Response to Rajmohan Gandhi's critique of Arundhati Roy's "The Doctor and the Saint".

This is my response, published in EPW dated June 6, 2015, to Rajmohan Gandhi’s critique of Arundhati Roy’s essay ' The Doctor and the Saint’:


http://www.epw.in/discussion/reading-arundhati-roy-out-context.html

Since EPW has edited my response slightly, those who wish to read the full and unedited text may read the response as follows ( The portions highlighted in yellow have not been carried in the EPW): 

Rajmohan Gandhi’s article ‘Independence and Social Justice’- Some Issues

Rajmohan Gandhi’s article ‘Independence and Social Justice’ (EPW, 11 April 2015) is a response to Arundhati Roy’s essay ‘The Doctor and the Saint’. Gandhi’s (RG hereinafter) main thrust in his response is that Roy has attacked Mahatma Gandhi and that her attacks violate key principles of historical debate, namely, that statements made 50 or 100 years ago should be seen in  the context they are made, and that pertinent information is not scissored out. He proceeds to layout several quotations and events to justify his criticism of Roy. However, his arguments are not convincing, and indeed, RG himself is guilty of reading events and statements out of context.

I want to illustrate this with two points that RG has tried to make. 

At one place, he tries to discredit Roy’s argument by saying she has not provided any sources for her information. RG writes:

“...Roy has this comment on Ghanshayamdas Birla, who often hosted Gandhi. In 1915, when Gandhi returned from South Africa, says Roy, Birla ‘organised a grand reception in Calcutta...became Gandhi’s chief patron and paid him a generous monthly retainer...Gandhi’s arrangement with G D Birla lasted for the rest of the days’. Roy does not provide any sources for this assertion”.

It is astonishing that RG says this, for Roy has clearly annoted this assertion (Endnote 165), giving a journal article by Leah Renold as the reference. A perusal of the said journal article provides more than ample evidence of the assertions made by Roy.

What is equally baffling is that RG chooses to take a fact that is quite well-known and acknowledged by many people including RG himself, and requires Roy to “provide sources” for this. 

After saying that Roy has not provided any sources, RG goes on and also quotes Birla himself as saying “… I informed him that I would …send him [Gandhiji] a monthly donation…”.

Given that it is quite well-known that Birla and several other businessmen and industrialist were closely associated with Gandhiji and provided considerable financial support to his work, and RG’s own acknowledgement of the same, it is clear that RG does not doubt that Birla financially supported Gandhiji. Then his questioning Roy’s assertion of “a generous monthly retainer” seems nothing but semantic quibbling. 

If anything, this shows that RG is ignoring the broader context of the relationship between Mahatma Gandhi-Birla (and other industrialists). Material available on record (for example, the extensive records of Mahadevbhai’s diaries) confirms beyond doubt that this relationship certainly included financial support, but went much beyond it.Top businessmen like G. D. Birla and Jamnalal Bajaj were so close to Gandhiji that they were consulted by Gandhiji and matters of national importance discussed with them. Many of them held crucial positions in the institutions Gandhiji was actively involved with. G. D. Birla was the founding president of the organisation that Gandhiji held dear, the Harijan Sevak Sangh and remained its president from 1932 to 1959. 

Mahadevbhai records a letter from Birla to Gandhiji (Diary Volume 19, Year 1934-35) and quotes it as “Dear Reverend Bapu...You [Gandhiji] have asked [me/Birla], ‘how much interest you will take in this new organisation, have you thought of giving some support [to the organisation]?...we all three [Birla] brothers are in agreement that we do not wish to hoard wealth for our children... now about giving. What is there to ask in this? I have made an understanding that I will remain your treasurer as per my ability. Whatever you ask I will send. I hope you will not have any hesitation in asking. If it is so do please write that clearly so that I can decide on my own...so consider my budget as public and do not hesitate in asking...” (Translated from original Gujarati by this author).

G.D Birla himself, in his book, ‘In the shadow of the Mahatma’, “...Whatever sum he [Gandhiji] asked from me (and he was as he put it, an inveterate beggar for the cause he worked for) he knew that he would get, because there was nothing I could refuse him...”

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Coming to the second point, RG asks readers to be “hugely sceptical” when “Roy suggests that Gandhi was soft with the Tatas”. Here again, RG has tried to question Roy on something that is quite well-known and recognised, and rather than Roy, he himself is guilty of ignoring the broader context.

The point is with reference to Gandhiji’s stand and support to the struggle of the Mulshi dam affected people. Roy quotes a letter of Gandhiji dated 5 April 1924 and says that it reveals Gandhiji’s approach to big dams in which “he advised villagers who faced displacement by the Mulshi dam, then being built by the Tatas…to give up their protest.”

RG then says that Roy has suppressed Gandhiji’s “remarkably strong and public words to the Tatas regarding the Mulshi dam…” Here, he is referring to, and quotes, a piece Gandhiji had written in April 1921 in Young India.

It is true that Gandhiji did appeal to the Tatas to not take recourse to the legal mechanism of compulsory Land Acquisition Act, and that whatever Tatas do should be in consultation with the people. However, this is the only evidence RG brings out to show that Gandhiji took a strong stand on the Mulshi dam and that he was not soft on Tata. Here, unfortunately, RG is guilty of taking an isolated, single instance and not only is trying to draw out a generalisation about Gandhiji’s stand on Mulshi dam, but is also doing it in the face of mountains of other evidence that is to the  contrary. In other words, he interprets that letter of Gandhiji in isolation of Gandhiji’s acts of commission and omission in the matter before and after the letter. 

Again, there is ample evidence available that clearly shows how Gandhiji held the Tata’s in high esteem and publicly praised the Tata’s on several occasions- both before and after Mulshi Satuyagraha. For example, Mahadevbhai’s dairies note how he praised Tata (and the entire Parsee community) during his visit to Navsari, recollecting the Rs. 25000/- that Tata had sent in support to the struggle in South Africa. (Vol. 7, Year 1924-25). In another instance, Mahadevbhai notes Gandhiji’s glowing praise for Tata’s during his visit to Jamshedpur. (Vol. 8). This praise does not seem to have taken cognisance of a brutal firing in which 13 striking workmen had been killed at the plant some years earlier nor of the fact that the Mulshi dam was built against the wishes of the displaced people and without proper rehabilitation and that the appeal Gandhiji had made to the Tata’s concerning the dam was ignored. Should not publicly showering glowing praise on the Tata’s then be seen as “being soft”? So why is RG asking readers to be sceptical of Roy? 

The only reason RG offers for readers to doubt Gandhiji’s softness towards Tata is that appeal in Young India, referred to above. But the real test of softness or otherwise is not just in the appeal Gandhiji made to the Tata’s. It must be tested against whether Tata’s accepted it (they did not), and if not, what was Gandhiji’s reaction. The fact is, that after the Tatas went ahead in forcibly acquiring the lands, not only did Gandhiji not take up the matter with Tatas, he did not castigate them, nor did he intensify his support to the movement. On the contrary, he continued to praise Tata’s and asked the Mulshi stayagrahi’s to give up their struggle.

RG tries to justify this last action of Gandhiji by mentioning that after Gandhiji’s strong appeal to Tata’s he (Gandhiji) was incarcerated, and when he came out, the dam was half complete, many people had accepted compensation and the leader of the satyagraha no longer espoused non-violence. But these arguments are specious.

First of all, Gandhiji was not in jail for the entire duration of the Mulshi Satyagraha. Even in jail, he could have made further appeals to Tatas to stop work or could have appealed to the Indian National Congress to support the struggle and make it a pan India issue. At one point in time, Mulshi satyagrahis were Gandhiji’s co-prisoners and he knew the plight of the satyagrahis and the struggle outside and could have come out strongly against the Tatas. That some people had taken compensation is not reason enough to not support the struggle. It is well known that often people end up taking compensation not because they are in support of the project but because they are terrified of the power of the law and police, because of the inevitability of the project and the looming threat of submergence. Last, but not the least, even if Gandhiji had felt that he could not support the stayagraha because its leadership believed in violence, he still could have pressurised the Tatas for going ahead with consultation with the people – for admittedly, not everyone had taken compensation. Even if he had not wanted to do any of this, he could at least have made known his displeasure with the Tatas for not following his appeal of 1921. He did not do any of these things and continued to publicly praise Tata.

Thus, it’s rather far-fetched to deny Gandhiji’s softness towards Tatas based on one letter. Indeed, that letter probably strengthens the doubt that Gandhiji did not support the Mulshi dam struggle because he was close to Tatas. For it is obvious that the Tata’s conduct was greatly in contradiction to Gandhiji’s wishes expressed in that appeal, wishes that he himself often publicly articulated as the core of his vision and developmental philosophy.

All this certainly makes the question – was Gandhiji lack of support to the Mulshi struggle due to his softness towards Tatas – a very legitimate question.

Rajendra Vohra in his well researched book in Marathi titled ‘Mulshi Satyagraha,’ raises this very issue, and implies it’s veracity. He says: “Gandhiji never came to support the people of Maval or the volunteers of the Mulshi Satyagraha; similarly he never met the Tatas on behalf of the Maval people... In fact, his relations with the Tatas went back a long way...In short it can be said that Gandhiji never took this struggle seriously at all...” (Page No 155.)

Later, the problem of the Mulshi dam displaced people aggravated with the raising of the wall and yet Gandhiji did not do anything to ensure that displaced people were properly rehabilitated [which they were not].

 

The Mulshi satyagraha had brought to the fore momentous issues concerning dams, modus operandi of companies like the Tatas, issues of land acquisition, displacement and rehabilitation. But these were not given the attention they deserved, either by the Indian National Congress or Gandhiji.This most certainly cost India and its underprivileged dear. The argument that the lack of support to the satyagraha was due to the close association (whether one calls it softness or anything else) of Gandhiji and other leaders with the industrialist is certainly a well-founded one with strong grounds. It is difficult to question this argument – and Roy’s credibility - with nothing more than one letter, as RG has tried to do.

Had the Mulshi satyagraha been given the place it deserved, Nehru would not subsequently have called such dams as temples of modern India and India would possibly have gone ahead with a different vision of “development”.

Nandini Oza.

Date: 4-May-15.

Disclosure: The author is an independent writer and a social activist, previously with the Narmada Bachao Andolan and currently with the Zindabad Trust set up by Arundhati Roy. She maintains a blog titled History less known.