The Eternal Gandhi

Every year on his death anniversary, India remembers Mahatma Gandhi, or at least performs the pretence of remembering him. The silence at Rajghat, the familiar quotations, and a few decaying statues garlanded here and there. Yet outside these annual rituals, something has changed. Gandhi, once the undisputed moral centre of the Indian imagination, has increasingly become a contested figure. More than ever before, Gandhi’s memory is now subjected to ridicule, selective remembrance, and sometimes, outright hostility.

In an era where history is being actively reinterpreted and new heroes elevated, Gandhi appears to be losing his place not because he has been disproven, but because he no longer fits comfortably into the ideological certainties of our time.

Today, every political or social constituency seems to possess its own pantheon. Dalit assertion and politics across the country rightly places Dr B.R. Ambedkar at the forefront of their struggle for social equality, while the revolutionary Left (and sometimes a more rootless AAP) draws inspiration from Bhagat Singh. Outpacing the rest in their pursuit of laying a claim over History is the Hindu Right, which has begun venerating Vinayak Savarkar and other such figures missing from the freedom movement.

For most of the 20th century, while he was alive and for long after he was gone, Gandhi belonged to everyone. Portraits of Gandhi were commonplace in urban and rural homes, irrespective of caste or religion. In fact, Gandhi was universal in the sense that he didn’t belong just to India. Generations of children born in newly-Independent India grew up bearing witness to Gandhi’s techniques being implemented and his ideals being extolled by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

Perhaps because he belonged to everyone, Gandhi now seemingly belongs to no one.

Gandhi’s nationalism was never exclusive, his morality never convenient, and his politics never easily weaponised. He resisted being turned into a mascot for any single ideology. This universality, once his greatest strength, has become a liability in an age that rewards clarity of allegiance over stoic neutrality. When political identities harden, a figure who refuses to take sides in the expected way is easily dismissed as outdated, naive, or even obstructive.

The credit for much of this lost ground goes to the world’s biggest echo chamber, social media. Algorithms, by their very nature, push content that a person seems to have liked or engaged with earlier. Familiarity sells, and what sells most is what’s most watched. As the former British Prime Minister Theresa May remarked last month, “In the past, you’d have an Old Joe sitting on the end of the bar, muttering into his pint of beer, and nobody took any notice of him because his views were either too extreme or ridiculous. Now Old Joe mutters on social media and all the other Old Joes respond and suddenly its an objective worldview.”

Today, the public discourse around history in India has become an Old Joe’s Sangathan.

Every year on January 30, one of the top trending hashtags on Twitter (now, despairingly, X) is #NathuramGodseZindabad. A symbol of the times we live in, times where celebrating Gandhi’s assassin is seen by many as a completely rational thing to do.

The online hostility towards Gandhi reflects either a lack of understanding of history the way it is understood around the world, or a genuine refusal to engage with history objectively.

Gandhi is now derided as weak for his commitment to non-violence, accused of appeasement for his attempts at reconciliation, and caricatured as a sentimental moralist unsuited to a muscular nationalism. His assassination is now celebrated by seemingly “mainstream” accounts on X and Instagram, receiving hundreds of thousands of likes and reshares.

What makes this shift significant is not simply the criticism of Gandhi but the impulse to replace him entirely. The rewriting of history is rarely subtle. It involves amplifying certain narratives while erasing others.

Yet, despite sustained efforts to diminish him, Gandhi endures not as a statue or slogan, but as a persistent moral presence. His relevance does not stem from the perfection of his ideas, but from the questions he continues to pose. What does power mean if it is divorced from ethics? Can a nation claim greatness while abandoning compassion? Is violence ever truly redemptive, or merely expedient?

These questions refuse to disappear because the conditions that gave rise to them persist. Inequality, communal tension, state authority, and dissent remain central to India’s political life. Gandhi’s answers may not always satisfy, but his refusal to accept easy solutions remains deeply unsettling.

It is telling that even those who reject Gandhi often cannot entirely escape him. His language, imagery, and moral vocabulary still shape debates on protest, citizenship, and justice. When movements invoke non-violence, they do so in dialogue with Gandhi, whether in agreement or rebellion. When the state responds to dissent, it implicitly measures itself against the Gandhian ideal it once claimed as foundational. Gandhi is present even when he is being rejected.

Unlike Ambedkar, whose constitutional legacy can be institutionalised, or Bhagat Singh, whose martyrdom can be romanticised, Gandhi offers no easy inheritance. To follow Gandhi is not merely to admire him, but to be inconvenienced by him. His politics demands patience where anger feels justified, dialogue where hostility feels natural, and humility where certainty is tempting. It is far easier to honour him ceremonially than to engage with him seriously.

And honour him ceremonially they do. Almost every single embassy or consulate of the Republic of India around the world, boasts a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in its front lawns. Every foreign dignitary that the Government of India hosts, from the likes of Putin to Von der Leyen, are taken to Rajghat to lay a wreath at Gandhi’s memorial. Even Donald Trump was whisked off to Sabarmati Ashram almost as soon as he landed in India. Publicly venerate Gandhi on the international stage, while turning a blind eye to his name being tarnished back home; that seems to be the unstated government policy of the day.

The attempt to push Gandhi out of India’s moral landscape ultimately reveals more about the present than about the past. It signals an impatience with complexity, a desire for heroes who affirm rather than challenge, and a preference for certainty over conscience. But history has a way of resisting such simplifications. Figures who are inconvenient are often the ones who endure.

On Gandhi’s death anniversary, the question is not whether we should agree with him, but whether we are willing to engage with him honestly. To remember Gandhi meaningfully is not to freeze him in reverence or discard him in contempt, but to confront the unease he provokes.

In a time when every group seeks its own heroes, Gandhi remains unsettling precisely because he exceeds ownership.

That may be his most enduring legacy. Amidst a concerted bid to tarnish his memory, Gandhi persists. Seventy-eight years after his assassination, the Mahatma endures not as a relic of the past, but as a mirror held up to the present. And it is often the mirror, not the man, that provokes the deepest discomfort.

Sairaj Goudar is a lawyer and writer based in Delhi.

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