MY JAIL EXPERIENCES—XI

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

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MY JAIL EXPERIENCES—XI

 

 

 As a boy I had not much taste for reading anything outside my school books. They alone gave me enough food for thought; for it was natural for me to reduce to practice what I learnt at School. For home reading I had an intense dislike. I used to labour through home lessons because I had to. During my student days in England too, the same habit persisted of not reading outside the books for examinations. When however I began life, I felt I ought to read for the sake of gaining general knowledge. But at the earliest period of my life it became one of storm and stress. It commenced with a fight with the then political agent of Kathiawar. I had therefore not much time for literary pursuits. In South Africa for one year I had fair leisure in spite of the battle for freedom that faced me. The year 1893 I devoted to religious striving. The reading was therefore wholly religious.

After 1894 all the time for sustained reading I got was in the jailsof South Africa. I had developed not only a taste for reading but for completing my knowledge of Sanskrit and studying Tamil, Hindi and Urdu Tamil because I was in touch with so many Tamilians in South Africa and Urdu because I had dealings with so many Mussalmans. The South African jails had whetted my appetite and I was grieved when during my last incarceration in South Africa I was prematurely discharged. When therefore the opportunity came to me in India, I hailed it with joy. I mapped out a rigid programme of studies at Yeravda to finish which six years were not enough. During the first three months I had a vague hope that India would rise to the occasion, complete the boycott of foreign cloth and unlock the prison gates. But I soon learnt that such was not to be the case. I saw at once that it meant laborious quiet organizing which could not take the nation anything less than five years. I had no desire whatsoever for being discharged before my time except by the peaceful constructive act of the nation even if it was not actually swaraj. I therefore settled down to studies with the zest of a youth of twenty-four instead of an old man of fifty-four with a broken constitution. I accounted for every minute of my time and would have been discharged a fair Urdu and Tamil scholar and well versed in Sanskrit. I would have satisfied my desire for reading original Sanskrit texts. But such was not to be the case.

My studies were rudely interrupted by my unfortunate illness and consequent discharge. However the following list gives the reader an idea of my studies: The Cambridge History of Scotland; The Master and His Teaching; Arm of God; Christianity in Practice; Tulsidas’s Ramayana (Hindi); Satyagraha and Asahayoga (Hindi); the Koran; The Way to Begin Life; Trips to the Moon (Lucian); Indian Administration (Thakore); Natural History of Birds; The Young Crusader; Bible View of the World Martyrs; Farrar’s Seekers after God; Misra Kumari (Gujarati); Stories from the History of Rome; Tom Brown’s School Days; Wisdom of the Ancients (Bacon); History of India (Gujarati)— Chandrakant; Patanjali’s Yogadarshana (Kania’s translation); Valmiki’s Ramayana (Gujarati translation); Five Nations (Kipling); Equality (Edward Bellamy); St. Paul in Greece; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Rosebery’s Pitt; Jungle Book (Kipling); Faust; Life of John Howard; Mahabharata— all the books (Gujarati translation); Dropped from the Clouds (Jules Verne); Irving’s Life of Columbus; Ramayana by Girdhar (Gujarati); Five Empires (Wilberforce); Lays of Ancient Rome; The Crusades; Gibbon’s Rome; Urdu Readers; Bhagavata (Gujarati translation); Bankim’s Krishnacharitra (Jhaveri’s translation); Vaidya’s Krishna (Gujarati translation); Tilak’s Gita (Gujarati translation); Saraswatichandra (Gujarati); Manusmriti (Gujarati translation); Ishopanishad (Aurobindo’s commentary); Kabir’s Songs: Jacob Boehmen’s Supersensual Life; Pro Christo et Ecclesia; Kathavali Upanishad (Hindi Commentary); Galilean; Jnaneshwari (Gujarati translation); Philo Christus; Satyartha Prakasha (Hindi); Prem Mitra (English) The Six Systems (Gujarati translations); The Gospel and the Plough; Nathuram’s Commentary on the Gita; Shankara’s Commentary on the Gita; Rajchandra’s Letters and Writing; Ourselves and the Universe (J.Brierly); What Christianity Means to Me (Abbott); Steps to Christianity; My Philosophy and Religion (Trine); Sadhana (Rabindranath); Bhanu’s Commentaries on Upanishads; Max Muller’s Upanishads; Well’s History; The Bible; Science of Peace (Bhagwandas); Barrack-room Ballads (Kipling); Evolution of Cities  (Geddes); Life of Ramanuja; Cunningham’s Sikhs; Gokulchand’s Sikhs; Macauliff’s Sikhs; Ethics of Islam; Social Evolution (Kidd); Manusmrity (Buhler); Our Hellenic Heritage (James); Avesta (Dadachandji); Gita (Aurobindo); Elements of Sociology (Spencer) Social Efficiency (Pherwani); Message of Mahomed (Wadia); Message of Christ (Wadia); Saints of Islam (Hassan); Early Zoroastrianism (Moulton); Travels in the Himalayas (Gujarati); Sita-haran (Gujarati); Buddha and Mahwira (Gujarati); Rama and Krishna (Gujarati); Man and Superman; Markandeya Purna (Gujarati); Poorva Rang (Gujarati); Life of Hasarat Umar1 (Urdu); Confessions of the Prophet (Urdu); History of Civilization (Buckle); Jaya and Jayant (Gujarati); Rabindranath’s Essays (Gujarati); Economics (Gujarati); Gita Govinda; Verieties of Religious Experience (James); Origin and Evolution of Religion (Hopkins); Lecky’s European Morals; Mharashtra-dharma (Marathi); Freedom and Growth (Holmes); Evolution of Man (Haeckel); Muktadhara (Gujarati)—Rabindranath; Sinking Ship (Gujarati)— Rabindranath; Life of the Prophet (Urdu)—Maulana Shibli; Dr. Mahomed Ali’s Koran; Rajayoga (Vivekananda); Confluence of Religions (Champakrai Jain); Mystics of Islam (Nicholson); Gospel of Buddha (Paul Carus); Rhys Davids’ Lectures on Buddhism; Spirit of Islam (Ameer Ali); Modern problems (Lodge); Mahomed (Washington Irving) Syadvada Manjari; History of the Saracens (Ameer Ali); European Civilization (Guizot); Al Faruq (Shibli); Rise of theDutch Republic (Motley); Musings of Saint Theresa; Vedanta (Rajam Iyer); Uttaradhyayan Sutra; Rosicrucian Mysteries; Dialogues of Plato; Al Kalam (Urdu) Shibli; Woodroffe’s Shakta and Shakti; Bhagavati Sutra (incomplete). Let the reader, however, not imagine that I read all these books by choice. Some of them were useless and outside the jail I would not have read them. Some of them were sent by friends known and unknown and I felt 1 was bound for their sakes at least to go through them.

The Yeravda Jail has what may be called not a bad collection of English books. Some of them were really good books, such for instance as Farrar’s Seekers after God, Lucian’s Trips to the Moon or Jules Verne’s Dropped from the Clouds, all of them excellent in their own way. Farrar’s is an inspiring book giving the best side of the lives of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. Lucian’s book is a fine and instructive satire. Jules Verne teaches science in the guise of a story. His method is inimitable. Many Christian friends were most attentive to me. I received books from them from America, England and India. I must confess that whilst I recognized their kind motive, I could not appreciate the majority of the books, they sent. I wish I could say something of their gifts that would please them. But that would not be fair or truthful if I could not mean it the orthodox books on Christianity do not give me any satisfaction. My regard for the life of Jesus is indeed very great. His ethical teaching, his common sense, his sacrifice command my reverence. But I do not accept the orthodox teaching that Jesus was or is God incarnate in the accepted sense or that he was or is the only son of God. I do not believe in the doctrine of appropriation of another’s merit. His sacrifice is a type and an example for us. Every one of us has to be “crucified” for salvation. I do not take the words “Son” “Father” and “the Holy Ghost” literally. They are all figurative expressions. Nor do I accept the limitations are sought to be put upon the teaching of The Sermon on the Mount. I can discover no justification in the New Testament for wars. I regard Jesus as one among the most illustrious teachers and prophets, the world has seen. Needless to say I do not regard the Bible as an infallible record of the life and teachings of Jesus. Nor do I consider every word in the New Testament as God’s own word. Between the Old and the New there is a fundamental difference. Whilst the Old contains some very deep truths, I am unable to pay it the same honours I pay the New Testament. I regard the latter as an extension of the teaching of the Old and in some matters rejection of the Old. Nor do I regard the New as the last word of God. Religious ideas like everything else are subject to the same law of evolution that governs everything else in this universe.

Only God is changeless and as His message is received through the imperfect human medium, it is always liable to suffer distortion in proportion as the medium is pure or otherwise. I would therefore respectfully urge my Christian friends and well-wishers to take me as I am. I respect and appreciate their wish that I should think and be as they are even as I respect and appreciate a similar wish on the part of my Mussalman friends. I regard both the religions as equally true with my own. But my own gives me full satisfaction. It contains all that I need for my growth. It teaches me to pray not that others may believe as I believe but that they may grow to their full height in their own religion. My constant prayer therefore is for a Christian or a Mussalman to be a better Christian and a better Mahomedan. I am convinced, I know, that God will ask, asks us now, not what we label ourselves but what we are, i.e., what we do. With Him deed is everything, belief without deed is nothing. With Him doing believes. The reader will pardon me for this digression. But it was necessary for me to deliver my soul over the Christian literature with which the Christian friends flooded me in the jail, if only to show my appreciation of their interest in my spiritual welfare.

That which I would not have missed was the Mahabharata and the Upanishads, the Ramayana and the Bhagavata. The Upanishads whetted my appetite for exploring the Vedic religion at its source. Its bold speculations afforded the keenest delight. And their spirituality satisfied the soul. At the same time I must confess that there was much in some of them that I was unable to understand or appreciate in spite of the help of the copious notes of Professor Bhanu who has incorporated in them the whole of Shankar’s commentaries and the substance of the others. The Mahabharata I had never read before except in scraps. I was even prejudiced against it, believing (falsely as it has now turned out) that it was nothing but a record of bloodshed and impossible long descriptions which would send me to sleep. I dreaded to approach the bulky volumes covering over closely printed six thousand pages. But having once commenced the reading, I was impatient to finish it, so entrancing it proved to be except in parts. I compared it, as I finished it in four months, not to a treasure chest in which you find nothing but polished gems limited as to quantity and quality but to an inexhaustible mine which the deeper one digs the more precious are the finds. The Mahabharata is not to me a historical record. it is hopeless as a history. But it deals with eternal verities in an allegorical fashion. It takes up historical personages and events and transforms them into angels or devils as it suits the purpose of the poet whose theme is the eternal duel between good and evil, spirit and matter, God and Satan. It is like a mighty river which in its progress absorbs many streams, some even muddy. It is the conception of one brain. But it has undergone ravages and received accretions in process of time till it has become difficult always to say which the original is and which is apocryphal. The ending of it is magnificent. It demonstrates the utter nothingness of earthly power. The great sacrifice at the end is proved inefficacious in comparison with the sacrifice of the heart by a Brahmin who gave his little all, the last morsel, to a needy beggar. What is left to the virtuous Pandavas is poignant grief.

The mighty Krishna dies helplessly. The numerous and powerful Yadavas because of their corruption die an inglorious death fighting amongst one another. Arjuna the unconquerable is conquered by a band of robbers, his Gandiva notwithstanding. The Pandavas retire leaving the throne to an infant. All but one dies on the journey to heaven. And even Yudhishthira, the very embodiment of dharma, has to taste the foetid smell of hell for the lie he permitted himself to utter under stress. The inexorable law of cause and effect is allowed without exception to run its even course. The claim put forth in its behalf that it omits nothing that is useful or interesting and that is to be found in any other book is well sustained by this marvellous poem. My Urdu studies proved as absorbing as the reading of Mahabharata. They grew on me as I proceeded. I approached this study with a light heart foolishly imagining that in two or three months I should be quite an adept in Urdu. But to my sorrow I discovered that it had been made into a language distinct from Hindi and that the tendency was growing in that direction. But that discovery only made me more determined than ever to be able to read and understand Urdu literature.

I therefore gave nearly three hours per day to Urdu reading. The Urdu writers have purposely gone out of their way to use Arabic or Persian words even to the rejection of words current among Hindus and Mussalmans. They have rejected even the common grammar and imported Arabic or Persian grammar. The result is that the poor nationalist if he will keep in touch with the Mussalman thought, must study Urdu as a separate, new language. The Hindi writers I know have done no better or no less. Only I thought that the evil had not gone very deep and the separatist tendency was a mere passing phase. Now I see that if we are to have a common national language being a mixture of Hindi and Urdu, special and prolonged effort will have to be made to affect a juncture between the two streams which seem at present to be diverging more and more one from the other. In spite however of the difficulty I retain the opinion that it is necessary for a Hindu to complete his education to know literary Urdu as it is for a Mussalman to know literary Hindi. It is easy enough if begun early. This study may have no pecuniary value; it may not open up the treasures of Western knowledge. But its national value is beyond compare. I am the richer for my close study of Urdu.

I wish I could even now complete it. I know the Mussalman mind much better than I did two years ago. I was interested in the religious side of Urdu literature and therefore plunged, as soon as I was able, into Urdu religious books. Fates have always favoured me. Maulana Hasrat Mohani had sent to Mr. Mansar Ali Leaves from the Lives of the Companions of the Prophet. As he was teaching me Urdu he passed the volumes on to me. And I went through them with the greatest diligence. The volumes, though they contain repetitions and would gain in lucidity for compression, were to me deeply interesting for the insight they gave me into the doings of the Prophet’s many companions. How their lives were transformed as if by magic, what devotion they showed to the Prophet, how utterly unmindful they became of worldly wealth, how they used power itself for showing the utter simplicity of their lives, how they were untouched by the lust for gold, how reckless they were of their own lives in a cause they held sacred, is all told with a wealth of detail that carries conviction with it. When one notes their lives and then the lives of the present-day representatives of Islam in India, one is inclined to shed a tear of bitter grief.

I passed from the companions to the Prophet himself. The two bulky volumes written by Maulana Shibli are a creditable performance. But I have the same complaints about them that I have lodged about the diffuseness of the volumes devoted to the companions. But the diffuseness did not interfere with my interest to know how a Mussalman had treated the incidents of the life of one who has been almost uniformly maligned and abused in the West. When I closed the second volume, I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life. There are incidents in it which I do not understand; there are some I cannot explain. But I did not approach the study as a critic or a scoffer. I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today undisputed away over the hearts of millions of mankind. And I found enough in the volumes to account for it. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and his own mission.

These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. As I do not regard any human being absolutely perfect, be he a prophet or an avatar, it is unnecessary for me to be able to explain to the censor’s satisfaction every detail of the Prophet’s life. It is enough for me to know that he was a man among millions who tried to walk in the fear of God died a poor man, wanted no grand mausoleum for his mortal remains and who did not forget even on his death-bed the least of his creditors. The teaching of the Prophet is no more responsible for the degrading intolerance or questionable proselytizing methods that one sees around him than Hinduism is responsible for the degradation and intolerance of present-day Hindus. From the Prophet I passed to the two volumes devoted to the life of Umar the unconquerable. As I pictured him before my mental eye walking to Jerusalem upbraiding some of his followers for aping the pomp of their neighbours, refusing to pray in a Christian church lest succeeding generations might claim to convert it into a mosque, granting the most liberal terms to the conquered Christians, and as I picture him declaring that the word of a follower of Islam, though pledged by one not authorized thereto, was as good as the written decree of the great Caliph himself, he commands my humble respect. His was an iron will.

He weighed out the same justice to his daughter that he would weigh to an utter stranger. I fancy I understand the breaking of idols and wanton desecration of temples, the thoughtless intolerance of Hindu music now going on in our midst. These acts seem to me to be due to an utter misreading of the events in the life of the greatest of the Caliphs. I fear that the acts of this great and just man are being presented to the Mussalman masses in a most distorted fashion. I know that if he rose from his grave, he would disown the many acts of the so-called followers of Islam which are a crude caricature of those of the great Umar himself. From this entrancing study, I went to the philosophical volumes called Al Kalam. These are difficult to understand. The language is highly technical. Mr. Abdul Gani however made my study fairly easy. I was only sorry; my illness interrupted my study when I had only half finished the volumes. Of the English books Gobbon’s takes easily the first place. It was recommended to me years ago by so many English friends.

I was determined to read Gibbon in the jail this time. I was glad of it. For me even history has a spiritual significance. As the author proceeds to trace the events in the life of the citizens of a single city who built up a world-empire, one traces the history of the soul. For Gibbon does not deal with trifles, he deals with vast masses of facts and arrays them before you in his own inimitable way. He deals with three civilizations, Pagan, Christian and Islamic, in sufficient detail to enable you to frame your own conclusions. His own compel attention. But he is as a historian jealous of his calling, faithful enough to give you all his data so as to enable you to judge for yourself. Motley is another type. Gibbon traces the decay of a mighty empire. Motley extracts from a little republic the life of his hero. Gibbon’s heroes are subservient to the story of a mighty empire. Motley’s story of a State is subservient to that of one single life. The republic merges in William the Silent. Add to these two Lord Roseberry’s Life of Pitt. And you are perhaps then prepared to draw with me the conclusion that the dividing line between fact and fiction is very thin indeed and that even facts have at least two sides or as lawyers say facts are after all opinions.

However I have no desire to engage the reader’s attention upon my speculations on the value of history considered as an aid to the evolution of our race. I believe in the saying that a nation is happy that has no history. It is my pet theory that our Hindu ancestors solved the question for us by ignoring history as it is understood today and by building on slight events their philosophical structure. Such is the Mahabharata. And I look upon Gibbon and Motley as inferior editions of the Mahabharata. The immortal but unknown author of the Mahabharata weaves into his story sufficient of the supernatural to warn you against taking him literally. Gibbon and Motley are unnecessarily at pains to tell you they are giving you facts and nothing but facts. Lord Roseberry comes to the rescue and tells you that even the last words said to have been uttered by Pitt are disputed by his butler. The substance of all these stories is: Names and forms matter little, they come and go. That which is permanent and therefore necessary eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history.