Of Gandhi and AO Hume

Keki Daruwalla

We are a nation of idol-makers and also idol-breakers. There’s a caveat here, for when we talk of iconoclasm, one is not thinking of Mahmud of Ghazni. Memory, envy and agenda comprise the trident or trishul that breaks idols for us. As memory starts ageing, the lustre around a man like Mahatma Gandhi starts wearing off.

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Two years ago, I was returning from a university after delivering a lecture and was asked by a driver of the taxi they had hired for me, ‘Sahab kya Gandhi achche aadmi they? (Was Gandhi a good man?)’ So, how can we blame Mr Amit Shah for calling Gandhi a ‘bahut chatur Bania’, as he did recently somewhere in Chhattisgarh? He was thinking of Gandhi being far-seeing and cited his known opinion that the Congress should have been dissolved after Independence. But Mr Shah possibly did not realise that when a man of his stature, president of the BJP, lets drop such an expression, it is likely to stick to our memory of Gandhi, will become a part of history. What do I remember of European history, or of the holy Roman Empire? It was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. The 1688 Great and Glorious Revolution of England? It was neither great, nor glorious, nor a revolution. So will Gandhi be confined to that triple-worded mantra, ‘bahut chatur Bania’?

The second tine of the trident I talked about was envy. That is bound to occur when smaller people find themselves on the same stage as Nehru and Gandhi. Incidentally, when we denigrate Nehru, as is the fashion today (it is almost compulsory), do we remember that Nehru spent 10 years in jail, a place where Jinnah did not spend a day? Not a night did he spend there, the maker of Pakistan, with the jailor passing him his thali of dal roti through a grill at sunset. I am never tired of pointing out Nehru’s 10 years in jail, where he wrote most of his books. People like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were proud to meet Nehru, such was his stature. And Einstein downwards everyone was happy and proud to meet Gandhi.

Gandhi incidentally was not happy meeting Mussolini, the man favoured by the veterans of our boisterous roistering right-wingers. In his book “The Good Boatman”, Rajmohan Gandhi says, “When he (Gandhi) met Mussolini in Rome in 1931, another facet of his non-violence was revealed. He disliked the Italian dictator’s trophies of war and suspected his ‘catlike eyes’. He thought Mussolini was a cruel man.” The author has culled these facts from ‘The Diary of Mahadev Desai, May 1932’.

Thank God that the Congress did not dissolve itself after Independence, or we would have been at the mercy of the Hindu Mahasabha. How would my generation have felt if after Gandhi’s emphasis on truth, ahimsa and communal harmony, the nation would have been led by Godse’s ‘ideals’?

Then comes agenda. It is a fallacy of the present political establishment to equate Nehru mukti with Congress mukti. Let Nehru and Gandhi rest where they are and attack, like all robust politicians do — and politics is a game for robust men, just look at Mr Shah — the Congress, Emergency downwards. When are we going to see a non-Nehru family president of the Congress? Next century? After Rahul, will the next Congress president be a Vadra?

The current mantra is aggression. Pakistanis behead our men? Give them surgical strikes and show all of it on TV, otherwise where’s the point? Nepal won’t play ball with the Madhesis? We’ll fix you buddy. And in our own Uttar Pradesh, you are not happy with the beef ban? And you were unhappy that we did not give a single ticket to a Muslim? We will give you Adityanath Yogi. Don’t blame politicians. Today’s Indian being what he is, aggression is the mantra for votes. Under such circumstances, can there ever be any negotiation between Gandhism and the current stance of right-wingers? Gandhian values are well and truly entombed, not just by right-wingers, but by the Indian youth itself.

But the entire freedom struggle cannot be ignored. So appropriate Patel. If the Thackerays (not to be confused with our Calcutta-born William Makepeace Thackeray of Vanity Fair fame) can appropriate Shivaji, why can’t BJP appropriate the Sardar of Bardoli? At least one icon is safe. I heard Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as a kid in 1947 when he came to Junagadh. To translate a Gujarati saying, he was like a pitcher of cold water (thanda pani nu matlu). He mixed up his metaphors though. He said ‘Hyderabad is already in our stomach, we can swallow it whenever we want to.’ Cool, calm, Iron Man of India. God rest his soul.

It is the Champaran centenary, for God’s sake, and such statements are made! Gandhi did not show any cunning here. He was just confronted with the terrible iniquity forced down by the English indigo planters on the poor peasants and he went there and slogged for eight months. He defied arrest and the tinkathia system whereby 3/20th of each holding was given to indigo plantation. He defied arrest and the iniquitous law was withdrawn because of his successful agitation. Gandhiji also saw the prevalence of alcoholism, untouchability and purdah in the area and tried to reform the peasantry.

Some dismissive remarks were made by Mr Shah against Allan Octavio Hume, without naming him. ‘The Congress party was constituted as a club by a British man. It had in its fold both right and left-leaning people.’ Correct. But that was the freedom movement. I am not sure how much the left (communists) or the right (Hindu Mahasabha) helped in the freedom struggle. And Hume (ICS) was a friend of India, was arguably the finest ornithologist, wanted to raise the age of Indian girls for marriage (which Congress opposed), wrote books on birds, theosophy and agricultural reforms in India. And he asked Indians to rise up against British oppression as he saw it. ‘Are ye serfs or are ye freemen?’ he asked. He wrote:

“Sons of Inde, why sit ye idle,

Wait ye for some Deva’s aid?

Buckle to, be up and doing!

Nations by themselves are made.”