Opinion Gandhi’s prayer matters more than ever
The easiest and most defeatist thing we can do today is to see these as moments from another time and space dimension — a realm of goodness to which we now have little or no access. To succumb to this would be self-destructive
Wafting out of it were the sounds of Gandhiji’s favourite hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light”. Whether or not we are sufficiently evolved to look up and pray for the pilot, we are, each one of us, capable of seeking to be led by the Kindly Light.
On the morning of January 30, 1948, an American journalist and photographer came to interview Mahatma Gandhi. After the invention of the atomic bomb, isn’t nonviolence now irrelevant, Margaret Bourke-White asked him. On the contrary, Gandhi replied, nonviolence is now all that is left in the field. Bourke-White challenged Gandhi by asking what he would do if an atom bomb was about to fall on him. Gandhi replied that he would certainly not run towards a bomb shelter — instead, he would go outside, look up and pray for the soul of the plane’s pilot.
This story tends to irritate some people. One set takes it as proof that Gandhi made nonviolence inaccessible by putting it in extreme terms. For pure materialists, it is ridiculous because they don’t know, or cannot access, the realm of prayer. If you are sympathetic to the materialists, the events of January 30, 1948 can be claimed as decisive proof in your favour. Nathuram Godse fired a pistol at point-blank range and Gandhi was killed. What difference did it make, they might say, that in that moment before he fell to the ground, Gandhi said “Hey Ram”. The formal memorial of our epochal visionary is inscribed with those words. Our ancestors, who ensured this inscription, were apparently not irritated by Gandhiji’s answer to Bourke-White. Why does this matter today? The first demand the inscription makes of us is to rise above disputes about “mere Ram” or “tere Ram”. Yes, Tulsidas’s “Siyavar Ramchandra” has been adopted as a tool of partisan politics. That still does not alter the spirit, the bhava, which was on Gandhi’s final breath.
The second call of the moment is to recall the depth of the lived experience that Gandhi inspired. This is why millions of people would not have been at all surprised that hours before he was killed, Gandhi made that statement about praying for the pilot. It was the same millions who did not eat that night — for that is what happens in a moment of deeply personal loss. One of the most touching manifestations of this phenomenon was recorded by Vincent Sheean, an American journalist. He travelled on the train that carried Gandhiji’s ashes to Allahabad for immersion at the sangam. That crowds would gather at every station along the way to pay tribute was no surprise. What struck Sheean was that even in the stretches between stations, people were waiting beside the track — with folded hands and prayers.
The easiest and most defeatist thing we can do today is to see these as moments from another time. To succumb to this would be self-destructive. Why not instead keep fragments of some memories even closer to our hearts? For instance, Sheean reported that, as the procession carrying Gandhiji’s ashes from the station to the sangam went by, it passed a church. Wafting out of it were the sounds of Gandhiji’s favourite hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light”. Whether or not we are sufficiently evolved to look up and pray for the pilot, we are, each one of us, capable of seeking to be led by the Kindly Light.
The writer is founder of the YouTube channel ‘Ahimsa Conversations’
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