I received this book as a present when I was 14 – The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer.
Born in Philadelphia and a journalist at the “New York Post”, He was one of the outstanding authorities on global politics in Russia, India and the Middle East, where he spent several years. The man’s style of writing is completely classic, be it the way the sentences dance around before coming to the point, or the way the narrative is complete and detailed, or even the way the conversations are brought completely alive.
I have attempted to read this book several times before, and I have always got stuck at the chapter which describes Gandhiji’s youthful and bachelor days. This time I directly skipped to this chapter titled “My week with Gandhi”. A beautifully written chapter, and I am going to type out two pages from this chapter which have impacted me heavily.
Old people are prone to reminiscences. Lloyd George would commence to answer a question on current events and soon be talking about his conduct of the first World War or a campaign for social reform early in the century. At seventy-three, Gandhi never reminisced. His mind was on things to come. Years did not matter to him because he thought in terms of the unending future. Only the hours mattered because they were the measure of what he could contribute to that future.
Gandhi had more than influence, he had authority, which is less yet better than power. Power is the attribute of a machine; authority is the attribute of a person. Statesmen are varying combinations of both. The dictator’s constant accretion of power, which he must inevitably abuse, steadily robs him of authority. Power feeds on the blood and tears of its victims. Authority is fed by service, sympathy and affection.
One evening, I watched Mahadev Desai spin. I said I had been listening carefully to Gandhi and studying my notes and wondering all the time what was the source of his hold on people ; I had come to the tentative conclusion that it was his passion.
‘That is right’, Desai said.
‘What is the root of his passion?’, I asked.
‘This passion’, Desai explained, ‘is the sublimation of all the passions that flesh is heir to.’
‘Sex?’
‘Sex and anger and personal ambition…. Gandhi is under his own complete control. That generates tremendous energy and passion.’
It was a subdued, purring passion. He had a soft intensity, a tender firmness and an impatience cotton-wooled in patience. Gandhi’s colleagues and the British sometimes resented his intensity, firmness and impatience. But he retained their respect, often their love, through his softness, tenderness and patience.
Gandhi sought approval; he was very happy when the great Tagore agreed with him. But he could defy the whole world and his political next-of-kin.
Gandhi was a strong individual, and his strength lay in the richness of his personality, not in the multitude of his possessions. His goal was To be, not To have. Happiness came to him through self-realization. Fearing nothing, he could live the truth. Having nothing, he could pay for his principles.
Mahatma Gandhi is the symbol of the unity between personal morality and public action. When conscience dwells at home but not in the workshop, office, classroom and market-place, the road is wide open to corruption and cruelty and to dictatorship.
Gandhi enriched politics with ethics. He faced each morning’s issues in the light of eternal and universal values. He always distilled a permanent element out of the ephemeral. Gandhi thus broke through the framework of usual assumptions which cramp a man’s action. He discovered a new dimension of action. Unconfined by considerations of personal success or comfort, he split the social atom and found a new source of energy. It gave him weapons of attack against which there was often no defence. His greatness lay in doing what everybody could do but doesn’t.
‘Perhaps he will not succeed’, Tagore wrote of the living Gandhi. ‘Perhaps he will fail as the Buddha failed and as Christ failed to wean men from their iniquities, but he will always be remembered as one who made his life a lesson for all ages to come.’
