Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a recent TV interview, stated that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was not known to the world until the 1982 movie ‘Gandhi’, was released.
The PM said that hardly anyone knew who Gandhi was before Richard Attenborough’s biographical movie came out in 1982. He also added that Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were known throughout the world but not Gandhi, whose stature should have been as high as those of the American and South African icons.
In the PM’s words, “Wasn’t it our responsibility to get him that level of global recognition during the last 75 years? Nobody knew about him. When the ‘Gandhi’ film was released, curiosity was generated across the world about who is this man. We didn’t do anything. If the world knew about Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi was no less than them and you have to accept this.”
Both Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela admired Gandhi and drew inspiration from him. Both leaders acknowledged Gandhi’s contribution to the movements they led against racial discrimination in the United States and against apartheid in South Africa respectively.
King started his civil rights movement on the path of Gandhi’s passive resistance. He supported civil disobedience and made Satyagraha the model for his movement. After the arrest of Rosa Parks, King led the 381 day boycott that would make him famous. On the non-violent direct action technique that he followed, he said, ‘Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work.’ Mandela wrote that whenever he was in solitary confinement he felt he was not alone as Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy used to accompany him all the time in his jail cell.
PM Modi claimed that India had failed in its responsibility to ensure Gandhi was known around the world. But Gandhi was not some obscure figure unknown to the world, he is recognised as one of the greatest leaders of all time, one of the giants of the 20th century, a global icon of peace and an advocate for the most vulnerable. The Mahatma was on the front page of the New York Times, on the cover of Time magazine in 1931, on the stamps of multiple countries, and more than 70 countries honoured him by erecting Gandhi statues. Albert Einstein held Gandhi in the highest regard and called him one of the greatest moral leaders of all times.
Einstein remarked: ‘I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.’
Also read: The World Knew Mahatma Gandhi Years Before the 1982 Film. PM Modi’s Claim Is False.
These examples show Gandhi’s high stature in the world from much before Attenborough’s movie hit the cinemas. Without naming the Congress, Modi accused the party of not projecting the Mahatma to the world. But then, the movie Gandhi itself was an India-UK co-production. The director, Richard Attenborough, had approached Jawaharlal Nehru for some details about Gandhi when he had first decided to make the film. Attenborough was introduced to Nehru in 1963 and they discussed the film for over three hours.
Nehru shared photographs with him and advised him not to deify Gandhi. Indira Gandhi approved the film when she was prime minister authorising $6.5 million from the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) towards the $22 million production.
The controversial comments of the Prime Minister mentioned above reveal an ignorance of world history and also of Indian history. Few figures in history have been so extensively chronicled, documented and filmed. The claim that the world did not know about Gandhi until this film was produced diminishes and belittles Gandhi and the freedom movement he spearheaded.
This deliberate falsification of facts and history is a hallmark of the far right. The obfuscation is not surprising as the Hindu right was absent from the freedom struggle. Led by the Congress, the freedom struggle had many strands, which included the Communists, Socialists, and conservatives, but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was not one of them.
The RSS and the Hindu right played little or no role in the freedom struggle. Even as they claim to be the biggest nationalists today, they were nowhere in the freedom movement, whose vision of nationalism was vastly different from the one espoused by the current regime.
We don’t need to demonstrate Gandhi’s importance to the world before Gandhi. The Mahatma doesn’t need anybody to promote his unparalleled legacy as a symbol of peace and non-violence, but for the uninformed, we do need to emphasise over and over again the epic battle he fought against imperialism, on the one hand, and religious fanaticism, on the other.
Gandhi earned the enmity of Muslim separatists and Hindu bigots alike, and was assassinated by one who belonged to the latter – a Hindu right-wing organisation which disagreed with his ideology.
The Hindu right remained unreconciled to Gandhi and it is this Hindu majoritarian ideology that rules India today. The adherents of this ideology reviled Gandhi for purportedly being too soft on Muslims. Gandhi insisted that India does not belong to Hindus alone.
Historian Ramachandra Guha writes in his monumental biography – Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World – that while Gandhi was ambivalent about the RSS, the Sangh actively distrusted him. The RSS distrusted men like Gandhi and Nehru who stood in the way of making India a Hindu state.
They have never been able to reconcile themselves to the fact that the Hindu right-wing elements were completely sidelined for decades after Independence. It is their politics and ideology which tries to show Gandhi as a lightweight because they opposed his ideology when he was alive and continue to oppose his ideas today, notably the creation of a democratic and inclusive political ethos.
Gandhi’s idea of non-violent resistance against injustice, his refusal to define citizenship on the basis of faith, pluralism, caste discrimination, interfaith harmony and solidarity are still relevant. Gandhian notions of inclusive nationalism and opposition to communal politics are particularly relevant today.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
