RAJAJI: AS A WRITER IN ENGLISH
K.
CHANDRASEKHARAN
The
notable fact of Rajaji as a writer, whether in English or Tamil, is that he
never set himself up to be a writer. Circumstances of his life such as matters
of public interest and the country’s politics during stirring times, shaped him to become almost a constant writer in both
the languages which, with a bent to getting immersed in English literature from
college days, transformed him to be contributing his share to the growing
Indo-Anglian literature.
It
was later only during his imprisonments that he could also become equally
conversant with Sanskrit and Tamil classics which naturally provided him with a
zest for acquiring more and more knowledge of our own epics and scriptures. In
a mind which was already cultivated and imbued with the best thoughts from
every source, it easily was able to absorb anything of permanent value both in
our culture and literature. Being of an unusually acute intellect, his range of
knowledge as well as memory-power for retention of the kernel of what he had
read aided him to express concisely and adequately upon almost all topics of
human interest. He might not remember the exact words of what he had studied
but unfailingly could reproduce the substance of
anything striking or relevant he had previously come across. For an original
mind, it is a common feature not to clog its memory with quotations. Unhampered
by previous writers in the matter of thinking, he could be as rich of thought
and presentation in lucid language as any other reputed writer in English.
Though
he used to mention of himself that, because of hi recesses from political
activity (during jail periods) as well as temporary retirements from political
work, he secured hours enough for doing translations both from English into
Tamil and from Tamil into English, he had never felt the want of mental
engagement. True, it was his desire to share with others the enjoyment of the
wealth of gold buried in our classics that took form in rendering valuable
translations. The origin of both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana condensations
happened only in similar circumstances. So far the English tenslations
of them are concerned, he says in the foreword to his books that, “When I had
to step down from high office and heavy responsibility, I did not feel at a
loss or wonder what to do.” He refers to his taking up of the work of
translating his Tamil originals of these two epics.
No
doubt he had already done some translations into Tamil from Marcus Aurelius and
Socrates, as also into English from Tamil like the “Kural”
and in Tamil of the Bhagavat Gita from
Sanskrit. Consciously or otherwise, his renderings were intended primarily for
our own younger people whose education in the modern system left very little
scope for study of our own great literary masterpieces. To have possessed the
confidence to undertake the task, itself indicates how well-equipped and of
scholarly-bent should have been his intellectual powers.
Most
of his English writings were of the later days when he had to be conducting the
Swarajya weekly. It was very thoughtful of the sponsors of the sumptuous
volumes called ” “Satyam Eva Jayate” to have collected many of his writings in
English which appeared in the Swarajya. They impress us of his enormous
mental pabulum which could encompass many subjects such as politics,
philosophy, religion, science, sociology, medicine and a best of others of
modern interest. In everyone of the topics chosen by
him, his approach and method of dealing with it showed of what balance of
outlook he was endowed with. In spite of their relevance to matters of
immediate interest, his way of interpretation revealed their usefulness as
knowledge for all times.
It
is evident from what we gather from some of the details of his early days and
entry into public life that he never refrained from comment and observation in
the daily press in order to remedy a wrong or solve a problem exercising the
public mind. One could perceive even in some of his letters to the editor or
articles which then appeared, that he had a point of view of his own that
deserved consideration. His language showed the care taken in the choice of
diction and the effort made to be accurate of facts. The one factor which later
also assumed proportions high enough to attract the Mahatma
and many others of his following, was his self-control. It is to be
conjectured that this self-restraint sought out the correct expression for
conveying his ideas, as otherwise due to any indifference on his part what he
tried to state might be misleading or be distorting the issue in discussion.
Overstatement naturally either of fact or language was avoided by him. One who
had watched him also knew how more than once even in the stage of final proof
he would look into what he had written and make corrections.
The
apparent simplicity of his English was partly the result of his
character-assertion. Self-restraint would permit of neither wrong statements
nor eloquence in spurts. From beginning to end the writing disclosed a closely
reasoned and cleanly presented picture. His
own observations, if they peeped in, were the
dictates of the moral armament behind all his sallies of wit and arguments. As
far as we are able to perceive his writings, we rarely notice much indulgence
in qualifying adjectives or adverbs just to make his point more appealing or
forceful. Rather his habit leaned more on the correct word which served
adequately his meaning. The outcome was a singular style of his own in
everything he wrote, whether an article, note or personal correspondence.
It
is not difficult to presume that his close association with the Mahatma could
have only strengthened such an eschewal of surplusage
of words. Whatever it be, the consequence of a
deliberate avoidance of verbiage proved to his advantage. It easily gathered a
power to instill in others a rectitude in response.
Take for instance the following passage from one of his writings: “What greater
pleasure is there in life than to be bold? In every matter if we try to do what
we think is right, everything will go on all right. What I have told you has
been said a thousand times before. But it is good to repeat truth so long as we
have not reached what we wish to reach.” (Voice of Wisdom:
P. 1.)
Analysed, there is
nothing to dazzle the eye in it, nor to strike our
ears as ponderous or inscrutable of meaning. Yet its very bareness forces the
mind of the recipient not to get distracted in any manner from a straight path.
Analogy
and simile are often employed by him in order to make his meaning clearer to
others. Sometimes parables too came out of him to elucidate his thought. All of
them trooped in as of their own making and seemed never of his. Because of his
refinement which again was based on his self-restraint, he had his theory for developing
the underlying thought. To know how he would reconcile with character, one has
only to read a passage from his pamphlet on “Culture”, to be assured of
his ever-alert observing power. He wrote “Culture and character, as I have
explained, are not the same thing though, of course, there is no harm
occasionally confusing one with the other and using the two terms loosely and
giving to culture the same importance as to character. The orange or the banana
peel carries a delicate variation of the quality of the fruit enclosed within
it. Often, the aromatic smell of the peel is even more pleasant than the inside
of the fruit. Cultured behaviour is often more
pleasant than even solid virtue. Peel and fruit grow together from tiny
beginnings to the ripe fruit state. So also do character and culture, the mind
inside and the external activities, conduct and behaviour,
go together. This is science as well as psychology.” (Culture,
P. 6)
To
show how a simile from him can beautifully light up a political situation, let
us take the following example. He wrote: “We have achieved political freedom as
a nation, but the nation may be governed as to rob individuals of the substance
of freedom. The sun may be out of an eclipse, but clouds of the sun’s
own making may still hide the sun from us.” Only poets are capable of
such imagery.
Humour lurks in his words
even when they are thrown out with no particular context in view. He observed:
“A strong Government and a loyal people no doubt make a good state. But a deaf
Government and a dumb people do not make a democracy.” (Rajaji Reader)
His language gains beauty and deeper
significance sometimes when he could add a personal note. Because we associate
with his personality much that has no more to reckon with in the case of
others, we are influenced by the spiritual touch of his utterance. “I have had
forty years of contact with a saint who came to show a new way of resistance of
evil. The sieve of time has of course dropped many details but what remains
has, by that process, been all the clearer and firmer.” (Rajaji
Reader, P.
146) A more convincing manner of bringing home the point of the ultimate duty
of the citizen of a state could not have been postulated. There is not only
force but a strident philosophy behind. He pointed to solid action to be
followed when all speculations and doubts have resolved by the functioning of
time. Distracting views, of themselves, vanish with the process of time working
upon men’s minds.
Emotion
such as what would descend to sentimentalism or spend itself in mere picturesqueness of language was never his. No momentary
impulse sought of his displaying purple patches for the sake of brightening his
writing. If at all, it was all throughout a careful and calm husbanding of the
springs within from wasting their pelucid waters on
desert sands. Sometimes his utterances assumed a pitch of resonance too just as
he tried to stress his point with an underlying spiritual note:
“It
is self-restraint, control from within, that makes art artistic, beauty
beautiful, and orderly and enjoyable.’
Ananda Coomaraswamy with his deep immersion in the
philosophy of aesthetics, or Tagore with an overriding spiritual significance
in his words, could have spoken these words. But Rajaji, in the midst of a life
torn between imponderable difficulties and trials to have given expression to
them, only proves the inner awakening which he had always nourished. Economy of
art in his case, seems to have been wonderfully ready
to come to his help.
His
short stories, some of them, have also been put in the English garb and they
attest to his attempt to be quite spoken-like. The same astuteness of
observation of life, the same sympathy for the poor and forlorn, the same
desire to uplift despairing human souls, ever actuated his motive for writing
stories through which to do his propaganda for relieving humanity of their errors and follies. In his
case the touch of propaganda
did not besmirch the quality of his
writing. Though openly he wanted to be didactic, his naive articulation of the lessons he came to preach
never alienated the connoisseurs of taste.
He
wrote once of an incident in
his life which may well be included as a short story. It pertains to a tree (Asvattha) which was felled by the axe of the municipal authorities of a
town just to remove it from affecting their building. The tree was tall and
full of foliage. It was cut
down and it lay stretched on the ground. An I. M. S. Officer who had a soul
full of tenderness to plants and trees bemoaned its fall
saying “Oh, they have killed my tall beautiful girl.” It struck a sympathetic
chord in Rajaji who began reflecting upon the cruelty inflicted on the poor
tree which had done no harm to people.
A dream came to him in which the tree began to speak to him
and bewailed his inaction in not averting the tragedy that overtook it. He
writes that the moment he awoke, he then only realised
it was all a dream–the tree addressing him in words. He writes with a becoming
sense of humour
how he wrote a letter to the
editor of a paper complaining of the act of vandalism in cutting down innocent trees. It seems the local
Bar, of which he was a member,
thoroughly enjoyed it as a joke while the president of the association even criticised him
for writing upon the felling of trees
while more important issues in public affairs remained yet unsolved. The
conclusion is that it makes the reader realise the utmost value of all life being equal. He writes:
“I did not tell them about my dream as I knew they would laugh and refer to my digestion.” (Rajaji Reader: Tree Speaks:
P.14)
The
naivete with which he has
written about his folly, if it really was, reminds us of the utter folly of most
of us in being callous to the taking of
life in whatever form it may be. They who laughed were not possessed of sensitive souls. Sensitivity, if it is real, cannot classify the
objects of its sympathy according to priority. Whatever may be the lesson from
the incident he has described, it certainly shows what true literary instinct
for details and narration he possessed for writing a story.
Terseness
followed his simplicity on occasions. His method of inculcating a healthy outlook in people which normally would escape attention of them, requires also remembering. He said: “Patriotism is not
just emotion. It is emotion and wisdom.” (Voice of Wisdom: p. 61) We
can get plenty of such words of mature experience from him.
But what adds an edge of practicality to it is when his sentences crisply
shorten and do not prolong to make it all ineffective.
Rajaji
has not written many books in English. Whatever he wrote in Swarajya, the
weekly magazine, when collected, bestow on us a good collection of his writings
which are never irrelevant even after the passage of time when they would be less contextual. One thing is
certain. Most of what he had
called attention to from his readers will not fail to be guiding principles not
only to us but to the rest of mankind.
But
for the artist in him, he could not have selected from the jungle of episodes of the Mahabharata such fine ones as would make any reader, particularly
Westerners, understand the real cultural values of Indian life. In the introduction he said: “The Mahabharata discloses a rich
civilization and highly evolved society which though of an older world, strangely resembles the
In
discussing the banishment of Sita by Rama in the Uttarakanda
he was not happy about the finale to the story. In his view, with the conquest
over Ravana the function of the Avatarhood of Rama was over. He wrote thus:
If...it is said in the Uttarakanda that Sita was sent
to the forest, we may take it that it mirrors the voiceless and endless
sufferings of our womenfolk. Tenderness of
feelings is borne out more in this view of his than his usual dispassionate judgement. We are not here
concerned with any controversy about the right or wrong of Rama’s action. Rajaji himself bad
owned that great minds have sometimes revealed inexplicable conduct measured by
ordinary standards.
Rajaji
liked the English language much not only for its international status but for
its treasures of literature. In
his arguments for retaining English language as an official vehicle in
administration, his partiality for its wonderful flexibility encouraged him to favour it. He knew how its impact on our great culture had
been beneficial for so long and how it has stirred us up along many of the healthy avenues of modernism.
Though
he was conscious of the handicaps of giving
in English a book of eternal poetic value as Kamban’s
Ramayana, yet he braved all criticism from students of the epic in publishing the Ayodyakanda
in English. The Sahitya Akademi had the pride of
sponsoring it to the world. There he says of the difficulties in trying to
bring about the beauty of the original verses, which read according to him:
“The lyric cannot be a lyric without conspicuous economy of words; without
sparkle or lilt; these are Kamban’s special
characteristics, not to speak of the depth of his thoughts, his human
understanding and his wonderful poetic imagination.” (The Ramayana: As
told by Kamban. Sahitya Akademi
Publication, Introduction: P. 10)
Rajaji
was an embodiment of the refinement which he had described as born of
self-restraint. If style can be the man, then he was to the brim in everyone of
the words he wrote. His sense of proportion, his imagination of others’
difficulties, his wholesome observation of all traits which contribute to
goodness of conduct, his courage of thought and action against odds, his innate
humility, his genuine love of the young–all those gave him the substance to
write and speak as no other could have done so satisfactorily amidst a life of
enormous hardships and sacrifices voluntarily borne, for the reclamation of an
ancient country fallen on evil days. He remained a dynamic politician, a
practical philosopher, and not the least a writer both in his own mother-tongue
as well as in English–his adopted vehicle for carrying far and wide his wisdom.
[Paper read at a Seminar
on Rajaji organised by the