Gandhi letters to Jones, The Reverend Dr. Eli Stanley.

Letters to Churchmen and Missionaries

  Jones, The Reverend Dr. Eli Stanley.

[Dr. Jones (1884-1973), a missionary in India for 36 years, set up the Sat Tal Ashram at Sitapur, United Provinces. The inmates lived simply, wearing Indian dress and eating Indian food so that Indian Christians were not alienated from Indian culture. A friend and admirer of Gandhiji, he met Gandhiji many times and stayed in the Ashram at Sabarmati for ten days. He wrote that Gandhiji "taught me more of the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East or West."103

He was not allowed to visit India during the Second World War because of his support for Indian independence. After the end of the war, he spent six months a year in India.

He was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and helped popularise Gandhiji and non-violence in the United States. He was the author of several books, including The Christ of the Indian Road (1925), Mahatma Gandhi, an Interpretation (1948) and Gandhi Lives (1948). Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., acknowledged that Mahatma Gandhi, an Interpretation was the first book from which he had learned about "the method and spirit of non-violence."]

Letter, April 24, 1926104

[Dr. Jones requested Gandhiji to send a message for his paper, Fellowship of the Friends of Jesus.]

Ashram, Sabarmati

April 24, 1926

Dear friend,

I have your letter and one copy, not two, of your paper.

Is it a weekly or a monthly? I do not find the information in the copy before me. I shall send you something as soon as I have a little leisure but after I have heard from you in reply to this.

I was going to Mussoorie but the friends who were interested in sending me there have relaxed the pressure and let me stay at the Ashram. I shall await your arrival at the Ashram and look forward to your stay in our midst, be it ever so short. Did you not tell me you had lived at the Ashram before for a day or two? If, for any reason whatsoever, I am away from the Ashram in July, I hope you will still come. There is just a slight probability of my going to Finland for the World Students' Conference. I say only a slight probability because the matter has not progressed beyond the conversational stage.

Yours sincerely,

E. Stanley Jones, Esq.

Sitapur, U.P.

 Letter, July 23, 1926105

[Dr. Jones wrote to Gandhiji on July 20, 1926, thanking him "for the beautiful days you gave me at the Ashram." He said: "I am sure that it has been a great preparation for me in my work in India."

He sent Gandhiji some notes on his stay at the Ashram and informed him that he had ordered Science of Power by Benjamin Kidd for Gandhiji.106]

The Ashram,

Sabarmati

July 23, 1926

Dear friend,

I have your letter with your interesting notes for which I thank you. We were all so happy to have you in our midst. I only wish you could have stayed longer with us. Then, perhaps, you would have toned down some of the remarks you have made about the Ashram and revised your criticism about its becoming self- supporting. To make it self-supporting is not our aim so long as we undertake public education in the matter of the spinning-wheel, untouchability, etc.

The suggestion to build a pigeon loft was made by another friend also. We did not take it up because it was suggested that it would simply attract more pigeons without relieving us of their presence in the roof of our cottages. Have you tried the thing yourself with success?

I shall endeavour to go through the Science of Power which you have so kindly ordered for me. 

I have developed the greatest disinclination for writing anything whatsoever. If I could suspend the papers I am editing, I would even do that. But it is a self-imposed task which I dare not shirk. You will, therefore, excuse me at least for the present if I do not write for the Fellowship of the Friends of Jesus.

Yours sincerely,

E. Stanley Jones, Esq.

Sitapur, U.P.

Letter, April 26, 1931107

[The open letter of the Reverend Jones, to which reference is made in this letter, concerns the press report of an interview by Gandhiji in Delhi on March 21, 1931. He was reported to have said in answer to a question as to whether he would favour the retention of foreign missionaries when India secured self- government:

"If instead of confining themselves purely to humanitarian work and material service to the poor, they do proselytising by means of medical aid, education, etc., then I would certainly ask them to withdraw. Every nation's religion is good as any other. Certainly India's religions are adequate for her people. We need no converting spiritually."108

Gandhiji wrote in Young India (April 23, 1931) that he was misquoted and that he could have said:

"If instead of confining themselves purely to humanitarian work such as education, medical services to the poor and the like, they would use these activities of theirs for the purpose of proselytising, I would certainly like them to withdraw. Every nation considers its own faith to be as good as that of any other. Certainly the great faiths held by the people of India are adequate for her people. India stands in no need of conversion from one faith to another."

He explained:

"Let me now amplify the bald statement. I hold that proselytising under the cloak of humanitarian work is, to say the least, unhealthy. It is most certainly resented by the people here. Religion after all is a deeply personal matter, it touches the heart. Why should I change my religion because a doctor who professes Christianity as his religion has cured me of some disease or why should the doctor expect or suggest such a change whilst I am under his influence? Is not medical relief its own reward and satisfaction? Or why should I whilst I am in a missionary educational institution have Christian teaching thrust upon me? In my opinion these practices are not uplifting and give rise to suspicion if not secret hostility. The methods of conversion must be like Caesar's wife above suspicion...

"I am, then, not against conversion. But I am against the modern methods of it."109]

Bardoli,

April 26, 1931

Dear friend,

Your open letter has come upon me as a shock, the more so as you yourself distrusted the report and have suffered yourself from misreporting. If you had just dropped a line before writing your long open letter how much precious time, that for you and me belongs to God, would have been saved? As it is, in the language of the Gita, you have been guilty of theft and, in the bargain have done a wrong to a friend. 

It will please you to know that three unknown friends have been more cautious. They have written to me to enquire whether the report correctly sets forth my view. Next time you see something about me which may appear to you to misrepresent me as you have known me, may I ask you to refer to me before you pen another open or private letter? Lastly, if you have loved me before, as I know you have, I hope that after reading my article in Young India on the subject matter of your open letter, you will feel that you have no cause to change your attitude. And why will you not love me even though I may err in your estimation? Or must love require a consideration?

Yours sincerely,

Rev. E. Stanley Jones

Sat Tal Ashram

Sat Tal (Dt. Naini Tal)

Letter, December 4, 1946110

As from Sevagram

Via Wardha (India),

Camp: Srirampur,

East Bengal,

December 4, 1946

Dear Dr. Jones,

Dr. Nelson111 was with me yesterday with Mrs. Alexander and we immediately became as old friends. He gave me your letter which I had not read when I made myself at home with him. The reason for my not reading your letter there and then was that he was in the company of several friends and I was about to go to the prayer meeting in which he took keen interest and wanted to read from a Pelican book in his possession, "Our God, our help in ages past" which I readily let him do, and at the close of the prayer the few words that I said to the audience consisted of a free rendering of the hymn he read but could not or would not sing. I have invited him to drop in again when he wished, to which he said he would do in a few days time.

Yours sincerely

M. K.G.

Rev. Dr. E. Stanley Jones

150 Fifth Avenue

New York City

 Letter, April 19, 1947112

[Dr. Jones wrote on April 15, 1947, that he had visited Sabarmati. He recalled that when Gandhiji went on the Salt March in 1930, he had vowed not to return to the Sabarmati Ashram until freedom was won. Dr. Jones imagined a triumphal return by Gandhiji soon. While he was not enamoured of pagentry, he thought that it could be used to impress upon the world that a non-violent struggle had won. He asked if there was a possibility of Gandhiji returning to Sabarmati.113 Gandhiji was then in Bihar trying to stop violence between Hindus and Muslims.]

Patna,

April 19, 1947

Dear Dr. Jones,

I got your letter this morning and am so glad to learn that you were able to visit Sabarmati and renew your recollections. I remember well how you missed looking glass in the room that was allotted to you, and how philosophically you took the absence of the article considered so useful in the West.

When the British troops, that powerful emblem of British rule, is removed from India that very fact will be a triumph, besides which every other pageant that can be conceived, must fade into insignificance.

I have no notion when I shall be able to leave my present haunt. I fully appreciate your prayerful sympathy in the task before me.

Please pass on my love to Mrs. Stanley Jones whenever you write to her. I don't know whether she is in India at present or whether she is in U.S.A. Please tell her that I remember the promise I hastily and lightly made to her that I will, when I got the necessary leisure, write out a dialogue for the use of children in the many schools she was conducting. I never got the leisure. But what is more true is that the task was much more difficult than I had imagined and to this day I do not know how I could deal with the delicate subject of the evil habits of children.114

Yours sincerely

M.K. Gandhi

Full text of "The Christ Of The Indian Road"

Full text of "The Christ Of The Indian Road"

Full text of "The Christ Of The Indian Road"

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The Christ of the Indian Road 

By E. Stanley Jones 

The Abingdon Press 

New York Cincinnati 

Copyright, 1925, by 

E. STANLEY JONES 

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 

Printed in the United States of America 

First Edition Printed September, 1925 

Reprinted October, November, and December, 1925 

January, February, March, April, and June, 1926 

CONTENTS 

CBAPTEB PAGE 

Preface 1 

Preface to the Sixth Edition 3 

Introduction 7 

I. The Messenger and the Message 17 

II. The Motive and End of Christian Missions 29 

III. The Growing Moral and Spiritual Supremacy of Jesus 53 

IV. Jesus Comes Through Irregular Channels— Mahatma Gandhi’s Part 67 

V. Through the Regular Channels — Some Evangelistic Series 81 

VI. The Great Hindrance 101 

VII. The Question Hour 123 

VIII. Jesus Through Experience 138 

IX. What or Whom? 154 

X. Christ and the Other Faiths 169 

XI. The Concrete Christ 181 

XII. The Indian Interpretation of Jesus. . 189 

XIII. The Christ of the Indian Road 201 

PREFACE 

Perhaps a few words of caution may be help- 

ful to the reader. To those familiar with India 

the title of this volume may lead the reader to 

expect the book to be what it is not — an Indian 

interpretation of Christ. It is, rather, an attempt 

to describe how Christ is becoming naturalized 

upon the Indian Road. The Indian interpre- 

tation of Christ must be left to later hands. 

To those who have no first-hand familiarity 

with conditions in India another word of caution 

may be given. The author has tried to be scrupu- 

lously careful not to overdraw the picture. He 

has let non-Christians themselves largely tell the 

story of the silent revolution in thought that is 

taking place in India. But even so, the American 

and English reader must be careful not always 

to read into the statements of the non-Christians 

the full content of his own thinking. In that 

case unwarranted implications may be drawn 

from them. 

Christian missions have come to a crisis in 

India. A new and challenging situation con- 

fronts us. If we are to meet it, we must boldly 

follow the Christ into what are, to us, untried 

1 

2 

PREFACE 

paths. In any case Christian missions are but 

in their beginnings in India. With adjusted 

attitude and spirit they will be needed in the 

East for decades and generations to come. 

My thanks are due to Dr. David G. Downey, 

who, owing to my return to India, has graciously 

undertaken to read the proofs and to see the book 

through the press. 

At the request of the publishers the spoken 

style has been retained. 

The Author. 

Sitapur, U. P., India. 

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION 

Some of my readers have observed the absence 

from this book of certain notes usual in mission- 

ary textbooks. Where, they ask, are the child- 

widows, the caste system with its compart- 

mentalized and consequently paralyzed life, the 

six million sadhus roaming through India find- 

ing little and contributing less; is Hinduism 

only a philosophical system — is there not a pop- 

ular side with its 330,000,000 gods and goddesses, 

its endless pilgrimages and rapacious priests at 

each stage, its worship of demons and gods of 

questionable character; has the purdah system 

been abolished ; has the appalling illiteracy 

amounting to ninety-three per cent been wiped 

out? Have these dark lines hitherto so common 

in the picture, faded out? Is it all sweetness 

and light? 

No, these things are still there. But I have 

left them out of the picture for three reasons. 

First. India is aggrieved, and I think rightly 

so, that Christian missionaries in order to arouse 

the West to missionary activity have too often 

emphasized the dark side of the picture. What 

they have said has been true, but the picture has 

not been a true one. This overemphasis on the 

one side has often created either pity or con- 

4 

PREFACE 

tempt in the minds of the hearers. In modern 

jargon a superiority complex has resulted. I 

do not believe a superiority complex to be the 

proper spring for missionary activity. 

Eastern travelers in America, picking and 

choosing their facts, can make out a very dark 

picture of our civilization — the slums of our 

cities, the lynchings, divorce statistics, crime 

statistics unparalleled in other cities of the 

world, and so on. They have, in fact, done so. 

As Americans we have resented it as being an 

untrue picture. Then as Christians we should 

do unto others as we would that others should 

do unto us. 

Second. Indians themselves are now alive to 

these evils and are combating them. The impact 

of Christian ideals upon the situation has 

created a conscience in regard to these things 

and we can trust India to right them as she is, 

in fact, now doing. The fact is that racial lines 

are so drawn that India will probably deal more 

drastically with her evils if she does it from 

within than if we foreigners were always insist- 

ing upon it. As a Turkish lawyer said to us 

regarding the reforms in Turkey, “The things 

which we have done in four years no outside 

power or government could have made us do. 

We are surprised at it ourselves.” The secret 

was that they did it. 

Third. I have tried to lay the foundations for 

PREFACE 

5 

Christian missions deeper than upon particular 

evils found in a particular race. Taken at their 

very best, pagan men and systems in East or 

West need Christ. I have said to India very 

frankly: “I do not make a special drive upon 

you because you are the neediest people of our 

race, but because you are a member of our race. 

I am convinced that the only kind of a world 

worth having is a world patterned after the mind 

and spirit of Jesus. I am therefore making a 

drive upon the world as it is, in behalf of the 

world as it ought to be, and as you are a part of 

that world I come to you. But I would not be 

here an hour if I did not know that ten others 

were doing in the land from which I come what 

I am trying to do here. We are all in the same 

deep need. Christ, I believe, can supply that 

need.” 

Another word should be added in regard to 

another seeming lack of emphasis. I have not 

emphasized the mass movement among the low 

castes because this book has been the story 

growing out of my own sphere of work. My 

work has been more connected with that mass 

movement in mind described in these pages than 

with the mass movement among the low castes. 

In spite of its obvious weaknesses and dangers 

I am deeply grateful for and rejoice in this lat- 

ter mass movement in which there is a turning 

of these dumb millions to Christ. In spite of 

6 

PREFACE 

statements to the contrary, this movement is 

going on with unabated force. Since my return 

to India a friend showed a petition signed with 

thumb impressions by eighteen thousand of 

these people who desired to come into the Chris- 

tian Church. But my emphasis has been upon 

what I knew best growing out of experience. 

A further word concerning the attitudes I 

find on my return after an absence of nearly two 

years from India. I find India even more open 

and responsive than when I left. The mass 

movement in mind goes on in silent but un- 

abated vigor. As the physical atmosphere be- 

comes saturated with moisture and heavy to the 

point of precipitation so the spiritual atmos- 

phere of India is becoming saturated with 

Christ’s thoughts and ideals and is heavy to the 

point of precipitation into Christian forms and 

expression. As to when that will take place 

depends upon how much Christlikeness we can 

put into the situation. As the leading Arya 

Samajist in India recently said to the writer, 

“Everything depends upon * the Christian 

Church.” It does. 

The Authob. 

INTRODUCTION 

Clearing the Issues 

When the early evangelists of the Good News 

were sent out on their own, they returned 

and told Jesus “what they had done and what 

they had taught.” This evangelist must add a 

third to what he has done and what he has 

taught — what he has learned. It will not be 

primarily an account of what has been done 

through him, but what has been done to him. 

Running through it all will be the perhaps un- 

conscious testimony of how, while speaking to 

India, I was led along to a simplification of my 

task and message and faith — and I trust of my 

life. 

Recently at the close of an address a friend 

remarked, “He has probably done some good to 

India, but India has certainly done a great deal 

for him.” India has. In my sharing with her 

what has been a gift to me I found that I had less 

than I thought I had — and more. 

I thought my task was more complex than I 

now see it to be; not less difficult but less com- 

plex. When I first went to India I was trying 

to hold a very long line — a line that stretched 

clear from Genesis to Revelation, on to Western 

7 

8 

INTRODUCTION 

INTRODUCTION 

9 

Civilization and to the Western Christian 

Church. I found myself bobbing up and down 

that line fighting behind Moses and David and 

Jesus and Paul and Western Civilization and 

the Christian Church. I was worried. There 

was no well-defined issue. I found the battle 

almost invariably being pitched at one of these 

three places: the Old Testament, or Western Civ- 

ilization, or the Christian Church. I had the ill- 

defined but instinctive feeling that the heart of 

the matter was being left out. Then I saw that I 

could, and should, shorten my line, that I could 

take my stand at Christ and before that non- 

Christian world refuse to know anything save! 

Jesus Christ and him crucified. The sheer storm 

and stress of things had driven me to a place 

that I could hold. Then I saw that there isj 

where I should have been all the time. I saw ! 

that the gospel lies in the person of J esus, that 

he himself is the Good News, that my one task 

was to live and to present him. My task was! 

simplified. 

But it was not only simplified — it was vital- 

ized. I found that when I was at the place of 

Jesus I was every moment upon the vital. Here ! 

at this place all the questions in heaven and earth 

were being settled. He Avas the one question 

that settled all others. 

I still believed in the Old Testament as being 

the highest revelation of God given to the world 

before Jesus’ coming; I would inwardly feed 

upon it as Jesus did. But the issue was further 

on. A Jain lawyer, a brilliant writer against 

Christianity, arose in one of my meetings and 

asked me a long list of questions regarding 

things in the Old Testament. I replied, “My 

brother, I think I can answer your questions, 

but I do not feel called on to do so. I defined 

Christianity as Christ. If you have any objec- 

tions to make against him, I am ready to hear 

them and answer them if I can.” He replied, 

“Who gave you this authority to make this dis- 

tinction? What church council gave you this 

authority?” I replied that my own Master gave 

it to me — that I was not following a church 

council, but trying to follow him, and he himself 

had said : “Ye have heard it said of old time, . . . 

but I say unto you,” so I was simply following 

his lead, for he made his own word final even in 

Scripture. I Avas bringing the battle up from 

that incomplete stage of Revelation to the final 

— to Jesus. Revelation was progressive, cul- 

minating in him. Why should I, then, pitch my 

battle at an imperfect stage Avhen the perfect 

was here in him? My lawyer friend saw with 

dismay that a great many of his books written 

against Christianity had gone into ashes by my 

definition. They were beside the point. But the 

lawyer was not to blame for missing the point. 

Had we not often by our waitings and by our 

10 

INTRODUCTION 

INTRODUCTION 

11 

attitudes led him to believe that we did make the 

issue there? 

Our confusion was Peter’s confusion which 

the Father’s voice and the vision of Jesus clari- 

fied. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses, 

representing the law, and Elijah the prophets, 

talked with Jesus, the New Revelation. The Jew- 

ish heart of Peter wanted to keep all three, and 

put them on the same level — he wanted to build 

three tabernacles for them. A voice from the 

cloud spoke, “This is my beloved Son ; hear him” 

— the law and the prophets are fulfilled in him ; 

hear him. And when they lifted up their eyes 

they saw no man save Jesus only. He filled their 

horizon. He must fill ours. 

Again, have we not often in the past led India 

and the non-Christian world to think that our 

type of civilization in the West is the issue? 

Before the Great War was not Western greatness 

often preached as a reason for the East becoming 

Christian? This was a false trail and led us 

into many embarrassments, calling for endless 

apologies and explanations. 

There is little to be wondered at that India 

hesitates about our civilization — great and beau- 

tiful on certain sides and weak and ugly on 

others. While some of the contacts of the West 

with the East have been in terms of beautiful 

self-sacrifice and loving service, some of them 

have been ugly and un-Christian. But that we 

are not more Christian in the West is under- 

standable when we remember in what manner 

much of our Christianity was propagated in 

Europe. Many of the evils which now afflict 

the West came in with it. While it is true that 

many of the first missionaries to the European 

tribes were men of rare saintliness and self-sac- 

rifice, nevertheless Christianity was not always 

propagated by saintliness and self-sacrifice. 

Take three illustrations that may show why 

three great un-Christian things lie back in our 

civilizations. 

All Russia became Christian with Vladimir 

the Emperor. He desired to become a Christian, 

but hesitated, for, as being beneath his dignity, 

he would not be baptized by the local clergy. 

He wanted the Patriarch of Constantinople to 

perform the ceremony — that would give the de- 

sired dignity. But to ask him to come to do it 

would be receiving a bounty at the hands of an- 

other. He decided that the only thing consonant 

with his honor would be to conquer Constan- 

tinople and compel the Patriarch to baptize him. 

He would then stand as dictator and not as 

suppliant That was actually carried out. Con- 

stantinople was captured and the Patriarch 

forced to baptize him. Thus Russia became 

Christian! Is it to be wondered at that dom- 

ination still continues in the West in spite of 

Christianity? It came in with it. 

12 

INTRODUCTION 

INTRODUCTION 

13 

Another. The Saxons, a warring tribe of 

Europe, were practically compelled by Charle- 

magne to become Christians. They consented on 

one condition. That condition would only be 

known at the time of their baptism. When these 

warriors were put under the water as a symbol 

that their old life was dead, they went under- 

all except their right arms. They held them out, 

lifted above their heads. These were their fight- 

ing arms. They were never Christianized! Is 

it to be wondered at that war continues in the 

West in spite of Christianity? It came in 

with it. 

Another. The Mayflower that carried the Pil- 

grim Fathers to religious liberty in America 

went on her next trip for a load of slaves. The 

good ship “Jesus” was in the slave trade for our 

fathers. Is it to be wondered at that race and 

color 'prejudice still exists in the West in spite 

of Christianity? It came in with it. 

The East feels that these things are still there. 

But standing amid the shadows of Western civ- 

ilization, India has seen a Figure who has 

greatly attracted her. She has hesitated in re 

gard to any allegiance to him, for India has 

thought that if she took one she would have to 

take both — Christ and Western civilization went 

together. Now it is dawning upon the mind of 

India that she can have one without the other— 

Christ without Western civilization. That dawn- 

ing revelation is of tremendous significance to 

them — and to us. 

“Do you mean to say,” said a Hindu lawyer 

in one of my meetings about seven years ago, 

“that you are not here to wipe out our civiliza- 

tion and replace it with your own? Do you 

mean that your message is Christ without any 

implications that we must accept Western civ- 

ilization? I have hated Christianity, but if 

Christianity is Christ, I do not see how we In- 

dians can hate it.” I could assure him that my 

message was that and only that. But this was 

seven years ago. That matter has now become 

clarified, more or less. It has become clear that 

we are not there to implant Western civilization. 

They may take as little or as much from West- 

ern civilization as they like — and there is much 

that is tremendously worth while — but we do 

not make it the issue. The fact is that if we do 

not make it the issue, they will probably take 

more from it than if we did. 

But the swift and often accurate intuitions of 

the Indian have gone further. He is making an 

amazing and remarkable discovery, namely, that 

Christianity and Jesus are not the same — that 

they may have Jesus without the system that has 

been built up around him in the West. 

A prominent lecturer, who has just returned 

from India, says that this discovery on the part 

of India of the difference between Christianity 

14 

INTRODUCTION 

and Jesus “can be called nothing less than a dis- 

covery of the first magnitude.” Let it be said 

that the suggestion as to the difference is not 

new, it has been said before. But the thing that 

is new is that a people before their acceptance of 

Christianity have noted the distinction and seem 

inclined to act upon it. It is a most significant 

thing for India and the world that a great people 

of amazing spiritual capacities is seeing, with 

remarkable insight, that Christ is the center of 

Christianity, that utter commitment to him and 

catching his mind and spirit, and living his life 

constitute a Christian. This realization has 

remarkable potentialities for the future religious 

history of the whole race. 

Looking upon it in the large, I cannot help 

wondering if there is not a Providence in the fact 

that India has not accepted Christianity en 

masse before this discovery was fixed in her 

mind. If she had accepted Christianity without 

this clarification, her Christianity would be but 

a pale copy of ours and would have shared its 

weaknesses. But with this discovery taking place 

before acceptance it may mean that at this period 

of our racial history the most potentially spirit- 

ual race of the world may accept Christ as Chris- 

tianity, may put that emphasis upon it, may 

restore the lost radiance of the early days when 

he was the center, and may give us a new burst 

of spiritual power. 

INTRODUCTION 

15 

For in all the history of Christianity whenever 

there has been a new emphasis upon Jesus there 

has been a fresh outburst of spiritual vitality 

and virility. As Bossuet says, “Whenever 

Christianity has struck out a new path in her 

journey it has been because the personality of 

Jesus has again become living, and a ray from 

his being has once more illuminated the world.” 

Out of a subject race came this gospel in the 

beginning, and it may be that out of another sub- 

ject race may come its clarification and revivifi- 

cation. Some of us feel that the next great 

spiritual impact upon the soul of the race is due 

to come by way of India. 

Renowned writer Ved Mehta, who took India to Americans, dies at 86 - The Hindu

Renowned writer Ved Mehta, who took India to Americans, dies at 86 - The Hindu

Renowned writer Ved Mehta, who took India to Americans, dies at 86
PTI
NEW YORK, JANUARY 11, 2021 16:24 IST


Author Ved Mehta during an interview in New Delhi on October 31, 2009. | Photo Credit: V. Sudershan


Mehta was a staff writer for ‘The New Yorker’ magazine for 33 years. His 24 books included volumes of reportage on India


Celebrated Indian-American novelist Ved Mehta, who overcame blindness and became widely known as the 20th-century writer most responsible for introducing American readers to India, has died at his home here at the age of 86.

The New Yorker magazine, where he had been a staff writer for 33 years, reported that Mehta died on Saturday.


"Mehta, a writer for The New Yorker for more than thirty years, died at the age of eighty-six, on Saturday morning,” it said on Sunday.

Born in pre-partition Lahore to a well-off Punjabi family in 1934, Mehta lost his eyesight when he was three years old to meningitis. He, however, did not let his impairment get in the way of a flourishing career or stop him from showcasing his literary prowess to the world.


He was determined to apprehend the world around him with maximal accuracy and to describe it as best he could.

"I felt that blindness was a terrible impediment, and that if only I exerted myself, and did everything my big sisters and big brother did, I could somehow become exactly like them," he wrote.

Best known for his 12-volume memoir, which focused on the troubled modern history of India and his early struggles with blindness, Mehta's 24 books included volumes of reportage on India, among them "Walking the Indian Streets" (1960), "Portrait of India" (1970) and "Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles" (1977), as well as explorations of philosophy, theology and linguistics.

"Daddyji" was the first installment in what was to become a 12-volume series of autobiographical works, known collectively as “Continents of Exile.” "Ved Mehta has established himself as one of the magazine’s most imposing figures,” The New Yorker’s storied editor William Shawn, who hired him as a staff writer in 1961, told The New York Times in 1982.

"He writes about serious matters without solemnity, about scholarly matters without pedantry, about abstruse matters without obscurity,” Shawn had said.

The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1982, Mehta was long praised by critics for his forthright, luminous prose — with its “informal elegance, diamond clarity and hypnotic power,” as The Sunday Herald of Glasgow put it in a 2005 profile, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

Mehta composed all of his work orally, dictating long swaths to an assistant, who read them back again and again for him to polish until the work shone like a mirror. He could rework a single article more than a hundred times, he often said, the report said.

One of the most striking hallmarks of Mehta’s prose was its profusion of visual description: of the rich and varied landscapes he encountered, of the people he interviewed, of the cities he visited, the NYT report said.

Mehta walked the streets of the city without a cane or a seeing-eye dog, and he bristled when someone dared try to assist him.

Mehta came to the United States when he was 15 years old, and attended the Arkansas School for the Blind, in Little Rock. After studying at Pomona College and Oxford University, he began to flourish in his working life as a writer.

He joined the magazine when he was 26 and, for more than three decades, wrote a stream of pieces, many of them appearing in multipart series. He wrote about Oxford dons, theology, Indian politics, and many other subjects.

Madhur Jaffrey, the Indian-born actress and cookbook author, once told Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times, that when she first met Mehta, “I tried to take his arm” to help. “He gave me a shove, and we’ve been friends ever since”, the New Yorker reported.

Some of his most fascinating work includes “A Battle Against the Bewitchment of Our Intelligence” (1961), a portrait of British intellectual life and the philosophical debates of the time; “John Is Easy to Please” (1971), a piece about the young linguist Noam Chomsky and the critics of his theory of transformational grammar; and, in 1976, a three-part Profile of Mahatma Gandhi, the report said.

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Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles Kindle Edition

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Ved Mehta’s book on Gandhi (1977) is one of the great portraits of the

political leader. Travelling the world to talk to Gandhi’s family, friends

and followers, drawing his daily life in exacting detail, Mehta gives us

a nuanced and complex picture of the great man and brings him vividly

alive.

 

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Length: 312 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled 

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Millions of words have been written about Mahatma Gandhi, yet he remains an elusive figure, an abstraction to the Western mind. In this book, the illustrious writer Ved Mehta brings Gandhi to life in all his holiness and humanness, shedding light on his principles and his purposes, his ideas and his actions. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Ved Mehta was a staff writer on The New Yorker for thirty-three years. He has been a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and has held the Rosencrantz chair in Writing at Yale University. 

Dark Harbor is an independent book in a continuing literary autobiography, Continents of Exile. The earlier books in the series are All for Love, Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, Up at Oxford, The Stolen Light, Sound Shadows of the New World, The Ledge Between the Streams, Vedi, Mamaji, and Daddyji. 

His other books include Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Portrait of India, and Fly and the Fly-Bottle. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN : B06XYPX5X9

Publisher : Penguin (December 15, 2013)

Publication date : December 15, 2013

Print length : 312 pages

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Customer Reviews: 4.9 out of 5 stars    10 ratings

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Anand

5.0 out of 5 stars An unique Gandhi biography

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2007

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Ved Mehta's this unique book on Gandhi is a must read for all those whom Gandhi is still an object of interest or target of criticism. For novice readers of Gandhi, this book gives them a window of opportunity for either deface their popular image of Gandhi or open up an all new interest for further reading and research. For a seasoned Gandhi reader, this book instead serves as a rare source of information on opinions and reflections of people who had lived and worked with Gandhi. Ved did an excellent job in going after Gandhi's contemporaries, most of whom were in their late years, gathering their recollections of Gandhi and presenting them in a very coherent manner, creating a unique biography of Gandhi in the process. It comes as little surprise to the readers of Gandhi that none of the people Ved met were talking about politics or Gandhi's contribution in the India's freedom struggle; rather they center their conversation on Gandhi's extraordinary character and near supernatural abilities, a response consistent with Gandhi's popular image as a saint than as an astute politician.

One of the very intriguing aspects of Gandhi's life is the kind of relations that he had kept with his women disciples. Based on the popular saying that behind every successful man there is a woman, it is natural for one to develop a curiosity in women of Gandhi's life. Believe me, you won't be disappointed; but unlike other great people, Gandhi's involvement with women rest in a different plain that is, for most, a difficult proposition to comprehend. A number of western and Indian women became Gandhi's disciples at different points in time and became center of controversies. One woman who scholars most seriously studied and most famous among Gandhi's disciples was Madeline Slade (also known as Mirabehn, a name Gandhi had given to her). Two of other women of Gandhi's associates who also became scholars' subjects of interest were Manu and Abha, with whom Gandhi had a `close' relationship.

One of the reasons for my interest in Ved's book was to look for the details of Mirabehn's recollections of Gandhi to see whether Richard Grenier's viciously worded interpretation of Mira's conversation with Ved about Gandhi in his book,  The Gandhi Nobody Knows  has any truth in it. Yet, one gets a different picture in Ved's book about their conversation that is quite different from Richard's interpretation who, one would tend to believe, distorted them in his tirade against Gandhi for falsely portray that she repented her association with Gandhi. The following are the excerpts from Ved's discussion with Mirabehn on Gandhi.

...I try to draw her out on the subject of Gandhi, but her answers are vague. She speaks of him in the most general and abstract terms as a great hero of history, comparing him to Socrates, Christ and Beethoven..."How is it that you were so readily able to substitute Gandhi for Beethoven and Beethoven for Gandhi?" I ask. "Surely what distinguishes the hero from the rest of us in his extraordinary individuality?" Mira replied, `They were much more alike than anyone supposes. My book on Beethoven will show that. They both believed in God. They both had great spiritual power. And don't think that van Beethoven wasn't political'...

One need not be very smart to see how pious Mira's image of Gandhi was. Richard's interpretation now can only be think of as biased and a product of an illogical mind. At least that is how I felt. Mira continued, `In a matter of spirit, there is always a call. Please don't ask me anymore about Gandhi, I am with Beethoven now'. One can only think of this comment as Mira's devotion to Beethoven and that she doesn't want to be distracted with questions on Gandhi. Mira's hagiographical book on Gandhi,  Spirits Pilgrimage  published around the time this interview was done, clearly showing her devotion and submission to Gandhi and his principles; if it wasn't for her devotion to Gandhi, she wouldn't had to spent time and effort in compiling such a revered recollections of her times with Gandhi. Readers who are interested to know how a relation expert might look at their relation, could read, a renowned psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakkar's semi-fictional book  Mira and the Mahatma .

Ved also interviewed Abha; one of Gandhi's `walking sticks' and participant of his Brahmacharical (celibacy) experiments. Abha could not fully comprehend those experiments; neither had she felt any bad intentions on Gandhi's part. Most controversial girl in Gandhi's experiment was Manu, who died at a younger age. Manu had written a book on Gandhi, Bapu - my mother  in which she compared her affection towards Gandhi with the affection she would have had with her own mother. Whatever the case, none of the women Ved interviewed had any bad opinion on Gandhi's experiments. What Ved has not attempted in his book, an analysis of Gandhi's these experiments with women, is attempted by an eminent professor Nicholas F. Gier in a recent academic work, `Was Gandhi a Tantric?' by comparing Gandhi's near tantric powers with that of other eastern ascetics. Ved seems to agree on Gandhi's yogic powers from his discussions with a few of Gandhi's associates who had many encounters and subsequent discussions with Gandhi on his experiments. Based on all these and other accounts, it is safe to assume that Gandhi had had supernatural powers and that he derived these powers at least partially through his `platonic' association with his women disciples. I would recommend Elizabeth Abbot's  A History of Celibacy  to get a more in-depth understanding of celibacy in different cultures and `vow of celibacy' historical figures including Gandhi had kept during their life times.

When Gandhi was alive, the people associated with him had a purpose in life and they were all single focused, but when he was gone, they found themselves devoid of Gandhi's influence and reduced to simple human beings. Mirabehn though continued in India for another ten years working on different rural and husbandry projects, could not stand a chance with the bureaucracy and red tapes of the new India and left India for Vienna to continue her search of Beethoven. Nehru, an aristocrat, became the head of India with complete disregard to Gandhian principles and even waged a war with China for a small piece of land. When asked about Gandhi's future in India, Rajajgopalachari (a close relative and political associate of Gandhi) told to Ved, "I have to give you a depressing answer, much as I don't like to. The glamour of modern technology, money, and power is so seductive that no one - I mean no one - can resist it. And it may be that because of Gandhi we got our freedom before we are ready, before we had developed our character to match the responsibility. The handful of Gandhians who still believe in his philosophy of a simple life in a simple society are mostly cranks." This sums up pretty much how badly the revolution that Gandhi had started died out in India. Unlike other great movements in history such as The Great Russian revolution, Mao's revolution in China, Communist revolution in Vietnam, Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, Gandhi's revolution perished almost instantly with his death. S.S Gill in his book,  Gandhi: A Sublime Failure , examines a number of `failures' from Gandhi's life and does a comparative study of what would have happened if Gandhi had done things differently.

Something somewhere went seriously wrong in India's freedom movement which was started with a noble method of execution under Gandhi's direction. Gandhi's vision of a free India was very special and for which he was willing to wait any longer. While Gandhi was working with British for a brighter future for India, religious and communal rifts created by the religious fanatics undermined Gandhi's vision. There it all started, the vision started to disintegrate into chaos and mayhem. Gandhi's gargantuan efforts to work with Muslims and untouchables all the while working with British for the betterment of India failed miserably. If anyone says that Gandhi did not hasten India's freedom even by a single day but at the same time delayed it by at least 20 years, my argument is, what kind of freedom are they talking about that Gandhi had delayed giving them for so long? Indians got their freedom before they being worthy of it. In my opinion Indians are never freed, British may have left India, but the millions of poor people of India are not liberated, and without their redemption, the freedom India gained is not worth a dime.

While reading reviews of many other Gandhi books, I got a feeling that how flawed is some of the readers' understanding of Gandhi. This book, I wish help them balance their opinions instead of forming a strong one-sided, uneducated opinion on Gandhi. Gandhi's life is not so easy to understand from a few books. One who seriously research Gandhi can see himself moving from one subject to other, from Hinduism to British Raj to Islam, and so on. Without getting a good grip on these topics, a proper understanding of Gandhi, a multifaceted personality, would be difficult if not impossible. It is interesting however to note that academic interest on Gandhi continue unabated with many studies, seminars, publications, debates, and research being conducted all over the world on Gandhi's life and his messages. To name a few, Kathryn Tidrick's  Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life  and Rajmohan Gandhi's  Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire  are two relatively new publications analyzing Gandhi's life.

I only wish Gandhi is understood as a man of great individuality than as a god or saint who was trying a series of experiments in search for truth in all his life, a life that is unparalleled in the history of mankind. I would like to believe that failure of his ideology to capitalize in the Indian political and social arena does not necessarily mean a failure of Gandhi himself.

Gandhi remains as one of the most enigmatic and intriguing figures of 20th century.

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Puneet S. Lamba

5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced Profile

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2003

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Nuggets of lesser-known trivia about Gandhi presented in wonderful prose.

Mehta, a staff writer for The New Yorker for a quarter of a century, neither deifies nor lambastes the mahatma (great soul).

Instead, he chisels a most human profile of the man widely regarded as the originator of non-violent non-cooperation as a successful protest methodology even against the most formidable of opponents.

2 people found this helpful

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jpspiro@midway.uchicago.edu

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but not always fair.

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 1997

This is a relatively short book about one of the largest lives in human history. However, Mehta (a former staff writer for The New Yorker) proves himself a master of collage, giving the reader a multifaceted portrait of Gandhi and his legacy. All of the major events of Gandhi's life are recounted, including the sexual-spiritual crises that didn't make it into the movie. As the title indicates, this book is also about Gandhi's followers and his legacy, and Mehta seems to go out of his way to show how strange and unstable many of Gandhi's followers were. Mehta also spends a lot of time examining Gandhi's bramarchya experiments, where he tested his ability to resist temptation by sharing his bed with young girls. This is the most cited fact about Gandhi that people use to discredit him, and Mehta is no exception. He comes out without an understanding of Gandhi's peculiar (to us) behavior, and he has the journalist's typical approach of never voicing a judgment but merely arranging the facts in such a way to make his opinion clear. If you have not read anything about Gandhi, this may be a decent introduction to him (an implicit critique from a distance is generally better than a pious view from the bottom of a pedestal), but the best place to start is still the Mahatma's own autobiography.

8 people found this helpful

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David Maayan

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Angle

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2004

On the cover of this book is a quote from Max Lerner, describing it as "meticulously researched, passionately felt, and elegantly written." I fully agree with this. Yet, as other reviewers have noted, meticulous research doesn't mean there is no agenda, and the author's passion may strike some as irritating bias. I have given this book five stars because it does what it does superbly. However, you should know something of what the author has set out to do.

As the title suggests, Mehta is concerned as much with Gandhi's legacy as the man himself. There are three sections of the book, and the middle one is a good short biography of Gandhi. It is sandwiched by two sections which center around interviews with disciples and others who run Gandhian foundations, etc. This material is constanty interesting, and very well written. A portrait is painted of Gandhi's causes and message being largely ignored, trivialized, or merchandized - even by organizations and individuals who claim to be spreading his message. However, (with one notable exception) no one is demonized, and the tone is far from a moral tirade. Rather, one senses the author's sadness at seeing the ironies of history, and the very human process of losing touch with the real core of a revelation. I should emphasize that a number of individuals are very sympathetically portrayed. At least two disciples are seen as truly continuing Gandhi's work with integrity and dedication, if not quite on the Mahatma's level.

And what was the Mahatma's level, according to this author? Did he write the book to humanize Gandhi? Certainly, the author believes, and wants to convince the reader, that Gandhi was capable of making mistakes and did so, and was not "complete" and perfect. Yet for all that, he clearly sees Gandhi as a truly great person, with tremendous inner and worldly achievements to his name. Remember that Mehta wrote his book when about 400 biographies of Gandhi had already been published, mostly hagiographic (devotional biography of a saint) in nature. Yet this book contains lots of information not easily available elsewhere, mostly about complexities and ironies of Gandhi's life. I think the author relied on people already having been given an impression of Gandhi's spiritual greatness from other sources, and wrote his book as a "new angle," and therefor didn't emphasize that which was already the standard image of his subject. Don't get me wrong - Mehta's book contains a lot which would lead one to be in awe of Gandhi (how could any biography of Gandhi not?) - but I think the simple, shining elements of Gandhi's life and ideas were downplayed to leave room for complex and controvertial aspects.

In summary, I would recommend this book strongly for someone who is already duly impressed by Gandhi from other sources - whether his autobiography, or the famous film, or elsewhere. I would particularly recommend "Gandhi The Man" by Eknath Easwaran, which is full of powerful quotes and beautiful pictures, as well as a basic biography. This would help give some impression of the power and light which radiated from Gandhi. Yet in Easwaran's book, some of the darkness is downplayed to better see the light. Darkness about Gandhi himself, but mostly the darkness of the failure of many of Gandhi's programs and ideas in India. Yet Mehta's book suffers from the opposite problem - hiding the light to bring out the dark. Taken together, these two books would convey both the intensity and purity at the heart of Gandhi, and the complexities and questions surrounding him and his legacy.

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Top reviews from other countries

Lomaharshana

5.0 out of 5 stars Important, well-written, chronicle of Gandhiji and the post-independence state of Gandhiism

Reviewed in India on June 12, 2020

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This is a 2013 reprint by Penguin Random House India of a book about Gandhiji originally published in 1977. The contents of the book were first published before 1977 in the American magazine, New Yorker.

I bought the paperback version from Amazon India. It is a decent copy. Even the font, Adobe Caslon, reminds you of the New Yorker. But more than the font, Mehta’s journalistic style is trademark New Yorker. He writes about his subjects in non-hagiographical but respectful tones. He digs out contradictions and inconsistencies in his subjects’ thought and speech as if it was his main job, but he describes these contradictions as if they are natural, human, and nothing to be uncomfortable about. This journalistic equanimity and watchfulness is what made the book important for me. (Today's Indian journalists have a lot to learn from the New Yorker in this matter.) This distant irreverence may strike to Indian admirers of Gandhiji as disrespectful, but I feel it is not.

Mehta’s book is split into three parts, with sixteen chapters.

In the first part, he writes about people who lived with Gandhiji. An unnamed woman who lived in the Sewagram Ashram with Gandhiji; Pyarelal Nayyar, Gandhiji's secretary, who now lives in a dirty apartment in Delhi; a cynical and Rajaji, 93 and disappointed with Nehru's India, who says nobody knew Gandhiji as he did and he thinks today’s Gandhians who believe in simple living in a simple world are “cranks”, Gandhiji's daughter-in-law Nirmala; his granddaughter Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni who has moved on to live a “normal” life; and Gandhi’s surviving benefactors Saraladevi Sarabhai, Janakidevi Bajaj and Ghanshyam Das Birla.

The second part of the book is a 130-page biography of Gandhiji, describing the life story that’s written in more than a thousand biographies and that every Indian knows very well. But here too Mehta’s professionalism works its magic. Irrelevant details are gone and crucial and fascinating questions, which are often ignored by other biographers, are answered. Such as, when did Gandhiji come up with idea of Satyagraha? How did Godse justify his actions in his trial? What did Gandhiji think of Jinnah? Did Gandhiji ever get support from common Indian muslims after the Khilafat movement? Did the Khilafat movement succeed? Et cetera.

But it was the third part of the book that struck me as the most important. It is a sombre description of Gandhiji “apostles” who have continued to live according to their interpretation of Gandhiji’s ideals, and whose lives are a reflection of the state of Gandhiism -- mainly non-violence and sarvodaya -- after India’s independence. We meet Charu Chowdhury, who continued to live in Noakhali and Dhaka in Bangladesh, because Bapu told him too. (This entailed several years in Pakistani jails.) We meet Nirmal Kumar Bose, a Communist, who was with Gandhiji during the tragic days of Noakhali. We meet Abha Gandhi, who was physically supporting Gandhiji when we was shot by Godse, and who now runs a hospital in Gujarat. We also meet Gandhiji’s doctor, Sushila Nayyar, the Kripalanis, and Raihana Tyabji. And then Mehta takes us to meet Vinoba Bhave, Gandhiji’s foremost disciple. He takes us to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to meet Gaffar Khan, who has spent fifteen years in a Pakistani jail after independence and who dreams of a separate state of Pakhtunistan. We also meet G. Ramachandran, Maurice Frydman, and Madeleine Slade. And a lonely Satish Chandra Dasgupta.

What is fascinating about this is that most of these people are unknown to us after Gandhiji's passing away. I did not know what happened to Abha Gandhi, to Gaffar Khan, to Satish Dasgupta, for instance. And what is thought-provoking about it is that, without once making it explicit, without once arousing disrespect about the great man or his companions, Mehta makes us wonder about the value of Gandhiji’s ideas. That is the real merit of this book.

Almost a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi brought out the best in us Indians. We cannot afford to forget him, even if we disagree with him. Each Indian generation must struggle and figure out its own interpretation of ahimsa, satyagraha, and sarvodaya. In his book, Ved Mehta shows us how we might do this. Highly recommended.

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Amit

5.0 out of 5 stars A essential book for Gandhi lover.

Reviewed in India on April 1, 2015

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This book represent Gandhi as person along with the hidden contour of freedom struggle. There is mention of Maurice Frydman. He is intriguing as always. Must read for any book lover. A gem.

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