Jawaharlal Nehru visited the town in 1928 and ignited the spark of nationalism. Swami Ananda Theerthan had established an ashram at Payyanur for students from the weaker sections of society, probably enthused by the recognition of the town as the centre of the Nationalist Movement.Įven prior to Gandhi’s visit in 1934, Payyanur had been identified as an active centre of the movement. Many of them had seen him in close proximity-not through traveling thousands of miles-but in Payyanur town itself when he came for a “personal visit” to meet his friend and disciple Swami Ananda Theerthan, a pioneer in the movement against caste-based prejudices and atrocities. With trembling hands, he rummaged through the dusty pile of books and produced the autobiography of Gandhi with a toothless smile comparable to Gandhi himself.ĭuring my childhood in Payyanur, a small town in north Kerala, I had many opportunities to interact with senior citizens who shared, with glittering eyes, their experience of seeing Gandhi. His reaction was, “Where is Rajghat?” On the other hand, the old man at the Sarvodaya book stall at Ahmedabad railway station (there used to be one there) got excited when I asked for the books on Gandhi.
Modest eyes hindi driver#
He was around but he was invisible.” A few years ago at Delhi airport, I got into a taxi and told the driver to take me to Rajghat. We saw his face in frames on the walls of government offices and on the rupee bills.
Rajkumar Hirani, the director of Lage Raho Munna Bhai, the popular Hindi film which made Gandhi and “Gandhigiri” popular and cool again, makes a valid point in “When I was growing, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was just another chapter in our school history books that we had to learn by rote for exams. In India, Gandhi is somehow dragged into political controversies and debates on the relevance of Satyagraha, primarily because the creation of the icon of Gandhi which was not based on the philosophy of Gandhi.
It would have filled any other young man with hate and anger, but not Gandhiji.” Gandhi paved the way for racial emancipation and economic liberation through non-violent ways, initiating the Satyagraha in Durban. All this happened within a fortnight of his arrival and must have been overwhelming for a young man alone in a strange country.
Ela Gandhi writes in a book which celebrates 150 years of Gandhi: “His initial encounters with racial prejudice and discrimination affected him tremendously-being treated rudely when he refused to take his turban off in the South African court being thrown out of the train on the Pietermaritzburg platform because he refused to move to a van compartment being assaulted because he refused to sit on the footboard of the coach being refused overnight accommodation at a hotel simply because he was not white. As a young immigrant, he endured racism in South Africa and withstood it merely with his faith in the power of truth and love. ‘Satyagraha’ or the ‘truth-force’ was sharpened in South Africa along with the successful experimentation of the Gandhian philosophy of life. As we know, the tools of Gandhi’s struggle against prejudices were based on Indian theories of ‘ahimsa’ or ‘non-violence’.
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