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By: D John Chelladurai
The prolific writer Gandhi churned out over one hundred thousand letters in a span of sixty years, almost 5 letters every day, besides regular articles and editorials in the three periodicals he published in four different languages for well over forty-four years. Writing came to him almost as an insistence on the all-encompassing Truth, as he wrote on a wide range of subjects concerning human life with ‘passion and burning indignation.[1] His writing had the clarity of a crystal and a force sufficient to raise a nation and fell another. Yet it was simple, free from the ornamental utterance and scarcely longer than necessary. As he himself claimed, ‘a thoughtless word never escaped my lips.
That is about a matured Mahatma. The beginning of the young monia, as he was called as a child, however, was one of choking and self-doubting. He couldn’t stand before a group, however minuscule it might be, leave alone speaking to them.
He stumbled upon ‘writing’ as a tool incidentally quite early in life and the fledgling Gandhi, with no other tool at hand, tried at it and wielded it remarkably till he added other weapons into his quiver. It was ‘writing’ that he employed to wean himself off his weakness.
It began like this. Once he stole from his brother’s anklet a speck of gold. When it pricked his conscience, he went to his father. He “did not dare to speak” out, instead chose to “write out a confession” and “handed it to him myself”.[2] Having read the note, tears trickled down his father’s cheeks. Recollecting it, later on, Gandhi stated, “those pearl drops of love cleansed my heart and washed my sins away”. He was hardly fifteen years of age then. He saw that writing did wonders.
Gandhi was just twenty-one years of age when he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Vegetarian Society. A serious question came up for discussion; “I thought it wrong to be absent, or register a silent vote. He remembered his sole weapon. Not having “courage to speak I decided to set down my thoughts in writing… I did not find myself equal even to reading it. The President had it read by someone else…”[3]
At Brighton, Gandhi had an elderly lady friend. Gandhi writes in his Autobiography, “On special occasions, she would invite me, help me conquer my bashfulness and introduce me to young ladies and draw me into conversation with them. I began to like the conversation with the young friend and began to look forward to every Sunday. Possibly the old lady had her own plans about us. I was in a quandary. ‘How I wished I had told the good lady that I was married!’ I said to myself.”[4] Eventually, he wrote a letter to inform her of his marriage and seeking her forgiveness for not telling her earlier.
When the Political Agent in Kathiawad whom Gandhi knew from England days, declined to listen to his representation[5], but unceremoniously ‘showed him the door’, Gandhi “at once wrote out and sent over a note” seeking amends or “I shall have to proceed against you.”[6]
On the third day of his arrival in South Africa, Dada Abdulla took Gandhi to see the Durban court and seated him next to his attorney. Gandhi writes, “The Magistrate kept staring at me and finally asked me to take off my turban. This I refused to do and left the court.” At once he “wrote to the press about the incident and defended his wearing of the turban in the court”. The question was very much discussed in the papers, which described him as an ‘unwelcome visitor.’[7]
When thrown out of the train at Pietermaritzburg, sitting in the extremely bitter cold, Gandhi contemplated on the whole color prejudice and the way to handle it. The following morning he sent a long telegram to the General Manager of the Railway and also informed Dada Abdulla,[8] and got an assurance of safety during the remaining part of his journey.
On the very next day, when his journey from Charlestown to Johannesburg by ‘stage-coach’ was mired with racial bullying, he shot out a letter to the agent of the Coach Company, narrating everything that had happened, and drawing his attention to the threat his man had held out,[9] and got assurance from the company, for a safe seat inside the coach, when he resumed the journey next morning.
At Johannesburg, the following day, when Abdul Gani Sheth informed him that first and second class railway tickets are not issued to Indians and “you will have to travel third class”, Gandhi quickly sent a note to the Station Master, seeking his intervention,[10] and got a first-class ticket for him to travel.
All this while, Gandhi was shaky. He wrote to his father because “I did not dare to speak, I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him.” In front of the Vegetarian Society, he had a point to make, but “had not the courage to speak.” To the British Lady, he was uncertain if he could express himself.
While he was shivering, frightened of the humiliation and reluctant to converse for fear of more humiliation, he persisted upon the only means of communication, the only tool he felt he could operate, that is a pen, to come out of his choking, to assert his position and uphold dignity.
‘My hesitancy in speech’, Gandhi writes, ‘which was once an annoyance is now a pleasure.’ It taught him the economy of words. “I have naturally formed the habit of restraint; a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. Experience has taught me that… man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word.”[11]
It was only in South Africa that “I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu.”[12]
This practice of ‘writing out’ letters suggests that despite his handicap Gandhi had been striving to cultivate a competent mode of expression and make it a habit. While this habituation of a methodology was a strange phenomenon for a young boy, it embodies few features of historic significance.
First: All these writings came as responses to wrongs that needed correction. His habit of stealing and being unfaithful to parents; the unfair stand of the Vegetarian Society against one of its members; the arrogant and a-social action of the political agent; cultural prejudice of the South African court; the racial brutality of the railway officials at Pietermaritzburg and the leader of the Stage-Coach at Charlestown, all these necessitated a protest, as Gandhi’s reactions suggest.
Second: a strong notion of righteousness Gandhi evinced on all these occasions, which forced him to take a side and insist upon that.
Third: hankering for correction drove Gandhi to react/respond even though situations were unnerving, and he was doubtful of his ability to respond.
Fourth: the penchant for taking action towards correction even at the risk of him becoming odd and vulnerable. He did respond despite his innate inhibition, no matter what the result was.
While being generally a tongue-tied person, Gandhi experienced a strange urge on occasions of strife to express himself against wrong. The handicap on the one side, and a strong notion of righteousness on the other, coupled with the hankering for correction and a penchant for a reaction against wrong, forced Gandhi towards one mode of communication he could take recourse to that was writing. Having tasted success once, he readily jumped at it every time he faced strife, and each time he made it more eloquent.
The young Gandhi habitualized a number of essential habits such as these which, years later, would become the enlisted qualities of a Satyagrahi, even before he thought of becoming a torchbearer for the society.
Indeed, the young Gandhi had a satyagrahi incubating all through these instances of writing out.
Author Bio D John Chelladurai is the Prof and Head, Dept of Gandhian Studies, Mahatma Gandhi Mission University, Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India
- [1] V S Gupta, ‘Mahatma Gandhi And Mass Media’, https://ift.tt/3uvRKvH
- [2] M K Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, https://ift.tt/3B2PXAJ experiments.pdf. P.14 / P 35 Auto Biography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [3] Autobiography, P32 / P. 76 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [4] Autobiography p. 34 / P. 80 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [5] Gandhi went to the Agent to plea his brother’s case.
- [6] P. 117 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [7] P. 129 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [8] P. 134 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [9] Ibid, P.59 / P. 137 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [10] / P. 138 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [11] Autobiography, P. 77 / 32 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
- [12] P. 76 of An Autobiography, www.mkgandhi.org
source https://nrinews24x7.com/pen-gandhis-first-walking-stick-the-weaning-wand-of-gandhi/
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