Opinions
and other scriptures. He regarded other beliefs and religions as equally valid and sustaining, and altogether capable of harmonious interactions in an increasingly troubled world. He was not a coward, as his life achievements clearly show, despite the view of militarists who had proposed an armed uprising against British occupiers. Gandhi rejected the prospect of millions of innocent Indians murdered - collateral damage - while armies fought in a crowded land. Besides, wars were costly and destructive, profiting only those who made armaments, provoked conflicts and funded war. Wars sap the energy of nations and while creating opportunities for technological innovations – some of which might well be adapted to civilian use – unduly distract the brightest minds from nobler efforts to research humanity and its values and interactions with the environment, and seek ways to live a life of cooperation, mutual support, altruism even, so that man may promote Nature's values rather than degrade them.
Albert Einstein said "Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time, indicated the path to be taken. He gave proof of what sacrifices man is capable of once he has discovered the right path. His work on behalf of India's liberation is living testimony to the fact that man's will, sustained by an indomitable conviction, is more powerful than material forces that seem insurmountable."
The peace march this year again emphasised the principles even as nations bristled with weaponry and harsh words. Earlier this year Dr. Reva Joshee, University of Toronto, had spoken of the courage of peace-seekers in the Gandhi tradition: "The Real Asian Tigers: Stories of Women Learning to Fight through Peace in India". Visiting India in 2010 Barrack Obama addressed Parliament thus: "… I might not be standing here today as President of the United States had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the rest of the world."
Much earlier Martin Luther King had said, "Christ gave us the goals, Gandhi gave us the tactics…" Similarly former presidents Lech Walesa of Poland, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and a multitude of world leaders seeking a better path than war to national independence have studied and followed Gandhi's way.
These things are contained in a tribute entitled Mohandas K Gandhi: thoughts, words, deeds, by Ram Sahadeo, an Ontario lawyer of Guyanese origin and a social and cultural activist. He summarises Gandhi's upbringing, beliefs, teachings, practices, his unshakeable integrity and eventually his martyrdom, tracing the strength of his beliefs to his immersion in the Bhagavad Gita. Speaking of the failure of Christians to follow the teachings of Christ Gandhi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." He opposed religious conversions, firmly believing that all religions were by their very nature true and that the believer's role was to become a devout follower of whatever doctrine he believed and not to coerce others to believe as he did.
Gandhi was not conversant with the Gita until he was a law student in London, England and was ironically introduced to the great book by English friends. How embarrassing! But he was not alone. British-educated Indians of that era and even today know little about Hindu scriptures; the prevailing position of the current Indian National Congress-led coalition government and its major supporters are staunch advocates of secularism (meaning anti-Hinduism) and invariably denounce anything that sounds remotely connected to Hinduism, despite the wisdom enshrined in the Gita and other scriptures. Yet anyone who has studied the Gita cannot but be impressed with its profundity that has stood the test of millennia, remaining pristine as on the day Krishna taught the lessons to Arjuna.
Many translations have been done in the past 200 years, including Gandhi's translation into Gujarati, which he subsequently translated into English. Mr Sahadeo reproduces this version in his book with an instructive introduction, several explanatory appendices, an index and a note about the author. It is 150 pages in 5 x 7 format, with American spelling, presumably aimed at the larger American audience. It clearly repays reading.
Changing face of beggars at the gate
The face of the profession changed from my early days growing up back home to just before I left the country after my 20th birthday. By then the gap between the rich and poor had widened, and begging as a livelihood had become a nightmare around me.
When I was growing up back home, just before I started school at five-years-old, I would stand in the verandah of our house and watch the street outside for many hours. I loved people-watching even then. It bothered my mother, my standing motionless like this, staring out at the street with my large eyes, hands at my side, one foot sometimes lifting to scratch the calf of the other with a big toe.
The verandah of the house where I was growing up was overgrown with my mother's love for plants. Her quest for flowers was eclectic, the method of selection and choice quite simple. She was on the lookout for plants wherever she went. Whether it was to a relative's house, or driving past a piece of bush on the road; or on a visit to the Botanical Gardens in the capital city, where every tree, plant and flower pot was labeled and numbered and guarded by the watchful eyes of gardeners, strolling police officers, and even visitors with a momentary, heightened sense of nationalism. My mother did not care. She always asked. Or helped herself discreetly to a "cutting" from the plant.
"I could get a piece of this plant, please?" she would say to a startled homeowner, even as she was wringing the woody stem off the plant, or uprooting a corner of the bush and vigorously shaking off the clinging, wet earth; or cracking open a pod using a shoe's heel as a hammer and harassing out the reluctant seeds.
Our verandah was a virtual tropical rainforest of mismatched plants. Orchids clung to rotting coconut husks hanging like drying heads from torturous lengths of wires; ferns peeked out of hanging baskets made from circles of wire lined with the fibrous netting from the upper branches of the coconut tree. Vines snaked out of jars of mossy green, unhealthy water. Periwinkles grew out of discarded, jaundice-yellowed chamber pots, its enameled relief of painted flowers chipped in spots; zinnias swayed in dented cans with rims and sides thickened with leprous skins of paint; rubber plants with leaves laved with cooking oil suffocated in half-barrels noxious with flies attracted by too-fresh cow manure.
I stood among these plants like a child of the forest under a canopy of bougainvillea, its thick woody branches lethal with thorns; hummingbirds buzzed in like supersonic aircraft, oblivious to me – it was as if I was a statue.
I watched the street, with its people rolling in as on a tide; others surged in as small eddies before being drawn outwards as if on a current flowing down a sluice that took them into other streets.
Standing motionless like this worried my mother some. She mentioned to a few relatives that perhaps I was unwell. Given the family lineage and its penchant for perpetual motion, there was concern that perhaps, "The child might be suffering from 'malkady'." That he must have received "mal juex" or the "evil-eye" from an envious, childless neighbour.
My mother took me for a "jharay", a ceremony of prayers and simulated soft-whipping with a dried spine from the long leaflet of a coconut branch, an attempt to exorcise the 'evil-eye'. It did not work. I returned the next day like a caged parrot to my perch in the verandah.
It was here where I observed the daily flow from the tide of beggars who came up our street. I noted one lady whose limp grew noticeably more pronounced as she walked up to the gates of the houses on the street. There were no doorbells. Announcing one's presence at the front was done by either noisily using the latch as a door knocker if the gate was metal, or calling out with some politeness, the greeting based on the time of day.
"Morning, morning," the beggar called. There was a hint of warble, and even a pleasant tweet in the way the syllables rolled out. The childless neighbour would stick her head out, still in curlers, through the kitchen window, her face twisted with vexed inquiry.
"I asking for a little help to feed the children, please."
For this effort the beggar would be on her way with a cup of flour carefully poured into a bulging bag carried on her shoulder.
One beggar man moaned. His fingers were as long as the legs of a crab. These he curled outwards, insisting on cash. He walked with a painful back, each rictus measured on a Richter of excruciation. I watched him from among my mother's plants. As he left our street his back grew straight. And then with wholesome energy in animated hands he flagged a taxi down.
A decade and a half later, on my way to the airport for good, beggars lined major intersections with faces expressionless like zombies.