From Mandalay to Wardha

In  March 1920 Gandhiji visited Burma for 13 days for seeking donations for Khadi work.  Buddhists in China, Japan, Ceylon and Burma claimed him as their own. Their monastic training, energy and fearlessness earned the Buddhist monks popular respect and the epithet 'dhammatatikas' or dharma activists. Like Gandhiji , they saw strength in unity, believing that if they maintained continued attachment to India, that  would help achieve home rule more rapidly.

Gandhiji had  stayed with Pranjivan Mehta near the Shwedagon Pagoda. He toured Rangoon, Mandalay,  Mailmein, Myingam and Toungro . Gandhi gave numerous public addresses to audience in the thousands, comprising of Burmese Monks, local public and  the Indian Diaspora. People contributed generously for Gandhi’s cause and he collected Rs.2,60,000 for the khadi work. He also told them to give cultivate faith in the Muslims.

Pd. Mahavir Prasad Trivedi had settled in Burma in Myingam and was eager to help the Swadeshi movement. He was working in the commissioner's office.  Natubhai Jasam, the diamond merchant  from Bombay was his neighbour. Trivedi  spent considerable time discussing with Gandhiji. All round the influence of the Swadeshi movement was quite evident.

Later in the late 1930s ,when his 20-year old son Rameshwar Trivedi wanted to join college in India, Panditji advised him to go to Gandhiji in Wardha.  So, this young man landed in Maganwadi in Wardha and met Gandhiji.  Gandhiji had developed a keen interest in village industry and the uplift of villages.  He had started the constructive programs that could guide the country.  Gandhiji had a special task for Rameshwar- to teach Hindi to Mirabehan according to his nephew Shri Anand Trivedi, whom I met yesterday.

Mirabehan wanted to live and work in a village and built a small  with mud, wattle of palm branches, split bamboo and utilizing ever stone that the blasting of the underground rock in her well made available to her. Gandhi ji described it saying it is not merely a hut. It is a poem.

Mirabehan spent her time spinning, carding weaving, cleaning latrines and working the locals about village sanitation and hygiene.  She was the youngest daughter of an English Admiral in the Royal Navy. Madelein Slade belonged to the British aristocracy. She was advised by Romain Rolland to travel and told to meet Gandhi adding, ‘ He is another Christ’.’ Gandhi gave her the name Mira when she arrived in Sabarmati Ashram on 8 September 1925 and called her his daughter.

Young Rameshwar spent ten years in Sabarwati and Wardha and that too mainly under Gandhiji's directions. 

How his life must have changed during this time and what was his contribution to the Swaraj movement was will soon be revealed to me by Anand Trivedi of MMTC once he checks with his father Shri Ramakrishna Trivedi  in Lucknow.  His father was the former governor of Gujarat  from 1986-1990. Shri  Trivedi said that he frequently visited the Sabarmati Ashram along with his father on different occasions.