Reading an Autobiography

Of the startling variety of genres, autobiography is the most intimate. The first-person narration of one's life, it is like an opened-window, opened to the world by the person himself. Maybe it is an injustice to speak of autobiography as a window as if it affords the readers only a marvelled glimpse at the interior of a richly furnished drawing-room. Or, maybe it is like an invitation to a conversation. Just like a conversation reflects the taste and sensibility of the other person, every autobiography reflects, in a way, the life and mind of the writer. But, it is difficult to fix a single metaphor to describe every work of the genre. Whatever be the metaphor, it is a plea to be heard. Like every plea, it is a defence of the choices the author made in his life. Like every plea, it persuades us to identify with those choices. Sometimes, we do.

Source: Amazon

Mahatma and the Madness of Violence

The birth and death anniversaries of founding fathers are celebrated with paean and pageants. The sesquicentennial of Mahatma Gandhi's birth is no different. People from all walks of life including politicians, celebrities, sportsmen, journalists, scholars, and students pay homage to the memory of a man whose death prompted Albert Einstein to remark, "Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth."

Perhaps, it is impertinent to remind the nation and the world about the end he met, on his birth anniversary, but my insolence is in good company. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma does the same, and he has a reason: "India and the world would have had little interest in the birth or the birth anniversary of this man if his life had not been what it was — a tussle between his passionate, self-consuming faith in ahimsa and his being stalked, unceasingly, by the fiercest violence until the very last step he took on the earth." (See The Pulse of a Legacy in an Age of Heroics)

M.K Gandhi, circa 1906
Source: NY Times

The life of Mahatma, on whose honour second of October was declared the International Day of Non-Violence by UN in 2007, was a continual battle against the violence around him, violence that pitted nations and peoples against each other, violence colonial and violence communal. The philosophy of ahimsa was his gift to the world, his solution to the problem of violence; a madness that propelled the world of the twentieth-century into two World Wars, Holocaust and brought it to the brink with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For Gandhi, non-violence was common-sense.

Since the end of the cold peace of post-war, the madness has returned with a vengeance. Alas, we don't have Mahatmas to lead us anymore. Ought we to lament the absence of a Mahatma in our age? We may either do that or we may ask ourselves: how ordinary men and women became Mahatmas? Mahatmas are born when men and women answer the call of history. An extraordinary personality, whose character is a rare synthesis of love and courage, will and vision. They thought through the problems of their times and devised ingenious solutions.

Mahatmas are a rarity that nobody really expects to see even once in their lifetime. However, that is not the lesson the history of Gandhiji teaches us. It is a story of resolutely-willed "naked fakir" who dared to do what he thought history demanded of him. In a nutshell, it is the story of love and courage, will and vision, qualities that are never too late to be redeemed by any generation.