The Making of Mahatma

By Anuradha Ray

The author of 'The Making of MAHATMA', Anuradha Ray completed her Post Graduation in International Relations from Jadavpur University, Calcutta. She has been associated with publishing for the last many years, and has been involved with compilation and editing of a number of books, both descriptive and analytical. She has also been associated with the organising of seminars of various institutions and publications of papers. Anuradha has travelled considerably in the last five years all over the country and found the experience rather enriching. The Making of Mahatma is a chronological narration of the events in the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamond Books
• Release date: Aug 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9789350830178

Book preview

THE EARLY YEARS—THE BEGINNING

FOR THE BETTER

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 at Porbandar, a small town on the western coast of India. Porbandar was then one of the many princely states in Kathiawar, now better known as Saurashtra about half way between the mouth of the Indus and the city of Bombay. The Gandhis belonged to the Merchant ( Bania) caste, and to the Vaishnava side of the Hindu religion. The ancestors were said to have been originally grocers, but the family had steadily risen in social status when Mohandas’s grandfather Uttamchand became the Prime Minister or Dewan to the Rana of Porbandar.

Uttamchand was a man of principles. State intrigues compelled him to leave Porbandar, and to seek refuge in the neighbouring state of Junagadh. There he saluted the Nawab with his left hand, explaining the discourtesy by saying that his right hand was still pledged to Porbandar. The Nawab was generous, and appreciating the bold reply, not only let him off with a nominal penalty but conferred a special favour on the brave refugee, and later used his influence to have him welcomed back to Porbandar when the new Rana ascended the throne.

Uttamchand’s fifth son Karamchand Gandhi in turn, became the Dewan of Porbandar. He too, like his father, had little formal education but was truthful, courageous and of a stem character. He was an extremely able man in the practical sense; dealing with all the intricate clan questions and disputes that arose in his jurisdiction. But he was short-tempered. He had great faith in his religion and he used to frequent temples, and was a regular reader of religious books, the Gita being his most favourite.

Karamchand alias Kaba Gandhi married four times in succession, having lost his wife each time by death. He had two daughters by his first and second marriages. His last wife Putlibai bore him a daughter and three sons, of which Mohandas was the youngest.

Mohandas was the fourth and last child of his father’s last marriage. The year he was born, 1869 was a year full of historic events all over the world. The Suez Canal was opened that year, Thomas A Edison patented his first invention, France celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte, and Charles W. Eliot became president of the Harvard University. Karl Marx had just published Capital the same year and Bismarck was about to launch the Franco-Prussian War. Queen Victoria ruled over England and India at that time.

Mohandas was born in the dark, right-hand comer of a room, 11 feet by 19½ feet and 10 feet high, in a three-storey humble house on the border of the small town of Porbandar.

Gandhi’s homelife was cultured and the family, by Indian standards was well-to-do. There were religious and mythological books in the house. Mohandas played tunes on a concertina, purchased especially for him. Karamchand wore a gold necklace and a brother of Mohandas had a heavy, solid gold armlet. Karamchand once owned a house in Porbandar, a second in Rajkot and a third in Kutiana. But in his last three years of illness he lived modestly on a pension from the Prince of Rajkot. He left behind a little property at his death.

Mohandas’s elder brother Laxmidas practiced law in Rajkot and later became a treasury official in the Porbandar Government. Karsandas, the other brother served as sub-inspector of Police in Porbandar and ultimately of the princeling’s harem. They had a sister, Raliatben, four years senior to Mohandas.

Moniya, as the family affectionately called Mohandas, received the special treatment often accorded to the youngest of children. A nurse, Rambha was engaged for him and he formed an attachment to her which continued into mature life. But his warmest affection went to his mother Putlibai.

Putlibai too was deeply religious, gentle and devout, and unrelenting in her observance of the prescribed ritual of fast and prayer. She left a deep impression on the mind of her son, who almost worshipped her. Years later, in the Yeravda Jail in Poona, Gandhi said to his secretary- companion Mahadev Desai, If you notice any purity in me, I have inherited it from my mother, and not from my father… The only impression she ever left on my mind is that of saintliness.

Mohandas started his elementary schooling in Porbandar, where he found it difficult to master the multiplication tables. Soon after, the family moved to Rajkot, another small state in Kathiawar, where his father became a member of the Rajasthani Court. In Rajkot, Mohan attended a primary, and later a high school named Alfred High School. Though conscientious, he was a mediocre student, extremely shy and timid, difficult in company and averse to games. The only incident of his otherwise drab school career which might be deemed significant as indicating his moral sensibility occurred when the Education Inspector visited his class and set a spelling test. Seeing that Mohan had spelled ‘kettle’ wrong, the class teacher prompted him with his toe to copy the correct spelling from his classmate’s slate, but Mohan obstinately ignored the hint and was later chided for his stupidity. ‘I never could learn the art of copying’ recalled the Mahatma later.

On the whole, the boy was not remarkable and he showed no great aptitude for study. One episode of his childhood seems to have made a great impression: it was a performance he saw by a travelling dramatic company of the play Harishchandra. It narrates the sufferings of a king of old, who sacrificed everything for the sake of truth and went through almost endless ordeals before his redemption. The play captured his heart, and as a child he used to act out Harishchandra to himself times without number. The idea of the truth was thus early implanted, and seems to have grown naturally in him.

At the age of thirteen, while still in school, Mohandas was married to Kasturbai, the daughter of a Porbandar merchant named Gokuldas Makanji and was of the same age. The newly-weds were ‘married children’ and behaved accordingly. He was jealous and therefore she could not go anywhere without his permission. When she wanted to go out to play she had to ask Mohandas and he would often say ‘no’. And Kasturbai was not the girl to brook any such thing. She made it a point to go out whenever and wherever she liked. The little husband got ‘more and more cross’. Sometimes, they did not speak to each other for days. Despite all these, his delight in his wife was extreme and in later years, he regarded this premature sensuality with sorrow and shame. It may have contributed to his strong views on child marriage, which he regarded later as one of the greatest evils of India. Although his conscience in later years troubled him greatly, he found Kasturbai the solace of his life, so long as she lived. Mohandas wanted to make his wife an ideal wife. He wanted to teach her everything he knew, since she was illiterate, but ‘lustful love’ as he called it, gave him no time to do so, and Kasturbai remained without instruction beyond simple letters in the local language, Gujarati. His regrets and self-condemnation are quite explicit in his autobiography.

Even after his marriage, he continued his high school studies. He had his difficulties with study, but after the age of 14, he seems to have made much better progress, actually winning prizes and scholarships. But he made a regrettable episode, involving an older boy, who was addicted to eating meat and drinking wine in secret. Mohandas was attracted to the company of this Muslim friend of his elder brother, Sheikh Mahtab, whose athletic build and physical daring exercised a fascination on Mohandas, who himself was of a comparatively slight build and was scared of ghosts, thieves and snakes.

Sheikh Mahtab convinced Mohandas that the ‘mighty Englishman’ was able to rule over the ‘puny Indian’ because the Englishman derived his ‘Herculean strength’ from animal flesh. So Mohandas, who came of an orthodox vegetarian family, took to tasting cooked meat secretly— his first experiment in patriotism! But it made him sick and that night he had nightmares of a goat kicking in his stomach. He had to wrestle with the fact that such secret repasts had to be hidden from his parents, entailing an inevitable falsehood. This proved to be weighty a burden on his conscience, and after a few such hazards, he gave up the experiment.

The same older friend also took Mohandas to a brothel, but there his shyness protected him.

These misdemeanours also culminated in a fling at cigarette smoking, for which Mohandas pilfered some coppers from home and also a chip of gold off his elder brother’s armband. This time his conscience revolted at last. He wrote out a complete confession and submitted it to his father, with a request to be punished. This was accompanied by a pledge, never to steal anything again. ‘He read it through and pearl drops tickled down his cheeks, wetting the papers… Those pearl-drops cleansed my heart, and washed my sin away.’

When Gandhi recalled this incident, he was already a Mahatma, and honest enough to add, ‘from a strictly ethical point of view, all these occasions must be regarded as moral lapses; for the carnal desire was there, and it was as good as the act.’

The final sin, which he called ‘my double shame’, occurred when his father died. He had been his father’s nurse, giving the massage and attending him on his illness, but his thoughts hovered round his young wife lying in bed, waiting, so he hoped, for his coming. When his uncle offered to relieve him, Mohandas was overjoyed and rushed straight to his bedroom and woke Kasturbai up. A few minutes later, a knock on the door interrupted his frenzy with the news that his father had expired. That was the year 1885. The shame of carnal desire at the critical hour of his father’s death was a blot, which he had never been able to efface or forget.

In 1887, Mohandas passed the matriculation examination, and enrolled in Samaldas College in the nearby state of Bhavnagar, as Rajkot had no college in those days. He found the studies tedious, the English medium difficult and the atmosphere uncongenial. Mavji Dave—an old friend and well-wisher of the family suggested that if he hoped to take his father’s place in the state service he had better become a barrister in England. Mohandas jumped at the proposal. But Mohandas was afraid of law, and wanted to try medicine as he wanted to be a doctor. However, he could not pursue this idea in the face of opposition from his elder brother, who resisted the proposal saying that their late father was opposed to the dissection of dead bodies and handling their ‘internals’. Mavji Dave also argued that he could never become a Prime Minister of a State like his forefathers, and for this position, a knowledge of the law was very important, and in fact, essential. But how to raise the money for expenses?

The family finances were in poor state. Mohandas approached the British Political Agent and the Sahib of Rajkot for a scholarship but failed to persuade them. Finally his brother promised to supply the funds.

But Mohandas’s mother was unwilling to part with her darling boy and afraid to let him loose in a strange unholy land, where he would be beset by temptations. He got her permission after his solemn vow before a Jain monk, Becharji Swami, not to touch wine, woman and meat.

At last he left for Bombay to take the ship to London. In Bombay, he had one more hurdle—the age-old prejudice of his caste-folk against crossing the ocean, which was looked upon with dread as pollution by ‘black-waters.’ They threatened to outcaste him if he persisted in his profane design. The caste tribunal excommunicated him. Undeterred, he sailed on September 4, 1888 for Southampton. He was not yet 18. A little earlier, Kasturbai had borne him a son, Harilal.

Had Mohandas been brought up in a western-oriented Hindu family of Bombay or Calcutta, his passionate urge to proceed to England for higher education wouldn’t appear extraordinary. But considering his upbringing and early education in an atmosphere that was little better than a cultural backwater and also the fact of his deep attachment to his mother, whose pet he was, this passionate urge could only be explained as the inner prodding of his destiny which the honest lad interpreted as legitimate ambition for a prosperous material career in the interest of his family. Three years later, on the eve of his departure from England, when a representative of ‘The Vegetarian’ asked him what had induced him to come to England and adopt the legal profession, he replied: ‘In a word, ambition… I thought to myself, if I go to England, not only shall I become a barrister (of whom I used to think a great deal) but also I shall be able to see England, the land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilisation.’

The first few days in London were miserable. He was a complete novice in the matter of English etiquette and also, there was the additional inconvenience of the vegetarian vow.

The food difficulty was solved, when one day, he found a vegetarian restaurant in Farringdon Street. Having had his first satisfactory meal in London, he also brought a copy of Henry Salt’s ‘A Plea for Vegetarianism’. Reading it, he was more than delighted. He was elated. It was the first revolutionary mental stimulus of his life, independently received and consciously registered. Hitherto, he had been a vegetarian by habit and because of the vow, he had taken to please his mother. From now on, he became a vegetarian by conviction.

He read many more books on dietetic research and was thrilled to discover modem science confirm the practice of his forefathers. To spread vegetarianism became henceforth his mission. This was the beginning of his missionary zeal as a diet-faddist, which he remained all his life.

The glamour of English life was strong on him during the early period of his stay and he went through a phase that he has described as aping the English gentleman. He got new clothes made, bought a silk hat, spent ten pounds on an evening dress made in Bond Street and even flaunted a double watch-chain of gold. He took lessons in elocution and French and spent three guineas to learn ballroom dancing. But it did not take him very long to realise that if he could not become a gentleman by virtue of his character, the ambition was not worth cherishing.

Meanwhile, his vegetarian contacts expanded. He joined the Vegetarian Society, became a member of its executive committee, and had his first experience in organisation though shyness made him unable to speak at meetings.

While fluency in public speaking still presented a formidable hurdle, command over the written word was more easily acquired by Mohandas. When he first joined the college at Bhavnagar, he was unable to follow the lectures in English. Now, here he was contributing articles to ‘The Vegetarian’ on the food habits, customs and festivals of his people at home. They bear witness to Mohandas’s power of observation as a young boy and are the earliest intimation of his future lifelong role as a journalist.

Mohandas came under the influence of the writings of Edward Carpenter, Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford and was also introduced to the theosophical thought of Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant.

Also it was in England, that he came to know the Bhagavad Gita in Edwin Arnold’s English rendering. He also read