|
|
Humor / Satire
The Hari Putar Dialogues � 24
by
Rajesh Talwar
(The
Times of India; 20 September; LONDON: Winston Churchill once called
Mahatma Gandhi "a bad man and an enemy of the Empire" who should have
been done away with. The war-time prime minister of Britain told Field
Marshal Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa at a meeting of the war
cabinet in London in the 1940s: "You are responsible for all our
troubles in India - you had Gandhi for years and did not do away with
him.")
Putar:
According to a report in the Times of India today, records have emerged
which quote Winston Churchill as saying that Mahatma Gandhi was a bad
man and an enemy of the Empire.
Hari: Enemy of the Empire, I can understand, but �bad man� is not a term
that even Gandhi�s enemies would apply to him.
Putar: But perhaps as far as Churchill was concerned anyone who was an
enemy of the British Empire was ipso facto, by definition a �bad man�.
Hari: That�s likely of course.
Putar: I think Churchill was being the bad man here when he blamed Field
Marshal Smuts for not doing away with Gandhi. Smuts did not agree with
Churchill. About Gandhi he is reported to have said: "When I put him in
prison - three times - all Gandhi did was to make me a pair of bedroom
slippers." Do you think that�s true?
Hari: Quite possible.
Putar: If this is true, why do you think Gandhi made him those slippers?
Hari: I don�t think that Gandhi ji would have made slippers specifically
for him. He was always experimenting with simple and intermediate
technology. Take the charkha and making of khadi for instance. It�s
likely that he spent some of his time in jail experimenting with the use
of simple technology, among his other activities. He might have made a
few slippers using rope or other materials.
Putar: Gandhi ji was a great believer in the use of symbols, wasn�t he?
Hari: The Dandi March and the making of salt was a great symbolic act of
defiance.
Putar: So was he using the rope slippers, if they were rope slippers as
a symbol to suggest to the Field Marshall that he and the British Empire
should find some rope to hang themselves?
Hari: That�s unlikely, putar. Don�t forget Gandhi ji was a great
believer in non-violence.
Putar: They were bedroom slippers, weren�t they? Perhaps he was
suggesting that the British Empire should go to sleep.
Hari: How is it that we are coming to know after all these years what
Churchill said, and actually thought of Gandhi?
Putar: Apparently Churchill's behind-closed-door, candid observations at
cabinet meetings about people and issues during the war were recorded
for posterity by one of the war cabinet minute-takers, Lawrence Burgis.
Hari: And those notes have now been discovered?
Putar: Yes. At that time, it was the law that all notes taken at cabinet
meetings should be destroyed. However, Burgis apparently failed to
destroy his notes. These have only now come to light six decades later
when prominent British historian Andrew Roberts was recently going
through the British cabinet archives for his forthcoming book Masters
and Commanders.
Hari: What does Roberts say about the authenticity of these notes?
Putar: Oh, there is little doubt about their authenticity. Roberts came
across several files of Burgis in which the then assistant to the Deputy
Secretary to the War Cabinet between 1939 and 1945 kept verbatim notes
of cabinet conversations. In his personalized account in The Telegraph
Robert says: "It was at that moment that I realized that Lawrence Burgis
had broken the 1911 Official Secrets Act, and had kept his verbatim
notes of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet."
Hari: What else did Churchill say?
Putar: When the Mahatma went on hunger strike during World War II,
Churchill told the cabinet: "Gandhi should not be released on the
account of a mere threat of fasting."
Hari: �Mere threat�? Gandhi could have died.
Putar: British cabinet ministers were skeptical about his fast. Burgis'
notes tell us of a cabinet minister who, referring to Gandhi's fast,
said he was getting glucose in his orange juice.
Hari: Were they discussing all these details in the Cabinet meetings?
Putar: So it appears. Another cabinet minister said "he had oil rubbed
into him which was nutritious".
Hari: First time I�ve heard that if you have an oil massage, you need to
eat less.
Putar: That statement about rubbing the oil allowed Churchill to claim
that: "it is apparently not a fast merely a change of diet".
Hari: How strange.
Putar: It�s an open secret that Churchill wanted the Nobel Prize for
Peace. He thought he deserved it because the war effort was in a way
responsible for the end of World War 2.
Putar: But was he really a man of peace?
Hari: Not in the way Gandhi was but prizes such as the Nobel Peace Prize
do not really matter as far as someone like Gandhi is concerned.
Putar: Tell me something Papaji?
Hari: Bol, putar?
Putar: Wouldn�t you agree that had Churchill truly been a man of peace,
he would not have suggested that Gandhi be allowed to die while on fast?
Hari: I guess that is right, putar, but what would you have had
him do?
Putar: He could have just placed a charpai next to where Gandhi
was fast and done a counter fast.
Hari: Somehow I can�t imagine Churchill doing that.
Putar: He was overweight in any case. It could have melted some of his
fat.
Hari: It would have been something healthy for him, that�s true.
Putar: Churchill said that Gandhi was taking nutrition through oil
massage, didn�t he? So if Churchill had been on fast, should he have
been allowed to smoke one of his famous cigars?
Hari: Why do you ask?
Putar: If Gandhi ji could take nutrition through the rubbing of oil on
his body, as has been alleged, surely you would agree that Churchill
could take it by smoking cigars?
Hari: I don�t know, putar.
September 28, 2008
Top
|
Humor
|
|
