Thinking of the Mahatma

Every Gandhi Jayanti, we naturally tend to reflect on the life and legacy of the father of the nation and of his relevance in the present day. He led our freedom movement with his unique moral and powerful force of ahimsa and satyagraha. This has been inspiring struggles of the weak across the world since; the civil rights movement of the Blacks, led by Martin Luther King in the United States being the most notable. 

In the Hindu tradition, Gandhi chose the path of renunciation and asceticism; dressing in a dhoti, choosing to live in an ashram as a sanyasi spinning the charkha, but in a complete rupture with tradition becoming a political crusader for freedom, for improving the lives of the poorest, and bringing about a societal transformation. For the colonised people of India, he became the Mahatma, the Great Soul, who enthused them, giving them a new confidence that they would get their colonial masters to leave and create a new ‘Ram Rajya’ in free India. 

He became one of the most powerful political leaders that the world has seen and that too without either wielding state power or leading a liberation army; only on the strength of his moral appeal. He went to the extent of undertaking fasts unto death for achieving radical changes among ordinary people, which were clearly unattainable on rational considerations, and in which he did succeed. 

The first major success was in the early 1930s to prevent further   political fragmentation by the creation of a separate voting electorate by the British for the Depressed Classes, the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, as they had done earlier for the Muslims. He succeeded politically, ended his fast and signed the Poona Pact with Ambedkar with the commitment to provide reservations for the Depressed Classes. He then became a crusader for the upliftment of the Dalits. 

His first symbolic major victory came when, with Brahmin priests, prestigious temples opened their doors and welcomed the untouchables  granting them entry for the first time, unimaginable in the India of those times. He later chose to stay in Valmiki Bastis till the end of his life and his high caste partymen had to go there to meet him.

The Partition

When India was partitioned and got freedom, he was desolate and defeated. His lifelong struggle for Hindu-Muslim unity and harmony had failed. His own party, over which his writ had run for over two decades, went against him, led by his closest aides, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel. The blood bath and the ethnic cleansing in Punjab that followed was horrendous. He undertook fasts unto death to get people to return to sanity and stop killing each other. His appeal to the Hindus not to attack the Muslims in India in retaliation for what was happening in Pakistan was a moral high ground, which turned out to be too high for a section of Hindus, and the emotional backlash led to his assassination. 

Also read: Mahatma Gandhi and the Politics of Fear and Fearlessness

But with his martyrdom he posthumously won his battle decisively. Hindu passions abated, the government was firm and effective in maintaining law and order and preventing communal violence. The Indian Constitution went on to give Muslims and other religious minorities equal rights, the right to practice and propagate their religion, and to run their educational institutions. 

As he began to clearly see the entrenched cruelty in Hindu society,  prescribed by the Manu Smriti, which said that  women and Shudras deserved to be beaten, he became a life long crusader for reform. To him reform of society was as important, if not more so, than getting freedom from the British. In a highly patriarchal society, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress welcomed women who came forward to become freedom fighters leaving the safety of their homes. The Congress had a woman as a President in the 1920s in Sarojini Naidu.

To see this in context, women in the UK had to wage a long struggle, the Suffragette movement, to get the right to vote around that time. The Indian constitution gave women equal rights. The constitutional provision of equality was far ahead of social reality where child marriage, purdah and the mistreatment of widows in upper castes were the norm.   

Gandhi's great achievement

As a social reformer, the Mahatma kept struggling with untouchability. He  began cleaning his own toilet and made it a norm for those staying in the ashram with him. He even threatened his wife that she would have to leave their home if she did not change her lifelong habits and clean her own toilet. Towards the end of his life, he had said, in exasperation, that if untouchability is intrinsic to sanatan dharma then he would have nothing to do with sanatan dharma. Thanks to the commitments made by Gandhiji, the Indian constitution provided for reservations for Scheduled Castes and Tribes and had an enabling provision for affirmative action for backward classes. The key principles enshrined in the Constitution had become the vision of the freedom struggle and its leadership. This was the Mahatma’s great achievement, though he did not live to see the constitution. 

India has since been undergoing a peaceful revolutionary transition against deep-rooted caste hierarchy and patriarchy, though the struggle is far from complete.

Gandhi kept grappling with the weaknesses in our society and was a tireless reformer all his life, a dimension that is not adequately recognised. He wielded the power of the pen and personal example to change minds and entrenched attitudes. Evoking the vision of ‘Ram Rajya’ made him a very effective teacher communicating in an idiom which found resonance with ordinary people. He was creative when he introduced in his prayer meetings the phrase “Ishwar Allah tero naam” to promote inter-faith harmony between Hindus and Muslims. When he said “Truth is God and God is truth”, he was perhaps trying to make a dent in common practice, best captured in the popular anecdote of a witness, after he has testified in court, being asked by his friends to tell them what actually happened. 

Also read: Chauri Chaura and Gandhi’s Vision of Responsibility

Then, the compulsion for his disciples to wear khadi, to sit and weave on the charkha also chipped away the settled beliefs in the caste hierarchy and the ‘dignity of labour’ became a lived experience while also driving home the importance of economic self-reliance.

An unnoticed loss, ever since we gained independence, has been the relative decline of social reform movements in our society which had been growing since the early 19th century with exposure to modern Western ideas. Politics and material advancement have been taking over. Gandhiji’s societal reform agenda remains, sadly, unfinished and needs grassroots social movements as much as laws and the power of the state.

The principle that the means are as important as the end was fundamental for him, with the moral compass remaining paramount. The 20th century has seen revolutions with laudable objectives getting corrupted and inflicting great suffering when their leaders acted on the belief that the end justifies the means. Many across the world have been looking up to India not because of its economic success or military power but for being the land of Mahatma Gandhi. Those of us who choose to forget him or to diminish his legacy do so at our own cost and at the cost of the nation.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.