Mahatma Gandhi and Indian fiction

Shriniwas Joshi

Mahatma Gandhi — the man of the millennium, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947, and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948, but was never awarded the Nobel. 

The omission was publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee because the faux pas had carted off quite a bit of sheen from the prize.

The UN, however, recognised that Gandhi not only played a major role in India achieving its independence, but also taught the philosophy of search for truth through non-violence, which has universal applicability and so declared Mahatma’s birthday as ‘International Day of Nonviolence’ in 2007. 

To celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of this great son of India, Sahitya Akademi organised a literary seminar on ‘Gandhi and Indian Literature’ at New Delhi. Gandhi himself was not a creative writer, although a prolific one, but acted as a catalyst to a multitude of creative writers both in India and abroad. Every renowned writer had something to say about him.

I was surprised as well as pleased to see Jaiwanti Dimri, superannuated professor of English from Himachal Pradesh University, sharing the dais with Bhagwan Singh, Maalan V Narayanan and Prabodh Parikh in the third session of the seminar. The session was chaired by SL Bhyrappa, a distinguished Kannada writer. Professor Dimri had also been the Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, and visiting professor of Portland State University, USA.

Besides academic brilliance, I respect her as a woman of substance. We had gone to Baba Balk Nath temple in Hamirpur for a literary get-together. The temple management, then, did not allow women to pay obeisance to ‘babaji’ direct, but to have his ‘darshan’ from a distant platform. Dimri refused to pay obeisance and said she would come only when the cave was open for women too. “This is sheer inequality and against the tenets of the Constitution,” she had said. The cave was, at last, opened for women in April 2016.

She is a voracious reader and the author of books in Hindi and English. In the national seminar, she narrated Gandhi’s activism in the novels of three languages — Assamese, Bengali and Bihari. She picked up the trailblazing Bengali novel ‘Dhorai Charit Manas’ by Satinath Bhaduri, published in 1941, and said the writer had excellently portrayed the persona of Mahatma Gandhi among India’s peasantry through stories, myths and rumours of his miraculous powers to fulfil the objectives of the nationalist movement. Dhorai, a villager, the protagonist, found Ganhi Bawa (Gandhi Baba) as big as Lord Rama himself. Dimri said, on the whole, Rama and Gandhi formed the two enduring ideals that framed the entire story of the novel. The second novel from Bihar, published in 1954, was that of Phanishwar Nath Renu’s ‘Maila Aanchal’ (soiled border) located in Meriganj village of Purnea district of Bihar. Renu describes the trials and tribulations of the villagers in the backdrop of the Quit India Movement and the exploitative zamindari system in the novel. 

Dimri says the currents and cross-currents in Indian politics are vividly described in the book. The third one from Assam that she had selected was Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s ‘Mritunjaya’ (1970), a Gyanpith award winner, which depicted the dichotomy between the Gandhian non-violent path to independence and the revolutionary vision of some other contemporaries.

The others spoke well on the fiction of different parts of India influenced by Gandhi’s philosophy, but Chairman SL Bhyrappa, went totally off on the tangent and preferred to speak on politics instead of literature. He derided the role of Gandhi in appointing Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister.

This took me to Fredda Brilliant, an émigré Pole, who had sculpted Mahatma Gandhi. This Gandhi installed at the garden area of Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury, London, is seated yet it is the most moving statue. Its clone, sculpted again by Fredda Brilliant in 1937, is sitting at the open space in front of the State Museum in Shimla. The Mahatma looks sad, glum and depressed in it. Is it because Mahatma felt guilty of what Bhyrappa had said? No. I go with Shiv Kant Jha, an advocate in the SC, reflecting the feelings of many, who see the bust in Shimla, “It was beyond me to comprehend why the Father of the Nation was so much downcast. While it is not unlikely in these locust-eaten years for most fathers to be sad on seeing the deeds of their progeny, Gandhi’s drooping face indicated some deeper pang, some iron in his soul. Is he so morose because he has really noticed that the talisman he had given to the decision-makers of the free India is now quoted at the lowest price on the stock exchange?” Has he rightly painted the picture of the present-day politicians?

Tailpiece

Dhorai's enthusiasm, in the beginning, was deflated when he saw Ganhi Bawa (Gandhi Bawa) wearing spectacles like so many lawyers and teachers in town. The holy man with spectacles appeared strange to him — From 'Dhorai Charit Manas'