The Saraladevi episode must have been a painful chapter in the family’s life—what made you decide to break the silence?
The(re’s an) item from the family archives being published for the first time: a powerful letter written in June 1920 to Gandhi by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, whose daughter would eventually marry Gandhi’s youngest son. Saraladevi was the subject of the letter, which Gandhi heeded. As a worshipper of truth, which Gandhi was, he demands the frankest scrutiny of his own life. There was therefore no question of my suppressing the Saraladevi story. When I first referred to it in my 1995 study, The Good Boatman, a respected relative mildly complained to me, and a most likeable Gandhi follower in Gujarat asked me, "Was that bit really necessary?" But there was no opposition as such. After the detailed account presented in Mohandas, I expect many to recognise that the episode actually enhances Gandhi. Not only will people feel closer to him in his humanity, they will admire him the more, for it is nobler to fight great battles when temptations tug at you.
Have his experiments with brahmacharya been blown out of proportion?
Some have pointed out that Indian tradition offers examples comparable to Gandhi’s experiments. My own study suggested that perfecting his chastity was only one of the reasons for Gandhi’s experiments. Calming bouts of trembling and a need for warmth were other reasons. No one in Gandhi’s time or later has ever suggested that Gandhi’s experiments were a cloak for lust. My study indicated that the old man who continued to fight great battles until his last day needed the sort of security that the child Mohan had found beside his mother. Like his seeming sternness towards the family, the brahmacharya experiments were a consequence of the giant size of Gandhi’s undertaking.
Would you consider him an unfeeling husband and father?
No. Most of his apparent sternness with his wife and sons was a direct consequence of what he saw as an irresistible call to take on all Indians as his family. He agonised over his inability, flowing from that call, to give preferential treatment to his wife and sons. At times Kasturba and his sons understood his agony. At other times they were pained by this inability.
Is it harder for a grandson to write about Gandhi than an outsider?
Thrills and hurts marked the journey. Often I cried in pain, shedding actual tears, for example when facing Gandhi’s seeming sternness with Kasturba and their sons. At other times I literally shot my fist into the air with excitement. These moments of wonderment outnumbered the moments of pain. As when I found in a 23-year-old Mohandas in South Africa a mastery of tactics on top of a firmness of resolve. Or when, at 27, he faced with cool courage a white mob that wanted to lynch him in Durban. And when at 40, while on a ship from England to South Africa, he penned a winning strategy for India’s liberty, and again when, five years later, he sailed for India with a perfect confidence that he would implement that strategy. His audacity bowled me over time and again, for example in his willingness to launch, right from the moment of his arrival in India in 1915, three huge battles at one and the same time: one for India’s liberty, another for Hindu-Muslim understanding, and a third against untouchability.
Why another biography of Gandhi when he is already the most written-about person in history?
Because his fame greatly eclipses our knowledge of him. I wanted to capture a real person who could be seen, touched and understood.
How difficult was it to weed out the myths from the man?
Not very, for I discarded all assumptions and sought to discover the real person at every stage of his life.
What is the secret of Gandhi’s success as the leader of a nation that didn’t exist until he created it?
Combining bold goals with a bold renunciation. He suppressed every smaller longing for the sake of creating a national longing. He embraced India as something more important than his family, his fellow-Banias, his fellow-Gujaratis. Consciously he cultivated parts of India far from Gujarat, and strove to identify himself with every single Indian.
Was he guilty of breaking his pledge not to accept Partition?
In a technical sense, yes, for he did not fast unto death in a bid to prevent it. But he knew that a fast by him would not prevent Partition. He sought (unsuccessfully) to prevent it in other ways, in part through his "Jinnah card"; he toiled for an India-Pakistan understanding that would render Partition meaningless; and in pursuit of that goal he planned a visit to Pakistan that was prevented by the assassination.
The anti-Muslim thrust of some of Gandhi’s Hindu opponents combined with Muslim separatism to produce Pakistan. Also, Gandhi’s "Jinnah card" was shrewder and more realistic than is usually acknowledged. It might have done the trick, but Nehru, Patel, CR, Rajendra Prasad, Pant and the other Congress leaders compelled Gandhi to take the card back.
What are your own personal memories of your grandfather?
Between the summer of 1946, when I was 11, and January 30, 1948, when I was 12-and-a-half, he spent many months in Delhi, where my siblings and I lived with our father Devadas (Gandhi’s fourth and youngest son and editor of Hindustan Times) and mother Lakshmi (CR’s daughter.) During this period I was often with him, usually for the 5 pm multi-faith prayer meeting he held. Frequently I sat close to him, facing the audience that came to join the prayers and listen to his post-prayer remarks. Hindu-Muslim tension was high at this time, and there were occasions when some in the audience protested angrily at the reading of verses from the Quran. I would ask myself, "What if someone comes up and attacks him? Can I help defend him?" Then I would look at my grandfather, see his calm face, and find calm myself. I was not old enough to understand very much, but not too young to see that the old man was unfazed by anger and also friendly towards the protesters. I should add that a sporting event in my school kept me from the January 30 prayer meeting to which he was walking when killed.
