‘AHINSA paurmo dharma,’ as us older long in the tooth lot will remember, was the slogan made popular by the Naked Fakir, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a hundred years ago, in 1906. Its meaning : propagating non-violence. The problem is that it is only an effective weapon when used by the masses, or the few protesters, against intelligent and benevolent rulers, governments, or the like.

Now that President General Pervez Musharraf has had his fun and feels that he is (for the time being) resting atop the world, may we, the weak and poor populace, remind him to get going and do what he must do, and undo that which was done by his two predecessors of the 1970s and 80s. First was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first civilian martial law administrator in the country’s history, the second the meek and mild, bowing and scraping, army general, Ziaul Haq.

Our general must, somehow, undo the wicked and unlawful Hudood Ordinance and the blasphemy laws which blight our statute books and which ‘lawfully’ affect and terrorise half our population, the gentler sex, the wives, the mothers of our children, the sisters and the daughters.

On the subject of books, a hot topic with which the general and we citizens are concerned, another book published in 2006 is ‘Shameful Flight’ (OUP) by historian and South Asian expert Stanley Wolpert, all about ‘The last years of the British in India.’ The contents, as the author states, rely in large part on “the most important primary source documents for this period ..... the twelve volumes on constitutional relations between Britain and India entitled The Transfer of Power — 1942- 7.”

Gandhi’s non-violence policy involved ‘fasting’ and after his arrest in August 1942 he resolved to wait six months before protesting, via a ‘fast’, against his incarceration. On January 29, 1943, Gandhi wrote : “I have pleaded and would continue to plead till the last breath .... If then I cannot get soothing balm for my pain, I must .....commence after early morning breakfast on the 9 February a fast for 21 days ...”

When the viceroy informed his council of Gandhi’s intent they expressed their nervousness about the possibility of his dying and proposed that he be released. But Victor Alexander John Hope, the second Marquess of Linlinthgow, Viceroy of India, was adamant. He “never wavered that Gandhi, if he desired to do so, should be allowed on his own responsibility to starve to death.” However, he felt that he should go along with his council, just in case — a dire outcome would not help matters — and agreed that it would be safer to release the ‘faster.’

Back home at Westminster, the cabinet was “greatly disturbed” that a mere ‘threat’ was to bring about Gandhi’s release. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in the midst of WW2, was absolutely furious and called an emergency cabinet meeting at which “he warmed up and worked himself into one of his states of indignation over India,” thundering that this was not the time to “cringe before a miserable little old man who had always been our enemy,” and Linlithgow was alerted and told to ‘suspend action’ as far as the release was concerned.

Meanwhile, as Wolpert relates “Since Gandhi’s fast to ‘capacity’ allowed him to drink water and fruit juice, the viceroy estimated he might survive for three weeks. But Lumley [governor of Bombay] had learned that Gandhi would only take enough fruit juice to make the water he drank ‘palatable’ giving him little ‘nutritive value’. Weighing 109 pounds when he began his fast, Gandhi lost eighteen pounds after his twenty-one day ordeal.”

What history does not record is that the British surgeon general, responsible for keeping Gandhi alive when he indulged in his numerous ‘fasts’, had a secret weapon, a brother doctor, a member of the distinguished Indian Medical Service, Colonel Nariman Jamshedjee Sohrabjee Faredoonjee Mehta. Each time the Mahatma embarked on a ‘fast’ he would be held, ‘protected’ in the Aga Khan’s palace at Poona, or at some other palatial location. Colonel Mehta would be posted to the fasting site and instructed to “ensure that the old geezer does not die.”

He, a physician, abiding by the Hypocratic Oath he had sworn, dispensed the quantity of glucose his conscience permitted.

As writes Wolpert, “fears for Gandhi’s health reverberated from Washington.” Even President Franklin Roosevelt got into the ‘fasting’ act and told his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, “Our biggest desire is not to see the fellow [Gandhi] die in prison. Linlithgow wrote to Churchill of Gandhi as ‘the world’s most successful humbug.’ Though he found no firm evidence, he still believed, as did Churchill, that the ‘nervous tension and hysteria engendered by all this Hindu hocus-pocus’ would have made it quite possible for ‘Gandhi’s own doctors’ to ‘slip glucose’ into his water. ‘I do not think that Gandhi had the slightest intention of dying and I imagine he has been eating better meals than I have for the last week.’

Churchill wired Field Marshal Smuts on February 26. ‘What fools we should have been to flinch before all this bluff and sob-stuff ..... To Linlithgow, Churchill wrote it seemed ‘almost certain that the old rascal will emerge all the better for his so-called fast.’ .... Gandhi broke his three-week fast on March 3, 1943, sipping six ounces of orange juice ....”.

It was not until April 1944 that the British decided that Gandhi’s health had deteriorated seriously from the after-effects of malaria in his Poona palace prison. They would no longer be “frightened by the Gandhi bogey” and felt that “his health had become so poor that it was improbable he would ever again actively participate in politics” and that his “immediate release would be best, since his death in custody would only intensify anti-government feeling.”

So the ‘old fraud’ (then nearly 75 years old) was released — and instead of dying, he “showed remarkable resilience, soon enjoying substantial recovery at a friend’s house on Bombay’s Juhu Beach, where he greeted old friends and young admirers. Churchill sent Wavell [the new viceroy] a ‘peevish telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn’t died yet’!”

As usual, Wolpert has written well and for those still interested in the demise of the British Raj it is a good, easy and entertaining read — highly recommended.

As for the efficacy of a ‘fast’ (a proper one, not the local version which lasts for about three hours outside the parliament house or our various press clubs) it can help. What with all this nonsensical delay over what is known as the Women’s Protection Bill, lingering in the National Assembly, may I suggest that the women of Pakistan, led by our charming first lady, Sehba Musharraf, embark on a strict and proper fast (totally inclusive) and prevail upon the men in politics to do right by them and their sister citizens and that if the repulsive ordinances cannot be repealed, they at least be rendered ineffective by the proposed amendments.