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Literary Review
Two collections
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These books bring together the speeches, correspondence and diary entries of Nehru and Gandhi relating to Sri Lanka. The underlying theme is the often-troubled relationship between India and Sri Lanka, highlighting some of the issues that remain alive even today, says NIRUPAMA SUBRAMANIAN.
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THERE is already in existence a vast amount of literature on both Gandhi and Nehru. But two new collections of speeches, correspondence, diary entries and other paraphernalia that relate to the two most important men of the Indian freedom movement are more than mere additions to the existing lore, highlighting as they do aspects of their life's work relating to one of India's most important neighbours.
Mainly a collection of speeches by Gandhi in what was then Ceylon on his one and only visit to the island in November-December 1927, the value of Gandhi and Sri Lanka (1905-1947) is further enriched by the inclusion of the meticulous correspondence of the Mahatma with his Ceylonese friends and admirers, newspaper clippings and photographs.
Gopal Krishna Gandhi, presently the High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka, has used a variety of sources, including the fading memories of people, both in India and Sri Lanka, but has drawn heavily from The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (ed. Professor K. Swaminathan) and With Gandhiji in Ceylon by the Mahatama's personal secretary, Mahadev Desai, and is appropriately dedicated to their memories.
Coming to Ceylon in 1927 at the invitation of the Jaffna Students' Congress, Gandhi stayed three weeks, toured the country from Point Pedro in Jaffna to Matara in the south, and gave 31 speeches, exhorting people to give liberally to their less fortunate brethren in their "mother country". His main preoccupation in those days was with the collection of funds for the khadi movement. He was not ashamed to solicit funds for the daridranarayanas of India, and never lost track of this single purpose of his visit, whether he addressed students, housewives, traders, Tamils, Sinhalese, Christians, Buddhists or Muslims, high society or low.
The huge crowds that thronged to see and hear him, the spontaneity of their welcome to this dark, frail-looking man, were unprecedented in the history of the island. Clad only in his loincloth, he seemed to have a mesmeric effect on the people even though he spoke only the harsh truth, about the perils of drink, the evil of killing for pleasure and the devil of untouchability, prevalent amongst even the Buddhists.
He preached to Buddhists to adhere to the tenets of the great teacher, chastised Christians for conversions and criticised Tamils for their unclean habits. He asked the trading community not to be miserly when giving for a cause, told municipalities how to offer better service and advised fashionable ladies to adopt khadi. He especially told the Indians in Sri Lanka to "live as sugar in milk". "Even a cup of milk which is full up to the brim does not overflow when sugar is gently added to it; the sugar accommodating itself in the milk enriches its taste; in the same way I would like you to live in this island so as not to become interlopers and so as to enrich the life of the people in whose midst you may be living," he said.
He and Kasturba had arrived the same day as the Donoughmore Commission on constitutional reform for Ceylon, but through his visit, Gandhi completely eschewed politics even though it was a burning topic in both India and its island neighbour.
The underlying theme of this compilation and the running thread with its companion volume on Nehru is the relationship between India and Sri Lanka. Gandhi described Ceylon as a "resplendent pendant" on the Indian necklace. Though ties between the two neighbours have changed much since the time in 1939 that Nehru stated he did not consider Ceylon a foreign land, and Gandhi declared that "it is, at least it should be, impossible for India and Ceylon to quarrel", the two volumes spotlight some of the issues that nagged the relationship even then and remain till today.
At the time Gandhi visited Ceylon, the tensions between the Sinhalese and the Indian Tamils who had migrated to the island in search of employment had not yet erupted. Twelve years later, as he asked Jawaharlal Nehru to travel to Colombo to resolve the problem, he would remark: "I must confess that these acute differences come upon me as a revelation. I have a vivid recollection of my visit to Ceylon. There seemed to be the most cordial relations between the Indians and the Ceylonese".
The 1939 visit was not Nehru's first to Sri Lanka, nor was it his last. Cleverly interspersing accounts from his Glimpses of World History and pages from Discovery of India, along with his speeches and comments on Ceylonese affairs, Nehru and Sri Lanka takes the reader on a journey through various phases of the Indian Tamil plantation question that was then the most important issue of the Indo-Ceylon relationship.
The reader is presented a mosaic of the island's history, of its at times troubled relations with India in the first half of the 20th Century through Nehru's own words. In spite of the lucidity and analytical clarity of one of India's greatest thinkers, the question why he did not involve himself more deeply to bring about an early solution to the problem of Indian Tamil plantation labour in Ceylon foxes the reader. Perhaps, it may best be answered by the gentlemanly norms of the Nehruvian era of Indian politics.
At one time, Nehru was willing to believe that the Indians might be to blame for their own worsening situation in Ceylon. "I have no doubt that the Indians there have not been behaving well and have made a mess of things... we should stop all unregistered labour to Ceylon," he wrote to Vallabhai Patel in 1939.
But he also recognised the meanness of the Ceylonese establishment in dealing with the problem. In a message to the Natal Congress, he spoke of a "dead set at Indians overseas, especially in the British dominions and colonies". He pointed out the denial of political and human rights, concluding that "dead nations submit to dishonour but we are a living and proud people and I would rather say that we faced extinction than submitting to dishonour."
As far back as 1954, Nehru was able to articulate the Sri Lankan fear, present even today, that "India may overwhelm and absorb it". Even though he described the fears as unjustified, he called for a more friendly approach to relations with Ceylon without expecting reciprocation, a policy that a future prime minister of India was to advocate towards the end of the century.
Nehru first came to Sri Lanka in 1931 with his wife Kamala and daughter Indira for a period of rest and quiet in the hill station of Nuwara Eliya. It was an idyllic holiday. The surroundings bewitched Nehru with their beauty, and the love of the poor people who came to see him everyday with their offerings of fruits and flowers overwhelmed him, but it was the calm and the composure of the Samadhi Buddha at Anuradhapura that he was most drawn towards, and it kept coming back in his letters and speeches.
"The strong calm features of the Buddha soothed me and gave me strength and helped me overcome many a period of depression," he wrote once. A photograph of the particular Buddha sent by a Ceylonese friend kept him company in his cell in the Dehradun jail and from then on, it was his constant companion.
Gopal Gandhi has been a punctilious compiler, tracking down material, including rare photographs, for both volumes with the sure-footedness of one who knows what he wants and where to get it. Thanks to the compiler, the book is full of little known anecdotes and information that throw as much light on the present as they enlighten about the past.
My favourite: A Ceylonese delegation consisting of a future president, J.R. Jayewardene, met Gandhi on March 20, 1940. This is what they told The Hindu. "We asked him what Ceylon could expect from a free India. Many in Lanka prefer to remain as Dominion in the British Empire than to be free and run the risk of being exploited by India which could easily swamp Lanka. Gandhiji laughed and said: `Ceylon has nothing to fear from a free India.'''
The compiler has also provided detailed annotations that flesh out the personalities behind the hundreds of names that flash through the pages in the two volumes and place events in context. His brief editor's notes at the beginning of each section in the Gandhi volume are highly readable and provide a narrative to the collection. The proofreading errors are a minor irritant.
Way back then, a correspondent to the Ceylon Independent had made an appeal for "an enterprising person or firm to collect and publish in book form" the speeches that Gandhi was making across the island. It has taken more than 70 years, but his grandson has not only finally fulfilled that long-felt need, but also completed the picture with the additional volume on Nehru.
The Sarvodaya Trust in Colombo deserves praise for bringing out the two tastefully got up volumes. The books were released in Colombo on Republic Day this year.
Gandhi and Sri Lanka(1905-1947); Nehru and Sri Lanka, edited by Gopal Krishna Gandhi, Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha, Colombo.
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