REMEMBERING THE MANY SIDES OF THE MAHATMA

Gandhi proposed new ways of thinking about spirituality, technology and innovation at his ashram. It is for contemporary Gandhians to revitalise his ideas with new explorations

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

WHENEVER people ask me about Mahatma Gandhi, I would remember conversations with my father. For him, Gandhi was even more unique than Albert Einstein. He told me the problems and issues that Gandhi raised were perennial. No one else could raise the spelling of the word better to such a classic level. It becomes the Plimsoll line for a kindergarten ethics. In that sense, Gandhi's questions were always contemporary.

He was not a Luddite. People forget that the kind of charkha he introduced was a more efficient reinvention made by the Polish theosophist and engineer Maurice Frydman. Frydman, who went on to have over a 100 engineering patents, was intrigued by Gandhi.

One must also add that the loudspeaker as a political instrument in India was introduced at one of Gandhi's rallies. I recollect an even more iconic story about a Gandhi rally. He was addressing a group of workers in Manchester after a swadeshi boycott. He looked at the state of the plant and said, "No wonder the Japanese are beating you." For my father, Gandhi was someone you learnt from. I remember we were travelling in a local train from Jamshedpur to Kharagpur, where my father occasionally taught. He was sitting at the door when one of his chappals fell off.

He was not upset-instead, to our surprise, he immediately took the other one off. He said, "One lost shoe is a crisis and a pair is a gift [to someone else]." A message of solidarity. Gandhi, for him, represented future solidarities.

What made Gandhi's philosophy perennial was his use of the body as a model and metaphor. For Gandhi, the human body was perpetually contemporary and vulnerable. It became an index of a civilisation's sense of violence. The body was also a site for experiments.