Fear of the videshi

Yet others studiously explored, not always from an Orientalist perspective, India’s culture, religions and civilisation and wrote scholarly treatises. they were the ones who acquired the gift of being interpreters, more trusted by the others’ even than by their own people. Finally, quite a few official and non-official Britons sympathised with or actively supported India’s nationalist aspirations. Remem-ber, Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912) was the “Father of the Indian National Congress”. Remember, too, that his biographer, William Wedderburn, was closely associated with the Bombay branch of the East India Association. His sympathy for India was as real as that of Hume, William Wordsworth, Henry Beveridge and Henry Cotton, men who still retained their faith in co-operation with educated Indians.

The Indian branch of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875, was connected with the formation of the Congress. One of its active members was the remarkable Irish wom-an, Annie Besant. She came to India in 1889, and dedicated her life to the service her adop-ted country.

In 1898, Besant founded the Central Hindu College, which subsequently became the nucleus of the Banaras Hindu Univer-sity. In 1914, she bought the daily Madras Standard and converted it into New India. This, together with her weekly Common-weal and her religious journals, made her the most formidable press baron in Mad-ras. The Home Rule League (1916), which soon had its branches all over the country, was the brainchild of this energetic woman. It soon gave the British every reason to see the organisation as an extremely serious threat to the continued existence of the raj. Indeed the Home Rule agitation had so aroused feelings against the government that the Governor of Madras interned Besant in mid-1917.

Charles Freer Andrews, who came to India as Principal of St. Stephen’s College in 1914, was another outstanding Briton who, “in the words of Tagore, lived “in our joys and sorrows, our triumphs and misfortunes, identifying himself with a defeated and humiliated people”. He remained, so writes his biographer Hugh Tinker, the unique individual who had stepped out of his position as a foreigner, a stranger to India, into the lives and hearts of Indians in order to show that nationality and race were infinitely less important than brotherhood and love. India bestowed on such a man the title of Deenabandhu.

Andrews’ devotion to Indian nationalism was exemplary; his life-long friendship with Tagore and Gandhi le-gendary. The spirit of Santiniketan made him at once restful, and calm and quiet, he told the Gurudev. Even before meeting Gandhi in South Africa, this is what he wrote: “I have a great happiness and blessing in store for me — to see Mohandas Gandhi. No life lived in our day could be more moving than his. My journey will be a pilgrimage to touch his feet”. No wonder, the Mahatma was dee-ply distressed by his death: “not only England, not only India, but humanity had lost a true son and servant … I have not known a better man or a better Chri-stian than C.F.Andrews”.

Gandhi’s personal charisma and skills of communication attracted a large number of people. Among his devotees were a number of foreigners’ who made India their home, spent years with him backing his political and social crusade, and lent their wholesome support to the nationalist struggle. Prominent amongst them were Verrier Elwin, Reginald Reynolds, a British Quaker who carried Gandhi’s historic letter to the viceroy on March 2, 1930 announcing the launching of civil disobedience, and Miss Slade, an English Admi-ral’s daughter who had left the life of ease to be with the Mahatma. Mirabehn, as she was famously known, was devoted to her mentor. She accompanied him on his travels, wrote notes and letters, nursed him in jail and was engaged in a concentrated effort to test and vindicate the Mahatma’s programme of village reconstruction and the revival of cottage industries. She was part of Gandhi’s entourage to London during the 1930 Round Table Conference. Gandhi translated into Eng-lish a large number ofdevotional songs for her which he used in the Sabarmati Ash-ram prayers.

My problem is how to appropriately describe these dedicated men and women. Should we be concerned with their foreign’ origin or with their contribution to our public life? Do we invent a special category for them? Should we treat them as videshi foreigners’ interfering in our nationalist struggles? Perhaps, we can find answers in the Mahatma’s writings. But, then, he was too magnanimous and large-hearted to think in such xenophobic terms. The majoritarian concept of citizenship, now being advanced in certain political circles for short-term electoral gains, was antithetical to his world view and the liberal and accommodating ethos of the nationalist movement.