I just wanted to ask you in South Africa of today many people are attacking his farms etc. Is he a sort of a forgotten figure?
Not really. The farmers attacked it in 1980s. As for the attack on the Phoenix farm, it was not attacked because people disliked Gandhi. It was because the Africans were displaced from Durban by the apartheid regime went in search of land and overran the farm. Part of it is reclaimed. Gandhi today is remembered in South Africa as, I would say, an important leader of the second rank. He started the Indian National Congress and inspired the African National Congress, so he is remembered for having inspired the African movement. Many of the early leaders of the African National Congress like Chief Albert Lutuli who got Nobel Prize was a Gandhian and believed in non-violence. Mandela realised non violence would not work, so took to armed struggle. He admired Nehru in fact more than Gandhi in some ways. After he came back he realised, that like Gandhi, he has to reconcile with the whites. Gandhi is remembered in India as a father of the nation, in South African he is one of the many important leaders in their freedom struggle not of the status of Mandela or Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and son on. Not on the same level, but a little below, but he is remembered with affection. They often tell you. I don’t know if you had the same experience? Several South Africans told me you gave us a lawyer we gave you back a Mahatma. He went as a lawyer and came back as Mahatma.
How do you view Attenborough film, the South Africa portion? Does that romanticise it?
Every film has to have a neat directorial line. Attenborough film had to have a very simple plot line. Forget South Africa, even when you come to India there is no Ambedkar, there is no Subhash Chandra Bose. If you introduce Ambedkar and Subhash Chandra Bose, the narrative becomes too messy. In the book you can introduce all this and show the disagreement. It is useful film for its time. It brought Gandhi back into public debate.
So you think the 15 years he spent in South Africa, if he had not spent those 15 years in South Africa, he may not have been the person he came back as when he came back.
Without question. There were a series of accidents. He failed as a lawyer in Rajkot in 1893, so he went to South Africa. In 1904, he offered Lord Milner who was the governor general a compromise. He said, just assure rights to Indians of property and practising their profession. Lord Milner said I am going to kick out all these people. If Lord Milner accepted his compromise in 1904, Gandhi would have come back to India, because he was worried about his children’s education— children were young and he wanted to educate them in Gujarat. If that compromise had been accepted in1904, Gandhi would have never tried Satyagraha, would have never gone to jail. So South Africa did a big favour to us.