rightMontage now Do or Die The enigma of Mahatma Gandhi by Sugata Bose

hen India won inde- myriad differences of religion and caste. It pendence at the famous is the latter struggle that forms the sub- midnight hour of August ject matter of this absorbing new book by W 14-15, 1947, Mahatma Joseph Lelyveld ’58, A.M. ’60, the Pulitzer Gandhi stayed away from the festivi- Prize-winning former executive editor of ties in New Delhi. Instead, he fasted in a the New York Times. predominantly Muslim neighborhood of “I merely touch on or leave out crucial Calcutta, quietly mourning the great hu- periods and episodes,” Lelyveld tells us in man tragedy that accompanied what he his author’s note, “in order to hew in this called the vivisection of his motherland. essay to specific narrative lines I’ve cho- The “great soul,” having been unable to sen.” The spotlight is trained on Gandhi prevent the subcontinent’s partition into the social reformer, rather than on “the two countries along ostensibly religious generalissimo of satyagraha,” as the Mahat-

lines, was afflicted with a sense of failure. ma described himself—especially satyagra- Bettmann/Cor b is The supreme leader ha (his technique of passive resistance) in A formal, undated portrait of Gandhi as a Joseph Lelyveld, Great of India’s struggle the sense of a quest for truth through mass young man Soul: Mahatma Gandhi for freedom from political activity. Lelyveld’s journalistic Gandhi’s life that spanned two widely sep- and His Struggle with India British rule had postings in New Delhi and Johannesburg arated shores of the Indian Ocean. (Knopf, $28.95) struggled with In- sparked an intellectual curiosity that en- V.S. Naipaul once described Gandhi as dia to transcend its ables him to probe the deep connections in the least Indian of Indian leaders. Lelyveld

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Harvard Magazine 19 Montage

deftly explores this paradox, focusing on the ways in which JOIN US! Gandhi’s early South African experience formed the later Enjoy these coming events Mahatma. It was a slow trans- for the formation. The young man who arrived in South Africa as friends of a lawyer in 1893 to represent harvard magazine an Indian Muslim mercantile firm did not take up the cause of the hapless Indian inden- tured laborers in that coun- Spring Event try until 1913. It took time for this campaigner for Indian may 11, 2011 rights to shed the racial preju- A reception and book signing dice that he harbored toward with joanne chang ’97, Africans. Gandhi’s views on chef, restaurant owner, the evils of caste-based un- and author of touchability took shape in

Flour: Spectacular Recipes from South Africa. His first politi- via G etty I mages K eystone amma- Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe cal speeches were delivered within the precincts of South murr center lounge Africa’s mosques, a sign of the Harvard University commitment of this Hindu F ran c e/ G K eystone- leader to making common cause with the Gandhi (center) as a practicing Muslims. attorney in South Africa. That Gandhi honed satyagraha, and his ians to their land from 1919 onwards. approach to crafting Indian unity across The satyagraha of 1913 leading to the lines of caste and religion, in South Africa repeal of the £3 annual tax on inden- between 1906 and 1913 is well known. He tured workers provided the perfect fi- would deploy both on a much wider scale nale for Gandhi’s two decades in South in India from 1919 onward. What is new in Africa, firmly establishing, on the eve of Lelyveld’s treatment of Gandhi’s South Af- his return to India, his reputation as a rican years is the analysis of “the most in- leader of passive resistance. As an expa- timate, also ambiguous relationship of his triate patriot himself, Gandhi was quite lifetime”: with Hermann Kallenbach, an comfortable with a conception of India architect of German Jewish background, that transcended the territorial limits of Fall Event with whom Gandhi set up Tolstoy Farm the subcontinent. Lelyveld ably recounts in the Transvaal, leaving his wife behind. the story of Gandhi’s ascent to the lead- 2011 Sifting through the letters that “Upper ership of the Indian National Congress Check our website: House” (Gandhi) wrote to “Lower House” with the support of Indian Muslims harvardmagazine.com/friends (Kallenbach), Lelyveld seeks to answer distressed about the fate of the Turk- for details about our fall the question, “What kind of couple were ish Khilafat (Caliphate) and the loss of friends event. Coming soon! they?” He devotes an entire chapter to this Ottoman territories at the end of World relationship, but its relevance to the over- War I. The Mahatma fused the symbols all aim of the book is unclear. Key cultural of Indian nationalism and Islamic uni- differences between American and Indian versalism—the spinning wheel and the For more information about the attitudes to same-sex friendships make crescent—together in the anti-colonial friends of Lelyveld’s suggestion of a homoerotic and mass movement of non-cooperation be- harvard magazine, possibly homosexual relationship specu- tween 1920 and 1922. Mohammad Ali Jou- please contact Felecia Carter lative at best. Whatever its nature, it is a har, the votary of a transnational Islamic at 617-496-6694 or visit us at: huge exaggeration to see the relationship movement with a lasting legacy, was his harvardmagazine.com/friends as the “most intimate” of Gandhi’s life. closest Muslim comrade in those years. After parting ways in 1914, Kallenbach Lelyveld notes that the remote cause of briefly returned to India in 1937 to make the Khilafat was important in the rise an unsuccessful attempt to enlist Gandhi’s of Gandhi, even though he adds the un- support for the Zionist cause. Gandhi con- necessary clarification that “it would be sistently supported the rights of Palestin- simply wrong, not to say grotesque, to

20 May - June 2011 Montage set up Gandhi as any kind of precursor possessed ‘do or die’ Gandhi, the fervent A Unique to bin Laden.” During later years of reli- commander.” “Your president,” Gandhi gious conflict, Gandhi would often look had said to Louis Fischer, a young Ameri- Employee Benefit back nostalgically on the “glorious days” can journalist and future biographer, in of Hindu-Muslim unity during the non- June 1942, “talks about the Four Free- Program for cooperation and Khilafat movement. doms. Do they include the freedom to be Gandhi led mass agitations against the free?” The fervent commander of the Quit All Faculty, Staff British raj in roughly decennial cycles. India movement (described by Gandhi Lelyveld mentions the civil disobedience as “the biggest struggle of my life”) is not and Retirees of movement launched in 1930 with the salt the person of primary interest to Lelyveld. satyagraha (protesting the government’s He turns quickly instead to the struggle Harvard University tax on salt) as its centerpiece, but his nar- within and Gandhi’s final efforts to grap- rative thread for the Depression decade ple with the Hindu-Muslim question. and its Affiliated is supplied by the debates on the caste Gandhi was prepared to be more gener- issue between Gandhi and B.R. Ambed- ous toward Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Hospitals. kar, a member of and spokesman for the Muslim political aspirations than his erst- “Depressed Classes.” Ambedkar, who while lieutenants, Nehru and Vallabhbhai stood for the destruction of the caste sys- Patel, who by then were at the helm of the With the Real Estate Advantage tem, found Gandhi’s attitude toward the Indian National Congress. Yet by the sum- Program, you will receive a cash- “untouchables”—Harijans, or children of mer of 1946, once the British had decided back bonus, outstanding service, God, as he dubbed them—a trifle patron- to quit India, Gandhi was not needed any and the support that you need izing. Lelyveld skillfully unravels the story more and those who had for decades been throughout the buying, selling, of Gandhi’s fast in 1932 against separate his “yes-men” had turned into “no-men.” downsizing and moving processes. electorates for the “Depressed Classes,” “If he’d pushed his case forcefully and pub- For more information about our his anti-untouchability campaign of 1933, licly,” Lelyveld argues plausibly, “the Con- program and to find out about and his stunning characterization of the gress might have found it difficult to pro- upcoming real estate seminars Bihar earthquake of 1934 as divine chas- ceed without him.” But Gandhi chose not and webinars, please contact Gandhi would often look back nostalgically on Beth Duncan at 800-874-0701 x4932 the “glorious days” of Hindu-Muslim unity. [email protected] Harvard Real Estate Services at tisement for the sin of untouchability. The to do so. Instead, in the autumn and winter 617-495-8840 unreason inherent in that statement elic- of 1946, he put himself “almost as far in an ited a rebuke from none other than Rabin- eastward direction as he could get in what www.facultyrealestate.harvard.edu dranath Tagore, the poet who had granted was still India from the center of political ©2011 Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. Coldwell Banker is a registered trademark licensed to Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. An Equal Opportunity Employer. Equal Gandhi the “Great Soul” epithet. decision making in Delhi.” This was the Housing. Owned and operated by NRT LLC. 23287RL 03/11 Lelyveld’s analysis of Gandhi on caste district (now in Bangladesh) of Noakhali, and of the vexed Gandhi-Ambedkar rela- where the Muslim majority had attacked tionship is brilliant. But his lack of inter- Hindu inhabitants in October 1946, and est in covering what he describes as “the where Gandhi wished to prove the two political ins and outs of the movement” communities could still live in amity. entails a loss and a missed opportunity Lelyveld gives the reader a moving de- to explore Gandhi’s ties with younger scription of a tragic lonely figure walk- radicals like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas ing for peace from village to village in Chandra Bose. Gandhi was, after all, pri- Noakhali. Gandhi’s trial by fire in restor- marily the leader of India’s anti-colonial ing a semblance of Hindu-Muslim unity, movement and had vigorous debates with which had been one of his life’s missions, these compatriots on the social and eco- was connected in complex ways, Lelyveld nomic reconstruction of free India. contends, to a renewed experiment with Lelyveld is right on the mark in sug- his vow of celibacy. (This experiment gesting that Gandhi was “never more elu- took the form of his sharing a bed with his sive or complex” than in the final decade grand-niece Manu, much to the conster- of his life, as he sought to balance his val- nation of some of his devoted followers.) ADMINISTERED BY ues with “the strategic needs of his move- By “any secular this-worldly accounting,” ment.” The decision to call upon the Brit- Gandhi’s four months in Noakhali did not Harvard Real Estate Services ish to “quit India” in August 1942 reveals, yield any political or social gain. He could IN PARTNERSHIP WITH in Lelyveld’s words, “a flash of the fully not avert partition. Yet Lelyveld is right in Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage

Harvard Magazine 21 Montage observing that in a more intangible way, signed to pressure the government of in- pro-Muslim. The “great soul” fell with the the Mahatma’s final stand remains to dependent India to be less mean-spirited name of the god-king Ram on his lips. this day a source of inspiration—as was in sharing assets with Pakistan, and to brought home to Lelyveld during a visit to treat its own Muslim citizens with digni- Sugata Bose is Gardiner professor of history. His Bangladesh in 2008. In Dhaka and Noakh- ty and honor. The Mahatma had long had books include A Hundred Horizons: The In- ali, Lelyveld found people who remem- a premonition that he would be killed by dian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire bered the Mahatma with reverence. an assassin’s bullet. When that moment fi- and the new His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Gandhi’s final fast wasnot directed nally came, it was a Hindu extremist who Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against against the British raj; rather, it was de- pulled the trigger, believing Gandhi to be Empire, a study of his great-uncle. Poetic Paschen The Chicago poet has spread the good wordings via book, CD—and subway.

oet Elise Paschen ’81 certainly admires is Richard grew up in an artistic home. Her Wilbur, A.M. ’47, JF mother, Maria Tallchief, was the ’50 (see “Poetic Patri- Pfirst American prima ballerina: arch,” November-De- from 1947 to 1960 the beautiful daughter cember 2008, page 36); of an Osage Indian father and a Scots- he returns the regard, Irish mother was the star of the New writing that Paschen’s York City Ballet. Tallchief and principal poems “draw upon a choreographer George Balanchine were dream life which can married from 1946 to 1952, but Paschen deeply tincture the is the only child of Tallchief and her sec- waking world.” He ond husband, Chicago contractor Henry observed of “Okla- “Buzz” Paschen. As a girl, Paschen did try homa Home”—a quiet, ballet, briefly, but “knew at a young age haunting verse that that I wanted to be a writer,” she says. She draws on the poet’s recalls reciting Blake’s “The Tiger” for her Osage ancestry—that mother at the age of eight. “I lived in my it “magically and mov- Elise Paschen imagination,” she says, “and loved writing ingly enters the con- poems, short stories, plays.” sciousness of another person in another 1991 she secured an international grant As author of the collections Infidelities time and place.” from the National Endowment for the (1996) and Bestiary (2009), Paschen has Paschen also helped bring the poetic Arts to send two poets, both Native evoked poignant moments, feelings, and art to millions of listeners and readers American women, to England on a reading J ennifer G irard ideas in lines crafted with lapidary care, through her work as executive director tour, and went with them. While traveling working in traditional meters and forms of the New York-based Poetry Society of by Tube in London, Paschen looked up to and often using rhyme. Among poets she America (PSA) from 1988 until 2001. In see a seventeenth-century sonnet by Mi- chael Drayton—“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part”— displayed in the car, and imagined something similar in New York City subways and buses. She dis- missed the idea as unrealistic, but several months after her return a to New York, got a call from New York City Transit: its president had been traveling in London, seen the Poems on the Under- ground displays, and wondered This Poetry in Motion poster offers a Chicago-specific version of Paschen’s poem “Taxi.” iety of ameri c so c iety of the P oetry of c ourtesy

22 May - June 2011