Tridip Suhrud
A
s he walked hastily – he hated being late – across the lawns, we were quick to seize the opportunity and assassinated him. We were certain that we had killed him. This certainty was not misplaced. We had used a Beretta M 1934 Semi- Automatic pistol to lodge three bullets into his body; almost at the very same place he would point to his heart, to his Antaryami, the dweller within, to say that the seat of authority lay within him. The Foreign Hand – not just any foreign but Italian hand – had unmistakably and unfailing come to our aid. We had kept him alive for 168 long days in Independent India, almost against his wish; the man had fasted at least twice – unto death – in this period and instead of letting go of him, some of us had made public pledges of ‘brotherhood’, of ‘collective non-violence’ and kept him amidst us. The reason why some of us still felt the need to have him was not clear then and the passage of time has not made that any less obscure. He had become somewhat slow to take hints. Ba and Mahadev Desai both decided to leave him. It would have been most convenient if he had followed them. The Aga Khan Palace in Poona was grand enough to accommodate three samadhis instead of two. But he wanted a final proof, a final demonstration of his brahamacharya, of his devotion to Rama, of his capacity to urge us to ahimsa, of obtaining both Moksha and Martyrdom. (It would be too much to suggest that he could foretell that his brilliant philosopher grandson would one day speak movingly and most insightfully of this and that this was all done to further the Ota Bapa No Vadlo1 ).
It was not for us to grant Moksha. At that point our relations with Ram Lalla were not so firm that we could make such promises on His behalf, and in any case, the man claimed to have found a lodgement for Rama in his heart. But Martyrdom we could aid in because this was to be a temporary arrangement. We were clear that he was never to be called “Shahid”, and we also knew that soon enough the nationwide siren would become dysfunctional and the need to remember him on that day by observing a forced silence on a busy working day would end. Someone sitting in Dewas might sing Ud Jayega Hans Akela but we were certain that we could chant “Goli Maro …” even louder. So to cut a long story short we found a young man, appropriately Chitpavan, to pull the trigger and when the deed was done we heaved a sigh of relief. Though, some spoke of his passing in terms of load shedding, of electrical failure in a major grid, as the light having gone out of our lives. Such men and women with poetic sensibility – mere versifiers they were – had little understanding of the resilient civilization that we are; when electrical failures occur we use a borrowed newspaper to fan ourselves for comfort.
And thus we did our duty, gave expression to our collective need for patricide and hoped that his conscience – that thing which like a bad sofa-spring came up at the most inopportune times to jab us at the most uncomfortable of places – would die with him. We knew that of all the powers that he thought he had and those that we had attributed to him, transmigration of souls, para kaya pravesh was not among them.
Finito. Pancha Mahabhuta and all that. We are an ancient people with many ways of knowing. We knew that our ancestors do not go easily. They need to be looked after, propitiated and even fed when they become crows – same crows of Kauve aur Kala Pani2. We decided to do a proper Shraddha Parva for the old man.
First thing we did was to start naming expensive real estate after him. He was a landlord of no mean size, some 100 acres in Phoenix and 1100 in Tolstoy and 120 more in Sabarmati, so we knew that despite protestations he liked real estate, roads, chaurahas. Cumulatively he became the longest stretch of road, Grand Trunk Road was really MG road. We also knew that he had a thing for prisons. Only if Jeremy Bentham had consulted him – participatory observation dear reader – the panopticon would have been perfected much to the delight of the French philosopher who was really a pendulum.3 So we decided in memory of Bentham to give him a panoptical vision. Made him stand at every possible Churaha; Khade Raho, we told him. Khade Raho aur Dekhte Raho, just don’t please speak, no whispering in ears either. We knew that eventually he would become a traffic hazard, we would honk at him, baju haat na we would tell him and curse him. We also knew that eventually in the town of his Ashram he would be made to stand under an overbridge for interminable years as those charged to look after him had begun to look the other way, to more greener pastures as they say (such bovine metaphors are not always misplaced.)
We had done the best thing ever (after pulling the trigger that is): made a statue out of him. Frozen in movement, time, place, gaze, (covered in dust, bird droppings and surrounded by noise) we could dust him occasionally and ceremonially. He had become an ideal father – Harilal Take That! – distant and hung up on a wall.
That bearded psychoanalyst who holds the key to our collective unconscious would later tell his student that the best way to forget someone, to kill someone is to make a fetish of him, turn him into a photograph, a statue. This was a harmless way of killing someone. The other way was more devious, he warned.
It is to emulate him, make a nostrum out of him, a rosary, a litany, our own Imitatio Christi. Find enough men and women to get up at 4:20 am and recite eighteen verses of the Gita, drink warm water mixed with honey, administer to each other with loving care an enema, spin some yarn, write post cards with bad spelling of ‘kettle’ in even more illegible hand, generally be recalcitrant – constipated would be another expression but for that beloved enema – allow no joy or beauty and most importantly claim that the slum of politics is not for us.
In short find enough people willing to lead a subsidised life and occupy the very same places he had lived and occupied – minus the prison of course. This, the teacher, assured us was fail proof. It would turn generations away from that impish man who walked like a ballet dancer, who laughed at himself and had a great sense of the aesthetic. A bad imitation is a very good antidote to the original, was the logic.
And we have done that. We found willing followers of another bearded man; the man who laboured under the belief that he was the original author of Discipline and Punish, and characterised the violation of our constitution as something akin to a Hindi week observed in State Bank of India, as Anushashan Parva. They went out and occupied Institutions, never to leave (and they all wish to live up to 125). These men and women were literal minded – not to be confused with literate – and claimed that he (the original one) was against colour Indigo and imposed a uniformly dull white on all. They were also gifted with being tone deaf.
They banished music, locked up libraries and almost succeeded (this despite a young woman who claims ‘he was quite a bowler’.) and made him # un-cool. These POP followers did something that even the British could not do. Take politics out of him.
His Ahimsa became vegetarian, (pakodas are allowed, they are good to eat even when the dentures are in the steel container), the one with a seditious heart became toothless, his charka became a behemoth to be placed at airports or so magical that visiting men who like wall décor could spin without a sliver, he of the original Chamar Chaap, sandal maker became almost brahminical, and eventually we were told to go and protest where he is not, without not within.
We went a step further. Holding up the very same dictionary that he helped create, we intoned that Bapu was a generic term and each village had its Bapu, each sect had one, each teller of Katha became one. Naam Gaya, Kaam bhi Gaya. And then the google maps made sure that Bapu’s Ashram meant Asaram’s, abode of crime.
Thus we were making good progress – ya, the same Vikas – till the Vikas came in our way. As part of our Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of educating ourselves we realised that a man may die but his books survive, ideas have a way of persisting and multiplying. We decided to take revenge on his books, but Pyar Se. We reprinted them, infused modern technology to make them computer friendly – CD Rom and all that Jazz – and while doing that we forgot to include some pieces, even changed the index (only the pedantic read a book through the index), generally sloppy editing that we had perfected. We were certain that nobody would notice such a thing; who compares editions in our country? We knew that the mimic men and women who had come to occupy his institutions had acquired anaskati, a perfect detachment from his writings. Aphorisms are all they wanted to remember, things that he should have said but did not; like the seven deadly sins. They would remain perfectly anaskat with regard to everything else.
But we had not factored in an two-dimensional woman who insisted that it had to be the way it was before, each word, nay each letter of each word had to be in that order and with her eyes cataract-clouded, she began to restore all the words.
Despite such setbacks we had made good progress; there was not a municipality that did not have a road and a statue, no courtroom in our cinema that did not have his photo – not in his barrister’s silk but toothless and in colour (the source of all coloured photos of this man originate of course from the photo-shopped images sent out by his former Ashram), our public men became Manly and spoke of bodily measures as signs of courage, no school text book that did not ensure boredom about the man, we sang bhajans as besura as possible – sophistry apart but we should note that the difference between besur and asura is not much in our land – and when we had exhausted all possibilities internally we took the project overseas; every country should acquire a statue and our creativity reached its zenith in Pietermaritzburg where we installed a statue, golden in colour of the man with two faces. We were inviting people to call him Janus faced, double faced and they did.
Despite all our endeavours and hard work there was something that bothered us. He refused to disappear or appear only when it was comfortable for us to have him make an appearance. He came when women hugged trees, when Dalits refused to eat a carcass or twirled their moustache, when the fishermen spoke of ethics of fishing, when tribals spoke of the gods that resided in the mountains or of mountains as gods, when farmers walked, when his namesake singer- the one who fancies printed shirts and has diamantine eyes and smells cowhide when Mrudanga plays – sang of Rama and Rahim, when Vaishnava Jana became a Muslim Jana and at times Khristi Jana; he would make his appearance much to our annoyance. He came even when his Sabarmati turned red – although it was rumoured that he was turned out of the house of his Sahodara – a brother born of the same womb – by the name of Imam Saheb Abdul Quadir Bawazir.
We were justly annoyed and we decided to shoot him again; if we do it often enough we would succeed – we know that as a nation trained to write UPSC examinations. We are – in the present continuous – doing so, diligently. But we have a new problem on our hands. His old friend – and like BFFs they fought – a bearded bard – we have a thing about men with beards in this country, which only the bearded psychoanalyst can unlock for us – yes the one with flowing robes and silken footwear – insisted that the man is a Mahatma. We got somewhat irritated and told the bard that yes we knew that it was he who had given such fancy ideas to the man. But the bard said to us – these Bengali types are persistent – that we had got the meaning wrong. Mahatma is not a great soul; a Mahatma is one who resides in our hearts. It is a case of I am Thou. The other is me, me the other and S/He in each one of us. Too much Advaita, but we got the point. S/He is the one who tells us the right from the wrong, the just from unjust, light from dark, makes us care, makes us love, he is the one that agitates us despite ourselves.
If we must kill him – like Finito – we must kill each one of us. Hum honge Kamiyaab, ek din. Insha’Allah.
Tridip Suhrud likes to smoke a briar, looks after real estate and is sometimes a part of the POP men and women who make ‘him’ toothless and at times when good taste asserts itself wears tweeds and brogues and pretends that MKG is only distantly related.
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Notes
1. For those of us who need clarification these days it is called dynastic politics, and for those who insist on full
bibliographic references, it is a name of a genealogical tree of MKG’s family prepared by Prahudas Gandhi, Ota
Bapa being one Uttamchand Gandhi.
2. Apologies dear reader. The Grandson and his friends refuse to go away.
3. Foucault’s Pendulum, oh uninitiated one of the People’s Republic of JNU.
Tridip Suhrud is a cultural historian, writer and is currently Provost of CEPT and Director of Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology, Gujarat. With several publications to his credit, he is currently working on a new book with Gopalkrishna Gandhi; Scorching Love, which will be published early next year and the second volume of Manu Gandhi's diaries (1946-1948), The first volume, The Diary of Manu Gandhi (1943-44) was published in 2019
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