The MAHATMA’s WINNING ways

The MAHATMA’s WINNING ways

Even a century later, Mahatma Gandhi is remembered for his unique efforts to establish peace and win hearts through simple methods. Much-needed Gandhigiri in our short-tempered times.

Shivakumar G Malagi

Bellary: The world knows the role of South Africa’s Pietermaritzburg railway station in the life of Mahatma Gandhi, and the civil disobedience movement. Few know that he also protested at the lesser known Bellary railway station, but to solve a factional feud of sorts in the Congress party.

The incident at Bellary’s station platform provided Gandhi a chance to understand the internal bickerings, which prevailed even then at the grassroot level in the Congress, and which later helped him establish an unparalleled leadership of the party.

Having assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi began a nationwide campaign to ease poverty, expand women’s rights to build religious and ethnic amity, end untouchability, increase economic self-reliance, and above all, achieve Swaraj — the independence of India from foreign domination. As part of his tour, Gandhi visited Bellary, but had to spend about eight hours on the railway platform on October 1, 1921, a very disgusted man.

Not many are aware that an unhappy Gandhi just waited at the station for his next train, even as the factions of the Congress — the Andhra State Congress and Mysore State Congress — bickered and refused to assemble in one place to meet the party leader. Both factions had invited him to their offices.

According to a passage from Discovering Tekur Subramanyam, a commemoration volume brought out by Kannada University at Hampi, “Mahatma Gandhi, during his visit to Bellary in 1921, was disgusted with the factions in the district unit of the Congress. Gandhiji refused to visit the offices of the factions, and preferred to rest at the Bellary railway station platform for eight hours.”

The age-old differences on linguistic lines within the Congressfold might have led Gandhiji to refuse offers by both groups in his unique ‘silent protest’. The incident, which happened early in Gandhiji’s life, is said to had led him to understand the ‘grassroot’ Congress workers, and turn them into a committed cadre-based force to fight British rule.

The merger issue of Bellary, which was part of the erstwhile Madras province till October 1, 1953, later led to the existence of two Congress units in Bellary district on linguistic lines: Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee. However, not much light has been thrown on what Gandhiji did in those ‘historic eight hours’ on the railway platform.