Dinanath Gopal Tendulkar Death Anniversary 12 June: Mahatma Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan's biographer, writer, documentary maker, Gandhi and Tendulkar's views

Dinanath Gopal Tendulkar died on 12 June 1972. Dinanath was an Indian writer and documentary filmmaker. He is best known as the author of Mahatma: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, an eight-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a biography of Mahatma Gandhi written by Dinanath, was first published in 1951 with a preface written by the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He was also a close associate of Vithalbhai Jhaveri and who collaborated in the production of the documentary film Mahatma: Gandhi's Life 1869-1948. Born in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra (Bombay Presidency), Tendulkar was educated at Cambridge University and then at the universities of Marburg and Gottingen.

Dinanath was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, by the President of India Rajendra Prasad but he refused to accept the award and asked for a watch instead. Tendulkar wrote Faith is a Battle, a biography of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the frontier Gandhi, in 1967. It was about the Muslim non-violent leader who migrated to Pakistan after Partition. Dinanath was appointed a member of the National Book Trust of India when it was set up in 1957. Dinanath's other works include 30 Months in Russia (1943), Gandhi in Champaran (1957) and Soviet Culture. He also edited two books, Jawaharlal Nehru in Pictures (1967) and Gandhiji: His Life and Works (1944).

Dinanath was of the view that there was no need for a referendum in India. There is no need, because the habit of drinking and drugs is universally recognised as an evil. Drinking is not a fashion in India, as it is in the West.

In another statement Dinanath Gopal Tendulkar said, newspapermen have become a walking plague. In the East, as in the West, newspapers have become the Bible, the Koran, the Zend-Avesta and the Gita of the people. Whatever is printed in the newspapers is considered to be God's truth. For example, a newspaper predicts that riots are going to take place, all the sticks and knives have been sold in Delhi, and this news throws everybody into panic. This is bad. Another newspaper gives news of riots here and there, and accuses the police of favouring the Hindus in one place and the Muslims in another. Again, the common man is troubled. I want you all to give up this fear. It is not proper for men and women, who believe in God and attend prayers, to be afraid of anybody.

Dinanath writes, Albert Einstein said, the powerful impact Gandhi has made on people is more lasting than is possible in our present age. We are fortunate and grateful that fate has given us such a bright contemporary, a lighthouse for generations to come.

According to Dinanath, Gandhi was a Hindu influenced by the Vaishnava and Jain traditions. In his student life in London he was in the mainstream of the thoughts of Marx, Darwin, Morris, Kropotkin and the Fabians. He came under the influence of Thoreau, Ruskin and Tolstoy. At the age of 75 he read Das Kapital. He was an extraordinary blend of East and West, ancient and modern. His own writings, mainly published by Navjivan Trust, Ahmedabad, include the Atmakatha or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, originally written in Gujarati, Gandhi's mother tongue. Mahadev Desai translated it into English in 1940.

According to Dinanath, the Publications Division of the Government of India published eight volumes of Gandhi's collected writings during 1954-63. Gandhi said, My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities are contained in one another, they all originate in my insatiable love for mankind... I know of no other religion than human activity. It gives a moral foundation to all other activities... We unnecessarily divide life into religion and other; whereas if a man has true religion, it should manifest itself in the smallest details of life. The slightest irregularity in hygiene, social and political life is a sign of spiritual poverty.

According to Dinanath, Gandhi was one of the very few men who stamped an idea on an age. That idea is non-violence. His emphasis on truth and purity of means by which he developed his creed of non-violence was another aspect of his deep humanity, for it insisted that in their fight for their rights men, whether individually or as groups, should never violate their basic obligation to respect life. According to Gandhi, since man has not been given the power to create, he has not the slightest right to destroy even the smallest living creature. Like all dynamic personalities, Gandhi also needed a vast medium for the expression of his creative will. He developed this medium for himself when he took upon himself the responsibility of leading a vast country to freedom, overcoming countless social, economic and political obstacles.

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