Crossing boundaries
How a German remembers Gandhi
Anees Jung

HE is 92 and tall. His memory is as lucid as a young man's. When he talks about Gandhi, his face lights up, the years roll back, the heavy layers of dust drop and one is back in a time when a great man not merely walked the face of this earth but lived on it making each moment luminous for himself and others. It was 1933 when Fischer left the terrors of a Nazi Germany and decided to visit Gandhi in India. He had written a letter merely addressed: Gandhi, India. He got an answer back, a long letter from his secretary, Mahadev Desai, describing the difficulties of living in India and with Gandhi. If he would not mind it, he was welcome. And so Fischer left Hitler's Germany.

He narrates how he journeyed - to France and Spain then on a bicycle that a kind Spanish couple gave him for very little money all the way to Istanbul. A group of Jewish professors teaching at the university helped him with some more money that took him by a boat via Piraeus to Lebanon, still under French rule. He then proceeded by road to Baghdad, onward to Basra; by boat again to Bombay and finally Wardha. When he arrived Gandhiji was not there but at the Faizpur Congress session. "When I reached there and was taken to Gandhiji, he looked up and said : "So you have come."

That was the beginning of a deep enduring relationship. "I was his chela, a bit in awe of a man I had read so much about and seen in photographs. No I was not disappointed. The ideal I had nurtured was close to the reality." Gandhiji questioned him about Germany. He was disturbed about the happenings. Why can't people like Fischer who are against violence start a movement for peace he wondered. It is not possible Fischer told him. Germany was not England. If anyone was to start any movement he would either find himself in a concentration camp or be killed. Gandhiji found it difficult to understand this. "He believed that even a man like Hitler should be approached," continues Fischer. "He even wrote a letter to him but without my knowledge. But he never got an answer as far as I know."

I met Herbert Fischer on a rainy evening in Berlin. We drove through sheets of rain - watching the dance of lights on the wide wet Kurfunstendam, (the main avenue once of West Berlin, now of one Berlin), beyond the Brandenburg gate (that once stood as a divider and is now a mere monument marking a painful memory) into wide streets lined by blocks and blocks of grey buildings still ringing with echoes of a Socialist regime. In one such building lives Fischer in a tiny apartment filled with memories, larger than life - of an India when Gandhi lived. I begin to ignore the thunder in the heavens, the lightning flashing like a long silver snake through his square window. Such a monsoon happening is rare to Germans. But not to Herbert Fischer who lived through many a monsoon in India. He watched it move over the western ghats when he lived in Itarsi doing social work at a Quaker hospital. He sensed it as it moved and greened the plains. He remembers it all vividly`85.

It was raining in Poona. Gandhiji was walking forward and backward on the verandah as he could not go out on the lawn for his usual evening walk. Fischer had come with his wife and six month old daughter to see Gandhi. Afraid that the baby may cry and disturb they had put the child in a corner. As Gandhiji walked and talked he stopped each time to take a peek at the child. Turning to Fischer he asked : "Is the baby sick?" No, replied Fischer. "Then why is it so quiet?" asked Gandhiji. "He was very fond of children. During his evening walks he liked to see them playing around." recounts Fischer. "He was very observant, attentive to everyone who was around him. If he was talking to me his focus was on me. And when he moved on to the next person it seemed that I was no more around. He was very keen on every relationship and he always found the time."

He remembers how he would go to the ashram on Sundays or during his evening walks when Gandhiji would give him an hour, sometimes half an hour. "He was not the kind of person who would impose on someone else. I remember Jayaprakash Narayan visiting him one evening. To everything Gandhiji said I heard J.P. say : "Nahin Bapu." After he left I heard Gandhiji say: " There is no one whose views are diametrically opposed to mine. But there is no finer fighter than him after Nehru for India's freedom." He would ask my views on things and we would sometimes talk about such personal matters as food and drink. Though a strict vegetarian he insisted that I eat an egg as I am a European.I asked him why he only drank goat milk. He did not like to see the cows maltreated, he said looking pained. We talked at length about his idea of a village on two sides of the river with women living on one side and men on the other with them meeting once a year to produce a son. If it works the population will decrease I told him. But nobody will keep to it he said. He realised that some of his ideas were sometimes far out. He thought everybody had the energy and will to do it. He was of course disappointed that they did not do everything that he suggested. There was a time when they did everything he said. But that time was going. They did not follow him anymore."

It is still raining in his chowk but it is calm inside the small apartment - Rajput miniature paintings smile on the walls, discreet bronzes stand poised on shelves. "In a way I still live in India," hums Fischer gazing out at the rains. The quarter where his building stands is green with trees. "It is more a chowk than a quarter," he says more at ease with the Indian concept of a square. To find an apartment even as small as this was not easy. "The years after the War were very difficult," he says. I detect a strain in his voice. Talking about Germany does not light him up as remembering India does. " People were still caught by the War and its sequences. One could not even buy a spool of yarn. It was sold by the yard. There was not enough food. What little we could procure we gave to the children. My wife who weighed 60 k.g came down to 40 k.g. It was not easy to get a flat in that time as it is now. With most people having gone off to West Berlin or further and with everyone now owning a car it is easier now. But for Fischer this tiny apartment is home which has contained him and his family since the days of the GDR.

Why did he not choose to stay on in India I ask? "I intended to stay and apply for citizenship. I had stayed for five years which was one of the conditions. I was in India

during all the years of the War. I was a civil internee, interned in a camp in Jabalpur, then Ahmednager with a small group of Germans.We also talked to Gandhiji when we went to see him for the last time in 1946. He said he would like to see us go back and help build a democratic Germany." And he did. He became a teacher. Germany after the War was still reeling in the Nazi aftermath. Many people had been affected, some willingly, others not. Teachers who were associated with the Nazi regime were thrown out. Only those who could prove that they had no connections with official Nazis stayed. But they were few. We were asked to join. I was recruited immediately because of my experience. I was asked to speak about India and I like doing that." He did it as a teacher and later as East Germany's ambassador to India.

He takes me into an interior room to show the two most intimate things that remain a part of his life - a photograph of his wife who has passed away and a postcard that Gandhiji wrote to her after their return to Germany. Dated 11-7-40 from Sevagram it reads : Dear Lucille: Kamlabai has sent me your letter to her. You must bravely bear what befalls you. This War will leave no one untouched. Yours Bapu.

"If you live for a time with a man like Gandhi it leaves a very deep impression and stays with you all your life. He has contributed a great deal to the changes in my life." He narrates an amusing incident when he was asked to dig a trench. When the young man along with him refused Fischer shouted at him. The youth turned around and said 'Look at the German. He is gone crazy.' "That was a typically Gandhian way to respond. After that incident I learnt never to shout at people but find a way to move them."

How does he assess Gandhi - as a prophet, a saint ? "No, he was a man. Very human. His humanism was the decisive point in him. Though his life was saintly, he was not a saint. He moved into the heart of people. There was not any time a break between him and the people. He was essentially an Indian who lived according to Indian traditions. When he read the Bhagavadgita it was not from a theoretical point of view but what it meant to him. Those who were around him also lived the same way. It is going perhaps but you still meet Indians who live according to its principles like Gandhi. Don't follow me he would say. 'I don't need followers. I need co-workers. Things will change. You will have new tasks. You will have to look out and see how you can go further than I have. The followers of Gandhi don't think of going further`85" He remembers with amusement an experience. When he was in Wardha and Sevagram there was no electricity. They all walked early morning to the prayer meeting with lanterns. Years later when he went back he saw that electricity had come but the people still walked with lanterns. "They wanted to do exactly what Gandhi did. And that's exactly what Gandhi did not want. When there is electricity there is no need for lanterns."

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