With Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha  -  Paramahamsa Yogananda

Two hours after our arrival, my companions and I were summoned to lunch. The Mahatma was already seated under the arcade of the ashram porch, across the courtyard from his study. About twenty-five barefooted satyagrahis were squatting before brass cups and plates. A community chorus of prayer; then a meal served from large brass pots containing chapatis (whole wheat unleavened bread) sprinkled with ghee; talsari (boiled and diced vegetables), and a lemon jam.

The Mahatma ate chapatis, boiled beets, some raw vegetables and oranges. On the side of his plate was a large lump of very bitter neem leaves, a notable blood cleanser. With a spoon he separated a portion and placed it on my dish. I bolted it down with water, remembering my childhood days when mother had forced me to swallow the unpleasant dose. Gandhi, however, was eating the neem paste bit by bit without distaste.

In this trifling incident I noted the Mahatma’s ability to detach his mind from the senses at will. I recalled a much publicized appendectomy performed on him some years ago. Refusing anesthetics, the saint had chatted cheerfully with his devotees throughout the operation, his calm smile revealing his unawareness of pain.

The afternoon brought me an opportunity for a chat with Gandhi’s noted disciple, daughter of an English admiral, Miss Madeleine Slade, now called Mira Behn. Her strong, calm face lit with enthusiasm as she told me, in flawless Hindi, of her daily activities.

"Rural reconstruction work is rewarding! A group of us go every morning at five o’ clock to serve the nearby villages and teach the villagers simple hygiene. We make it a point to clean their latrines and thatched mud huts. The villagers are illiterate; they cannot be educated except by example!" she laughed gaily.

I looked in admiration at this highborn English woman whose true Christian humility enabled her to do the scavenging work usually performed only by "untouchables".

"I came to India in 1925," she told me. "In this land I feel that I have `come back home’. Now I would never be willing to return to my old life and old interests."

We discussed America for a while. " I am always pleased and amazed," she said, "to see the deep interest in spiritual subjects shown by many of the Americans who visit India."

Mira Behn’s hands were soon busy at a Charkha (spinning wheel). Owing to the Mahatma’s efforts, spinning wheels are now omnipresent in rural India.

Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery trains, automobiles, and the telegraph have played important part in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.

Our trio enjoyed a six o’clock supper as guests of Babasaheb Deshmukh. The 7:00 p.m. prayer hour found us back at Maganvadi ashram, climbing to the roof where thirty satyagrahis were grouped in a semicircle around Gandhi. He was squatting on a straw mat, an ancient pocket-watch propped up before him. The fading sun cast a last gleam over the palms and banyans – the hum of night and the crickets had started. The atmosphere was serenity itself; I was enraptured.

A solemn chant led by Sri Desai, with responses from the group, then a Geeta reading. The Mahatma motioned to me to give the concluding prayer. Such divine union of thought and aspiration! A memory forever – the Wardha rooftop meditation under the early stars.

Punctually at eight o’clock Gandhi ended his silence. The Herculean labors of his life require him to apportion his time minutely.

"Welcome Swamiji!" The Mahatma’s greetings this time was not via paper. We had just descended from the roof to his writing room, simply furnished with square mats (no chairs), a low desk with books, papers, and a few ordinary pens (not fountain pens); a nondescript clock ticked in a corner. An all pervasive aura of peace and devotion. Gandhi was bestowing one of his captivating, cavernous, almost toothless smiles.

"Years ago," he explained, "I started my weekly observance of a day of silence as a means for gaining time to look after my correspondence. But now those twenty-four hours have become a vital spiritual need. A periodical decree of silence is not a torture but a blessing."

I agreed wholeheartedly. The Mahatma questioned me about America and Europe; we discussed India and world conditions.

"Mahadev," Gandhi said, as Sri Desai entered the room, "please make arrangements at the Town Hall for Swamiji to speak there on Yoga tomorrow night."

As I was bidding the Mahatma good night, he considerately handed a bottle of citronella oil.

"The Wardha mosquitoes don’t know a thing about ahimsa, Swamiji!" he said, laughing.

The following morning our little group breakfasted early on whole-wheat porridge with molasses and milk. At ten-thirty we were called to the ashram porch for lunch with Gandhi and the Satyagrahis. Today the menu included brown rice, a new selection of vegetables, and cardamom seeds.

Daily Activities

Noon found me strolling about the ashram grounds, on to the grazing land of a few imperturbable cows. The protection of cows is a passion with Gandhi.

"The cow to me means the entire subhuman world, extending man’s sympathies beyond his own species," the Mahatma explained. "Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is obvious to me. The cow in India was the best companion; she was the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible. The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole voiceless creation of God. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more forceful because it is speechless."

Certain daily rituals are enjoined on the orthodox Hindu. One is bhuta yajna, an offering of food to the animal kingdom. This ceremony symbolizes man’s realization of his obligations to less evolved forms of creation –– instinctively tied to body identification (a delusion that afflicts man also) but lacking the liberating quality of reason peculiar to humanity.

Bhuta Yajna thus reinforces man’s readiness to succour the weak, as man in turn is comforted by countless solicitudes of higher unseen beings. Humanity is also under bond for the rejuvenating gifts of Nature – prodigal in earth, sea and sky. The evolutionary barrier of incommunicability among Nature, animals, man, and astral angels is surmounted by daily yajna (rituals) of silent love.

Two other daily yajnas are pitru yajna and nara yajna. Pitru yajna is an offering of oblations to ancestors; a symbol of man’s acknowledgement of his debt to past generations, whose store of wisdom illumines humanity today. Nara yajna is an offering of food to strangers or the poor; a symbol of the present responsibilities of man, his duties to his contemporaries.

In the early afternoon, I fulfilled a neighborly nara yajna  by a visit to Gandhi's ashram for little girls.  Sri Wright accompanied me on the ten minute drive.  Tiny young flowerlike faces atop longstemmed colorful saris!  At the end of a brief talk in Hindi that I was giving outdoors, the skies unloosed a sudden downpour.  Laughing, Sri.Wright and I climbed aboard the car and sped back to Maganvadi amidst sheets of driving silver.  Such tropical intensity and splash!

Re-entering the guesthouse I was struck anew by the stark simplicity and evidences of self sacrifice which are present everywhere. The Gandhi vow of non-possession came early in his married life. Renouncing an extensive legal practice which had been yielding him an annual income of more than Rs.60,000 the Mahatma dispersed all his wealth to the poor.

Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation.

"A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say, "if a man laments, ‘My business has failed, my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,’ to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"

Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their innermost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.

© "Tapovan Prasad" (October 2002) published by Chinmaya Mission, # 2, 13th Avenue, Harrington Road, Chetput, Chennai 600 031. Email: tapowan@vsnl.net. Reprinted with permission.

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