Gandhi is dead, long live Gandhi

On August 15, 1947 when Jawaharlal Nehru was waxing eloquent about India's tryst with destiny in the glittering lights of Delhi, Gandhi was at the heart of darkness on the streets of riot-torn Calcutta, trying to stop the carnage with only his walking stick for company. Gandhi's opprobrium of the national leadership, by wilfully absenting himself from the celebrations of an independence he had devoted his life to achieve, was not lost on Nehru. In the same speech, he acknowledged that they had "...been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message". 

Tilak was once asked what role he saw for himself in independent India. He replied that he would probably be locked up in a jail somewhere. Independence did not mean the absence of injustice; and as long as there was injustice in the country, he would continue to protest against it. I like to believe the same fate would await Gandhi if he was alive today. 

Unlike Nehru and his ilk, who believed sovereignty and self-rule were prerequisite for social change, Gandhi insisted true freedom could only be achieved when political independence was accompanied by a parallel program of social reform. This is why he would often say, "Sanitation is more important than independence". Political freedom which was not built on the three pillars of Sarvodaya, Swaraj and Swadeshi, was meaningless for him. 

As we go through the perfunctory national routine of remembering Gandhi on his death anniversary, it is a good time to take stock and reflect on the irreconcilable gap between Gandhian values and our societal priorities. India has more mobile phones than toilets, more TVs than school teachers. I am ashamed to think of what Gandhi would have to say about this state of affairs. 

 In his legendary speech before the passing of our constitution in the constituent assembly, Ambedkar, a life-long critic of Gandhi, denounced Gandhi's personality and method of protest as a destabilising force in Indian democracy:  "First thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives... It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy (emphasis mine) and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us." 

But Ambedkar's insistence on constitutional methods was predicated on his belief that the Indian state would fulfil its part of the social contract and act in the best interests of citizens. However, successive governments since independence have betrayed the public trust; and today the fiduciary relationship between the public and our polity is at its nadir.  We live in a world which is Gandhi's dystopia- sarvodaya has been replaced by industrial capitalism, social service by consumer culture, corporate trusteeship by naked profiteering. A cursory look at the daily newspaper may be sufficient to convince us that Gandhi is no longer relevant in India. However, as long as our political class continue to bypass rule of law, destroy our public institutions and indulge in corruption, Gandhi and his method of protest will never be out of fashion. JP's Total Revolution and Anna Hazare's Lokpal agitation are proof enough.

Later in his speech Ambedkar warned against the cult of personality around Gandhi, requesting all those interested in maintenance of democracy "not to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enables him to subvert their institutions. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness...no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship." (emphasis mine).

Growing up, I used to think that "Mahatma" was not an epithet but the first name of Mohanlal Mohandas Gandhi. Our engaged with Gandhi was primarily through the dry history textbooks that we opened just before our Board exams. These textbooks were written by reverential ideologues who started their hagiography after interval i.e. with Gandhi's arrival in India, when the man and his ideology were fully formed. Like Alok Nath who was born as Babuji, Gandhi came across as a humourless ascetic who was born as Bapu. It is inconceivable to think of Gandhi as an aam aadmi who worked his way to greatness, correcting one fault at a time. His life in England and South Africa was an apprenticeship in non-violence, a gestation period in which his ideas matured. How did a western-educated, bowler-hat wearing Anglophone who took French lessons and "ate meat to grow tall like the Englishmen" end up writing Hind Swaraj, which was a complete rejection of the Western way of life? 

We are enamoured of a politician who refuses beacon lights because our generation is not used to a leader who cleans latrines and removes the night soil of the lower castes. Gandhi's biggest legacy to us is the story of how he overcame the social and religious prejudices that dominated the world he was born into. He broadened his outlook by reaching out beyond his immediate surroundings to converse with some of the most inspiring figures of his time like Tolstoy (only person Gandhi addressed as "Sir" in the 35,000 letters that he wrote), Thoreau, Romain Rolland and John Ruskin. His meticulous reading of books as varied as the Bible and Plato's Republic provided the theoretical framework for his experiments with truth. 

George Orwell started his essay titled Reflections on Gandhi by saying saints should be judged guilty until proven innocent. To evaluate Gandhi using the yardstick of sainthood is being unfair to a man who carried the burden of "Mahatma" like a cross throughout his life. Even Gandhi was not a perfect Gandhian because of his decision to involve himself in the imperfect world of politics, which by its very nature involves compromises and concessions. When I read escapist biographies like Joseph Lelyveld's Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India I am reminded of the story of seven blind men who tried to understand the whole elephant by touching only a small part of its body. 

Gandhi may have died considering himself a failure, but that is the fate of all great men. The best of them cannot live up to their own high standards. As Orwell said, "Even Gandhi's worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive."

In his autobiography Gandhi disclosed that as a high-school kid, he was afraid of ghosts and could not sleep with the lights off. That this kid could grow up to take on the might of the British empire and become the man we now revere as Mahatma Gandhi, should inspire every child that is frightened of monsters under the bed.