Being stalked by the Mahatma Gandhi

In Bollywood it was Sanjay Dutt who first portrayed an eccentric obsession for the Mahatma in the eponymously titled film Lage Raho Munna Bhai Having spent a night poring over dustladen literature related to Mohandas K Gandhi inside a library Munna Bhai starts having hallucinatory visions of the leaderIts this vision that later guides the goon to the path of truth integrity and what filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani wittingly made us remember as Gandhigiri Historian and scholar Ramachandra Guha who has just released an 1100page biography Gandhi The Years That Changed India 19141948 PenguinAllen Lane and has spent over three decades researching him may have never succumbed to this glorified reverence to Gandhi but he still admits to being a great admirer of the manSaraladevi Chaudhurani seated with whom Gandhi once contemplated a spiritual marriage photographed with her sister Pic courtesySantiniketan ArchivesThis also explains the 60yearold writers neverending quest to understand Gandhi which accidentally began in his teens I grew up in the India of the 1950s when every year on October 2 you commemorated Gandhi and sang Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram So there was always this halo around him Guha recalls in a telephonic interview from Delhi But his first tryst with Gandhi was when he read his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth as a college student I was struck by his description of taking off his sacred thread After that I resolved to never wear one For me a sacred thread was a mark of caste distinction and I felt if Gandhi abandoned it so should IThe motivation to explore the Gandhian narrative however got hold of him when he was pursuing his PhD on the history of environmental movement in India in the 1980s On realising that its main actors Chandi Prasad Bhatt Medha Patkar were influenced by Gandhis methods of analysis critique struggle and reconstruction Guhas curiosity piqued From thereon he started extensively consuming stories about Gandhi The first book that had a significant impact on him was Belgian writer JTF Jordenss Gandhis ReligionRamachandra Guha first got acquainted with Mahatma Gandhis life as a college student when he read the latters autobiography PicNishad AlamIt was a very moving and sympathetic account of Gandhis religious pluralism and provided an insightful understanding of everything he stood for Guha says Later while writing about the social history of cricket he once again realised how Gandhi had influenced the manner in which the game was watched played and talked about I was being stalked by Gandhis shadow he admitsIt wasnt long before he started gathering material and books around and about the remarkable historical figure And I did it without really thinking that I would one day write a biography on him That idea struck me only 15 years ago when I realised that Gandhi in either an influential or marginal way was seeping into whatever I was working on His new magnum opus a freestanding sequel to his first biography Gandhi Before India which traced Gandhis childhood and his decades as a lawyeractivist in South Africa shifts the focus to India where he returned in 1914 The book takes us right into the scene of action as Gandhi spearheads a host of revolutionary and reformatory movements before he is dramatically assassinated in 1948 Together the tomes provide a holistic perspective on the leaders lifeWhat makes this new account fascinating is that Guha happens to be the first biographer to have access to the recentlyopened Gandhi papers at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi The material was collected by Gandhis first and most remarkable secretary Mahadev Desai and later Pyarelal Nayar These papers track and document Gandhis correspondence from all over the world his campaigns letters to the Congress and the criticism to his work offering us a sense of a range of Gandhis influencehe saysApart from the backstories behind the many revolutionary movements that set the stage for Gandhis demand for selfrule Guha also touches upon the romance between Gandhi and Saraladevi Chaudhurani the niece of Rabrindranath Tagore whom he first met in Lahore Their affair though short and not consummated was very intense as visible in the letters that Gandhi sent to her and which were painstakingly documented by Desai That history has never judiciously discussed this story doesnt come as a surprise to GuhaI think there is a certain prudishness among the older generation of historians who tend to exalt the public image at the expense of the personal he says I wanted to discuss Gandhi and Saraladevi in a way that was not scandalous but human They were enchanted by one another but Gandhi could not have made a public display of his affection for her because they were still part of a conservative societyBut Gandhis personal life mdash marred by him being a difficult father and husband and the bizarre obsession with celibacy which also saw him conduct the strangest experiment of sharing the bed with his grandniece Manu mdash never once took away from his farreaching political and social work of which Guha feels the antiuntouchability campaign was most challenging Its easy to mobilise people in a campaign for political freedom but to ask Hindus to introspect on how they were treating a section of the society was commendable he saysHaving lived with Gandhi through his working career Guha who says he should be retiring now is relieved that he has finally put the Gandhian story to bed He however cant be sure if his quest to know more is over I admire the man but of course with reservation Gandhis life is one lived in the open and his story is extraordinary in the way he shaped the country and the world I dont know if am obsessed with Gandhihellip there are some things that are mysterious in every human being that perhaps the individual himselfherself will never be able to understand But all I wanted to do was provide a very layered nuanced and textured account of Gandhi and thats why I prolongedCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates