Mahatma Gandhi

 “Generations to come will scarce believe that a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”- Albert Einstein on Mahatma Gandhi

Talking about Mahatma Gandhi is now unfashionable. For most Indians the Mahatma is apparently no more relevant today, being reduced to a distant figure of an old bespectacled man with a walking-stick, a pious and saint like person to be annually ritualistically remembered on his birth and death anniversary. There are some who revile the man and his ideas, some going to the extent of extolling his assassin as a patriot. But then one wonders why the current regime whose ideology is far removed, even diametrically opposite to the Mahatma’s philosophy of inclusivity, truth and non violence find it necessary to publicly embrace Mahatma Gandhi. Part of the answer lies in the towering stature of the Mahatma and respect it commands globally. This was brought to the fore recently when images of the world's top 20 heads of state together walking barefoot at the Rajghat to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi splashed on screens and in prints. It was perhaps the sole sober and solemn event in the carefully orchestrated extravaganza called G20 summit held in Delhi a few days back. Part of the reason compelling the ruling regime to publicly appropriate Gandhi's legacy is also the fact that perhaps Gandhi's image as a saint-like leader of the freedom struggle still resonates in the minds of common folks in India. The paradox of being opposed to Gandhi's ideology and yet feeling the need to celebrate him publicly is very cleverly dealt with by carefully hollowing out the core of his ideology, sanitizing him and presenting him sans-ideology, reducing him to an empty or innocuous symbol. Using Gandhi's pair of spectacles as the logo of “Swachh Bharat” is an example.

One learnt about Gandhi in school classrooms but that was more about learning by rote than anything else. Outside the classroom, I grew up in RSS infused environment prevalent in close family and friends’ circle. RSS has its heroes and villains, and Gandhi was certainly not a hero, to put it mildly. Over the years as I read and learnt and got exposed to varied views on Gandhi, I began to appreciate Gandhi as a person, his views and his role in the freedom struggle. One informative book on Mahatma Gandhi’s life is written by an American author Louis Fischer titled “Mahatma Gandhi His Life and Times “. The author had met Gandhi a few times and the book was written soon after Mahatma's assassination. When one learns about him and his evolution from sources like this biography and Gandhi's own autobiography “experiments with truth” dealing with his early life, certain traits and aspects of this extraordinary personality make a deep impression, even if one does not agree with his views on issues such as sex and celibacy, prohibition, economic philosophy of “trusteeship’, his ambivalent attitude towards modern industry etc.

The one thing that strikes as really extraordinary is the centrality of the concept of Truth in his life- personal, social and political. He asserted repeatedly that it is “not the God that is the truth, it is “the Truth that is God.” He was brutally frank about his own follies and misadventures and had written of stealing money in his childhood, visiting brothel once on suggestion of a fried and turning back in England, his lust for his wife that diverted his mind from attending to his sick father. This is extraordinary for a politician and that too at a time in mid 1920s when he was emerging as a leading figure of the freedom struggle against British rule in India. His entire life has been nothing but searching for truth in his personal and his political activities.

Non-violence was equally central to Gandhi's political philosophy which he practiced throughout his life. In those days even before understanding Gandhi and his views, we derided Gandhi for this. I remember mouthing and hearing the phrase “मजबुरी का नाम महात्मा गांधी ” mocking Gandhi as a weakling and implying his advocacy of non-violence as a sign of helplessness or weakness. Masculinity has been associated with violence and non- violence continues to be seen as an effeminate characteristic. The concept of अहिंसा is found in many religions in various forms as an edict or guideline of refraining from harming other humans, animals, nature in personal conduct and practice. Gandhi elevated this principle also for political and social practice- not only in action but in speech and even in thought. He was deeply religious in the sense that religion meant ethics and morality for him. However, Gandhi's philosophy of non- violence was not merely absence of violence or even anti-violence but a positive force for attaining truth. It was not cowardice but a weapon to confront and fight injustice with. He in fact more than once stated that left with a choice between violence and cowardice, he would not hesitate to prefer violence. The concept of सत्याग्रह for him embodied both truth and non- violence, the two pillars of Gandhian philosophy. Boldness and courage is not determined by the size of one's chest or the measure of one's biceps. This frail looking man, never lying, telling and facing truth, not ashamed to admit faults and follies and challenging the might of a world-dominating imperial force without rancour, hatred or violence was perhaps the most courageous political person that the world has ever seen.

He was the first and the most prominent mass leader of the pre-independence era. He had immense faith in the capacity of the common man to fight against oppression and was convinced that a mass participation was indispensable for achieving not only freedom but also social transformation towards an inclusive peace-loving society. (For Gandhi15th Aug 1947 marked only the political independence while the arduous task of social independence: i.e. "Swaraj" still lay ahead. Shunning any official position in the first fully independent government and not even participating in the celebrations at New Delhi, he was away dousing communal flareups in Bengal). He was able to arouse millions, men and women of all ages, of all faiths, from all social strata for a given cause. This was an extraordinary achievement given the conditions of illiterate population, primitive means of communication and a rudimentary organization - The Indian National Congress. In fact during various mass mobilizations he converted the Congress organization from a club of petition- writing gentlemen into a mass party. He was not only a man of action but a man of ideas and letters and a prolific writer (nearly 100 volumes of collected writings). He debated openly and with respect with his opponents , earning their respect. Subhas Chandra Bose and Tagore disagreed with Gandhi on some issues but the fact that the former called him ‘ Father of the Nation” and latter bestowed “ Mahatma” title for Gandhi indicated profound respect that he was regarded with even by those who did not entirely agree with him.

Mahatma Gandhi is perhaps the only Indian leader whose political philosophy spread outside India and significantly influenced political struggles of the oppressed in various parts of the world. Interestingly the most prominent leader who in a sense was a practitioner of Gandhi's philosophy came from the country where Mahatma Gandhi first began and honed his concepts of Satyagraha and non-violence. Nelson Mandela the leader of the African National Congress, initially led an armed struggle against the white apartheid regime. But later, fearing violence against the whites as "historical" retaliation to avenge decades of violent oppression suffered by the blacks, adopted the policy of non- violent reconciliation which led to a fairly smooth transition to a non- discriminatory democratic South Africa. Thousands of miles away in the land of the United States, Martin Luther King took inspiration from the Philosophy of non-violence and led a peaceful political civil rights movement of the blacks against white supremacist policy of segregation and for social and political equality.

Mahatma Gandhi was particular about non-violence is speech also as for him civilized debates and discussions were fundamental to a functioning democracy. During the freedom struggle with Gandhi at the helm, the language used by the leaders against the colonial regime was civilized and dignified. The tradition continued after independence and even after the terrible violence that followed the partition, the political discourse was polite and courteous as evidenced in many spirited but civilized parliamentary debates. Bitterness and incivility entered the political language after the passing away of Gandhi, Patel, Ambedkar, Nehru although minimum decorum still was observed. In the last couple of decades however, violence has become increasingly ubiquitous all around us. The violence of hatred one encounters daily in the speeches of politicians and in the media, particularly social media and on television screens is utterly repulsive and toxic. Political opponents are viewed as enemies and heckled with abuses in insulting and vulgar language in public and even in parliament. Violence both in speech and in deed is now normalized, nay appears to have gained public approval. How else does one explain the popularity of TV channels with aggressive agenda-driven anchors and bad mouthing abusive and shouting participants. How is one to understand public support for lynching, encounters, and bulldozers and slogans of गोलि मारो.

And perhaps the aspect of Gandhi's political philosophy that is particularly relevant in the present times is its insistence on fairness and morality of both the ends and the means. For Gandhi, no objective howsoever lofty can justify immoral and violent means to achieve it. In Gandhi's view the end and the means are organically intertwined. He elaborated that whereas the end or the objective of any political programme lies in the future and is not in its control, the means that are chosen to achieve the end are. Hence the primacy and immediacy of means in our social and political actions.

The doctrine of the presently dominant ideology is not only anti-Gandhian in its aim, it it using all means, fair and foul, to achieve its avowed goal of a majoritarian semi-theocratic state- Hindu Rashtra. This is not a new or sudden development. This ideology was working for decades before independence, keeping itself isolated from the freedom movement. It came to the fore after independence and inspired an assassin to physically eliminate the Mahatma. And now that it has achieved ascendancy it is systematically killing Gandhi's soul. Coupled with relentless pursuit for personal power and glory by a demagogue at the helm, all means, fair and (mostly) foul are being deployed to remain at the helm and politically eliminate every opposition. The so-called “Chanakyas” of the government are ever devising new “carrot and stick” techniques to make the legislature, the judiciary, the media, the bureaucracy subservient to the executive top brass and make them pliant enough to be bent and twisted to suit the ruling regime's agenda. “ When asked to bend, they crawled” was how LK Advani described the media's behavior during the emergency of the 1970s. Today most of the media crawls and licks shoes without being overtly asked, and far from being watch dogs, they have become lap dogs The juggernaut of Hindutva is moving on sweeping away every obstacle in its path using whatever means available. Public resources are being poured in promoting the personality cult of the leader as the Messiah of Hindu Rashtra and as Vishwa Guru for saving the beleaguered world. Sadly, amongst those who cheer-on the cavalcade and the charioteer can be found those who pride themselves being as upholder of social morality and who not very long ago stood with Anna Hazare led anti- corruption movement, who held candle marches for this or that cause. Mesmerized by propaganda onslaught of Islamophobia and victimhood, हिंदुत्व and अमृत काल and mentally transfixed into “bhakti trance” they do not see or chose not to see the blatant corruption eroding inclusive, diverse, democratic and federal structure of India that is Bharat. In their eyes the grand idea of Hindu Rashtra justifies everything- intimidation and vendetta using investigative agencies, toppling opposition governments with bribery or threat under “operation Kamal”, whitewashing the corrupt on defection, slapping sedition charges on flimsy grounds, keeping critics locked up without trials, bypassing parliamentary conventions and using brute force of majority and not consensus, to name a few. It is only the victimized opposition party leaders and a few intellectuals (derisively labelled as "Libtards") who raise occasional protesting noise. There is deafening silence from general public, from civil society on account of either indifference or because of fear. It seems for us Indians democracy begins and ends with elections, what happens in between elections be damned. The nation built on these immoral and amoral ideas and practices will be a dystopian nightmare and not a utopian सोनेकी चिडिया. With majoritarian hegemony and state patronage and promotion of Hindu religion and demonization of other religions, Hindu Rashtra is almost here in a way- de facto if not de jure. And strangely enough in spite of this the believers raise the war cry of Hinduism being in danger with ludicrous "Jihad" conspiracy theories. What "final" shape the Hindu Rashtra will take is unclear. Interestingly, अमृत काल has recently been renamed कर्तव्य काल , possibly because the former sounded similar to the now past-expiry-date and discredited slogan of अच्छे दिन. It is also a subtle shift in messaging on what to expect.

There are perhaps lingering fears in the minds of the regime that the flame of Gandhism may be still flickering in some remote corners withstanding the Hindutva hurricane. They perhaps have not forgotten that JP Narayan was inspired by Gandhism. It may not be enough to hollow out Mahatma Gandhi's thoughts, they need to be turned inside out. Maybe soon we will see revised history claiming Mahatma as an ardent supporter of Hindutva. Or someone may be annointed as the modern-day Mahatma, relegating the original to the dustbin of history. Already, some months back the wife of a Maharashtrian minister proclaimed that there are two fathers of the nation- the original of the yesteryears and the current modern one of the new Bharat. And very recently another high official holding a constitutional position, higher in the order of protocol precedence, has reiterated the same with another epithet युगपुरुष . The fact that the “original” and the pretender couldn't be more contrasting is indicative of how the times have changed.

When depressing thoughts cloud one's mind, Mahatma Gandhi's optimistic words provide some solace and hope: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always”- Mahatma Gandhi