The Mahatma in Sind(h)
Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi’s grandson talks to audience at Beach Luxury Hotel about Bapu, Partition and Sindh again.
The Mahatma liked Sindh. PHOTO: REUTERS
KARACHI:
The Mahatma liked Sindh.
Before Partition, he’d visited the province nearly seven times and according to his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, he felt out of his depth when he visited the province after the 1935 Government of India Act had separated Sindh from the Bombay Presidency. Bapu, as history has taught us, kept fighting to keep the Subcontinent together.
On the third day of the fifth Karachi Literature Festival, Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi’s grandson sat down in front of the audience at the main garden at Beach Luxury Hotel to talk about Bapu, Partition and Sindh again.
Rajmohan, who has written extensively on Partition, was joined by historian Sarah Ansari from Royal Holloway, University of London. The talk was moderated by Zafar Junejo, a Sindhi writer and translator. Junejo opened the session with Sindh’s obsession with Gandhi.
He said it was odd that the province was producing so much literature about a man from across the border and pre-Partition. He asked Bapu’s grandson on why he felt it was so. According to Rajmohan, an average human longed for something human and Gandhi was very appealing to individuals.
While discussing what the legacy of the Mahatma was, Junejo asked Rajmohan what was it about Gandhi that people still talk about - was it satyagraha: a term coined by Gandhi which roughly translates to insistence on truth, or was it his philosophy of love? Rajmohan replied it could have been Gandhi’s self-realisation but it was up to the individual to take away what they wanted from Bapu. He said whatever resonates in their minds is what they take away from his legacy.
Ansari suggested that legacy as a word was static. “Gandhi’s legacy has evolved in the last 60 years. It will evolve again and keep evolving,” she said.
Gandhi’s love for India and her people was strong but it was not blind. Rajmohan recalled a meeting of the Indian National Congress held soon after the Jallianwala Bagh incident of 1919. “Now this session was attended by the Ali brothers, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was still part of the Congress and the party president of the time, Motilal Nehru and the party’s former head Annie Besant,” he said. “They wanted to pass a resolution condemning the incident. While rereading the draft, they saw the last paragraph or second half of the resolution which said that the party also deplored violence by Indian hands a few days before Jallianwala Bagh.” He added that an English woman had been assaulted by some Indians.
According to Rajmohan, the Congress men were wondering who could have done that. “One of them said that no son of an Indian mother could have written this. Insinuating that Besant might have written the second bit of the resolution,” he said. “After many words had been exchanged, Gandhi stood up and said that he had thought about it and felt that only the son of an Indian mother could have written that.”
It didn’t come as a surprise to many to learn that it had been Gandhi all along.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 10th, 2014.
The Mahatma liked Sindh.
Before Partition, he’d visited the province nearly seven times and according to his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, he felt out of his depth when he visited the province after the 1935 Government of India Act had separated Sindh from the Bombay Presidency. Bapu, as history has taught us, kept fighting to keep the Subcontinent together.
On the third day of the fifth Karachi Literature Festival, Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi’s grandson sat down in front of the audience at the main garden at Beach Luxury Hotel to talk about Bapu, Partition and Sindh again.
Rajmohan, who has written extensively on Partition, was joined by historian Sarah Ansari from Royal Holloway, University of London. The talk was moderated by Zafar Junejo, a Sindhi writer and translator. Junejo opened the session with Sindh’s obsession with Gandhi.
He said it was odd that the province was producing so much literature about a man from across the border and pre-Partition. He asked Bapu’s grandson on why he felt it was so. According to Rajmohan, an average human longed for something human and Gandhi was very appealing to individuals.
While discussing what the legacy of the Mahatma was, Junejo asked Rajmohan what was it about Gandhi that people still talk about - was it satyagraha: a term coined by Gandhi which roughly translates to insistence on truth, or was it his philosophy of love? Rajmohan replied it could have been Gandhi’s self-realisation but it was up to the individual to take away what they wanted from Bapu. He said whatever resonates in their minds is what they take away from his legacy.
Ansari suggested that legacy as a word was static. “Gandhi’s legacy has evolved in the last 60 years. It will evolve again and keep evolving,” she said.
Gandhi’s love for India and her people was strong but it was not blind. Rajmohan recalled a meeting of the Indian National Congress held soon after the Jallianwala Bagh incident of 1919. “Now this session was attended by the Ali brothers, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was still part of the Congress and the party president of the time, Motilal Nehru and the party’s former head Annie Besant,” he said. “They wanted to pass a resolution condemning the incident. While rereading the draft, they saw the last paragraph or second half of the resolution which said that the party also deplored violence by Indian hands a few days before Jallianwala Bagh.” He added that an English woman had been assaulted by some Indians.
According to Rajmohan, the Congress men were wondering who could have done that. “One of them said that no son of an Indian mother could have written this. Insinuating that Besant might have written the second bit of the resolution,” he said. “After many words had been exchanged, Gandhi stood up and said that he had thought about it and felt that only the son of an Indian mother could have written that.”
It didn’t come as a surprise to many to learn that it had been Gandhi all along.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 10th, 2014.