the - GIN: "You smug,
narcissistic bastard . . . Be like you, with your enemas and your
loincloths? Never'!" (29). In this case also after six years of
persistence first with Vichitravirya, then with Salva for
nuptial fulfillment, she gave up hope, and started looking for
someone who would ki1.1 Gangaji. However, fearing the papaya-
thin leader of the masses who was by now well-known throughout
the country, nobody would agree to assassinate him. It was
then that she firmed up to do the task herself.
Tharoor's Amba also practised austerities and was finally
informed by 'an ethereal voice that echoes round the spaces of
her mind" that. Ganga Datta can be killed only by 'a man made
unlike all other men" (208). At this juncture, she goes to a
sharp-toothed surgeon in a greased white coat in a small
clinic of ill-repute in the backstreets of Mumbai and asks him
to change her into a man just as Amba had been transformed
into Sikhantin in the Mahabharata -- (GIN 209).
When India achieved freedom at the stroke of midnight,
Gangaji remained unhappy, silent and alone on the cold floor
of an ill-lit room. A,s he was pondering over his over-all
failure, Sikhantin himself arrived, straight from the small
clinic where she had had her gender transformation. Sikhantin
fires angrily at Gangaji, verbally at first, pointing a finger
at his personal life:
What a wreck you are, Bhishma!. . . What a life you've led. S p o u t ~ n g on and on about our great traditions
and basic value:!, but I don't see the old wife you
ought to be honouring in your old dotage. Advising
everyone about their sex life, marrying people off,
letting them call you the Father of the Nation, but
where is the son you need to light your funeral pyre,
the son of your own loins? (GIN - 232). This also reminds us of the original Father of the
Nation, Gandhi, who is aLso said to have had problems of a
similar nature. In this regard, Collins' observation is
interesting:
. . . the one failure in his [Gandhi'sl life had been
in his role a:s a father. His eldest son, embittered
because he'd felt his father's devotion to others had
deprived him of his share of paternal affection, was
a hopeless alcoholic who had staggered drunk to his
dying motherl.s bedside. Two of his other sons were in
South Africa and rarely in contact with Gandhi ( 6 8 ) .
He goes on to add that the Father of the Nation enjoyed a
normal father-son relation only with his youngest son Devadas.
The assassin took out his gun and shot the Mahaguru
thrice. He was then seined by the latter's followers. Collins
also says that Nathuram Godse shot Gandhi three times. But he
was shot not in a poorly-lit room when he was alone but in the
midst of a crowd as hae was proceeding to his regular prayer
meeting (440).
In the original epic, Arjuna attacked Bhishma on the
tenth day of the battle, using Sikhandin as a shield to
prevent counter-attack, knowing very well that the "grandsire"
would not attack a woman. Arjuna drove arrows into Bhishma's
body so thickly that t:here was not even an inch of space
between them. Consequently, Bhishma tumbled down from his
chariot. Writes Rajagopalachari in his version of the
Mahabharata:
Bhishma's body did not touch the ground, on account
of the arrows sticking out all over his body. His
body shone more brighrly than ever before, as it lay
on a bed of hc'nour, supported by the shafts that had
pierced his fl'esh (232).
The dying Bhishma requested Arjuna, his favourite disciple, to
get him some water to drink. The latter made an opening in the
ground immediately by shooting an arrow adeptly into it from
which immediately gusheci Siorth the "pure sweet water" from the
River Ganga.
Tharoor subverts the above-mentioned incident in his
characteristic manner. The narrator Ved Vyas, not having
personally witnessed the assassination of Gangaji has a
nightmare in which the Mahaguru is felled not by bullets but
by arrows as in the Mahabharata. -- The hundred hands of his
followers which lift him gently to his deathbed seem to the
narrator to be
a bed of a hundred arrows, all planted firmly in the
stony ground, their sharp triangular heads embedded
in Gangaji's back, his lifeblood pouring from each in
a crimson flow that merged and mingled with the
darker trickle Sirom his assassin's weapon, till it
was impossible to tell which he was dying from, the
injury inflicted by the killer or the unremitting
incisions of the bed of arrows on which he was lying-
(GIN 2 3 3 ) . -
Like Bhishma of the !*lahabharata, Tharoor's Gangaji too,
even though suffering c:onsiderable physical pain, does not
experience any mental torment. "He bore his fatal impalement
calmly, as another campaigner for justice and peace had
accepted the catharsis of crucifixion." In his nightmare, Ved
Vyas visualizes Gangaji asking for the last sip of water
'which is the dying Hindu's last prerogative on earth." "A
lustrous youth" immediately obliged him by stepping forward
and shooting a purposeful arrow into the ground. But Tharoor
points to the harsh reality of present-day environmental
pollution, for the 'Ganga-jal' which emanated from the ground
was
the best and the worst. of all the water of India, its
crystals clear with the sparkle of love and truth and
hope, its flow muddied by the waste and the offal
that are also flung into the holiest of our rivers.
The filthy water, if it quenched the Mahaguru's thirst, also
succeeded in inflaming his open wounds. At this juncture, the
nightmare fades from the narrator's vision and he is brought
back to 'reality' when a boy called Arjun, Pandu's son, brings
a tumbler of "Pure Ga.nga-jal, from Hastinapur" for the
Mahaguru (GIN - 233 I .
In the Mahabharata, .- Karna rushed to Bhishma's side as
soon as he came to know that he lay wounded in the battlefield
and sought his blessings which the 'grandsire' graciously
gave, and Karna returned to the Kauravas brimming with
confidence at havlng obtained Bhishma's benediction. In the
GIN also, Mohammed Ali Karna (Mohammed Ali Jinnah) visits -
Gangaji as he lay dying seeking his blessings. And the sinking
Gangaji also wholeheartedly rendered him his blessings.
Nehru' s f lalr f 01:: giving extemporaneous speeches is
highlighted by Fischer in his biography of Gandhi. The news of
the Mahatma's assassination was conveyed to the people of
India by none other than Jawanarlal Nehru who was the Prime
Minister then. He broke the news through the All India Radio,
fighting in vain to cor~trol his tears and choked up with
emotion:
The light has gone out of our lives and there is
darkness everywhere and I do not quite know what to
tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu
as we call him, the father of our nation, is no more
( 1 8 - 1 9 1 .
In the GIN, immediately after Gangaji's death, Dhritarashtra
also refers to the Light that went out of 'our" lives. But the
paradox of the statement was that there had never been any
light, literally, in Dhritarashtra's life as he had been born
completely blind. However, Monammed Ali Karna's reaction was
characteristically grudging: ' . . . a great loss to the Hindu
community," he said (GIKI 234) . Mohammed Ali Jinnah's message
of condolence, as recorded by Collins at Gandhi's death, is
strikingly similar: 'There can be no controversy in the face
of death . . . He was one of the greatest men produced by the
Hindu community." At this, one of Jinnah's assistants
suggested that Gandhi's significance went beyond his
community. But Jinnah without budging, disagreed: " No. . . That's what he was - a great Hindu" (445).
At all times the impact of Gandhi on Indian English
novels has been very significant. Gandhi himself was
influenced by Thoreau and Tolstoy. In I. Venkateswarlu's
words :
Thoreau's ldea of non-conformity to the evil of
American slave trade and Tolstoy's notion of
resistance 'o Russian serfdom were also more or less
similar to the Gandhian concept of resistance to a
moral wrong. They paved the way for Gandhi in this
matter. Liberalism and humanism shape, to a large
extent, the Gandhian non-conformist theory (Amur 52).
Gandhi introduced his potent weapon of 'satyagraha'; and
'ahimsa' was for him not merely a term of considerable
spiritual significance but a working principle in actual
political praxis. Venkateswarlu rightly points out:
Apart from the Upanishads, the Gita and other holy
scriptures of Hinduism, the Bible too plays a
significant role in shaping the Gandhian notion of
'satyagraha.' Tlne Sermon on the Mount made a lasting
impression on the mind of the Mahatma (Amur 53).
Both R.K. Narayan in Waiting for the Mahatma (1955) and
Raja Rao in Kanthapura have tried in their individual styles
to deal with Gandhism. Where Narayan was unsuccessful, as
pointed out by C.D. Narasimhaiah, Rao was effective to a
greater extent. Moorthy, the central character of Rao's novel,
is a typical Gandhian. His act of eating with the pariahs
which leads to hls eventual excommunication is the highlight
of the novel.
In the words of M.K. Naik:
Gandhi's writings are a mine of stimulating thought
on political, social, economic, cultural and
spiritual issues. He was no erudite scholar, by no
means an original thinker with a razor-sharp mind,
nor a brilliant theoretician. But solidly grounded in
the ancient Indian tradition, he possessed a profound
moral earnestness which enabled him to rediscover the
ethical values of this tradition; and with his
convictions au:pported by similar trends in ancient
and modern Western thought, he boldly applied his
findings to the political and social realities of
colonial India (122).
K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar also praises Gandhi for bringing
about yet another revolution - the Gandhian revolution in
the usage of Indian English. Writes Iyengar:
Although no g.reat scholar, Gandhi knew very well the
New Testament im English, and his writing in English
had accordingly a simplicity, pointedness and clarity
that was in refreshing contrast to the heaviness
often charact:.eristic of earlier Indian writing.
Thanks to the Gandhian example, Indian writing in
English became recognizably functional. Gone were the
old Macaulayan amplitude and richness of phrasing and
weight of miscellaneous learning. Gandhian writing
was as bare and austere as was his own life . . . (272). In Khwaja Ahmad Abk'as' Inqulab ( 1 9 5 5 ) , we come across
many historical characters like Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Subhash
Chandra Bose, Vallabhbhai Patel, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and so
on. The representations being rather straight-forward, there
is hardly any ironic or parodying intent such as we encounter
in the novelizing art of later Indian English novelists like
Rushdie and Tharoor. It is worthwhile mentioning that the
fictionalization of history has always held a fascination for
Indian English writers. F.ccording to Iyengar, T. Ramakrishna
Wrote a historical novel. as early as 1903. Titled Padmini, it
was "a romance of the sixteenth century leading up to the
great battle of Talikoto which brought to an end the 'never-
to-be-forgotten' Vi jayanagar Empire" ( 3 2 3 ) . Sudipta Kaviraj suggests that the strength of Gandhism is
rooted in its shrewd utilization of cultural power, 'its
ability to fashion weapons of political struggle Out of
unorthodox material" (229). While radical politicians such as
M.N. Roy failed to understand Gandhi's politics, it was its
apparent weaknesses such as his so-called "impotent mysticism"
and indigenism that was its real strength. He was well-versed
both with British law and administrative ethic; and his
politics was a shrewd admixture of cultural and political
strategies. Says Kaviraj: 'Resolved in its parts, it
[Gandhisml appeared laughable and simplistic; as a totality,
it was, after all, the only strategy that worked against
British imperialism." Kaviraj sees Indian culture as one of
"inflections," having a great variety of gestures of "great
subtlety." Says Kavlraj:
Subtlety of a culture is not a matter of literacy
alone; and Gandhi's political style consciously tried
to gather up these elements from other aspects of
Indian life, in which their effectiveness had been
tried for centuries, and apply them to the untried
field of politics.
Kaviraj goes on to argue that Gandhian politics was not
entirely mystical. Rather, it was well-directed with its
seeming irrationalities carefully worked out. Says Kaviraj:
Surely, a part of Gandhi's critique of colonial
culture was a deliberate counterposition of
Westernized crudeness with an inherently subtle
indigenous style, a cultural style which does not
give an account or justification of what it is doing
in other's terms. Gandhi used the Indian cultural
repertoire with great success. His style was a
condensed introduction, and a breaking down of the
barrier between the political interlocuter and his
audience. He began to be understood before he began
to speak, where others discoursed endlessly with
little effect ( 2 2 9 ) .
Kaviraj contributes Gandhi's success to his blend of
literacy and subtlety that in turn "made for a peculiar mode
in which few knew how to play with Gandhi's sureness of
touch." Kaviraj points out that Gandhi created a political
culture which depended (jroatly on the "prediscursive" - that
is, he used symbolism of a kind which was understood to the
audience even before he started to speak. For Kaviraj,
Gandhi's elaborate simplicity was a conscious political act
which achieved through his idiosyncratic symbolic style what a
rationalist discourse could not have:
It dispensed with the need of every urban politician
to introduce :himself to his rural constituency,
arguments to establish his authenticity. Gandhi's
metaphysics crossed this barrier implicitly (230).
Mohanty points out that Gandhi's conscious use Of
religious symbols in 11i:s strategy of struggle irritated the
communists. Gandhi endeavoured to mobilize the masses, often
with great success, in the anti-colonial struggle. Needless to
say, he willingly put to use traditional idioms and symbols in
order to communicate with ordinary people. Writes Mohanty:
What the communists regarded as feudal images, Gandhi
used effectirre:Ly to carry people with him. At the
same time, he made it clear to the landlords and
capitaiists that unless they stood by him they would
invite the wrath of the common people. Thus the
united front of otherwise antagonistic classes and
sections of people actually materialized under his
leadership wt~ic:h the communists failed to appreciate
(243).
As Kaviraj puts it: 'E'olitics often become a context over the
use of language, a matter of defiance of linguistic and
symbolic norms" 110). A:nd nobody understood this better than
Gandhi himself.
Ranajit Guha alleges that Gandhi being the spokesperson
of the indigenous bourgeoisie
shared with the colonialists a prejudice common to
all elites in regarding any mobilization of the
masses on their own initiative as indiscipline. In
this sense, the voice that asked the question about
disciplining the habitually undisciplined, though not
quite the same as a sergeant-major's, was still the
voice of one who stood outside and above the ranks he
wanted to bring to order. That being so, Gandhi's
description of his own faith in the masses as
'boundless,' was less than convincing. He dismissed
the views of: the critics of Non-co-operation as
'nothing less t.han distrust of the people's ability
to control t:hemselves.' But his own distrust is
inscribed so firmly and so copiously in his writings
and speeches that it is hard to imagine anyone
scoring better (Chaterjee 108).
After charging Gandhi of insincerity, Guha goes on to add
that Gandhi, unlike h:is 'loyalist' opponents within the
Congress, knew how to make use of the masses whose mobocracy
he distrusted. As Guha puts it:
. . . Gandhi had a use for the masses. It was of
fundamental importance for the philosophy as well as
the practice of his politics that the people should
be appropriated. for and their energies and numbers
'harnessed' to a nationalism which would allow the
bourgeoisie to speak for its own interests in such a
way as to generate the illusion of speaking for all
of society. ,4lthough he shared the aversion of all
elitist politicians for what he called 'mob rule' and
was quick, like them , to condemn it as 'cruel' and
'unreasonable,' he distinguished himself clearly from
the others by his acumen to discern an inexhaustible
fund of eneri3y in the 'mobocracy' he hated so much
and e x p l o ~ t it in order to power the Congress
campaigns. He was not going to throw away this
material which he described as 'an exhibition of
boundless l(:)vel and set about regulating and
employing it 'for the national good' (109).
Guha charges that Gandhi used the power of the masses to
achieve the goais of the bourgeoisie (111). The writings of
critics like Kavlraj, Mohanty and Guha, along with the parody
of Tharoor, reveal Gandhi not as just the highly-revered
figure of the father of the nation, but a hugely successful
and shrewd politician who knew how to win the complicated game
of wresting power, and could just as easily dominate in a game
of one-upmanship.