Rajmohan Gandhi Reflects on India's Founding Fathers

RAJAGOPALAN: Rajmohan Gandhi, welcome to the podcast.

RAJMOHAN GANDHI: Pleasure to again be with you.

Patel

RAJAGOPALAN: I want to talk with you about the biographies that you've written, most notably of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and, of course, Mohandas Gandhi. I want to start with Patel first, so we deal with them one by one. Patel very much imbibed Gandhian principles. He was part of the non-cooperation movement. He took ahimsa and its values very seriously, and the values of nonviolence.

You also describe how he used some Cortellian Kautilyan methods, —saam, daam, dand, bhed, —when he was pulling the Union of India together. Do you see a fundamental tension between these two? I guess the second part of that question would be, does that mean he's not as Gandhian as he originally set out to be?

GANDHI: I think it’s a great question, and I’ll try and answer it if I am able to. It’s also worth recognizing the circumstances in which he joined Gandhi. He has returned from the UK as a barrister, unlike Gandhi, unlike Nehru, unlike Jinnah, who went as relatively young people. Patel is already a vakil. He’s a pleader. He’s not a lawyer, he’s a pleader.

RAJAGOPALAN: A successful one.

GANDHI: A very successful one in a small Gujarat town. He saves money. First, sends his older brother.

RAJAGOPALAN: Sends his brother.

GANDHI: Then he goes himself. He becomes a successful barrister. Then he practices in Ahmedabad, where he's very successful. Then he hears of Gandhi, this unusual man, and Gandhi arrives in Gujarat, and makes Gujarati's bases come from South Africa, where the work he's done is quite well known across India. Patel, for some time, follows Gandhi’s work with a very cynical outlook. Also with great curiosity. Some of his comrades have described close associates of his at that time, who also were admirers of Patel, but also were interested in what Gandhi was doing.

Some of his comrades have described close associates of his at that time, who also were admirers of Patel, but also were interested in what Gandhi was doing.

One day, some lawyers come, and Patel is there at the club, famous Gujarat Club. They’re used to sitting with Patel and having some conversations with him. This time, they walk past him, and Patel says, “Where are you going?”  “No, we’re going to listen to Gandhi.”  “Oh, you’re listening to Gandhi?”  “He’ll ask you to clean lavatories. He’ll ask you to sort out grain or to grind grain, maybe. If you want interesting conversation, sit here.” Of course, they go. This is his initial reaction. Then it is what Gandhi has done in Champaran, which is far away. Even today, Champaran in Bihar is very far from west—

At that time, we're talking about 1917, Champaran is just very far off from Ahmedabad, western India. There, the European magistrate asks Gandhi to quit Champaran, and he says he will not. In the court, he says that, "I will listen to conscience in me. Yes, I'’ll pay a price, but I'll disobey you. I will not go." This is published in newspapers. In the Gujarat Club, some of Vallabhbhai'’s friends, and Vallabhbhai himself, are absolutely astonished. This is the very first time that, of course, in 1857, much earlier, there was defiance of British rule. Here, a barrister like him, very coolly, very calmly, says, "No, I will not do what you tell me."

When you ask about Patel and Gandhi, and the differences in Gandhi’s attitude, remember that it is Gandhi’s willingness to defy the empire. Defiance of empire takes something very much stronger, tougher than the words nonviolence, or nonretaliation, or love my country. There is strength. It is the strength in Gandhi that draws Patel.

Of course, Patel then also—Kripalani later writes about this time, referring to Patel, because Kripalani, who is a very remarkable man, and also enlisted by Gandhi in 1915 or so. Kripalani sees Patel at the beginning of the movement when Patel is still very Western and very much impressed by the apparent success of the empire.

Then he sees Patel again. Now, Patel’s clothes are different. He’s totally different. A new Indian has been made. This is Kripalani’s phrase. Patel is joining Gandhi, not only in a work for the freedom movement, but it is a regeneration of India. It is a creation of a new India. If we want to contrast, you might say courteous behavior, nonviolent behavior, tough behavior - saam, daam, dand, bhed behavior - those are very important, but let’s remember that it is the boldness of the project, the toughness of what is required that captures Patel.

RAJAGOPALAN: I would not disagree with that. Yet I would have imagined that for Gandhi, the means of stitching the union together was as important as the end of stitching the union together. He very much wanted the Union of India to be a single entity and for everyone to be together.

GANDHI: Surely.

RAJAGOPALAN: They would agree upon the ends, but I always wonder if Gandhi might have agreed with the means, in particular, the way the Nizam of Hyderabad was treated, or there are places where the army was brought in and deployed.

Those are a little bit different. To Gandhi, the boldness, I agree with, the stubbornness, the absolute refusal to buckle down when you have the higher moral ground. But would he have coerced a fellow countryman? - is the question I always have, in a way that Patel did.

GANDHI: Great question. Some of these questions, by the way, were raised while Gandhi was still living. The Nizam of Hyderabad came later, but in eastern India, among some of the Orissa states, and also Junagadh had happened.

RAJAGOPALAN: Junagadh had happened.

GANDHI: Gandhi had to face these questions. Some of the princely states in eastern India, they complained to Gandhi also that Patel is really pushing us hard, coercing us. When Junagadh happened, Gandhi publicly said that he wished that it had happened in a different way. You’re quite right that some of Patel’s methods, Gandhi might have disagreed with, and in fact did disagree with, but then Patel was the deputy prime minister, Nehru was prime minister, and Gandhi was just a citizen of India.

This is another interesting thing that Gandhi might have differed, but Gandhi also knew how to relinquish responsibility, delegate responsibility, and so accepted that Patel and Nehru, and others were running India, and Gandhi was there if needed as an umpire, if needed as an adviser, but he was not governing India.

RAJAGOPALAN: You also have a wonderful chapter, not in the Patel biography, but now in the Gandhi biography, on why Gandhi chose Nehru over Patel as his successor, so to speak. Do you think he would have made a different choice had he lived longer? The particular context in which I ask this question is one of central planning, because about a decade and a half into the experiment, it became crystal clear how coercive the methods of Nehruvian central planning were. Something that Rajaji pointed out over and over again and fought over the period, especially towards the end of his career. Do you think this would have changed anything in Gandhi's choice?

GANDHI: This is what would be called not just a hypothetical question, but a hypothetical raised to several degrees. On the economic policies of the government of India, very broadly speaking, Gandhi certainly was not in favor of centralized planning. In fact, already, again, before his death, questions of controls had come up and Gandhi had offered his views, and he’s very much in favor of not over- controlling.

However, let us also remember that in Gandhi’s case, when it comes to a choice of who could lead the future of India, the question involved so many aspects of national life. There is the unity of India. There is the partnership between all the communities living in India. There is the attitude of the citizen to the government, whether the government should really dominate or the citizen should feel that he’s at the same level as the rulers. The economic question would certainly be very important.

Gandhi would want, I imagine, something other than centralized planning. When it comes to the leadership of a country, Gandhi would take into account all the other aspects that I've also mentioned, where the economic policy and the free trade or how much control the government should exercise over business would be an important issue, but Gandhi would not forget that the dominant issue would be who is an Indian. I, if anyone suggests that it should be that some people are not Indian because of whatever their caste or their religion, or whatever.

In the business of who is an Indian and who would make sure that everybody living in India would feel that they are Indians, if that is a quality that you want in a prime minister, I think Gandhi would then probably, if the choice was again between Nehru and Patel, Gandhi might have chosen Nehru. As I say, the choice was already made. Also, it's very important to remember and a Canadian biographer of Nehru was the first, I think, to use the phrase “duumvirate,” that Nehru and Patel jointly ruled India, the two people, duumvirate. to do Amrit.

Yes, Nehru was prime minister, Patel was deputy prime minister, but the two were jointly ruling, in a way, India. Gandhi wanted Nehru also to listen to Patel. Before his death, he asked him to. The choice of Nehru versus Patel is a very important question. Also, even after I'd written the Patel book, which was a long time ago, in subsequent years, also, I've occasionally been studying the issue, and it becomes very, very clear that it is the joint relationship, and the teamwork between people like Gandhi and Patel was a very major consideration in Gandhi's mind.

RAJAGOPALAN: Now, when I look back at this, and of course, this is a counterfactual or a hypothetical, I feel like perhaps Patel might have been a better choice, only keeping today in mind, because he might have been a better or more astute politician when it came to the conservative currents within India, which perhaps Nehru might have missed in the post-partition moment. A lot of it initially got suppressed because of the assassination, but those undercurrents have always been present, especially in the north and east of India. Somehow, now we see this massive resurgence of it, which I wonder if Patel would have missed it quite the same way that Nehru ignored it.

GANDHI:I don't know that I fully understood your question, but if you're suggesting that Nehru did not see what was happening or did not yield to what was happening, did not make room for what was happening, but I would say that Gandhi would have been very glad that Nehru did not yield to what was happening, that India remained an absolutely secular state. The question who is an Indian was in Gandhi's mind, —if you are, again, referring to Gandhi from his childhood—he says that even in his school, he tried to befriend Parsis and to befriend the Muslims.

Gandhi was consciously or unconsciously aware from childhood that the question of who is an Indian, who belongs to India, who should have the Indian nationality, Gandhi knew that this was a very great question. From the beginning, he tried to make that as a question that he would address in his life, which he did. When it came to the constitution and to the running of India, the constitution should have equal rights for everybody. This was clear to Gandhi and to Nehru.

Incidentally, Patel was the president of the Congress in the year 1931, when the fundamental rights resolution was adopted by the Congress, which became the basis for the fundamental rights in the constitution. Patel was the Congress president, Subhash Bose was present, Gandhi was there, Nehru was there. In a way, it's very important to recognize that Patel too was as committed to the notion that Muslims too have equal rights in a future for India. This was in 1931. It is clear that Nehru was more deeply committed personally.

Now, all that this commitment of all of them to the question of everyone having equal rights, in the case of Nehru, it was not a difficult commitment. In the case of Patel, it was a difficult commitment because Patel had, as I have said in a, you might say simplified, but not an inaccurate statement, Patel had a Hindu heart, but his hand was governed by justice and by the law. In Nehru’s case, there was no conflict, internal conflict. In Patel’s case, there was an internal conflict, but he resolved it in favor of justice, in favor of equality, in favor of the constitution.

I would say that the very fact that India’s democratic experiment, for several decades after independence, with all its defects, worked quite amazingly well and surprised the world—the plural character of India, the secular character of India was maintained—I would say confirms the soundness of the choice. India was lucky to have Nehru as the prime minister, Patel as the deputy prime minister, and the two working with very great solidarity and teamwork. The differences between the two, which were real and often were expressed in sharp words, sharp language, but those were junior to, subordinate to the tremendous loyalty to each other and the loyalty to—

RAJAGOPALAN: To the project.

GANDHI: To the project. 

RAJAGOPALAN: To the republic. 

GANDHI: To the republic.

RAJAGOPALAN: I honestly don’t think that India would have not been secular had Patel been the leader or had lived longer or anything like that. In fact, his commitment to pluralism and secularism, I don’t question it at all. My question is just simply there is a matter of taking all the different bandmates along while playing the song. I wonder if Patel might have done a better job of taking conservatives along with him. Rajaji might have done a better job of taking the conservatives along with him in a way that Nehru perhaps sidelined them. Are we paying the price for it today? That’s very hard to say.

GANDHI: It is very hard to say. An answer to that question requires a good study of the situation in the ’40s, the ’50s. In the ’40s, what was the predominant need? Was it to carry the conservatives along? Was it to carry the Hindu right along? Partition has taken place. Very quickly, although not at the time of August ’47, but very soon, Pakistan decides to become an Islamic state. What should India do? What do the Muslims of India feel? The left movement is very strong, by the way. Jayaprakash Narayan, Lohia—

RAJAGOPALAN: Absolutely.

GANDHI: All that is happening. You have to carry the left as well as the right. You have to carry not just the conservatives. You rightly mentioned, you spoke well about Patel, you also spoke of Rajaji. It is very interesting, as today, people will not know. By the way, today, people think that there was a simple choice of prime minister; Gandhi chose Nehru rather than Patel. All that is a very simplified and a misleading question.

RAJAGOPALAN: There’s no anointing.

GANDHI: No. Another very important point, Shruti, the popularity of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947.

RAJAGOPALAN: Was just enormous.

GANDHI: Enormous. It was not Gandhi’s preference alone, it was the preference of the—

RAJAGOPALAN: Of the people.

GANDHI: —people of India. That’s very important to know. All of them had to be carried. There was India’s international image also. India’s relations with the rest of the world.

Rajaji and Patel, yes, they would’ve appealed, again, to different constituencies very effectively. In that very interesting statement, which people do not know, this was in early ’42, war is taking place. The war has expanded to Japan. The US is also now in the war. Great questions about the future of India.

Shortly thereafter, the Quit India Movement also starts, but it’s not yet started. Subhash Bose has left. He’s in Germany first. He even meets Hitler. Then he goes to Japan and all that. The question of the future of India is very important. Then Gandhi makes this very important statement in Wardha, that not Rajaji, not Vallabhbhai, but Jawaharlal Nehru will be my successor. He specifically names these two.

RAJAGOPALAN: These two. Yes.

GANDHI: Then he says Jawaharlal Nehru. This is Gandhi’s assessment. I don’t think that history has shown that it was a wrong assessment. As I have just said a few minutes back, it was an assessment also of the people of India at that time.

RAJAGOPALAN: At that time. Coming to Rajaji, one important distinction, and when I read all the biographies back to back, I start juxtaposing, thinking of similarities and differences, I would categorize both Patel and Rajaji as more conservative, both in their economic thinking, certainly, in the way they thought about the social construct, and also social change, that things need to happen gradually as opposed to radically.

There’s a very important distinction between the two, where Patel is very much in favor of an overarching centralizing force, whereas Rajaji’s very much for provincial, federal kind of governance. One, why was Rajaji ignored so much on that? He seems to have been absolutely prescient on how that would play out in a place like India. Why did everyone miss this and err so badly? I do think this one was an error, the overarching centralization of the Indian republic.

GANDHI: If you'll allow me again to go back to that period of India's independence movement, '20s, '30s, '40s, you rightly mentioned that both Patel and Rajaji were in several ways cautious, conservative in their outlook as compared, say, with Nehru and others. Don'’t forget, please, that the issue in the '20s, '30s, '40s do was not so much what how the states of India should relate to the center or even how the Hindus and the Muslims should relate to each other, so much, as how India should relate to the British. What should be the Indian attitude to the British?

Remember that although both Rajaji and Vallabhbhai Patel eventually became very close associates of Nehru and Gandhi in creating an India that would fight the British rule, but it would be cordial to individual white people or British people. B, both Rajaji and Vallabhbhai Patel in their youth were fiercely opposed to British domination. There's this anecdote which is there in my book: Rajaji's traveling by train, and a white man enters a train, and white man complains of the heat and says, “it'’s hot.” Rajaji says, "It'’s not hot enough." "What do you mean not hot enough?" "It’s not hot enough to persuade people like you to quit India."

Rajaji is conservative in many ways, but he's a very angry man. But this, again, is something remarkable, that both Patel and Rajaji, and so many other Indians who joined the freedom movement, they get mellowed. Yes, it's a passionate struggle for freedom. It's a passionate struggle for self-respect for India's dignity. This new India, this independent India, will be cordial to the rest of the world. It will not dislike the rest of the world. This was another major factor. I'm going away from your centralization question.

RAJAGOPALAN: No, but this is very helpful.

GANDHI: Centralization. Your centralization question, all I think we can say is that so many questions, which are so burning and important today, which should have been discussed before independence came, like centralization, were not discussed. In my Patel book, I mentioned this three-year period when Patel, Nehru, Maulana Azad, Pant, and several other very interesting—Kripalani—future leaders of India, were in prison together for three solid years. Three solid years in this historic prison, which dates back to pre-Mughal times, to the Sultanate times.

In this historic fort, these leaders of future of India are there for three years, but do they really discuss what should be the future, supposing freedom comes? What should be the relationship between the center and the states? What should be the economic policy? Very sadly, the truth is, they did not discuss it.

This is something to reflect on. Today, also, we have struggles in various parts of the world, struggles for various things, but are those who are passionate for certain changes, also, do they have the farsightedness to sit down and say, “If somehow this present unfriendly, unpleasant phase ends, and we have a chance to do things again, what would we do on certain major issues?” That is, I think, is the most important part, that enough, careful, serious thought as to the governance of an independent India was not given before independence came.

RAJAGOPALAN: It’s almost as if they were taken by surprise in some sense, right?

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: It’s anticlimactic in one sense that there are various moments when they think this is about to happen, and of course, the war breaks out. Then there are also times in the past decades before when Gandhi has halted satyagrahas when they’re gaining momentum. It’s almost as if they don’t believe this is going to happen, and when it does, between the chaos of the partition and stitching together the country, the priorities change. It’s much more about the present—

GANDHI: The immediate.

RAJAGOPALAN: —than it is about the 100-year project or the 200-year project.

GANDHI: Remember, the freedom movement for most of these people starts in 1915. They’re already now are elderly people.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, they are. They’re tired.

GANDHI: Tired people.

RAJAGOPALAN: They’ve been in and out of prison. They’re exhausted.

GANDHI: Yes. It is a legitimate criticism that not enough thought was given to the future government. We have this great advantage. We know that freedom came. We know that these people did not make enough plans about the future. There were several emergency situations, several shocking, and astonishing, and sudden situations there to deal with. We should take lessons for the future from this, rather than lament the inadequacies in the leaders of the past.

RAJAGOPALAN: I would not want to say I lament them or their choices. It’s more that the way they are set up in the current context of what Patel stood for, or what Nehru stood for, or someone else, I feel like we need to parse this out a little bit better to understand and have a better sense of what it is that they were working on historically, so that we can take the right lesson and then go with it.

I don’t think in today’s India, Patel would have this overarching centralizing influence, right? I don’t think in today’s India, for instance, Rajaji would be quite as conservative about caste as he might have been, at that point. If things were different, the same people with the same values might do something slightly different. That’s not how it is portrayed in the textbook version or the CliffsNotes version.

GANDHI: Those are very important points. Let me ask, was Rajaji conservative about caste compared with other people at that time? He was a radical.

RAJAGOPALAN: He was radical.

GANDHI: He was a revolutionary. Yes, we can say that his views, as expressed in 1920s and ’30s, are not the views that today, people express. In fact, he was attacked for being radical and being a rebel. It’s very important that we do not assess these people from the norms that we have accepted today.

RAJAGOPALAN: His family was worried that people from the community won’t come for the funeral.

GANDHI: Right.

RAJAGOPALAN: There were some real concerns about being “outcast.”

GANDHI: Some of his steps against untouchability and for respecting the so-called Dalits, these steps that Rajaji took were before he came into the Gandhi circle. His conscience was at work. As it was at work, in so many other remarkable people that some we have heard of, some we have not heard of.

Rajaji

RAJAGOPALAN: I want to come next to Rajaji. There are many extraordinary things about Rajaji. To me, the most extraordinary is that his economic ideology was very different from his contemporaries. He worked with all of them despite this very important difference. When he became governor or chief minister, he very much supported the policies he cared for, which is freedom within the market to transact, no price controls, no quantity controls, and got some wonderful results. First, can you tell us a little bit more about how you view Rajaji’s economic ideology? Then perhaps we can talk about how that’s played out over time.

GANDHI: Today, we are in year 2025. Many people remember 1991 and the liberalization. People don’t realize what India was like when these people were young and active, and even when some of these people that we are talking of were quite old. The phrase License Permit Raj, that businesses can only work if license are obtained, permits are obtained, and government takes its own sweet time to award licenses and permits, delaying economic progress, and encouraging corruption on a tremendous scale., This was evidenced in free India in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s. Rajaji said this License Permit Raj must go, and real freedom must come. It was a tremendous concept which Rajaji expressed. This was after, of course, independence.

RAJAGOPALAN: I want to underline that, what you just said, because what he’s really telling us is there were the colonial masters who ruled over us in a very arbitrary and capricious manner, and they have left. Now, we are ruling over our own people, when he likens it to the Raj. Right now, there’s a new class of rulers, as opposed to people who serve us and govern us.

GANDHI: Yes. That’s a very valid point. This is what Rajaji did underline. There’s no doubt about it that the advantages of centralized planning were exaggerated. Much of that was an illusion. It was natural and easy for people to believe in that illusion because the poverties were so great, the inequalities were so great. The appeal of not just Garibi Hatao, but the idea of some equality, and some minimum standards of living for everybody, were very attractive and appealing ideas, and still are.

The human nature was there even then, and is there, and human nature does not encourage honesty when you say that only some people can be given licenses and permits. Corruption does take place on a very large scale, and the economy gets slowed down. That was a very sharp insight of Rajaji that he underlined and presented to the people of India.

RAJAGOPALAN: One, how did he maintain that? One, he was not able to persuade his contemporaries like Nehru, and Jayaprakash Narayan, and Kripalani, that socialism was not the way forward. He was very staunch in his opinion and his belief. How do you view that? There were various points at which they all managed to persuade each other to find middle ground. On this, Rajaji was unbending. There was no middle ground when it came to economics.

GANDHI: That’s right. Now, we’re talking about Rajaji of the ’50s and ’60s.

RAJAGOPALAN: This is the postindependence Rajaji.

GANDHI: Well after independence, and well after he himself was part of the ruling elite for some years, and then he departed. Ruling elite in Delhi, and then again in Madras, firstly united Madras, and then Andhra separated, and he remained as chief minister of Madras from ’53 to ’54.

RAJAGOPALAN: When he removed price controls—it’s the first thing he did as chief minister, actually—he removed price controls, and then there was immediate increase in supply of grain.

GANDHI: He demonstrated the practical effectiveness of what he believed. Absolutely right. Yes, it is true that the bulk of the ruling class has rejected him during his lifetime. From ’72 to ’91, in retrospect, it’s not such a long time. In 19 years, people came round and understood. Nobody can historically claim that Rajaji achieved what was achieved. It was Manmohan Singh, it was Narasimha Rao. It was the economic reality. Even before the Narasimha Rao government, even Chandra Shekhar was there for a short time, they were beginning to think in these terms. There was the compulsions of reality. Scholars and those who wish to understand history, I think it is quite appropriate to say, “Please, if you see that some people merit credit for prescience and for persistence in advocating an unpopular but correct view, acknowledge it.”

RAJAGOPALAN: Why was his view not the one that was chosen? I feel like Swatantra Party stood for so much that was wonderful. It was anti-establishment, but it was plural, it was democratic, it cut across many different states. There were members of the Swatantra Party who were from the elite, literally some of the erstwhile princes, but they also had regular folks who were canvassing for all the farmers and for change on the ground. Why did that political project not prevail? Why did it just disappear?

GANDHI: I would say that the scale of poverty in India was very great. When so many millions are so poor, it’s not hard for the platform that says, we want the removal of poverty, we want to prevent rich people from being very successful, we want the state to have the power to control rich people. That political line is effective when the masses are very, very poor.

RAJAGOPALAN: Now, the numbers have changed. India is much richer, Indians are much richer. Liberalization brought out about 300, 400 million out of extreme poverty.

GANDHI: Absolutely.

RAJAGOPALAN: It has been wonderful in that sense. Still, about half of India is very poor. Now, we’re talking about 750 million people. Almost double that of what we had at independence, and so on. Somehow, the culture has changed, the political culture has changed. There’s much more currency for markets and economic freedom today than it was at that time, even among the poor. Was it just that Swatantra Party was in the opposition and they couldn’t demonstrate the benefits of their economic ideas, or was it something else?

GANDHI: What has happened after Rajaji’s death in the world? What has happened to the Soviet Union?

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, collapse.

GANDHI: The demonstration of that also has influenced—and then not just the success of the Indian economy in lifting millions out of extreme poverty, but it also happened in many other countries. Many Indians have traveled around the world. Many Indians know what’s happening in the world much more than they knew before. All this understanding and awareness, both of the failures of the Soviet model and the success of liberal economics, were not widely known at that time. Today, they are. Today, now has its own new questions of supremacy and undemocratic methods for achieving results. That is where the debate often is.

RAJAGOPALAN: Here, I find I’m even more personally disappointed about the disappearance of the idea of the Swatantra Party and not just the party itself, because if the ideas have prevailed, maybe we would have seen a revival of something like that. The reason is we don’t have a pro-market, pro-economic freedom platform that is also pro-individuals and pro-pluralism. Because in India, if you’re pro-individuals, you have to be also pro-linguistic, pluralism, religious pluralism, across the states, across castes, across tribes, and so on.

Today, we are left with an either or. We’re either left with a secular-minded left, which believes in bringing back a lot of the controls and things like that, or we are left with a very pro-markets right that doesn’t believe in individual pluralism outside of the markets. Swatantra Party would have been the perfect thing for India, in the sense that it’s what most Indians would like. They would like to be left alone to speak their own language, and eat their own food, and subscribe to the politics of their own state, and wear the dress they wear, and their religion, and so on, while participating in the gains from economic freedom and global trade.

GANDHI: I wish Rajaji were alive to hear what you’re saying now. He would be very pleased indeed. This is a nice thought. It’s a fanciful thought. Remember, again, just as the picture that people could paint of extreme poverty and extreme equality could often defeat the argument of, you might say, libertarian argument, today, the prejudices connected to religious communities are so fierce, and the propaganda about it is so persistent and constant that arguments, even powerful political personalities may find it not so easy to present a powerful argument both for individual freedom, and for equal rights, and for protection of provinces, protection of communities, equality. I think it is very good to have this vision, this dream, that you spelt out, which I welcome very much. I also feel that vision or dream is entertained in many more minds than we think.

RAJAGOPALAN: I would hope so because I feel like anything else would mean that one group of people in India is going to coerce another group of people in India, which to me is a problem. I know today we are worried about the majority coercing the minority. Equally, you can have certain instances where minorities can coerce majorities. We’ve seen this with the princely states and a few landed aristocrats in the past. If we don’t know the future, 50, 60, 80 years from today, and we just don’t want one group to dominate another, I don’t see any other way out other than this plural project that is based on the individual and both political, religious, and economic freedom.

GANDHI: I’m going to pick out one phrase from what you have said, noncoercion. Coerciveness, coercion is the enemy. Noncoerciveness has to be a platform. People should be left free as groups or as individuals, as regions, as linguistic groups. Also, there can be free debate. If I feel that in your group there’s some ideas which I disagree with, as long as I express my disagreement or my objection in nonprovocative language, in academic language, there should be debate, there should be dialogue, there should be freedom of expression, but the phrase I love the most, noncoercion.

RAJAGOPALAN: We’ll hold on to hope for that. Another thing that Rajaji was very prescient about was the future of Pakistan.

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: At the time, when I read the newspaper archives, it’s so odd when we look back from the current moment, because everyone thought India’s project would fail. That India’s neighbors would succeed because they were smaller, they were less diverse, they were maybe picking a state religion or a state language or something very particular.

GANDHI: They sometimes had a military rule, which looked attractive and efficient.

RAJAGOPALAN: It looked like order, as opposed to India, which on the outside looked like disorder and chaos. 75 years later, India is the only experiment that’s really persisted, which makes me very hopeful. Even compared to his contemporaries, Rajaji was very prescient about Pakistan. His contemporaries might have disagreed with the idea, but they didn’t think it would fail. Whereas Rajaji could see it much more clearly. What is it that Rajaji was able to see, do you think?

GANDHI: One particular thing, which is perhaps what you have in mind, although you’ve not spelled it out, he anticipated that Bangladesh would split. That he and Mountbatten were having a conversation and they agreed that in 25 years or so, the east—

RAJAGOPALAN: And the west.

GANDHI: —would—

RAJAGOPALAN: Almost exactly to the date. That’s what happened.

GANDHI: That’s what happened. Rajaji was aware, as maybe some others were not aware that regional feelings were very strong, not only in what was Pakistan, but what is India. That each state, the linguistic community in each state—the Tamils are a people, the Telugus are a people, the Malayalis are a people. Bengalis are tremendous people.

RAJAGOPALAN: We’re all very proud of our language and our dialect, and refuse to give up on it.

RAJAGOPALAN: Literature.

GANDHI: Yes. This was very deeply realized, as you have been pointing out in this conversation, by Rajaji, very early on. It is something that we must acknowledge.

We’re not acknowledging a weakness, we’re acknowledging an asset.

RAJAGOPALAN: Why has Rajaji gone out of public memory and consciousness? Is it because the Congress and their textbooks didn’t make a bigger effort to keep him alive? Is it because towards the later part of his career, he was much more involved in Tamil Nadu and its politics? There has been a disappearance of Rajaji, which I personally find astounding, because he occupied very important positions. He’s literally the person who was the first Governor-general of India⎯

GANDHI: First Indian head of state after Bahadur Shah Zafar.

RAJAGOPALAN: Exactly. He’s occupied various positions, not just a ceremonial position. He has been chief minister of Madras. He started his own political party very late in his life, led it to success. He has done so many different interesting projects, other than walking alongside Gandhi and Nehru, that his disappearance from public memory and consciousness seems very strange to me.

GANDHI: It is strange, but it is not something that one can do anything about, or I would say one should do anything about. What the public decides to remember or forget is a matter for the public to choose. To fret about it is completely unnecessary. In any case, there’s not too much one can do about it. Any campaign to revive Rajaji’s memory would be—even if a handful of people study his life closely—yes, I wrote my book a long time ago. There’s room for many more books if others are impelled to study his life. What a writer he was.

RAJAGOPALAN: He was an extraordinary writer.

GANDHI: Both in English and in Tamil.

RAJAGOPALAN: I showed you the volumes of Satyameva Jayate, which are the collections of his weekly columns, which, even now, they’re extraordinary to read.

GANDHI: Such a lover of the language and lover of literature. From every angle, he’s worth looking at, worth studying. After all, usefulness of a person’s life does not depend on how many references this person gets on television, or newspapers, or whatever, whatever. If sufficient scholars study, and comment on it, or criticize in the best academic sense, and discusses dialogue—Rajaji is a fabulous—he will remain a subject for scholars. If it’s fortunate, the wider public, it’ll also remember him.

RAJAGOPALAN: My read on it is that the reason he’s not as well remembered by the broader public is he was too nuanced. That he didn’t stand for one thing and one thing in an overwhelming way that then people can associate with that and point to that. There was too much nuance going on there. Whether it is about federalism or provincialism, whether it is about caste or the Tamil language, or the Dravidian movements, or economic freedom. You can’t point to one thing. That might be the downfall.

GANDHI: Another problem with him is the length of his name, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari.

RAJAGOPALAN: I have a shorter version of that, and I can say it’s hard to fill out forms.

GANDHI: That is one. To be honest, Shruti, not many scholars of Rajaji would say that his failure was lack of nuance.

RAJAGOPALAN: No, too much nuance.

GANDHI: Sorry that this failure was too much nuance. No. He had very strong views. Not one’s views, but he changed his views from time to time.

RAJAGOPALAN: He did.

GANDHI: Especially on the Hindi matter, for instance. One reason why he lost popularity in Tamil Nadu, of course, was that he was a Brahmin.

RAJAGOPALAN: It’s a tiny minority.

GANDHI: Yes. It was the caste equations. When students of history look at his life and remember all the quite radical things he did being a Brahmin, that opinion will change. As I say, lessons learned from his life, or even inspirations drawn from his life, are more significant than the number of people today who may say, “Yes, we know who Rajaji is.”

Ghaffar Khan

RAJAGOPALAN: I want to move to Ghaffar Khan, which you have a fantastic biography. It’s right here. We just don’t know enough about him. He lived quite recently. Of all the people you’ve written about, he’s the most recent in one sense. You’ve meticulously chronicled the Khudai Khidmatgar movement. Why is it such a footnote or a passing note even within Pakistan? Forget India, I don’t think anyone is studying this in Indian textbooks anymore. Is it because the idea of Islamic nonviolence is just not something that has currency today within Pakistan or anywhere in the world?

GANDHI: Let me offer two comments on this. One, in Pakistan, actually, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan is far better known today than he was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There are universities named after him. There are other important institutions named after him. He’s remembered with great pride in many parts of Pakistan.

RAJAGOPALAN: Not taught in the syllabi. None of that has really made its way into school curriculum where kids learn about this. In a way, they learn about Iqbal or Jinnah, and other things.

GANDHI: I’m not aware of the school curricula in Pakistan, so I can’t answer that question. Generally speaking, among the general public, and you might say even the English-language mass media occasionally that I look at, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan is treated with far greater respect, of course, but also more widely than used to be the case.

RAJAGOPALAN: I’m happy to hear that.

GANDHI: I’m glad that is happening. Of course, some of his descendants were active also in politics in various versions of the Awami Party in the North-West Frontier Province, now called the Pakhtunkhwa Province. Yes, fortunately, in Pakistan, he is remembered more and more. In India, I’m afraid the loss of memory is due to some other rather less pleasant factors. There was a hospital named after him in Faridabad, where he had worked also in the refugee resettlement. It was a small tribute paid for his lifetime’s work. They changed the name. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Hospital. The name has changed recently. It is that which has resulted in, you might say, the sidelining of his name from mass media. On the other hand, by the way, there is a very active Khudai Khidmatgar Association [Organisation] of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in India today.

RAJAGOPALAN: In India, yes.

GANDHI: Currently. Very active. They go to many places. Again, their activities are not publicized by the normal media, but it’s a very active and growing group. I, myself, since I’m in touch with some of them, I get emails all the time of their activities, in Pondicherry today, elsewhere, in UP, or in Haryana, or Delhi, elsewhere. At least on a small scale, people are inspired by this incredible man.

We should not underestimate whether we are looking at the history of Islamic communities in the world, history of Islam in the world, or where the history of—there are many groups like the Pakhtuns all over the—for instance, the Kurds of the Middle East. There are many groups who feel that they have been sidelined by political and other events in recent decades. Abdul Ghaffar Khan is very relevant for the future of Islam, is very relevant for the future of these ethnic groups that are dominated by bigger ethnic groups in the neighborhood. For instance, the Pashtuns dominate Afghanistan. Punjabis dominate Pakistan.

The Kurds, for instance, are dominated by neighbors everywhere. For such groups, he’s a very powerful figure, but then also as a human figure. Again, the nonviolence that he embraces and he fights for Hindu rights and for Sikh rights, he and his brother, before Pakistan, in the North-West Frontier Province. He’s a wonderful figure for, as I said, for smaller ethnic groups, but also for humanity as a whole, and for the world of Islam as a whole, and for the relationship between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world. I don’t think he will disappear. Certainly, scholars will study him. How lucky I am that I had the privilege to write—I must boast a little.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, please.

GANDHI: My biography of him that appeared first in 2004 was the first book, the very, very first book, whether in Pakistan or in India, that mentions the names of his sisters, the names of his wives, one after the one died, names of his mother. In Pashtun culture, you don’t mention the names of the women in your family. Even for me to obtain the names from relatives took time and effort, but I was lucky enough.

RAJAGOPALAN: You’ve done this in your other biographies, too. You went to great lengths to learn more about Patel’s wife. No one seemed to have a memory of what she looked like or what she sounded like. You describe beautifully in the book.

You’ve done the same with Rajaji’s wife. Of course, she was your grandmother, but you didn’t know her. You’ve done this for many people that you’ve written about, especially Iqbal. Iqbal had a similar story of more than one wife and the different families. Why is it that other biographers don’t do what you do?

GANDHI: I don’t know, but I hope others will do better and more than I’ve been able to do. Thank you, though, for saying what you say about my efforts. I appreciate that.

RAJAGOPALAN: I noticed it when I was reading because normally it just says married to so and so, and then we quickly move on to the next great thing that the great man has done. My worry when it comes to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan is, we look at Bhave, we look at Jayaprakash Narayan, or Kripalani, more recent, postindependence India, we talk about Hindus who still believed in nonviolence and ahimsa and noncooperation as means of protest.

We never quite named the Muslims. We named South Africans. More and more recently, we name congressmen, now they’re very senior in the United States, or senators, who were part of the civil rights movement. We don’t have a long list of Muslims, even though they existed. We know they existed in the subcontinent, but there has been a kind of erasure there. Do you think there’s globally something else going on with just our refusal to acknowledge that there are nonviolent streams within Islam in a world where everyone wants to paint it as one thing?

GANDHI: Thank you. I think that’s an absolutely valid point. I think within some Islamic countries, it is very difficult for those who champion nonviolence to find a hearing. Outside Islamic countries, in many parts of the world, including in India, including in the US, there is prejudice against Muslims anyway. If there is an Islamic voice urging for nonviolence, we will ignore it, not because it’s a nonviolent voice, but because it’s a Muslim voice.

Prejudice against Islam works in some places, and the tyranny of certain extremist Islamic governments also works against. Nonetheless, as has happened to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Pakistan, I think and I hope that more and more will study people like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and their equivalents, who I’m sure existed.

RAJAGOPALAN: Like Malala.

GANDHI: Yes, Malala Yousafzai. Exactly. Again, many in India, for instance, don’t know or don’t remember that virtually every African country has significant Muslim minorities.

RAJAGOPALAN: Absolutely.

GANDHI: Some have great Muslim majorities, but even those that have very significant, and these are very major populations. What happens to Islam in those countries in the future is very significant. I wish that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan story can be taught—

RAJAGOPALAN: Everywhere.

GANDHI: —in African countries.

RAJAGOPALAN: Do you think that his pacifism came more from Pakhtun codes of honor and the kin, or do you think they came more from Gandhi’s influence and the project in India? Is it easy to even separate the two?

GANDHI: Perhaps not. Certainly, perhaps it came from both. Just as Gandhi believed that nonviolence was a central tenet of Hinduism, Badshah Khan claimed and believed that nonviolence was a central tenet of the holy Quran. In my very last conversation with him, it took place in Mumbai, not too long before he died—of course, he went back to Pakistan and died there—he told me of how many times another word, which is not exactly nonviolence, but patience. Patience was the word that occurs again and again and again. He interprets patience as some synonym for nonviolence.

Badshah Khan drew his nonviolence from his Pakhtun culture, as you say, from Gandhi, from the struggle for nonviolence, India’s struggle. As most people today will not know, but in 1930, the year of the Salt March—everybody knows of the Dandi Salt March. Some people like you know of Rajaji’s Vedaranyam Salt March in south India. There were similar things across India. There was the most amazing thing in the North-West Frontier Province, when these Pakhtuns absolutely remained firm with nonviolence and performed their noncooperation and civil disobedience.

Tremendous story.

RAJAGOPALAN: That received a lot of press at that time.

GANDHI: At that time. Some Indian soldiers of the British army refused to shoot at these people. They were punished. That also received tremendous publicity, and rightly so.

RAJAGOPALAN: The reason I asked the question of whether he gets it more from the Gandhian project or from the Pakhtun culture is, is the Gandhian ideal, can it be transplanted in different parts of the world? We’ve seen some success, for instance, in South Africa. We saw some success in the civil rights movement. Is this something that lends itself to travel the world and be exported, or does there have to be something in that local culture which also embraces those ideals?

GANDHI: Luckily, there is that in every culture, I believe. What happened in the civil rights movement here was a big thing. It was a huge thing. Huge thing. What happened in Mandela’s willingness to say that the new South Africa is for everybody, huge thing. Those are not small things. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s likewise. And again we speak of it as nonviolent defiance, but if you study it, there is more to it.

There is dignity.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. There is a strong moral component to it.

GANDHI: There is fraternity in it. There is a notion that all of us are one, that we are actually one humanity. That notion is in it. Gandhi, yes, he spent all his life in India. Even though he was often invited here and there, he did not go out. He concentrated because he wanted India to show an example. He always said it would be an example for the world. There’s no question that a fair and decent nonviolent struggle for justice and for equal rights is something that does seem to accord with not only different cultures, but really with the human conscience everywhere.

Gandhi

RAJAGOPALAN: When it comes to Gandhi, I really like your biography of Gandhi, in particular, because you give us a very clear image of him. You tell us that there are so many different strands of Gandhi, but what you’re focused on is what he was focused on, which is getting India and Indians to the other side, like a good boatman, which is towards freedom and self-governance and dignity. He had a number of battles in the process, but that was really the project. Do you think that he would think that he got us to the other side, if you were to ask him?

GANDHI: I don’t know. We do know that he was very sad, of course, at the carnage that took place. Deeply, deeply, deeply. He was very sad about the partition that took place, but he was very, very happy about independence. Even when he was in very deep sadness, to friends he wrote about ushering the goddess of liberty into the courtyard. He was very, very pleased about independence. Just the political independence itself was not enough, but it was a matter of very great satisfaction to him as it was to everybody else.

A very short thing: Gandhi spoke to the Asian leaders when they met in April of ’47, shortly before independence, in the Purana Qila in Delhi—leaders of Asian nations, some Middle Eastern nations, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was present. Gandhi, Nehru, Ghaffar Khan. Sarojini Naidu was there. I was there as a small boy. I was present there. That address is worth remembering because there Gandhi speaks of what he wishes the world to take from India’s experiment, one of the few places where he directly addresses that question. He expresses great pride that Asia has produced the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Zoroaster.

He says, “Which other part of the world has produced figures like these?” It’s phenomenal. Gandhi is speaking there as an Asian of a huge, vast continent, but as a connection to the world. He says the people of Asia, “Now you must conquer the West, but not with vengeance, but with love and with truth.” I would say that, of course, he would be very, very unhappy with what’s happening today. I think he was always willing to fight the long battle.

RAJAGOPALAN: No, I don’t just mean how he would feel today, because there are moments of strife and when things are going well. More about, would he think that we achieved the freedom and the dignity that he wanted Indians to have at the end of British rule and the beginning of self-governance? Would he think that, in itself, was a successful project?

GANDHI: Yes, definitely. Not a large enough project. The aim was not large enough, but that certainly would have, absolutely.

RAJAGOPALAN: He would not have been dissatisfied with Pakistan and Bangladesh and Burma because he was thinking of it as a unified project.

GANDHI: Yes, no, it was a joy, but not unmixed.

RAJAGOPALAN: One of the very interesting chapters you have is Gandhi and Ambedkar, their conversation and their contrast, so to speak. Now, both of them were very clear in that untouchability had to go. Ambedkar had a different project of agency and dignity, where he wanted to radically annihilate caste. He often felt that Gandhi was comfortable with just eliminating untouchability but didn’t subscribe to that next stage ideal. First, have I characterized the difference correctly? Then maybe I can ask you a few questions about the two of them.

GANDHI: No, I think your characterization is correct, yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: At the birth of the republic, Ambedkar is also gone soon after, it seems like there was this long period of time when Ambedkar was not as relevant in public memory. Not too many people spoke of him. Of course, every single village in India has a statue of Ambedkar, which whenever I go somewhere, there’s a statue of him holding the constitution, and I take a picture, which thrills me to no end.

In modern day, it seems like Ambedkar’s relevance has only continued to rise, but Gandhi, has, one morphed, he’s become this odd figure and not as relevant in current-day politics anymore. Do you think that difference stems from their different views of how they approach the caste project pre-independence?

GANDHI: No.

RAJAGOPALAN: No.

GANDHI: By the way, the word relevance, I have some difficulty with it. By relevance, one means popularity.

RAJAGOPALAN: Popularity or in public conversation, I would say.

GANDHI: Or, the emergence or the occurrence in public—

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, both are more relevant today than ever before. I agree. A fair point.

GANDHI: The thoughts of Gandhi are, to me, in my mind, even more relevant than ever. Yes, Gandhi doesn’t occur in conversations or in speeches, and so forth. One powerful reason for Ambedkar’s immense popularity today and not only that his ideas are—in fact, that is not the front and major reason—India has 16% to 18% Dalits. That is how many hundreds of millions of people? Gandhi does not have a caste constituency like that or a racial constituency like that.

RAJAGOPALAN: The whole country was his. He’s the father of the nation.

GANDHI: Yes, but he didn’t belong to any caste or group. Moreover, also, apart from the Dalits, of whom Ambedkar was one, the non-Dalits also have a great guilt, and rightly so. They, too, recognize Ambedkar as the champion of the people that sadly was so horribly treated over centuries. Ambedkar deserves to be in the conversation of people of India and the people of the world today, which I rejoice at, by the way.

Although there was a chance when a Dalit figure in Tamil Nadu asked me if I would write Ambedkar’s biography, and I wanted at one stage to do so.

RAJAGOPALAN: When was this?

GANDHI: This was in the mid-’80s.

RAJAGOPALAN: When there weren’t as many biographies of him at that time. Now there are many more, thankfully.

GANDHI: Right. I considered it. Then it was my inability to understand Marathi properly because much of Ambedkar’s early writings were in Marathi in his journals, Mooknayak, and others. Anyway, but although I have not written his biography, I’ve studied his life to a fair extent, to some extent at least. I’ve recently reviewed this wonderful book by Teltumbde, Ambedkar’s biography. I think his is a life that has to be studied, and it is a tremendous life.

RAJAGOPALAN: When you look at that conversation they had today, which side would you be on?

GANDHI: Which conversation?

RAJAGOPALAN: The caste conversation, the back and forth, which eventually became the preface and the foreword for Annihilation of Caste, the letters that they exchanged.

GANDHI: That was in 1936.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes.

GANDHI: A debate and a dialogue in a particular year is not a permanent text for posterity.

RAJAGOPALAN: We’re having the same problems today.

GANDHI: No, we’re having the same problems today. And after that, in Gandhi’s life, remember that he made it a rule, strange rule, I would say, peculiar rule—

RAJAGOPALAN: The weddings.

RAJAGOPALAN: —that he will only attend a wedding if one was Dalit and the other one was not. He then became a very powerful proponent of marriages between Dalits and non-Dalits. That is Gandhi’s stand.

RAJAGOPALAN: Which changed? He was not one for exogamy at the beginning of his life, but he slowly changed his views.

GANDHI: Slowly, maybe, but dramatically—

RAJAGOPALAN: Dramatically.

GANDHI: —and publicly. What more can one do than to say, “I will not even go to a marriage.” It was a very radical demonstration of his point of view. That is Gandhi’s point of view, not the exchange in 1936 over Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste. This is what I want any scholars of Gandhi and Ambedkar to recognize.

RAJAGOPALAN: You’re saying by the end of Gandhi’s life, or towards the end of his life, they agreed on the point that to annihilate caste, you needed to end marriage endogamy.

GANDHI: They agreed on that, and they also agreed on the fact that they should jointly create the future of India. That is why Ambedkar was made the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution. Teltumbde has written, by the way, and other scholars have also, and I’ve also found in my research, Gandhi had a very large role to play in the induction of Ambedkar in the new government, first government of independent India. They were agreed not only on that particular social matter, they were agreed on the broad principles on which the new India would be conducted.

RAJAGOPALAN: Do you think this was the main difference was, again, what we were talking about in the beginning of the conversation between, say, Nehru and Patel? Nehru was much more radical, top-down in wanting to break down social structures. Patel was much more willing to gradually change them. This is another difference between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Ambedkar was much more radical in wanting to break down these structures.

GANDHI: No, I would say that in the case of Ambedkar, it can be more simply stated. In Ambedkar’s view, justice for the untouchables was more important than the freedom of India. In Gandhi’s view, freedom of India was an essential prerequisite to providing justice for the untouchables. Then when freedom came, that question became irrelevant. Gandhi and Ambedkar were on the same side.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. I think that’s an important point that the tradeoff Gandhi was making has now become moot, which is why we don’t appreciate it quite as much.

GANDHI: Yes, but what is at least worth recognizing is that Gandhi and Ambedkar and Nehru and Patel and Rajaji and Rajendra Prasad and many others were absolutely together creating the new India when the new India emerged in August of ’47.

Competing Visions

RAJAGOPALAN: The protagonists in your various biographies, they hold, maybe rival is going too far, but quite different visions for the Indian Union. You have Patel’s centralism.

GANDHI: Competing visions.

RAJAGOPALAN: Competing visions, maybe. You have Patel’s centralism, you have Rajaji’s federalism or provincialism, you have Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi’s moral federation, if I can use that term. Do you see those visions colliding today, or do you think they can go along quite the same way? They went along the same way in the past because they had one common purpose. Do you think today they are conflicting visions?

GANDHI: No. Among these people, yes, there are differences of opinion on pace and on details. Broadly speaking, all the people you have named—Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan, Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel, Rajaji—they would want what they broadly want for the future. There are no critical or fundamental differences because the great challenge today, for today’s world, whether we want supremacy or equality, whether we want democratic rule or autocratic rule, on these two questions, all these people are on one side.

Biographies of Family Members

RAJAGOPALAN: Now, you’ve written five full-length biographies. Of course, in Eight Lives and other books, you’ve also written shorter biographies. Two of your full-length biographies are of the two grandparents: Mohandas Gandhi is your father’s father, C. Rajagopalachari is your mother’s father. Is it easier or harder to write a biography of a family member?

GANDHI: No. The really important question is, are family members or nonfamily members willing to share private papers? When that happens, it is relatively easy to write a biography. As I mentioned, in the case of Ghaffar Khan, I had to work very hard to get even the names of the female protagonists. Luckily, in the case of Rajaji, his son and others were able to. In Gandhi’s case, papers were available. That is, you might say, one way of answering the question. I know what you’re getting at.

Perhaps also, is whether to make any assessments or judgments about the character of an individual, does the biographer have some difficulty? I would say yes and no. I would say that when I was asked by a group of people to write the Rajaji biography, that was the first of the biographies I wrote. One of Rajaji’s admirers, nonetheless, he said to me, “We’re asking you to do it because we know that if you feel you want to criticize him, you will feel free to do so.” I felt very proud that I was thought of in that connection. All this is preface to my saying this, that when I have written about both Rajaji and Gandhiji, I always consciously said—because apart from the fact that any biographer should, above all, have primary loyalties to the facts, to the truth. In addition to that, these people themselves, Gandhi himself claimed that his loyalty was to the truth.

Rajaji also, although he was shy about talking about himself, again, it is obvious from his life, his loyalties. I must also mention this. In one of the books that he was reading, I think it was Samuel Johnson’s life or something like that, or Boswell or something, in the margins, Rajaji writes, “In 20 years, nobody will know who Rajagopalachari was.” It’s a charming thing to me. In a way, he knew that fame is a fleeting thing. He was not after that. I said to myself, “when it came to Rajaji, Gandhiji, that I will be as truthful, as factual—I will not hide anything. I will not praise.” However, that is a conscious decision, but the subconscious God alone knows. I cannot say that I’ve been absolutely fair or impartial. That was my honest endeavor.

RAJAGOPALAN: I guess that’s one part of what I was getting at. In the case of Gandhiji, you had a lot less time with him. He was assassinated when you were a teen. With Rajaji, you spent a good 35, 37 years quite closely before he was gone. When you talk about truth, do you struggle when you see a piece of paper or a letter that conflicts with your memory of a particular conversation, or your memory of how he spoke with you about a particular topic? Is that a conflict at all?

GANDHI: No. I must also add this, Shruti, that yes, I was 35 when he died. It’s not that I had conversations with him over a 35-year period—

RAJAGOPALAN: Sure, okay.

GANDHI: —one. Secondly, I had no idea, when I was conversing with him before he died, that I would ever write his biography.

RAJAGOPALAN: Of course.

GANDHI: In my subsequent research into his life, my conversations with him played only a relatively minor part. There were a few interesting things that I remembered, which were interesting, and therefore I added. My conversations provided very little material for the biography. The material for the biography was from primary research—

RAJAGOPALAN: And his papers and his people, his family members, and some things.

GANDHI: —and his papers and newspapers. Yes.

Serendipity in the Research Process

RAJAGOPALAN: Serendipity often can guide our research. I imagine it’s especially true for biographers. What is an accidental discovery in the archives or through private papers or something else that changed the course of one of the biographies that you’ve written? Do you have a good story from the archives for those who are listening?

GANDHI: I can’t immediately remember. Remember this, all these books were written a long time ago, and not only have I forgotten what I wrote, but also how I wrote them and how I did my research on them. I’m struggling now to remember if there was some serendipitous discovery that was quite fabulous for me.

For instance, I found this in one of Mahadev Desai’s diaries about Gandhi. Gandhi says to Mahadev Desai—he doesn’t say that this is for your private consumption, but Mahadev Desai does not put it in any newspaper. Gandhi says, “I want to drive the British away, bag and baggage from India, but I force myself to love them.” To me, this was a very important thing to know, that love of the British was not a natural instinct for him.

RAJAGOPALAN: How could it have been after—

GANDHI: Our picture of Gandhi, love and nonviolence, and the mischievous propaganda, that Gandhi wants the Hindus to offer themselves to the Muslims to be killed, absolute BS. Nonetheless, there is this image of Gandhi, but he wants to drive the British out “bag and baggage, but I force myself to love them.”

RAJAGOPALAN: I’m thrilled you found this because to me, how could he not? They jailed him for years on end. I don’t think people today realize how many years these gentlemen spent in prison.

GANDHI: Yes. I must also add, in Gandhi’s case, my understanding, this feeling of him, although disclosed to Mahadev Desai in 1918, existed much before he was jailed.

RAJAGOPALAN: Oh, before he was jailed.

GANDHI: Much before. This was in 1918. He’d hardly been jailed in India.

RAJAGOPALAN: In South Africa.

GANDHI: South Africa, but no. A very important encounter with this man, Oliphant, civil servant in Rajkot, because Gandhi goes to him when he’s returned from England. He has met this white man in London when he’s on leave. They socialize.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes.

GANDHI: He’s very friendly. Then when Gandhi goes, because he’s pressurized by his older brother to go to this man for some personal matter, Gandhi says he should not have gone. Pressurized by the brother who had financed his London visit, so he goes. He’s pushed out by this man, ejected. Gandhi in Rajkot is the descendant of a chief minister.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, of a Diwan, equivalent.

GANDHI: Diwan. Not called Diwan, but kind of. He’s pushed out by this man who’s come from England, who doesn’t belong here. That is the start of the drive to push the British out bag and baggage.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, but with love.

GANDHI: Afterwards, he discovers that he should do it with love and nonviolently.

Civil Rights in the US

RAJAGOPALAN: This is a lovely discovery. One of the things I discovered in the last few days, speaking with you, is you’ve had similar encounters in the United States. You’re, of course, much younger than Gandhi.

GANDHI: I’m much older than he was when he died.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. You succeed Gandhi, and by then we imagine that maybe some of these struggles are over. In the mid-’50s, when you are in the United States, you are denied a haircut, I believe—

GANDHI: Yes, more than once.

RAJAGOPALAN: —by a white barbershop, for being colored. I believe they told you that they don’t deal with your kind of hair and they don’t have the right instruments, but they refused to serve you. Can you tell us about that story?

GANDHI: Yes. This was in Detroit in 1957. This was my first visit to the United States. I was not quite 22. I was in a very nice suburb of Detroit and staying with a wonderful white family in a very nice home as their guest. I went out for a haircut. There were two or three barbers in succession who said that, sorry, they couldn’t. One of them said he didn’t have the right tool for my kind of hair. Then I realized what was happening because I was just innocent. I genuinely believed the first man when he said he didn’t have.

RAJAGOPALAN: The tools.

GANDHI: Then I realized this was more than that. It was not rough and rude, but very courteous but very firm. I discovered not so much that I was badly treated. I discovered that this racism existed in the United States.

RAJAGOPALAN: Were the parallels immediately drawn for you with Gandhi’s experience, or at 22, you had come out of newly independent India and—

GANDHI: No. I was then thinking more of the African Americans and what they go through.

RAJAGOPALAN: The personal family connections came later.

GANDHI: Yes, personal family connections came and were really not that important. The realization that in this wonderful country, this thing still continues in the year 1957. That, to me, was the realization.

RAJAGOPALAN: In ’57, when you were traveling, you knew a number of people in the civil rights movement in the United States. You traveled with many of them, often in mixed race groups. What was that experience like? Because you are not of either race.

GANDHI: No, that was a tremendous experience for me. It was a privilege for me to get to know. Frankly, by this time, Gandhi was a very, very big name. I was often introduced to people as Gandhi’s grandson.

RAJAGOPALAN: Has that ebbed?

GANDHI: I had the chance to meet Martin Luther King Jr.—

RAJAGOPALAN: Oh, wonderful. Tell us about that.

GANDHI: —in ’57. I was in one end in DC, and I was one end of one road, not far from Congress, the Capitol. He was coming from the other side. Then somebody took the chance to say, “This is Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi’s grandson.” We shook hands. That was one meeting. The second meeting was ’57. Martin Luther King is, of course, already quite famous. The Montgomery boycott had taken place, but many other things had not happened. He was being given an award. I was again taken to the platform by somebody. Then a photograph.

I had not known about it until this well-known series on Martin Luther King papers from Stanford came out. There was this picture in one of the volumes of me with Martin Luther King and with Roy Wilkins. It’s taken from the Library of Congress photograph. In that year, also, I went to Atlanta, Georgia. I met Daddy King, the father of Martin Luther King Jr., who, of course, was a fiery personality, outward personality, the opposite of his son.

It was a tremendous experience for me to begin to understand the civil rights struggle here, which, of course, other people call it struggle for freedom. This wonderful man that I had the chance to meet, who recently died some months ago, the Reverend James Lawson Jr., amazing man. I’ve researched his life to a fair extent, interviewed him several times. If I get the chance to complete the biography of James Lawson that I’ve started, I will count myself lucky.

RAJAGOPALAN: How did your experience with the civil rights movement here—did it inform your time during the Emergency in India, or was that more about everything you had seen towards the end of the freedom struggle and the constitution drafting?

You saw the end of the freedom struggle, but not much of it. Did that have the bigger influence on your fight during the Emergency? Was it experiences like the civil rights movement?

GANDHI: I would say both. I would say also that essentially, I was a journalist’s son.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, Devdas Gandhi.

GANDHI: Yes. Incidentally, this is also something I like to say to myself and to others about Gandhi, Gandhi was many things in his life. In that famous trial in Ahmedabad, he described himself as a farmer and a weaver. What Gandhi was from 1903, when Indian opinion till the day—

RAJAGOPALAN: He was a writer.

GANDHI: No, journalist. He was writing for his newspaper all the time. 

RAJAGOPALAN: In more than one language. He wrote in Gujarati newspaper. 

GANDHI: Yes. As a journalist’s grandson, as a journalist’s son— 

RAJAGOPALAN: Rajaji was a columnist. You have that on all sides of the family.

GANDHI: The suppression of newspapers in the Emergency was something absolutely unacceptable.

GANDHI: It is quiet and a whimper for many, but for many journalists, it’s not quiet. They’ve been arrested, a large number of them. They’ve been in jail, some of them for many years.

RAJAGOPALAN: Their businesses have been shut down, their offices have been stoned.

GANDHI: It is very, very sad and serious, and it has lasted much longer than the Emergency. If you get me started on that, I can go on for quite a bit. It’s a very deep unhappiness in me. It’s a very deep unhappiness in a great many people. It makes me very sad, though not pessimistic, because I believe that the Indian spirit is very strong.

Pessimistic or Optimistic?

RAJAGOPALAN: In your more recent books, one of them is India After 1947, the other one is on the constitution, most recently, I don’t see those books as hopeful as when I meet you in person. How do you characterize yourself today in the current moment?

GANDHI: In the books, I describe the reality. As a person, I describe what is in my heart and in my mind.

RAJAGOPALAN: Then, what makes you more hopeful than the reality that you paint for us in the books?

GANDHI: The reality is what I see. The hope is what I believe. The latter, the belief comes, I think, from my conscience. Hope, it is a deeper thing. It is my understanding of life as a whole, purpose of life, purpose of human life. Why should there be this vast humanity? Why should there be humanity with so many differences and so many languages? It is the result of deep reflections over a long lifetime, which is different from some observation of what is happening in a country in a particular period of time.

Role of God and Faith

RAJAGOPALAN: What is the role of God and faith in your life?

GANDHI: I believe in the Almighty. I don’t want to give the Almighty a particular name or certainly a particular shape. Whether the Almighty has a shape or a name is a question I do not worry myself with. I believe that there is an Almighty. I often feel that the Almighty is too patient, too slow. I do see, although I don’t see dramatic differences, dramatic changes or improvements, as I would like, but I see tiny, tiny signs of goodness every day. Unexpected goodness, unexpected beauty, unexpected decency. That is enough to sustain my belief.