Why was the Mahatma killed?....

There is a very old essay, simply titled ‘Gandhi,’ by Mary McCarthy, that brilliant writer who was at the centre of the Golden period of American intellectual imagination in the 1950s and the 60s. Mary McCarthy was a junior teacher at Sarah Lawrence, one of the snootiest women's colleges in America. A few months after the Mahatma’s assassination, she movingly wrote in that short essay of her horror at the indifference and cynicism with which the “news” was received in the Sarah Lawrence faculty cafeteria. There is a haunting sentence in that essay: “The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger.”

 

Of course, everyone knows that it was Nathuram Godse who pulled the trigger that afternoon in the lawns of Birla House, New Delhi. But we have conveniently forgotten why Godse and his confederates came to pass a death sentence on this saintly figure.

 

The Mahatma was killed because a very, very small group of bigoted men disapproved of his politics. This group of fanatics was unwilling to tolerate this simple man with a profoundly simple but powerful message. And, the only way these fascists could win the argument against the Mahatma was to silence him permanently.

 

The Mahatma was killed because he preached a message of communal harmony and insisted on amity between the Hindus and Muslims. The Mahatma was killed because he was using all his spiritual capital to see to it that the newly liberated India did not succumb to the sectarian demands of sectarian Hindus. His very presence had given heart to Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel who refused — and refused wisely — to treat the Muslims as second-class citizens. Those who killed the Mahatma thought that once the old man was out of the way, they would be able to ride roughshod over Nehru and put an end to his secular politics. The Gandhi-Nehru combine was seen as a stumbling block by those who wanted to make the new nation into a Hindu rashtra. That combine had to be disrupted and dissolved. Hence, they passed a death sentence against the twentieth century's tallest moral leader.  

Those shots at Birla House on January 30, 1948, were the first violent expression of a kind of intolerance. Indeed, the intolerance of which we have heard quite a bit in the recent days can be traced back to the Gandhi killers. The unfinished agenda of Gandhi's killers continues to entice and excite the fanatic.

 

I think we owe it to ourselves that every so often we should be asking the question: why was the Mahatma killed? 

 

A controversy appears to be brewing about the visit of Kathleen Wynne, premier of Ontario province in Canada, to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The Canadian politician is known to be a strong proponent of same-sex marriages and this position is being opposed by some people of the Sikh community in Canada. Because of this opposition, it is being debated whether she should be ‘honoured’ with a ‘siropa’ when she visits the Golden Temple. The wise men who run the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee can be expected to take a wise decision. 

 

However, a larger issue is associated with such visits by political leaders from England, America and Canada to religious places here (and, in indeed in their own country.) The larger issue is the changing nature of politics and political mobilisation in these presumably 'superior' political systems.

 

As a student of political science, I find it rather odd that American, British and Canadian politicians feel obliged to undertake such visits and what these publicised excursions are meant to symbolise. It is indeed curious. During the 1960s and the 1970s, the American Political Science establishment used to preach the virtues of the new ‘political man,’ a citizen who had liberated himself from the primordial appeal of religion, tribes, community and caste. That was also the time when American universities had huge funds at their disposal which were used to finance research and teaching of political science in universities of Asia and Africa. The intellectual assumption was that these ‘third world’ countries suffered from a certain kind of backwardness because of their religion-centric mobilisation. 

 

Now, the established leaders of these self-declared ‘advanced’ political systems are resorting to those very undesirable practices which were decried as ‘backward’ three decades ago. In India, this proclivity is denounced as ‘vote bank’ politics. In these ‘advanced’ polities, pandering to minorities and their religious sensibilities is now applauded as smart politics. 

 

LAST week, the media fraternity lost a very fine practitioner. Arindam Sen Gupta, a colleague and friend from my Times of India days, passed away after a bout with cancer. 

 

Arindam was — for a newsman — too much of a gentleman. But behind his amiable personality was a fierce professional. For nearly a decade, he served as executive editor of The Times of India and in that capacity, he gave a quiet sense of direction to the paper. He specially imparted an endearing equanimity to the aggressive energy in the newsroom. He had a sense of fairness and an unflinching liberal disposition. He was married to a wonderfully brave and self-possessed woman, Swati Mitra. And, she was a steadying influence on Arindam. He will be missed by all his friends. 

 

EVERY year, the entire Tribune family celebrates February 2 as Founder's Day by way of remembrance for its founder Sardar Dayal Singh Majithia. A few days ago, I was most gratified to receive a laboriously hand-written communication from an 80-year-old reader in Panipat, Dr PK Malhotra, who, he says, is also known as — and better known as — ‘Dr Kumar Panipati.’

 

In his letter, Dr Malhotra argues that Sardar Majithia’s act of generosity and foresightedness in setting up The Tribune Trust was so extraordinary and so atypical that his story, like the sagas of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, should be told over and over again. 

 

In any case — and, that is what stumped me the most — many decades ago, he had composed a poem in praise of Sardar Dayal Singh Majithia. He was kind enough to permit me to reproduce the verse: 

 

 

(That precious drop which time squeezed out of granite, must indeed be taken to adorn the eyelashes! This man has watered the garden with his blood, this man must be weighed against the fragrance of every crop!)

 

LASTLY, on Republic Day, I was amused to receive a call from Natwar Singh, who thought I deserved to be complimented for making our honourable Raksha Mantri Manohar Parrikar put on a proper bandgala and formal shoes for the Rajpath show. 

 

Natwar Singh, a former diplomat and former foreign minister, is a fastidious dresser and he takes a dim view of those who do not display appropriate sartorial taste. He complimented me for using these columns last week to warn the Raksha Mantri that his dress preference on Republic Day would be watched. 

 

Care for coffee?