This year on January 30 will be exactly 75 years to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of those against his message of non-violence and fierce defence of a syncretic India. In a series of articles and videos, The Wire takes stock of Gandhi’s murder, and delves deeper into the forces and ideas behind independent India’s first act of terror. Recent years have seen another attempt to kill Gandhi, his ideas, spirit and message. We hope to help unpack where India stands today and its future, through the lens of how the Father of the Nation’s legacy is being treated.
Will Gandhi’s ideals prevail in India or Godse’s? The very fact that such a question needs to be asked is a sad commentary on the state of the nation, 75 years after Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindutva fanatic.
The Wire’s Siddharth Varadarajan explains how today, the values Gandhi stood for are being trampled underfoot – the idea that belongs equally to all its people and not just its Hindus, that government policies should protect the environment and not harm it, that growth without equality and employment is meaningless, that people have the right to dissent without being vilified, arrested and prosecuted.
