HVK Archives: To reform it you have to be saturated with our tradition
To reform it you have to be saturated with our tradition - The Observer
Arun Shourie
()
3 January 1997
Title : To reform it you have to be saturated with our tradition
Author : Arun Shourie
Publication : The Observer
Date : January 3, 1997
It is seldom that one is moved to tears these days, so inured have we
become to the state of affairs. But that is literally what happened to me
the other day. I had long wanted to visit the Yeravda jail in Pune - Gandhiji
had been kept in it, it was here that he had undertaken a fast unto death to
get the British Cabinet to take back the 'Communal Award', the device by
which they had sought to break the Scheduled Castes from Hindu society by
instituting the same separate electorates for them that had successfully
driven a permanent wedge between Hindus and Muslims.
I had read the accounts of that fast many times over, of how Gandhiji had
lain in the open under a tree in the prison yard, how Gurudev Tagore had
journeyed all the way from Shantiniketan to bless his struggle, how when he
saw Gandhiji lying on the cot under the tree he had buried his head on his
chest and stood drooped like that for a long while, how the other leaders of
Scheduled Castes had striven to get Ambedkar to give up championing the
British decision and come to terms with Gandhiji how that pressure and the
tidal wave of outrage which had swept the country had left Ambedkar no option
but to stop hailing the British maneuver, how Gandhiji had succeeded in
getting the British to cancel their Award, and simultaneously the orthodox to
open temples to Harijans....
I had also read Gandhiji's writings of the period, From Yeravda Mandir, he
had entitled them.
So I had wanted for long to visit the yard. The request had been put to Mr
Mahadev Govind Narvane, the Inspector General of Prisons. He not only granted
the permission readily, he told my friend that he would come along too.
It was so gratifying to see the yard immaculately clean. The rooms in which
these giants were kept are tiny, and bare as can be, and have been maintained
as they were when they held those patriots. The tree is there still: it is a
luxuriant tree, the original trunk is actually five trunks now, they spread
in all directions.
Were such a place in Japan, lakhs and lakhs of school children would be
making the pilgrimage to it every year. But here scarcely any of our
children would know of its existence. That is the heritage of fifty years of
Macaulayite-cum-Marxist education.
Because of the liberality of the Inspector General I was able to accompany
him as he toured the entire prison. I have not seen a public place in India
that is as clean as this enormous complex.
Nor one which is as suffused with a sense of purpose - everyone was engaged
in work: making yarn, stitching uniforms, making towels, durries, curtains,
furniture, moulding utensils, cooking the enormous quantities of food that
are required, and that with the help of specially designed ingenious machines
and fabricating those machines.
We went to the open fields where prisoners have planted grain and vegetables,
where they have transformed a large pit into a fish farm, where they are now
engaged in developing a large area for water storage.... We went to a large
complex of meeting and dining halls that the prisoners had constructed, a
large hall for wedding receptions that is now rented out, an excellent
playing field.... We went to the women's ward again tailoring, preparing
packets of spices....
We went to see the library of the prison. Narvane had written to publishers
to donate books for the library. They responded generously, and at once. The
library now has over 12,000 volumes.
I was to learn later that this vast transformation had been brought about by
none, other than the very IG who had allowed me to roam around the place.
Four years ago, the prison department of Maharashtra was like its
counterparts elsewhere, a sick unit so to say. This year it is turning in a
profit of over Rupees 20 crore.
Where feuds and fisticuffs had been common, there is accord and comradeship.
In spite of several detenus being put in 'open prisons' - on the way to the
jail, we had stopped to see a number of them who were working in the open
compound in one of the vehicle washing units which have been started by the
jail in the city there has been hardly any instance of a prisoner trying to
run away. On the contrary, their wages have been increased, and several of
them now send money-orders home.
Narvane himself turned out to be an unusual person. He is an author, for one:
his rendering of the Gita into Marathi verse has sold over 80,000 copies.
And of course his approach to prison administration is completely different.
The prisoner is not to be seen as criminal Gandhiji said, Narvane told me,
but as a patient.... There was Gandhiji again. Towards the end we had gone to
the theatre that has been set up at Yeravda as elsewhere in Maharashtra
prisons over the last four years.
Prisoners sang several bhajans. Hearing them sing what had so long been
Gandhiji's favourite, Vaishnay jan te taine kahiye pir parayi jaane re....,
just a few yards from where six decades ago Gandhiji had staked his very life
to save our society from being torn asunder, tears welled up in my eyes and
my voice failed me.
That is a thing that strikes me repeatedly as I travel around: wherever good
work is going on, the person who is the fount of it is talking Gandhiji - he
has made some sentence of Gandhiji his own, he is trying to live Gandhiji.
An officer like Narvane, "Gandhiji used to say, 'Look upon the prisoner not
as a criminal but a patient'. "
A doctor who could be earning lakhs but has chosen to toil in a government
hospital, "Gandhiji used to say, 'It is not the patient who is to be grateful
to us; we have to be grateful to him for giving us the opportunity to serve
him'." An environmentalist high in the Himalayas, "Gandhiji used to say,
'There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for everyone's
greed'.
And Gandhiji is but the latest link in a long chain. Every other page Anna
Hazare recalls something Sant Jnaneshwar said, something Sant Tukaram said,
something Sant Eknath said.
He recalls a verse of Kabir this moment, of the Gita the next, and of course
all the time he is trying to live up to things that Swami Vivekananda taught.
Each chapter of his slender book ends with a sentence from the Gram Gita of
Sant Tukadoji. The way they dedicated their all to revive our society is a
constant inspiration for him. The sayings and rules of thumb in which they
crystalised their experience are guides for him.
That even such great and saintly persons had to undergo such extreme
hardships is a buoy that sustains him, as it does everyone doing comparable
work.
Now, there are three separate things to learn. These are the persons who are
beacons for Hazare and other workers. What a comment it is on the way we have
been brought up, on our entire education system, that most of us today would
not be able to even place so many of these sages. Second, with such workers
these verses and teachings are not recalled by way of learning, but of life:
they are the very breath of Hazare, and of persons like him.
And when Hazare recalls the same sentence, the effect it creates is
altogether different from the effect that occurs when ordinary persons like
us recite it. We are just reciting what we have read somewhere, but these
people are recalling something which they have translated into their life, an
idea the truth of which their own life, their own experience in serving our
country has confirmed to them. When a politician recalls the same sentence,
it signals the people that the man is a hypocrite.
Just as Gandhiji is but a link in the long chain of lamps which light the way
of workers like Hazare, the reverence for these saints and sages is itself
but a manifestation, an example. The key to the make up of such persons, as
the key to the being of persons like Gandhiji himself is that they are
saturated with, they are immersed in, totally coloured in our tradition,
specifically our religion.
Their language, their parables, their similes, the rules they enunciate are
all derived from that religious tradition.
Again, this is not just a matter of rhetoric, they do not use the religious
language or illustration out of a utilitarian calculus they do not do so
thinking that this will make their message more convincing for the people.
They do so because that tradition, that religion, its teachers and exemplars,
its teaching and rituals are their very life. And even more so because
reflection, the vicissitudes of life, the lessons that their own work has
taught them have developed in them a deep respect for that religion and
tradition.
Looking at how Hazare had automatically begun his work by undertaking first
the repair of the village temple, at the way the meetings of the village are
held at and around the temple, at the role vows taken in the temple have come
to play in the transformation of the villagers' life, at the fact that the
Grain Bank has been housed in the temple and that no one guards the store, to
read him explain his case to the villagers - to get to God we must annihilate
our egos; to annihilate our egos, we must serve others.
I was reminded of what Pandurang Shastriji Athavale once told me: why presume
that everything in our tradition is evil and wrong, that our rituals are just
a bunch of superstitious nonsense; why don't you start with the opposite
assumption that because persons of uncommon wisdom and insight prescribed
these things, there must be something invaluable in them?
Start with that faith, with that assumption if you like, and think how the
faith of our people in that text and ritual can be built upon to help the
people help themselves.
This deep respect for the tradition also results in a deep patriotism among
these persons. Just as for the Lokmanya and Gandhiji the sacrifices which
heroes and heroines had made through our history were an ever-present
companion, in the case of a person like Hazare the sacrifices which were made
during the Independence Struggle, the lives that were shed defending the
country against foreign invaders are a constant and vivid presence.
This patriotism, so unfashionable among our intellectuals and
'internationalists', is one of the mainsprings of their work, it is one of
the main reasons they are able to stay the course.
Just as they are dedicated to and immersed in the tradition, they are stern
in advocating that the dross be shed. Recall how absolutist Gandhiji was in
his campaign to purge Hinduism of untouchability, he would not give the
orthodox any quarter in that struggle. "Nowhere in the scriptures is
untouchability sanctioned," he would say, "and if it is, burn the
'scripture'."
Persons like Hazare are just as uncompromising and stern, in his case when he
is confronted by mindless ritual and superstition. He describes how people
of the village had become slaves of every stone to which some sindur had been
applied, how he and his associates shifted these stone idols - to let the
traffic flow in one case, to complete a percolation tank in another, but even
more so to have the villagers see that no harm came to the volunteers who
undertook the work.
He describes how goat-sacrifice was ended, ultimately the priest with his
fake trances was driven out of the village. Like all reformers, he sees value
in our ancient rituals too, but he is forever stressing to the people that
they must beware lest performing the ritual becomes a substitute for that
improvement of mind and conduct which the ritual is aimed at bringing about.
Don't just go on a pilgrimage, he teaches them, observe the condition of the
people on the way, learn the good things they do, and on returning put them
into practice for the benefit of your village; that is real pilgrimage.
What is the point of merely bathing in a river? Cleaning bodily skin without
purifying the mind is no use, he tells them: in fact these days because of
our having let our rivers become polluted, it may not even be possible to
clean our skin that way.
Some water a Tulsi plant every morning, he tells them, they light incense
near it in the evening, they wear a garland of Tulsi around the neck; but if
there is a daughter-in-law at home who is being constantly harassed, what is
the use of all those devotional offerings?....
This is one of the fundamental differences between these reformers and, say,
our intellectuals, or, to put it at the highest, between a Gandhiji and a
Jawaharlal Nehru: the former are insiders, their critique is born of a deep
commitment to, a deep respect for the tradition; while the latter are
outsiders - not just impatient with and exasperated by, but deep down ashamed
of that tradition.
And that is why the former succeed, and the fulmination of the latter ends up
as mere heckling.
A question for our intellectuals, and a suggestion.
Question: Why is it that such figures do not arise among Indian Muslims?
Suggestion: When you try to discover the reasons why Indian Muslims lag
behind others, remember the answer you have reached to the Question.
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