Historical Spot: In Gandhi's footsteps

On the centenary of the Mahatma's return to his homeland, Stephen McClarence traces his extraordinary legacy

To judge from his school reports, he was a pretty average student. Here at his high school in Rajkot, a busy city in western India, they spell out his low achievement in his first year: 32nd out of a class of 34, no marks in geography, rated only "fair" by his teachers.

This rather slight lad with big ears and a serious expression seemed destined for an anonymous future. But his name was Mohandas Gandhi and, as the Mahatma, or "Great Soul", he would grow up to inspire millions and engineer his nation's independence from Britain. A sort of secular saint, he became so famous that an envelope bearing only a sketch of him and the word "India" reached him without difficulty. Today, his face beams beneficently from every Indian banknote.

Next month marks the centenary of the start of Gandhi's six-month journey home to India from South Africa, where he had spent 20 years, on and off, as a lawyer. He sailed from Cape Town to London, where he planned to spend a short time before a three-week voyage to India. The outbreak of World War 1 in August, however, inspired him to linger in Britain, recruiting volunteers for ambulance work. He finally left London in December and landed in Bombay in early January.

He was a dapper man in those days, the image of middle-class professionalism in a dark suit, wing collar and homburg hat. As my wife and I discovered as we followed India's "Gandhi Circuit", he only later adopted the loincloth and sandals that prompted Churchill's famous sneer, "a half-naked fakir". He wore the loincloth even when invited to tea at Buckingham Palace by King George V and Queen Mary. Asked afterwards if he had felt underdressed, he replied: "The king had enough on for both of us."

Our route took us well away from the regular tourist trail as we crossed Gujarat, India's most westerly state, bordering Rajasthan and the Arabian Sea. We started at Gandhi's birthplace in the port of Porbandar and took in Rajkot, Bhavnagar, where he went to college, and Ahmedabad, where he set up ashrams and lived for many years.

Each town seemed busier and more cosmopolitan than the last, until we brought the Gandhi story to a logical conclusion by flying to metropolitan Delhi, scene of his assassination in 1948 and now a potent symbol of a modern India that often seems preoccupied by the worldly concerns he rejected.

"Gandhi is read in school, but we are reading him, not following his ideas," said Professor Nirmalya Majumdar. "But his non-violence is very relevant these days and I feel that if there's no understanding of Gandhi, there's no future for India."

Majumdar and his family have crossed the nation from Calcutta on a pilgrimage to the 18th-century house where Gandhi was born in 1869. It's along a narrow street in Porbandar, which gradually dwindled in importance as a trading port with Africa and Arabia as Bombay developed. Thousands of dhows, great wooden ark-like boats, still pack its wharves, however, pennants fluttering in the breeze. There's a lingering odour of drying fish.

The Gandhi house is just off the main square, where flower-sellers thread marigolds into garlands and stalls stock clay pipes, bundles of multicoloured twine and vivid pyramids of spices. In the centre of the square is a statue of the Mahatma striding out into a hopeful future. We saw similar statues in every town we visited.

Up to 2500 visitors a day leave their shoes at the gate of the house and stand in silence in the small, square room where he was born. The atmosphere is devotional, with lilies scattered on the floor. Aptly for a man who so conspicuously espoused simplicity, the house, with its challengingly steep staircases, is unfurnished.

Across the courtyard, a crowd of schoolchildren with iPhones jostled to photograph a pair of Gandhi's owlishly round spectacles. Upstairs are pictures of him meeting Lord Mountbatten, Charlie Chaplin and '30s Lancashire mill girls, some of them wearing carpet slippers, mobbing him and cheering. Even in Lancashire he was wearing the loincloth.

Down on the shore, the Gandhi Memorial Centre, which opened four years ago, boasts tableaux of him spinning, marching and bicycling. Our guide for the week in Gujarat, the punctiliously attentive OV "Ram" Ramkishore, had a fund of stories about him. "People said to him, 'Why do you travel third-class in trains?' He said, 'Because there is no fourth class'."

The next day, we followed the circuit, devised by Gujarat's state government, to Rajkot, where Gandhi's family moved when he was seven years old. We passed fields of cotton, acres of bright red chillies drying in the sun, pilgrims walking to the shrines of their mother goddesses, and birds at every turn: storks, spoonbills, flamingos, pelicans, ibis, cranes. On the way we visited the Khadi Plaza, a factory and shop run on Gandhian principles, where village girls at clattering looms turn out the hand-woven cloth that he saw as a key to Indian self-reliance.

Rajkot represents industry on a vaster scale: around 80% of India's car components are made in this hectic city. Unless you're fascinated by car components, it's best to head down the congested back streets of the old market area. Turn right at a handkerchief stall, look for a shop selling schoolbags and under an archway is the late 19th-century courtyard house where Gandhi lived.

Now an absorbing museum, it explores his life and influence. Its manager, 82-year-old Prabhat Dangar, recalls seeing him at a public meeting in 1939, eight years before independence.

"He gave a fiery speech and I remember the cavalry dispersing the very big crowd," he said. "It was just pell-mell, but even when the Britishers were arresting Gandhi, they treated him with respect."

The museum includes one of the most moving images of him, gazing in profound despair and disbelief at his wife Kasturba on her deathbed. The most recent entry in the visitors' book, signed by "Retired man", says simply: "I am too small to comment on him."

We stayed at nearby Gondal, an engaging little town where Gandhi was reputedly first honoured as Mahatma. One of its disused palaces, scattered with snarling stuffed leopards, has been temporarily converted into a Bollywood film set representing Victorian Bombay.

The real India of the past still survives upstairs - the Maharaja's old library, locked, shuttered and silent, with its busts of John Milton and Walter Scott and its acres of long-unread middlebrow novels with era-defining titles such as True to the Old Flag by GA Henty, and For the Sake of His Chum by Walter C Rhoades.

Across town, the Orchard Palace has become a guesthouse furnished in 1950s and '60s style. With peacocks patrolling its lawns and meals served at a dining table as long as a cricket pitch, it's one of the most delightful places we have ever stayed in India, a peaceful retreat with a lingering Chekhovian atmosphere. "A pair of owlets are nesting in a tamarind tree near your room," said Ram as the sun set.

We would have been happy to stay for weeks, but had to drive on to Bhavnagar, where Gandhi studied at college and a cavernous museum traces his life with photographs and mementos. Exhibit number 39 is labelled as the pistol used by his assassin.

Our tour ended in Delhi, at the place where the pistol was used. Birla House, in the leafy south of the city, is a calm and serious place where a path of footprints follows Gandhi's last teatime walk across the lawn to the place where he was shot. "The limp body softly sank to the ground," said a witness.

Upstairs, the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum, with its interactive displays, may strike some as trivial, but it conceivably reaches out to the young. As Ram said, rather sadly: "His ideas and ideals are still relevant to us, but many people now remember him only on his birthday and at elections to garner votes. Gandhiji lived in the age of the bullock cart; now even the desert nomads have mobile phones."

A few miles across the city, the more traditional - and impressively comprehensive - National Gandhi Museum displays his bloodstained clothes, recordings of his slightly lisping voice and the staff he carried on the famous 1930 Salt March, which was such a turning point in the independence struggle.

The museum is near Raj Ghat, where Gandhi was cremated: a popular place for Sunday outings for families wanting to walk thoughtfully around a simple landscaped garden with an Eternal Flame and black marble slab surrounded by wreaths of marigolds and rose petals.

The tour had proved absorbing, but nothing suggested Gandhi's presence more powerfully than the previous stop on our trip, back in Gujarat. There, in the heaving city of Ahmedabad, crowds of devotees are drawn to his simple single-storey house in the riverside Sabarmati Ashram. Its well-documented displays feature his desk, his spinning wheel and, for the completist, his wooden spoon.

Much less visited, a couple of miles up the road, is the Kochrab Ashram, which he set up four months after arriving back in India in January 1915 (he had spent several months in Britain on the way). The caretaker Bhin Baldur took us around this small garden estate of buildings, pointing out the bathroom "where Gandhi used to ablute" (now a storeroom) and "the kitchen where he fetched pails of water". Bhin acknowledged the palpable atmosphere of the place: "We still feel that Gandhiji has just gone out for some chore and will return shortly."

The narrow road that the ashram used to stand alongside has become a dual carriageway. On the far side are a shopping mall and a cellphone store.

We drove to the airport for our flight to Delhi. It boasts a shop selling Gandhi watches, Gandhi paperweights, Gandhi desk calendars, Gandhi sports shirts. The Mahatma is still relevant, then, in 21st-century India: he has become a brand. - © The Telegraph

• McClarence travelled with Cox & Kings (coxandkings.co.uk), which offers a 12-day private tour similar to the one he took from £2295 (about R41100) per person, with flights from London.

Quick Facts:  Where to stay

. Porbandar

Lords Eco Inn (lordshotels.com) is a bright new contemporary-styled hotel overlooking the Arabian Sea. Its smart Blue Coriander restaurant is very popular. Doubles from R510, including breakfast.

. Gondal

Orchard Palace (gondalpalaces.com) has a charming period atmosphere and is set in beautiful gardens. The Maharaja's former private railway carriage has also been fitted out as guest accommodation. Doubles cost R1200, full board.

. Bhavnagar

Nilambag Palace (nilambagpalace.com) is an impressive if slightly austere 19th-century building with large rooms, helpful staff and a pleasant garden restaurant serving excellent food. Doubles from R840, room only.

. Ahmedabad

The House of MG (houseofmg.com), formerly an Art-Deco mansion, is a triumph of chic artistic design with exceptionally comfortable rooms. The rooftop restaurant is busy and atmospheric. Doubles from R1300, including breakfast.

. Delhi

ITC Maurya (itcmaurya@itchotels.in) has the glamorous buzz of a big international hotel: every night is like Bollywood Oscars night. It has luxurious rooms, helpful staff and a welcoming Golf Bar. The half-dozen restaurants include the highly rated Bukhara. Doubles from R3400, room only.

Further information: See gujarattourism.com and incredibleindia.org.