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Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
In January 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated:
To me, at that age, Mahatma Gandhi appeared to be only a businessman.
I have spoken against him thousands of times because I don't agree
with anything in his philosophy of life. But the day he was shot
dead - I was seventeen - my father caught me weeping.
He said, "You, and weeping for Mahatma Gandhi? You have
always been arguing against him." My whole family was Gandhian,
they had all gone to jail for following his politics. I was the
only black sheep, and they were, of course, all pure white. Naturally
he asked, "Why are you weeping?"
I said, "I am not only weeping but I want to participate
in the funeral. Don't waste my time because I have to catch the
train, and this is the last one that will get there on time."
He was even more astonished. He said, "I can't believe
it! Have you gone mad?"
I said, "We will discuss that later on. Don't be worried,
I will be coming back."
And do you know that when I reached Delhi, Masto was on the platform
waiting for me. He said, "I thought that however much you
are against Gandhi, you still have a certain regard for the man.
That is only my feeling...." He then said, "It may
or may not be so, but I depended on it. And this is the only train
that passes through your village. If you were to come, I knew
you would have to be on this train; otherwise you would not be
coming. So I came to receive you, and my feeling was right."
I said to him, "If you had spoken before about my feeling
for Gandhi, I would not have argued with you, but you were always
trying to convince me, and then it is not a question of feeling,
it is pure argument. Either you win, or the other fellow wins.
If you had mentioned only once that it is a question of feeling,
I would not have even touched that subject at all, because then
there would have been no argument."
Particularly - just so that it is on the record - I
want to say to you that there were many things about Mahatma Gandhi
that I loved and liked, but his whole philosophy of life was absolutely
disagreeable to me. So many things about him that I would have
appreciated remained neglected. Let us put the record right.
I loved his truthfulness. He never lied; even though in the very
midst of all kinds of lies, he remained rooted in his truth. I
may not agree with his truth, but I cannot say that he was not
truthful. Whatsoever was truth to him, he was full of it. It is
a totally different matter that I don't think his truth to be
of any worth, but that is my problem, not his. He never lied.
I respect his truthfulness, although he knows nothing of the truth - which
I am continuously forcing you to take a jump into....
But there are a few things about him that I respect and love - like
his cleanliness. Now, you will say, "Respect for such small
things...?" No, they are not small, particularly in India,
where saints, so-called saints, are expected to live in all kinds
of filth. Gandhi tried to be clean. He was the cleanest ignorant
man in the world. I love his cleanliness.
I also love that he respected all religions. Of course, my reasons
and his are different. But at least he respected all religions - of
course for the wrong reasons, because he did not know what truth
is, so how could he judge what was right, or whether any religions
were right, whether all were right, or whether any ever could
be right? There was no way. Again, he was a businessman, so why
irritate anybody? Why annoy them?...
I disagree with him, and yet I know he has a few small qualities
worth millions.
His simplicity...nobody could write so simply and nobody
could make so much effort just to be simple in his writing. He
would try for hours to make a sentence more simple, more telegraphic.
He would reduce it as much as possible, and whatsoever he thought
true, he tried to live it sincerely. That it was not true is another
matter, but about that what could he do? He thought it was true.
I pay him respect for his sincerity, and that he lived it whatsoever
the consequences. He lost his life just because of that sincerity.
With Mahatma Gandhi, India lost its whole past, because never
before was anybody in India shot dead or crucified. That had not
been the way of this country. Not that they are very tolerant
people, but just so snobbish, they don't think anybody is worth
crucifying...they are far higher.
With Mahatma Gandhi India ended a chapter, and also began a
chapter. I wept, not because he had been killed - because
everybody has to die, there is not much in it. And it is better
to die the way he died, rather than dying on a hospital bed - particularly
in India. It was a clean and beautiful death in that way. And
I am not protecting the murderer, Nathuram Godse. He is a murderer,
and about him I cannot say, "Forgive him because he did not
know what he was doing." He knew exactly what he was doing.
He cannot be forgiven. Not that I am hard on him, just factual.
I had to explain all this to my father later on, after I came
back. And it took me many days, because it is really a complicated
relationship between me and Mahatma Gandhi. Ordinarily, either
you appreciate somebody or you don't. It is not so with me - and
not only with Mahatma Gandhi.
I'm really a stranger. I feel it every moment. I can like a certain
thing about a person, but at the same time there may be something
standing by the side of it which I hate, and I have to decide,
because I cannot cut the person in two.
I decided to be against Mahatma Gandhi, not because there was
nothing in him that I could have loved - there was much, but
much more was there which had far-reaching implications for the
whole world. I had to decide to be against a man I may have loved
if - and that "if" is almost unbridgeable - if
he had not been against progress, against prosperity, against
science, against technology. In fact, he was against almost everything
for which I stand: more technology and more science, and more
richness and affluence. I am not for poverty, he was. I am not
for primitiveness, he was. But still, whenever I see even a small
ingredient of beauty, I appreciate it. And there were a few things
in that man which are worth understanding.
He had an immense capacity to feel the pulse of millions of
people together. No doctor can do it; even to feel the pulse of
one person is very difficult, particularly a person like me. You
can try feeling my pulse; you will even lose your pulse, or if
not the pulse then at least the purse, which is even better! Gandhi
had the capacity to know the pulse of the people. Of course, I
am not interested in those people, but that is another thing.
I'm not interested in thousands of things; that does not mean
that those who are genuinely working, intelligently reaching to
some depth, are not to be appreciated. Gandhi had that capacity,
and I appreciate it. I would have loved to meet him now, because
when I was only a ten-year-old lad, all that he could get from
me were those three rupees. Now I could have given him the whole
paradise - but that was not to happen, at least in this life.
glimps45
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