Dr Prannoy Roy talks to author and Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Gopal Gandhi, on his book "Restless As Mercury", which talks about Mahatma Gandhi's early life. In the interview, the author sheds light on Mahatma Gandhi's formative years, his parents, his wife Kasturba Gandhi and his transition from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to the Mahatma.
Here are the highlights of Gopal Gandhi's interview to Prannoy Roy:
NDTV: You mean this simple agreement to be able to voluntarily offer your fingerprints rather than it being forced and made compulsory, that difference nearly cost Gandhi his life, what happened?
Gopal Gandhi: A group of Indians, Pathans, who had joined the struggle because Gandhi had said, we should never give our fingerprints, they were dismayed and a little puzzled by this compromise. They said, yesterday you told us to join the struggle and never give fingerprints, and today you're saying we should give it voluntarily. It was too nuanced for them. Gandhi had come to a very finely nuanced compromise on principle. Coercion had been removed. But Mir Alam hit Gandhi on his head with a truncheon, and kicked him and left him for dead, because he felt Gandhi had betrayed the cause. And Gandhi says, very, very significantly, that as he fell, he remembers very dimly that as the blows started, "I uttered the words Hey Rama".
"Gandhi, as an Indian subject of the British Empire, joined the expedition against the Zulus, but as a stretcher bearer to tend the wounded and the dying. And he says, we were to dress the wounds on the backs of several natives who had received lashes." He found that the wounded Zulus would have been left uncared for "unless we had attended to them. The Zulus could not talk to us, but from the gestures and the expressions of their eyes, they seem to feel as if God had sent us to their succour. I shall never forget", says he, "the lacerated backs of Zulus who had received stripes, and were brought to us for nursing. Because no white nurse was prepared to look after them. And I had an insight into what war by white men against coloured races meant. And yet those who perpetrated these cruelties called themselves Christians. This was no war, but a manhunt": Gopal Gandhi
"...We think of Gandhi as a person, who's influenced others, a person who is like Paras, a philosopher's stone, whatever he touched turned to gold, but actually he was being touched by people": Gopal Gandhi, Author, on his book 'Restless As Mercury'
"Kasturba told her husband, when the new judgment came from the Cape Town court that Indian marriages are not to be recognized in South Africa, marriages that have not been solemnized according to Christian rights or registered in the South African officialdom will not be recognized, there was an uproar in the community. So, she says to her husband, so I am not your legal wife. And our children are not our legal children. So, he says, yes, that's right. Then let's go back to India. So, he says, no, we have not come here to go back to India. That would be a cowardly thing to do. So, she says, in that case I'm going to oppose this. So, if others are going to jail for this, I'm going to jail myself. And she goes into jail": Gopal Gandhi
"Gandhi begins to see his son as a role model and says, I want every Indian in South Africa to be like Harilal. And Harilal spends many terms in jail during the Satyagraha movement, in hard labour, and hard labour in South African jails was hard labour. And the father sees this, and has just, admiration, is a very small word, for what Harilal is doing"
"Another person who became a very strong friend of his in South Africa, was his eldest son Harilal. It is very different for a son, who is only 19 years younger than his father, to look upon his father with anything like awe. So Harilal was a very critical son. He was just 19 years younger. But in South Africa, once the struggle starts, Harilal understands the magnetism of the cause, the injustice being suffered by the Indian community, which Gandhi is now helming, leading, and joins the struggle": Gopal Gandhi
"Kasturba slowly becomes kind of a friend and a colleague as well. And the evolution of their marriage shows how inside marriage it is much more important for a spouse to be a companion and a colleague and a friend rather than just the mother of his children": Gopal Gandhi
"Among the school friends that Mohandas had, not too many, was Shaikh Mehtab who tells Gandhi, tells young Mohandas, you are very weak. Look at me, I'm a runner. I jump, I do pole vaulting. I am so strong. And that's because I'm a meat-eater and you are not, you're a puny fellow. Now this touched something in Mohandas, coming from a vegetarian family, and he very sportingly tried eating meat. Didn't last very long. Shaikh Mehtab also introduced him to very predictable lines of what Shaikh Mehtab thought was the ideal life of a youth": Gopal Gandhi
"Gandhi says about his father, in his different writings which are in this book, that he can picture his father finding it very difficult to get into those hard, strong boots, to prepare for the visit of the Governor. My father was used to soft slippers of the Indian kind, but getting into this attire just to be able to offer tribute to the visiting Governor was like torture for my father. And then he says his father was a man of tremendous will power. Having protested to an English official when the English official was being saucy with the ruler of Rajkot. The ruler said, I don't mind, but Gandhi's father, Karamchand Gandhi, said this is wrong. I will not tolerate an official being insolent to the ruler": Gopal Gandhi
"I wanted to see the man Mohandas, in the Mahatma, and to see how the person who is born into very simple and ordinary circumstances, but with some extraordinary opportunities also, has a tussle with his conscience, with his ambitions about himself, and wants to get on with whatever he has, and to make something of his life": Gopal Gandhi
"The book is about his earlier years, I would say, till he's about 45 and about the time when he was discovering himself, and discovering his role in life, his talents, his abilities, and also his failings and failures. The title 'Restless As Mercury' comes from his sister, his only sister who lived into her late nineties and she, in an early description of her younger brother, Mohandas, said in Gujarati that he was restless as mercury; that is very, very correct.": Gopal Gandhi
"I think it was his honesty, his utter frankness about himself that has marked his life, that marked his words, and his autobiography and other autobiographical. He's ruthlessly honest. And not to score a point in the book of honest quotes, but that's how it is. That's how he is": Gopal Gandhi