The Gandhi within us

It was during the course of work — making documentary films in 2007 — that Janhavi Prasada got enthralled with Gandhi’s book The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

During the course, the author (who comes from a family of erstwhile zamindars of Oudh, Uttar Pradesh and is the sister of Jiten Prasada, ex Congress minister) realised how most of the issues so dear to Gandhi like sustainability, organic products, sanitation and healthy living are things that are even more relevant in our times. And yet, “in our country, instead of keeping him close to our lives, we have made him a Mahatma, put him on a pedestal and made him too intimidating to be relevant to most of us,” says the author of Tales of A Young Gandhi, a graphic novel that will be out later this month.

“Reading the autobiography got me thinking about starting a research programme, travelling all over the world to all the places associated with Gandhi, meet Gandhians and interacting with them. I visited South Africa, London, Bangladesh, Nepal and many other countries only to realise that Gandhi’s philosophy is actually a general way of life that needs to be brought to the young in a way that will not intimidate them.”

This realisation led Janhavi, who is also the founder of NGO, Youth for Gandhi, to author a graphic novel that sets out to bring Gandhi within our reach again. The book, she says, is mature in its approach and hence it is meant not just for children but for all young adults too. She adds, “I find older people with a rigid outlook often put Mahatma Gandhi in a box or on a higher plane, and that is not what I want to do. I want all of us to empathise with him, and that is why my book draws on his autobiography to remind us he was an ordinary man who as a youth experimented with drinking, smoking, stealing money, obsessing with sex, but he experimented with those experiences to become the Mahatma for the world. I hope my novel will help us all to sift through our own baggage, and find Gandhi within each one of us.”

The format of the graphic novel, Janhavi explains, is a very engaging medium to tell Gandhi’s story since it delivers a powerful dose of information and knowledge in a very easy to grasp manner. She points out, “The Amar Chitra Katha series has done this effectively in a hugely successful manner with our spiritual stories.”

Writing a graphic novel, Janhavi says, is vastly different from a regular novel. She adds, “You have to sit with an illustrator and with a storyboard. I used the text from The Story of My Experiments with Truth, and made it simpler. The text is taken from the book, but the visual presentation is mine. I have also illustrated a couple of pages in the beginning and in the end. I used those stories from Gandhi’s autobiography that touched me the most. For example, when he stole from his brother, the guilt affected him so much that he confessed to his father who took him into his arms and cried. This was a lesson in forgiveness. Another significant incident is when he was with his father, but his mind was focused on intimacy with Kasturba. His father died soon when he was with Kasturba, and Gandhi was so troubled that he took his vow of brahmacharya. In the depiction of Gandhi’s persona, I have tried to keep him as real as possible rather than making him a Mahatma.”

Asked if there is anything about Gandhi that disturbs her, Janhavi says, “Gandhi’s relationship with his children and his wife was extreme. He put everything before his family just to set an example — he could have been softer on them.”

The novel is centered on Gandhi’s growing up days and how he dealt with life, and how these experiences enriched his life. It ends with his Porbandar days. Later after independence, Gandhi had to become a social activist and a politician, and he struggled with this dilemma.

Janhavi confesses, “I am not inclined to deal with the politics of Gandhi which is why I am not sure if I will do a sequel. The book will hopefully introduce a new generation of readers to not only a fascinating life but also a new medium of illustrated novel, and make him relevant once again at a time when violence is rampant in the world. Now is the need to bring Gandhi back.”