An incident in the city recently answered many questions that crop up often when Mahatma Gandhi is discussed. The issue was about the removal of Gandhiji’s bust from one location to another, which prompted the residents of the area to protest and have it reinstalled at the place where it stood. This Gandhi was theirs, they claimed. So Gandhi belongs to every Indian, in his/ her special way, including his detractors.
In the city, on the occasion of Gandhi’s death anniversary, The Hindu MetroPlus catches up with two Gandhians who, in their unique way, keep Gandhi meaningful and alive for the generation.
K.B. Remani K.B. Remani, 61, started the Bapoo Hindi Vidyalaya in 1977 to teach Hindi and propagate Gandhian thought and values. She began her classes in a rented place in Amaravati and till date has been shifting the venue for the lack of a permanent place.
Yet this itinerant existence has not deterred either Ramani or the students from keeping the organisation alive. Remani says, “Bapu and desh bhakti are my life. I teach only Hindi and love for the country. This is my strength. The things that inspire me most about Gandhi are his patriotism and his simple way of life.”
After completing her SSLC, Remani studied Hindi at the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha at Ernakulam. She was impressed by two of her teachers, Gnana Kumari and Rukmani Ramnath.
Her idealisation of Gandhi began after listening to the talks given by the visiting ‘vidwans’ or intellectuals who spoke at the Hindi classes. She was inspired by Gandhiji’s way of life. When she thought of a vocation for herself, propagating Hindi and the ideals of Gandhi came to the fore. She founded the school and has been doing this service continuously for the past 38 years. People from around the area have been helpful, says Remani. As a single woman she has found help and love from students and their parents. Most of the Hindi teachers in the school in the area are her former students. The Bapoo Vidyalaya had a long stint, for 15 years, in a place given by the People’s League. There it found an identity.
Today, the classes that begin every at seven in the morning and go on for an hour-and-a-half have 18 students. Remani says that she tells her students stories about Gandhi in a language easy to them. In her spare time she works with a social organisation- the United Women’s Welfare Association- where she addresses women’s issues.
Narendra Mathuradas Asher Narendra Asher at 84 proudly displays a host of letters written by the Mahatma to his parents, Mathuradas Asher and mother Moti ben. Sitting in his 160- year-old house at Gujarati Road in Mattancherry, Narendra narrates the family’s close association with Gandhi, which began in Kerala. “After Gandhi returned from South Africa, Gokhaleji asked him to travel across the length and breadth of the country before starting the Independence Movement. That brought him to Kerala.” The young Mathura Das went to hear Gandhi speak and found the translator not doing a good job. As Mathuradas was fluent in both Hindi and Malayalam he took the microphone and began translating Gandhi’s speech. Gandhi felt the change in the mood of the crowd. After the event, Gandhi asked Mathura Das to join him, which he did. Gandhi simultaneously asked Mathuradas’s brothers, Narendra’s uncles, to look after his share of business and his family. “My father joined Gandhi and was made in-charge of the ashram at Champaran in Bihar. Gandhi wrote to my parents regularly. He was very fond of my mother and if he did not receive a letter from her he wrote enquiring about the reasons for the delay. Can you imagine the humility of such a great personality?,” asks Narendra.
Narendra and his family treasure the facsimile copies of the letters, with the originals at the Gandhi Smarak Museum in New Delhi. Most of the letters are written by Gandhi and a few by his secretary Mahadev Desai and signed by Gandhi.
A letter written on 8-8-1930 to Moti ben is to console her after the death of her son Meghji by small pox. “Gandhiji was not in favour of a vaccine extracted from a calf that was being injected those days as a preventive against small pox. My mother and a few others too did not take this vaccine.
My brother died of to the disease and Gandhi felt responsible in a way. Most of his letters are, on the same page, half addressed to my father and half to my mother.”
A letter dated 9.11.1929 is written after Narendra’s uncle, Jeevan Das passed away in Karachi. A long two-page letter, Gandhi here talks about the provision of survival for Jeevandas’s widow. He asks whether the widow has been provided for and goes on to speak about the duty of a husband towards a wife. Gandhi writes that a husband’s duty is apparently not to leave wealth behind for his wife but to see in his lifetime that the woman is capable of standing on her feet. That he says is the duty of a husband. To leave money for a wife, he writes is adharma.
“Most of his letters have a moral,” says Narendra who met Gandhi twice. “The first was at the Ramgarh Congress where my father was asked to go before and make preparations for the meeting. My sister Shanta, 88, was in-charge of Gandhiji’s kutir or hut. My mother was always made leader of the picketing group.” The second time Narendra met Gandhi was in 1942 when Gandhi had come to Mumbai after Kasturba passed away. My mother and I would go for the daily evening prayers ,”he says.
In 1968 Narendra brought his father, Mathura Das, back from Champaran to Kochi because of failing health. After his death and 66 years after Independence, Gandhi lives on in the household like before, with children grandchildren, extended family and friends living the legacy and memory of the Mahatma with pride and in action.
