India Renaissance or Continuity

8/10/2019 India Renaissance or Continuity

1/10

Volume 23, Number 21 & 22 January 20, 1977

Feature

India: Renaissane or !ontinuity"

#y V$ %$ Naiaul

Gandhi lived too long. Returning to India fromSouth Africa in 1915, at the age of forty-five,holding himself aloof from the establishedoliticians of the time, involving himself !ithcommunities and grous hitherto untouchedby olitics, ta"ing u urely local causes hereand there #a land ta$, a mill stri"e%, he thenvery &uic"ly, from 1919 to 19'(, dre! all Indiatogether in a ne! "ind of olitics.

)ot everyone aroved of Gandhi*s methods.+any !ere dismayed by the aarentlyarbitrary dictates of his inner voice. And inthe olitical stalemate of the 19'(sfor !hichsome Indians still blame him Gandhi*sunredictable olitics, they say, his inability tomanage the forces he had released, needlesslylengthened out the Indeendence struggle,delayed self-government by t!enty-five years,and !asted the lives and talents of many goodmenin the 19'(s the management of Indianolitics assed into other hands.

Gandhi himself #li"e /olstoy, his earlyinsiration% declined into a long and ever morerivate mahatmahood. /he obsessions !ereal!ays made ublic, but they !ere ersonal,li"e hisagain almost /olstoyanse$ualan$ieties in old age, after forty years ofabstinence. /his eriod of decline !as theeriod of his greatest fame0 so that, even !hilehe lived, he became his admirers. e becamehis emblems, his holy caricature, the ob2ect ofcometitive iety. 3no!ledge of the man as a

man !as lost0 mahatmahood submerged all theambiguities and the olitical creativity of hisearly years, the modernity #in India% of somuch of his thought. e !as claimed in theend by old India, that very India !hoseolitical deficiencies he had seen so clearly,!ith his South African eye.

4hat !as ne! about him then !as not thesemi-religious nature of his olitics0 that !asin the Indian tradition. 4hat made him ne!!as the nature of the battles he had fought in

South Africa. And !hat !as most revolutionaryand un-Indian about him !as !hat he left

une$ressed and !hat erhas, as an Indian,he had no means of e$ressing his racialsense, the sense of belonging to a eolesecifically of the Indian subcontinent that thet!enty years in South Africa had taught him.

/he racial sense is alien to Indians. Race issomething they detect about others, but amongthemselves they "no! only the sub-caste orcaste, the clan, the gens, the language grou.eyond that they cannot go0 they do not seethemselves as belonging to an Indian race0 the!ords have no meaning. istorically, thisabsence of cohesiveness has been the calamityof India. In South Africa, as Gandhi soon sa!,it !as the great !ea"ness of the small Indiancommunity, embattled but fragmented, the!ealthy Gu2arati +oslem merchants callingthemselves Arabs, the Indian 6hristiansclaiming only their 6hristianity, bothsearating themselves from the indenturedlaborers of +adras and ihar, all sub2ected as

Indians to the same racial la!s.

If it !as in 7ondon as a la! student thatGandhi decided that he !as a indu byconviction, it !as in South Africa that he addedto this the develoment of a racialconsciousness, that consciousness !ithout!hich a disadvantaged or ersecuted minoritycan be utterly destroyed, and !hich !ithGandhi in South Africa !as li"e an e$tension ofhis religious sense teaching resonsibility andcomassion, teaching that no man !as an

island, and that the dignity of the high !asbound u !ith the dignity of the lo!.

is indu nationalism soils everything,/olstoy said of Gandhi in 191(, !hile Gandhi!as still in South Africa. It is obvious inGandhi*s autobiograhy, this gro!ing, un-Indian a!areness of an Indian grou identity.It is there in his early dismay at theindifference of the Gu2arati merchants toroosed anti-Indian legislation0 in his shoc"at the aearance in his office of an indentured

/amil laborer !ho had been beaten u by hisemloyer0 and the shoc" and dismay are

1/10
http://www.nybooks.com/contents/19770120http://www.nybooks.com/authors/4978http://www.nybooks.com/contents/19770120http://www.nybooks.com/authors/4978


2/10

related to his o!n humiliations during his first2ourney to 8retoria in 19', !hen he !ast!enty-three. Gandhi never forgot that night2ourney to 8retoria0 more than thirty yearslater he so"e of it as the turning oint of hislife. ut the racial theme is neverac"no!ledged as such in the autobiograhy. Itis al!ays blurred over by religious self-

searching, e$eriments !ith truth, attemtsat the universal0 though for t!enty years, untilearly middle age, he !as literally a racialleader, fighting racial battles0 and it !as as aracial leader that he returned to India, anoddity among the established oliticians, to!hom Indian !as only a !ord, each man!ith his o!n regional or caste o!er base.

Indians !ere not a minority in India0 racialolitics of the sort Gandhi "ne! in SouthAfrica !ould not have been understood. And atleast some of the ambiguities of his early daysin India can be traced bac" to his !ish toreeat his South African racial-religiouse$erience, to get a!ay from the divisiveolitics of religion and caste and region hisseemingly erverse insistence that India !asnot ready for self-government, that India hadto urge itself of its o!n in2ustices first, hismystical definitions of self-government, hisemhasis on the removal of untouchability, hissuort of trivial +oslem issues in order to

dra! +oslems and indus together.

e had no means, in India, of formulating thetrue racial lessons of South Africa0 and erhashe couldn*t have done so, any more than hecould have described !hat he had seen as ayoung man in 7ondon in 1. /he racialmessage al!ays merged in the religious one0and it involved him in !hat loo"ed li"econtradictions #against untouchability, but notagainst the caste system0 a assionate indu,but reaching unity !ith the +oslems%. /he

difficult lessons of South Africa !ere simlifiedand simlified in India ending as a holy man*sfad for doing the latrine-cleaning !or" ofuntouchables, seen only as an e$ercise inhumility, ending as a holy man*s lea forbrotherhood and love, ending as nothing.

In the 19'(s the +oslems fell a!ay fromGandhi and turned to their o!n +oslemleaders, reaching the theory of t!o nations. In19:; the country !as artitioned, and manymillions !ere "illed and many more millions

e$elled from their ancestral land as great aholocaust as that caused by )a


3/10

might become easy of attainment to us and toothers. /his !ill include service of self, thefamily, the community, and the State. /hisdeclaration of faith, aarently a unity,conceals at least four ersonalities. /he indudreams of nonattachment and salvation0 theman e$osed to 4estern religious thoughtthin"s that the conduct of the individual

should also ma"e salvation easy for others0 theSouth African Indian reaches the !idestsocial loyalty #the community, the Indiancommunity%0 the olitical camaigner, !ith hisresect for #and deendence on% ritish la!and institutions, stresses service to the state.

It !as too much. Something of this comle$South African ideology had to go in the holyland of India0 and many things !ent. /he racialintimations remained une$ressed0 and !hat!as utterly consumedby holiness, thesub2ection of India, the lengthening out of theIndeendence struggle, and the mahatma*shardening antiathy to the machine, at oncethe symbol of oression and the 4est!hat!as utterly consumed !as that intrusive andunmanageable idea of service to the state.

Cor ?inoba have, Gandhi*s successor inindeendent India, the Gandhian ideal is the!ithering a!ay of the state. Er so he saidmany years ago. 4hat does it mean, the

!ithering a!ay of the stateF It means nothing.It means this Eur first ste !ill be to getGram-Ra2 #government by the village% thenla!suits and disutes !ill be 2udged andsettled !ithin the village. )e$t it !ill be Ram-Ra2 #the 3ingdom of God% then there !ill nolonger be any la!suits or disutes, and !e shallall live as one family. have said that morethan t!enty years ago #the &uotation is from anadmiring biograhy by an Italian., ublished in7ondon in 195%. And something li"e that isstill being said by others today, in the more

deserate circumstances of the @mergency.4anted a Gandhian 6onstitution is the titleof a recent article in The Illustrated Weekly ofIndia, !hich, since the @mergency, has beenrunning a debate about the Indianconstitution. /he !riter, a former stategovernor and ambassador, merely ma"es thelea for village government0 he also ta"es theoccasion to tal" about his ac&uaintance !ithGandhi0 and the article is illustrated by ahotograh of the !riter and his !ife sitting onthe floor and using a &uern, grinding their

daily corn together in ious idleness.

It is !hat Gandhianism !as long ago reducedto by the mahatmahood religious ecstasy andreligious self-dislay, a 2uggling !ith nothing, aliberation from constructive thought andolitical burdens. /rue freedomand trueietyand still seen to lie in !ithdra!al fromthe difficult !orld. In indeendent IndiaGandhianism is li"e the solace still of a

con&uered eole, to !hom the state hashistorically been alien, controlled by others.

8erhas the only olitician !ith something ofGandhi*s racial sense and his feeling for all-India !as )ehru, !ho, li"e Gandhi, !assome!hat a dislaced erson in India. At firstthey loo" so unali"e0 but only t!enty years laybet!een the mahatma and the @nglish-educated )ehru0 and both men !ere made bycritical years sent outside India. In hisautobiograhy )ehru says he !as infected bythe revailing, and fashionable, anti-Semitismat arro! School0 he could hardly have failedthere to have become a!are of his Indianness.

/he irony is that, in indeendent India, theoliticians !ho have come u are not farremoved from the men !hom Gandhishort-circuiting the established 4estern-styleoliticians of the timebegan to dra! intoolitics in 191;. /hey are small-to!n men,rovincials, and they remain small because

their o!er is based on the loyalties of casteand region. /he idea of all-India is not al!ays!ithin their gras. /hey have so"en instead,since the 19(s, only of India*s need foremotional integration0 and the very !ordssea" of fracture. /he racial sense, !hichcontains resect for the individual and eventhat concet of the eole, remains as remotefrom India as ever. So that even +ar$ism tendsto be only its 2argon, a form of mimicry theeole so often turn out to be eole of acertain region and of a certain caste.

Gandhi s!et through India, but he has left it!ithout an ideology. e a!a"ened the holyland0 his mahatmahood returned it toarchaism0 he made his !orshiers vain.

?inoba have, Gandhi*s successor, is more amascot than a mahatma. e is in the oldIndian tradition of the sage, !ho lives aartfrom men, but not so far from them that theyare unable to rovide him !ith a life suortsystem. efore such a sage the rince

rostrates himself, in order to be reminded ofthe eternal verities. /he rince visiting the

3/10


4/10

sage it is a recurring theme in Indian ainting,from both indu and +oslem courts. /herince, for all his finery, is the suliant0 thesage, ash-smeared or meager !ith austeritiesor bursting !ith his develoed inner life, sitsserenely outside his hut or belo! a tree. /hereis no articular !isdom that the sage offers0 heis imortant simly because he is there. And

this is the archaic roleone or t!o centuriesa!ay from Gandhi in South Africa in 19',Gandhi in Indian in 191;that have hascreated for himself in contemorary India, asGandhi*s successor. e is not a articularlyintelligent man and, as a erfect discile of themahatma, not original0 his olitical vie!s comeclose to nonsense. ut he is very old0something of the aura of the dead mahatmastill hangs about him0 and he is the man theoliticians !ould li"e to have on their side.

Cor some time in the 195(s have !asassociated !ith =aya 8ra"ash )arayan, !holater became one of the oosition leaders.And there !as some an$iety, !hen the@mergency !as declared in =une 19;5 and)arayan !as arrested, about !hat have!ould say. ut, as it haened, have !asn*ttal"ing at the time. It !as the mahatma*scustom, in later years, to have a !ee"ly day ofsilence. have, in emulation of the mahatma,but al!ays overdoing things, had imosed a

!hole year*s silence on himself0 and there !erestill some months of this silence to go.@ventually, ho!ever, it !as reorted thatvarious statements had been sho!n the oldmanin the manner of those &uestionnairesthat call for the tic"ing of bo$esand he hadmade some signs to indicate his suort for thesusension of the constitution and thedeclaration of the state of @mergency.

4hen, later, he fell ill, +rs. Gandhi fle! to seehim0 and her ersonal hysician gave him a

chec"u. It !as +rs. Gandhi !ho, under heavysecurity, so"e at the meeting held in Helhi tohonor have*s eightieth birthday0 and it !as indeference to haveor so I heard it saidthat,in all the uncertainty of the @mergency, +rs.Gandhi reroclaimed the rohibition of alcoholas one of the goals of the government. Si$doctors in the meantime !ere loo"ing after theold sage0 thus cosseted, he lived through hisyear of silence and at last, in =anuary 19;, heso"e. /he time had come, he said, for India tomove from rule by the ma2ority to rule by

unanimity. 4hich !as &uite astute for a man ofeighty. /he actual statement didn*t mean

much0 but it sho!ed that he !as stillinterested, that India !as still rotected by hissanctity.

have in himself is nothing, a medievalthro!bac", of !hom there must be hundredsor thousands in India. ut he is imortantbecause he is no! all that India has as a moralreference, and because for the last thirty yearshe has been, as it !ere, the authori


5/10

to of the head0 the effacement of the *I* andthe discovery of the Self.

At anaras one day a literature student as"edhave about #hakuntala, the late fourth-century Sans"rit lay by the oet 3alidasa. It!as a good sub2ect to raise !ith someone !ho"ne! Sans"rit, because #hakuntala, !hich intranslation reads only li"e a romance ofrecognition, is considered one of the glories ofSans"rit literature, and comes from !hat isthought of as a golden age in Indiancivili, !henne!ly indeendent India !as ta"en at its o!nvaluation in many countries, have aearedon the cover of Timemaga


6/10

at the discomforts and disorder of the havemarch, the bad food, eery and oversalted,the atmoshere of the circus, the constantnoise, the !orshiing cro!ds chattering li"eaviaries, easily distracted, even in the resenceof the master, have*s o!n follo!ers incaableof tal"ing in anything but shouts, constantlyublicly belching and ha!"ing and farting.

?asto tries hard to understand0 a risoner ofhis ilgrimage, he tries, by a naturalassociation of ideas, to find in the torment ofthe nightly cam the innocence of the fartDthe sortings of a lovable eole !hich loves tocommunicate.

And every day there is the ne$t village, and thehard clay roads of ihar. Al!ays, have stridesahead, in the lead. )o villager, ho!ever!orshiing or raturous, must run across hisath or !al" in front of him. It is ermittedonly to follo!sainthood, and the salvation itoffers #contained in the mere sight of thesaint%, has it stringencies. At one stage have,for no aarent reason, seems to have hisdoubts and seems to be droing hints of a fastagainst the laat Shantini"etan, the university founded by theoet /agore to revive the arts in Indiahavedescribed himself as a retailer of sirituality.At Shantini"etan Such !as have*s security inIndia0 to such a degree had the rationalthought of a man li"e /agore been che!ed uby the cultural rimitivism of Gandhian India.

Some years before, in a memorable statementmade during the great days of the long !al",have had described himself as the fire. It !ashis duty simly to burn0 it !as for others to usehis fire. umility, once it becomes a vo!,ceases to be humility, Gandhi said in hisautobiograhy0 and have*s interretation ofhis function in India is as vain and decadent asit aears. It !as a erversion of the Gita*s ideaof duty, a erversion of the idea of dharma0 it!as the language of the magician.

6/10


7/10

have, !ith his simlicity and distortions,offered Gandhianism as a "ind of magic0 andhe offered himself as the magician. Gandhi, theSouth African, !as too comle$ for India. Indiamade the racial leader the mahatma0 and inhave the mahatma became +erlin. e failed,but that did not tarnish his sainthood. e hadfailed, after all, only because the times !ere

bad0 because, as so many Indians say, offeringit as the rofoundest !isdom, since the deathof Gandhi truth has fled from India and the!orld. In a lac" Age have had virtuouslyattemted old magic0 and on his eightiethbirthday he !as honored in )e! Helhi.8aunchy congressmen in cris !hitehomesun sat on the latform and some madeseeches. +rs. Gandhi, after a little fumbling,carefully garlanded his ortrait.

/he latestcensored and incomletene!sabout have is that in =une 19; he started aublic fast. In this fast, !hich he must haveconsidered his last ublic act, there is still theelement of Gandhian arody. Gandhi, too, dida famous last fast. ut Gandhi*s fasthis laste$ression of ain and desair in artitionedIndia!as against human slaughter in the8un2ab and engal. have*s last fast, if thereorts are correct, !as against co! slaughter.

It seems to be al!ays there in India magic, the

ast, the death of the intellect, siritualityannulling the civili


8/10

!hich the sacred Gita lays such stress% andcreativity #?inoba have finding in Sans"ritonly the language of the gods, and not thelanguage of oets%, striing itself do!n, li"eall decaying civili


9/10

bandages0 individual ercetion and 2udgment,!hich once called forth his creativity, arerelin&uished as burdens, and the man is oncemore a unit in his herd, his science reduced toa s"ill. /he blight of caste is not onlyuntouchability and the conse&uent deificationin India of filth0 the blight, in an India thattries to gro!, is also the over-all obedience it

imoses, its ready-made satisfactions, thediminishing of adventurousness, the ushinga!ay from men of individuality and theossibility of e$cellence.

+en might rebel0 but in the end they usuallyma"e their eace. /here is no room in India foroutsiders. /he Arya Sama2, the AryanAssociation, a reformist grou oosed totraditional ideas of caste, and active innorthern India earlier in the century, failed fora simle reason. It couldn*t meet the marriageneeds of its members0 India called them bac"to the castes and rules they had ab2ured. Andfive years ago in Helhi I heard this story. Aforeign businessman sa! that his untouchableservant !as intelligent, and decided to give theyoung man an education. e did so, and beforehe left the country he laced the man in abetter 2ob. Some years later the businessmanreturned to India. e found that hisuntouchable !as a latrine cleaner again. ehad been boycotted by his clan for brea"ing

a!ay from them0 he !as barred from theevening smo"ing grou. /here !as no othergrou he could 2oin, no !oman he could marry.is solitariness !as insuortable, and he hadreturned to his duty, his dharma0 he hadlearned to obey.

Ebedience it is all that India re&uires of men,and it is !hat men !illingly give. /he familyhas its rules0 the caste has its rules. Cor thediscile, the guru!hether holy man or musicteacherstands in the lace of God, and has to

be imlicitly obeyed, even ifli"e have !ithGandhihe doesn*t al!ays understand !hy.Sacred te$ts have to be learned by heart0 schoolte$ts have to be learned by heart, anduniversity te$tboo"s, and the notes oflecturers. It is a fault in the 4estern system ofeducation, ?inoba have said some years ago,that it lays so little stress on learning greatlines by heart. And the children of middleschools chant their lessons li"e uddhistnovices, raising their voices, li"e the novices,!hen the visitor aears, to sho! their


10/10

he might have left indeendent India !ith anideology, and erhas even !ith !hat in India!ould have been truly revolutionary, thecontinental racial sense, the sense of belongingto a eole secifically of India, !hich !ouldhave ans!ered all his olitical aims, and morenot only !ea"ening untouchability andsubmerging caste, but also a!a"ening the

individual, enabling men to stand alone !ithina broader identity, establishing a ne! idea ofhuman e$cellence.

)o! the eole !ho fight about him fightabout nothing0 neither he nor old India has thesolutions to the resent crisis. e !as the laste$ression of old India0 he too" India to theend of that road. All the arguments about the@mergency, all the references to his name,reveal India*s intellectual vacuum, and theemtiness of the civili

Documents

India Renaissance or Continuity