The interview with the Mahatma that Times of India did not carry
A young poor Dalit boy after completing his graduation from Kerala landed up in Delhi in search of a job, basically because his caste overshadowed his brilliance in his native Travancore. He secured a temporary job as an assistant in the Foreign office. This was around the time the Central Excise Act had come into force, 1944. He didn’t like the job and so applied for a Tata scholarship for studying abroad.
He applied directly to JRD Tata. The application was shabby with a lot of scratches and overwriting. All his efforts to get a clean sheet of paper failed and he posted the dirty letter. A month later he got a call from the Tatas, where a lady got his application typed and put up to JRD Tata. Ten months later he got that Tata scholarship, but his next ship to England was after six months and he did not know how to support himself during that period. So the Tata lady got him a job in the Times of India and accommodation in the Tata Institute hostel. She also arranged some suits for him. While with the Times of India he interviewed Mahatma Gandhi and can you believe it, the Times did not carry it! So much for editorial acumen! But the interview is available in volume 86 of “The Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi” which we bring to you here
April 10, 1945
Q. Do you still hold that the Harijan problem is only religious and social and that it has no great political significance?
A. It has political significance but indirectly.
Q. The Congress as an organization has not taken up the Harijan work. Will it not be better if that work is taken up by the Congress and not by the Harijan Sevak Sangh?
A. It is wrong to say that the Congress has not taken it up.
Q. But it seems that leaders like Jawaharlal and the Rashtrapati are not keenly aware of the Harijan question?
A. Those two are immersed in that work.
Q. The Harijan Sevak Sangh after years of work had not yet produced even a dozen leaders from among the Harijans themselves.
A. That charge is only partly true.
Q. All great men have a passion for simplification. You have simplified the nature of human conflict as between violence and non-violence, truth and untruth, right and wrong. But in life, is not the conflict between one right and another right or between one truth and another truth? How can non-violence deal with such a situation?
A. That is a matter of application.
Q. In the Hindu-Muslim question where the conflict is between the rights of the Hindus and the rights of the Muslims, what technique of non-violence can be employed to solve the problem, especially when these rights seem to be irreconcilable?
A. That awful situation can only be dealt with properly through satyagraha. Your questions show that you have not studied it. If I am right, Pyarelal will give you a list of the books. My advice to you is that you should seriously study the literature on the subject.
Q. How can a Harijan who goes abroad best serve his country and community from abroad?
A. He cannot serve the one without serving the other. Abroad you will say it is a domestic question which you are determined to solve for yourselves.
He landed up in the London School of Economics under the legendary Harold Laski. The Tata scholarship was about Rs. 16000/- and when he got a first class, the Tatas sent him 100 pounds to see the continent. The Tata scholarship was not free; the scholars were to return the money after they got jobs. In his case an exception was made because of his poor background.
He came back to India with a recommendation from Laski to one of his illustrious students, Jawaharlal Nehru. What a recommendation was that! Nehru knew the value of appreciation from a scholar like Laski and so persuaded the young man to join the IFS. And there he went on to become the Secretary – in a department where he worked as a temporary assistant.
He could not meet his sponsor JRD Tata yet – that he could do only 35 years after he got the scholarship – again when he was about to go abroad - only this time as India’s Ambassador to the United States!
Today he is no more, but what a great life it had been. From Uzhavoor to Raisina Hills was certainly not a pleasant excursion. Incidentally he was the President of India during the 50th anniversary of our Independence Day and Republic Day.
He had two room mates in London – a Mauritian and an Indian. One of them was later known as Sir Veerasamy Ringadoo, President of Mauritius and the other is the famous Indian Economist KN Raj. What they say about birds of the same feather flocking together is after all true!