On Mahatma Gandhi’s 154th birth anniversary, it is once again time to remember his contribution not just to India’s freedom movement, but also the political ethos that he inspired. He had the extraordinary understanding of the emerging nation’s collective consciousness and it motivated the ordinary Indian to follow him. Everybody acknowledges that he did this by appealing to India’s spiritual tradition, rising above caste and even community. In fact there were many senior personalities in the freedom movement who derided his religious inclination, either openly or in private.
He based his movement on the principle of non-violence, which was at the heart of the non-cooperation strategy. This was necessary because the non-cooperation undertaken by the common people provoked violent responses from the British at the grassroots level. The people needed to endure the pain without responding in kind. This was not easy, because the strategy hit the British where it hurt the most – their ability to exploit India economically. The pain could only be endured by developing the spiritual strength exemplified by the kind of courage exhibited by the Ranis who committed Jauhar, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and the four Sahibzaadas. Nothing could shake their resolve. The top echelons of the Congress leadership, not facing any torture of that level, did not quite empathise with the principle. They followed Gandhi because he had the people’s support, but did not lose sight of their growing personal ambitions. Mohd Ali Jinnah was Gandhi’s archetypal rival, as his civilisational impulse came from elsewhere. Pt Jawaharlal Nehru’s inclination towards Fabian Socialism ensured that, after Gandhi’s demise, the principle of mass involvement was summarily ditched and state control became the driver of the emerging nation. It was left to the likes of Vinoba Bhave to take the Gandhian approach forward outside of the establishment. The powerful intellectuals who were involved in social reform movements had already branched out in various ways, away from politics.
This more or less left the field open for a much narrower political ideology in the Congress party. Nehru was lauded as a liberal and democratic minded leader, but the party he led was already diminished, with only an aging leadership left to balance his growing hold. As a result, while the British had left, structurally and conceptually, the British Raj remained. Gandhi was relegated to sainthood, boosted into distant orbit by Godse’s senseless act. In the present, Gandhi is remembered on particular days, and his principles have been relegated to school textbooks. Marx, Lenin, Mao and Stalin find greater traction with the intellectual class. A Gandhi playing politics, today, would be immediately dismissed as ‘communal’. There is some solace, however, that he is still remembered on certain days and, for the time being, we will have to be satisfied with that.
