A couple of days back I came across an article on Gandhi in Outlook India Bapu's Human Tryst
It made interesting reading for two reasons,one it's based on a revelation by his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi in his forthcoming book MOHANDAS: A TRUE STORY OF A MAN, HIS PEOPLE AND AN EMPIRE and two it had a Bengali connection !!!
It reveals a clandestine relationship that Gandhi had with this dazzling and feisty Bengali lady Saraladevi which rocked the boat his marriage to Kasturba.The first spontaneous thought that sprung into my mind was that even Bapu couldn't resist the temptation of a Bong beauty & intelligence.Being an ardent Bong,I felt a sense of pride....mind you very briefly though !!!
My first tryst with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (MKG) was probably in my fourth or fifth standard. We had a Supplementary paper in English language wherein we had to go through a few chapters from MKG autobiography “My Experiments with truth”.One thing that I distinctly reminisce was the candid confessions that MKG made in his book.As much his entire autobiography gives insight into the vision that would change the history of an entire nation,it was also a public ‘mea culpa’ of an ordinary man’s struggle to overcome his inner demons.
We all know and venerate Gandhi as a visionary and an astute political leader.As a visionary he was almost flawless in what he envisaged in free India viz society devoid of Untouchability,nation liberated of its socio-economic prejudices and Hindu-Muslim peaceful co-existence.However as a political leader he did not entirely give us the best history and the brightest future (read 1947 Partition).Let me not digress here becoz my original intent was not to dissect his political career but to try and understand why MKG chose not to mention this event in his autobiography.
Well as they say every man has to go through a mid-life crisis at some point.So if we were to believe that theory this must have been MKG’s.However it had come at such a stage of his life that too much was at stake even to make an eventual disclosure albeit it meant “My Experiments with Truth” would have a missing chapter.
Does this present an opportunity to vilify the Mahatma? May be for some.But not me…
Rather I put him on a higher pedestal.Becoz it goes to show the man failed to tug away from the greatest temptation and defy the laws of fatal attraction….or simply he was just an ordinary man who went through his trials and tribulations on the journey to liberate a nation.If every saint has a past so does a sinner …a future which can lead to greatness.
Whilst I wait for my turn to grab a copy of the forthcoming book I wonder what Munnabhai has to say about all this....
It made interesting reading for two reasons,one it's based on a revelation by his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi in his forthcoming book MOHANDAS: A TRUE STORY OF A MAN, HIS PEOPLE AND AN EMPIRE and two it had a Bengali connection !!!
It reveals a clandestine relationship that Gandhi had with this dazzling and feisty Bengali lady Saraladevi which rocked the boat his marriage to Kasturba.The first spontaneous thought that sprung into my mind was that even Bapu couldn't resist the temptation of a Bong beauty & intelligence.Being an ardent Bong,I felt a sense of pride....mind you very briefly though !!!
My first tryst with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (MKG) was probably in my fourth or fifth standard. We had a Supplementary paper in English language wherein we had to go through a few chapters from MKG autobiography “My Experiments with truth”.One thing that I distinctly reminisce was the candid confessions that MKG made in his book.As much his entire autobiography gives insight into the vision that would change the history of an entire nation,it was also a public ‘mea culpa’ of an ordinary man’s struggle to overcome his inner demons.
We all know and venerate Gandhi as a visionary and an astute political leader.As a visionary he was almost flawless in what he envisaged in free India viz society devoid of Untouchability,nation liberated of its socio-economic prejudices and Hindu-Muslim peaceful co-existence.However as a political leader he did not entirely give us the best history and the brightest future (read 1947 Partition).Let me not digress here becoz my original intent was not to dissect his political career but to try and understand why MKG chose not to mention this event in his autobiography.
Well as they say every man has to go through a mid-life crisis at some point.So if we were to believe that theory this must have been MKG’s.However it had come at such a stage of his life that too much was at stake even to make an eventual disclosure albeit it meant “My Experiments with Truth” would have a missing chapter.
Does this present an opportunity to vilify the Mahatma? May be for some.But not me…
Rather I put him on a higher pedestal.Becoz it goes to show the man failed to tug away from the greatest temptation and defy the laws of fatal attraction….or simply he was just an ordinary man who went through his trials and tribulations on the journey to liberate a nation.If every saint has a past so does a sinner …a future which can lead to greatness.
Whilst I wait for my turn to grab a copy of the forthcoming book I wonder what Munnabhai has to say about all this....
