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Mainstream, VOL LV No 32 New Delhi July 29, 2017
Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Man and his Personality
Saturday 29 July 2017, by
#socialtagsMUSINGS
I heaved a sigh of relief when the Opposition came up with the name of Gopalkrishna Gandhi as their vice-presidential candidate. As I’d mentioned in one of my earlier columns, this grandson of Mahatma Gandhi has been a former civil servant-turned-diplomat and now an academic-commentator-writer.
I had interviewed him soon after his book— Dara Shukoh: A Play (Tranquebar Press)—was launched.
I’m putting excerpts from that interview with Gopalkrishna Gandhi; enough to relay details of the man and his personality—
After you took voluntary retirement from the Indian Administrative Service in 1992, you were appointed as the Director of the Nehru Centre in London and later posted as India’s envoy to South Africa, Sri Lanka and Norway. And then, posted as the Secretary to the President of India and later made the Governor of West Bengal. Now settled in Chennai, you are a well-known columnist and author. Looking back, which one of these postings and which phase has been of the greatest significance to you?
Each one of my positions in India’s diplomatic missions has been defining and, in a way, different from the other. London was a huge education in cross-currents, Pretoria an unparalleled experience in the witnessing of living history, Colombo a training in faith and fortitude, and Oslo a much-needed embrace of oxygen. But serving former President K.R. Narayanan and then working in West Bengal were invaluable to me in that they showed that fair-dealing, not size, is meant to be our or any democracy’s true signature. If it is not, it will be a flawed and guilt-burdened democracy. Certain offices and functionaries more than others are meant to ensure that such a debasement does not take place or does not remain un-rectified.
All these years, was there always an urge to write on a regular basis?
I did not then and do not now feel I have anything particularly important to say. My experience of my slice of life’s sweet, bitter and tastelessness has been far less memorable than that of most people.
But, yes, some things I have chanced upon as a wayfarer have seemed worth putting down, in the impression that some hamsafar might find them to be of passing interest. ...Occasions for public speaking (except when I was the Secretary to the President) gave me opportunities for sharing such evolving thoughts, in a way that substituted the need to ‘write regularly’.
Your columns seem to concentrate on the uncomplicated and lesser-known aspects to everyday life. Comment.
Lesser known, perhaps. But uncomplicated? I am not sure...
In your opinion, why is it that today we have no Munshi Premchand—in terms of the basic simplicity which that legendary writer was equipped with? This when there seems to be no dearth of writers.
Writers are not outside of society. What is ‘simple’ now? But I think we should not despair. A new simplicity, quite different from Munshiji’s, will arise in all our language and writing traditions, which will be direct if not rustic, frank if not plain and honest in an altogether new register of experiences that will hold up an old mirror to our newly changed faces.
Your book Dara Shukoh: A Play was released sometime back. What drew you to focus on this bygone Mughal prince? Are there other characters from history whose lives move you?
It was his story which was, in fact, history. Where do you find failure trouncing success, defeat making victory counterfeit, as in the life of Shahjahan’s eldest-born?
Some bureaucrats have taken voluntary retirement to take to full-time writing. Does creativity get choked in the midst of those workplaces?
‘Bureaucrats’ are not a different species of humanity, any more than any other class of people. We are all ‘types’ and ‘persons’ in varying alternation.
You have served in various capacities and been at the helm of affairs. Which particular situation or phase or people have left a deep impression on you as a writer, so much so that maybe you’d write a book on it?
I have not been really at the ‘helm of affairs’, luckily for the helms! If I write in the future beyond columns and occasional pieces, I will be impelled to do so in ways that cannot and should not be pre-meditated.
Being Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, do you carry memories/faint recollections of him?
Alas, no. But that is my loss, not that of anyone else.
In your opinion, why is it that none of Mahatma Gandhi’s grandchildren have taken to active politics?
That is factually incorrect. My cousin, Sumitra Kulkarni, the eldest of Gandhiji’s grandchildren now living, was a member of the Rajya Sabha from the Indian National Congress for several years. And my esteemed elder brother, Rajmohan Gandhi, was also in the same House, from the Janata Dal. Neither of them is in active politics now, but their interest in public affairs remains strong and contemporary, from different political vantages.
As a writer, do you feel upset and dismayed at seeing and sensing the decay and deterioration around.
I do not regard myself as a writer. In fact, I do not really see myself being in any typecast category. Being but a drop in the ocean of the people-hood of India, I despair and I celebrate, I agonise and I go down on my knees in thanksgiving, I grieve and I rejoice.
And in this mind-tearing bi-polarity ever so often, I ask the Maker why it is that He has chosen to make this part of the Creation His— or perhaps Her—stage of endless experimen-tation, with the most extreme and mutually incompatible of raw materials. And, of course, I get no answer, for the Creator has better things to do.
