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(B) Evaluation :
Roy's appreciation of Gandhiji's personality is interesting. But it has its merits as well as shortcomings.
A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES: Dilip Kumar Roy
It seems from this sketch that Mahatma Gandhi was never clear about his views on art He had been influenced by two Christian thinkers of his time, Tolstoy and Ruskin. After listening to Gandhiji's humanitarian ideas, even Roy was reminded of Tolstoy's views on art and he found that Mahatmaji's philosophy had been influenced by the Russian artist's. Roy cites a passage from Tolstoy's What's Art ?:
"
The artists of various sects like the theologians of various sects, mutually exclude and destroy themselves. listen to the artists of the schools of our times and you will find, in all branches, each set of artists disowning others. In poetry the old romanticists deny the parnassians and the decadents, the parnassians disown the romanticists and the decadents, the decadents disown all their predecessors and the symbolists; the symbolists disown all, their predecessors and les mages:and les mages disown all, their predecessors. Among novelists we have. naturalists, psychologists and nature-ists, all rejecting each other. And it is the same in dramatic art, in painting and in music. So that art, which demands such tremendous laboursacrifices from the people, which stunts human lives and transgresses against human love, is not only a thing not clearly. and firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory ways by its own devotees that it is difficult to say what is meant by art, and especially what is good, useful art for the sake of which we might condone such sacrifices as are being offered at. its shrine."93
Mahatmaji's concept of Sarwodaya is a kind of translation of Ruskin's Unto this Last. Like Ruskin, he had a utilitarian view of art. Nothing was valuable to him that did not contribute directly to the social upliftment of the people and their spiritual well-being. Gandhiji's view of spirituality was ascetic. What we find mentioned here is a simple, didactic view of art akin to Ruskin's.
But Tolstoy, Ruskin and Gandhiji could not appreciate art as art, valuable in itself. Romain Rolland seems to be apologetic in his defence of art when he writes:
"It is indubitably evident that Nature is the supreme artist. Only, one would have a personality like his (Gandhiji's) supplement his apotheosis of Nature by some such remark as:
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