Abstract
Writing about a book which is even partially about Gandhi—that is what, despite its title, Atlantic Gandhi is—one cannot but worry about the two matters of truth and non-violence. And worrying about them can—in certain situations—confront one with the difficulty of reconciling the two. In principle this is not difficult. The uncertainty of knowing—as suggested by the anekantavad that Gandhi swore by—makes truth and non-violence an inseparable couple. But principles are hard to practise. One must try nonetheless.
I began reading this book with great expectations and studied it from cover to cover, including every footnote and entry in the bibliography. The reading done, I was left with a feeling of unease about the book and about a growing trend in scholarship that it typifies. It betrays an obsessive concern with theorizing, and a desire to carve out a specific sub-field—Atlantic Gandhi—within the larger field of what is theorized as Atlantic modernity. It seeks to provide a broad overview of the overarching Indian diaspora that the brutal system of indentured labour for plantation economy produced in such far-flung areas as South Africa, Fiji and the Caribbean. And within that it inserts ‘Atlantic Gandhi’, the subject of its special study, and traces the evolution of his consciousness as diaspora.
What emerges is actually not a book—except in the physical sense of appearing under one title—but two unfinished books. If it is a book on Gandhi, even Atlantic Gandhi, the Caribbean story of indenture remains extraneous to it, despite its strained justification for including that story. As a book on the overarching Indian diaspora, it leaves a great deal undone. It carries a poignant quote in which Gordon K. Lewis moans: ‘We see slavery but not the slave.’ Besides, the author herself complains—and resolves to redress the historiographic imbalance—that ‘Gandhi and his allies so dominated the South African issue that the labourers there hardly emerge with the clarity they do in the Caribbean’ (pp. 127–8). Yet, barring stray snippets, it conveys little of the pain and suffering of the unfortunate migrant men, women and children. There is, instead, an abundance of theoretical discussion that all but invisibilizes the existential human tragedy of indentured Indian servitude.
My complaint is not about theorizing, but about the way it is done. In fact, there is in the book itself an excerpt from the Cuban poet, essayist and literary critic, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, which shows how powerfully theorization can evoke human suffering. Retamar says in the excerpt:
But it is only right and fair to ask what relationship we, the present inhabitants of this America in whose zoological and cultural heritage Europe has played an unquestionable part, have to the primitive inhabitants of the same America—those peoples who constructed or were in the process of constructing admirable cultures and who were exterminated or martyred by Europeans of various nations, about whom neither a white nor black legend can be built, only an internal truth of blood, that, together with such deeds as the enslavement of Africans, constitutes their eternal dishonor.
Such theorization calls for a deep understanding of the world that is being theorized. It cannot come from second-hand reading; which is what this book relies on. It selects certain reigning theorizations and clinically applies them to write about its own chosen themes, indentured labour and the Gandhi of South Africa. It betrays little awareness of the need to delve into the primary historical material pertaining to the world it is writing about. To give but one example, it contains a whole chapter on C.F. Andrews which is based entirely on secondary sources like Charles Freer Andrews (1950), by Banarasi Das Chaturvedi and Marjorie Sykes, and The Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India (1979) by Hugh Tinker. In fact, even in its use of the requisite primary material relating to Gandhi, so much of which is easily accessible, the book has been rather sparing. The same quotations are used repeatedly in the text.
A scholar of literature, Natarajan would surely know the kind of understanding that the best writings on, say, a work of fiction would provide to one who has chosen not to read the original work. History, there is reason to believe, is no different. The feel and understanding that come from engaging with original sources can never be matched by what can be obtained from the most outstanding secondary works.
Theory, too, is no different. You cannot hail C.L.R. James as the ‘guru of Atlantic modernity’ (p. 180) and cite him repeatedly to make a variety of points, and not read him. This book does precisely that. It does not read James. It reads him through Hillary Beckles and Tejaswini Niranjana. It reads, to give another example, Victor Turner through Benedict Anderson. It nevertheless must bring everything within the purview of theory. So, for whatever it is worth, a foot-note is added to the statement that Gandhi’s career in South Africa demonstrates that ‘his silences and absences are meaningful’. The foot-note simply reads: ‘Contemporary theory finds silences significant to meaning’ (p. 82).
Even Gandhi, very largely, is only vicariously read. He is read through Anderson. ‘Using Anderson to read Gandhi’, is how the book puts it (p. 80). The kind of reading that ensues is illustrated in the following excerpt:
In my discussion of Hind Swaraj, I pointed out Gandhi’s railing against the railways, ironic given my Andersonian claim that he used the railways to build geography of nation. Gandhi’s rejection of railways as disease carriers for instance is paradoxical in one who advocated open communication with crowds. It appears that his distrust of machinery causes him to overlook ways in which he used the train. (p. 83)
An iron logic is already neatly worked out, waiting to be applied to Gandhi. It has seen railways as an instrument to build the geography of a nation. It follows, therefore, that they can discharge no other function, certainly not the dirty function of carrying disease. Further, he who has used the railways for nationalist ends forfeits the use of his reason if that reason discerns serious problems with the railways. If he still criticizes the railways, the problem cannot be with the railways, but must be with his irrational distrust of machinery. (The logic implicitly assumes that Gandhi’s unfavourable view of the railways is itself not contributing to his distrust of machinery.)
Saying, deliberately, nothing about the Hind Swaraj, I have simply pointed to the specious nature of the logic that underlies the claim made in the above excerpt. It is remarkable that such logic should seem immaculate to an intelligent and well-read person like the author of this book. Even more remarkable is the fact that, while it may be ‘Andersonian’ in a very specific sense, this way of looking at the Gandhi of the Hind Swaraj is much wider spread. Dominant since 1909, it has ensured the dismissal of Gandhi’s seed-text as quixotic, antediluvian, unreal, etc. Essentially, but for a few intermittent exceptions, the way it has been looked at has been the way of the very civilization it has radically critiqued.
Rejected, paradigmatically, by his political guru politely, and by his political heir peremptorily, the fate of the Hind Swaraj led Gandhi to appeal that it be read with his eyes. That is where the real difficulty lies. The ‘Andersonian’ way is our natural way. To respond to Gandhi’s appeal and try and see what it looks like from his eyes, requires a radical cognitive shift. Things have begun to change in recent years. The unbridled ruthlessness of predatory global capitalism, along with the violence that is gripping the world—making more and more people experience in their daily lives that which Gandhi had foreshadowed in 1909—is enabling people to sense something of the logic of the Hind Swaraj. Reservations continue about the viability of the Gandhian alternative, but the century-long cognitive resistance to it is cracking.
Given that the making of Atlantic Gandhi has been coterminous with this cognitive shift, it is a little surprising that the book should all but fail to see its subject with his own eyes. I say ‘all but’ because there is one point where, temporarily swayed by a poignant quote from C.L.R. James about Gandhi, the book comes tantalizingly close to glimpsing the spirit of Gandhi (p. 180). That is as far as it goes.
A book so theoretically-oriented can reasonably be expected to be extra alert in its choice of terms. What, then, is one to make of its use of the term ‘citizens of British Empire’ and of their ‘rights’? (pp. 209, 212). The British Empire, one knows, made a great show of granting rights to the populations inhabiting its dominions. But those, one thought, were the rights of ‘subjects’, not of ‘citizens’. The distinction is crucial for understanding the reality of the historical phenomenon—colonialism/imperialism—within which unfolded the book’s two themes. Another term rather thoughtlessly employed is ‘ethnicity’. Despite having lost much of its descriptive and explanatory power in recent years, ethnicity continues to be freely misused. Categorizing the migrants to South Africa, the book describes the Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam as ‘ethnicities’. Further, it notices among those migrants certain ‘micro-ethnicities’. These latter are listed as Moplahs, ‘Sudra’ and ‘Hindi’. Explaining the last term, the book tells us that ‘a North Indian migrant to Chennai may be known as “Hindi”’ (p. 78).
Before concluding, I must state, in deference to the readers’ interest, that this book is dotted with egregious errors. True, even prestigious publishers are now tending to care little about typos, but this book is the shoddiest I have seen. For instance, three errors occur within the space of but eighteen lines between the end of page 127 and the beginning of 128. That makes it one error per six lines. There are pages with three to four, for example, pp. 196–7. Think of the effect on your mental state of reading two consecutive pages marred by seven errors. A model of bad drafting, bad editing and bad proof-reading—revealed in promiscuous punctuation, spelling mistakes, wrong referencing, grammatical errors—the book makes you wonder how all this could possibly happen. Ending with the book’s last page, it opens with this sentence about the author: ‘Nalini Natarajan is a Professor at the English Department, College of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico in the US, where she has been teaching at since 1987.’