Gandhi as a Journalist

By V.N. Narayanan

As a journalist, Gandhi could have taught a few lessons in mass communication. An effective communicator, fearless and eloquent with his words, he reached out to millions of people and convinced them of his cause

Mahatma Gandhi was the most effective mass medium of the 20th century. His journalism belonged to an era when there was neither radio nor television. Such was the power of his 'soul communication' that whatever he said and wrote reached the farthest corners of this country within days and to the entire world thereon. 

Mahatma Gandhi, in a journalistic career spanning nearly four decades, edited six journals. None, including Harijan and Navajivan, could boast a circulation of more than a few thousand copies. But such was Gandhi's grasp of the basics of mass communication that he ensured that his daily "outpourings of heart and soul" reached all.

If one were to ask the question as to who came first-Gandhi-the-freedom-fighter or Gandhi-the-media-crusader-the truth would be that Gandhi-the-journalist pre-dated Gandhi the freedom fighter by at least 20 years.

In less than a few months' stay in South Africa, Gandhi realized the need to become a journalist to fight for the rights of the Indian community. And he brought the highest qualities the profession could boast of-courage in the face of adversity, unswerving adherence to truth, pursuit of public causes, and objectivity in presentation. 

His letters to the editors of South African dailies are a lesson to all journalists on how to fight injustice in a country where the laws are loaded against one section of the people, without giving offence to the rulers themselves. 

A telling example of this trait was his letter dated October 25, 1894 to the Times of Natal, which carried a contemptuously worded editorial titled, 'Rammysammy'. 

Gandhi wrote: "You would not allow the Indian or the native the precious privilege (of voting) under any circumstances, because they have a dark skin. You would look the exterior only. So long as the skin is white it would not matter to you whether it conceals beneath it poison or nectar. To you the lip-prayer of the Pharisee, because he is one, is more acceptable than the sincere repentance of the publican, and this, I presume, you would call Christanity"

Gandhi adds: "You may; it is not Christ's. Sir, may I venture to offer a suggestion? Will you re-read your New Testament? Will you ponder over your attitude towards the coloured population of the Colony? Will you then say you can reconcile it with the Bible teachings or the best British traditions? If you have washed your hands clean of both Christ and the British tradition, I can have nothing to say; I gladly withdraw what I have written. Only, it will then be a sad day for British and for India if you have many followers."

After 10 years of relentless crusade, Gandhi realised that the twin tasks of mobilizing public opinion and influencing official decisions required a regular newspaper. Thus was born Indian Opinion in June 1903. He was clear about the nature and content of his newspaper. It would not carry any advertisements nor try to make money. Instead, he sought subscribers who would give donations. It was while writing in Indian Opinion that Gandhi stumbled on the concept of satyagraha. Writing on satyagraha in South Africa, he said: "Indian Opinion was certainly a most useful and potent weapon in our struggle."  The journal was to Gandhi "a mirror of his own life". In My Experiments with Truth, he wrote: "Week after week I poured out my soul in its columns and expounded the principles and practice of satyagraha as I understood it. I cannot recall a word in these articles set down without thought or deliberation or a word of conscious exaggeration, or anything merely to please. Indeed, the journal became for me a training in self-restraint and for friends a medium through which to keep in touch with my thoughts." Indian Opinion lasted for 11 years. It more or less forced the South African provincial regimes to modify their repressive laws against Indians. One day Gandhi got a call from Bihar where the Indigo farmers of Champaran were subjected to the same kind of indignity and exploitation as the indentured labourers in South Africa. He promptly went there and investigated the issues, and produced a report that would be the envy of the greatest investigative journalist anywhere in the world. After Champaran it was only a matter of time before the Mahatma took to journalism as his most potent weapon of satyagraha. As coincidence would have it, Gandhi was persuaded to take over the editorship of Young India. Simultaneously, he started to edit and write in Navajivan, then a Gujarati monthly.  Gandhi's writings in it were translated and published in all the Indian language newspapers. Later Navajivan was published in Hindi, as Gandhi was convinced that Hindi would be the national language of free India.  The Mahatma's crusade for the repeal of the Press Act of 1910 was a unique piece of journalism. He was telling the rulers that it was in the best interests of the government to repeal the law.

Issue after issue of Young India and Navajivan carried samples of the Mahatma's journalistic genius which blended seemingly earnest appeals to the government to do what was "just and righteous". In South Africa his writings often made the white racists look ridiculous: "The white barber refused to cut my black hair", extending colour prejudice to not only non-Christian skin but non-Christian hair as well. In March 1922, Gandhi was charged with spreading disaffection by writing seditious articles in Young India.  In his own inimitable manner Gandhi said: "I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a government, which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system." The burden of leading a nation towards freedom and the contingency of having to face trials followed by jail terms, did not stem the flow of writings from Gandhi's pen. There was not a day when he was not writing on some issue or the other in Young India and Navajivan.  To these he added Harijan, Harijan Sevak, and Harijan Bandu, which became the Mahatma's potent media for carrying his message to the weakest sections of India. Young India and Navajivan folded up in January 1932 when Gandhi was imprisoned for a long spell.  Between 1933 and 1940, Harijan (English), Harijan Bandu (Gujarati) and Harijan Sevak (Hindi) became the Mahatma's voice to the people of India. These newspapers found the Mahatma concentrating on social and economic problems. Caste disparities and such instruments of social deprivation as untouchablity and ostracisation were the targets of the Mahatma's crusade. Gandhi's assessment of the newspapers of the day was not complimentary. He found them commercial, afraid of the government and not truthful in reporting. His last word on the Indian newspapers came at a prayer meeting in Delhi on June 19, 1946. He said: "If I were appointed dictator for a day in the place of the Viceroy, I would stop all newspapers." He paused and added with a mischievous wink: "With the exception of Harijan, of course."

http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/masters/mahatma-gandhi/journalist.asp

Gandhi's foresight in nature conservation and model of development

Gandhi was ahead of rest of the world by nearly half a century in realizing that the extreme consumerist development models of west can destroy nature as well as ourselves. Scientists today acknowledge that view after decades of research. Following article from BBC is an example of relevance of Gandhi's thoughts in today's world on how the models of development should respect nature.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7621507.stm

This article begins by: "In 1928, Mahatma Gandhi observed: "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West.

"The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (the UK) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."

More than half a century before anyone had even considered the term "sustainable development", Mahatma Gandhi warned of the dangers facing a rapidly developing world.

Almost 80 years later, the population of India has quadrupled, and the US - the world's greatest over-consumer - has a population of 300 million.

The risks prophesised by Gandhi have started to come true."

To these I would like to add another apt quote of Gandhi. "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."

International Day For Non- Violence

And then Gandhi came

Excerpts from Jawaharlal Nehru's "The Discovery of India".
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....World War I ended at last, and the peace, instead of bringing us relief and progress,
brought us repressive legislation and martial law in the Punjab. A bitter sense of humiliation and a pssionate anger filled our people. All the unending talk of constitutional reform and Indianization of the services was a mockery and an insult when the manhood of our country was being crushed and the inexorable and continuous process of exploitation was deepening our poverty and sapping our vitality. We had become a derelict nation.

Yet what could we do,how change this vicious process?We seemed to be helpless in thegrip of some all-powerful monster;our limbs were paralysed,our minds deadened. The peasantry were servile and fear-ridden; the industrial workers were no better. The middle classes,the intelligentsia,who might have been beacon-lights in the enveloping darkness,were themselves submerged in this all-pervading gloom. In some ways their condition was even more pitiful than that of the peasantry. Large numbers of them,diclassi intellectuals,cut off from the land and incapable of any kind of manual or technical work,joined the swelling army of the unemployed,and helpless,hopeless,sank ever deeper into the morass. A few successful lawyers or doctors or engineers or clerks made little difference to the mass. The peasant starved, yet centuries of an unequal struggle against,his environment had taught him to endure,and even in poverty and starvation he had a certain calm dignity,a feeling of submission to an all-powerful fate. Not so the middle classes, more especially the new petty bourgeoisie, who had no such background. Incompletely developed and frustrated, they did not know where to look,for neither the old nor the new offered them any hope. There was no adjustment to social purpose,no satisfaction of doing something worthwhile,even though suffering came in its train. Custom-ridden,they were born old,yet they were without the old culture. Modern thought attracted them, but they lacked its inner content, the modern social and scientific consciousness. Some tried to cling tenaciously to the dead forms of the past,seeking relief from present misery in them. But there could be no relief there,for,as Tagore has said,we must not nourish in our being what is dead, for the dead is deathdealing. Others made themselves pale and ineffectual copies of the west. So,like derelicts,frantically seeking some foothold of security for body and mind and finding none,they floated aimlessly in the murky waters of Indian life.

What could we do? How could we pull India out of this quagmire of poverty and defeatism which sucked her in? Not for a few years of excitement and agony and
suspense, but for long generations our people had offered their ‘blood and toil, tears and sweat.’ And this process had eaten its way deep into the body and soul of India, poisoning every aspect of our corporate life, like that fell disease which consumes the tissues of the lungs and kill slowly but inevitably. Sometimes we thought that some
swifter and more obvious process, resembling cholera or the bubonic plague, would have been better; but that was a passing thought, for adventurism leads nowhere, and the quack treatment of deep-seated diseases does not yield results.

And then Gandhi came. He was like a powerful current of fresh air that made us stretch ourselves and take deep breaths; like a beam of light that pierced the darkness and removed the scales from our eyes; like a whirlwind that upset many things, but most of all the working of people’s minds. He did not descend from the top; he seemed to emerge from the millions of India, speaking their language and incessantly drawing attention to them and their appalling condition. Get off the backs of these peasants and workers, he told us, all you who live by their exploitation; get rid of the system that produces this poverty and misery. Political freedom took new shape then and adquired a new content. Much that he said we only partially accepted or sometimes did not accept at all. But all this was secondary. The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view. The greatest gift for an individual or a nation, so we had been told in our ancient books, was abhaya (fearlessness), not merely bodily courage but the absence of fear from the mind. Janaka and Yajnavalka had said, at the dawn of our history, that it was the function of the leaders of a people to make them fearless. But the dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear- pervasive, oppressing, strangling fear; fear of the army, the police, the widespread secret service; fear of the official class; fear of laws meant to suppress and of prison; fear of the landlord’s agent; fear of the moneylender; fear of unemployment and starvation, which were always on the threshold. It was against this all-pervading fear that Gandhi’s quiet and determined voice was raised: But not afraid. Was it so simple as all that? Not quite. And yet fear builds its phantoms which are more fearsome that reality itself, and reality, when calmly analysed and its consequences willingly accepted, loses much of its terror.

So, suddenly, as it were, that black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders, not wholly of course, but to an amazing degree. As fear is close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness. The Indian people did not become such more truthful than they were, nor did they change their essential nature overnight; nevertheless a seachange was visible as the need for falsehood and furtive behaviour lessened. It was a psychological change, almost as if some expert in psycho-analytical methods had probed deep into the patient’s past, found out the origins of his complexes, exposed them to his view, and thus rid him of that burden.

There was the psychological reaction also, a feeling of shame at our long submission to
an alien rule that had degraded and humiliated us, and a desire to submit no longer whatever the consequences might be.

We did not grow much more truthful perhaps than we had been previously, but Gandhi
was always there as a symbol of uncompromising truth to pull us up and shame us into
truth. What is truth? I do not know for certain, and perhaps our truths are relative and
absolute truth is beyond us. Different persons may and do take different views of truth, and each individual is powerfully influenced by his own background, training, and
impulses. So also Gandhi. But truth is at least for an individual what he himself feels and knows to be true. According to this definition I do not know of any person who holds to the truth as Gandhi does. That is a dangerous quality in a politician, for the speaks out his mind and even lets the public see its changing phases.

Gandhi influenced millions of people in India in varying degrees. Some changed the whole texture of their lives, others were only partly affected, or the effect wore off; and yet not quite, for some part of it could not be wholly shaken off. Different people reacted differently and each will give his own answer to this question.

....Gandhi for the first time entered the Congress organization and immediately brought about a complete change in its constitution. He made it democratic and a mass
organization. Democratic it had been previously also but it had so far been limited in
franchise and restricted to the upper classes. Now the peasants rolled in and, in its new garb, it began to assume the look of a vast agrarian organization with a strong sprinkling of the middle classes. This agrarian character was to grow. Industrial workers also came in but as individuals and not in their separate organized capacity.

Action was to be the basis and, objective of this organization, action based on peaceful methods. Thus far the alternative had been just talking and passing resolutions, or terroristic activity. Both of these were set aside and terrorism was especially condemned as opposed to the basic policy of the Congress. A new technique of action was evolved which, though perfectly peaceful, yet implied non-submission to what was considered wrong and, as a consequence, a willing acceptance of the pain and suffering involved in this. Gandhi was an odd kind of pacifist, for he was an activist full of dynamic energy. There was no submission in his to fate or anything that he considered evil; he was full of resistance, though this was peaceful and courteous.

The call of action was two-fold. There was, of course, the action involved in challenging
and resisting foreign rule; There was also the action which led us to fight our own social evils. Apart from the fundamental objective of the Congress- the freedom of India - and the method of peaceful action, the principal planks of the Congress were national unity, which involved the solution of the minority problems, and the raising of the depressed classes and the ending of the curse of untouchability.

Realizing that the main props of British rule were fear, prestige, the co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the people, and certain classes whose vested interests were centred in British rule, Gandhi attacked these foundations. Titles were to be given up and though the title-holders responded to this only in small measure, the popular espect for these British-given titles disappeared and they became symbols of degradation. New standards and values were set up and the pomp and splendour of the viceregal court and the princes, which used to impress so much, suddenly appeared supremely ridiculous and vulgar and rather shameful, surrounded as they were by the poverty and misery of the people. Rich men were not so anxious to flaunt their riches; outwardly at least many of them adopted simpler ways, and in their dress, became almost indistinguishable from humbler folk.

The older leaders of the Congress., bred in a different and more quiescent tradition, did not take easily to these new ways and were disturbed by the upsurge of the masses. Yet so powerful was the wave of feeling and sentiment that swept through the country, that some of this intoxication filled them also. A very few fell away and among them was Mr. M. A. Jinnah. He left the Congress not because of any difference of opinion on the Hindu-Moslem question but because he could not adapt himself to the new and more advanced ideology, and even more so because he disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people, talking in Hindustani, who filled the Congress. His idea of politics was of a superior variety, more suited to the legislative chamber or to a committee-room. For some years he felt completely out of the picture and even decided to leave India for good. He settled down in England and spent several years there.

It is said, and I think with truth, that the Indian habit of mind is essentially one of quietism. Perhaps old races develop that attitude to life; a long tradition of philosophy
also leads to it and yet Gandhi, a typical product of India, represents the very antithesis of quietism. He has been a demon of energy and action, a hustler, and a man who not only drives himself but drives other. He has done more than anyone I know to fight and change the quietism of the Indian people.

He sent us to the villages, and the countryside hummed with the activity of innumerable messengers of the new gospel of action. The peasant was shaken up and he began to emerge from his quiescent shell. The effect on us was different but equally far-reaching, for we saw, for the first time as it were, the villager in the intimacy of his mud-hut, and with the stark shadow of hunger always pursuing him. We learnt our Indian economics more from these visits than from books and learned discourses. The emotional experience we had already undergone was emphasized and confirmed and henceforward there could be no going back for us to our old life or our old standards, howsoever much our views might change subsequently.

Gandhi held strong views on economic, social, and other matters. He did not try to impose all of these on the Congress, though he continued to develop his ideas, and
sometimes in the process varied them, through his writings. But some he tried to push
into the Congress. He proceeded cautiously for he wanted to carry the people with him. Sometimes he went too far for the Congress and had to retrace his steps. Not many accepted his views in their entirety; some disagreed with that fundamental outlook. But many accepted them in the modified form in which they came to the Congress as being suited to the circumstances then existing. In two respects the background of his thought had a vague but considerable influence; the fundamental test of everything was how far it benefited the masses, and the means were always important and could not be ignored even though the end in view was right, for the means governed the end and varied it.

Gandhi was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the inner-most depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual. It was basically concerned with his firm belief in the moral law, which he calls the law of truth or love. Truth and non-violence appear to him to be the same thing or different aspects of one and the same thing, and he uses these words almost interchangeably. Claiming to understand the spirit of Hinduism, he rejects every text or practice which does not fit in with his idealist interpretation of what it should be, calling it an interpolation or a subsequent accretion. ‘I decline to be a salve’, he has said, ‘to precedents or practice I cannot understand or defend on a moral basis.’ And so in practice he is singularly free to take the path of his choice, to change and adapt himself, to develop his philosophy of life and action, subject only to the over-riding consideration of the moral law as he conceives this to be. Whether that philosophy is right or wrong, may be argued, but he insists on applying the same fundamental yard-stick to everything, and himself especially. In politics, as in other aspects of life, this creates difficulties for the average person, and often misunderstanding. But no difficulty makes him swerve from the straight line of his choosing, though within limits he is continually adapting himself to a changing situation. Every reform that he suggests, every advice that he gives to others, he straightway applies to himself. He is always beginning with himself and his words and actions fit into each other like a glove on the hand. And so, whatever happens, he never loses his integrity and there is always an organic completeness about his life and work. Even in his apparent failures he has seemed to grow in stature.

What was his idea of India which he was setting out to mould according to his own wishes and ideals? ‘I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, and India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people, an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony.... There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs...... Women will enjoy the same right as men.... This is the India of my dreams.’ Proud of his Hindu inheritance as he was, he tried to give to Hinduism a kind of universal attire and included all religions within the fold of truth. He refused to narrow his cultural inheritance.

‘Indian culture,’ he wrote, ‘is neither Hindu, Islamic, nor any other, wholly. It is a fusion
of all.’ Again he said: ‘I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other peoples’ houses as an interloper, a beggar, or a slave.’ Influenced by modern thought currents, he never let go of his roots and clung to them tenaciously.

And so he set about to restore the spiritual unity of the people and to break the barrierbetween the small westernized group at the top and the masses, to discover the living elements in the old roots and to build upon them, to waken these masses out of their stupor and static condition and make them dynamic. In his single-track and yet manysided nature the dominating impression that one gathered was his identification with the masses, a community of spirit with them, an amazing sense of unity with the dispossessed and poverty-stricken not only of India but of the world. Even religion, as everything else, took second place to his passion to raise these submerged people. ‘A semi-starved nation can have neither religion, nor art nor organization.’ Whatever can be useful to starving millions is beautiful to my mind. Let us give to-day first the vital things of life, and all the graces and ornaments of life will follow...... I want art and literature that can speak to millions.’ These unhappy dispossessed millions haunted him and everything seemed to revolve round them. ‘For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance.’ His ambition, he said, was ‘to wipe every tear from every eye.’

It is not surprising that this astonishingly vital man, full of self-confidence and an unusual kind of power, standing for equality and freedom for each individual, but measuring all this in terms of the poorest, fascinated the masses of India and attracted them like a magnet. He seemed to them to link up the past with the future and to make the dismal present appear just as a stepping-stone to that future of life and hope. And not the masses only but intellectuals and others also, though their minds were often troubled and confused and the change-over for them from the habits of a lifetime was more difficult. Thus he effected a vast psychological revolution not only among those who followed his lead but also among his opponents and those many neutrals who could not make up their minds what to think and what to do.