View of statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the premises of Parliament House.
Credits: PTI Photo
I just returned from another visit to the United Kingdom. The glamour and glory which once attracted my attention have subdued. I invariably thought of Mahatma Gandhi, and his unique way of standing up to the colonial masters. I thought, ‘What would I tell Gandhiji?’
My Dear Bapu,
Do you recall that magnificent Buckingham Palace? Of course, it is a colossal building with wide stairs. It was these steps that you climbed when you attended in 1930 the Round Table Conference at London. By then, you had taken to your minimalistic attire, a dhoti and a shawl, with which the world came to know you. When someone asked if you were wearing enough clothes to meet the king, you wittingly remarked, “The king had enough on for both of us.”
Today, overlooking the Houses of Parliament is a statue of two-time UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It is here that on February 23, 1931, Churchill infamously remarked:
“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”
Historian Ramachandra Guha in an essay which he adapted from his book Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-18, writes that “…there is no question that Churchill had an intense dislike of Indians in general, and a pathological suspicion of one Indian in particular. His venomous and long-lasting hatred of Gandhi shows that this great Briton could sometimes think and act like a small-minded parochialist.”
Despite this diatribe against you, Bapu, you maintained an equipoise, and said: “I am not anti-English; I am not anti-British; I am not anti-any Government but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-justice. So long as the Government spells injustice, it may regard me as its enemy, implacable enemy.”
Your tribe has vanished. Today, all that we hear is one head of government calling the other names! What a fall in standard! Debate on issues has evaporated.
I want to ask you something that has intrigued me, especially after a visit to the Tower of London. How can one publicly display with pride property procured by the practice of dishonesty, intrigue, violence, and mercilessness? Displayed here are the crowns and sceptres of the kings and queens of England, proudly exhibited as the symbols of oppression, power, and grandeur in a world of oppressed, depressed, and simplistic people. The proclamation about the jewellery boasts of horrid descriptions of the kilograms of gold; and the carats and number of diamonds in each of the exhibits. And lo and behold, as if adding insult to injury, set in the crown is the best example of stolen property — the Kohinoor diamond.
I also visited Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Non-violence of which you were a votary is complementary to mercy. Is Shakespeare’s famous passage through Portia in The Merchant of Venice rendered a cry in the wilderness?
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and
majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this
sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings”.
(Scene 1, Act 4)
Your statement, “All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be in vain, if at the same time you do not build your character, and attain mastery over your thoughts and actions” cannot be truer than it is today.
Your call to boycott foreign goods had a serious impact on the cotton mills in Manchester. I visited Manchester too. Today, there is a statue of yours at Cathedral Yard, in Manchester, with a plaque bearing your profound statement: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Bapu, you would be very disturbed by today’s world. The first and only articles of faith you preached and practised, namely peace, truth, non-violence, mercy, and honesty are despatched and hidden in history books.
Yours sincerely,
K G Raghavan
(The writer is a senior counsel)