Mahatma Gandhi and the World: Preface

 THE EPIC OF THE MAHATMA

 

In the course of the just concluded General Elections, our Prime Minister, in one of his interviews, suggested that Mahatma Gandhi came to be widely known only after Attenborough made his celebrated film on him in 1982.

 

It would be unfortunate, if it were indeed true that we, and especially our young people, know so little about Gandhiji today that we have to learn about him from a movie, however great. Therefore, we have put together a series of brief notes that give the story of how Gandhiji became known as the Mahatma across the world in early twentieth century. He achieved that status through his extraordinarily passionate commitment to the land, people and civilisation of India and by performing intense tapas in the form the great suffering he endured during his several imprisonments in South Africa. He also undertook an extensive study of Indian classical texts so that he could commit to India knowingly, not only passionately.

 

All this he did in the 21 years he spent leading the fight of Indians in South Africa to reclaim their human dignity. For him and for his co-sufferers, that fight for human dignity became a struggle for the establishment and recovery of Dharma, and the leader of that struggle came to be known in the world as a Mahatma. 

 

In these notes, we tell this story, briefly but passionately. We show that on the strength of his austere discipline, erudition and tapas, Gandhiji had become well known in the world already by 1909. In that year, he was referred to as the Mahatmaby Pranjivan Mehta in a letter to Gokhale. He was addressed as Deshbhakta Mahatma in the formal Manapatras that the Indians presented to him when he was leaving South Africa in 1914. And, within weeks of his arrival in India on January 9, 1915, he was being spontaneously addressed and treated as the Mahatma by people in different parts of India.

 

We have written these notes to quickly remind ourselves of the epic story of the Mahatma. The story is important to recall in the current climate of a certain malignancy towards him.

 

These brief notes are not enough. To ensure that this epic story remains a part of Indian lore, we must ensure that our educated youth are made familiar with at least three of his foundational books: Hind Swaraj, My Experiments with Truthand Satyagraha in South Africa. Reading these shall make our youth and all of us Indians immune against any current and future malignancy against the Mahatma and by extension against our civilisation and ourselves.

The brief notes are posted on this blog under the label “Mahatma Gandhi and the World” and run from the Mahatma and the World I (June 1, 2024) to Mahatma and the World XI (July 20, 2024). We shall soon be bringing these notes together in the form of a booklet.