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Gandhi versus Mahatma

One more Martyr's Day has come and gone, largely unnoticed. I do not know how many Indians remembered Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, no one bothered to observe the routine two minutes silence at 11 am. India had become so filmi that the best way to pay homage to the Mahatma was to watch Richard Attenborough's film, Gandhi, on one of the cable TV channels. Which is better than attending a cocktail party or a vulgar Hindi play full of double meaning dialogue.

I am sure the newspapers published the day after Martyr's Day would have relegated the Mahatma to a couple of small paras on the inside pages. The front pages, these days, are exclusively for Sonia Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other stars in the political firmament who flip from one party to another. I am sure that, in another five years, Martyr's Day will be removed from our calendars.

Yet, I had the occasion to remember Gandhiji more than once. Producer-director Feroz Khan, a personal friend, had invited me to his staging of a controversial play, Gandhi Vs Mahatma, originally written in novel form in Gujarati and then adapted for the stage in Marathi, Hindi and Gujrati. Feroz tried out an English adaptation with actor Naseerudin Shah in the lead as Gandhi.

The play dwells more on the human side of Gandhi, highlighting his conflict with his wife and children on many issues. The other hero of the play is Harilal, the Mahatma's eldest son who could not see eye to eye with his father on several issues.

Harilal had no complaints about Mahatma Gandhi, the national leader and public hero. But he was more concerned with Bapu, his own father, who never allowed himself to come closer to his children and assumed that rigid discipline was an adequate substitute for love. Harilal took to liquor, womanising; he even converted himself to Islam for a brief period. Six months after Gandhiji assassination, Harilal died in a public hospital, the victim of a venereal disease.

The play is powerful and highly emotional. It made me think of my own concept of Gandhi, particularly during my childhood. I was not fortunate enough to have seen Gandhi in real life. He was killed when I was just 10 years old. As the news came over the radio, everyone who was present in the room wept. That included my father who seldom exhibited his emotions in public.

Even when he was serving the British government as an officer in the Madras state, my father often spoke glowingly about Gandhiji's courage in taking on the almighty British empire. "If only the other Indians had one-sixteenth of the courage of Gandhiji, the British would never have been able to conquer India," he often told me.

Gandhiji, for us, was initially a folk hero. In school, we had lessons in English which described his life and praised his achievements. The teachers in the rural Tamil medium schools where I studied often referred to him as Gandhi thatha (grandfather).

I watched a lot of street plays on his life. Gandhi figured prominently in Theru Koothu (a form of street play), where he was the superman who fought and won against the British. In school, we always had competitions based on Gandhiji's life on October 2. I regularly took part in these, singing poet Bharati's composition Mahan…Gandhi Mahan…in off-key notes.

But my most unforgettable experience of being exposed to the greatness of Gandhi came when I attended Bharati's birth anniversary celebrations in Ettayampuram, along with a family friend. For over three days, I watched in fascination and wonder, a series of cultural activities produced and directed by the best talent in the state. Among these was Katha Kalakshebam (poetic rendering of a great man's life) on Gandhi by Kothamangalam Subbu.

Subbu was a remarkably versatile genius. He wrote screen plays, besides acting and directing Tamil films. For several years, he was the right had man of S S Vasan, the head of Gemini Studios. Further, Subbu composed music, wrote short stories and plays, and also sang very well. His rendering of Mahatma's life took about two hours. The language of the songs was simple and direct.

I was very young then; yet, I was particularly moved by the episodes of the salt satyagraha and the final scene set to the backdrop of the Birla temple, where the Mahatma falls to an assassin's bullets. By the time the rendering was over, everyone in the hall -- including Subbu and his accompanists -- were in tears. It was an experience I will never forget.

Equally moving was singer Mohammad Rafi's tribute to the Mahatma. Suno suno aye duniyawalo, Bapuji ki amar kahani began the tribute and, for the next 20 minutes, Rafisaab's golden voice took us through Gandhiji's childhood experiences in South Africa, the freedom struggle in India, the Quit India movement and the final, moving scenes at Birla Mandir. All India Radio played this song only on Gandhi Jayanti and January 30, but such was its impact on my young mind that I could hum the entire song.

For different people, Gandhi meant different values. To me, in those days, he was the lovable Gandhi thatha, his pokkai vai (toothless mouth) a source of amusement and familiarity. He was like any other thatha in the village. Love and compassion for the entire human race seemed to radiate from him. That was why, after so many years, it was difficult for me to accept the fact that he did not show any love towards his own sons and brought them up like strangers.

Poor Harilal! All he asked for was some gesture of love and affection from his father, who was the hero of the nation.

But then, like the rest of us, Gandhiji was also a human being. We were wrong in deifying him. The best way to understand Gandhi is to look at him as a human being. A great human being but, still, a human being.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier