Gandhi Jayanti

Mahatma Gandhi, half-tone print, 1940 #

October 2nd is the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi -- his 135th. For most Indians it doesn't mean much anymore. It is a national holiday during which no liquor is sold. The President, Prime Minister and many politicians, go to Raj Ghat, a memorial to Gandhi, to offer flowers. A few aged Gandhians, wearing white handspun khadi clothes and white caps, are trotted out for the cameras. Editorials talk of Gandhi's increasing irrelevance to the India of today. And yet, he is too great, too complex, to be forgotten entirely - and not just because his picture is on the money.

Raja Rao wrote a lovely novel, Kanthapura, which gives a sense of what Gandhi must have meant to many during the Independence Movement. The novel is narrated by an old woman living in the small village of Kanthapura. She tells the story of how the villagers came to participate in the Movement. In this scene, a traditional storyteller is telling the villagers for the first time about the Mahatma:

In the great heavens, Brahma, the self-created one, was lying on his serpent, when the sage Valmiki entered, announced by the two doorkeepers. "Oh, learned sire, what brings you into this distant world?" asked Brahma, and, offering the sage a seat beside him, fell at his feet. "Rise up, O God of Gods! I have come to bring you sinister news. Far down on the earth you chose as your chief daughter Bharatha [India]... But, O Brahma... you have forgotten us so long that men have come from across the seas and the oceans to trample on our wisdom and to spit on virtue itself... O Brahma, deign to send us one of your gods so that he may incarnate himself on earth and bring back light and plenty to your enslaved daughter..." - "O sage," pronounced Brahma, "...Siva himself will forthwith go and incarnate himself on the earth and free my beloved daughter from her enforced slavery..."

... And there was born in a family in Gujerat a son such as the world has never beheld! As soon as he came forth, the four wide walls began to shine like the kingdom of the sun, and hardly was he in the cradle than he began to lisp the language of wisdom. You remember how Krishna, when he was but a babe of four, had begun to fight against demons and had killed the serpent Kali. So too our Mohandas began to fight against the enemies of the country. And as he grew up, and after he was duly shaven for the hair ceremony, he began to go out into the villages and assemble people and talk to them and his voice was so pure, his forehead so brilliant with wisdom, that men followed him, more and more men followed him as they did Krishna the flute-player; and so he goes from village to village to slay the serpent of the foreign rule. Fight, says he, but harm no soul. Love all, says he, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian or Pariah, for all are equal before God. don't be attached to riches, says he, for riches create passions, and passions create attachment, and attachment hides the face of truth. Truth must you tell, he says, for truth is God, and verily, it is the only God I know. And he says too, spin every day. Spin and weave every day, for our Mother is in tattered weeds and a poor mother needs clothes to cover her sores. If you spin, he says, the money that goes to the Red-man will stay within your country and the Mother can feed the foodless and the milkless and the clothless. He is a saint, the Mahatma, a wise man and a soft man, and a saint. You know how he fasts and prays. And even his enemies fall at his feet...

Click to listen to Gandhi's favourite bhajan, Raghupati Raghava. (There are a number of other audio links to songs connected to Gandhi here)

read Gandhi's writings

listen to Gandhi's voice

Some websites devoted to Gandhi:

Gandhi Serve Foundation

Mahatma Gandhi eArchive

Gandhian Institute Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal

Salman Rushdie's article for Time's Leaders of the Century issue

The Mahatma and THE HINDU: "The Hindu newspaper offers its readers, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, an eight-page Special Release on "The Mahatma and The Hindu" -- A representation of the coverage of an epoch-maker by a newspaper of record, 1896-1948."