The earth trembles for a reason

Mahatma Gandhi did not once mention the name of the Indian National Congress during his tour of north Bihar after the great earthquake of 1934. This was deliberate, and he made this plain in case anyone had missed the point. He had come to help a ravaged people, not to sell a political party. This must have been the longest single spell in public life when he did not mention the Congress: he reached Patna on March 11 and stayed for almost a month before entering Assam on April 10.

He was in the South on his anti-untouchability campaign, living through a period of intense conviction, a time when he called himself a Harijan. He told a meeting at Alleppey on January 18: "I tell you what I want to do with the Hindu religion. I want to purify it of the sin of untouchability and to exorcise the devil of untouchability which has distorted and disfigured Hinduism out of all recognition It is not a small movement, but a big movement fraught with great consequences."

On 20th, Trivandrum welcomed Gandhi with a government order opening public wells and roads to untouchables. On the 21st the Mahatma got a telegram from Babu Rajendra Prasad: "Earthquake has wrought terrible havoc, ruining Monghyr, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur and Motihari. The last two districts flooded by the waters sprouting from beneath surface. Death casualties anything between ten and fifteen thousand and countless injured. Indescribable damage to property. Appalling suffering."

Gandhiji wrote to Prasad the same day a sentence that distills the helplessness of man against the havoc of nature: "I am being crushed to pieces, still I talk, laugh, and seem to enjoy, for I have to do that. But I am thinking of it all the twenty-four hours."

The earthquake had struck at 2.15 in the afternoon on January 15 and stretched a thousand miles from its epicentre.

Gandhiji began collecting funds for the stricken at a meeting in Tinnevelly on January 24, in words that need to become part of our consciousness today: "In the face of this great calamity over which we have no control, let us forget that some of us are Congressmen and others are non-Congressmen, that some of us are Hindus and others are non-Hindus, that some are officials and others are non-officials, and that some are Englishmen and others are not. Let us remember that we are all Indians eating Indian grain and salt, and living on the dumb Indian masses. And as such, let us act and work with one will and absolute unity."

Then came the controversy. "For me," said Gandhiji, "there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouchability campaign." He expounded on the theme in the next issue of Harijan: "the calamities such as the Bihar one, come to mankind as chastisement for their sins I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement. I am not affected by posers such as why punishment for an age-old sin, or why punishment to Bihar and not to the South, or why an earthquake and why not some other form of punishment. My answer is that: I am not god."

This became a bit of a social earthquake of its own, sending tremors across India. Rabindranath Tagore publicly rebuked the Mahatma: "It has caused me a painful surprise to find Mahatma Gandhi accusing those who blindly follow their own social custom of untouchability, of having brought down God's vengeance upon certain parts of Bihar, evidently, specially selected for his desolating displeasure. It is all the more unfortunate, because this kind of unscientific view of phenomena is too readily accepted by a large section of our countrymen" There was much more in this vein.

Gandhi was unfazed, writing, again in the Harijan, "To me, the earthquake was no caprice of god, nor a result of a meeting of mere blind forces." He continued his tour of the South, interrupting it on March 9 only after an urgent SOS from Rajendra Prasad. He reached Patna on March 11; the next day, Monday, was his day of silence. On the 13th he went around Patna and on Wednesday left by car for Motihari.

This was no "aerial survey" by a VIP. This was another meeting of the poorest Indians and the man who had become an icon in their hearts.

Agatha Harrison has left an account of Gandhiji's tour of earthquake-shattered Bihar: "How can I describe these two days to you? With the exception of a few miles of route in the outlying districts we drove between walls of people. As we neared a village or town, these human walls would press in almost to the point of suffocation in an effort to see this much-loved man, Mahatma Gandhi.

"Sometimes, through sheer fatigue, he would curl up on the seat and sleep and I would talk with Babu Rajendra Prasad. As we neared a village, and the motor slowed down, Babu Rajendra Prasad on one side, and the chauffeur on the other, would lean out and call softly in Hindustani, He sleeps. These words would be echoed by the people. But even this did not deter them from pressing around the car, though quite quietly, in an effort to see Mr Gandhi. From my vantage point I saw the expression on their faces, and was dumb..."

Gandhi was a tough leader. He had only one message for the people of his country in the hour of their desperation: "Work, work, do not beg, but work; ask for work to do, and do it faithfully."  Would he have recognised the India 50 years after his death, a nation of holidays and foreign debt?

In 1934 all that an Indian got for this work was two annas a day for a man, one anna for a woman and half an anna for a child. But he dreamt that "this earthquake will be turned into a blessing". How? Through regeneration of the spirit. When he saw the ruined palaces and temples of Rajnagar he felt crushed. Then he remembered Kunti's prayer: "O Lord, send me misery and misfortune, lest I forget Thee."

The rich never understood the Mahatma, although they joined the mood he created, the storms he raised in the heart as he struggled to liberate Indians from themselves first, and from the British later.

But the poor understood him perfectly. He was the one they had been waiting for. He had every right to admonish them, to instruct them, to challenge their beliefs like untouchability, to tell them that an earthquake was all their fault and still retain their love and loyalty, for he was one of them. Their suffering was his, their hut was his, their food was perhaps a little more than his.

He wore nothing more than their loincloth. One look from him, one touch of his hem and they found the peace that had eluded them all their lives, the hope that they could pass on to their children. Mirabehn accompanied Gandhiji when he visited Orissa on his anti-untouchability mission in May that year. She tells a story.

One morning Gandhiji announced that he was ready for the attentions of a barber. To his surprise, a heavily ornamented woman appeared. She was the village barber, and gave him a perfect face-and-head shave. The Mahatma could not resist giving the barber some advice, about her ornaments, asking her why she wore them, telling her that they were ugly. Crestfallen, the barber replied that she had borrowed the ornaments especially for this occasion; she could not have come to Gandhi looking plain.

He argued; she gave him a sweet smile and went off to turn her attentions towards two