Gandhi at First Sight

Thomas Weber

Description

‘Meeting the Mahatma’ was a special moment for most of the people who captured it later in memorable prose. Gandhi at First Sight is a collection of such heartfelt moments of people from Sarojini Naidu to Katherine Mayo and from Romain Rolland to Charlie Chaplin, of an experience that was profound and sometimes even life-changing.

‘In Gandhi at First Sight, Tom Weber has executed a simple yet brilliant concept with a masterly touch, an impressive understanding of the varied individuals whose first impressions of Gandhi he has included, and an enriching introduction.’ —Rajmohan Gandhi

‘Weber… shows with an astonishing array of first meeting accounts precisely how Gandhi forged relationships from the beginning by making indelible initial impressions. This book… brings us incomparably closer to comprehending Gandhi’s extraordinary personal power.’ —Dennis Dalton, Columbia University, New York

‘Thomas Weber brings to life the memories of meetings. These firstperson, autobiographical accounts provide glimpses of the private world of friendship, of being a disciple and a pathfinder.’ —Tridip Suhrud, Director, Sabarmati Ashram Preservation Memorial Trust

‘With Gandhi gone two-thirds of a century, we have been in danger of losing touch with a man who was the most intriguing figure of his time. Now, however, we have these unique accounts of encounters with him that allow Gandhi to reach across the decades with a message that endures through time.’ —Charles DiSalvo, West Virginia University, West Virginia

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Biography
• Gandhism
• Salt Satyagraha
• Diaries
• Memoir
• Bapu
• Father
• Autobiography
• India
• Weber
• Thomas
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 05 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940647
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Thomas Weber is an Honorary Associate, School of Social Sciences and Communications, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His most recent Gandhi-related books are: Beloved Bapu: The Gandhi-Mirabehn Correspondence (with Tridip Suhrud); Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women (Roli Books); The Shanti Sena: Philosophy, History and Action; On the Salt March: The Historiography of Mahatma Gandhi’s March to Dandi; Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians (Roli Books); and Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor.

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2015
First published in 2015 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © Thomas Weber, 2015
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eISBN: 978-93-5194-64-7
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Books by Thomas Weber
Beloved Bapu The Mahatma Gandhi/Mirabehn Correspondence (edited with Tridip Suhrud)
Going Native Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women
Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians
The Shanti Sena: Philosophy, History and Action
Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor
On the Salt March The Historiography of Gandhi’s March to Dandi
Nonviolent Intervention Across Borders A Recurrent Vision (edited with yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan)
Conflict Resolution and Gandhian Ethics
Hugging the Trees The Story of the Chipko Movement
Contents
Introduction
A first sight of Gandhi
On first meetings and first impressions
The wages of history and the vicissitudes of memory
Who met whom?
Meeting the Mahatma
What is left
1904: Henry S.L. Polak
1905: Millie Graham Polak
1907: Joseph J. Doke
1909: T.S.S. Rajan
1914: Sarojini Naidu
1915: J.B. Kripalani
1915: G.A. Natesan
1915: Rajkumari Amrit Kaur
1916: Vinoba Bhave
1917: Rajendra Prasad
1918: R.R. Diwakar
1919: E. Stanley Jones
1924: G. Ramachandran
1925: Madeleine Slade
1926: Katherine Mayo
1926: Zakir Husain
1926: Muriel Lester
1927: Archibald Fenner Brockway 98
1928: Horace Gundry Alexander
1929: J.C. Kumarappa
1929: Sherwood Eddy
1930: Reginald Reynolds
1930: Newton Phelps Stokes II
1930: Negley Farson
1931: William Lawrence Shirer
1931: John Haynes Holmes
1931: Charlie Chaplin
1931: Jo Davidson
1931: Webb Miller
1931: Romain Rolland
1931: Mary Barr
1932: Dr Dinshaw K. Mehta
1933: Nilla Cram Cook
1934: Nirmal Kumar Bose
1935: Halide Edib Adivar
1935: Paramahansa yogananda
1935: Margaret Sanger
1935: Yone Noguchi
1936: Shriman Narayan
1936: Herbert Fischer
1937: Joseph Jean Lanza Del Vasto
1942: Louis Fischer
1942: Edgar Snow
1945: Hermon Ould
1945: R.G. Casey
1946: Margaret Bourke-White
1946: Hallam Tennyson
1947: Lord Louis Mountbatten
1948: Vincent Sheean
Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgements
Gandhi at First Sight
A FIRST SIGHT OF GANDHI
I had my first sight of Gandhi in London in late 1976. Well, at least a sight of his wax model at Madame Tussaud’s museum; after all the Mahatma had been dead for over a quarter of a century by then. But even that sight moved me. That little brown man in a shawl, oversized nappy and carrying a stick – positioned among those gray men in gray suits or military uniforms, who were supposedly great world leaders – stood out. and needless to say, not just because of his dress. He was Time magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ in 1930 following his celebrated Salt March to the seaside village of Dandi to break the British salt laws and shake the foundations of the Empire. Seventy years later, he became runner up (to Albert Einstein) as Time’s ‘Person of the Century’. He is one of the most recognised figures of recent history and has come to be seen not just as saintly politician and the ‘Father of the Nation’ of the world’s largest democracy, but as the architect of mass nonviolent struggle and as the iconic godfather of things related to peace in general.
If I was moved by seeing a wax reproduction, how much stronger must the experience have been for those who met Gandhi in flesh and blood at the peak of his fame? The accounts presented here will show that for some of them the experience was profound and even life-altering.
ON FIRST MEETINGS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS
After a day or two of being in even the most beautiful of places, we tend to become complacent about our surroundings. First impressions, so the saying goes, are often lasting impressions. While with people, first impressions regularly prove to be totally misplaced, they are, at that time, real and raw, unshaped by later rationalisations. And, moreover, first impressions are often surprisingly accurate. In some cases, especially where there has been powerful anticipation, the impact of a first meeting can be overwhelming (as seems to have been the case with Madeleine Slade – Mirabehn, and Lanza del Vasto – Shantidas). Very often, those meeting Gandhi did not take long to comment that what you saw was what you got. Gandhi, it seems, was a well-integrated person who did not play games with those who sought him out (except to show very human and welcoming humour). Indeed, what his visitors saw was what they got. The first impressions were generally lasting.
Psychologists point out that we have an inbuilt bias to conflate the beautiful with the good. Many of Gandhi’s first-time visitors (for example Nilla Cram Cook) mentioned that he was quite ugly to look at, but he was not a stranger with whom they locked eyes in a crowded room. People sought him out and these were not chance encounters. There were expectations, but still there do seem to be many cases of ‘love at first sight’ in the accounts. The lack of beauty certainly did not signal a lack of good. Several of those who sought his presence went on to dedicate themselves to the Mahatma and his cause after the first meeting. In essence, these first meetings with Gandhi took on life-changing attributes. For example, the impact of that first meeting on a group of young Bihari lawyers (including Rajendra Prasad) was truly life-altering. Many of them went on to be leading national activists, but one cannot help suspecting that if they had not met Gandhi at Champaran, most of them would have remained provincial attorneys. Prasad summed up these changes to the lives of the volunteers when he wrote:
Most of us who joined Gandhiji in Champaran were lawyers and not one had joined him with the idea of giving up the profession. But when we started working in Champaran, our whole outlook changed. We found it impossible, once we had undertaken it, to go back to our avocation without completing the task at hand. Thus people who went there for a few days remained for months. When we had finished the work in Champaran, we returned home with new ideas, a new courage and a new programme. (Prasad, Autobiography , p.100)
While there is a large literature on the psychology of first meetings and impressions (often tendering advice for successful job interviews), I have no intention here of writing a scholarly introduction. This collection of first-hand writings on first meetings with Gandhi speaks for itself. It is merely a way to introduce Gandhi to a new audience and, because it presents the Mahatma in an unusual way, perhaps provide new insights for a more experienced audience.
When Gandhi was still an unknown young Indian in Rajkot, or a student in London, or even a lawyer in South Africa, who was there to write about him? Why would anyone record an everyday meeting? When he becomes famous, it is only natural for old memories to surface (and for the shadow of the current period to be cast backwards to contaminate those memories). Would T.S.S. Rajan have remembered the South African lawyer Mohandas Gandhi, who was a guest speaker at a London Indian students’ dinner some forty years earlier, if that speaker did not go on to become Mahatma Gandhi? Many of us have shared houses during our student days, but how many of us would remember a first meeting with our house mates if nothing extraordinary had happened? For example, in Gandhi’s case, fellow vegetarian, Doctor Joshua Oldfield shared rooms for a while with him in London and, first some forty and then sixty years later, tried to remember his friend. He comes up with little more than high praise for Gandhi’s character and that he was a ‘young, shy, diffident youth, slim and a little weakly’. (Oldfield, “My Friend Gandhi”, p.187)
One of the first recorded meetings with Gandhi is that by Lionel Curtis, a young South African official who had to deal with the issues of immigration. He recalls that he met Gandhi the young Johannesburg attorney, the first Oriental he had come into contact with, around 1903. In his brief description, Gandhi ‘was dressed in European clothes except for his Indian cap and gave me the impression of being an exceedingly able young lawyer. He started by trying to convince me of the good points in the character of his countrymen, their industry, frugality, their patience.’ (Curtis, “Two Meetings”, p.47) There is little texture here, no colourful story-telling.
Of course this book is not really about Gandhi at first sight. There are a gre