Gandhi was a real activist, far ahead of his times

In the post-truth world, bizarre things happen. One such incident was when US President Donald Trump decided to bestow the title of “Father of India” on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at their meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. In a room full of journalists, Mr Trump trumpeted that “we’ll call him the Father of India…”. It created a furore on the Indian social media, with people pointing out that this exalted title belonged to another Indian — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. We do not know whether Mr Modi felt embarrassed or elated with the “title”, but Mr Modi’s colleague, PMO minister of state Jitendra Singh, thundered in typical bhakt style that anyone who can’t accept the PM as the “Father of India” was “not an Indian”! As both Mr Trump and Mr Modi are products of post-truth politics, a certain degree of affinity in their thought process is understandable. But one wonders what the original holder of the title, the man who made truth and non-violence his dual arsenal to fight the mightiest colonial empire in the world, would have thought about this whole issue! He would perhaps been dismissive about the title (great persons are known for their acts, not their titles), but one may safely surmise that he would not be amused by the practice of some members of the ruling party terming anyone “anti-national” for simply criticising government policies or refusing to eulogise the
Prime Minister.  

As we celebrate Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, it’s time to revisit Gandhian principles and their relevance today. In a conflict-torn world faced with threats of global terrorism, racial conflicts, internal strife within societies and the ever-present environmental concerns, with the disastrous effects of climate change manifesting every day, what would have been his strategy to deal with these problems? Gandhiji was no alien to conflicts. In his lifetime, he saw two world wars and the devastating power of destruction by nuclear bombs. He saw and successfully fought the most powerful and ruthless imperialist forces. He saw the rise and fall of the Third Reich, the most vicious and inhuman fascist regime practising genocide with cold-blooded ruthlessness by brutal state machinery. He suffered the partition of his beloved homeland, the most sordid saga of massacres in the Indian sub-continent except for the events preceding the Bangladesh war of independence. He himself was brutally assassinated by the forces of hatred.

The answer lies in the Mahatma’s actions and his teachings. Gandhiji identified himself with the ordinary people of this nation. His decision to travel across India in the third class compartments of trains not only gave him an immense insight about his country, but also helped him getting identified by people as one of them, not an ivory tower leader. The effect was visible in Champaran, Kheda, the Ahmedabad Mill strike and the Non-Cooperation Movement. Gandhiji could identify the main stakeholders of the freedom movement — the ordinary people — and could turn the struggle for independence into a mass nationalist movement.

For Gandhiji, the method was as important as the goal. His refusal to compromise with the principles of non-violence, that led to his calling off the Non-Cooperation Movement after the Chauri Chaura incident – where a mob attack on a police station led to the deaths of two dozen policemen — faced severe criticism within the party. But Gandhiji stuck to his principled decision, thus giving the moral vector to the freedom movement. Gandhiji understood that it was not possible to fight the brute military force of largest imperialist power on earth by unarmed masses. It was courage, not bullets, that could fight oppression. It’s only the principles, and the strict adherence to satyagraha, that gave people the courage and moral high ground to face savage lathicharges unleashed by the police on unarmed protesters, to court arrest without resorting to violence.

Gandhiji gave people that moral courage. He recognised that the plurality and diversity of India was its strength, not its weakness. Diverse and often conflicting groups came together — zamindars and peasants, industrialists and labourers, ideologically diverse groups and communities, Hindus and Muslims — under the common umbrella of the Indian National Congress under the leadership of the Mahatma. Of course, within the broader framework of ideology, it took genius of a Mahatma Gandhi to devise political strategies and tools to bring them all together not only to fight for independence, but also to fight social evils like untouchability, aiming to create a free and just society. For him, politics could not be divorced from social commitments. That’s the lesson that all political parties, especially those not in government, need to learn.

The Mahatma was not a climate activist. But today, as the world is grappling with environmental concerns that put a question mark on the very survival of the human race, what Gandhiji said almost a century ago proved to be prophetic: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West… If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” The number of earthquakes, forest fires, floods, the melting of polar caps and Himalayan glaciers at an alarming rate and other such calamities show that global warming and climate change are no longer dreaded projections of the future. It’s right here and now. Long before the world had sensed these dangers, Gandhiji had warned us about the perils of unplanned and reckless industrialisation: “The earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not enough every man’s greed.” Perhaps it is time to think about a paradigm shift on the notion of development itself, and revisit Gandhian philosophy to “live simply so that others can simply live”. His vision of holistic development by strengthening the rural economy, self-reliance, decentralisation, localised small-scale industrialisation and, most important, cutting down on superfluous consuptions could provide an alternative model of sustainable
development.

Mahatma Gandhi is more relevant today than ever before. His teachings and visions could be adopted and formulated into political tools and public policies to addreess contemporary concerns. To quote Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru: “For that light represented something more than the immediate past, it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.”