Inner life, Outer life

Naipaul, in India: A Wounded Civilization, analyzed MK Gandhi's obsession with himself and observed caustically that there were just two or three descriptions of landscape in his autobiography. Whether in England or South Africa, Gandhi was so immersed in the duel with his self that he failed to observe what went on outside him.

Naipaul could not have made this observation about the other great, modern Indian, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru wrote his remarkable and voluminous autobiography, running to 600 odd pages, within a short, uninterrupted, and largely undisturbed period of eight or nine months that he spent in the Naini Jail from June 1934 to February 1935. It is a story in which Nehru resorts to the plural "we" to include the collective involvement of his less articulate colleagues in the nationalist struggle. And a story in which amidst the confusion, uncertainty and chaos of the times, he could be lyrical, longing for things he misses or things he observes anew -
"Once I remember being struck by a new want. I was in the Lucknow district gaol, and I realized suddenly that I had not heard a dog bark for seven or eight months."

Nehru imagined and longed to see the trees and mountains beyond his confinement, described the cool breeze he felt on his face while being moved from one jail to another, and retains his good humor even while recollecting the first lathi-charge he faced as an activist. More than its considerable literary worth, Nehru understands and describes the contemporary nationalist currents better than any history book. There is intellectual rigor and a sense of historical purpose in him. He analyzes the political situation in India before the advent of Gandhi and how it changed after him. In fact, Nehru gives us better insights into the "Political Gandhi", and his magical hold over the masses, than Gandhi himself. Nehru frankly looked at his vanity, arrogance, and his susceptibility to compromise his strong beliefs to move forward, to be his key weaknesses.

MK Gandhi’s autobiography, on the other hand, is at the other end, and reveals a primary, child-like, instinctual mind at work. Gandhi’s subject is no doubt Gandhi himself, and describes his most personal events in meticulous detail. Whether it is his lapses from vegetarianism or petty thievery in childhood, or struggle with his sexual passion, Gandhi remains convinced about their impact on his inner life and conscience development, even while it may make the reader uncomfortable or even bored at times.

However, as Ramachandra Guha has pointed out, in spite of his seeming idiosyncrasies, Gandhi's memory has been treated more kindly by his countrymen, even as his ideals lay tattered. The more militant of our middle classes may look at his frailty and seeming physical weakness with derision, his sexual struggle as hypocrisy and his concessions to Muslims as treason. But, by and large, his reputation as a great apostle of peace, tolerance and non-violence remains unchallenged while his ideas on ecology and sustainable development have received delayed interest.

Nehru, on the other hand, in spite of irregular, obsequious gestures from the ruling Congress party, is mostly an object of ridicule, derision, anger and hatred today. The more sympathetic consider his idealistic approach "naive", while the more vocal and hostile consider him responsible for every ill facing India from bad roads to dynastic politics.

However, in spite of their obvious differences in thought and approach to nation building, Gandhi and Nehru were united in their fundamental quest for a moral and ethical life. Gandhi contested, in his own unique way, the "maleness" of the western colonialism in greed, power and violence. How endless consumption can minimize life, making it nothing more than acquisition and ownership of stuff valued by others. How centralization of power begets corruptibility, and how violence begets violence. He centralized the importance of means over ends.

Nehru's aspiration of morality and ethics extended to the kind of state he envisioned India to be. This is of course at odds with the view expressed by most of our rationalist commentators today, who consider the nations not to have any morality, but only “self-interest”. This view also perhaps governs pillorying of Nehru for all his supposed mistakes, whether on Kashmir, Organized Development, Hindu Code Bill, pragmatic socialism, Non-Aligned Movement, UNSC Permanent Seat, or Panchsheela.

In this revisionist narrative, real history of India begins with the liberalization in 1990s when India unshackled the license-permit-raj of “Nehru’s” legacy. It is perhaps true that last twenty years have opened doors to entrepreneurship and innovation, enabled upward movement of lower-middle and middle classes, and created a situation of plenty for an enthusiastic, consumerist class. But twenty years is also perhaps also a good time to take a hard look at what an unbridled quest for “self-interest” has resulted in.

A corrupt polity. An intricate, compromising nexus of political establishment, corporate czars and fourth estate. A moneyed culture where heroes are judged solely for their ability to make money regardless of morality. Celebrity-obsession. A stressful, spiritually vacant life mushrooming with spurious Godmen, astrologers and soothsayers. A booming industry of self-serving, bad books on self-help and management. A reputation for being a bully with most neighbours.

A nation at war with its own people. A nation ravaging itself to satisfy its consumption needs.

Is it that while we have been busy making money, we have lost something of the way of a soul or an inner life? We perhaps need to re-posit a few questions to ourselves.

What is a nation, if not a community of individuals united by common territory and sense of purpose? And, if that is true, what remains, if that nation is drained of morality and ethics?

Perhaps, we still need Gandhi and Nehru, if not for anything else, then to be our super-ego. Nehru’s idea of an inclusive, egalitarian, industrially developed, socially conscious and morally alive nation, tempered with Gandhi’s ideas of personal virtue, sustainability, devolution of power, and compassion towards the underdog, remains enticing and an ideal to remake ourselves and our nation.