This afternoon, attended the Shanghai International Literary Festival, where Ramachandra Guha spoke about Gandhi and his relevance to Modern. Fairly large crowd, cheek by jowl in the jammed and truly stunning Glamour Bar by the Bund. A watery sky, quiet Huangpu River, and distant barges could be seen from the window. Guha was nattily dressed (for him), drank several glasses of water and his passion and quirky devotional style shone through. It was a riveting talk on the large swathe of modern Indian history, with Gandhi at its center. Gandhi’s 4 “jobs” – that of a freedom fighter, a social reformer, a religious pluralist, and an environmentalists. I learnt a few new things – that he was an early proponent of feminism, that he was not an atheists but tolerated diversity of views, that he indeed had complex relationships with those in the family, including his oldest son. Detested by all, the leftists, rightists, Hindus and Muslims alike, the man was often a lonely voice of the true and the unwavering in a troubled country. At the end, the floor was opened to questions. Most stuck to safe queries on Nehru, the relationship to modern Indians and society, but one question tried to probe Gandhi and sex. Guha astounded me by probing deeply into Gandhi’s own experiments with the truth of his celibacy as embarrassingly documented – that he discovered a desire when he was 75 and tried to test his strength by sleeping with women volunteers (god bless those souls). The discussion ended and doors opened like petals into a pallid Shanghai street. Back to a life with normalcy and expectedness, the audience poured into cabs back to whatever it was they were doing mindlessly. If it was one thing I pondered over, it was that a life committed to a belief , a truth , a passion, an engaged Aristotlian questioning into life, is what renders its meaning – for all to see. Something sorely missing from mine. And Many.
