For the most part of our lives, he was the omnipresent Father of the Nation. There had to be a Mahatma Gandhi Road in every city, and his name was on innumerable institutions. Every movie was preceded by the grainy Films Division footage of masses of people being led by this skinny dhoti-clad figure. Hindi film music lovers knew by heart Mohammed Rafi’s long paean to him: ‘Suno Suno Ai Duniyawalon Bapu ki Ye Amar Kahani’.
The post-Independence generation grew up with a range of feelings about Mahatma Gandhi, from admiration to doubts about some of his actions to irritation at the way our elders worshipped him, especially those who’d gone to jail during the freedom struggle. Yet, critiques of Gandhiji abounded, particularly in the Naxalite era of the 1970s. Young Marxists who thought it a waste of time to read his voluminous writings denounced him as the reason India didn’t have a revolution; he was even reviled as an agent of the British. Once the Indira Gandhi era started, he became just a photograph on the wall; someone whose thoughts were eulogised and anniversaries observed twice a year; and because of whom we enjoyed a month-long discount on khadi.
However, even this neglect by the Congress of its tallest leader seems benign compared to the malevolent pursuit undertaken by this current regime of the man without whom India’s freedom from the British can’t be imagined. Gandhi haters have always existed, but on the fringe. Today, functionaries of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre praise Gandhiji’s assassin in Parliament, and enactments of his assassination are not only staged, but those committing this sacrilege are arrested only days later and then let off on bail. These acts question the moral authority of the ruling party when it criticises a tableau depicting the assassination of Indira Gandhi in Canada.
Gandhi-phobia isn’t confined to prominent individuals and groups; it appears to be a government programme. Ashrams set up by him and his followers, which form part of the heritage of our freedom movement, where people go to see how Gandhi lived, are either being transformed drastically (the iconic Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad) or bulldozed (Sarva Sewa Sangh in Varanasi).
Both cities have a special connect to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Why couldn’t the country’s most powerful person have stopped this desecration? Are we being naive in holding such expectations from a politician who started off as an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak and has never strayed from its ideology? In November, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat proudly declared that India’s Prime Minister ‘is an RSS swayamsevak’ even today’.
There could be no ideology more diametrically opposed to Gandhiji’s than that of the RSS, from its opposition to the freedom movement to its belief in militant Hindutva which relegates `others’ to second-class status. It’s significant that Gopal Godse revealed both in his book and in interviews that his brother Nathuram was an RSS member throughout his life.
In a body blow to Gandhiji’s legacy, the July 2022 issue of ‘Antim Jan’, the monthly magazine brought out since 2012 by the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, had a special issue on V D Savarkar, co-accused with Nathuram Godse in the Gandhi assassination case! The Prime Minister is the head of the Gandhi Smriti.
That’s the trouble. Gandhi is so integral to India’s identity that it was never imagined that the country would be run by those inimical to him. Try as they might — be it through public utterances denigrating him or the misinformation campaign run by WhatsApp groups of party supporters — the BJP cannot, as yet, get rid of Mahatma Gandhi. The most recent example of this was when Modi led the G20 heads to Raj Ghat to pay homage to the Father of the Nation.
But like Gandhiji, his ideological opponents too never give up. Unable to shake off his influence, the current government seems to have reduced his legacy to the jhadu and charkha. Even these two programmes are a travesty of Gandhiji’s vision. The Prime Minister sweeping artfully scattered dead leaves at India Gate to flag off the Swacchata Abhiyan on October 2, 2014, had no connection with Gandhi’s determination to get unwilling Congress members, and his own wife, to clean their own toilets — a task considered unsuitable for so-called higher castes.
Replacing Gandhi’s photo on the cover of the annual khadi calendar with that of Modi spinning a charkha caused outrage when it happened in 2017, but seems totally appropriate now that the government has changed the flag code from khadi to polyester. That the khadi national flag encapsulated the essence of the freedom struggle could hardly matter to those who’d opposed it.
Yet, as the many satyagrahas planned every year on October 2 show, the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi remains alive among ordinary Indians.
(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.