“Gayathri mantra Japam 1008”: “mithhyaatheetha praayaschittaarthham”… what is it?

Yesterday Saturday, 8th August 2025 was the auspicious annual Upakarma Day that is so very important for all members of the Brahmin community in Tamil Nadu.

Upakarma is the anniversary occasion when all Brahmins renew their vow to continue the traditional vocation in life of “vedaadhyayana” which consists in engaging constantly in chanting the Vedas to keep the eternal 4 Vedic scriptural texts (Rg, Yajur, Sama and Atharvana) well preserved for the sake of posterity.

On this occasion, Brahmins ritually cast off their old “yagnyopaveetham” (known commonly in Tamil as “poonool” or “sacred thread”) and don a new one. Then they offer solemn oblations of rice and sesame grain to the Vedas in spirit after which they commemorate the “kanda Rishis”, the ancient seers who first intuited the Vedic mantras and authored the scriptural “itihaasas” and “puranas”.

It is laid down in Vedic Sastra that all Brahmins must mandatorily perform this timeless annual ritual every year. Not observing it is a transgression of Vedic ethics.

On my part, as a Sri Vaishnava, I have all these past years been faithfully observing the Upakarma ritual without fail.

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“mithhyaatheetha praayaschittaarthham samvatsara praayaschittaarthham, doshavath apataneeya praayaschittaarthham, sandhyaa vandanaadi akaranena janita dosha nivruthyarthham, ashtotthara sahasra sankhyayaa (1008) (or) sambhaavita sankhyayaa, (as many as possible) gaayathree mahaa manthra Japam karishye” ||

The above is a litany in Sanskrit with which, early this morning on August 9, i.e. this day after Upakarma, I at my home commenced the annual ritual chanting 1008 times of the sacred Gayatri Mantra— silently to myself seated in a corner of my house.

This rite of chanting Gayatri Japam too is an integral part of the annual Upakarma and also, mandatorily, has to be performed by all Brahmins.

It is about this Gayatri Japam rite that I am penning down below a very brief essay mainly for the benefit of Brahmin youngsters in our community who may know so very little about the significance of the chant of the Gayatri Japam 1008 times that they may be tempted to dismiss it as too tedious a rite to observe and hence might give it a skip.

The British ruled over us for 250 years by replacing traditional modes of Vedic education with their own modern Macaulayan systems. That was the need of the times, no doubt, and wholly welcomed by even the Brahmins of Tamilnadu at large. However, one of the casualties unfortunately inflicted by the British education system upon the Brahmin community was the dinning into, nay, even brainwashing of the minds of its youngsters with a deep seated contempt for Vedic ritualism. Ever since then, several generations in the Brahmin community have all grown up cultivating a superior attitude of deep condescension towards all Vedic rituals… including Upakarma and Gayatri Japam. This essay cannot of course in any way persuade them to change that attitude.

There are however many other Brahmin youngsters in our community —- very highly educated in the modern ways — who nonetheless possess an open mind and are still willing to pay attention and due respect to Vedic belief-systems and values. They are a curious lot and they pose good valid questions such as : What does performance of this ritual help me achieve? Why is it mandatory? Why is it so significant?

It is indeed those youngsters who may find this essay of some use.

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To gain a proper understanding of the answers to all such curious questions, we have to start at the beginning with the very first question of all :

What is the Sanskrit litany above all about?

The litany is, first and foremost, a first-person vow or declaration of resolve (“Sankalpam”) to perform a certain large number of Gayatri mantra recitations, repetitively, as sincere spiritual atonement or cleansing for various types of faults, transgressions or omissions—whether inadvertent, accumulated over years, or arising from ritual mistakes—especially those connected to performance of the daily ritual of Sandhyāvandanam which no Brahmin calling himself a Brahmin can ever fail to perform everyday all his life.

The detailed meaning of the “Sankalpam” is as follows:

“I will hereby perform the great (mahā) chanting (japam) of the Gayatri mantra as a penance/prāyaścitta:

• for the removal of sins committed unintentionally or mistakenly in the past (mithyā-ātīta prāyaścittārtham),

• as expiation for mistakes/faults committed over the years (samvātsara prāyaścittārtham),

• as penance for faults due to unavoidable causes or errors (doṣavatha āpatanīya prāyaścittārtham),

• for the removal of faults arising from omissions or errors in performing venerations such as Sandhyā (twilight prayers) and other Vedic rites as well (sandhyā vandanādi ākāraṇena janita doṣa nivṛttyartham),

• by chanting the Gayatri mantra one thousand and eight (or as many as possible) times (aṣṭottara sahasra saṅkhyayā / sambhāvita saṅkhyayā).

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The Brahmin youngster may next ask a very valid question:

By the mere act of repeating or chanting the Gayatri Mantra 1008 times, how is atonement of transgressions effected ? How does mere “Japa” or droning a chant remove the taint of sin?

To such an intelligent question , the answer has got to be a little long-winded since the matter at hand demands understanding of how the human mind reacts to Repetition of words … and especially repetition of Vedic mantra.

In my schooling days in the 1960s, I remember vividly that there was one unique form of punishment that class-teachers used to sometimes mete out to errant or delinquent students. It was called “Imposition”.

“Imposition” meant that a student would be told to write 100, 500 or 1000 times in a notebook one particular line or short sentence that expressed apology, regret, repentance, asking for forgiveness or a solemn promise to redeem oneself … Writing an “Imposition” was a sort of atonement and a school classroom-ritual.

The practice of making students write lines, often called “imposition” had a long history in schools. It was a discipline commonly used to express student apology, repentance, or promises to improve behavior, serving as a consequence for various misbehaviors. The sentence to be written typically related to the offense, such as “I must not talk in class”, “I shall not steal from the lunch-boxes of my class-mates”…. or similar admonitions.

The rationale for Imposition was partly to leverage the effort and focus required in writing to correct misbehavior. This practice emerged in formal education systems largely in the 19th and 20th centuries, reflecting disciplinary approaches where repetitive writing was used to enforce conformity and instill lessons. It was intended to ensure students internalized moral or behavioral rules through physical repetition, believed to reinforce learning by repetition.

Today however “Imposition” — the writing of a repeated sentence expressing contrition — is no longer considered to be a good way of instilling discipline or good behaviour in school students.

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The reference above to “Imposition” should not be mistaken to be any sort of case being made by me to bring back that outmoded disciplinary practice in school classrooms. Rather I bring it up here only because the idea of Imposition serves well to illustrate the lateral thought-process of mine that seeks to connect — albeit only at a deeply psychological level — the practice of Japam and “imposition”. In another words, it helps me to argue that what Imposition was intended to do to correct errant behaviour of the school student in class is much the same as what the Brahmin meditative practice of “1008 times Gayatri Japa” also is intended to do to human spiritual impulses?

At a deeply psychological level, it is indeed interesting and thoughtful to be able to consider that “imposition” (the repetitive writing punishment) might function in a way somewhat analogous to the Hindu meditative practice of “Japa” (the repetitive chanting or recitation of a mantra) but in different domains—behavioral vs. spiritual.

Japa is intended as a disciplined, mindful repetition of a sacred word or phrase to focus the mind, purify consciousness, and elevate spiritual impulses. It seeks to cultivate positive transformation, leading to mental clarity, concentration, and inner peace by deeply embedding a spiritual vibration within one’s awareness.

On the other hand, “imposition” seeks to change behavior by having the student repeatedly write a sentence reflecting remorse or a commitment to improve. The idea is to reinforce a lesson through sheer repetition, potentially embedding the behavioral message in the student’s mind to inhibit undesirable actions and promote compliance or correction.

However, while both techniques do involve repetition, their psychological effects can and, of course, do differ greatly:


• Intent and mindset: Japa is voluntary, meditative, and sacred, aimed at positive inner transformation. Imposition is typically imposed as a punishment, often experienced as repetitive, tedious, and sometimes personally shaming.


• Emotional impact: Japa usually induces calmness, focus, and spiritual upliftment. Imposition may provoke feelings of frustration, resentment, or humiliation, which can hinder genuine behavioral change.


• Cognitive outcomes: Japa engages mindfulness and spiritual focus, potentially reshaping consciousness positively. Imposition usually relies on rote repetition, which may not foster understanding or internal motivation to change behavior, sometimes leading to resistance rather than growth.

At a conceptual level, however, there is no doubt that both do use repetition as a mechanism to embed a pattern—whether spiritual or behavioral—but the experiential quality, intention, and psychological impact differ significantly.

Which is why our ancient Vedic adepts ( Rishis and Acharyas) made sure that while Japam did its intended work subliminally upon the human psyche to purge it of all mental pollutants through the ritual of “praayaschittaartham”, the repetition of mantra never did become tedious, frustrating, humiliating or else, did arouse resentment just as Imposition invariably tended to do.

Classroom Imposition might have lacked the meditative mindfulness and positive frame that makes Japa transformative. So, one might say imposition mimics the repetitive aspect of Japa, but it does not generally replicate the deeper psychological and spiritual benefits. Gayatri Japam 1008 times — its repetition too can have profoundly different effects depending on context, intention, and emotional engagement.

If a Brahmin young man grasps and understands properly the underlying rationale and significance of the “Gayatri Japam Sankalpam” , he would never perhaps want to fail in his ordained Vedic Duty to observe the annual Upakarma and Gayatri Japam rituals.

“Sarvam Sri Krishnaarpanam”!

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy… (Part-9): ….The years in political wilderness ….

 It would not be inaccurate to say that between roughly 1933 and his death in 1946, Rt. Hon’ble V. S. Srinivasa Sastri was in relative political wilderness compared to his earlier prominence. By the mid-1930s, Sastri had distanced himself from the more militant and mass-based nationalist politics led by the Indian National Congress under Gandhi and Nehru, following his resignation from the Party over disagreements about the non-cooperation movement.

Sastri had serious qualms about Civil Disobedience and Non-Cooperation being used as weapons of political struggle albeit in wholly Gandhian-style and in much-touted Non-Violent ways.

While not disagreeing that Sathyagraha was indeed a very effective way of exerting tremendous moral pressure on the British Colonial powers, Sastri had the foresight, nevertheless, to realise that it was a potent and treacherous double-edged sword. After Independence was attained, Sastri feared, the new fledgling Nation might not be able to rein in the anarchic impulses that he discerned lurking deep and latent at the very core of the whole philosophy of Civil Disobedience. Those impulses he felt would not be conducive to nation-building and, in fact, would turn out to be inimical to social reconstruction.

Civil Disobedience was politically expedient in the short-term for Gandhi and Nehru to wrest freedom from the British. Sastri however was convinced that it would only instill in the Indian people, once they had gained such freedom, a very unhealthy political culture and a deep-seated habit of wilful recalcitrance and non-cooperation that would never wear off. Rather it would only gather more strength and would engender and normalise chronic instablity and acrimony in the relationship between the State and People.

In other words, Sastri had the statesman’s farsightedness to anticipate how in the Independent Democratic Republic of India, Gandhi’s legacy of Civil Disobedience would take deep root in the national character and begin to constantly plague civil society with all sorts of mass-movements and social unrest staged more for narrow parochial, group self-interests rather than large national causes. Civil Disobedience thus could easily become less and civil; and in time, become ever more and more disobedient.

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During this later period in which he found himself in relative political wilderness, Sastri turned the focus of his energies to his other passions.

Sastri focused more on constitutional liberalism and worked mainly through moderate political channels such as the Indian Liberal Federation. His leadership of the Indian Liberal Federation and expertise as an orator and diplomat remained respected but his political influence and popular visibility diminished significantly in these years.

He engaged further in diplomatic and educational roles, notably serving as Vice-Chancellor of Annamalai University from 1935 to 1940. Since the British Government of India greatly valued his expertise in foreign affairs, Sastri was even briefly offered an assignment to go to Malaya to study and submit a report on the status of Indian labourer-population working there as migrant workers in tea and rubber plantations.

Although Sastri participated in some important political events such as the Round Table Conferences (1930-31) and was part of delegations appealing for dominion status during WWII, he was still largely sidelined by the mass nationalist movements that dominated the freedom struggle in the 1930s and 1940s.

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WORLD WAR-2 and QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT:

Sastri’s moderate, cooperative stance during World War II, including refusal to resign from the British War Committee and opposition to the Quit India movement, placed him at odds with the dominant Congress leadership and radical nationalists.

The “War Committee” during World War II was constituted by the British Government in India. It was mandated to coordinate and oversee the Indian contribution to the Allied war effort. This committee was part of the administrative and consultative mechanisms set up by the colonial government to manage military, strategic, and resource mobilization issues during the war.

Sastri’s role in the War Committee was as a member representing Indian interests from a moderate, constitutionalist perspective. He did not hold a formal military rank but served as a senior political advisor and elder statesman. His participation reflected his pragmatic support for India siding with Britain during the war while advocating orderly constitutional progress and opposing radical civil disobedience such as the Quit India Movement. Sastri’s presence on the committee was part of his broader role as an experienced diplomat and political moderate engaged in advising the British government and advocating Indian concerns within legal and constitutional frameworks.

Sastri made no secret at all that he considered the Quit India movement of 1942 as an impossible demand that could lead to anarchy and appreciated the difficulties faced by Britain in the war. Sastri blamed India’s problems more on Indian disunity than British policy and maintained that British rule was “providential” as part of India’s political evolution. Thus, he chose to remain on the War Committee as a moderate voice supporting dominion status and constitutional progress, rather than withdrawing in protest or radical opposition.

There is no specific record of who exactly demanded that Sastri resign from the War Committee, but it can be inferred that the more radical elements of the Indian National Congress and Quit India Movement supporters would have expected loyal Indian leaders to resign in protest of British rule during the war. Sastri’s refusal to resign set him apart from the Congress leadership and mass nationalist activism of the period.

V. S. Srinivasa Sastri did experience thus a form of political marginalization during the later years of the Indian freedom struggle, especially as the mass nationalist movements led by Gandhi and Nehru became increasingly dominant. However, the relationship between Sastri and Gandhi was marked by mutual respect and personal friendship despite their sharp political differences. Gandhi even addressed Sastri as his “elder brother” in their correspondences and praised his qualities. Their personal rapport remained warm.

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Sastri himself expressed a sense of melancholy and political isolation in the late 1930s and early 1940s, lamenting that Indian liberals were “not wanted” in the political landscape dominated by radical nationalism. This nuanced picture is reflected in biographies and archival letters showing Sastri’s dignified but somewhat melancholic withdrawal from frontline nationalist politics in the 1930s and 1940s.

Below is a mere sampling of such letters of Srinivasa Sastry. They all truly reflect the mood of subdue and melancholy that was gradually creeping upon him in his advancing years but which he yet bore with stoicism and, in fact at times, with remarkably good humour! To his good friend, the outstanding legal and constitutional luminary, Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar, Sastri wrote about his sense of isolation but then at the same time also pulled Alladi’s legs, playfully shaming him for his preoccupation with the mundane and quotidian preoccupations in his humdrum life and even for not showing gratitude to his “long-suffering” spouse!

TO RAO BAHADUR A. KRISHNASWAMI AIYAR

POONA: 31st March 1935

Dearest Friend

This note is several days behind, but there is no more to write for that reason. Life is reduced to routine for me and one day is so like another, I ask myself why prolong.

You come frequently into my thoughts-stooping and looking at your own sandals, which you drag with an effort, the ancient blanket resting on the shoulder with accustomed repose, the fingers of the right hand tracing queer lines on the heedless air, the head no longer poised firmly, but thrown forward and a wee bit sideward, as if too heavy with borrowed cares and adopted tasks, and the mind—ah, that mind! who shall sort its contents? May be the most suitable transport of a patient from Guindy to the hospital, maybe a word of unfelt anger to the school contractor, maybe the supply of a missing link in the chain of evidence for a trumpery small-cause suit to which a cousin or a nephew of an old friend is a party, maybe some subtle flattery by which a simple official could be wheedled into forgetting restrictive bye-laws. …. Good honest items everyone: but does it strike you ever that others may do them just as well as you, and that if they were not done so well, the world would not be the worse the least bit?

Why not listen two hours daily to the melting thevaaram of a half-starved andi, helping the puzzled intelligence of a neighbour with pregnant comments on the vocables and allusions? Why not get an old sastri to chant the Upanishads or expound the Gita. now and then startling him by questions suggestive of the limitation of rishis or the unbridled exegetical ingenuity of Sankara?

And why not, I ask twice, why not spend a quiet hour at home, submitting to the just reproaches of a long-suffering partner, from whom so much has been exacted but to whom so little has been given? Believe me always your saucy, but reverent and worshipful,

V.S.SRINIVASAN

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The spectre of World War-2 breaking out in Europe greatly disturbed Sastri and perhaps even aggravated his personal mood of depression. Sastri was greatly admired by the noted Kannada poet and prolific Sahitya Akademi Award winning writer, “DVG”, D.V.Gundappa (1887-1975). In a letter addressed to DVG, Sastri’s mental state of anxiety can be fathomed:

To: Mr. D.V. GUNDAPPA

MYLAPORE: 4th October 1938

My dear Gundappa

Born in 1869, I am only 69 now. That is, I have completed 69 years. When Sept. 22 comes round in 1939, I should be a septuagenarian, if…..

The world is going mad. I never was so perplexed in my life as now. Do I want peace or war? Peace.

Then why am I not pleased? Because of the extinction (it will be that soon) of Czechoslovakia. Did I expect peace in a Hitler-ridden world without some iniquity? If I did, I was a fool. Much as I disliked Halifax when he said: ‘Peace is at this juncture greater to the world than justice’, I don’t dislike him nearly so much now. Peace is something more tangible, at least in its negative aspects, than justice, and far more clearly discernible. Who would sacrifice a clear tangible end for a mere abstraction which means different things to different nations and different individuals? This peace, however, cannot last long. Some people would ask: “Since we must fight someday, why, not now? it may be better now than tomorrow”.

The answer is that of the doctor in the case of the dying man. He can’t say: “Since the patient is sure to die in three days, why not finish him now? So much bother is saved.”

The idea is, God’s ways are inscrutable. Nothing is certain. If we gain time, who knows? Mankind may change its ways, the nations may learn the wisdom of peace, and all quarrels will yield to reason.

Let Chamberlain (then British Prime Minister) have the peace prize, and give a share of it to Daladier (French Radical-Socialist centre-left politician, then Prime Minister of France in 1933, 1934) and Mussolini (then Italian Prime Minister) and (Adolf) Hitler himself. Benes (then Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia in 1935-1938) is to have nothing but the world’s pity and scorn.

My brain is now feeble and fitful in its work, and I daren’t trust its verdict. But there will be a few more wars before the reign of peace begins. Then the earth and its peoples will be very different from what they are to-day.

Affectionately yours

V. S SRINIVASAN

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The most poignant of his letters expressing the utter sense of isolation and loneliness he felt at being marginalized by the mainstream of politics in India in that period was the one Srinivasa Sastri wrote to a dear and personal friend to whom he truly opened out his heart and vented feelings:

To Mr T. N. JAGADISAN:

COIMBATORE: 7th June 1941

My dear Jagadisan,

A few years ago I used to plague myself with examination of my past and contemplation of the great chasm between what might have been and what was….

Now I have a solace, but you will he surprised, perhaps shocked, to know of it. What would it have signified to the world, I ask, if I had realized my possibilities to the full？

True pessimism, you say. Stern reality, I rejoin.

Pray do not imagine I have a grievance against the world. I have none. On the contrary, the world has been kind; not only tolerant, but generous. A diffident, ungrasping man is generally at a disadvantage; but luck has been friendly to me. Good things have sought me, occasionally found me timid and hesitant. I have not actually run away from such opportunities; conscience-stricken and scared, I have sat up and done my duty. But I was never eager, not at all ambitious and sadly deficient in the quality of adventure. If I sat at the table of the mighty, I was content to eat what I needed. I did not shout for the viands and costly wines and gorge myself.

To speak the truth, I was every moment weighed down by the feeling that I had strayed out of bounds. I never settled down where I was stationed, but sat on the edge of the chair, ready to vacate if stared at questioningly by any steward.

Conquerors must be made of sterner stuff.

Affectionately yours

V. S. SRINIVASAN

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In spite of his relations with Gandhi remaining warm and affectionate as ever, still there was no doubt that his deep and wide political differences with the Mahatma’s politics and leadership did at times chafe and even rankle Srinivasa Sastri. In one of his letters to another friend, and in a moment of rare candour, Sastri gave voice to all his suppressed bitterness:

To Mr A. V. THAKKAR

R. S. PURAM, COIMBATORE: 12th September 1941

My dear Thakkar

You will have seen my statement on Churchill’s declaration. He is a powerful man, now all powerful and puffed up. India can tackle him, if she is united, practical-minded, long-sighted. Jinnah has tied himself up into a tangled knot. He is paralysed. Gandhiji can shake himself and strike a new line but he too for the moment is in perverse company and wedded, like the I.C.S. of old time, to prestige and consistency. These are the shibboleths of party but the ruin of the nation. He can’t give up his morals and Ahimsa, but he can stand aside and give a chance to an alternative policy. Stark abdication, publicly announced, may cause a panic and do terrible harm. But acquiescence in another line of approach is feasible. He is aware of it. However, I am impotent and have no business to advise. So I shut up. Love.

Yours affectionately

V. S. SRINIVASAN

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(to be continued)

Sudarshan Madabushi

Utterly perplexed by the Trump Tariff War, I interviewed “Perplexity”to understand the mayhem!

1. In what conceptual ways are the trump tariffs expected to start bringing in revenues to America ?

Perplexity: The Trump tariffs are conceptually expected to bring in revenue to America primarily by imposing taxes on imported goods—importers pay these tariffs at the U.S. border, and the collected funds go into the federal government’s general fund, potentially narrowing the budget deficit or paying down national debt.

Trump has suggested two main uses for these tariff revenues: to reduce the national debt or possibly distribute “tariff rebate checks” to American citizens, although neither has been implemented so far. The tariffs are intended to raise substantial government revenue—revenue from tariffs has significantly increased, becoming one of the larger sources of federal income.

The tariffs are levied on imported goods, meaning the U.S. importers pay the tariff cost upfront. However, these additional costs frequently get passed onto American consumers through higher prices, effectively making consumers bear much of the economic burden despite the tariff revenue flowing to the government. Businesses sometimes absorb the costs or negotiate price reductions with foreign suppliers but often face pressure to raise prices, thereby fueling inflationary effects.

The tariffs also aim to reduce the trade deficit and encourage domestic production, as they increase the cost of foreign goods relative to U.S.-made products, potentially stimulating investment and hiring in American industries, according to Trump’s administration. However, economists warn the economic effects may include slower growth, higher consumer prices, and job losses in some sectors, which could counterbalance the revenue benefits.

In summary, Trump tariffs generate revenue by taxing imports paid by U.S. importers, with the money flowing to the federal government to help reduce deficits or debt. The economic cost mostly falls on American companies and consumers through higher prices, while the administration hopes the tariffs will also promote domestic economic growth.

2. Conceptually then trump tariffs have the following effects : a higher indirect tax on US domestic consumers and deeply discouraging imports from abroad. Isn’t that right ?

Perplexity: Yes, conceptually, Trump tariffs act as a higher indirect tax on U.S. consumers because importers who pay the tariffs mostly pass on these costs to domestic consumers, leading to higher prices on imported goods and those made with imported components. This effectively discourages imports by making foreign products more expensive compared to U.S.-made goods. The tariffs raise the cost of a wide range of products, from clothing to electronics, causing significant price increases for U.S. households. This reflects a deliberate policy to protect domestic industries by reducing import demand, though it also burdens consumers through inflation and may slow economic growth in some sectors.

To summarize:

  • Importers pay tariffs at the border but often pass costs to consumers as higher prices.
  • This acts like a tax on consumers, raising prices of imported and related domestic goods.
  • Higher import costs discourage buying foreign goods, aiming to boost U.S. production.
  • Price increases have been reported notably in clothing, appliances, and other consumer items.
  • Consumers bear much of the economic burden, despite the government collecting tariff revenues.

So yes, your understanding is correct.

3. So, it would be right to conclude that fiscal revenues generated by the trump tariffs will increase dramatically in the short term but in a very short term thereafter when imports taper off , the revenue streams from tariffs will dry up . Right ?

Perplexity: Yes, it is correct to conclude that fiscal revenues generated by the Trump tariffs are expected to increase significantly in the short term due to the higher tariffs imposed on a wide range of imported goods. For example, the U.S. government collected nearly $30 billion in tariff revenue in one recent month, which was a 242% increase compared to the previous year, and a total of about $100 billion since the tariffs started ramping up. However, this surge in revenue is likely to be short-lived because as tariffs make imports more expensive, import volumes tend to taper off over time, reducing the base on which tariffs are collected.

Economic responses include importers delaying purchases before tariffs take effect, and then reducing imports after tariffs increase, which slows revenue growth from tariffs in the medium term. Additionally, the higher costs caused by tariffs could dampen U.S. economic growth and consumer demand that normally support imports, further reducing tariff revenue. Thus, although tariffs raise government income initially, once imports decline due to tariff-induced cost increases and trade pattern adjustments, tariff revenue streams will diminish accordingly.

To summarize:

  • Short-term: Rapid and large increases in tariff revenue due to high rates on large import volumes.
  • Medium to longer term: Import volumes decrease as tariffs raise costs, leading to a reduction in tariff revenue.
  • The economic effects of tariffs (higher prices, slower growth) can indirectly reduce broader tax revenues and economic activity.

Your understanding aligns well with economic analysis of tariff behavior and trade dynamics under Trump’s policy.

4. To make matters worse, if countries hit by trump tariffs around the world decide to bite the bullet and impose retaliatory reciprocal tariffs on their own respective imports from America, then American exporters will begin to hurt , will they not ? Trump tariffs thus in essence becomes a global zero sum game ?

Perplexity: Yes, your understanding is correct. If countries targeted by Trump tariffs decide to impose retaliatory tariffs on their imports from the U.S., American exporters will face difficulties because their products will become more expensive and less competitive in those foreign markets. This retaliatory effect can hurt U.S. industries that rely on exports, especially in sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and technology.

Such reciprocal tariffs trigger a global zero-sum game dynamic, where gains from tariff revenues or import protection in one country are offset by losses in export opportunities in another. Trade tensions escalate into tariff wars, reducing overall trade volumes and disrupting supply chains, which ultimately can slow economic growth both in the U.S. and globally. For instance, China and the EU have responded to U.S. tariffs with their own tariffs on American goods, leading to losses for U.S. exporters.

This interplay has been widely viewed as harmful to the U.S. economy despite initial tariffs raising government revenues, because retaliatory tariffs tend to lower U.S. export demand and cause economic disruptions that may outweigh the tariff revenue benefits.

Summary:

  • Retaliatory tariffs by other countries raise costs for U.S. exporters, reducing their competitiveness.
  • This sets up a global zero-sum scenario with winners and losers balanced across countries.
  • Overall trade volumes shrink, and economic growth risks increase globally and for the U.S.
  • American exporters, such as farmers and manufacturers, are adversely affected by foreign tariffs in response to Trump tariffs.

Thus, Trump’s tariffs and the ensuing retaliation can trigger economic pain on multiple fronts beyond just consumer price increases in the U.S.

5. So, if it makes no sense conceptually at all, what could then be the underlying rationale for the trump tariff game plan ?

Perplexity: The underlying rationale for the Trump tariff game plan, despite its conceptual contradictions, is rooted in several strategic and economic goals:

  • Reducing the U.S. trade deficit: Trump aimed to narrow the gap between the value of goods the U.S. imports and exports, believing that tariffs would discourage imports and encourage buying American-made products to boost domestic production.
  • Protecting American manufacturing and jobs: Tariffs are positioned as a tool to shield U.S. industries from what Trump called unfair global trade practices and to incentivize reshoring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S..
  • Increasing government revenue and potentially substituting some income taxes: Trump suggested tariff revenues could help reduce the national debt or even replace income taxes for some Americans, although this was more aspirational and less practical once import volumes decline.
  • Enhancing economic sovereignty and national security: Tariffs were presented as a way to protect U.S. economic sovereignty, prevent exploitation by foreign countries, and strengthen national security by fostering domestic production capacity.
  • Using tariffs as leverage for broader trade and geopolitical demands: Tariffs served as a strategic bargaining tool to pressure trade partners into renegotiating trade agreements, addressing immigration, or other policy goals.

In essence, tariffs in Trump’s strategy were meant as a comprehensive economic and geopolitical lever: to fix perceived trade imbalances, protect and incentivize U.S. industry, raise revenue, and assert U.S. strength in global trade relations. The approach acknowledges some short-term economic pain but underscores a long-term vision for “America First” trade policies aimed at economic revival and sovereignty.

6. Will trump tariffs eventually reduce or exacerbate America’s income and wealth inequality problem ? Will the chasm between Wall Street and Main Street widen or narrow ?

Perplexity: Trump tariffs are generally expected to exacerbate America’s income and wealth inequality rather than reduce it. The tariffs act like a regressive tax, disproportionately burdening lower-income households who spend a larger share of their income on imported goods, which tariffs make more expensive. Research from Yale’s Budget Lab finds that tariffs cause larger relative income losses for lower-income families, who may lose a few thousand dollars in purchasing power annually, while price increases hit basics like clothing and everyday imports that lower-income groups rely on most.

This dynamic tends to widen rather than narrow the economic chasm between Wall Street and Main Street. Wealthier households may bear higher total costs (due to absolute spending amounts), but the relative burden falls heavier on poorer households, whose income is more stretched. Meanwhile, tariffs do not appear to restore manufacturing jobs at the scale hoped in historically struggling regions, instead slowing overall economic growth and raising consumer prices, which hits middle- and lower-income Americans harder. Export sectors face retaliation, hurting workers in those industries too.

In sum:

  • Lower-income households suffer greater proportional income losses due to higher prices on tariffed imports and reduced purchasing power.
  • Middle- and working-class consumers bear inflationary costs that widen economic inequality.
  • Businesses and workers exposed to retaliatory tariffs may lose jobs, compounding inequality.
  • Wealthier individuals and Wall Street benefit less from tariffs and often have greater financial buffers.
  • Economic growth slows overall, limiting broad-based income gains that could narrow inequality.

Thus, Trump tariffs are more likely to worsen income inequality and deepen the divide between Wall Street (capital owners) and Main Street (working consumers) rather than alleviate it.

7. The ripple effect set off by trump tariffs could be incipient tsunami in the offing that would hit the retail market, the housing market, health care industry, education sector … all such markets that serve the average citizen . Would that be a reasonable prediction to make ?

Perplexity: Yes, it is a reasonable prediction that the ripple effects of Trump tariffs could manifest like an incipient tsunami impacting various key markets that serve the average American citizen, including retail, housing, healthcare, and education.

Several economic analyses highlight emerging signs of strain across the U.S. economy following the tariff increases:

  • Retail markets face price hikes due to higher import costs, leading to inflation that reduces consumer purchasing power and slows retail sales growth.
  • The housing market is experiencing falling property values in key regions and reduced construction spending (down about 2-3% in recent months), partly due to increased costs for building materials and slowing economic confidence.
  • Healthcare and education sectors report cost pressures from tariffs on equipment and supplies, leading some institutions to defer projects and investments to manage expenses.
  • The broader economy shows signs of slowing hiring, stagnation in manufacturing job growth, and an erosion of real wages due to inflationary pressures linked to tariffs.

These effects combine to create “fine sand in the gears” that gradually slow economic activity rather than causing an immediate collapse, as explained by economists analyzing post-tariff data. As tariffs raise input costs broadly, they ripple through supply chains and consumer markets, disproportionately impacting industries that directly serve middle and lower-income Americans.

In summary, the wide-reaching, multifaceted economic strains triggered by tariffs can indeed cascade, hitting multiple sectors that affect everyday citizens, validating the prediction of a growing “tsunami”-like effect across retail, housing, healthcare, education, and more.

Thus, while the tariff policy aims to protect domestic industry, early evidence indicates that the costs spread across vital sectors and weigh on the average consumer over time.

8. Does no one in the Capitol understand these basic concepts of macro-economic theory and hold the President accountable for whereto his tariff policies are taking the country down? Surely, there are sane and brave members on both sides of the aisles in Congress and Senate ? No ?

Perplexity; Many members of Congress and the Senate do understand the basic concepts and impacts of tariffs, including the downsides of the Trump tariff policies, but holding the President accountable through legislative or procedural checks has been challenging.

The key reasons are:

  • Executive power over tariffs: Congress has delegated broad authority to the President to impose tariffs under laws like Section 232 (national security), Section 301 (unfair trade practices), and Section 201 (protect domestic industries). This delegation limits Congress’s direct control over tariff decisions, and the Executive has used these powers to act swiftly on tariffs with limited congressional oversight.
  • Limited Congressional action: While some members on both sides of the aisle have voiced opposition or concern, proposals for more congressional review and checks on tariff authority have rarely progressed to floor votes. This is partly due to political polarization and the President’s veto power over such legislation.
  • Judicial role: Courts have upheld much of the executive’s tariff authority so far. Legal challenges exist but have not significantly constrained tariff policies.
  • Bipartisan complexity: Both political parties have shown mixed responses, with some members supporting tariffs for protecting industries and others criticizing the economic costs and consumer impacts. Finding a bipartisan consensus strong enough to limit executive tariff powers has been difficult.
  • Ongoing debates: Congress can consider reforms to reclaim tariff authority or impose more rigorous cost-benefit analyses, reporting, and sunset reviews of tariffs. But as of now, the political will to implement such reforms is insufficient.

In essence, while there are certainly “sane and brave” lawmakers aware of these economic realities, the structural delegation of tariff authority to the President combined with political dynamics has prevented robust congressional accountability or reversal of tariff policies.

So yes, many in the Capitol do understand the macroeconomic theory and consequences but are constrained by the current balance of power and political environment in their ability to hold the President fully accountable for tariff policy effects.

[Brookings Institution analysis, 2025]

9. Well… thank you … I just hope the Senators and Congressmen and all the venerable wise men of the Courts in America don’t end up finally only scrambling to rearrang the deck chairs once they see the Titanic starting to sink!

Perplexity: Your metaphor captures a real concern shared by many observers—that policymakers and institutions might wait too long to act decisively until the economic damage from tariffs and trade tensions becomes undeniable and more difficult to manage.

Historically, delays in responding to significant economic challenges can result in reactive, piecemeal solutions that fail to address root causes. The complexities of tariff impacts—ranging from inflation and supply chain disruptions to labor market shifts and worsening inequality—call for proactive, coordinated policy responses rather than last-minute corrections.

Still, there are also signs of awareness and some efforts within Congress, the courts, and various economic advisory bodies to study these impacts more closely and consider reforms to restore a more balanced trade policy framework. But political will, timing, and the appetite for bipartisan compromise will be crucial in determining whether effective action comes soon enough to prevent serious and widespread economic fallout.

In sum, vigilance and informed engagement by the public, media, and policymakers alike remain essential to avoid the “Titanic” scenario and instead steer toward more sustainable economic and trade policies. Your hope is both a caution and a call to encourage timely, responsible governance.

****** ***** end of interview *********

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy… (Part-8): When Srinivasa Sastri urged Mahatma Gandhi to cease being a dictator and step away from the Congress Party

Srinivasa Sastry greatly respected Mahatma Gandhi for his deeply spiritual aspirations. But Gandhi’s spiritual militancy, such as his agitational methods of Sathyagraha employed against the British, received only his grudging admiration. And even such admiration was often conveyed to the Mahatma only with a large dose of brotherly admonition.

Sastri as a friend advised Gandhi that his great “experiments with Truth“ that consisted of mixing political work with spiritual “saadhana” — such as fasting, self-abnegation and self-flaggelatory practises — was not a healthy idea. It was, in fact, Sastri said, Gandhi’s “disease of grimness“. He told Gandhi that it was that disease that caused all his mental disturbances and depressive states. It turned his political engagement often into an obsession with personal angst, agony and self-doubt leading eventually to the Mahatma’s not infrequent bouts of melancholy.

In one of his most affectionate letters to Gandhi, Sastri wrote asking the Mahatma to stop meditating on his navel, as it were… to cheer up instead and to stop brooding over his spiritual failings, and to surround himself with less grim and more jovial friends and colleagues.

“You live in a difficult world. Waking or dreaming, you are racked by thoughts of sin and penance, confessions and truth-quests, satyagraha and moral self-flagellation. Those having sent home my dart of criticism, I folded my hands and prayed. “Enlighten me, for my soul is cast in doubt and you know all.”

The atmosphere in such circumstances is apt to be thick with disappointment and grievous failure. And if the only correction possible were self-correction, the master must needs find himself doomed to the cell of penitence, which is next door to suicide….. You appear to me to be confounded by anxious thought.

“I have written objecting to (your) too frequent references to the “Inner Voice” that talk to you or correspond with you continually pose doubts and serious problems, only deepening the grimness and suffocation around you. Few bring lightness of talk, familiar expletives, innocent jokes, revealing banter. You badly need a privileged jester in your establishment.

**************

In response to Sastri’s suggestion to cheer up and fill his surroundings with “lightness of talk, familiar expletives, innocent jokes, banter …”, Gandhi replied chirpingly to his friend in Mylapore, telling him that he very much appreciated especially the suggestion to appoint a “jester within the establishment” whose job would be to keep his spirits up from falling into the pit of melancholy.

“Let them learn that closest friendships can subsist between persons of contrary temperaments. As the public know, Sastri and I have opposite views on many important questions. Our mutual regard and affection have never suffered on that account. There is no reason whatsoever why the same rule cannot be extended to parties and groups representing opposite schools of opinion (in our politics).… Would that the affection subsisting between Sastri and me prove so deep and extensive as to reach and affect the whole society!

“But enough of this. I almost hear Sastri’s spirit whispering to me: ‘ You are misusing the medicine I prescribed to wean you from your disease of grimness and the like’. Therefore, let me hasten to tell him and the public that I have in my little camp of four a specially privileged jester in Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He succeeds in bending me almost double every day with laughter over his unexpected sallies. Gloom hides her fiendish face in his presence. No disappointment, however great, can make him gloomy for long. And he will not let me be serious for two consecutive minutes He will not spare even my ‘ saintliness’! It may deceive simple people but never the Sardar …. (he) tear(s) down the mask and compel(s) me to see myself as … (perhaps Sastri might) … delight to see me…. The thing that Sastri wants in our little family is there cent per cent. Next time he enters the Assembly or some such place, he must vote special thanks to the Government for putting Vallabhbhai with me or me with him.

But this consoling information does not in any way release Sastri from his self-imposed obligation. For the Sardar will not do what Sastri can be trusted to do mostly. Unlike him, the Sardar has the wretched habit in the end of saying ‘ ditto’ to all I say. And that is bad for anybody.

*************

The admonitory tone of Sastri’s letters to his friend Gandhi was reserved not only for matters personal but also included political affairs and especially, on occasions, when Sastri felt Gandhi was carrying Sathyagraha to extremes.

In August 1933, while in prison, Gandhi threatened the British authorities with what came to be called the ‘Harijan facilities fast”.

On 1st August, the Mahatma and his chosen band of individual resisters had been arrested at Sabarmati. Gandhiji was released on 4th August, and immediately after served with an order restricting his movements. On disobeying the order, he was re-arrested. Release and re-arrest happened also to his followers.

Soon after his arrest, Gandhiji wrote to the Government seeking permission for the use in prison of what he called the freedom to use “facilites for Harijan work” which he had enjoyed as prisoner in 1932. It meant that even while from prison, Gandhi be allowed to engage in political activity (such as writing, publishing, broadcasting, giving interviews, propagandizing etc.) outside so long as it was related to Harijan causes and Harijan welfare. On the 14th instant, after Gandhi had sent four reminders and announced his mtention to fast, the Government reluctantly gave him certain facilities but imposed certain conditions. He was to give no interviews for publication in the press.

Gandhiji considered the facilities “far short of the original orders of the Govenment of India and of my requirements“. It was clear Government gave the facilities grudgingly. They had, moreover, passed an unfair criticism that whenever the Mahatma was free he devoted more time to political work than to Harijan work. So, Gandhiji went immediately on a fast on the 16th of August. The British however released him on the 23rd instant.

Sastri was not aware of the entire correspondence that had been earlier exchanged between Gandhi and the British authorities. But from whatever he learned about the Sathyagraha staged in prison, he made it clear that he felt it arose more from either Gandhi’s petulance or from a surge of intemperate indignation that the Maharma felt against the British and far less from any overriding sense of sympathy for the Harijan cause.

Sastri’s frank view was expressed in a letter to Gandhi that he wrote. This letter has reference to what is called the “Harijan Facilties Fast” which resulted in Gandhiji’s release on the seventh day and transfer to Parnakuti where he broke the fast. Sastriar had evidently no access to the long correspondence that had taken place earlier between Government and Gandhiji, all that he however was insisting on was that the privileges Gandhi had enjoyed as prisoner during the year 1932, could not be demanded in 1933 or everytime the British saw cause to place him under arrest.

Expressing rare disappointment and exasperation which he felt over Gandhi-ji’s near-anarchist methods of agitation, Sastri then went on in the letter to urge the Mahatma to even (a) give up Civil Disobedience, (b) to rein in his own dictatorial tendencies as the leader of the Indian National Congress, (c) to quit the Party and (d) to let its younger leaders shoulder the burden of carrying on the freedom struggle!

Sastri also advised Gandhi to instead focus all his energies and attention on building the blueprint of a modern Constitutional architecture for the independent nation that India was bound to emerge as, sooner or later, and in any case, not too far in the future, given the imminent collapse of Imperial Britain.

COIMBATORE: 27th August 1933

Dearest Brother

Government might well have given you the old facilities. A curse has disabled them from generous or timely action. But they haven’t conferred a right on you or made you a promise. What they conceded to you at one time and in one set of conditions they are not bound to concede to you at another time and in another set of conditions The order made (earlier) after the Poona Pact, from which you quote, does not amount to an irrevocable or unconditional promise. You indulge in special pleading of a bad type when you charge them with a breach of promise. The addition of the words ‘made to a prisoner in their custody’ (made by you) loses the point it might have had otherwise.

It might be said by an observer who wasn’t prejudiced against Government that, while Harijan uplift was dear to you, putting blame on Government was dearer. It has been said in my hearing by well-disposed persons that you would love nothing so much as to die in gaol and leave Government hurdened with the responsibility.

Behind and beyond your present tussle with Government lies the future of the country. How can Congress best secure that future? Your answer is clear. But another answer is taking shape in people’s minds. It is that civil disobedience, both mass and individual, must be given up.

A new policy, aiming at constructive national good in legistation, finance and administration all round, has long been overdue and must be tried over and above what is now called the constructive programme of Congress. I believe this feeling is common outside Congress, and is gaining ground inside Congress. How can this orientation be brought about?

It is so different from your present polices, in look so opposed to it, that one doubts whether you can undertake it. Perhaps your whole preparation and equipment lie in a different direction. It is no disparagement to any one that he is not fitted to lead the nation in all contingencies and in all directions. Unfortunately no man, however big, can be always trusted to know his limitations and make room when the cause to which he is devoted requires it. His very greatness stands in the way of change. And as I have told you more than once, you have out-topped all other leaders so long and so decisively that there is no man in sight to take your place at once.

What a blessing it would he if you could be transformed and re-made, as it were, for the fresh era . But you are too good, too true to yourself to pretend you are the same teacher when the creed is no longer yours and the ritual is something you have never conducted.

In this sore strait, the country looks to you to play a greater part than you have ever played. (Pardon me: what I mean is the greater part of the country as I figure out the parties). Save your individual conscience, pursue civil disobedience, seek the goal and embarrass Government as you like; but leave Congress free to evolve a new programme. It simply cannot do so, while it has to give authority and countenance to individual disobedience.

You rememher I begged you to adopt this course when I was last with you at Parnakuti. You told me you put it to the working committee, but they would have none of it. Naturally and in a way properly too. The committee couldn’t face the odium of abandoning you. I don’t wonder the thought was abhorrent to them. The moment is come-in my opinion it came long ago-for you to say, ‘I set Congress free to try other methods. I have plenty of God’s work to do, for the nation’s welfare, with Harijans’.

There, then, I’ve told you the truth as it seems to me.

May one hope that you will see the problem from a new angle? I know one thing. There is no self-effacement to which you are not equal. The only thing is, it must seem to you to be called for.

All that a friend and brother can do is to give an indication.

Yours affectionately

V. S. SRINIVASAN

************

To Srinivasa Sastry’s very blunt but equally sincere and friendly message to him, Gandhi replied defensively as follows in a slightly acerbic yet unoffended tone:

30th August 1933: Parnakuti

Dear Brother

I treasure your letter.

I do not mind anything you have said. On the contrary I appreciate all you have said. Having said this, I must say that I utterly dissent from your interpretation of Government orders. If you saw all the correspondence, perhaps you will revise your judgement. I am not given to special pleading consciously. You may not have noticed that the Government have themselves dropped the idea of ‘another set of conditions’. On the contrary, they said that they made a mistake in making what you call ‘ concession in the first instance’, and the mistake made was not one on merits but had reference to their own convenience.

However, I shall not strive with you in connection with your pronouncement upon my statement, but if you will care to study the whole question I would gladly send you the whole of the correspondence. I hope that you yourself do not consider me to he capable of desiring to blame the government for the sake of doing so or that that performance would be dearer to me than Harijan uplift. I consider myself capable of a just discrimination and therefore of knowing when, the Government is in the right.

But this is all beside the point. I have taken so much space with what is now immaterial, in order to tell you that I do not plead guilty to the charge you have made against me.

Now for the central point of your letter. I quite agree with you that I am wholly unfit for the constitution building at the present stage. In my opinion that time is not yet. It will come only when the nation has developed a sanction for itself. I would therefore gladly retire from the Congress and devote myself to the development of civil disobedience outside the Congress and to Harijan work. The difficulty is how to do it? Can I do it by seceding from the Congress? That was the question that troubled me at the time of the informal conference and that is the question that confronts me again. I am seeking light.

As soon as I have regained sufficient strength I shall again sound the mind of Congressmen and if I can possibly retire from the Congress I shall gladly do so. My impression, however, is that the Congress mentality has not changed. Whilst it is true that a large number of Congressmen have got tired, very few would care to subscribe to the white paper or work for securing certain improvements in it. They want a radical change. But I am in no hurry to come to any final decision. I can give you this assurance that nothing will deter me from taking any steps that might he in the best interests of the nation. There is no question even of self-effacement. Performance of duty I have held always to be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. The awful fact, however, has often been to know where duty lies.

You won’t give me up, but continue to guide me and you will not hesitate to come if you felt like coming.

I am not going to hesitate to ask you to come when I feel that I need your personal contact and a constant exchange of thoughts.

Love

M. K. GANDHI

****************

Sastri immediately replied to Gandhi’s letter, providing more clarification on what he had intended to convey to the Mahatma:

COIMBATORE: 4th September 1933

Dear brother

I was touched by your reply. It was full and reasoned.

Neither of us forms an opinion in a hurry or drops it in a hurry. But there is a satisfaction in knowing the other side. In all circumstances, we shall carefully understand and make allowances for each other.

So let us dismiss the past.

I plead for Congress being freed from your rule. If you wait for its consent to the course, a very long delay is inevitable. Grant the freedom immediately. Must you like the British Raj, put off the consummation till it becomes inevitable?

Certainly Congress are not going to bother about improving on the white paper. With the Tories in power and our minorities clamouring for alms, that is an impossible dream. Few progressive politicians in India indulge in it any more.

You write in your letter of forging & national sanction. Let one assume for a moment that yours is the only way of doing it, still must it be in point of time continuous absolutely without intermission or respite to the nation?

May it not be, in certain conditions, another way can be tried with advantage? The belief is widespread that such conditions are now in being. I will name two of these.

(1) The ascendancy of the Tories which looks likely to last long. (2) The danger to Indian Nationalism from the passing of the political power into the hands of minorities backed by and dependent on the British people.

If the ill effects of these conditions should be kept at a minimum, the national forces must combine effectively and must make themselves felt in all directions and all the time. ‘Victory or Nothing’ is a rousing cry on the battlefield. When the day is lost, it has no meaning.

Where legislatures exist, even such manacled legislatures as ours, much may be done, were it only to prevent evil by vigilant opposition. It is first rate to be the Government. If you can’t be that, the next best thing is to be a strong united opposition. Bacon said we must have our hands constantly in affairs, and he was a man of the world.

I know you have no faith in this method. But do not forget it takes all sorts to make a world. ‘God fulfils Himself in many ways lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’

You seemed to think, when we last talked of this matter, that one wing of Congress might apply this method while another wing went on with individual Civil Disobedience.

I am clear the two methods are utterly incompatible.

Congress must choose one. Nor can the liberal and progressive schools be trusted to employ their methods on the necessary scale or with appreciable effect. I am a liberal, but not so partisan as not to see the nation’s good except through liberal spectacles. It is my heart’s wish that Congress and liberals and others similarly devoted to the cause of the future nation should merge together and form one large party. But the idea is too good for the moment. We must be content to have these parties, with their several labels but cooperating for common purposes, as clearly defined as possible.

If there is sense in this plan, pray give it a chance. Two conditions are necessary. Civil Disobedience must go. Dictatorship must go.

Yours lovingly

V. S. SRINIVASAN

*****************

The reply that Gandhi dispatched back to Sastri revealed at once his mind on who his political successor was going to be! And that in itself was an unambiguous hint conveyed to Sastri that the time had,at last, come when “the old order changeth, yielding place to new”!

PARNAKUTI : 9th September 1933

My dear Brother

I like your letter.

I want you to continue to strive with me and believe, as Gokhale used to believe of me, that whilst I often appeared to be uncompromising, I had a compromising and accommodating nature. I have always prized the certificate that he gave me and have endeavoured to live up to it.

If the freedom that you desire for the Congress was in my giving, I assure you that I would give it today, but it is not such a simple performance. When at Patna I surrendered all powers to the Swaraj party, Motilalji (Motilal Nehru) handsomely admitted that, though I was always ready to give, the party was only then to take them. The fact is that I do not want power. I look upon it as a privileged service. The moment I feel that I can get out of it to the benefit of the Congress, I will not fail.

However, you may depend upon me that I shall strain every nerve to adopt your advice. A great deal will depend upon Jawaharlal, whom I expect here on Saturday.

Love

M. K. GANDHI

************

That very last line in Gandhi’s letter perhaps was the “writing on the wall” that he hoped Srinivasa Sastri would read, absorb and understand its full implications. The Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastry’s philosophy of constitutionalism and the liberal–humanist path he had always stoutly been advocating as the principal means to the end of Swaraj would not cut any ice in the new era that was about to dawn on the political firmament of India under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru.

The last line, presaging as it did the rising spirit of Indian Nationalism that Nehru’s India was soon going to be enveloped in, also perhaps in a veiled way, signalled Srinivasa Sastri’s last bow and graceful exit from the political stage of India.

***************

(to be continued)

Sudarshan Madabushi

Modi-ji, Please don’t let the current Trump-tariff crisis of India go waste!

Below ⬇️ is a jingoistic “forwarded message” that’s going viral on the Whatapp University circuit.

Why is Trump angry with India? Is it only because India is buying oil from Russia, or is that just an excuse? And why is it that we are not able to sign even a mini Trade deal, leave alone a comprehensive one, with the US? It is because our Govt’s strict policy not to compromise our national interests, which are being well articulated by our Minister of Commerce.

The following will give an idea of what US is trying to thrust down our throats and how we are resisting it – deal or no deal:

“Piyush Goyal has become a headache.”
That’s the whisper echoing through Washington.
A smiling face.
Sharp suits.
Soft tone.

But behind that politeness…
Ruthless.
Calculated.
Unshakable.

They expected an easy ride.
What they got was an Indian slap.

Now America is calling it “Mini Trade Deal”.
Mini? Cute.

Will we get a Max Deal?
A Pro Max Deal later?

Even Mumbai flat brokers negotiate with more dignity.

Because behind the American suits,
staged diplomacy lies something darker.

A clause so sinister,
India won’t touch it.

Now, everyone’s asking,
why isn’t India signing to full conditions of US?

Trump presses.

But India stands firm.
Not on our land.
Not on our watch.

Let me show you.

India – US Trade:
$500B by 2030

But it came with a clause:
Genetically Modified Crops (GM Crops)

India said NO.
USA said sign.
India: never.

Because this isn’t just business.
This is identity.
This is sovereignty.

GM Seeds aren’t seeds.
They’re software.
Patented software.

Plant once.
Pay forever.

You don’t own your crop.
The seed does.

Ask who owns it?

Monsanto.
Yes, the same one that made Agent Orange.

Now called Bayer,
poison doesn’t rebrand.

Back in the 60s,
America exported wheat.

Now it exports sickness:
GM corn
GM soy
GM canola
GM cotton

All “Roundup‑Ready”,’
chemical-tolerant crops.

The weeds die.
The crops live.

95% of US corn is GM.
Same for soy.

It’s everywhere:
baby food,
bread,
hospital meals.

Since 1990 in US:
Obesity doubled
Diabetes in teens soared
PCOS
Infertility
Depression
Cancer
Heart failure
Liver disease

Coincidence?
Or consequence?

The “solution”?
Drugs.

Statins
Metformin
SSRIs
Ozempic

Subscriptions, not cures.
Survival kits dressed as care.

Big Food makes you sick.
Big Pharma keeps you alive.
Insurance makes you pay.

And guess what?
They share the same shareholders:
Vanguard
BlackRock
State Street

They fund food.
They fund meds.
They fund the narrative.

India said NO.

And they came out swinging:
Trump tweets.
Pakistan diplomacy.
Sudden Western media outrage.
Opposition cries, “Modi failed!”

But no one tells you why.
Because this isn’t about trade.

It’s about turning our land into their next sick market.

Hyper‑processed.
Hyper‑obese.
Hyper‑medicated.

If India signs?
We lose:
Our farms
Our seeds
Our soil
Our future

All for a Trade Deal?

Behind the Curtains, the villains:
Agri: Bayer, ADM, Cargill
Food: Nestlé, PepsiCo, Kraft
Pharma: Pfizer, J&J, Merck
Insurance: UnitedHealth

And behind them all,
The same hands.
Same dollars.
Same ruthless plan.

So next time someone says:
“Why don’t we just agree with the US?”

Ask them:
Feed your family, or feed their factories?

We’re not anti‑America.
We’re pro‑soil.
Pro‑truth.
Pro‑future.

If that makes us difficult,
So be it.

Because if we sign on their terms,
We lose more than a deal.
We surrender the land beneath our feet.

If this post stings…
Good.

Some truths don’t whisper,
they roar. What a great Analysis…..

Worth Reposting To Other Groups so that this article gets more Publicity and Clears the Doubtful minds

👌👌👍👍👏👏👏👏👏

***************

Well… after I read the above WhatsApp tirade , I told myself this :

We can go on patting ourselves on the back about how tough India is and how it will not be bullied by Trump.

It’s more important however I think to focus on how our $ 85 billion export revenue stream from America will now come from elsewhere in the world.

I don’t see any talk of this in our news media and commentatariat.

And a friend of mine agreed with me saying this to me :

I agree 100%. This constant chest thumping must stop. Let the government first accept the fact that our agriculture is sick – kept on oxygen by loan waivers, huge subsidies, guaranteed repurchase, funding of all food calamities, and ridiculously low productivity in spite of support over 75 years. This pampering must stop. Until then nothing good will happen. Wean these leeches off their oxygen first and use that money for basic health, basic education and basic infrastructure. Long live our tax paying people!

Question: Will we use this opportunity to bring in a new wave of reforms or will it be “farmers””farmers” all over again.

And my answer to him was this :

You have put a Great question forward ! To my mind , it will demand a great deal of political courage from this government to launch at this time of crisis a set of reforms with far reaching consequences…

This government does not run on its own steam in Parliament. It has 2 crutches … TDP and JDU. How will reforms sail through when next year there is a crucial elections in Bihar which the NDA cannot afford to lose ?

So, I doubt this government will attempt any big reforms … not until after 2026. But by that time who knows, the crisis today might have gotten worse or might have even blown over ?

Unpredictable !

But talking of crises … I’m reminded of the following famous quotable quotes :

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” – Winston Churchill

Niccolò Machiavelli is sometimes credited with a similar idea: “Never waste the opportunity offered by a good crisis”.

Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff, famously updated it: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy… (Part-7): When Srinivasa Sastri delivered a brave but accurate character-profiling of Mahatma Gandhi

In their philophical approach regarding how the struggle for India’s Freedom from British Colonial Rule must be conducted, Srinivasa Sastri and Mahatma Gandhi were indeed poles apart.

Gandhi looked upon himself as a saint-politician. Sastri looked upon himself as scholar-statesman. The contrast between the two men stood out starkly at times whenever Gandhi chose to weaponize his spiritualism and use it as a political tactical attack against the British establishment. Sastri, on the other hand, many a time weaponized his liberal value-system to shame British conscience and their sense of political fairplay.

Gandhi’s most preferred weapon thus was militant Sathyagraha while Sastri’s standard weapon was militant constitutionalism, both of which although fundamentally rooted in Ahimsa, India’s civilisational principle of Non-Violence, nonetheless and not too rarely, led to the two friends being at odds with each other.

An incident in 1933 happened which reveals the sharply contrasting philosphical outlook and political operating-style of Sastri and Gandhi as it had always existed and simmered beneath their otherwise brotherly relationship.

************

Gandhi wrote the below letter to Sastri in Mylapore:

2nd May 1933

My dear Brother

Dare I ask for your blessings for the coming Yajna ? It is now nearing 2 a.m I have left my bed among other things to write this begging letter. If the fast does not meet with your approval, I know you are too true a brother to grant my request merely to please me.

With love, Yours

M. K. GANDHI

The “yajna” (observance of a sacrificial rite) that Gandhi was referring to in the letter was an intended twenty-one days’ fast that the Mahatma had resolved to volunatarily undertake from the 8th to 29th May 1933 in the Yerawada Prison. What was the reason for such a fast?

Gandhiji claimed it was part of his “Harijan work” i.e. his passionate campaign championing the cause of Harijan emancipation from caste oppression, abolition of Untouchability and social advancement of the Harijan population in India. However, Gandhi’s expression “purification of self and my associates...” was rather intriguing since there was a larger background story behind it. But before that story can be recounted here, first it is to Sastri’s reply to Gandhi’s letter that must be reproduced and read carefully so that the context can be understood.

This is Sastri’s letter below. In it we see him clearly tell the Mahatma right to his face that the idea of fasting does not fit in at all with Sastri’s own philosophical convictions. In a very gentle, subtle and characteristically inoffensive manner, Sastri also expresses his dismay at what we may today perhaps recognize to be the mystic mumbo-jumbo with which the Mahatma oftentimes disguised his pious self-flaggelation:

Private

MYLAPORE : 7th May 1933

Dearest Brother

After much thought and destruction of several drafts, I have decided that the best reply to your ‘ begging ‘ and most touching letter of the 2nd instant is the enclosed extract (i.e. in which Gandhi had stated “‘It is particularly prayer for the purification of self and my associates. .. .. I want more workers of unassailable purity.’). I trust it will sustain you ever so little in the ordeal which will have begun when it reaches Yeravada.

It would have been useless and, as you said in your first statement, embarrassing for me to try to dissuade. What remains for your friends and associates is to wish that you may come out of the ordeal not merely unscathed, but armed afresh with the strength of tapas for the struggle that seems without end.

I will not pretend for a moment that I approve of your fast. To one like me, born in Hinduism and bred up in it for long years, the arguments pro and con are thoroughly familiar. From sacred texts one might confute most of the reasoning in your statements. But beyond texts and mere authority is reason and humanity, on which you habitually fall back. Even in that ultimate court I fear we shall not be found on the same side.

Our values are different fundamentally. Tbe difference is radical, no sophistry can abolish it.

In spite of what you have said in the last revelation of your heart, I believe that too much self-communion and internal debate have undermined your judgement. The state of ecstasy when values are reversed, when day becomes night and night day, when pleasure becomes pain and pain pleasure, is rare even in the experience of mystics. The attempt to make it habitual and to adopt the language appropriate to that state as the language of everyday speech is, if I may use the expression, to walk on moral stilts. On occasions you appear to me, in strange contrast to your realism, to impose that mode of movement on the common men and women around you.

The atmosphere in such circumstances is apt to be thick with disappointment and grievous failure. And if the only correction possible were self-correction, the master must needs find himself doomed to the cell of penitence, which is next door to suicide. You have enough philosophy to understand that to claim divine sanction for a course of conduct is to withdraw it from the field of discussion and deprive it of direct validity to other minds. Whenever I come across the claim in your writing I cannot help quoting to myself the famous line of Kalidasa:

“विचार्येषु: प्रतिभासि मे त्वम्।”

You appear to me to be confounded by anxious thought.

I cannot tell you how much I deplore the publication of the story of Nila Nagini Devi. If it were merely a confession, I might understand it, though it would still repel me as the exposure of one’s sores. But why should you rub it in? The moral proclaims itself. Here again it is a deep-going disparity of taste. I am still in the grip of the world’s idea of decorum. You have gone beyond, and would repudiate low standards. With great effort I remind myself that hagiology is full of such records, and I must somehow get reconciled.

I did not mean to write at length, but the stuff inside has forced itself on your attention. Don’t mind it. Treat the letter as if it were nothing but the expression of my unchanged love and of my fervent wish that you should live long and serve the great causes you cherish. For, contrary to your teaching, I hold that you are more potent than your memory can be.

With affectionate thoughts, Yours always

V. S. SRINIVASAN

********

It is interesting to see that Sastri minced no words in saying to Gandhi pointblank that “Our values are different fundamentally. The difference is radical, no sophistry can abolish it”. Sastri often found it tiresome to hear his friend Gandhi go on and on often moralising on even matters that were political and worldly and nothing to do with the spiritual. He even openly expressed his impatience with the Mahatma’s frequent invocation of his so-called “inner voice“… Gandhi himself was quite aware of Sastri’s impatience and wrote a tad apologetically in another letter of his (1932):

“I do wish I never spoke of God or the Inner Voice or Conscience. But, like “Ramnaam”, however much it may be abused, it has got to be repeated when it is relevant, and almost becomes imperative. Truth will receive a deep cut if, for fear of being misunderstood or even being called a fraud, I did not say boldly what I felt to be true”.

The other interesting line in Sastri’s letter is his reference to “Nila Nagini Devi“. He expresses mortification in no uncertain terms at Gandhi having written about it publicly which he describes as “a deep-going disparity of taste” … “that repels me as the exposure of one’s sores”.

Who was “Nila Nagini Devi“? What was she to Mahatma Gandhi? Why did Gandhi bring her name up in the context of his 21-day fast, championing at Yerawada the Harijan cause? What did she have to do with Gandhi’s “Harijan work”?

Ms. Nilla Cram Cook was an attractive American lady who had come to India in search of spiritual solace and self-discovery. Thanks to some friends in Ahmedabad, she had ended up as a volunteer sevak at the Ashram and an ardent disciple of Mahatma Gandhi himself with whom she began profusely corresponding on a host of Indian social issues such as Harijan upliftment and abolition of Untouchability, a cause that was very close to Gandhi’s heart. Ms. Cook began calling herself Nila Nagini Devi in all her correspondence with Gandhi.

To fully understand why in his letter to Sastri, Gandhi had referred to his 21-day proposed fasting as a “yajna” as a “prayer for the purification of self and my associates“, it becomes necessary to know a little background about Nila Nagini Devi. In an article ( https://www.theindiaforum.in/book-reviews/gandhis-american-disciple ), Gangeya Mukherjee explains to us what this American lady-disciple was to Gandhi.

QUOTE: “The account of Ms. Cook’s life in India makes for painful reading. Cook, or Nila Nagini Devi as she was also known, swirled in the currents of her mercurial temperament, her lack of inhibitions and striking beauty, drawing admirers to her. They were willing to provide her with logistical support for indulging her numerous itinerant whims, including introducing her to Indian royalty. Individuals as varied as ministers of Indian princes, venerable pedants, staid journalists such as Durga Das, and countless youths from all sorts of backgrounds were participants in her enterprises.

“Born to a broken marriage between bohemian American parents, raised for some years in Greece, married and divorced at a very young age, and generally disillusioned with life in the West, the talented and versatile Cook arrived in Kashmir in 1931 with her young child. Bereft quite soon of her inheritance, scarred by exploitative physical relationships, and with spiritual bliss still elusive, she appeared to find solace in Harijan service, having been introduced to it by Thakkar, the secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh. Her contact with Gandhi and his anti-untouchability campaign of 1932 soon followed.

“Beginning in November 1932, within the space of hardly a year, Cook wrote what can only be described as a flurry of letters to Gandhi, receiving usually prompt, though not always the expected, responses from him. Her letters, graduating from the initial address of “Revered Mahatmaji” and signed as “ever yours in service and devotion, Nila Nagini” to the final phase with “Beloved Bapu” and “With all our love, Nila”, contain her thoughts and plans for Harijan service, and many other things.

“They express her weakness before a desire that blurs both social norms and ethical principles; they complain about the hardships of slum housing or the defects of the Satyagraha Ashram; and they agonise about her physical ailments and those of her son, and even speak of her menstrual problems. Above all, the letters plead for guidance and nearness. As the volume reveals, Gandhi’s responses—even when he seems on the verge of giving up on her for her immorality and weakness before desire—never waver in their caring tone. He advises her on her diet and spiritual upliftment, on a possible pregnancy after an indiscreet encounter with a youth volunteer in Harijan service, and is solicitous about the welfare of her son. Gandhi remains, to all intents and purposes, a combination of a father and a mother to her.

“After a troubled stint in the Harijan cause and increasing restlessness in Satyagraha Ashram, Cook left Ahmedabad in October 1933, without informing Gandhi, never to return. Only a few letters were exchanged between them after this

“Gandhi’s relationship with Cook illustrates the natural affinity that women usually felt towards him, and his own conception of his generally filial approach towards participants of his movements, particularly the inmates of his ashrams.

“It also illustrates his rare understanding of the enchantment of regarding service to Harijans as an exotic experience other than an expiatory one, which made it necessary for one to be very vigilant against exploiting the vulnerabilities of the deprived and disinherited. Most of all, it illustrates the sacrality that Gandhi perceived in the Harijan cause, any other word being wholly inadequate to describe its place in his moral universe. 

“Cook’s brief but disappointing relationship with Rudramani, a Harijan youth (in the Ashram), jolted Gandhi. Although in this case he was critical of Rudramani’s conduct, on the general plane, it rudely brought home to him the possibility of helpless men and women being treated as emotional and physical prey by volunteers turned predators, all in the guise of service. He was very aware that in informal interactions between young and healthy men and women, erotic desire could be at the root of attraction though it could be camouflaged as a spiritual yearning for a higher cause”. UNQUOTE

So, the fast that Gandhi told Sastri he was going to undertake was thus “prayer for the purification of self and my associates” and a way to atone for a sexual scandal that had happened at Sathyagraha Ashram in which a Harijan was both victim and perpetrator. And that was the real cause of such intense mystic agony for Gandhi’s troubled “inner voice” and which had thus compelled him to perform a self-imposed “yajna“! And all this according to Gandhi was part of his “Harijan work“! Sastri himself confessed that he had found that very hard to get reconciled to and so he wrote candidly to Gandhi:

“… if the only correction possible were self-correction, the master must needs find himself doomed to the cell of penitence, which is next door to suicide. You have enough philosophy to understand that to claim divine sanction for a course of conduct is to withdraw it from the field of discussion and deprive it of direct validity to other minds”.… I believe that too much self-communion and internal debate have undermined your judgement The state of ecstasy when values are reversed, when day becomes night and night day, when pleasure becomes pain and pain pleasure, is rare even in the experience of mystics. The attempt to make it habitual and to adopt the language appropriate to that state as the language of everyday speech is, if I may use the expression, to walk on moral stilts. On occasions you appear to me, in strange contrast to your realism, to impose that mode of movement on the common men and women around you”.

***********

What a brave but so very accurate character-profiling of the great man the whole country was looking up to — then and as even today — as a Mahatma!

(to be continued)

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy… (Part-6): When Sastri corrected Gandhi’s English sentence-syntax and advised him to give up his dicatorial ways!

Many of the scores of letters to Mahatma Gandhi that Srinivasa Sastri wrote were from his home in Mylapore, Madras (now Chennai). The house was named “Swaagatham” (“welcome“!).

I have visited that house several times in the 1980s when Karthik (Sastri’s great grandson), my friend, used to invite me there late afternoons for an hour or two to exchange and compare notes on how each was preparing then for upcoming the final Charterred Accountancy examinations. So feverishly tense used to be our exam-preparations that simply to relieve ourselves of pent-up nervous tension, we often to used to play shuttle-badminton in the large front-yard of Sastri’s home. After we had both sweated it out in a strenuous workout in a game or two, we’d relax and chat a bit, seated on old-style wicker-chairs kept out in the porch. Karthik’s mother, Srinivasa Sastri’s grand-daughter, I remember, a very kindly and gracious lady (she’s now in her 90s and, bless her, still lives happily with son, Karthik), used to serve us cool lemon juice or hot coffee to lift up our spirits and drive our examination blues away.

Sastri’s “swaagatham” house was situated on V.M.Street (Venkatachala Mudali Street) that today veers off from Dr Radhakrishna Salai to Luz, Mylapore via the Madras Sanskrit College and Tiruvalluvar Statue. The house I remember was a very spacious, sprawling and stately bungalow adjacent to the Childrens Club. It was a two-storied building with large frontage, airy rooms with vaulting high-roof, long cool verandahs and broad balconies. Whenever I visited that house, in my mind, I couldn’t help imagining the Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s himself striding in spirit around the very spot I happened to be standing upon…. It was a very horripilating, humbling feeling indeed.

**********

One of the very first things that Sastri intended to do on his return to India from South Africa was to write from his home in “Swaagatham” a full-fledged report of his mission solely for the eyes of Mahatma Gandhi. He was aware that during the course of his assignment in South Africa, many people from there as from within India, had been feeding Gandhi in drips and dribbles with all sorts of information on Sastri’s activities. Such informal and informant channels of communication were giving Gandhi positive feedback while a few others were funneling only negative stuff about him.

Gandhi’s son Maniklal Gandhi was one such person.

Maniklal who lived in Durban South Africa was the Editor of a newspaper called “The Indian Opinion“. It had, in fact, been founded earlier by Mahatma Gandhi himself. The news paper was advocating for the rights of the Indian community and hence was also covering and publicising Sastri’s activities as India’s Agent-General there. Initially, Maniklal was extremely unhappy with Sastri’s public speeches and stated positions on how he intended to serve the Indian community’s cause in South Africa. He too like many of Sastri’s detractors felt that Sastri was bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with the British Ruling dispensation in South Africa, trying to placate and appease them. In his letters to his father, Maniklal minced no words about what he felt about Sastri’s speeches and work.

Gandhi read his son Maniklal’s reports, however, with more than a pinch of salt. The Mahatma had greater faith in his friend Sastri than he had in his own son’s instinct and political judgement. He made no secret of his feelings directly to Sastri in a very candid and very affectionately worded letter.

My dear brother.

I am watching what is happening but consider it wise not to say anything. But I shall not hesitate to intervene when necessary.

What I find disturbing is a para in Manilal’s letter which I translate below:

“I am not quite satisfied with his speeches. He crosses the limits in praising the Empire and the benefits conferred by it on India. He thinks it necessary thus to please the Europeans. He seems to believe that thus only shall we secure something. The effect of these speeches cannot be good in India. He (the publisher?) has therefore asked me not to print them in ” Indian Opinion”.“

He has not the faculty of discrimination to see that we are like blood brothers even though we do not hold the same views about tbe Empire. I have not said to him much about this letter of his beyond warning him against coming to hasty judgements and telling him that you do honestly believe the Empire activity to be on the whole heneficial.

But you will of course not hesitate to summon him before you and speak to him if necessary as you would to your own son. … For he is a good boy and brave boy. …

Sastri had been keen to brief Gandhi through a comprehensive report of his mission in South Africa to disabuse him of any negative impressions the Mahatma might have gathered from the negative drip feedback fed to him by some quarters that included even Maniklal, the Mahatma’s son. Sastri felt that if Gandhi was convinced about the success of his South African mission, he needed to worry little about what others in the INC or elsewhere thought about him.

However, to Sastri’s chagrin, he could not send in such a report since Gandhi at that time was serving a sentence in jail in Yerawada.

” (I felt) ….the first thing to do on return to the shores of India was to go to Mahatma Gandhi and make a report to him of our doings. To no one could a prior report be made. If he approved of our work, that was enough– this was the feeling not merely of myself, who may be considered to have a weakness for Mahatma Gandhi, but of all with whom I was associated (as colleagues). And if I may for the first time publish a secret, it was also the feeling of the members of the Government of India. How sad I must feel now, you can imagine, when it is not possible for me to make similar report to the one man in all India who has a right to form a judgement of South African affairs and lead public sentiment in the country! “

Gandhi of course, as his later correspondence below reveals — and before Sastri’s return to India and the submission of his intended report — acknowledged openly that the trust he had had placed in Sastri to do the job in South Africa stood completely vindicated. And that he had also been right not to place too much trust in his son Maniklal’s own assessment of Sastri’s work.

SABARMATI: 26th February 1928

My dear Brother

I have been duly receiving the duplicates of your demi-official notes for Sir Muhammad Habibullah. Manilal and others too keep me informed of your movements. Already urgent letters are being received to implore you not to leave South Africa at the end of your year. They say you are already counting your months. And they are trembling in their shoes, and more than they, am I trembling, and perhaps my trembling is weightier because of the absence of shoes. For, I really feel that except for grave reasons of health it would be a national tragedy for you to leave South Africa at the present moment. And I am sorry to have to say– but it is true — that no one else can successfully replace you at the present moment. The familiarity that your stay in South Africa might have produced has certainly not bred contempt; on the contrary, it has gained greater respect for you from those whose respect counts for the work.

And just as you have gained influence amongst the Europeans, you have gained staunch adherents amongst our own countrymen. You may not desert them. Do please therefore let me have a reassuring letter. Of course I don’t know what the Government may want you to do.

With love, Yours sincerely

M. K. GANDHI

P.S: If you were here, you would not appreciate our polities just now.

************

Mahatma Gandhi, amongst the many other versatile qualities that he possessed, was also a prolific writer and correspondent. His himself founded a magazine called “Harijan“. Through countrywide circulation of this magazine, Gandhi intended to keep up a continuous line of mass communication with vast followers and countrymen all across India. Anyone during that period of the Freedom Struggle who wished to know Gandhi’s thinking, ideas or his mind on any matter of national importance — be it political, economic, social, religious or spiritual — would have have had to subscribe and read regularly the Mahatma’s epistles published in the Harijan.

After the inaugural issue of Harijan was printed and went into circulation, Gandhi sent a copy of it to Srinivasa Sastri to elicit his editorial opinion on it and especially on the lead article the Mahatma had authored. The ensuing correspondence between Sastri and Gandhi was meant to be private but then Gandhi found it to be not only hilarious but also so very educative that he had had Sastri’s letter subsequently published for general public consumption! Sastri picked up and pointed out to him half a dozen faults in grammar, syntax and style in the content of the Harijan article penned by Gandhi . Gandhi accepted Sastri’s masterly lessons on the finer aspects of English grammar and composition with with all the good grace, humour, humility and gratitude of a middle- school boy in class!

GANDHI-SASTRI LETTERS: THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD

“I wrote to the Rt. Hon. Shrivasa Sastri for a message to the ‘ Harijan‘. And I received a characteristic reply marked ‘ private‘. The letter seemed to me to be too good to be suppressed. I, therefore, wired for permission to publish it. The reply wire was as characteristic as the letter.

“Firstly inappropriate to ‘ Harijan’, secondly offensive to partisans, ill requital for your steadfast affection.

However, if perchance useful, please publish.”

And here is the letter.

Private

MYLAPORE: 13th February 1933

Dear Brother,

Thanks for your affectionate letter, in which you ask for a message to your new baby.

I am going to change towards you. It is necessary in your interest, no matter what effort it costs me.

You live in a difficult world. Waking or dreaming, you are racked by thoughts of sin and penance, confessions and truth-quests, satyagraha and moral self-flagellation. Those having sent home my dart of criticism, I folded my hands and prayed. “Enlighten me, for my soul is cast in doubt and you know all.”

“I have written objecting to (your) too frequent references to the Inner Voice” that talk to you or correspond with you continually pose doubts and serious problems, only deepening the grimness and suffocation around you. Few bring lightness of talk, familiar expletives, innocent jokes, revealing banter. You badly need a privileged jester in your establishment.

Have you read a story called Ardath by Ouida? The hero there has a critic whose business is to expose his errors and bring to light the flaws in his character. Being a professional fault-finder, he overdoes his part in the end and defeats his first object. I shall vary my function from time to time and disappear from the scene every now and then. But I will endeavour to awaken parts of your mind long gone to sleep and to supply elements of nourishment which it has long been without. Of course, you can stop the medicine if it disagrees and you cannot stand it! That would be a sign to me that the disease had gone too far.

You are an extraordinarily correct writer of English.

The ordinary reader will not detect any slips on your part. They are not only rare but of a subtle nature. The eye of a schoolmaster, made acute by dwelling on trivialities of grammar, can alone see them. Here are some, all from the first number of the ‘ Harijan‘ and from the parts bearing your name.

Page 3. ” If it is a bye-product of the caste system, it is only in the same sense that an ugly growth is of a body“. (‘ That ‘ is fast undergoing a change in English, but this use is far in excess of present usage. Better say ‘ in which an ugly growth is a bye-product of a body’.)

Also read the whole passage again. Don’t you say in effect ‘ If the caste system is a bye-product of the caste system ‘?

Page 3. ” The outcaste-ness, in the sense we understand it, has therefore to be destroyed altogether.” (A slip similar to the above. Between ‘ sense‘ and ‘ we‘, insert ‘in which‘.)

Page 4. “Caste Hindus have to open their temples to Harijans, precisely on the same terms as the other Hindus.” (Say ‘ the same terms as ‘ to ‘ the other Hindus‘. Else, it would mean that the other Hindus opened their temples on certain terms to Harijans.)

Page 7. “Beyond this I may not go, for the reason I have already stated and which the reader should respect.” (Insert ‘ which ‘ after ‘ reason‘. The conjunction ‘and‘ must not be made to connect a suppressed ‘which ‘ and an expressed ‘ which ‘.)

Page 8. ” Untouchahility has a great deal to answer for the insanitation of our streets and our latrines.‘ (Idiomatically, ‘ for ‘ is part of the verb ‘ answer ‘ and cannot govern ‘ the insanitation‘. We must insert ‘ in ‘ after ‘for‘, though the sentence become inelegant. I would recast it: ‘ Untouchahility is answerable for a great deal of the insanitation &e.‘).

Page 8. ‘ Therefore a person who is to attend to scavenging, whether it is a paid bhangi or an unpaid mother, they are unclean until they have washed themselves clean of their unclean work.”

(The looseness is, perhaps, the result of rapid dictation unchecked by subsequent reading. ‘ A person ‘ is left hanging in the air. The plurals’ they ‘ themselves‘ and “their” are justifed by the common gender required.

Still, the discord of number is apparent to the point of harshness and may be avoided. Read ‘ A person…….. is unclean until washed clean of the unclean work.‘)

Let me add a criticism of substance.

On page 7 you answer a question under the heading ” Seeking or Giving?” The paragraph has gained brevity at the expense of clearness. The difference between giving cooperation and seeking it requires more elucidation. Likewise the analogy of love leading to feeding in one case and starving in anothe.r But you are obscure and even baffling when you say that your policy of non-cooperation with Government allows of your seeking its cooperation whenever your purpose is, in your opinion, “very sacred and altogether good“. Most sensible people follow this rule in ordinary life: not seeking co-operation when they don’t care and seeking it when they care. They don’t proclaim it as a policy or give it a grand name.

Ever yours affectionately

V. S. SRINIVASAN

***********

Gandhi went on to add another footnote-comment after reproducing in full in the next issue of Harijan Sastri’s Letter verbatim:

I wanted to share this letter with the public, because such a letter would help any publicist and his cause and that in an unexpected manner, more so when written without any thought of publication.

Let the student note in passing Sastri’s love for the language he has mastered as few men have done. He is a purist in everything. We badly need purists in our country. I want only purists as fellow-workers in this glorious campaign of abolition of untouchabilty.

As to the purity of the language of ‘ Harijan’, whatever faults are found notwithstanding Sastri’s warning will be shared with me by Sastri, the Editor, and by Mahadev Desai, who shares with the schoolmaster the weakness for writing correctly in the language which for the moment he is using.

I must leave the reader to find out for himself or herself the many other beauties of Sastri’s letter. If he will do so, he must read the letter three or four times and look up all the references in the first issue of ‘Harijan’.

M. K. GANDHI

********

Today, those of us who admire Gandhi, Sastri … and still love the beauties of the English language… would do well indeed, as Gandhi had urged, to “read the letter three or four times and look up all the references in the first issue of ‘Harijan‘”.

(to be continued)

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy… (Part-5): When Sastri corrected Gandhi’s English sentence-syntax and advised him to give up his dicatorial ways!

Between his return to India from South Africa in 1939 until his death in 1946, how did Sastri occupy himself ? What were his major political accomplishments and contributions to the Freedom movement? And what were his other pursuits, literary and academic?

Between 1939 and 1946, Sastri’s life was devoted to literary scholarship, educational leadership, and the pursuit of a constitutional, united India. Though marginalized politically by the ascendant radical nationalists of the INC under Nehru, Patel, Rajaji and others, he continued to shape debates on education, language policy, national identity, and communal unity. His substantial body of literary work—autobiographical, biographical, and interpretive—combined with his commitment to public service, represents his enduring legacy in Indian political and cultural life.

It would be superfluous here to recount what History already and abundantly has recorded as Sastri’s many contributions in the above mentioned spheres of public life. So, merely a brief listing of the most significant of them all is given below if only for the sake of jogging the memories of students of Indian history interested in the biograpy of Srinivasa Sastri.

1 Public and Political Roles

a) Advocacy and Liberal Federation: Sastri continued to lead and guide the Indian Liberal Federation, advocating constitutional approaches, dominion status, and communal harmony. He became a key voice against the partition of India, expressing strong opposition to the Muslim League’s demands for the division of the country.

b) Appeal for Dominion Status: During World War II, he was part of a multi-party Indian delegation urging Prime Minister Winston Churchill to grant India dominion status, in recognition of India’s support to the Allies.

c) Opposition to Partition: In his final years, Sastri was a leading voice opposing the partition of India, emphasizing secular constitutionalism and national unity.

d) Support for Constitutional Reform: He promoted peaceful, negotiated constitutional advancement toward full self-government, a stand that, although overshadowed by more radical movements, influenced moderate and intellectual circles.

e) Advisor and Public Intellectual: Sastri often advised both government and political leaders, using his diplomatic experience to influence debates, especially around minority protections and communal relations.

2 Educational and Literary Work.

a) Language Policy and Translation: In 1940, the Madras government appointed Sastri to head a committee tasked with standardizing scientific and technical terminology in Tamil. His recommendation—to retain Sanskrit-derived words—sparked the first major Tamil language policy debate in the Madras Presidency.

b) University Leadership: Up to 1940, Sastri was Vice Chancellor of Annamalai University, and he remained involved in educational matters with an emphasis on Indian values and modernity.

c) Scholar, Orator, and Literary Figure: During this period, Sastri focused on writing, reviewing, and translating key historical and literary texts. He was famed as an orator and writer in both English and Tamil and continued to publish essays and lectures.

d) Autobiographical and Reflective Essays: Sastri’s autobiographical essays in Tamil, most notably compiled as ‘மீண்டும் வாழ்ந்தால்’ (Meendum Vazhndhaal, “If I Live Again,” 1944), reflect his personal philosophy, national ideals, and struggles.

  • (i) Historical and Biographical Works: He wrote biographies of eminent personalities—such as “Life and Times of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta” (1945), “My Master Gokhale” (published posthumously in 1946), and “Life of Gopala Krishna Gokhale” (1937)—that remain valued for their insight and literary grace.
  • (ii) Translation and Scholarship: Sastri condensed and interpreted the “Valmiki Ramayana” (1935), promoted appreciation of Indian and world classics, and contributed essays on his literary influences.
  • (iii) Reviewing Gandhi’s Works: He proofread and corrected the manuscript of Gandhi’s autobiography, “The Story of My Experiments with Truth,” and reviewed successive issues of Gandhi’s magazine “Harijan”.

3 Intellectual Legacy: Even as political currents in India in the 1930s and 1940s marginalized moderates of his generation, Sastri’s voice was respected for its erudition, moral force, and literary craft—he was seen as India’s premier liberal constitutionalist and a model for statesmanlike public discourse. In fact, long before the idea of an Indian Constitution crystallized itself after 1947 — and which lay dormant as something referred to as an obscure “White Paper” within the Indian National Congress at that time — Srinivasa Sastri was already engaged in serious and very lively conversations about it with Mahatma Gandhi himself during1932-33.

4 Death: Sastri died in Madras (now Chennai) on 17 April 1946 after a period of declining health.

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It was during the above period i.e. between 1930 when he returned from South Africa to India and 1946 when he passed away, that Srinivasa Sastri, though imperceptibly marginalised by the political coteries surrounding Jawaharlal Nehru nonetheless maintained very intimate and endearing personal relations with Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, born on October 2 and Sastri who was born on September 22 in the same year of 1869 CE was a mere fortnight the Mahahtma’s senior by age. Throughout those decades, the two of them addressed to each other scores of personal, private letters discussing dozens of issues and affairs related to the Freedom struggle and a host of social issues like Harijan welfare, Untouchability, Temple entry of Dalits, the internal politics of the Congress Party, and future of constitutionalism in an independent India.

Gandhi and Sastri referred to each other in those letter as “brothers“. All those letters between the two fortunately have been preserved in the Government of India archives and Gokhale Institure of Public Affairs today as “Gandhi-Sastri Letters”.

It is from the correspondence in those letters that I was able to cherrypick three very interesting, nay, astounding ones that vividly showed how affectionately the two “brothers” -in-arms, although they differed fundamentally in their respective philosophical outlook in life and politics, could never snap ties, never tear themselves away from nor fall out with each other.

A. In one correspondence, Gandhi endearingly conveyed to Sastri sentiments that showed how he trusted his instincts and political judgment more than he trusted that of even Gandhi’s own son, Manilal Gandhi.

B. In another hilarious private correspondence, Sastri suggests corrections to Gandhi’s published epistle in the “Harijan“, giving him superb grammar lessons on how sentence syntax in the English language must be structured. Gandhi accepts them all with all good-humoured humility and gratitude!

C. And in the third correspondence that I was able to pick, Sastri took the liberty to show Gandhi the mirror to his face, hinting in classic tongue-in-cheek manner at the latter’s occasional saintly humbug, even nuisance that did not really serve his own interests. Sastri then sternly advises him — as one affectionate brother would another — to stop being a dictator, for the sake of the good future of not only the Indian National Congress but also free India!

(to be continued)

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy lives more in Durban than in Delhi? (Part-4)

By the time Srinivasa Sastri returned in 1929 to India after successfully completing the diplomatic task in South Africa that had been assigned to him by the British Government of India and by Mahatma Gandhi as well, his intellectual and political stature had grown and he became renowned amongst both the Colonial Administrations of Great Britain and South Africa and as well as in Indian political spheres back home.

Srinivasa Sastri, due to his wide-ranging erudition, strong affinity and remarkable command of the English language, his polished oratory style, and his constitutional moderate approach that inclined towards cooperation with the British rather than confrontation had already gained considerable fame worldwide. He was admired by many British leaders and intellectuals for his eloquence— King George V made him a “Companion of Honour,” and British Prime Ministers and historians praised his English oratory highly.

However, within the political circles in India — at that time in the 1930s when Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement and Sathyagraha mass-agitations were gathering enormous momentum thanks to a rising tide of nation-wide nationalism — Sastri was not admired by the leadership of the Indian National Congress half as much as those in the the vaulting corridors of imperial power in Whitehall, Westminster in London. Despite the personal rapport and trust that Sastri enjoyed with Mahatma Gandhi, he found himself terribly at odds with the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Rajaji and other stalwarts of the Congress Party.

Srinivasa Sastri had earlier, in fact, himself held positions in the Indian National Congress! He had joined the Congress in 1908 and had served as the Secretary of the Madras District Congress Committee in 1911. He had been quite an active member until 1922 when he resigned in protest against the Non-Cooperation Movement initiated by Gandhi and the Congress leadership. Sastri viewed the movement as radical and extra-constitutional. He doubted the ability of Gandhi’s followers and apostles to maintain pacifism and was critical of the confrontational approach, preferring constitutional methods and cooperation with the British colonial framework.

During his time with the Congress, Sastri was known for his moderate and constitutional approach to the struggle for independence. It inevitably led to a falling out with the more radical “top brass” (high command) of the Indian National Congress such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji).

Sastri resigned from the Congress.

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After leaving the Congress, Srinivasa Sastri went on to found the Indian Liberal Federation (or Indian Liberal Party). He was content to continue his political work through that platform which represented a less popular but far more moderate, liberal, and constitutionalist segment of Indian politics, distinct from the mass civil disobedience and radical nationalist strategies pursued by the Congress leadership.

In spite of Sastri having repudiated the INC and left it, the fact that Mahatma Gandhi had still handpicked him and had also wholly endorsed the British Government’s choice of his candidacy to go to South Africa as Agent-General on an ambassadorial assignment, it is my surmise that it caused considerable pique — or envy or both — against him amongst the “top brass” of the Congress. To further add to the consternation of Nehru and other leaders of the INC, Srinivasa Sastri was also nominated to join the important Delegation of prominent Indian leaders attending in 1930-32 the historic Round Table Conferences in London.

These lengthy Conferences were held to deliberate upon and make recommendations for Constitutional Reforms related to British Rule in India which did in fact have far-reaching ramifications later in history for the Independence of India.

At these crucial meetings of the Round Table convened by the British Government in London, Sastri participated actively while making significant contributions to the proceedings. But then he did so not on behalf of the Indian National Congress but as the leader of the Indian Liberal Federation. The inputs and recommendations given by him at the Conferences were at complete variance with those of the INC’s own approach and strategies. Thus, the “top brass” of the Congress Party became even more resentful and deeply critical than before of Srinivasa Sastri.

Nehru’s worst suspicions about Sastri’s ideological stance vis-a-vis how the Freedom Struggle against the British must be conducted were confirmed. He was irked deeply by Sastri’s steadfast view that the struggle for India’s Independence must be based firmly on principles of “constitutionalism” and not on the fervor of “nationalism“. Nehru felt that Sastri was overly sympathetic to and cooperative with the British rulers, as the record of his work in South Africa had already shown and then, also especially evident at the Round Table Conferences where Sastri and his associates had largely accepted British proposals that the Congress itself had rejected as unfair.

Sastri’s stance favored dominion status for British India and ongoing constitutional reform over immediate full independence. This position put him ideologically squarely apart from the Congress mainstream led by Nehru, Patel, and Rajaji. The mainstream INC thus became hostile towards Sastri. It began an imperceptible yet strident campaign of criticism against Srinivasa Sastri in spite of his being in the good books of Mahatma Gandhi. Their criticism was aimed mainly at what was perceived as Sastri’s excessive sympathy for and cooperation with British colonial rulers. Nehru, in particular, saw Sastri as too conciliatory and cooperative with the British, especially during moments of crisis and political struggle. For example, Nehru remarked in his autobiography that although Sastri was an excellent orator, he seemed to advocate “mute submission” and was not very effective during critical times when followers needed strong leadership.

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It is quite probable that apart from ideological difference of opinion, Nehru’s distinct discomfort with Sastri arose also from a suppressed sense of envy.

In the 1930s, Jawaharlal Nehru was unquestionably the rising star within the Indian National Congress. He commanded the awe and obedience of the entire Party rank and file. He was indeed the Crown Prince, the undeclared heir to the Mahatma. And Nehru was respected in the country also for his comprehensive and seemingly unmatched grasp of world affairs, international relations and diplomacy. Foreign Affairs was considered Nehru’s turf and forte and none within the INC could dare challenge him on that front. If at all there was any Indian at that time who could easily hold a candle to Jawaharlal Nehru if not even perhaps excel him, it could be none other than the Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastry.

Sastri’s mastery of the English language, polished oratory, and constitutional approach made him an elite diplomat and international representative of Indian interests. He had shown that he could successfully engage with British political leaders and that too with great aplomb even at august global forums like the League of Nations, the Imperial Conference, and diplomatic missions to South Africa and the UK. His diplomatic efforts, such as the Cape Town Agreement with South Africa safeguarding Indian minority rights, were pioneering, representing India in a sophisticated international liberal framework. Sastri’s work greatly helped advance Indian self-respect globally and it laid the groundwork for India’s evolving global legitimacy, moving toward the idea of dominion status within the British Empire. Here was a man then who — quite like Nehru himself — thus took to international diplomacy and India’s Foreign Affairs like duck to water. Nehru the rising star in the INC could not have relished Sastri being looked upon as an equal expert on foreign affairs. That title belonged exclusively to Nehru and he would brook no challengers.

Above all, what might have also irritated Nehru no end was the fact that Mahatma Gandhi himself personally valued Sastri’s role for presenting Indian claims in global fora, complementing thereby Gandhi’s mass civil disobedience with Sastri’s constitutional diplomacy and intellectual weight.

Nehru thus, it can be reasonably conjectured, had much personal motive indeed to grow quite hypercritical of what he believed was Sastri’s diplomatic elitism and caste/racial biases which, in fact, he charged, were what had distanced Sastri, in the first place, from the mass movements of the INC and alienated him from the vast population of poor, marginalized Indians.

Within the INC rank and file in some quarters, the narrative eventually thus gained currency and began circulate about in hushed whispers and and murmurs — that Sastri’s diplomacy often reflected elitism and a kind of “performative Brahminness,” emphasizing refined Indian culture and distance from poorer Indians and indigenous allies. And that Sastri’s kind of elitism in the country is what weakens mass movements for political rights. The narrative also falsely described Sastri’s efforts to separate Indian concerns from those of other marginalized groups like black South Africans during his diplomatic work as very problematic, and that it revealed his own deep caste and racial biases that could only limit solidarity and broader nationalist appeal.

All the above points are clearly reflected in Nehru’s remarks about Sastri in his autobiography and elsewhere.

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It is important for us today who are students of history to clearly understand what Anglophilia meant at the time in the history of the Indian Independence struggle.

Anglophile elites, typically Western-educated middle-class professionals (lawyers, teachers, journalists, academicians who came from the Brahmin caste), played a major role in introducing constitutional, legal, and diplomatic methods to the independence cause. Their familiarity with British political institutions enabled them to negotiate with colonial authorities and represent Indian interests internationally. Their engagement helped frame Indian nationalism within a global legal and diplomatic context, advancing Indian claims through constitutional reforms, dialogue, and international forums.

Leaders like Srinivasa Sastri exemplified this thing called Anglophilia by using their mastery of English and British-style diplomacy to advocate for Indian rights abroad, complementing mass movements led by figures such as Gandhi.

Leaders like Nehru — in spite of being himself an unabashed Anglophile in every sense of the term — adopted a posture of being very allergic to so-called “anglophilia” only because it suited them politically to neutralise those whom they saw as ideological rivals. The best way to do that was to accuse leaders like Sastri of turning elitist toadies of the British. The elites’ focus on constitutionalism sometimes did slow or complicate more confrontational efforts in the freedom struggle, leading thus to internal disagreements about strategy.

Nonetheless, Mahatma Gandhi at least very clearly understood that the so-called “anglophile elites” of India were contributing essential diplomatic skills, constitutional knowledge, and international legitimacy to India’s independence struggle through their advocation of moderation and cooperation with British institutions. Their dual role in a way helped him shape a pluralistic nationalist movement balancing elite negotiation and mass resistance, although perceived affinity with British interests sometimes limited their influence among radical nationalists.

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Largely due to such a surreptitious campaign of calumny unleashed by the top leadership of the Indian National Congress, Srinivasa Sastri soon came to be branded in mainstream Indian politics as an Anglophile. And to add insult to injury, he was also disdained as a “performative orthodox Brahmin“.

How and why did such blatantly unfair stereotyping of Sastri happen?

It would require perhaps the forensic skills of a professional historian delving into that period in history to study it and be able to write about how exactly it happened. But it would not be unreasonable to surmise here that Srinivasa Sastri got stuck with that unsavoury tag of “elite Anglophile” thanks mainly to misunderstanding and grossly misinterpreting — by ripping out of context — many of his public utterances… especially the eloquent speeches he had given in South Africa, which was where he had achieved the most impactful work in his career as a gentleman-diplomat.

Here below is just one sample of such a speech Sastri had gone on record to have made (in 1927) and the likes of which, most probably, served later as grist for the rumour mills of Delhi spreading the malicious canard about Sastri’s Anglophilia and which Congressmen believed was true.

“It is no part of our intention either now or at any time in the future to challenge the political supremacy of the white part of the population of South Africa. We admit to the full your right to maintain the civilisation which you value, the modes of living, the standards of comfort which you have set up for yourselves, amidst discouragement and difficulties, which we fully appreciate. We recognise that it will be your right to determine the public policy of this sub-continent, and model it to yours and the satisfaction of the public interests.

“This being out of the way, we recognise as a natural corollary that there must be certain limitations and restrictions upon the political and municipal freedom of Indians here (in South Africa) so that this essential requirement may be satisfied. We are anxious to disarm your suspicions in the matter.

“And any application which might be made for the freedom of the Indian population in a request for the removal of disabilities pressing upon them, and any petition for facilities enabling them to live a happy, contented and prosperous life—all these things must be understood as being subject to this limitation, with which no wish is there to interfere in, or dispute the political supremacy of, the Europeans of this sub-continent”.

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Anyone today reading the above extract of Sastri’s speech without any knowledge of the context in which it was made in South Africa might unthinkingly only jump to the conclusion that yes, as Nehru had accused him, he must have been, “overly sympathetic and cooperative with the British rulers” and that “he seemed to advocate “mute submission” to them.

To the best of my knowledge, there is little on record in the public domain reporting that Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastry ever defended himself against the accusation of “elitist toadyism” hurled against him. He would never have stooped to that level of countering uncharitable slander whispered about him behind his back… He would simply have ignored it all and withdrawn. To defend himself under such circumstances in the newspapers or in the public square would have been beneath the man who was known always for having maintained the dignity of his “method of kindly inoffensiveness“.

There is a very emotional passage in the very same speech of Sastri quoted above. It was made in South Africa for an entirely different occasion. But in my view, those could be the very words that Sastri might have repeated today today to us were he to be called to offer an explanation, justification or a defense of what he was charged with by peers and rivals in politics back in 1930-32. And those words in his own defense would surely qualify yet as another classic example of his “method of kindly inoffensiveness“:

“You know, being men and women of the world, that there is only one truth and a thousand lies; there is only one course of action in a difficulty and there are beside it a hundred wrong courses each inviting you to itself. It is hard—I realise it fully– it is hard to do what is right, to speak the truth, to keep to the straight path in front of you when there are temptations to make a great mark, to create a sensation which the superficial observer will regard as smart or clever, but which cannot contribute anything to remove the evil of the situation.

“Suspicions had been aroused, accusations had been flung about recklessly, that it is necessary to be quite clear and emphatic on the point. It is, unfortunately, true, in the political world, that when politicians repudiate something we usually suppose that there is something wrong about it. Politicians are a tribe who do not always trust one another. When they repudiate anything they are anxious that the repudiation shall be taken at its face value, that their honesty shall not be questioned, and their bona fides shall be above cavil. But, when another man repudiates anything, they laugh, ignore it, even sneer and say, “We know what these political statements are!”

“I want you to acquit me of saying anything that will look like a political statement of this kind. There cannot be any temptation for me to deceive you in making a statement in which I did not fully believe. I have a sacred duty to the cause I represent. There are circumstances surrounding my work; there is sufficient guarantee that I will not make myself consciously guilty of exaggeration, a wilful distortion of the facts or a calculated concealment of feelings deep in the mind”.

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After the unkindly offensive way he was treated by the leadership of the Indian National Congress, Srinivasa Sastri political career began to unravel and rapidly wane… He became slowly a broken man…. How did he cope with the isolation? To what did he turn his attention next in life?

(to be continued)

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Rt.Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri’s memory and legacy lives more in Durban than in Delhi? (Part-3)

The diplomatic tight-rope walking that Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri had to execute in his remit as the Agent-General of the Imperial Government of India (1927-29) in South Africa was accomplished not only with great dexterity but also aplomb. For the services he rendered to both the British Government as well as to the Indian community at large in South Africa, and within such a short span of time, he earned fulsome praise and gratitude.

In 1931 — as much as we see today in 2025 in the Sastri School‘s plans for commemorating 2029 as their centenary year in Durban — South Africans remembered Srinivasa Sastri with great affection even two long years after he had left them to return to India. Such was the undying admiration and respect he aroused in South Africans. Below was a heartfelt tribute in 1931 penned by two South Africans of India-origin:

“Mr. Sastri returned us the first Agent General to the Government of India in the Union in June, 1927. He sailed for India on January 28, 1929. His stay in the country was eighteen months first for a year, and, on the request of the Governor-General of South Africa (the Earl of Athlone) and the Viceroy of India (Lord Irwin), he agreed to remain for a further period of six months.

“What eighteen months they were! A veritable king commanding homage wherever he went, winning over opposition and working unremittingly and persevering in labour for the advancement of the community. Now and again he would feel the burden of overwork, the infirmities of the body and the pain of advancing years, and for the moment he would lift aside the veil to those in close touch with him who might share in his disappointments.

“Oh, if I were young!” he once said to us, “It is a work which demands youth, in its vision and optimism to help in bringing about a state of the South African Indian acceptable to the country, an enlightened community that any people will be proud to claim its own. I am now old, weak in strength and the power to do. It was the will of the people of India that I came. Had it only been a few years ago! I wish for strength so that I can move about from one end of the country to the other, wherever a solitary Indian is to be found, sounding a clarion call to duty to this his country of domicile and birth.”

“Despite what he felt to be his limitations, very few would assert that he failed. If, he maintained, the British Commonwealth was based on equity to the least among its fellows, then the Europeans of South Africa, who were assured of the dominance of Western civilisation, must concede the right of the Indian to a proper place in the country. Mr. Sastri’s pleadings for the recognition of this aspect rose to heights of eloquence unsurpussed and unrivalled.

“Urging this plea with moderation and forbearance, he won to the cause he served the unqualified friendship and co-operation of the best of both the white races, Dutch and British. There are many amongst us who may still recall his speeches, combined with wonderful diction and thought; and ere the echo of the silvery cadence die, the figure grow dim, and the appeal lose its force, may we be permitted to preserve, even in its imperfections, the words of that great Indian-Srinivasa Sastri who may yet speak to us and the succeeding generations. (S.R.Naidoo and Dhanee Bramdaw – 1931)

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Neither Mahatma Gandhi nor the British Imperial Government could have ever found anyone else in India to serve as equal if not a better Ambassador in South Africa than Srinivasa Sastry. For, he excelled not only as a consummate and suave diplomat but also in the capacity of an extraordinary cultural exemplar of Indian civilisation. Another South African, a white man, wrote this about him:

“Not often does one find a speaker who at once has something to say, which is so well worth saying, and is able to say it with such distinction and such charm.

“Of the significance of Mr. Sastri’s ambassadorship for the Indians in South Africa it is hardly for me to speak; but one need not go beyond the speeches …. to find evidence of his wisdom in counsel, his discretion, his understanding sympathy, his unerring statesmanship.

“To the Europeans of our land his sojourn in our midst meant perhaps more than anything else the presentation of a new conception of India and its people. He became to us the interpreter of India— an India of which, to our shame be it said, we used to know all too little; or, where we knew of it, we allowed, all too readily, our remembrance of it to be obscured.

“He revealed to us an India of an ancient civilisation, one of the great civilisations of the world, a civilisation which has made many important contributions to our modern life; an India of a serene philosophy, a wide culture, and a developed art; an India with a literature well worthy to be numbered among the great literatures of the world. Of that India we did not know before Mr. Sastri came among us or, if we knew of it, we did not often think of it. He made it real to us, and against the background which he thus created, he made it possible for us to see what we have called our Indian problem in a different way.

“Fortunate indeed was India when she sent Mr. Sastri as her interpreter to South Africa. But Mr. Sastri did more than reveal India to South Africa. He also, in his own inimitable way, did much to reveal us to ourselves, helping us to see—no less effectively because of the kindly inoffensiveness of the method — some of those things wherein we are in danger as a nation of falling short of those high principles to which we owe allegiance”. (Jan H. Hofmeyer 1930)

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  1. How did Sastri succeed in not only “revealing India to South Africa” but as South Africans themselves felt, he “also, in his own inimitable way, did much to reveal us to ourselves“?

    2. What was Sastri’s “method of kindly inoffensiveness” that made the British Colonial Rulers of South Africa realise that they were “… in danger as a nation of falling short of those high principles to which we owe allegiance”?

    3. And what was that tremedous work which Sastri said had demanded “a vision and optimism to help in bringing about a state of the South African Indian acceptable to the country, an enlightened community that any people will be proud to claim its own”.

    Sastri’s “method of kindly offensiveness” was employed in his diplomacy when he appealed to the higher, nobler nature and human instincts of Imperial Rulers. It also included in his sage advice to the Indian community in South Africa to eschew any form of revolutionary confrontation with the Imperial State for the sake of their immediate and long-term interests. Like the good old school-teacher and headmaster that Sastri was in his own personal disposition, he urged South African Indians to instead concentrate on the first priority Educating themselves, their children and women as the key to economic and social development.

    Sastri’s “method kindly inoffensiveness” was nowhere more well and convincingly demonstrated than in his splendid public speeches that were on occasions addressed both to the Imperial Rulers there as well as to the Indian community.

    Sastri held up a large mirror to the face of British Colonialism so that its Rulers in South Africa could get a good look at themselves and, in good conscience, realise their duty and obligations to their subjects; and having to justify to themselves that they were truly what they claimed to be: a supreme but civilised race and an imperial power in the world that was a force for the good. Sastri asked them:

    ” Would you be justified in ordering the lives of Indians amongst you?

    “Would you be justified in ordering their lives in going further than might be necessary in bider to secure this essential condition?

    “Would it be wise; would it be in accordance with the highest civilised rules; would it be in conformity with the highest standard set up by Great Britain in various parts of the Empire? Would it be right to raise bars and barriers which are not necessary to maintain your supremacy, but which seem only designed to deny the Indian, sometimes wholly, sometimes partially, the opportunities and facilities which are necessary for his full development? He has no right to shape your politics or alter institutions to his own benefit. But is it necessary (for you) to bind him with shackles and fetters which deprive him of the opportunities to which, as a citizen of the British Empire, as one who swears allegiance to the Throne of Great Britain, he is entitled? Is it necessary to impose limitations on him as to the profession he might follow, or on the education he might wish to receive?

    “Is it or is it not a part of the aims of every civilised Government that every citizen, except he be of evil character or disloyal conduct, shall be allowed to become himself fully? I believe that the ordinary canons of right and justice will give the answer, without reservation, in the affirmative to that question.

    There is the promise held out by the Sovereign of Great Britain on dozens of public solemn occasions. There is the course consistently held by a long period of Imperial rule by Great Britain, a course which will not be deviated by a hair’s breadth, which require that no one will be denied that which is necessary for developing himself.

    “Whether the institutions are monarchical, oligarchic or democratic, no matter which shape they may assume in outward form, their tendency must always be to utilise all the available talent in the country to the fullest advantage not only for one section, because it may be dominant, but for the whole community. Everyone of the community is interested not only in giving the best to the whole collectively of the State but he is interested in exacting from the rest of the community the best possible for that collectivity.

    ““Equal rights for every civilised man” is the motto of administration which on all occasions…. has (to be) … followed. It is my fervent prayer that nothing will tempt you to depart from the straight and broad path.

    “The Government of India wishes nothing better than that they (the British) shall adhere to this formula in all that they do with reference to the Indian people. I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to answer the question which may be put: “What are the signs of contemporary time, is that formula in jeopardy, what are the currents of opinion that might wreck that formula ….? I put the question, but the answer must come from those whose daily lives have been spent in studying the details and the tendencies of administration.

    “As one who wishes with all my heart that the British Commonwealth will continue for a long, long time yet in the history of the world to be the exemplar of the highest principles of rule, to be the pattern of all that is best, to secure the welfare of human kind, I pray you not to deviate from the high standard set up by (Cecil) Rhodes, while you might be absolutely required to keep your own supremacy and maintain your own traditions, but to ask the other Provinces to come along and take their stand on your side as the custodians of even-handed justice and fairplay, to maintain the high level of British justice, British equity and the British desire to give every individual under the common flag an opportunity.

    “I can assist my countrymen only by assisting you”.

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    The “method of inoffensive kindliness” of Srinivasa Sastri was also gently blended into his style of diplomacy while dealing with the Indian community in South Africa. He inoffensively chided them on grossly neglecting their education and the schooling of their children. He told them this in a speech:

    “To the Indian (community), I say do not misjudge me; I have not come here to exalt myself in the eyes of the Europeans at your expense. But you have always to remember that you cannot ask anything until you have established fully your desire to benefit by it. I visited the Indian School, and I was sad to see the small number in the higher hall.

    Allow your children to have all the facilities of education that are offered to them.I know how you love your children. But every true father desires nothing more than that he should be excelled and (sur)passed by his son. I would rather prefer you to be beggars wandering from door to door than that you should have abundance to eat and leave your children in ignorance. It is wrong to take away children from school after the fourth standard. It seems to me that you should have protection up to 17 or 18 years of age. And you should pay even greater attention to the education of your girls. You can only neglect the careful education of your girls at the peril of the community.

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    When after 1929 Sastri had returned to India having accomplished the task that had been assigned to him by Gandhi and the British Goverment, did he receive the same appreciation and accolades from his own compatriots and colleagues in the Indian National Congress that the South African Indian community in Durban and elsewhere had thought it fit to shower upon him?

    (to be continued)

    Sudarshan Madabushi