Gandhi & Art

By

Raman P.Sinha

 Centre of Indian Languages
  Jawaharlal Nehru University
  New Delhi    110067
  e-mail:ramanpsinha@gmail.com

“...there are so many superstitions rife about me that it has now become almost impossible for me to overtake those who have been spreading them. As a result, my friends’ only reaction is almost invariably a smile when I claim I am an artist myself.”1

                         
 What Gandhi said to Dilip Kumar Roy in above quotation is still prevalent. The reaction as smile has not changed as yet since we hardly talk Gandhi in relation to Art (forget about talking Gandhi as an Artist) though it could  be discussed in so many ways — for example we can probe into Gandhian Aesthetics; I mean what Gandhi thought about Beauty and Art, what was his idea about literature, painting, music etc.; we can also analyze those works of films, plays, painting, music, sculpture, literature where Gandhi and Gandhism is the subject; It is also worth focusing Gandhi as litterateur and as a translator as his writing runs through hundred of volumes in Gujarati and English.

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Truth is Beauty

In Young India dated 23.03.1921, Gandhi wrote Satyagraha is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is, therefore, known as soul force.2 Elsewhere, he proclaimed that “I see and find beauty in Truth or through Truth. All truth, not merely true ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures, or songs, are highly beautiful….Truth may manifest itself in forms which may not be outwardly beautiful at all. Socrates,we are told, was the most truthful man of his time and yet his features are said to have been the ugliest in Greece. To my mind, he was beautiful because all his life was a striving after Truth, and you may remember that his outward form did not prevent Phidias from appreciating the beauty of Truth in him, though as an artist he was accustomed to see Beauty in outward forms also.”3 Here Gandhi stresses the dichotomy of content and form and takes side of the content but later he equates form with immorality:

“Take Oscar Wilde. I can speak of him, as I was in England at the time he was being much discussed and talked about…Wilde saw the highest Art simply in outward forms and, therefore, succeeded in beautifying immorality.”4

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 two things i liked about the article were : -the fact that the article touches the aspect of gandhi,which was least talked about; -you cast your net really wide. very good job of it.

lata raman | September 12, 2010