Jottings - slice of life - 173 (Gandhi, Gk Chesterton - and the writing of the book “Hind Swaraj” or “Home rule” )

Jottings - slice of life - 173 (Gandhi, Gk Chesterton - and the writing of the book “Hind Swaraj” or “Home rule” )

The transformation of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from a suit clad aspiring lawyer in London and South Africa to a loin draped messiah of Indian freedom struggle – is a larger than life story, etched in Indian psyche so deep that it is now impossible to understand the origins of such a transformation in any other terms than destiny, divinity and genius of the Man himself. Twentieth century has made him an international Icon, whose statuary presence frozen and sculpted in the image of his childlike toothless smile, long aquiline nose, cane in hand and a long confident stride has become synonymous with inspiration, integrity, commitment to freedom, and honesty. In case of a man of such an image in the collective public mind, it becomes difficult to isolate fact from fiction, myth from reality, and often times, we come to believe what we inherit and taught, and tend to ignore, mask, or conveniently forget that such a legendary figure, towering intellect could actually have derived his inspiration from a different less patriotic English source. A source, most unlikely - from one greatest essayist and story tellers in English language- From a man, capable of writing a caustic or sarcastic opinion with nonchalant ease of literary genius, smoking a cigar and drinking beer sitting in an offbeat pub in Fleet street. I will talk about this man this later in this essay.

The story of Gandhi physically booted out of a first-class compartment from a train in South Africa is known to every student of history. It was Gandhi’s real first taste of discrimination at a personal level; which provoked and intensified his struggle against white rule. This incident happened in 1893. However, it was not until 1909, that Gandhi wrote his treatise, a short book on how he perceived Indian freedom struggle should be and what kind of Institutions are required to govern India. The tone of Gandhi’s Independence struggle distinctly took an “Indian” turn during that year. The Hind Swaraj or Home rule, as the book came to be called, was written during a Train journey between London and South Africa in November during that year. In a flurry of inspired writing, Gandhi wrote this slime volume in seven days in Gujarati, which later was translated into English and French. In it, for the first time, Gandhi articulated a full-fledged vision of Indian freedom struggle rooted in Indian values, and not based on principles borrowed from the West. The book itself, when read independently and not as agenda, is a startling transformation of Gandhi’s vision from an international perspective of what freedom means to local adaption of what it should mean for Indians. Until then Gandhi merely wanted the colonial powers to leave and relinquish power, and he thought, wrote, spoke and acted on the topic purely in the idioms of Western thought and institutions enunciated and popularized by the David Hume’s and Herbert spencers of his time. But in “Hind Swaraj” for the first time, we find a quantum change in tone. In those hundred odd pages, we find a new charter laid out of Gandhi. Indian Freedom struggle should be based on its own history, civilization and values, and not on any other terms. Prior to this seminal book, for the last 15 years of his life, Gandhi had been actively fighting the British in his signature Non-violent way in South Africa, but it never occurred to him during that period he was still fighting for freedom on British terms and with British institutions. His illuminating moment of truth happened during that brief train Journey in November between November 13th to 22nd 1909, the train journey from London to South Africa - A week of introspection and radical change sitting alone in his cabin and re-thinking his strategy.

The question is what triggered that change? What prompted Gandhi to write his testament of Hind Swaraj, at a feverish pitch, during that journey? The answer to that question lies elsewhere. In October of the same year 1909, GK Chesterton, the great essayist, wrote a short column for London news sitting a bar titled “India for Indians”. He wrote this article out of frustration over what Indians were demanding in the name of Independence. The white collared Indian civil servants from India’s elite were only asking for old wine in new bottle. They wanted the British to leave, but wished to preserve everything British behind. To an iconoclastic thinker like Chesterton, that sounded ridiculous. Though he was not a great enthusiast of Hinduism or Indian values, he was wise to realize that freedom of a nation should be procured only on its own terms. Anything less than that is a shame. In his usual flamboyant, incisive style of prose, Chesterton criticized the current crop of Indian patriotism as misplaced and misdirected in an article titled ‘India for Indians” in the Illustrated London new column on September 18th, 1909, a month before Gandhi’s seminal Train Journey. It is certain Gandhi read that article, and was stuck by the force of Chesterton words. In a striking passage in that article, Chesterton writes

“When all is said, there is a national distinction between a people asking for its own ancient life and a people asking for things that have been wholly invented by somebody else. There is a difference between a conquered people demanding its own institutions and the same people demanding the institutions of the conqueror.”

Or again, in one of finest observations on how Indian Freedom struggle should evolve, Chesterton writes (I request all my readers to pls read this rather lengthy passage)

“..Suppose an Indian said: "I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer dying in battle to dying in hospital. There would have been despotism; but I prefer one king whom I hardly ever see to a hundred kings regulating my diet and my children. There would have been pestilence; but I would sooner die of the plague than die of toil and vexation in order to avoid the plague. There would have been religious differences dangerous to public peace; but I think religion more important than peace. Life is very short; a man must live somehow and die somewhere; the amount of bodily comfort a peasant gets under your best Republic is not so much more than mine. If you do not like our sort of spiritual comfort, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it." Suppose an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian Nationalist, or, at least, an authentic Indian, and I think it would be very hard to answer him. But the Indian Nationalists whose works I have read simply say with ever-increasing excitability, "Give me a ballot-box. Provide me with a Ministerial dispatch-box. Hand me over the Lord Chancellor's wig. I have a natural right to be Prime Minister. I have a heaven-born claim to introduce a Budget. My soul is starved if I am excluded from the Editorship of the Daily Mail," or words to that effect…”

This is Chesterton at his best. Only he could write with such wit, acute observation and brilliant prose. When Gandhi read this article before he boarded his train, his intellect was challenged and fired, he understood the futility of fighting the British with their own weapons. Gandhi’s book, Hind Swaraj or Home rule, read in the light of Chesterton’s essay, looks like a crystallization of what Chesterton wrote with such effortless ease and wit to make a few dollars for a living writing to meet a newspaper deadline.

Taking nothing away from Gandhi’s vision, he was able to transform the texture of Indian freedom struggle through that single book. When he landed in India on the advice of senior Indian leaders to lead the struggle, almost all members of the freedom movement struggle had read, and was inspired by what Gandhi had summarized in “Hind Swaraj”. They didn't ask him where he got his idea from. What he had written in those pages was the fire that lit the pyre of Colonial rule. Whether it was Chesterton’s ingenious article, or Gandhi’s own thought process that led to Home Rule - it makes no difference. The fact is Gandhi found the right note in continuing with his struggle. And Chesterton may have been the catalyst for that radical change.

God bless…

Yours in mortality,

Bala