My Century Home Page

Broadcast on Monday 27th September 1999

RAJMUHAN GANDHI

After the British, I think Gandhi, in a very unusual way, became a symbol of India. It's true that he was a devout Hindu. But really he was an Indian - you might say more than that. He died on January 30th, 1948, in Delhi, which was where I was a schoolboy. at the time. I was twelve and a half when he died. And, along with others in my family - my parents, my sister, my two brothers - I saw him virtually every evening during those last months of his existence.

So I remember how he received people; I remember how he faced the anguish of his last months, when so many killings took place and partition had just taken place, and some of his dreams had not been realised. So, though I was only twelve and a half, I remember the anguish on the face of this man whom I knew was my grandfather but who, I also knew, was something much more than that. I had just come back from school. The murder took place in the late afternoon, after five pm. But, when I reached home, somebody told me that he had been shot at, that my parents had already gone to the site, and that he had been asked to take me. When we reached there, there was an enormous crowd. We had to go through the crowd. And then I was in the room where he was, where my father was, Nehru was, Mountbatten there. He was dead by this time.

To be honest, when he was killed, I expected him to just stand up and start walking again. I did think that he had this element of the supernatural in him - which, of course, was absurd, but that's how I did think at the time. But he was also affectionate in a very normal, natural, human, every grandfather kind of way. But he was not just the father of his four sons. He really was the father of a very large number of Indians. And he took their problems as his problems. And he had a lot of time for all of them. So his sons and his grandchildren had to take their place along with other Indians in the queue, if you like.

His assassination took place within twelve days of his last hunger strike, last fast - which was directed at the killings in New Delhi. And that did bring, at least temporarily, peace in Delhi at the time, between Hindus and Muslims. He regarded himself as having been weak or inadequate somewhere, so that he could not prevent the division of India into two. What he said, towards the end of his time, was: he had not quite realised that there was this element of hatred. Therefore he had gone ahead again and again. And, after the departure of the British, in August 1947, this hatred was turned on one another - between Hindus and Muslims.

But you can notice in his life a great tension, between the kind of man he wanted to be and the weak human that he was - and sometimes his great unhappiness, even his anger at himself for not being what he should be. He also remains as a kind of an ally of the human conscience, of my conscience. The male members of a Hindu family have this task, after a cremation, of collecting the bones and the ashes of the deceased for immersion in the sacred river. So, along with the others, I had to pick up his bones. There were these great crowds. There was a sense almost of repentance. A wrong had been done, and we were all party to it - that sort of notion I think communicated itself even to me.

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