Great Mahatma Gandhi: Light that doesn't go out

Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin recalls the impact of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination fifty years ago, and analyses the ways in which the great Indian leader has been both forgotten and remembered. This is the first of two articles.

HONG KONG (JP): Asia remained a distant reality on my childhood horizon until Jan. 30, 1948. I rushed home from school at lunchtime as usual, arriving just before one 'o'clock and the BBC lunchtime news. We knew immediately that something was very wrong because the news presenter was one of those special voices reserved, by the BBC, for momentous occasions. The news has just arrived from New Delhi.

At his evening prayer meeting that same day at Birla House, Mahatma Gandhi had been shot and killed by an assassin. In Britain, as in India, the initial news reports carefully stressed that the assassin was a Hindu. Years later I was told that those in charge of the news at All India Radio that sad, sad day quite correctly reported that the assassin was Hindu before they were absolutely sure that he was, fearing the carnage that would flow if the killer had belonged to a minority, and particularly if he had been a Moslem.

As a teenager in London, I knew little of Gandhi's life and work. But instinctively, on hearing of that tragic event, one knew that someone great and good had been killed, that an enormous tragedy had taken place, and that the world was the poorer as a result.

As he went to an All India Radio studio to talk to the nation that night, Jawaharlal Nehru felt many deep emotions. He had been Prime Minister of independent India for just five and a half months, but he had been Gandhi's colleague and pupil for 36 years. There was no time to write a script, no time to order his thoughts. Nevertheless Nehru beautifully, though a trifle misleadingly, caught the moment and glimpsed the future, as he sadly spoke to the people of India about their loss:

"The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader Bapu as we called him, the Father of the Nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that. Nevertheless we will not see him again as we have seen him for these many years.

"We will not run to him for advice and seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow.... The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light.

"The light that has illumined this country for these many years will illumine this country, and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country, and the world will see it, and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented something more than the immediate present, it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom."

It was an excruciatingly painful moment for Nehru, yet he managed to ad lib what remains, even now, one of the most relevant epitaphs for Gandhi.

Gandhi had been Nehru's guide, philosopher and friend, helping the lawyer from Harrow and Cambridge to rediscover his own country, thereby making it possible for Nehru the Kashmiri Brahmin to see Mother India in a more democratic light.

In the hours before his death, Gandhi had been hard at work trying to heal the growing division within the Indian National Congress between Fabian Socialist Nehru and the fiery conservative minister of home affairs Sardar Vallabhai Patel. For these and many other reasons Gandhi's passing was a highly charged moment for Nehru.

After announcing that Gandhi would be cremated the following day, Nehru concluded by saying that Jan. 31 should be a day of fasting and prayer :

"The greatest prayer that we can offer is to take a pledge to dedicate ourselves to the truth and to the cause for which this great countryman of ours lived and for which he has died. That is the best prayer that we can offer him and his memory. That is the best prayer that we can offer to India and ourselves."

Looking back with the perspective provided by the passage of 50 years, it becomes clear that the Mahatma has not escaped the fate which often befalls those who try to remind humanity, against all the odds, that it should try to act according to the "better angels of our nature".

Gandhi has been so sanctified, and even deified, that many lose sight of his real substance and lifelong achievement.

At least, in that moment of the greatest anguish, Nehru firmly rejected any deification. Immediately after the assassination, voices were quickly raised urging that Gandhi's body be embalmed.

The proposal was made so that millions of Indians could have the chance to pay their last homage to Gandhi. Had that happened, one must wonder who would have ever given the order that the embalmed body be cremated. Very likely, Gandhi's embalmed body -- like Mao Zedong's in Beijing, or Ho Chi Minh's in Hanoi -- would still be on display today in a mausoleum in New Delhi.

Nehru firmly rejected any such notion of embalming, noting that it was Gandhi's repeatedly expressed wish that no such thing should happen, that Gandhi was entirely opposed to any embalming of his body, so "we must follow his wishes in this matter, however much others might have wished otherwise".

So the funeral was held the very next day, Jan. 31, amidst tumultuous scenes plus -- irony of ironies -- the presence of all branches of the Indian armed forces, mounting guards of honor and firing salutes for the apostle of non-violence.

Gandhi was not then embalmed physically. But he has been "embalmed" in Gandhism, in doctrinaire and even dogmatic thinking about his life and work. This has been well illustrated by many of the tributes that have greeted the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Yet Gandhi was, in reality, the most down-to-earth and practical of men.

Once again the old canard -- that Gandhi advocated passive resistance -- has been frequently trotted forth. Gandhi actually believed -- passionately -- that if people were passive they could not properly resist injustice, and, if they were determined to resist, they should not be passive. Non-violence for Gandhi was an active state of being, an expression of deep conviction, not a display of resignation. That is why it is more accurately described as non-violent civil disobedience.

Another way in which Gandhi has been widely misinterpreted lies in all those peace movements which regularly take his name in vain. Gandhi, in my view, while pacific, was never a pacifist in the sense of believing -- as so many peace movements do -- in seeking peace at any price.