JUNE 30, 2019 • THE WEEK 43ment, he dissuaded them. Th e Bombay Pentangular
tournaments were fi nally stopped in 1946.ALLIES FROM AMERICA
Gandhi never visited the United States in his life-
time. But he was aware of the importance of positive
American public opinion to enlist allies for India’s
freedom struggle. In fact, from 1905 through 1947,
both British offi cials and Indian nationalists wanted
Americans to favour their side. Gandhi consorted
with visiting American missionaries, ministers,
lawyers and journalists, turning some into fervent
advocates of nonviolent resistance.
Today, with states curtailing abortion rights in
the US, one can look back to a rather nasty set of ex-
changes between Gandhi and American birth-con-
trol activist Margaret Sanger in the 1920s when she
visited India to gather support for her cause. She
roped in Rabindranath Tagore on to her side, but
could not convince Gandhi. His stand on the subject
was derived from his life-long experiments with celi-
bacy which continued into the old age when he took
to the practice of taking consenting naked young
women to sleep next to him at night. “Th ere can be
no two opinions about the necessity for birth con-
trol,” wrote Gandhi, “but the only method handed
down from ages past is self-control or ‘brahmachar-
ya’.... Medical men will earn the gratitude of man-
kind, if instead of advising artifi cial means of birth
control they will fi nd out the means of self-control.”
Sanger called Gandhi “a reactionary moralist”.
Gandhi’s fi rst radio broadcast was not on All India
Radio, but on Columbia Broadcasting System on
September 13, 1931, when he had decided against
visiting the United States. He spoke about untoucha-
bility and Hindu-Muslim antipathy and sought help
for the “poor peasants of India”. American journalist
Webb Miller found Gandhi to be “the most fascinat-
ing and inscrutable” of all the leaders he met. Miller’s
extensive dispatches from Uttar Pradesh and the
Dharasana Satyagraha after Dandi March inspired
the Times to run its Man of the Year cover on Gandhi
in 1931.
In all likelihood, the last interview Gandhi gave
was also to an American. Photographer-writer
Margaret Bourke-White met him at Birla House on
January 30, 1948. Towards the end of their chat, she
wanted to know Gandhi’s view on the atom bomb.
How would he meet the threat? “...by prayerful ac-
tion,” he replied. Soon after their goodbyes, when she
was just a few blocks away, Gandhi was shot thrice.NO SPORTS PLEASE
Gandhi was no fan of cricket. Or football, hockey,
boxing or any sport for that matter. He did not
understand the frenzy around football and cricket
among “colonial-born Indians” and preferred the
daily grind of “simple agriculturalists” to achieve
fi tness goals. Congress stalwart K.F. Nariman once
called Gandhi “the least sportive saint”. When a
reader of the Indian Opinion inquired why he did
not carry any sports news, Gandhi responded that
“... sport indulged in for the sake of developing the
body is of some use. But we venture to suggest that
agriculture, the inherited occupation of Indians—
indeed of the human race—is better sport than
football, cricket and all other games put together.”
Late 1930s and early 1940s saw Bombay hosting
pentangular cricket tournaments which had
teams from fi ve communities: Europeans, Hindus,
Muslims, Parsis and the Rest (Indian Christians,
Buddhists and Jews). Th e tournament came under
attack for encouraging a communal conscious-
ness at a time when Hindu-Muslim divide was
on the rise. When Parmananddas Jivandas Hindu
Gymkhana, a team of Hindus, sought Gandhi’s
counsel to participate in a pentangular tourna-G