Gandhi's unknown love

Music wound its way around Gandhi in the strangest of ways. He once declared: “There can be no swaraj where there is no harmony, no music’

- DIPANKAR DE SARKAR

(ILLUSTRATION: BINAY SINHA)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had a love few knew of — and that was for music.

When hymns ring in the 156th birth anniversary of Gandhi on October 2, let’s recall how the famously frugal advocate of self-discipline was also a great music buff.

A careful examination of his comments and letters catalogued in the 90 volumes of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi reveals a lifelong fan of music and musicians. Gandhi loved and used music to focus his own mind, and calm the minds of the public through the darkest days of the Indian freedom struggle. In this, he had another ally — the spinning wheel.

An outstanding piece from Gandhi's playlist found its way into the early editions of Beating Retreat ceremony in New Delhi — which historically signified the withdrawal of troops and the return of peace, and marks the culmination of the Republic Day celebrations showcasing India’s military might. The standout piece at the ceremony then was the Christian hymn, Abide With Me. It would be the last piece, played by the military band against the backdrop of a setting sun, bells chiming in the distance.

The song was one of Gandhi’s favourites, although, having grown up in a Vaishnavite milieu in Gujarat (his father was the diwan of Porbandar and Rajkot), he came late to Christian hymns — at the age of 19, during his first visit to England, to study law. Much later, Joseph Doke, a Baptist minister and Gandhi's close associate in South Africa, would recount in MK Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa how Gandhi thought it necessary to take dancing, elocution, French, and violin lessons in London to become an “English gentleman”.

“You know I have no ear for Western music, and the result was a ludicrous failure,” Gandhi told Doke. “The violin was to cultivate the ear, it only cultivated disappointment.”