To reduce Gandhi to a Hindu-Muslim wrangle today is to misunderstand the Mahatma
What was different about this October 2, 2017, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s 148th birth anniversary? For one, several groups and individuals on social media seemed to use the occasion to try and put the Mahatma in his place, so to speak. The Mahatma haters and baiters, as usual, held him responsible for all sorts of ills — Partition, Muslim-appeasement, weakening of Hindus, favouring Jawaharlal Nehru, wrong economics, and so on.
Indictment
Many, who were not so negative, nevertheless questioned his Mahatmahood. Some even considered Nathuram Godse’s final statement in the trial, made on May 5, 1949, before the Punjab High Court, then in session in Shimla, to be the definitive indictment. An important fact to remember about the latter, however, is that the statement in circulation is via Gopal Godse, Nathuram’s brother and co-accused, not a certified copy of the court records.
Earlier this year, the Central Information Commission (CIC), disposing of an RTI plea, ruled that a copy of Nathuram’s statement should not only be supplied to the appellant but also displayed, along with other Gandhi assassination related material, on the National Archives website. Though the order was passed on February 16, 2017, I was unable to find the official version of Nathuram’s statement anywhere.
I, for one, would welcome the publication of such material, along with a free and open discussion of its contents. I am convinced that it will show even more clearly how mistaken Nathuram was, how he distorted facts and motives to justify the unjustifiable, the killing of the frail, unarmed “father of the nation”
Gandhi needs not be attacked, defended, or reduced, merely to politics, Left or Right or Centre. Instead, we must go back to his times, examine his own words and his life. Who can deny that he awakened the conscience of an enslaved people, turning a restricted attempt at reform the colonial government into a mighty mass movement of national awakening? He wanted to transform not only India’s but humanity’s idea of state, society and religion. To reduce him to a Hindu Muslim wrangle would be to misunderstand his purpose.
His detractors have found no other, let alone better solution to the problems of opposing communities. Swaraj does not mean dominating or annihilating others just as it does not mean yielding to oppression or genocide. Gandhi’s satyagraha empowered millions of men and women who otherwise thought themselves helpless.
Analysis
He not only awakened a sense of agency in them, but also made them fearless in the face of vastly superior might. Those who are asking for the end of his deification are busy deifying other figures instead, thus contradicting their own objection. It seems as if their grouse is against Gandhi, not against deification as such. The sad truth about most of us is that piety and devotion come easier to us than critical analysis or independent thinking. No surprise that the fiercest detractors of Gandhi are often those who haven’t even tried to read or understand him.
When some of these thoughts were going through my mind, the terrible news of the Las Vegas carnage broke through. The videos, captured on the phones of viewers and survivors, were horrific. Before Jason Aldean started to sing, a fusillade automatic gunfire was already directed at the assembled crowd. Concert-goers were running helter-skelter, screaming.
Just then the opening chords of the electric guitar sounded and Aldean began singing, “Some days it’s tough just gettin’ up/ Throwin’ on these boots and makin’ that climb…” — all the while deadly, staccato pounding of gunfire. So much damage done, the killer, 64-year-old Stephan Paddock, took his own life. He slaughtered 59 people, injuring nearly 10 times as many in just a few minutes. Though ISIS was quick to claim responsibility, the link is tenuous, not accepted as yet by investigative agencies.
Question
The obvious question on everyone’s mind was the same: why? Why would anyone take so many lives, even reloading a weapon to continue killing people after one barrage of gunfire into an unarmed crowd?
Whatever little we know of Paddock does not offer us any clues as to his conduct or behaviour. That he could not have been “normal” or “sane” is obvious. But his “madness” still does not make any sense to us. Neither is Paddock the first of such killers, many of whom have worked their mayhem in the world’s most advanced and powerful country, the United States.
My concern, even unease, over Gandhi’s detractors totally dissipated. I had been disturbed that they had taken recourse to the Mahatma’s birthday to decry and berate him. How would they have liked themselves or their own heroes to be treated similarly? I was sure they would be much less tolerant of criticism and its timing. But, after all, what did their reproach matter?
What Gandhi lived and died for was reaffirmed, though with such heinous irony, in the Vegas massacre. Violence begins — and must end — in the minds of men. Till we know how to stop that the Mahatma will remain relevant.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)