Through the eyes of a Guilderland student
Understanding where Ghandi came from and what shaped him before he shaped the world



GUILDERLAND — Most Americans, when they think of Mohandas Gandhi, probably see an old man, bespectacled, with a balding head and graying hair at the temples. He is seen as an icon — a man who used civil disobedience to free India from British rule, a man who lived a simple life and taught the power of love.

Zagreb Mukerjee knows Gandhi better than most of the rest of us.

The freshman at Guilderland High School has read Gandhi’s writings, visited the Gandhi Museum in New Delhi and interviewed its director, and even has spoken with Gandhi’s granddaughter.

He has distilled his knowledge, focusing with great clarity on a lesser-known part of Gandhi’s life — his years in South Africa where he defended the rights of the Indian minority and developed the idea of satyagraha, or peaceful defiance of the government.
"Great people are not born," writes Mukerjee. "Instead, they are molded by the experiences of their lives."
His paper, "Taking a Stand is at the End of a Long Path: Gandhi’s Struggle in South Africa," pictures Gandhi as a young man, describing the influences that eventually created an icon.

The paper has earned Mukerjee first place in the senior category at the New York State History Day finals; he’ll now go on to the National History Day competition in College Park, Maryland in June.
Mukerjee at 14 is described by Deb Escobar, the enrichment teacher who has guided him on projects since his days at Farnsworth Middle School, as "serene."
"He is very modest about his own ability," she said.

Mukerjee likes to play classical music on his violin, he said, because it’s soothing, and he also likes to learn. He is a good student who is hard-pressed to name a favorite subject; he likes them all.

His mother, Rita Biswas, wrote a letter last year to Advocacy for Gifted and Talented Education, nominating Escobar for Educator of the Year, an award which she won. In nominating Escobar, Biswas wrote that she brings out the best in every student.
Biswas wrote how her son was not challenged in the classroom. "We had tried a parochial school, a private school, the public-school system, and even an international school," wrote Biswas. "By fifth grade, we gave up"Sixth grade and Mrs. Escobar radically changed all that. Under Mrs. Escobar’s tutelage, we feel our son was finally challenged to his full potential and beyond and his enthusiasm for school returned."
Mukerjee himself wrote the award committee, "The moment Mrs. Escobar first taught me, I felt she inspired me, that she guided me without steering me, and taught me without teaching her way as the only way. I could see that the experience was not unique to me, or even to my class. Almost every student that she teaches feels that same feeling of inspiration."
Biswas, who teaches international finance at the University of Albany, said, "We have a global commuter marriage." Her husband, Amitabha Mukerjee, a computer scientist, lives and works in India, commuting whenever he can to the yellow Colonial-style house in Guilderland where Biswas and their two sons live.
Summers, they travel to India and visit relatives, Mukerjee said. On his visit last summer, he said, a "powerful exhibit" that he saw in New Delhi made him decide to write about "the Mahatma’s work in South Africa."
"Mahatma," he explains means "great soul." And the exhibit, in keeping with Gandhi’s ideology, was very simple and would not seem out of place in a rural Indian village.
In a bibliography in which Mukerjee describes and analyzes 20 primary and 10 secondary sources for his paper, he writes, "A large bamboo and straw hut-like construction houses the exhibit...The walls of the entire building are lined with hundreds of pictures, each with a detailed caption that tells about the events within....Included here are pictures of the Mahatma’s time in South Africa and his works there.
"Scattered throughout the rooms are a handful of artifacts, relics of the great man’s life, including a cot upon which he stood and gave a speech during the Dandi March Satyagraha, the military ambulance that transported Gandhi to a hospital after he was shot by an extremist Hindu, and a replica of the jail cell of Mahatma Gandhi during one of the many times he was imprisoned for standing up to the British rulers of his mother country."
Listed in the bibliography, too, is Tara Bhattacharjee Gandhi, the Mahatma’s granddaughter, whom Mukerjee interviewed for about an hour and a half, he said. This gave him insight "into the Mahatma’s legacy on earth," he writes, and provided "valuable information about how Gandhi is still relevant today."
"Mrs. Gandhi also told me a lot about the way Gandhi interacted with those about him, a personal view that no book or photograph could duplicate," he writes. "She also gave me many insights on the sources of the Mahatma’s nonviolent ideals, especially his mother and the depth of his religious faith."
Gandhi’s granddaughter, Mukerjee said, "has made it her life’s work to keep the memory of Gandhi alive....She wants all of his work known, not just the fight for independence...He was a great advocate for the equality of women and the lower classes of society."
"Bit of both"

Mukerjee has written papers for the History Day competition before, beginning in sixth grade. Last year, he wrote on the role of the Presidential debates in the elections; the year before, he wrote on African Americans in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
This year’s contest theme was "Standing Up In History," and his visit to India provided an opportunity to speak to a lot of people who knew Gandhi or who make it their life’s work to study him.
Although Mukerjee speaks Bengali, the interviews were conducted in English. "A lot of the scholars speak English," he said. "The English created an elite, and the upper classes all emulate the Westerners."
Asked if he considers himself more of a Westerner or an Indian, Mukerjee responded, "I think I’m a little bit of both."
He hasn’t had any difficulties in straddling two worlds, he said. "Sometimes, there will be a conflict in tradition," he said. "I’m not sure who I’ll get married to."
While that may seem a long way off to most 14-year-olds, Gandhi, it turns out, was married at 13. In his meticulously detailed footnotes, Mukerjee writes, "Gandhi, in his autobiography, wrote about other youngsters and said he ‘congratulated them on escaping [his] lot’ by not having married earlier."

Birth of the Mahatma
Mukerjee’s paper opens with a succinct description of how Gandhi has influenced our world — from inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. "who changed the life of minorities in America forever," to inspiring Aung San Suu Kyi, now under house arrest for speaking out against the military regime in Burma.
Mukerjee then goes on to describe Gandhi’s early life, as the child of parents of the Bania caste — his father was the chief minister of Porbander; his mother was "exceptionally devout."
"His mother had a deep religious faith in Hinduism and she really passed that onto him," said Mukerjee.
"Gandhi’s childhood was not remarkable," writes Mukerjee. "He was not exceptionally intelligent, nor was he a favorite of his teachers. Notably, he prided himself on his integrity and claimed never to have lied to a classmate or teacher."

After studying law in England, Gandhi returned to India to work as a legal clerk in Rajkot, before accepting a contract to go to Durban, South Africa.
"He spent 21 years in South Africa," said Mukerjee, "fighting for the rights of the Indians who had migrated there for work and weren’t well treated. That is where his message came from for freeing India."
After slavery was abolished in the British Empire, so-called "coolies" were brought in from India by the white plantation owners in Africa. "Racism was not only rampant, but accepted by both perpetrators and victims, and was ignored by the government," writes Mukerjee.

This period is the focus of Mukerjee’s paper
"There was not just one influence, but all the small influences that made him who he was," said Mukerjee.
He gives an example: "He was ordered to take off his turban, and when he refused, he was thrown out of court."
Mukerjee explained, "The turban symbolized he was an Indian. They wanted to make him a European and he didn’t want to be."
Mukerjee then gives a second example, building on the first. Gandhi was traveling to Pretoria to represent a local merchant, who bought him a first-class train ticket. When a passenger objected to traveling with a "coloured man," Gandhi was ordered to the van compartment.

When he protested that he had a first-class ticket, and refused to go to the van compartment, he was forced to the station platform by a policeman.
As Gandhi spent a cold winter night on the train platform, Mukerjee writes, "He wondered about the wisdom of his staying any longer in South Africa, if things such as this could happen. He ruminated, ‘The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial — only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease, and suffer hardships in the process...so I decided to take the next available train to Pretoria.’"

Gandhi called a meeting of local Indians in Pretoria and a group was proposed to advocate the rights of Indians.
"This was the beginning of the Mahatma," writes Mukerjee, "and at the same time, the beginning of the end of Mohandas, the shy young man that went to England to study law — the cause for which he spoke overrode his timidity. But the Mahatma was not yet fully born...."
Gandhi talked the wealthy merchant who had hired him into settling out of court, using an arbitrator. Rather than trying a case that pitted two of the most influential Indian merchants in South Africa against each other, Gandhi set a precedent for arbitration — "neither judging nor condemning, but rather, trying to achieve an equitable compromise," writes Mukerjee.

With the case happily settled, Gandhi was set to return to India. In the midst of his farewell party, he read a newspaper article on a proposal to deprive Indians of their right to elect leaders. Quoting from Gandhi’s biography, Mukerjee writes that, instantly, the farewell party was turned into a working committee.
"He lost all shyness in the pursuit of equality and right"," writes Mukerjee. "The true Mahatma came into being."

Love of learning
"A lot of people think he didn’t fight," said Mukerjee. "He did fight; he fought nonviolently. It started with small things, like not taking off his turban, and it grew."
Eventually, he said, Gandhi rallied Indian laborers not to pay a required tax. "A lot of them ended up in jail. Eventually, the tax was repealed," said Mukerjee.
Through his research, he said, "I’ve definitely gained a new respect for Gandhi and his ideals.
Asked why people should read his paper, Mukerjee answered, "I think there are better works out there. People should read books written by the Mahatma himself."
He went on, "A lot of Indians and people in my generation don’t seem to study Gandhi. They don’t grasp him."

Mukerjee looks forward to discussing the Mahatma with the judges in the national History Day competition. He anticipates being interviewed by a panel as he was at the state level.
Asked if he hoped to win, Mukerjee answered quickly and quietly, "No, no, no"I’m just glad to be going. It’s good to meet other people with similar minds. It’s not hostile. I always like talking to others and learning."