E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timescourse, always forgiving though he was a very severe task master. But he hadgrown extremely tolerant, which he was not in our time ... When I saw this,many a time I chafed and said to father, "Bapu, you have vastly changed fromthe time we were under you' You never pampered us; I remember how youmade us do laundry work and chop wood; how you made us to take the pick andshovel in the bitterly cold mornings and dig in garden, to cook and to walkmiles. And I am surprised see how you now pamper these people around you."'Bapu would listen and burst out in his usual hearty laughter: "Well, children,"he would say, "are you listening to what Manilal is saying?" And yet he wouldlove and caress them.'How much sorrow there is in all this for many lost years without affection.Manilal underwent punishment and banishment yet remained a balanced humanbeing. Hiralal, however, suffered an inner trauma. While his wife lived, he wasoutwardly normal. But when she died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, and whenGandhi frowned on his remarriage, Hiralal disintegrated completely. He took toalcohol and women; he was often seen drunk in public. Under the influence ofdrink, penury and the desire for vengeance, he would succumb to the offers ofunscrupulous publishers and attack his father in print, signing 'Abdulla', aMoslem name. He had become a Moslem. Conversion to Islam, drunkenness andprofligacy were probably Hiralal's effort to hurt his father.Early in the 1920s, Hiralal helped launch a new firm called All-India Stores,Limited, and became a director. In 1925, Gandhi received a lawyer's letter onbehalf of a client who had invested money in the company; it informed theMahatma that correspondence addressed to the company was being returnedand that the whole thing seemed 'a bogus affair'. The client was a Moslem'whose respect for Mahatmaji led him to become a shareholder.'Gandhi reproduced the entire letter in Young India of June 1925, and appendedhis reply:I do indeed happen to be the father of Hiralal M. Gandhi. He is my eldest boy,is over thirty-six years old and is father four children, the eldest being nineteenwww.mkgandhi.org Page 237