Life of a Son and the Makingof 'a Film

d

Rohini Mokashi-Punekar

HARILAL GANDHI: A LIFE

ByChandulalB. DalalEditedand translatedby Tridip SuhrudOrient Longman,2007, pp. 290, Rs.690.00

IN THE TRACKSOF THE MAHATMA: THE MAKING OF A DOCUMENTARY

ByAK. ChettiarEdited by AR.Venkatachalapathy. Translated by S. Thillainayagam.Orient Longman, 2006, pp. 151, Rs. 375.00

Sometimes, very rarely,there comes alonga book that has an intensely personaleffect. So c.athartic indeed is the impact

of Chandulal Dalal's life of Harilal Gandhi

that one is persuaded to compare it ratherlamely with the passion and grief of Greektragedy. The tragic developments in Harilal's

. life played' out in the shadows of theMahatma's superhuman moral growth belongto the realm of literature even as they stemfrom the aspirations and frustrations of themortal world. Not surprisingly, the publica-tion of this biography in 1977 was followed bya novel in Gujatati and two plays, all dealingwith fictionali~d accounts of Harilal Gandhi's

.life. Dinkar Joshi's novel Prakash no Padchhyo(Shadow of Light) published in 1988 pre-sented Harilal as a victim of his father's

experiments wi.th truth and his life as adefiance of Gandhi's authority. Based on thisnovel Ajit Dalvi wrote the Marathi play

.Gandhi viruddha Gandhi (Gandhi vs. Gandhi)

later adapted for the Gujarati and Hindi stage.While this play provided grist to the Gandhibashing quarter 'of public discourse in India, empathy and compassion, and to ensure thatwhich has found increaSing strength and the son was not used as arsenal to attack thelegitimacy with the expansion of the Hindutva .father. The present.translation of the biogra-base, Feroz Khan's Mahatma Vi. Gandhi for phy into English by Tridip Suhrud is in twothe English stage sensitively preSented Harilal's parts. The first part is the life as documentedlife. However, to the extent that the life and ' by Dalal with five appendices provided by'views of Harilal' Gandhi constitute an opposi-' him, and the second part is in the form oftion to the Mahatma, the novel and the plays twelve additional appendices provided by thefed into a critique of Gandhi as a failed father translator. Together the book contains thepresumably extendable by a leap of argument complete published, un-published and archivalinto the right wing Hindu fundamentalist, . material on Harilal Gandhi. The second part

'party, thesis of the failed Father of the Nation. generously completes the first: in this theTo .counter the rising tide of sensational' translated volume complements and completes

representations of Gandhi and his eldest born the original.Barilal, Neelam Parikh (the great-granddaugli-' Chandulal Dalal's biography was pub-ter of the former and granddaughter of .the '. ,.li.shed by the Sabarmati Ashram Preservationlatt~~) wrote a short biography of Harilal 'and Memorial Trust, Ahmedabad, the archivesGandhi titled Gandhiji nu Khovaye/u Dhizn of which he helped set up. The translator(The Lost Jewel) in 1998, incorporating informs us that Dalal was not an ashramite;Gandhiji's unpublished letters to Harilal as however he too was engaged in a quest; hIswell as the hitherto unpublished correspon- mission was to comprehend ahd chronicledence of Harilal with his wife and sister-in- Gandhiji~ life that resulted in a detailed andlaw. Parikh's motive was to present the exhaustive history of the saryagraha in Southrelationship between Gandhi and his son with Mrica. Dalal~s intimate knowledge of

TheBookReviewI September2007 I 5

Gandhiji's letters and papers forms the basisfor his life of Harilal, as do the very Gandhianqualities of veraciry, truthfulness and compas-sion. Each fact is carefully corroborated withavailable documents; periods for which nodocument is available are left without anyattempt at speculation or conjecture. Thedocumentary content of the narrative enablesthe reader to hear several voices expressingthemselves through letters and reminiscences;we recognize with poignancy the accents ofGandhi remonstrating with a recalcitrant son;Harilal's recklessly defiant public letter; hiswife Chanchi's plaintive tones, his youngestbrother Devadas's sorrowful voice and

Kasturba's grie£ There are others too: hischildren, an uncle, a sister-in-law and daugh-ter-in-law who all cared for him. In his ownfashion Harilal seems to have evoked devotion

from relatives and' friends. A vagrant rakish-ness and careless generosiry are his character-istic qualities in all accounts. Through theunadorned and spare sentences of the narra-

tive, the voices of .the three people most.involved in the tr:tgedy that was Harilal's life,come across to the reader with a deep pathos.The piercing incident at Katni station; when adrunk and destitute-looking Harilal appearedon the platform, feebly crying out 'Kasturba kijai' instead of the usual refrain 'MahatmaGandhi ki jai', hqlding out an orange for hismother and insisting that she eat it alone, is atestimony to the private world of anguish andsorrow that the three must have constantlyexperienced. While the differences betweenthem were always squarely placed in thepublic domain, the private sorrow of that.estrangement is trJthfuily arid compassionatelydocumented by the biographer. '

, Harilal's early youth, e~peciallyhis yearsin South Africa where he was an active

satyagrahi (even earning the sobriquet 'ChhoteGandhi') has documentary sources in terms ofnewspaper files and records, but his later lifeafter the estrangement from Gandhiji isobscure. Long gaps and absences mark .Harilal's life punctuated only by rare publiCannouncements or references: for instance his

disagreement with Gandhiji and the conver-sion to Islam, and newspaper reports of hisdebauchery. Dalal reconsttucts his later lifewith the help of a few surviving letters to/fromthe immediate and extended family and,published reminiscences. The reconstructiontherefore is not, only of the individual subjectbut of an extended family; of the Gandhi Cl.anas wellas the life of the community in the " , ,

various ashrams founded by Gandhiji.o Welearn therefore that in the ashram at Wardha

special provisions that were othetwise notpermitted were made for the short periodduring which it seemed Harilal might reformhimself. he was allowed a room for himself

probably because he needed to smoke. Thereis the slightest catch between gaiety andsorrow in Gandhiji's voice when he is re-

ported to have said to another ashramite:Give the room to him because you canlive even under a tree. You are not goingto leave me and go away but Harilal hasbeen running away ftom me. Now therehas been a change of heart and he hascome home. I do not want to harass him

on small matters. If he stays it would be abig achievement. Ba will be most satis-fied. Ba complains that I do not payenough attention to Harilal. But I cancare for him in only iny way. '

Harilal of course preferred to go his ownwayward direction. Perhaps, even as headmired his father and rebelled against hisdictum, he shared with him an equally fierceindependence of spirit and thought. Perhaps,as Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes in his wonder-ful review .article of this translation in the

EPW, they had more in common than bothwere ready to acknowledge: their constantreading of the Gita, love of independence andthe .distrust of authority, a certain nomadicnature that ensured that both never had settled

homes, their wanderings over the countty andthe year of their death.

Corning 30 years after the publication ofthe original, this translation of ChandulalDalal's biography of Harilal Gandhi surely fillsin several gaps in the existing scholarship onGandhi in English. In its meticulous andpainstaking research the biography is irre-placeable. Tridip Suhrud has done a com-mendable job of translating from Gujarati: thepdelity'to fact and a compassionate precisionthat one imagines are the hallmarks of theoriginal communicate themselves. A fewmistakes in language and syntax do occur.However, the present volume is more thanjust a translation. It is a sincere and lovingendeavour to truthfully make available to theEnglish reading public the record of a life. thatin turn sheds light from intimate perspectiveson one of the foremost me~ in human history.For this the translator deserves kudos.

In the Tracksof the Mahatma: The,Makingof a,Documentary is an eminently charmingwork that tantalizingly engages the reader. For

'one, it defies all norms of literary categoriza-tion. Neither a memoir nor a travelogue,though it has some fearures of both,",it could

0' be described as possessing a certain 0..

piCaresque quality, if that word was not' usedlargely in connection with the novelis,tic form.Anecdotal, episodic, obstinately non-linear"the book is densely informative 'arid full'of-akind of boyish zest. It reports fteely of thefamous and powerful with candidness andhumour; deeply reticent and m,odest, theauthor effaces himself from the narrative

allowing the process of making the documen-tary to occupy centre stage.

The author, A.K. Chettiar, is credited

with filming the very first documentary onGandhiji, and that at a time when the medium

6/ The Book Review / September 2007

The author, A.K. Chettiar, is credited

with filming the very first documen-

tary on Gandhiji, and that at a time

when the medium was a novelty and

the means very difficult. As the,

editor of the present volume

A.R.Venkatachalapathy rightly pbints

out, the making of the Gandhi docu-

mentary filltl is the stuff of legends, a

remarkable achievement considering

the times when it was made and the

effort involved.

was a novelty and the, means very difficult. As

the editor of the present volume

A.R. Venkatachalapathy rightly points out, the

, making of the Gandhi documentaryfilm is thes,tuff of legends, a remarkable achievementconsidering the times when it was made andthe <;ffortinvolved. On October 2, 1937, onboard a ship nom New York to Dublin,Chettiar dreamed of making a film on the lifeof the Mahatma. He was a Chennai based

journalist, 27 years old and had had trainingin photography in Tokyo and New York.Gandhiji was a powerful influence and hewanted to capture on film the greatness of theman. Back home in Chennai, he founded a

company and then went about collecting allthe existing material on Gandhi from a variety

, , of sources. He searched archives,studios,news agencies and pri-V~tecollections in Indiaand across Europe, South Mrica and America.Over two and a half years he travelled acrossthe world-war clouds loomed threateninglyoverhead~and collected 50,000 feet of

footage shot by a hundred different cameramen over three decades 'and four continents.This he edited iilto a 12, OOO-footdocumen-

tary in Bombay and released it in Chennai inAugust 1940 with Tamil commentary and afew months later, with Telegu commentary.Then the film went "into hiding in fear of theBritish government's reprisal, not however,before the author reportedly hid six copies indifferent places. On the eve of Independence,August 14, 1947, the film was screened inDelhi to an overflowing audience in Regal

. cinema. Among those present includedRajendra Prasad and several freedom fighterswho could see themselves on the screen. In

1948 it was made with Hindi commentaty aswell. While an offer was made in 1940 to

<;:hettiar by Twentieth 'Century Fox to take thefilm to America, the deal came to naught andit was only in1952-53 that he re-edited thefilm with English commentary in Hollywoodand screened it in New York. In the packed

\

theatre President Eisenho.wer and his family

were amo.ng tho.se who. were mo.ved by the

film. After this the do.cumentary seems to

have vanished. It was o.nly an abridged versio.no.f the film that was disco.vered in two. Ameri-

can universities recently. The o.riginal two.

ho.ur do.cumentary is untraceable; the o.nly

reliable acco.unt o.f it. exists in the presentvo.lume.

A.K. Chettiar was also. apro.lific writer

and tho.ugh the film finds mentio.n in so.me o.f

his writings, says Venkatachalapathy in hisexcellent intro.ductio.n, it was no.t until 1978

that Chettiar wrote a 10-pan series in the

jo.urnal Kumari Malar (that he fo.unded and

ran fo.r so.me 40 years) o.n the making o.f the

do.cumentary. The film and its maker have had

so.me co.verage in the press in recent years. In2002 Theo.do.re Bhaskaran, the film historian

o.fTamii dnema, drew attentio.n to.

A.K.Chettiar's Gandhi ,do.cumentary that hasbeen unacco.untably mi~sing from all theinstituted archives. In ~003 A.R.

Venkatachalapathy edit~d the text o.f the ten-pan series, Annal Adic~uvatil repro.ducing itfo.r the first time in book fo.rm. Co.nsiderable

tho.ught has go.ne into. *e editing, since the

edito.r inco.rpo.rates appro.priate excerpts fr9m

Chettiar's o.ther writings in the bo.dy o.f the

text and as appendices in o.rder to pro.vide as

much info.rmatio.n as po.ssible o.n the film. In

The Tracks of the Mahatma is the English

versio.n ably translated by S. Thillainayagam

who. manages to accurately captUre theso.uthern cultural flavo.urand nuances o.f the

text, witho.ut ho.wever sacrificing English

grammar and language. Co.nsider the fo.llo.wing

paragraph that wo.nderr&llytransfers the '

inward chuckle o.f the ~riginal:

The beginning o.f 1940. We were very

busy editing the film o.n G:1Jldhiji. We

who. had been staying in a ho.tel ~til

then, rented the ground flo.o.r o.f a new

terraced building o.n Co.ll~ge Ro.adin

MatUnga, Bo.mbay. The rent was fo.rty

rupees a mo.nth. The landlo.rd did no.t live

in the city and his friend who. lived in the

same street co.llected the rent. We so.ught

him o.ut evety mo.nth to hand o.ver therent. No.t o.nce did he ask fo.r it. ,

There was a no. table, chair Dr co.t in

Coming 30 years after the publi-

cation of the original, this translation

of Chandulal Dalal's biography of

Harilal Gandhi surely fills in several,

gaps in the existing scholarship on

Gandhi in English. In its meticulous

and painstaking research the

biography is irreplaceable.

the, ho.use. There was but o.ne rickety

fo.lding chair, and even that belo.nged to.the landlo.rd. It was reserved fo.r visitors

who wo.re tro.users.

The bo.o.k is full o.f such arresting vi-

gnettes. Eschewing a narrative that wo.uld

marshal the experiences into. an o.rganized and

chro.no.lo.gical who.le, Chettiar pro.ceeds with

direct frankness and simplicity to. reco.unt the

little experiences to.gether with the big.

Po.rtraits o.f such impo.rtant figures such as

Rajaji and Radhakrishnan, Madan Mo.han

Malviya and Kripalani emerge with a few

simple and sharp strokes, as do. the perso.nali-

ties o.f Po.lak and Kallenbach. In the predo.mi-

nantly male wo.rld o.f the bo.o.k, Madame

Mo.ntesso.ri makes an unfo.rgettable appear-

ance as do.es the filming o.f tho.usands o.f

village wo.men spinning o.n the charkha in

rural Tamil Nadu. Accounts o.f fuming

Ro.main Ro.lland in the French co.untryside,

the scouting fo.r fo.o.tage in fascist Italy, the

filming o.fTo.lstoy Farm in So.uth Mrica with

Kallenbach sho.uldering the tripo.d are narrated

with a host o.f teeming details abo.ut stUdio.s,

travel, prices, budgets and companies in theUSA and Britain.

Finally the Mahatma. The subject o.f the

do.cumentary and therefo.re o.f the bo.o.k,

Gandhi is the spirit that drives the mo.mentum

o.f the quest;, he is ho.wever se~n fro.m adistance, from behind the lens o.f the camera

as it were. The flurry o.f making the do.cumen-

tary is the fo.regro.und o.f the bo.o.k and the still

unchanging pivo.tal po.int is the Mahatma.Chettiar's reverence fo.r the Mahatma and his

principles, and his unquestio.ned and exem-

plary practice o.f the same principles are the

basis o.f the do.cumentary. The very name

Gandhi, he finds, o.pens do.o.rs fo.r him

wherever he go.es. Ho.wever, he never meets

Gandhi face to face, never ever wishing to

thrust himself fo.rward, even tho.ugh their

small unit camps at Wai-dha to film the

activities o.f the ashram. A telling evidence of

the autho.r's self-effacement. When he is given

letters addressed to. Gandhiji by his fo.rmer

asso.ciates' in -So.uth Mrica, Chettiar prefers to.

po.st them 'rather than incur questio.ns fro.m ,

the Mahatma abo.ut the do.cumentary, even if

it means giving up a legitimate chance to. meet

and talk to. him: Also. typical is the clo.se Df the

bo..ok, when the do.cumentary maker havihghad his film screened in New Yo.rk fo.r the Presi-

dent o.f the USA and o.ther impo.nant dignitar-

ies, spends the night o.n a so.fa in the airpo.rt

,since 'there is no. mo.ney fo.r a ho.tel ro.o.m."

, In the Tracks of the Mahatma is a superb

bo.o.k; it o.ught to. be o.n the 'must-read' list o.f

anyo.ne interested in Gandhi, Dr in film

histo.ry, Dr in travelo.gues and yarns. .

Rohini Mokashi-Punekar teaches at the depart-

ment o.f Humanities and So.cial Sciences, Indian

Institute o.f Techno.logy, Guwahati.

The Book Review / September 2007 /7