Images - Mahadev Desai

Images - Photographs - Personalities - Mahadev Desai
Mahadev Desai (1 January 1892 - 15 August 1942) was an Indian independence activist and writer best remembered as Mahatma Gandhi's personal secretary. He has variously been described as "Gandhi's Boswell, a Plato to Gandhi's Socrates, as well as an Ananda to Gandhi's Buddha".
Mahadev Desai was born on 1 January 1892 in the village of Saras in Surat District of Gujarat to Haribhai Desai, a school teacher, and his wife Jamnabehn. Jamnabehn died when Desai was seven years old. In 1905, aged 13, Mahadev was married to Durgabehn. He was educated at the Surat High School and the Elphinstone College, Mumbai. Desai graduated with a BA Degree, and after earning his L.L.B in 1913 took a job as an inspector at the central co-operative bank in Bombay.
Mahadev Desai first met Gandhi in 1915 when he went to meet him to seek his advice on how best to publish his book (a Gujrati translation of John Morley's English book On Compromise). Desai joined Gandhi's Ashram in 1917 and with Durgabehn accompanied him to Champaran that year. He maintained a diary from 13 November 1917 to 14 August 1942, the day before his death, chronicling his life with Gandhi. In 1919 when the colonial government arrested Gandhi in Punjab, he named Desai his heir. Desai was for the first time arrested and sentenced to a year in prison in 1921.[citation needed] He was Gandhi's personal secretary for 25 years, but as Verrier Elwin wrote of him, "he was much more than that. He was in fact Home and Foreign Secretary combined. He managed everything. He made all the arrangements. He was equally at home in the office, the guest-house and the kitchen. He looked after many guests and must have saved 10 years of Gandhi's life by diverting from him unwanted visitors". Rajmohan Gandhi writes of Mahadev Desai thus: "Waking up before Gandhi in pre-dawn darkness, and going to sleep long after his Master, Desai lived Gandhi's day thrice over - first in an attempt to anticipate it, next in spending it alongside Gandhi, and finally in recording it into his diary".
In 1920, Motilal Nehru requisitioned the services of Mahadev Desai from Gandhi to run his newspaper, the Independent, from Allahabad. Desai created a sensation by bringing out a hand-written cyclostyled newspaper after the Independent's printing press was confiscated by the British government. Desai was sentenced to a year's rigorous imprisonment for his writings in 1921 - his first stint in prison. In prison, Desai saw that the jail authorities mistreated prisoners, frequently flogging them. His report describing the life inside an Indian jail, published in Young India and Navajivan, compelled the British authorities to bring about some drastic jail reform measures. Desai took over as editor of Navajivan in 1924 and from 1925 he began the translation into English of Gandhi's autobiography and its serial publication in the Young India. The following year he became chairman of the executive committee of the Satyagraha Ashram and won a prize from the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad for his article in Navajivan. ...
Following the collapse of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and the deadlock at the Round Table Conference, Gandhi restarted the Civil Disobedience Movement. The colonial government, under the new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, was determined to crush the movement and ordered a clampdown on the Indian National Congress and its activists. In 1932, Desai was arrested again and sent to prison with Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Following his release in 1933, he was re-arrested and detained in the Belgaum Jail. It was during this time in prison that he wrote Gita According to Gandhi which was posthumously published in 1946. He also played a role in organising people's movements in the princely states of Rajkot and Mysore in 1939 and was put in charge of selecting satyagrahis during the Individual Satyagraha of 1940. Desai's final prison term followed the Quit India Declaration of 8 August 1942. He was arrested on the morning of 9 August 1942 and, till his death of a massive heart-attack six days later, was interred with Gandhi at the Aga Khan Palace. Desai was 50 at the time of his death.
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