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GANDHI
By Peter Ruhe Phaidon Press/ Roli Books Price: Rs 1,495 Pages:
312 |
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| RUHE: Pictorial Tribute |
In a country
where preservation of the past is, at best, erratic and, at worst, callous,
Mahatma Gandhi hasn't come out too badly. Apart from the Collected Works,
meticulously put together by the Navjivan Trust, and D.G. Tendulkar's
seminal eight-volume Mahatma, almost every aspect of Gandhiana has been
documented. Maybe the Indian version of the national movement can't match
the exhaustiveness of the British documents and private papers-because
the erstwhile imperial rulers had a more profound sense of history-but
it does contribute in preserving a historical balance.
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| UNLIKELY FRIENDS: On his return from Britain,
Gandhi visited Italy, met Mussolini and posed with young Fascists.
The Pope refused him an interview. |
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| SAINTLY QUIRKS: Gandhi found time to visit
a dairy show in London during his 1931 visit. The prize-winning goat
was named Mahatma Gandhi. |
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| EARLY TOUCH: Gandhi in Johannesburg, 1908,
after release from jail |
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| CONTRAST: An impeccable Jinnah was the exact
opposite of Gandhi |
One of the major gaps has been photographs. Gandhi was one of the most
photographed leaders of his age. Apart from family members and Congressmen
who were amateur photographers, almost every public appearance of Gandhi
was captured by newspapers and news agencies. Considering the wide coverage,
relatively little has been preserved and documented. The best photographs
of Gandhi still remain those of his visit to Britain in 1931 for the Round
Table Conference and those shot by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Margaret
Bourke-White in the final year of his life.
Most of the British-owned newspapers in India once maintained well-catalogued
archives where even the fragile glass slides were lovingly preserved.
Tragically, the transition to Indian hands led to the photo archives going
to seed. The preservation of India's past was not among the priorities
of those who inherited these great institutions. Which is why the lavish
collection of photographs of the Mahatma that Peter Ruhe has brought together
in this volume contains not a single one sourced from the Indian media.
Indeed, the bulk of the photographs have been taken from the collections
of Kanu Gandhi-the Mahatma's grand nephew who lived with him in Sevagram
Ashram-and Vithalbhai Jhaveri, a dedicated Gandhian. Jhaveri built up
a collection of some 8,000 photographs of Gandhi which was passed on by
his family to Ruhe in 1989 for electronic archiving.
For Ruhe, who is quite devoted to his subject, this has been a labour
of love. He has brought together photographs of Gandhi which are not only
rare but also tell a story-of Gandhi the politician and Gandhi the quirky
saint. Unfortunately, the focus is excessively, and perhaps understandably,
on Gandhi. Apart from a few telling photographs of the Civil Disobedience
Movement and the communal riots of 1946, there isn't too much by way of
putting Gandhi in the context of the national movement. There were two
Gandhis: one, the unquestioned leader of the movement for independence;
the other, the guru of the small band of dedicated Gandhians. Ruhe's preference
for the latter is obvious.
Maybe that is why there is a need for someone to pick up the threads
from Ruhe and produce another photo collection of the national movement-where
Gandhi is a key player but not the only one.
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CURRENT
ISSUE FEB 11, 2002
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