Book Notes- Gandhi Today(1987) by Mark Shepard.

I’d like to open with this quote from a recent New York Times op-ed for no particular reason. 

From the New York Times :
Democratically elected leaders cannot ignore public skepticism, but they should not surrender to it when they know better.

I just finished reading the book Gandhi today : a report on Mahatma Gandhi's successors / by Mark Shepard and decide to write a little summary and notes to self.

The books is a treat for someone who wonders what happened to the mass movement that Gandhi shaped up during the Independence struggle.  The history we read in schools offer no help here, it is as if the Gandhian’s suddenly wrapped up and left with the Britishers.  There were some claims about “Gandhigiri” becoming cool again after release of a Bollywood movie “Lage Raho Munna Bhai”. The claims look very silly after reading the book, for, “Gandhigiri” never went out of style, its thrived, evolved and often triumphed.  As Professor Nagler would say, it worked and it “worked”.

The book is mostly a short biographical accounts of people the author studied during his India trip.  Other Gandhian workers like MLK etc are not mentioned. The list is in no way complete.

Vinoba Bhave aka “The Walking Saint”:  One thing that Vinoba is most remembered for  (besides his walking statistics) is that he was the architect of the famous Bhoodan(land gift) movement.  Because its currently in news, I found it quite interesting that Telangana region was the origin of Bhoodan movement.  In those days(1951) too it was the scene of armed insurrection, with the state repression worse than the guerrillas’.  Vinoba was already well known among villagers and he was popular as the spiritual inheritor of Gandhi.  During a village assembly as he tried to help a group of Harijans he asked if anyone could give them some land.  A well to do farmer offered 100 acres to which the Harijans responded that they only needed 80 acres. This is when Vinoba realised that the solution was actually much simpler than he expected it to be, he decided to walk through the region and collect land gifts for the landless.  He calculated that he needed a fifth of the held land for the poor and he would call himself the “fifth son” of the landlord and ask for his share.  The book examines many reasons why he received donations including fear of communist take over, status/prestige or merely the chance to gain some “spiritual merit”.  However some rich were truly affected too.  Having heard about this phenomenon from Krishnammal and David Albert I didn’t find it all that unusual.

Bhoodan was later expanded into Gramdan where more and more land around a village was merged under the ownership of a village council.  Gramdan later lead to envisioning of Bihardan. 

Did Bhoodan work?  The book offers some good statistics and reasoning for its apparent lack of targeted success of 50 million acres.  Taking the rollbacks into account the movement was still able to redistribute 1.5 million acres of land which was far more than the “socialist” India’s land reform program.  It was also able to offer a chance to demonstrate an alternative village model.  It also allowed for creation of several pockets where the Gandhian workers would later carry out long term programs. 

Jayaprakah Narayana (JP):  During his early years(1921) JP dropped out of the college to participate in Gandhi’s call for non cooperation.  But later he decided to resume his studies, so he jumped into a cargo ship an arrived in US to study in UC Berkley (and various other universities) for next seven years.  It was in US he came in contact with communist students and professors and by the the time he landed in India in 1929 he was a confirmed Marxist.  He openely criticized Gandhi’s non violent methods feeling that it was delaying India’s independence.  He even tried to organize armed resistance during the WWII years.  But around the time of India’s independence he had started questioning the notion of violence.  He grew disillusioned with the direction communism took place in USSR.  Watching the Hindu-Muslim riots in horror he started questioning if violence could ever bring the kind of society he yearned for.   Following this he realigned himself with the Gandhians and declining the offer from Nehru to join the cabinet as his lieutenant he offered himself to the task for Bhoodan as the first Jivandan (life gift)

The book follows his years of work for Bhoodan and then later as he grew vocal against the Indira Gandhi government.   At times he led 100K strong (and non violent) crowd protesting against the corruption, lack of employment, education etc.  Many times these protestors were fired at, many died but the protests essentially remained non violent (perhaps not in the purest sense).  The lack of Gandhian purity caused Vinoba Bhave to oppose some of these actions.

It then covers JP’s work during the 18 months of imposed Emergency in which Indira Gandhi’s government was able to tear apart the (MK) Gandhian network.  JP went down fighting valiantly with failed kidneys and frequent requirement of blood purification.

to be continued….