HISTORY
Mahatma: the aesthete
|
It is generally believed that Gandhiji lacked aesthetic sense. But, writes La. Su. RENGARAJAN, there are many instances of innate artistry in Gandhiji's writings and thinking.
|
COURTESY LA. SU. RENGARAJAN
With eminent artist Nandalal Bose at Shantiniketan.
"Gandhiji had little sense of beauty or artistry in manmade objects, though he admired natural beauty. The Taj Mahal was for him an embodiment of forced labour and little more. His sense of smell was feeble. And yet, in his own way, he had discovered the art of living and had made his life an artistic whole."
THIS is how Mahatma Gandhi's heir apparent Jawaharlal Nehru described his Master's aesthetic sense, or the lack of it, in his autobiography.
While studying Law in London, the young Gandhi visited the great Paris Exhibition of 1890. "There is no art about the Eiffel Tower. It was the toy of the Exhibition. So long as we are children we are attracted by toys, and the Tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets," he wrote in the Story of My Experiments with Truth.
Over 70 years ago, in October 1924, the founder of Gandhigram Trust, G. Ramachandran, then a young student from Tagore's Shantiniketan, asked Gandhiji why eminent persons — even among his admirers — held that he had, consciously or unconsciously, ruled out considerations of art in the scheme of national regeneration. Gandhiji explained: "All true Art is the expression of the soul. Real Art therefore must help the soul to realise the inner Self. I see and find beauty in Truth or through Truth... If men and women begin to see Beauty in Truth, then true Art will arise."
Gandhiji also said, "there is truly sufficient Art in my life, though you might not see what you call works of Art about me. What conscious Art of man can give me the panoramic scenes that open out before me when I look upon to the sky above with all its shining stars?" When an inmate of Sabarmati Ashram requested Gandhiji to give an account of his visits to Rome and other places of artistic interest after the Second Round Table Conference in London (September-November 1931), he wrote back in Gujarati on January 25, 1932: "I very much enjoyed seeing the paintings in Rome, but what opinion can I give after a visit of two hours? What is my competence to judge? I liked some of the pictures very much indeed. If I could spend two or three months there, I would go and see the paintings and sculptures every day and study them attentively." (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 49, p. 37)
Art, for Gandhiji, was not a matter of imagination only but of living as well. Not only did his "eye for art" teach "man to seek enjoyment in usefulness," but also he held that at a later stage man learnt further that "there was neither beauty nor joy in living for its own sake but that he must live to serve his fellow-creatures and through them the Maker", (Harijan, April 4, 1936).
Gandhiji wanted art and literature that could speak to millions. He went round an exhibition of paintings organised by Gujarati Sahitya Parishad at Ahmedabad on October 31, 1936. Presiding over the 12th annual gathering of the Parishad, Gandhiji referred to the splash of colours on the canvas in the name of modern or abstract art: "I missed what I could call a painting that speaks. Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself? I saw in the Vatican art collection a statue of Christ on the Cross, which captured me and kept me spellbound. There was no one there to explain its charm to me. Here in Belur, I saw a bracket in stone made of a little statuette, which spoke to me without anyone to help me to understand it." Publishing a Gujarati translation of Mahakavi Subramania Bharati's poem with his article "My Heart Aches" (the first line of Bharati's song "Nenju Porukkuthilaye") in his Gujarati weekly Navajivan (17.3.1929), Gandhiji mentioned, "English translations of a number of poems of the gifted Tamil poet by Shri Chakravarti Rajagopalachari have already appeared in Young India. I give this poem below as it is interesting and instructive. Here is true poetry which has power to take the people forward and the power to kindle life."
Towards music, however, Gandhiji was more charitable, but on his own terms. He linked music to life's harmony: "To know music is to transfer it to life. The prevalent discord of today is an indication of our sad plight. There can be no true swaraj where there is no harmony, no music."
Gandhiji was more appreciative of devotional and soul-stirring songs. Answering question Education in Navajivan (July 1,1928) Gandhiji wrote: "Without lessons in music, the entire educational system seems to me to be incomplete. Music pacifies anger and its judicious use is highly helpful in leading a person to the vision of God. Its deeper meaning is that our whole life should be sweet and musical like a song. To make life musical means to make it one with God, to merge in Him." Gandhiji's peculiar aesthetic sensibility transcended racial and cultural barriers. It helped him to see and appreciate the beauty of South African Zulu's physical form and moral innocence. This is how Gandhiji describes them in his book Satyagraha in South Africa, which he wrote in English when he was in the Yeravda Central Jail during November 1923-February 1924: "Among the Negroes, the tallest and the most handsome are the Zulus. I have deliberately used the epithet `handsome' in connection with Negroes. A fair complexion and a pointed nose represent our ideal of beauty. If we discard this superstition for a moment, we feel that the Creator did not spare Himself in fashioning the Zulu to perfection." The description of the "lovely footpath" and the "magnificent valley" in one of his earliest articles titled "A Band of Vegetarian Missionaries" bears testimony to Gandhiji being a keen observer of beauty. The article published in The Vegetarian, a weekly of the London Vegetarian Society, May 18, 1895, was about his visit to the Trappist monastery in a hilly settlement near Pinetown 16 miles from Durban. Gandhiji was always sensitive to the beauty of nature. In South Africa, he had moved over about all parts, he says "with open eyes" and he had observed with admiration the country's wealth of natural scenery. In Satyagraha in South Africa, he speaks of the surpassing beauty of Cape Town situated at the foot of the Table Mountain. In India, too, during his frequent and exhaustive tours of the country, he drank in the beauty of Nature wherever he went. In the pages of Young India and Navajivan Gandhiji gave loving pen-pictures of what he had seen in Assam, the Himalayas, Malabar and Kanyakumari. In his article "The Darshan of Kanyakumari" in Navajivan (March 2, 1925) Gandhiji writes: "As we face due south, we can see from the very same spot the sun rise and set to our right. We did not have the time to witness that spectacle; nevertheless, we could imagine the sun rising at dawn after a bath in the great Bay of Bengal, robbing the stars of their brightness, and in the evening, going down the golden sky and retiring for rest into the Western ocean full of gems... . "
He wrote in Navajivan (February 29,1920): "As the clouds brightened with the light of dawn, a golden sheen would appear on the waters of the Ganga and, when the sun had come into full view over the horizon, there seemed to stand in the water of the river a great pillar of gold." "How to Describe Their Majesty?" was the title Gandhiji gave his Gujarati article in Navajivan (July 14, 1929) when he saw in Almora the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas. But, Gandhiji's aesthetic exultation melts to form a sublime thought of the Absolute behind the earthly façade when he recalls that centuries ago Shankaracharya had roamed in Almora. He ends his article: "The true Himalayas exist within our hearts. True pilgrimage, or supreme effort on the part of all human beings consists in taking shelter in that cave and having darshan of Siva there!"
We see a telling instance of the aesthetic gift of Gandhiji in his letter of May 1, 1936, to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, written the day after he, along with his secretary Pyarelal, had walked down from Wardha to his newly constructed hut in a lonely hamlet, Segaon (later named Sevagram). They had walked at night and missed the way in the deserted rural track. But it was a moonlit night and Gandhiji had kept his eyes open. The scene welled up in his memory as he was writing the letter and filled him with pleasure. He wrote: "We came yesterday. The night was glorious."
Such deep and lasting memories must have been the joyous moments that sustained Gandhiji's inner journey towards the ever-receding ideal.
This aesthetic charm of life which he perceived inwardly while he proceeded with his experiments outwardly with truth so as to reach his goal of seeing Truth that is God "face to face", is reflected when he wrote in a different context in Harijan dated October 14, 1939: "Between the ideal and practice there always must be an unbridgeable gulf. The ideal will cease to be one if it becomes possible to realise it. The pleasure lies in making the effort, not in its fulfilment. For, in our progress towards the goal we ever see more and more enchanting scenery."
La. Su. Rengarajan is a writer, researcher and Gandhian scholar.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
