An eager crowd, a ten-minute window, and a Mahatma who refused to be late.
It was once in Chidambaram that Gandhi dodged an unruly crowd and made good his escape in order to keep an engagement. In a sense, crowds had been the curse of Gandhi’s life. They had never allowed him peace — they followed some remorseless law of motion toward him the moment they caught sight of him. Gandhi had had some hair-breadth escapes from enthusiastic but frantic crowds who, in their eagerness to gaze on him and do him honor, would have all but trampled him to death.
It was altogether a bad day at Chidambaram. Gandhi was driving to the Annamalai University, where he was to address the University Union, with Dr. T.S.S. Rajan seated beside him in the car. Half a mile or so from the University, a dense crowd had collected in one of the town’s narrow streets, awaiting Gandhi’s car — two other cars followed close behind with other members of the party.
The crowd held up Gandhi’s car. Gandhi asked what the matter was. The spokesman came forward to explain: he and his friends had planned a feast, arranged in honor of Gandhi’s visit, at which high-caste Brahmins would sit with the Harijans — even then in progress in a big pandal, just a stone’s throw away. They pleaded with Gandhi to alight, just for a moment, to look in on the dinner.
Gandhi turned to Dr. Rajan and asked when they were due at the University. Only ten minutes left, Dr. Rajan answered. Gandhi inquired whether this dinner was included in his programme for the day, and learned that it was not. He asked Dr. Rajan to explain to the crowd that he had an engagement to keep in the next ten minutes, and that this interruption was an unauthorized item. But the crowd would accept no excuses, and insisted on Gandhi’s alighting, if only for a minute.
Dr. Rajan got into a lively argument with the crowd. Gandhi, meanwhile, quietly slipped out of the car by the other door and made a dash for the University building. For a moment the crowd did not realize what was happening — they were having it out with Dr. Rajan, whom they thought was the real culprit. That was Gandhi’s chance. He soon managed to get clear of the crowd, and one of the cars behind shot forward, picked him up, and sped him toward the University.
The crowd then saw their bird escaping and surged forward, shouting the accustomed slogan, “Mahatma Gandhi-ki-jai.” But the car that had picked up Gandhi had already got clear. Gandhi looked back and waved his hands like a merry schoolboy who had escaped from some tight corner.
The crowd was venting its wrath on Dr. Rajan, who had to make vigorous use of his fists to extricate himself from an infuriated mob.
But Gandhi had no time to adjudicate between the claims of violence and nonviolence — he drove away in a cloud of dust. He was not more than a minute late for the meeting of the University Union, and the first words he uttered were of apology for the delay.
The heart of the story
Gandhi and his watch were inseparable companions. Punctuality, with him, ranked high among the virtues — high enough that even a crowd eager to honor him could not be allowed to make him break his word to another.
