Gandhi's Truth by Erik H. Erikson

Author:Erik H. Erikson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-04-22T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER

II

Prophet in His Own Country

* * *

1. WHY AHMEDABAD?

FROM THE MOMENT in January of 1915 when Gandhi set foot on a pier reserved for important arrivals in Bombay, he behaved like a man who knew the nature and the extent of India’s calamity and that of his own fundamental mission. A mature man of middle age has not only made up his mind as to what, in the various compartments of life, he does and does not care for, he is also firm in his vision of what he will and can take care of. He takes as his baseline what he irreducibly is and reaches out for what only he can, and therefore, must do. We will now show how Gandhi went about consolidating himself in all of these respects. Without further vacillation he made it a point to appear amidst the “dazzling splendor” of the reception with which his countrymen meant to honor him in the simple outfit of a “Kathiawadi rustic,” that is, a native of his own province. Offering without delay “what might be called a little Satyagraha,” he addressed the dignitaries at public functions in his native Gujarati. He told his countrymen off in a manner so taunting as to be worthy of little Moniya, and yet with the soft-spoken sincerity of a man who not only meant every word he said but also meant to follow it up with deeds—or perish. And the response of the public soon “emboldened me to think that I should not find it difficult to place my new-fangled notions before my countrymen.” He obediently, if half-mockingly, accepted Gokhale’s advice to lie low for a while in matters of public politics, but he never hesitated to speak up in such a way that his program for a reformation, Indian style, would unfold with methodical certainty.

But first he had to make clear who he was. When presented, on the second day after his arrival, with an address enclosed in a silver casket with fetters made of gold, he described the gifts

as somewhat unsuitable to a person who had neither a roof over his head nor locked doors to his house. Fetters, whether of gold or of iron, were the same to him, as they were fetters after all. A function like the one they held, he said, was most uncongenial to him….10

To the é1ite of Bombay, who appeared six hundred strong at a reception, he confided that he and his wife

during the three days that they had passed in Bombay, … had felt—and he thought he was voicing the feelings of his wife, too—that they were much more at home among those indentured Indians, who were the truest heroes of India.11

And when the people at Rajkot greeted him with a meeting presided over by the Dewan, he admitted that with all these gatherings his health was “going down badly”; he only hoped that they would keep up the love they were showing that day when in days to come they saw him really work and maybe fail.

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