Becoming a Fakir .

 

 

Becoming a Fakir:  Mahatma Gandhi’s Iconic Loincloth Attire

 Nearly a century ago, Winston Churchill was overwhelmed by Mahatma Gandhi’s attire. In a moment of anger, he called Gandhi, a ‘half-naked seditious fakir’!

“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”

His humble clothing was in non-violent defiance of the British Rule–a message that he wore on himself for the rest of his life. Yet, the choice of clothing has a deeper story set in the ancient city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

 ‘Fakir’ is a term derived from the Arabic word ‘faqr’ which means poverty and depicts a person who has renounced his worldly possessions for a humble, spiritual life. Mahatma Gandhi’s life also took a turn during his South India tour in September 1921.

While crusading for the civil disobedience movement by boycotting British goods and promoting Khadi, he was suddenly hit with a practical reality when someone asked- “If the laborers burn their foreign clothing, where are they to get Khadi from?”

He wrote, “On the way (from Madras – now Chennai – to Madurai by train) I saw crowds wholly unconcerned with what had happened in our compartment. Almost without exception, they were bedecked in foreign fineries. I entered into conversation with some of them and pleaded for Khadi. They shook their heads as they said, ‘We are too poor to buy Khadi and it is so dear.’ I realized the substratum of truth behind the remark. I had my vest, cap, and full dhoti on. When these uttered only partial truth, the millions of compulsorily naked men, save for their langoti four inches wide and nearly as many feet long, gave through their limbs the naked truth. What effective answer could I give them, if it was not to divest myself of every inch of clothing I decently could and thus, to a greater extent, bring myself in line with ill-clad masses? And this I did the very next morning after the Madura meeting.”

After a few days, this doubt finally translated into concrete action when he reached Madurai to stay at Sri Ramji Kalyanji’s residence on 175-A, West Masi Street.

He arrived in silence, with a cloud of doubt about his head, the silent indication of the storm of revolution awaiting the nation.

On September 22, 1921, he abandoned his usual attire of a shirt and hat, donning just a simple white loincloth.

Two issues were worrying Gandhiji. He had been struck by the poverty he had seen around him as far back as during the Champaran satyagraha days. But this visit to South India made it all the more starker to him. The sight of poor peasants working in the fields in their loin clothes and their struggle for food and livelihood troubled him.

This act, not only highlighted and strengthened the fight to boycott British goods but also created the everlasting symbol of a common man and his spiritual strength, reaching out to the hearts of fellow Indians.

 “I do not want either my co-workers or readers to adopt the loincloth. But I do wish that they would thoroughly realize the meaning of the boycott of foreign cloth and put forth their best effort to get it boycotted, and to get khadi manufactured. I do wish that they may understand that swadeshi means everything,” Gandhi clarified, in Navajivan.

“The adoption of a dhoti and a shawl in the place of an elaborate Gujarati attire is a symbolic external manifestation of an internal revolution. The dress of liberty turned into the Mahatma’s identity".( Gurusamy, secretary, Gandhi Museum)

From a simple piece of cloth to a mass movement, he directed the nation to a path of freedom, not just from the British, but from its innermost evils that separated its people from one another.

Much like the khadi cloth weaved into existence with numerous strands of thread, his journey embraced the nation in unison!

 He may have been mocked as a 'half-naked seditious fakir', but his iconic makeover became the quintessential symbol of the common man and his spiritual strength.

*(Adapted from an article in Navrang, October 2019)

Mahatma Gandhi- Some interesting glimpses into his life.

"Some men changed their times, but one man changed the world for all time!"

His name is MAHATMA GANDHI.

 (Here are some interesting facts about Gandhi that provide a glimpse into the life of the Father of the Nation on his 155th birth anniversary.)

1. Gandhi's first name was Mohandas. "Mahatma" is a title denoting love and respect, which roughly translates as "great soul." It's believed that a friend of his, Pranjivan Mehta, was the first to refer to Gandhi as "Mahatma" in writing a letter from 1909, decades before he became a globally renowned figure.

2. Guru Dev Rabindranath Tagore was credited with naming Gandhi as Mahatma. Subhas Chandra Bose sought his blessings and gave him the title "Father of the Nation" in June 1944.

3. In 1883, thirteen-year-old Gandhi entered into an arranged marriage with fourteen-year-old Kasturbai Kapadia. Gandhi later recalled that at the time, they didn't know much about marriage, and for them, it simply meant wearing new clothes, eating sweets, and playing with relatives. At the age of sixteen, Gandhi became a father, but unfortunately, the baby lived only a few days. The couple went on to have four more children who survived to adulthood.

4. Gandhi ate fruit, nuts, and seeds for five years but switched back to strict vegetarianism after suffering health problems. He maintained that each person should find their own diet that works best. Gandhi spent decades experimenting with food, logging the results, and tweaking his eating choices. He wrote a book named "The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism".

5. Gandhi took an early vow to avoid milk products (including ghee), however, after his health began to decline, he relented and started drinking goat’s milk. He sometimes traveled with his goat to ensure that the milk was fresh and that he wasn’t given cow or buffalo milk.

6. Gandhi was incredibly meek and shy by nature. During one debate at the London Vegetarian Society, he felt such stage fright that somebody else had to read out his arguments on his behalf. It was a serious stumbling block for his burgeoning career as a barrister. The first time he tried to cross-examine a witness, he got so nervous that he flopped back into his chair and simply gave up the case, returning his fee to his (presumably disgruntled) client.

7. Despite his disaffection with racist colonialist attitudes, the young Gandhi also felt patriotic towards the British Empire. During the Boer War of 1899-1902, he took it upon himself to form the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps, gathering hundreds of volunteers to whisk wounded British troops from the front lines to field hospitals.

‘I felt that, if I demanded rights as a British citizen, it was also my duty, as such, to participate in the defence of the British Empire,’ Gandhi later said.

8. Wearing his now-iconic white loin cloth and shawl wasn’t simply a matter of Indian tradition for Gandhi. It was a political move, which he very deliberately adopted on 22nd September 1921. It was part of his push to encourage Indians to boycott foreign-made clothes and embrace homegrown, hand-spun fabric known as khadi. The move utterly reinvented Gandhi’s image for all time.

9. Gandhi was nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, first in 1937, but the Nobel committee’s advisor was skeptical, saying that even though Gandhi was non-violent, his Indian nationalist beliefs spurred violence among followers. Gandhi was shortlisted in 1947, but again he was rejected for his nationalism. He was killed in 1948, and – significantly – no Nobel Peace Prize was awarded that year.

10. Mahatma Gandhi, fondly known as "Bapu" never traveled by plane, throughout his life. He preferred to travel by Train.

11. Gandhi attended law school in London and was famous among the faculty for his bad handwriting.

12. Gandhi denounced” Gandhism” and did not want to create a cult-like following. He also conceded that he had “...nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills.”

13. Gandhi fought for much more than independence. His causes included civil rights for women, the abolition of the caste system, and the fair treatment of all people regardless of religion. His mother and father had different religious traditions.

14. Gandhi demanded fair treatment for the untouchables, India’s lowest caste; he underwent several fasts to support their cause. He called the untouchables Harijans, which means "children of God."

15. Gandhi shared a significant friendship with the renowned Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, who authored "War and Peace". Tolstoy's writings on non-violent resistance greatly influenced Gandhi.  Additionally, Gandhi was connected with other influential world figures such as Winston Churchill, Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, Einstein, and Bernard Shaw.

16. Gandhi never had a 'God Complex', unlike many other modern leaders.

17. Gandhi showed the world that true strength lay not in using muscle power but in winning people's power. This is why he was respected by even those against him.

18.  Gandhi influenced many leaders beyond borders and time including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Dalai Lama, Will Durant, Rabindranath Tagore, Barack Obama, and Pearl S. Buck.

19. Gandhi was assassinated as his country grappled with the bloody aftermath of Partition when India and Pakistan gained independence in August 1947. He was shot dead on 30th January 1948.

20. Mahatma Gandhi's relics are still preserved in the Gandhi Museum in Madurai. An urn that once contained Mahatma Gandhi's ashes is now at a shrine in Los Angeles, California.

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Gandhi's wisdom is frequently cited by business leaders and volunteers. Here are some of his most famous quotes:

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."

"Man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

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