Gandhiji’s padayatra

 Manmohan Choudhury

Translated by Sailen Routray

Gandhiji’s Harijan tour in Odisha was due in the month of May in 1934. To gift him a bagful, Surendra Patnaik and I were staying in my mamu’s house in Satyabhamapur and roaming around in neighbouring villages to collect money and donations. We enjoyed delicious meals at my mamu’s place. We succeeded in collecting some funds. At the same time, we were gathering different kinds of experiences as well.  One day, we had gone to Ghantimunda, on hearing that there was a rich mahajan there. On reaching the mahajan’s place, I saw an old man counting money sitting on his haunches on the veranda. He was wearing a really dirty dhoti, and had a topknot on the head. There was a lot of money piled up in bundles in front of him. We told him quite a bit about the importance of Gandhiji. The old man stopped counting money and listened to us. Towards the end when he said, “All right. It’s all good” – we thought that the old man would give us at least one bundle from the money piled in front of him. However, when he said “OK, take this” and took out a few coins from a fold on his waist and offered these to us, cold water fell on our hopes. We came back without taking what he offered to us. We used to be treated really well elsewhere. In many places, people would affectionately offer us food. While residing in Satyabhamapur, we had received the sad news of Utkal Gouraba Madhusudan Das’s demise.

I also witnessed zamindary oppression for the first time during this period. Once we had gone to Lekhanpur and were the guests of the zamindar there. He was also a supporter of the freedom movement. His office was located in front of our residence. A large number of people were assembled there. I looked up on suddenly hearing a lot of noise and saw a petty official hitting a man with shoes. I was thunderstruck when I saw this. Later I regretted that I did not protest against this.

During this period, a certain feeling of cosmopolitanism had started taking hold of my mind. People from across the world, from all the countries, belong to one common humanity, that all people should unite overcoming the barriers of the discriminations associated with nation states, such ideas were creating an inclination towards liberalism in my mind. Along with this, there were also the romantic ideas related to the working class. Be it workers from Kolkata’s jute mills, or those laboring elsewhere, whenever I met them in villages, I would want to talk to them about their lives. In Padmapur, we came to know that quite a few families from there had migrated to Brazil and were settled there. These linkages between Odisha’s rural hinterland and faraway South America created quite a bit of excitement in my mind. I thought this was how the whole world was going to become one. 

We returned to Cuttack as the time for Gandhiji’s tour was close at hand. We had managed to collect around three hundred rupees. Gandhiji came to Angul via Sambalpur. The Deputy Commissioner there warned the people that no one should extend any cooperation towards the events concerning Gandhiji’s welcome and felicitations. Only Girijabhushan Dutta somehow could put up a tent and made a place for Gandhiji to stay. However, quite a few people from the nearby villages turned up to see Gandhiji. Girija babu was working as a contractor in Angul. He was independent and fearless. Later he supported the cause of the Garjat Movement in Odisha. It was on his land that later khudi built the ashram in Angul.

Gandhiji went to Puri in the evening, passing Cuttack, in the Talcher Train. He was supposed to come to Cuttack from Puri. A seven days long whirlwind tour had been planned for him. He was supposed to move around in a vehicle and have two to three meetings per day. But the next day we got the news that Gandhiji would start his padayatra from Puri. His motor tour was cancelled. It came to be known that the local leaders had arranged for police protection for him on receiving the news that the Puri pandas, the priests at the Jagannath temple, were conspiring to get him beaten up. He had decided on a padayatra to make it easier for those people to beat him up, if that was what they wanted.

Wherever his tour had already been fixed, both the people and the organisers who had been making the arrangements felt frustrated with this sudden change in plan. Many even went and started arguing with him. However, Gandhiji was unperturbed. The schedule for a seven days long padayatra from Puri to Cuttack was fixed. I went and joined the padayatra on the second day in Sakhigopal. My job was to write about Gandhiji’s speeches in detail and to take photographs at his meetings.

Rabindranath Tagore’s elder brother Dwijendranath had invented a method of stenography in Bangla and had published a book on the topic. Khudi had a copy of the book and it came to my hands. I had been practicing this method of shorthand writing. In reality, I had not developed any level of competence and my speed was not that good. However, as each sentence of Gandhiji’s Hindi speeches was being translated into Odia as he spoke, I got the time I needed to write these fast. For the first few days, after I cleaned up the text of the speech, Gandhiji would take a look and make the corrections himself. Later he thought these corrections were not needed. Then I would show the text to Kaka Kalelkar or someone else.

In the padayatra, I was walking two and half to three miles in the morning and the same distance in the afternoon. The padayatra would begin in the morning after everybody had an early breakfast. In the evening, we would set off after finishing dinner around five or five-thirty. There was no worry of arranging food at the night halt. It was summer, so everyone slept in the open. During the day, a house or some temporary shade created by woven mats of coconut fronds would be needed. Before leaving, Gandhiji would personally supervise whether the pit latrines, soiled leaf-plates, etc. had been properly buried under the earth or not. He would see to it that everything had been cleaned up properly. He would also take care of all those who accompanied him on the march. What had been cooked, whether there were any leftovers, he would take stock of this as well.  Once when he heard that my sister Chuni had a thorn in one of her feet, he sat down to remove it out himself. On another occasion, he heard that there was surplus cooked rice, and became pacified only when he was informed that it could be put to good use by making pakhala out of it.

Many distinguished people were coming to meet Gandhiji. They came from a variety of backgrounds, and from outside the country as well. A German man called Kuti Buto from South-West Africa was there in the padayatra from the beginning to the end. He used to identify himself as a member of the Nazi party. He was one of the chief attractions of the padayatra. Wherever he went, he ended up drinking ten, twelve tender coconuts at one go. Two Czechoslovakian guys arrived in Puri, may be at Siulachaka or Satyabhamapur. Thakkar Bapa was there from Puri till Cuttack. N. R. Malkani, the secretary of Harijan Seva Sangh, was there from Bairi to Bhadrak. Satish Chandra Dasgupta arrived at Siulachaka for the first time. Gandhiji had a two-weeks long programme in Bengal after Odisha. Satish babu had allotted that duration of time to Odisha on Bengal’s behalf. Therefore, after reaching Cuttack, Gandhiji left for Patna to attend a meeting of All Indian Congress Committee, and after coming back from there, he got down at Bairi station and again started the second phase of the padayatra. The padayatra was supposed to take place till Baleswar. However, rains started in Jajpur, and therefore, it had to be stopped in Bhadrak.

Agatha Harrison, an English woman who loved India, was in the second padayatra for many days. Pierre Ceresole, from a pacifist service organization called Service Civil International, had come to serve the earthquake affected people of Bihar. He was also with Gandhiji for a few days. Minoo Masani was then a key leader of the Congress Socialist Party. After having come here, he also spent two, three days in the padayatra and had few rounds of discussions with Gandhiji. Ghanshyam Das Birla had come, too. He arrived at the most inconvenient spot for halting, Intaripokhari. Gandhiji stayed there in a tiny house. The rest were put up in a banana grove. There it was very difficult to get even a little milk for Birlaji.

At every halt, Gandhiji would first address the assembled masses and speak against untouchability. Raju-da would translate these speeches. Gandhiji would speak one sentence and then its translation would follow. The speeches would not be too long. He was trying to explain a few basic points at all the places. People used to come from places far away just to have a glimpse of Gandhiji. Many would arrive at inopportune times and grow anxious to see Gandhiji. During the day, he would usually sit in an open area. Therefore, this posed no difficulties. However, in the night, when Gandhiji would be sleeping, people would disturb him by holding lanterns near his face and shining torches at him.

Numerous episodes have stayed in my memory forever. Once the halt was in the yard of a temple or may be a matha. Someone spread Gandhiji’s bedding on a spot that was just five to seven feet away from its boundary wall made up of dry, thorny plants. Gandhiji had already sat upon the bedding when my father saw this and said, “It’s a wild place. There might be dangerous creatures around. Let’s shift the bedding a little farther from the boundary wall.” Gandhiji smiled and replied, “Gopa babu! If a snake had to bite me, couldn’t it crawl a little farther and do so?” The bedding stayed where it was. 

At another place, as it became too hot, Gandhiji went and sat down in the shade of a mango orchard. The trees were filled with insects. It was difficult for a man to sit there in peace. When someone expressed irritation about this, Gandhiji made the following remark, “What’s their fault? If we’re insects, we’d have done exactly the same.” In Cuttack district, Satyabhamapur was quite some distance away from Lekhanpur. It became quite late while traveling there. So, in Gopinathpur, Gandhiji started running after going down the embankment. For the distance of almost half a mile, it was a proper run. Everyone was panting while trying to follow him.

The halt before Jajpur was on the bank of river Budha at night. There, as soon as the evening prayer got over, dark clouds gathered in the sky, and soon it started raining incessantly. There was a small shop there. One of its rooms had a little space. Gandhiji and around seven to eight women took shelter there. For everyone else, only seven to eight feet long mats of woven coconut fronds were available. There were twenty-one or twenty-two of us who put up a canvas against these mats and took shelter underneath. By the time we could make these arrangements, it started raining cats and dogs. The rains continued well into the night. Throughout the night all of us dozed inside the makeshift hut leaning on to and colliding with each other.

It rained heavily at Todanga in Baleswar district as well. Bhadrak was twelve miles from there. It was decided that Gandhiji would walk this stretch at one go and end the Odisha tour after staying for two days at Jivramji’s Ashram in Bhadrak. According to this plan, we left in the morning, rested for a bit once on the road and reached Bhadrak at midday.

In the second phase of the padayatra, Badama got smallpox. She died of the illness. My mother arrived at the Kabirpur halt from Cuttack. Gandhiji consoled her. Then, I didn’t show my feelings. It could be the influence of the prayers that detailed the characteristics of an equanimous person, or because of my shyness. Later my grandmother died during the padayatra led by Vinobaji; even at that time I showed such detached manner. If it were analyzed to find out whether this was due to my equanimity or lack of sensitivity, the latter would be true. Often I have thought of Badama and Ma and have missed them deeply. Now I think that not experiencing sorrow or happiness is not a sign of health. What is desirable is that a human being should not be overwhelmed by either sorrow or happiness and their intelligence should function properly under all circumstances. However, one’s sensibility must remain fresh. The current social climate numbs our sensibility. Therefore, we need ways to keep it fresh and sharp. Otherwise, a lack of sensitivity and lifelessness would pass itself off as equanimity. That’s what it seems like when one sees Vinobaji’s activities.

In Bihar a famine struck when the agitation for gramdan was on a whirlwind. Jayaprakashji took the lead of the relief work after forming a relief committee. Vinoba offered the opinion that there was no need to get into that work. That everyone should just keep on doing the foundational work of receiving the gift of villages. This didn’t agree with my sensibilities. I had argued with Vinobaji strongly. He had offered the view that humans do not die till their prarabdha gets over. Therefore, only those whose prarabdha got over would die, and those whose prarabdha did not get over would continue to live no matter what. Therefore, there was no need to think about them. This ideology of the prarabdha could neither be proved nor disproved. This is what’s called a circular argument. However, later, Vinoba had given his consent to create gramsabhas and conduct relief work under their banner.

That’s all past. Now, when for all practical purposes, dictatorship had been established in India, falsehood and violence reigned supreme, and hundreds of people were murdered in Bihar and elsewhere in the country, it’s strange for Vinobaji to not be worried even slightly and support the regime by remarking that it’s a “time for discipline”. Gandhiji would be worried about the sorrows and pains of even his adversaries. He would think about possible remedies for them. And now when beginning with Jayaprakash Narayan hundreds and thousands of close colleagues were arrested, civil rights of the whole country were withdrawn, all of this not touching him at all was not a sign of equanimity. It’s a sign of emotional blockage and spiritual paralysis.

During the padayatra, one morning Gandhiji walked leaning on to my shoulders to have a conversation with me. He asked me, “What are you doing now and what do you want to do in future?” I said, “I’m interested in studying astronomy and its related fields.” He said, “You could study along with undertaking some work like Khadi.” I said, “Yes.” Our conversation ended with this. The fact of the matter was that I didn’t have any clarity about what I wanted, or didn’t want, to do, at that point of time. In a way, I was participating in the freedom struggle. I had a broad understanding that I had to go forward in that direction. The aspiration for a new society had also arisen by coming in touch with socialist thoughts. In another direction, I deeply wanted to know about the mysteries of our strange world that science was unveiling.  Due to my reserved nature, I was not openly discussing any of this with anyone. Therefore, what more could I discuss with Gandhiji?

Note: This is a translation of a chapter from 'Kasturi Mruga Sama', the autobiography of Manmohan Choudhury (1915-2003). Choudhury was a freedom fighter and sarvodaya activist from Odisha who participated in almost all the popular socio-political movements of his times that happened in the state. He was also a noted writer of non-fiction in the Odia language who won major awards for his writing.