one very simple message which is that
well it’s called Mahatma matters so
which is that Mahatma the Mahatma
matters of course Mahatma’s matter also
but also that we have to talk about
things or matters concerning Mahatma’s
might seem as if it’s about my book the
death and afterlife of Matt McGann D but
it’s actually not entirely about it the
book is only a pretext so in terms of my
methodology what I want to do this
evening is to talk more about the
afterlife of Gandhi while the slides are
about his death because you can see that
the title of this book is the death and
afterlife of Matt McGann d and we might
ask ourselves when I say Mahatma’s
matter or Mahatma the Mahatma matters or
matters concerning Mahatma’s what is him
hotma who is a madman and in this book I
propose a very simple explanation or
definition Mahatma is somebody whose
afterlife is more important more
powerful than his life and it’s very
interestingly illustrated in the
Bollywood film which many of you have
seen I’m sure Leggero Munna Bhai where
the Mahatma is actually a ghost yes
whereas Attenborough’s Gandhi is about
the life of Mahatma of the Mahatma so
it’s a hagiography but Bollywood
understands that the afterlife is more
important now let me get back to the
slide this is the place where he died
where he was shot assassinated this is
the Birla house and it’s on 30th January
Road in New Delhi
these January markets we know it and
it’s now called the Gandhi Smriti and
his body was kept out in the balcony for
some time for people to to go and pay
their homage to him and this is what he
looked like after he was shot
there’s no pointer here but you can see
the garland of bullets on his chest
in fact his son David as Gandhi said
that key
his chest exposed because let people see
that he took bullets on his chest in
fact just a couple of days before he
died he told his grandniece he said that
if I die of pneumonia or a common cold
or so much as a pimple proclaimed to the
world that he was no Mahatma but a
charlatan a fraud but if I die with
bullets on my chest then I will have
died as I lived so you see the three
bullets that he took two passed clean
through him one was just above his
stomach above his solar plexus the other
one was in his chest and the third one
so these two went right through him and
the third one was in his lung and it
remained in his lung in fact he bled it
was you know as they say halal he kind
of bled bled out so that the face was
also very pale and an ashen as I said
that if the afterlife of a Mahatma is
what defines him if the afterlife is
greater than his life then we should ask
what is the significance of his
afterlife and in this book I try to
argue that to understand the meaning of
the afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi we have
to contemplate his death what did he die
for not just who killed him
so this is his body decorated with some
flowers and those are his two
grandnieces and mani been who was
Siddharth Patel’s daughter they surround
him there this is the Mahatma
this is Gandhiji and his assassin
naturam Vinayak Godse another way to
define a Mahatma is that a Mahatma
cannot be appropriated by any particular
party ideology or group they may want to
make cultural or political capital out
of him in fact there are wonderful
accounts of how in his death he also
United the Congress party you know Nehru
and / tales of thought per tail did not
see eye to eye and indeed Gandhiji had a
very long meeting with Nehru
and after the prayer meeting he was
supposed to meet Patel and you know he
was called for his prayer meeting he was
late and he said I’m late and that was
his last prayer meeting and when he fell
his watch stopped working it was 5:17
p.m. on the 30th of January 1948 but
what I was trying to say is that many
people have tried to make political
capital off his death
blaming certain people on the one hand
and trying to take credit for his life
but not everybody knows or remembers
that the day before Gandhiji died he
wrote out his last will and testament
where he said that the Congress party
should be dissolved and that the
Congress workers having attained
independence will not require addition
turned themselves into a political power
and seek office and the spoils of power
political power instead they should fan
out go to the countryside serve the
people almost like a parallel government
keeping officials in check keeping
bureaucrats and politicians accountable
so you can see that there were a lot of
people who were very you might say
displeased with Gandhi which he wrote
about in his last days so a Mahatma is
also somebody whose legacy whose life or
after life cannot be appropriated by any
individual group or political party or
ideology a Martin always resists such
pigeonholing slotting categorizing so
everybody knows or has talked about the
links of not romp with RSS he was indeed
a member of the RSS the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh for some time and then
he left the organization he was very
much a part of the Hindu Mahasabha
but the real point whether it is for all
of us or for the RSS or for the Hindu
right or for Hindu nationalists to think
about is whether you want to follow
natural or narendra modi because the
first thing that our Prime Minister did
on assuming office
of a floral tribute he offered flowers
to the picture of madmen Gandhi in his
office so what I’m trying to say is that
you cannot drive a wedge between
different sections of India on the basis
of Gandhiji and as I said if somebody’s
afterlife is greater than their life
which really means that
marnik cheesy-looking shortness
immersion a putana do free cheese it’s
very hard to digest Gandhi because he
keeps in a sense defying us provoking us
and it’s that persistence of who he was
and what he stood for which makes him a
Mahatma this is the the funeral
procession of Gandhiji one of the many
ironies about his death was that the so
called apostle of peace and ahimsa was
taken in a gun carriage to the cremation
ground you know so and that gun carriage
is still preserved in the Gandhi smithy
you can look at it it’s a bit worn for
age but it’s still there on display but
all these army people and of course his
own army of kadhi wearing acolytes at
the back this is another view of the
funeral procession which went past india
gate towards raj heart where he was
cremated which also makes him very
interesting in the history of Delhi
because Delhi is full of the tombs of
temper of emperors you know many many
Emperor’s are buried here and also of
saints we heard of Moinuddin Chishti
and you know we in fact heard of Quadra
Nizam would then his such a grand
disciple because this his his disciple
or great grand because his disciple was
bakhtiar kaki whose Meszaros and merrily
but there is a fool by Lucas air but
Gandhiji said don’t disrupt after
independence by the way which was one of
the last places he went in January in
1948 and then his disciple was Baba
Farid
and his disciple was Nizamuddin Auliya
who’s whose compositions or in whose
honor Amir Khusro compositions you just
heard and so the point really is that
daily
full of the mizar’s of saints and before
that of other scenes before the Sufis
and after that of others don’t forget
that guru Tegh Bahadur was also martyred
here
the point is Gandhiji and guru tegh bar
are the only ones of two kinds of
memorials a memorial like Raj cot for
their political significance and a
memorial for their spiritual
significance these are some of the
newspaper headlines in the Star Times
was edited by a son David as Gandhi then
it was a newspaper owned by the billa’s
I showed you the house in which on the
grounds of which he was killed
now that was Bella’s house but if you
see the room in which he lived he wanted
to send out a message which was he was
off with lajas but not I mean he was in
bed loud but not off or for the Bellas
or the rich capitalists of India in fact
all his belongings there was so few of
them they’re still preserved that his
glasses his watch his shows I mean is
cut out and he slept on the ground in a
tiny room in that huge house so these
are some more of the newspaper headlines
that you can see here this was the
newspaper headline of dawn which was a
Pakistani newspaper it still exists and
it’s very interesting that this is his
funeral pyre and his granddaughter Manu
writes that the buyer soon got so hot
that nobody could sit around it so as he
lived he died alone in solitary splendor
this is sir Raja denied Rose broadcast
on his death where he says where she
says my father do not rest now this is
the opposite of our IP you know rest in
peace and this is the point I was trying
to make that Gandhi’s afterlife if it’s
greater than his life is going to fill
all of us with some kind of chemical
OCHA in the brain to quote Leggero Munna
Bhai he doesn’t let us rest he haunts
the body politic of India and the real
question is what is this man and his
life what is the meaning of it and why
did he die so
death was this yoga his last yoga these
are his very words and he offered his
own body as an abuti in that last yoga
but what was the yoga for yoga was for
saving India from an endless partition
what is an endless partition and endless
partition is a cycle of memetic violence
that gets played over and over and over
again and while is it important to save
India it was important to save India
because India stands for something it
doesn’t stand Gandhi himself said it it
doesn’t stand India doesn’t rise for
herself alone but India has that
capacity or that power or that message
which can actually be of great use to
humanity in the present times which are
of course a time of great crises and one
might ask what is that message of India
and of Gandhi that India can offer to
the world and this is what we come back
to when we think about Mahatma matters
so these Mahatma’s who trod the soil of
India for different since times
immemorial were essentially trying to
tell us one thing and that that thing
that they were trying to tell us is that
we are much greater than who we are or
who we think we are and there’s a
purpose for our being here on this earth
and that purpose is not just to identify
ourselves you know what daily life as we
understand it would use this opportunity
to you know in a sense realize ourselves
realize who we really are and that was
what Gandhi’s satyagraha was about so
the last thing that I want to leave you
with is that when Gandhi wrote in Swaraj
in 1909 he realized that modernity was
self-destructive you heard about sugar
earlier in that sense all these sugars
are metaphorically symbolic or
emblematic of our modern way of life
which is in the end going to be suicidal
because we’re not living in harmony
either with nature there are three
worlds then the world of the humans the
world of nature and the world of gods
now these three worlds are in a sense
out of kilter they’re not in harmony
and the message of the Mahatma’s is
really to get these worlds back into
harmony so that we can save the human
race and our habitation
from self-destruction and that is why
this Mahatma matters and all these
Mahatma’s matter and that is why India
matters – thank you so much [Applause]