Tridip Suhrud
I
n his foreword to a biography of Harilal Gandhi, Ramachandra Gandhi wrote of his grandfather and uncle: “Harilal gave himself up to alcohol, even as Gandhi gave himself up to Ramanama. The son suffered privations, the father won martyrdom and, possibly, Moksha.”1 This essay is an attempt to understand what Ramachandra Gandhi described as Gandhi’s “rambling wisdom…suggestive of an inebriation which is greater than sanity and worldly wisdom of teetotallers.”2
On 30th January 1948 as he stopped three bullets in their path of hate,3 Gandhi uttered the name of Rama. It was iccha mrityu, a death that he had desired and willed. For months before that day, Gandhi had imagined this death: a violent death at the hands of an assassin and at that moment his ability to face the bullets on his chest without any trace of hatred for the assassin and to meet his maker with the name of Rama on his lips. Such a death, he hoped, would show that he had been a true devotee of god as Truth, Satyanarayan. Speaking to those who had come to listen to his prayer discourse, and also to those who sought to prevent him from taking the name of Rahim in his prayers as also to his would be assassins, Gandhi said;
“ I shall have won if I am granted a death whereby I can demonstrate the strength of truth and non-violence…Yes, if I have been sincere in my pursuit of truth, non-violence, non-stealing, brahmacharya and so on and if I have done all this with God as my witness, I shall certainly be granted the kind of death that I seek. I have expressed my wish at the prayer meeting also that should someone kill me I may have no anger against the killer in my heart and I may die with Ramanama on my lips.”4
In private, he had expressed his desire to give one final proof, one definitive demonstration of his faith, of his striving to see God face to face. He said to Manu Gandhi, his constant companion and partner in yajna that he no longer desired to live for 125 years and that his striving was to meet death with the name of Rama on his lips. He believed his striving to be incomplete but hoped that death would be his witness. He said to Manu, “If I should die of lingering illness, it would be your duty to proclaim to the whole world that I was not a man of God but an impostor and a fraud… But if I die taking God’s name with my last breath, it will be a sign that I was what I strove for and claimed to be.”5
Why would he want a demonstration of his faith with such finality? For at least a few years before his assassination, the country and its leadership had turned away from him. As he sought to heal himself and the nation-in-the-making in communal riots-torn Noakhali, Bihar, Calcutta, and Delhi, he had seen both the efficacy of his ahimsa as also its frailty. Despite his ‘miracle of Calcutta’ and barefoot march through the ravaged villages of Noakhali, the country was in the grips of an unprecedented orgy of violence. A final demonstration of ahimsa, of total submission to Rama he hoped would cure the country of this disease.
This desire of surrender, of submission was not new to him. Ramanama was ever-present in his life ever since Rambha dai gave it to him as a remedy for his fears. He was convinced that on three occasions when he was about to surrender to his lust and be with ‘public women’, he was saved by the presence of Rama dwelling within his heart. He was to later, claim that he really became aware of the existence of god on that terrible night of May 5, 1891 at Portsmouth. He said, “seeking pleasure I learnt self-restraint. On the path to forsake Rama’s name, I had his darshan. A miracle indeed.”6
To be sure, the name of Rama was not on his lips at that hour; on his lips was the language of lust. Gandhi believed that Rama came to him in the form of a friend who waned him “‘Whence this devil in you, my boy? Be off, quick!’7 ” He faintly understood the meaning of the term ‘God saved me.’ At the time of writing the autobiography, he was still grappling with the deeper meaning of what it meant to be saved by God. He was convinced that if he had submitted to his lust that night, he would have been rendered totally incapable of waging Satyagraha, of taking a vow and remaining steadfast to it, of washing away the ‘filth of untouchability’, of repeating the sacred name of Charkha and would have been unfit to be blessed by the darshan of millions of women who came to him without a trace of fear.8 Ramanama was on his lips when he fell to the blows of Mir Alam and his associates in Johannesburg in 1908.
Who was this Rama that he invoked? Gandhi was no image worshipper. He in fact liked to think of himself as a destroyer of idols, in so far as they represented subjugation to tradition, to textual authority invoked to show the untrue as true and as justification for injustice. And yet he understood the symbolic power of idols.
Gandhi’s Rama, as his Krishna and Jesus, was a composite of four aspects. One was the historic Rama: the Rama of the various Ramayanas, the son of Dasharatha, the husband of Sita, the slayer of Ravana as also of Vali, the king of Ayodhaya who also banished Sita. The second was Rama as an exemplar, regarded by millions as an incarnation and worshipped as Shri Ramachnadra Prabhu. This Rama was, for Gandhi, the Rama of Tulsidas, not so much of Valmiki and much less that of Kalidasa and Bhavbhuti. The third Rama was the symbolic Rama. Rama who stood for Satyanarayan and Daridranarayan; for conscience, for the inner voice to which he sought to surrender himself and whose guidance he sought. The fourth was Rama as Name; Name that stands for itself and is not a symbol for a reality which it is supposed to represent.
The historic Rama did not move Gandhi. While introducing his translation of the Gita as Anasaktiyoga Gandhi had claimed that, he was not interested in the historicity of either the Mahabharata or the Gita. He preferred to read it allegorically. He wrote; “Even in 1888-89, when I first became acquainted with the Gita, I felt that it was not a historical work…This preliminary intuition became more confirmed on a closer study of religion and the Gita…I do not regard the Mahabharata as a historical work in the accepted sense.”9
Gandhi did not worship or invoke the historical Rama. The Rama of history was far too imperfect. That Rama was not an infallible person. That Rama had killed Vali and also banished Sita. But even if the historical Rama had not committed any of these acts, the mere fact of him having lived in a body made him imperfect. For Gandhi, any embodied person, even an avatar, could not escape the limitations that the body imposes. “The man called Rama who lived in the past was subject to limitations. His body was perishable.”10 The body is the root of ego and hence sin for Gandhi. In Hind Swaraj Gandhi quoted Tulsidas, but in a significant transposition he chose to alter the saying to indicate his conviction that the body was the site of sin. He wrote; ‘Of religion, pity or love is the root, as egotism of the body.”11 The embodied, historical Rama was hence imperfect and subject to sin. “The timeless body in Rama is sinless. The physical Rama, is of course subject to sin.12” And the one who is subject to sin, not necessarily because of a particular moral failing or due to lack of virtue, but by mere fact of having been in a body cannot save one. He cannot be the one to whom one sings “Nirbal ke bala Rama.”13 Gandhi wrote to son Manilal and daughter-in-law Sushila that, “the Rama of history, who is qualified by attributes, good or bad, would not have the strength to save us.” 14
In any case, he preferred myth and legend over history. “According to me, imagination is superior to historical fact.”15 Gandhi preferred Tulsidas’s Ramacharit Manas over any other rendering of the life of Rama, including that of Valmiki. He was willing to grant Valmiki’s Ramayana superior artistic merit but Tulsidas was for him unrivalled in his spirit of devotion. Whenever he invoked the Ramayana, it was Tulsidas’s Ramacharit Manas that he spoke of. 16
But even a work that he considered an unrivalled spiritual text was not without its flaws. It certainly was no historical work, nor was Tulsidas beyond his own failings or those of his times. He said that “literal application of the lines attributed to Rama by Tulsidas will land the doer in trouble if not send him to the gallows.”17 Tulsidas had composed a poem as an act of devotion to the Rama of his imagination. “Tulsidas had nothing to do with Rama of history. Judged by historical test, his Ramayana would be fit for the scrap heap.”18 He believed that we have little to learn from Rama if we regard him as a historical figure that had waged a war against another historical figure, Ravana.
As Gandhi’s invocation of Ramanama grew in intensity, more and more people questioned him on his devotion to Ramayana and to Rama who had killed Vali by deception and banished Sita. Gandhi remained unperturbed by these searching questions as he was concerned with neither the Rama of history nor did he regard Tulsidas as infallible and sacrosanct.19 Gandhi insisted on reading the life of Rama in the image that he held dear. He argued, like he did with all religious texts and texts that had validity as shastras, that “nothing contrary to truth and ahimsa need to be condoned.”20 Of course, it would be perverse to argue that since Rama practised deception, we could do like wise. The proper thing would be to believe that Rama was incapable of practising deception.
Gandhi had a deeper reason to not regard the Rama of Tulsi as infallible. Was it given to the fallible to have a full conception of the infallible? Commenting upon the fallibility of the composers of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (and by implication figures of Rama and Krishna that emerge from them) Gandhi said; “Only an infallible person could do justice to the lives of infallible beings. One can therefore only take the spirit of the great works for guidance, the letter would smother one and stop all growth.”21
Gandhi was sympathetic to the idea of avatara, incarnation. The avatara does not deny the historicity of a figure. It does not mean that Rama or Krishna as adored by people never lived, but the idea of perfection is an after growth. In his introductory remarks to the translation of the Gita Gandhi said; “Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified; but the picture is imaginary…perfection is imagined.”22All embodied life is an incarnation of god for the believer, but avatara for Gandhi, is a homage paid by people to someone who had lead an exemplary life and rendered extraordinary service. Gandhi saw nothing wrong in such homage, as it took nothing away from God’s greatness. Rama or Krishna in this sense are imbued with divinity.23 Rama as a historical figure no longer lives, and it is not that Rama that we worship. Gandhi said; “We do not worship the historical Rama or Gita. The Rama of history is no more now. But Rama to whom we attribute perfect divinity, who is god directly perceived, lives to this day.”24 The timeless Rama as an exemplar is sinless.
When he invoked Rama and Sita, he often invoked them as exemplars, as those who show the path of rectitude. Rama’s victory over Ravana, aided by an army of monkeys, exemplified for him the conquest of physical might by spiritual strength. Gandhi invoked Rama’s steadfast adherence to a vow, his tapascharya, his willingness to undergo suffering so that he could demonstrate the superiority of soul-force and eradicate evil, adharma.
The modern West, with its civilisation that made bodily welfare the object of life had ensnared and enslaved India according to Gandhi. The colonising power of England was the new Ravana, which could be defeated only by his eleven vows, his Satyagraha, and the willingness to undergo lifelong suffering.
The struggle for freedom for him was a struggle among two dwellers within our hearts, modern west (Ravana) and real civilisation (Rama). “The one binds us to make us really free, the other only appears to free us as to bind us tight within his grip.” 25
Sita exemplified for him non-cooperation with evil. We cannot kill the one who performs adharma but it is our duty to refuse co-operation with adhrama. He repeatedly invoked Sita’s conduct in Ashok Vatika and her refusal to be enticed by Ravana to explain his idea of non-cooperation. Lakshman and Urmila exemplified self-denial and ever wakefulness essential for a satyagrahi. Rama as an exemplar could embody Daridranarayan, the god as embodied in the poor and the suffering. He said; “I take Rama to mean Daridranarayan and it is our duty to forsake the company of the one who does not serve the daridranarayana.”26 He could in the same way claim that Rama resides in the charkha and that sacrificial spinning (sutra yajna) would bring merit equal to the recitation of Ramanama. 27
The necessity of effort, of national service and identification with the poorest took precedence over mere recitation of Ramanama for the sake of self-realisation. In response to a query regarding the possibility of attaining self-realisation without participation in national service, he said: “..effort is necessary for one’s own growth. It has to be irrespective of results. Ramanama or some equivalent is necessary not for the sake of repetition but for the sake of purification, as an aid to effort, for direct guidance from above. It is, therefore, never a substitute for effort…Ramanama gives one detachment and ballast and never throws one off one’s balance at critical moments. Self-realisation I hold to be impossible without service of and identification with the poorest.”
Rama as an exemplar allowed Gandhi to extend the symbolic power of the avatara. But what was central to Gandhi was the Rama of his imagination, Rama who symbolised god, His presence, His compassion and mercy. He said, “There was a time when I knew Rama as Shri Ramachandra. But that time has now passed. Rama has now come into my home.”28 Before Rama came to dwell within him, there was a possibility of amnesia, of forgetting Rama. He recalled how he had come to forget the teaching of Rambha dai in his conceit and how his fears had revived. “As I grew old, the faith weakened. My mentor, the nurse, was dead. I ceased to take the name of Rama, and my fears revived.”29 Only the one who believes can feel the power of Rama and his glory. It is in fact the believer, who gives resonance to the name. In absence of faith, Rama has no power. Gandhi gave an analogy of the quinine tablet to illustrate this. “Ramanama has no independent power. It is not a quinine pill, which has a power of its own…It destroys malaria germs wherever they may be. Ramanama has no such independent power. A mantra acquires power through devotion.”30 The power that a devotee bestows on the name of Rama has to be done in the spirit of detachment, of selflessness. Gandhi said that if the first devotee who took the name Rama had done so to acquire pleasures of heaven, Rama would have been no more than one of 33 crore gods. “But the devotee of Rama linked the name with moksha, and the result has been that a good many people have attained Moksha by uttering Rama’s name in prayer.”31 Gandhi wished to be one such devotee.
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On 30 March 1928, on Ramanavmi day he addressed the ashramites. He said that the Rama of whom they sang was not the Rama of Valmiki, nor even the Rama of Tulsi, because here was not the Rama whose name we may recite to cross to the other shore or whose name we may repeat in moments of despair. This Rama was not the embodied Rama, he could not have a physical form. Hence, “the Rama whom one wishes to remember, and to whom one should remember, is the Rama of one’s own imagination, not the Rama of someone else’s imagination.32” Because this Rama of Gandhi’s imagination was the Perfect One, He was the one who saved and purified even those who had fallen and committed sin, He was patit pavan. It is such Rama that he sought to worship. “We should worship Him, the Inner Ruler, who dwells in the hearts of all, yet transcends all, and is the Lord of all. It is He of whom we sing: Nirbalke bal Rama.33” It was this formless and flawless that Rama that Gandhi wished to see face to face. The Rama that he referred to and the name that he repeated all his life and at the moment of his death was not that Rama who we know as Dashrath’s son.34 It was that Rama whose name Dashratha gave to his son. That Rama was Atmarama, it was Truth. Truth is not merely that which we are expected to speak. It is That which alone is, it is That of which all things are made, it is That which subsists by its own power, which alone is eternal. Gandhi’s intense yearning was that such Truth should illuminate his heart. He lived, moved, and had his entire being in pursuit of this desire. His intense longing and desire was to attain self-realisation, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha. Despite his awareness that Rama had come ‘home’ to him, He was not near enough, and hence he needed to keep the recitation of the name. He spoke of this distance and his need for utterance; “Even now, although Rama is near, He is not near enough to me; hence the need to address Him at all. When He is with me all the twenty-four hours, there will be no need to address Him even in the singular.”35
Gandhi liked to describe himself not as a man of learning but as a man of prayer. Prayer was for him the final reliance upon God to the exclusion of all else. He knew that only when a person lives constantly in the sight of God, when he or she regards each thought with God as witness and its Master, could one feel Rama dwelling in the heart every moment. Such a prayer could only be offered in the spirit of non-attachment, anasakti. Gandhi spoke beautifully of the power of namasmaran.
“You must learn to repeat the blessed name of Rama with such sweetness and such devotion that the birds will pause in their singing to listen to you – that the very trees will bend their leaves towards you, stirred by the divine melody of that Name.”36
In the final years of his life, Gandhi gave himself up to the Ramanama. He was surrounded by failure and a raging fire. It was at once a sign of Gandhi’s deep faith and his utter despondency and loneliness. Ramanama became the cure and perhaps the only form of cure that he came to rely upon. In the midst of an intense debate about the nature of India’s independence Gandhi often retreated to Uruli-Kanchan near Poona in western India, to a naturopathy clinic. The retreat was a mode of finding a cure, a healing, not only for the diseased body of patients that he treated but also for the disease of India.37 To one and all he said recite the Ramanama with a pure heart. The cure for the disease, both of the body and the body-politic of India, lay in the Ramanama. He spoke of Ramanama as an infallible remedy, as he put it in Gujarati ramban38. Ramanama was no longer a symbol, nor was it a metaphor. Ramanama had become the thing itself. Ramanama alluded to no reality or presence outside of itself. It had become for Gandhi, Real. It was incumbent upon him to prove this reality.
He was convinced that the violence that surrounded him was due to his own failing, his imperfect ahimsa, and imperfect brahmacharya. As he walked through the ravaged villages of Noakhali and Bihar sleep eluded him. Even the chanting of Ramanama failed to bring repose. He lamented; “Why can’t I, who preach all healing virtues of Ramanama to others, be content to rely on it exclusively myself?”39 This was true of India as also of his own body and that of Manu Gandhi’s. Manu had become the partner in his yajna. Her frail health, her illness, which finally required her to be operated upon, plunged Gandhi into deep crises. He was convinced that if Ramanama had actually taken firm root in his heart Manu would not have suffered any physical ailment. “After all I have made her my partner in this yajna. If Ramanama is firmly rooted in my heart, this girl should be free from her ailments.”40 He shared his despondency with Manu. “Since I sent you to the hospital, I have been constantly thinking where I stand, what God demands of me, where He will ultimately lead me…I know my striving is incomplete; your operation is a proof.”41
Manu’s ailment and surgery became the metaphor for partitioned India. If he could attain perfect brahmacharya (charya or conduct that leads to Brahman that is Truth), and unsullied ahimsa, the flames raging around him would subside. His quest in the final years of his life was to attain this perfect brahmacharya as embodiment of Truth. This could be attained only if his heart was filled with the presence of Rama. He confessed, “I am no where near realising Rama yet, but I am striving. When I have the realisation, the glow of my ahimsa will spread all around.42” He must discover the full potency of Ramanama or perish in the attempt. 43
And perish he did. But in that final act of iccha mrityu he attained his Rama. The raging fires subsided and the country was stunned into silence only when he gave himself up to Ramanama.
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Notes 1. Ramachandra Gandhi, foreword, in Dalal, C. B. Harilal Gandhi: A Life edited and translated by Tridip Suhrud (Chennai: Orient Longman, 2007), p. xi. 2. Ibid; p. xii. I also hope that this captures something of Ramachandra Gandhi’s own invocation of and submission to ‘the messianic magnet’ of Arunachala, Sri Ramana Maharshi. 3. This is also Ramachandra Gandhi’s formulation. 4. CWMG, vol. 90, p. 489. 5. CWMG, vol. 86, pp. 521-522. 6. CWMG, vol. 27, p. 110 7. Gandhi, M. K.; An Autobiography Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated from the original Gujarati by Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1939, 1999), p. 60. Henceforth An Autobiography. 8. The fact of keeping a vow was of great significance to Gandhi’s self-understanding. Erik Erickson has observed; “That young Gandhi left England with his vow intact was a matter of enormous importance, not only in his own eyes, but later also for his ethical stature among his people.” Erickson, Erik ; Gandhi’s Truth: On the origins of militant non-violence. (New York: W. W. Norton & co.; 1970, 1993), p. 152. 9. Desai, Mahadev; The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to Gandhi, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1946, 2007), p. 127. 10. CWMG, vol. 57, p. 197. 11. CWMG, vol. 10, p. 47. The couplet attributed to Tulsidas reads: “Daya dharma ka mool hain, pap mool abhiman Tulsi daya na chandiye, jab lag ghatmen pran.” Gandhi replaced pap(sin) with deha (body). 12. CWMG, vol. 32, p. 284. 13. Refrain from Surdas’ hymn, ‘He is the help of the helpless, the strength of the weak.’ 14. CWMG, vol. 40, p. 405. 15. CWMG, vol. 50, p. 359. 16. Gandhi was partial to Ayodhya Kand, which deals with banishment of Rama. “It is enough to make anyone rejoice in suffering,” he claimed. See, CWMG, vol. 32, p. 77. 17. CWMG, vol. 26, p. 335. 18. CWMG, vol. 28, p. 111. 19. Of Tulsidas’s saying that women along with Shudra and the drum deserve beating, Gandhi said; “May be Tulsidas himself, following the practice of his time, used to beat up his wife; what even then? The practice does not cease to be reprehensible.” See, CWMG, vol. 28, p. 318. 20. CWMG, vol. 41, p. 543. 21. CWMG, vol. 26, p. 335. 22. Desai, Mahadev; The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to Gandhi, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1946, 2007), p. 128. 23. Ramachandra Gandhi spoke of the necessity of Sri Krsna for the truth of India. He asked; “Who is Krsna? Did he actually live in historical time? Most emphatically yes, a single visit even to modern touristy traffic-ridden Vrndavana convinces the open-minded and faithful to the indubitability of Govinda’s physical existence not only in the past but timelessly in the present also.” See, I am Thou: Meditations on The Truth of India. (Pune: Indian Philosophical Quarterly, 1984), p. 52. 24. CWMG, vol. 40, p. 405. This divinity of Krishna and Rama were crucial to Ramachandra’s Gandhi’s understanding of India’s spirituality as well. He wrote; “The divinity at least of Rama and Krsna and their historicity alone can account for the undefeatedness of Indian spirituality.” See, I am Thou: Meditations on The Truth of India, p. 53. 25. CWMG, vol. 44, p. 264. 26. CWMG, vol. 45, p. 6. 27. CWMG, vol. 31, p. 511. 28. CWMG, vol. 24, p. 196. 29. CWMG, vol. 23, p. 302. 30. CWMG, vol. 69, p. 415. 31. CWMG, vol. 32, p. 112. 32. CWMG, vol. 32, p. 112. 33. Ibid. 34. The idea of Rama being a son of Dasharatha also grew with time. If Rama is merely Dasharath’s son he could not be all-pervasive, but if a devotee were to think of Rama as all-pervasive then his Dasharath too becomes all-pervasive. See, CWMG, vol. 85, pp.331-332. 35. CWMG, vol. 24, p. 197 36. CWMG, vol. 57, p. 446. 37. The metaphor of the diseased India had stayed with him since the time that he wrote the Hind Swaraj; wherein he spoke of the need to find a physician for diseased India. 38. Literally, the arrow of Rama, as infallible as the arrow. 39. CWMG, vol. 86, p. 218. 40. CWMG, vol. 86, p. 486. 41. CWMG, vol. 86, pp. 521-522. This sense deepened with his own fast. The last fast affected both his kidneys and lever, a sure sign that the purity that he had wished and prayed for still alluded him. 42. CWMG, vol. 90, p. 350. 43. Ramachandra Gandhi captured this invocation thus: “‘He Rama!’ is a consummatory extreme thanksgiving invocation of Rama who is God, a rare and holy final accomplishment. Only the rarest bhakta of Rama invokes Rama undespairingly and unpetitionarily as death suddenly and unexpectedly takes him. All of Gandhi’s life was an immersion in Rama Nama, vehicle and sakti of the whole man and his civilization, metaphysical Indian civilization, spiritual Hinduism, which the satyagrahi was pitting against the anti-metaphysical, unspiritual, gasping bullying unbelieving modern times, also against cowardly decaying Indian society and hard-heated privileged Indian individuals and classes unmoved by the plight of starving millions.” See, I am Thou: Meditations on The Truth of India, p. 13.
Tridip Suhrud is a cultural historian, writer and is currently Provost of CEPT and Director of Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology, Gujarat. With several publications to his credit, he is currently working on a new book with Gopalkrishna Gandhi; Scorching Love, which will be published early next year and the second volume of Manu Gandhi's diaries (1946-1948), The first volume, The Diary of Manu Gandhi (1943-44) was published in 2019
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