William Shirer was a journalist and a historian. He rose to fame with his bestseller The Rise and Fall of Third Reich, which gave a firsthand account of his experience in Nazi Germany.
He was not famous when the events in this book took place. Gandhi - A Memoir predates his work in Germany. He was all of twenty seven (actually a day younger than that) when he met Mohandas Gandhi for the first time, in his capacity as a correspondent of The Chicago Tribune.
His work is interesting for a few reasons. He was the first American correspondent who stayed in India for an extended period of time - long enough to build friendships (or at least friendly relationships) with Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Europe and America had received news from India mostly through the British news sources prior to his arrival. Shirer arrived in India with a fresh pair of eyes and was able to give the world an alternative view of Gandhi. He stayed in close contact with Gandhi and other leaders to have a ringside view of several pivotal moments of history. Gandhi seems to have sensed the value of Shirer as a direct way to reach the American audience.
Shirer’s work is also interesting, as his work does not suffer from the over-the-top adulation as works of Indian authors do. Despite his admiration for the great man, he freely describes their disagreements and debates.
The Social Setting
Shirer describes the social set up among the British at the time of his arrival. India was ruled by the Viceroy, ‘the absolute monarch with no responsibility at all to the Indian people, and subject only to the British Government in London’. A handful of Englishmen: some 2,000 members of the Indian Civil Service, 10,000 officers and 60,000 British troops ruled over a quarter billion subjects. In addition, there was an army of ‘natives’. All of these were funded by the Indian taxpayers.
Rudyard Kipling, whom Shirer describes as the ‘Indian-born jingoistic poet and storyteller’, had given the British public a colourful, but superficial view of India, He also described the British as “the master race”, and said that ruling India had been “placed by the inscrutable design of providence upon the shoulders of the British race”.
The Indians had their caste system, but so did the British. There were thousands of English and especially Scottish traders, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers and journalists who were not considered equals by the ruling class. Those ‘in-trade’ were scarcely accepted socially by the British officials, although they were considered a cut above the natives. The British were completely “insensate to the fact that they were masters in someone else’s country… Their condescending attitude towards an ancient and highly civilized people whom they regarded as racially, socially, culturally and even intellectually inferior and not fit to govern themselves was a constant humiliation to the Indian people”.
Shirer talks of an episode when he socialized with a young Muslim lady and was set upon by his British acquaintances and asked to “mend his ways”.
Initial Interactions
Shirer admits being baffled by some of Gandhi’s statements on non-violence, soul-force and satyagraha at first. He persisted, and in due course learnt to interpret the phrases as intended. The timing of their initial interaction was significant - when Gandhi was negotiating on Congress’ behalf with Lord Irwin, the viceroy. The two sides had talked long hours for a number of days to arrive at a pact, which would see Congress call off their nationwide agitation. Gandhi also unsuccessfully appealed to Irwin for pardoning Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary, and his two companions. The leaders of Congress, who were expecting Gandhi to hold out for full independence, felt that he’d surrendered the Indian interests in making the agreement. Nehru praised Gandhi’s achievements publicly but was bitterly disappointed.
Shirer, who had many private discussions with Gandhi, and had the privilege of transcribing his address to the nation to summarize the outcome of the Gandhi-Irwin talks, describes his reaction as pragmatic. He had agreed to suspend the agitation, but was quietly confident that he would see India free during his lifetime.
I found Shirer's account of Gandhi's conversations with two viceroys fascinating. i.e. Irwin, with whom Gandhi had shared a mutual respect despite all their disagreements; and Willingdon, who started off in a petty way by refusing to see him when he took office. Gandhi was able to agree to disagree with both the men, while ‘understanding them perfectly’.
Gandhi and his followers
There were several points of disagreement between Gandhi and his followers, such as Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and Vallabhbhai Patel. For example, Sarojini Naidu refused to live by his frugal rules, and made light of them whenever he tried to enforce them. Nehru was explicitly opposed to Gandhi’s rules on celibacy. With all the disagreements though, they believed that Gandhi was the only man who could lead the fight against the colonizers.
Gandhi’s uncanny ability to communicate to the masses was one reason. Shirer describes how he drew spontaneous crowds of tens of thousands of followers wherever he went. Current generations who grew up on a surfeit of communication tools may not appreciate another unique achievement - he managed to communicate with them despite the lack of sophisticated communication tools.
Many of Gandhi’s followers were skeptical of the value of his salt march to Dandi. The British administration was waiting for the march to fizzle, and for Gandhi’s credibility to take a hit. Gandhi intuitively grasped the potential value of the march. In a conversation with Shirer, he equated the value to that of the Boston tea party, an event that had a symbolic significance in America’s anti-colonial movement. He’d be soon proven right, of course
Gandhi was not above using his persuasion skills to secure blanket endorsements to talk on behalf of the Congress, and the Indians. This worked until the Gandhi-Irwin talks. But the effort fell apart in the Round Table talks in London, when Ambedkar (on behalf of the dalits) and the Shaukat Ali (on behalf of muslims) refused to align with him. The dilution of Gandhi’s voice suited the divide-and-conquer tactics of the British Administration, and the talks failed.
Gandhi, Jinnah and their Religions
“Jinnah befriended me during my stay in India”, says Shirer, “often inviting me to his mansion on Malabar hills in Bombay for long talks and plentiful drinks and to meet his friends and followers”. Unlike Gandhi, Jinnah liked good food, fine cigarettes, drinks, and stylish, western attire. He was ‘contemptuous of the unwashed masses’, and refused to travel third class along with Gandhi. It was politics, not religious zeal that caused him to join the Muslim League. He broke with Gandhi in 1921 due to his zeal for the law - he did not want to use law-breaking as a political strategy.
By the time Shirer left India, Jinnah had completely rejected the Congress. In Shirer’s opinion it was at least partly due to his personal dislike of Gandhi. He could not stand ‘Gandhi’s Hindu fads”, says Shirer. “Why does Gandhi have to squat on my good Persian rugs when he comes to visit me? And break our talks by sipping goat’s milk from a filthy cup that he has preserved from prison? Why does he have to preach the evils of eating meat, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco? I hate all this Hindu nonsense about cows being sacred, and Hindus telling us that we Moslems have no right to kill them for beef. I despise the antiquated Hindu caste business that Gandhi still defends”.
Shirer felt Jinnah became embittered and cynical since the time that they had known each other well. “History is of course full of paradoxes. Jinnah, the most irreligious of men, became an unbending fanatic for an Islamic state. Gandhi, the most religious of Indians, would hold out till the end for a secular India”.
Shirer says it would be impossible to determine how many Hindu-Muslim conflicts were created by the British rulers, but many quarrels were incited by them to keep the two communities separate. An unnamed police chief said to Shirer, “almost as a joke, that it is very easy to provoke a riot. For a hundred dollars you could start something really savage. Pay a moslem to toss a carcass of a cow into a Hindu temple, or some Hindus to toss a dead pig into a Mosque.” That did not excuse the Hindu and Muslim leaders, says Shirer. There were plenty of unscrupulous fanatics on both sides.
The Caste System
Gandhi had an idealistic view of the caste system, where people stayed within their caste duties, but treated everyone as equals. He saw the caste system as the glue that had held the Indian communities together. He had been excommunicated from his caste for eating and drinking with others, but the event almost amused him. His view of an independent India had room for a caste based society, but a reformed one, where the lower castes were treated the same as everyone else; and untouchability was non-existent. His own disciples disagreed with him on his interpretation of castes. Nehru for example, had a vision for India that was socialistic, free of caste and religious biases. Gandhi did not believe in socialism, of course.
The Quirks and the Controversies
Gandhi had taken a vow of celibacy at the age of thirty-six. Shirer wonders if Kastuba approved. While they seemed to have had a good relationship, Gandhi always seemed to talk to the other women, notably Sarojini Naidu, or Miss Slade (Miraben), but never to Kasturba, even whe she was always around. Gandhi may have hastened Kasturba’s demise by refusing her western treatment in her final days. Gandhi described his relationship with her as ‘tried friendship’, but Shirer does not hide his disapproval of the way Gandhi treated his wife.
The author also does not shy away from probing Gandhi’s ‘questionable, unnatural’ practices of sharing his bed ‘in a platonic way’ with young women to test his own vow of celibacy. Nehru called the practice ‘unnatural and shocking’. Nirmal Kumar Bose, one of Gandhi’s followers, was disillusioned, and left his ashram over the issue.
The Failures
Gandhi also did not seem to have fully appreciated the difficulties that the jews faced in Nazi Germany, He advised them to accept the tyranny but disobey, emulating the Indian non-violence movement. For all his political savvy, he seems not to recognize that his approach worked only because the British always wanted to be seen as doing the right thing.
It occurs to me that he lost his life due to precisely the same reason he failed in his mission at the round table conference - due to his inability to make one class of people yield for the greater common good. Shirer makes it clear that Gandhi took on both the challenges - the challenge of uniting Indians at the round table conference, and the challenge of Hindu Muslim unity around the events of partition - fully knowing that he might fail. He felt he had to try regardless.
As a diligent student of the Gita, he was naturally able to assume the role of a karmayogi, and was able to carry on performing his duties, treating success and failure the same. His nature perhaps caused him to underestimate the value the others placed on immediate wins.
His opponents suffered a different kind of failure. In trying to get him out of the way, they ensured that he was a martyr. At the end of this book, Shirer compares his death to the crucifixion of Christ - as many others have done over the decades.
Shirer concludes on an emotional note, by saying that the days with Gandhi had been the most fruitful in his life. What he learned during those days helped him through the dark times he witnessed in Europe in later years.
