But for a particularly scurrilous review by the English Churchillian revisionist Andrew Roberts, Joseph Lelyveld?s interpretation of Mahatma Gandhi would have barely registered on popular consciousness. That review led to some unwanted salacious speculation about Gandhi?s sexuality, and the subsequent knee-jerk banning reactions in Gujarat and Maharashtra have ensured the book a place in critical and popular reviews, and possibly in the best-seller list as well.
The life of Gandhi, arguably the person who wielded the greatest influence in the 20th century, is also one of the most widely studied and written about. Biographies date back almost a hundred years and the list of biographers includes literature Nobel laureates, eminent psycho-analysts, political scientists, historians, economists and social thinkers. The man himself left an ocean of words, and generations of scholars can delve into them, de-constructing old theories and forming new ones.
So what can this addition to an already overflowing collection of Gandhiana, even if it is by so eminent a person as a former India bureau chief and later, the executive editor, of The New York Times tell us that we don?t already know?
Indeed, Lelyveld?s central thesis can be anticipated and agreed upon by most serious students of Gandhian thought. Lelyveld says: ?I?ve tried to follow him…as he struggled to impose his vision on an often recalcitrant India…with his harangues on…untouchability, or the need for the…Hindus to accommodate the…Muslim minority.? And ?as used by Gandhi, poorna Swaraj…was a goal for each individual Indian…It meant a sloughing not only of British rule, but also… a rejection of modern industrial society in favour of a bottom-up renewal of India, starting in its villages…Gandhi was a revivalist…he wanted to instil values…that nurtured together would flower as a material and spiritual renewal.?
Before reading Lelyveld, I had observed in these pages that Gandhi?s ?invocation of simple, self-sufficient, village communities embedded in the concept of Ram Rajya …attracted alike the peasants and burgeoning middle castes… Gandhi saw neither his life nor his struggles as being just parts or isolated activities. He led by example, practicing first and preaching later. He saw economic, social and religious activities as mutually supporting and evoked the images of a virtuous man and society (Many Gandhis, One Mahatma, FE, 14 April 2011).
Received wisdom sees a disconnect between Gandhi, the influential leader of a small minority in South Africa in the early days of the last century, and Gandhi, the tallest leader of the Indian national movement from the mid-1920s onwards. Lelyveld?s signal contribution arises from his assignment spanning the two sub-continents. He shows that there was indeed continuity and Gandhi?s evolution had begun long before he returned to India for good in 1915. He discovers that in Africa, ?Gandhi kept changing, experiencing a new epiphany…each representing a milestone on the path he was blazing for himself.? Among these are satygraha, dignity of manual work, equality transcending castes and religion and finally, an all-consuming compassion for the poorest and the weakest. Even Gandhi?s canonisation occurred in Africa, with nemesis/admirer Jan Smuts saying in 1914 that ?the saint has left our shores.? His idolater and critic P S Aiyar observed bitterly that he had attained sainthood all by himself! Tagore?s appellation of Mahatma followed only in 1919.
He also establishes that all these were interrelated. You could not have the satyagrahi Gandhi without the brahmachari-come-lately. His espousal of the downtrodden had the flipside of almost deliberate and wilful neglect of his own family, Kasturba being the worst sufferer, just as the idealist and the faddist were two sides of the same persona. Lelyveld painstakingly traces the origin of Gandhi, the work in progress, to the time he landed in Durban in 1893. The process continued for over half a century, to 1948.
Lelyveld does not shy away from showing that Gandhi started with?perhaps without intention?what would now be considered less than enlightened views about the African majority. Even though he saw them and understood injustice was done to them even more than to the Indians, his focus remained on the Indian population.
My one quibble with this mostly original highly readable book concerns the Kallenbach affair. Lelyveld carefully refrains from assigning any explicit sexual connotation to Gandhi?s relationship with the German architect in the ten pages he devotes to it (Roberts is far more blatant, and obnoxiously so), but his use of phrases such as cohabitation and his quotes from Kallenbach?s letters and diaries leave the reader in little doubt as to his intent. Gandhi?s image needs no air-brushing, but this somewhat salacious interlude adds nothing to the book.
Lelyveld concludes that Gandhi?s ?image still has the power to inspire…the inspiration is still there to be imbibed.? Fittingly, that other great influence on the 20th century, Albert Einstein, observed: ?Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.?
The writer has taught at IIM-A and helped set up IRMA
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India Joseph Lelyveld
HarperCollins
Rs 699
Pp 425