By Amitabh Ranjan
Margaret Bourke-White, the intrepid photojournalist nicknamed Maggie the Indestructible, reported from India first in 1946 and then immediately after independence, representing Life magazine. Her reportage forms part of her 1949 book Halfway to Freedom. She was witness to the mayhem in the Kashmir valley when fanatical Muslim tribesmen poured in, killing, looting and setting villages afire. Her vivid account mentions the martyrdom of Maqbool Sherwani, a shopkeeper. Sherwani worked behind the lines and kept the morale high of the beleaguered villagers, urging them to resist and stick together irrespective of their religion.
Caught by the tribesmen, he was asked to make a public announcement that joining Pakistan was the best solution for Muslims. On his refusal to do so, the savage nomads lashed him to the porch posts of an apple shop in the town square of Baramulla, drove nails through his palms, and on his forehead pressed a piece of tin with the words: ‘The punishment of a traitor is death’. Defying them till his last breath, Sherwani shouted ‘victory to Hindu-Muslim unity’ even as the marauders put several bullets into him.
There are many instances in the book, The Undying Light, one of which could have been an apt opening for this review. But at one of the most fraught moments in India’s march post-independence, the episode of Sherwani’s martyrdom could be the much needed stitch for the country’s frayed consciousness.
The latest offering by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former bureaucrat-diplomat and governor, chronicles watershed events starting with the assassination of the Mahatma up to the rise of Narendra Modi in the new millennium. Being the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari and having four decades of an exceptional public career, being an administrator, diplomat, secretary to two presidents and governor of two states, puts the author at a vantage point not many could claim to have. Up, close and personal, he saw the sinews, and occasionally the shenanigans, of leaders who helmed India and of those the nation dealt with globally.
Divided into eight sections, the book offers a wide-angle view weaving many stories into one. There are travails, a bit too many it would appear. But there are moments of triumphs too. Starting with the scars of Partition and an assassin’s bullets “taking the light out of our lives”, it takes you through such seminal events like Operation Polo, integrating Hyderabad into India; the first general election with universal adult franchise, a rare feat; Operation Vijay liberating Goa from the Portuguese rule; the Sino-Indian war; the deaths of the first president and two successive prime ministers in a span of four years; the many other wars, direct and proxy; communal and caste mayhems; Emergency at the behest of Nehru’s daughter, one of the bitterest ironies of democratic India; Rakesh Sharma becoming the first Indian cosmonaut to orbit the earth in a spacecraft; assassinations of two prime ministers, first the mother and then her son; the Sri Lankan imbroglio; the Bofors fallout; Punjab terrorism; the era of liberalisation; the nuclear test, among others.
Certainly the events are not something that the reader would not find in the pages of modern India’s history. These are also not something presented as parts of a grandiose historical account. What make them immensely readable are the lived experiences of the author, imparting an intimate flavour amidst administrative complexities, letting the reader know how it felt to be through the grind. Some rare photographs from official and personal archives are the icing on the cake. It is a memoir and history wrapped as one.
What the book also brings to the fore with telling effect is how the makers of new India worked together. Rajaji, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Ambedkar, JP, Kripalani, Rajendra Prasad among a host of others, including the Mahatma, may have had divergent views on many occasions. But they were together for an India “where unity did not mean uniformity, love of country or community did not translate into hatred of another, and liberty meant the right to seek and get justice without robbing another’s”.
In the epilogue, where the author raises and ponders a few existential questions facing the country, he recounts Nehru’s spontaneous burst of emotions after the Mahatma’s final journey: “that light will be seen…, for that light represented something more than the immediate present; it represented the living, the eternal truths…drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.”
Has the light brightened or dimmed over the years, a question that Gopalkrishna Gandhi poses to himself, is something each one of us should ask ourselves. Maybe the answer lies in Sherwani’s last words, or in those of the saint of Sabarmati: Sabko sanmati de Bhagwan.
Pick up this wonderfully enlightening book if you seek perspective to find the answer to that question.
Amitabh Ranjan is a former journalist who teaches at Patna Women’s College
Book details:
Title: The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India
Author: Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Number of pages: 624
Price: Rs 999
