At the very outset, two things can be said about Gandhi. One, no leader of modern India has been misunderstood as much as Gandhi. It would be true to say that Gandhi has been written about a lot, but understood very little. Two, today we need to understand him more than ever before. A proper understanding of Gandhi is very necessary not just because it would do justice to him posthumously but also (and more so) because it is connected to our collective survival as a people.
The irony regarding the misunderstanding is that it is shared by Gandhians and Gandhi-bashers alike. They are both jointly united in creating distortions about Gandhi. There is a reason for this. Gandhi was no theoretician. He did not consciously construct a blueprint either of his theory or of an ideal social order. He often said that his life was his message. This meant that Gandhi’s ideas and ideals, were not codified at one place in the form of a doctrine but were diffused in the form of his activities. Gandhi was no Marx and he did not leave behind an explicitly worked out theory codified in a manifesto. There is certainly no Gandhian manifesto that we can use today to correctly identify his theory and vision. What Gandhi did leave behind was many decades of political and social activism. He himself said that anyone wishing to follow him, after he was dead and gone, should simply look at what he did and how he did it rather than look for any well-codified doctrine.
This has created quite a bit of confusion in independent India on who is a real Gandhi or what constitute a true Gandhian activity. It is often not easy to distinguish a fake Gandhian activity from a genuine one. It is quite possible for any person or political party or a social movement to claim to be a Gandhian and be completely unGandhian in reality. It is therefore extremely necessary to go directly to Gandhi and not via the multiple images of Gandhi that have been created by his followers and adversaries.
Much is made of his position on religion and politics. That he defended religions entry into politics, mixed politics with religion and corrupted politics by introducing obscurantism into it, is an important part of the mist that surrounds Gandhi. In reality Gandhi made a crucial distinction between what he called Religion which he defined as a moral code of a social order, and specific religions (Hinduism, Islam, Christiniaty etc.) He called Religion (with a capital R) the tree and religions as different branches of the same tree. In 1946 he advised his followers: “There are many religions but Religion is only one. You should follow that one Religion.” Whereas he supported politics being based on religion, i.e., a moral order, he was against denominational religions entering politics. In an interview given to his biographer Louis Fischer in 1942, he said: “religion is a personal matter which should have no place in politics.” In 1947 Gandhi again repeated: “religion is a personal affair of each individual. It must not be mixed up with politics or national affairs.”
With such an important distinction between Religion as a moral order and different denominational religions as different sets of belief systems and rituals, Gandhi declared in 1947 that the Indian “State was bound to be wholly secular.” Again in 1942 he asserted most unambiguously: “Free India will be no Hindu Raj; it will be an India Raj based not on the majority of any religious sect or community but on the representatives of the whole people without distinction of religion.” As a deeply religious Hindu, Gandhi respected the cow as a sacred symbol of Hinduism. But he was totally opposed to the activities of the Cow Protection Societies. Gandhi actually called them Cow Killing Societies (Go Bhakshini Sabhas instead of Go Rakshini Sabhas) because in his view, their intolerant and intransigent attitude vitiated the atmosphere and created hostile reactions. Such a situation led to more cows being killed.
At this stage, it is very necessary to clear the confusion regarding Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Perhaps no other single Gandhian idea has been invoked, and distorted as much as his Satyagraha in the last few months of our political life. Here as elsewhere Gandhi has been used as a legitimizing stamp with total disregard for the essence of Gandhian Satyagraha. Gandhi defined his Satyagraha as an ethical weapon to apply moral pressure on his adversary in order to force him to be a part of a common pursuit for truth. For Gandhi Satyagraha was a search for the ‘correct option’ which was to be pursued by both the sides. It was not a blackmail to force the opponent and bend him to one’s own will. Gandhi made an important conceptual distinction between Satyagraha ( a moral force) and Duragraha (blackmail). The two, moral pressure and blackmail, may superficially resemble each but fundamental differences lie beneath the surface. It is significant that Gandhi generally did not resort to a hunger strike against the British to get the major Indian demands fulfilled. He sat on a hunger strike mostly against his own people. His Satyagraha was not a weapon meant to score a victory over the opponent. It was a moral instrument meant to carve out a common space with the adversary in the pursuit for larger social good. As Gandhi himself said: “A true Satyagrahi should always be ready for the highest form of settlement.” Victory was never a part of Gandhi’s political vocabulary. Also, Satyagraha was not meant to be a routine everyday activity. It was to be resorted to, only after other options had been exhausted. As Gandhi explained: “…a Satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to Satyagraha. He will, therefore, constantly and continually approach the constituted authority, he will appeal to public opinion, educate public opinion, state his case calmly and coolly before everybody who wants to listen to him; and only after he has exhausted all these avenues, will he resort to Satyagraha.” Gandhi called it a “science of Satyagraha” which was still “in the making” and understood by very few people: “A soldier of an army does not know the whole of military science; so also does a Satyagrahi not know the whole science of Satyagraha.” Judging by how Gandhi defined his Satyagraha, it should be clear that it has been either completely misunderstood or deliberately distorted in independent India. Quite often it is Duragraha (blackmail) that has been practised in the name of Satyagraha.
Gandhi has often been called a dictator who imposed his position on his Congress colleagues and blackmailed others by threatening to go on fast if his views were not followed. In reality Gandhi was a great democrat who never went out of his way to impose his priorities on others. To take a few examples, he was a great believer in spinning and spun regularly. Twice, in 1922 and in 1934, he tried to introduce regular spinning as a mandatory activity for Congress office holders. He also wanted it to be included in Congress constitution. But sensing a lack of enthusiasm among other Congress leaders for making spinning mandatory, he refrained from insisting on it. His reservations on modern capitalist economy and on large-scale industrialization were known to all. Yet he never tried to impose it on the Congress organization. In fact the famous Congress resolution passes at Karachi in 1931, advocating centralized planning and large-scale industrialization, was predictably drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru. But it was Gandhi who moved that resolution, primarily in order to create consensus around it. Gandhi never insisted on his economic ideas to be at the centre of Congress programme.
It should be clear that Gandhi has been both misunderstood out of ignorance and deliberately misused and exploited out of political machinations, in independent India. It is easy to explain why he should be misused and misappropriated by politicians who have found it convenient to legitimize their politics by using Gandhi as a stamp. But why has he been misunderstood so much? Is there an explanation for the general ignorance?
It is very necessary to emphasize that Gandhi was constantly growing and evolving. This aspect of Gandhi’s politics and personality has generally not been realized by people. Both his detractors and followers tend to freeze him in time and space. Both have ‘essentialized’ Gandhi by choosing to understand him on the basis of stray, isolated statements made generally during the early part of his career. In order to be fair to him, We need to construct an image of Gandhi that is dynamic and not eternal. As Gandhi came into active contact with the national movement, he revised his position on a whole range of issues – religion in politics, inter-faith marriages, parliamentary democracy, industrialization, modern science and technology, and much else. It is important to recognize that even as Gandhi transformed the national movement, he was also transformed by it. The image of an obscurantist, anti-modern, antiquated Gandhi – so widespread among people – has been built largely on the basis of his earlier writings, prior to his entry in the Indian National Movement in 1918. In particular, great reliance has been placed on a small monograph Hind Swaraj that he wrote in 1909. It was a severe indictment of the industrial civilization and he attacked all manifestations of it – modern technology, legal institutions, modern medical science, parliamentary democracy etc. The attack on modernity was accompanied by a near total endorsement of tradition, particularly Indian tradition. Hind Swaraj has generally been treated as a kind of Gandhian manifesto, a key text to understand Gandhi. Both, the anti- and the post- modernists have found great merit in the book and used Gandhi in their attack on Modernity. But the important thing to remember is that during the course of his involvement with the national movement, Gandhi rejected in practice most of what he said in Hind Swaraj, even though he refrained from actually disowning the book. As he grew out of his earlier positions he also made it clear in a statement made in 1933 that he wanted to be recognized by his new positions, not the old. Gandhi wrote: “I would like to say to the diligent reader of my writings and to others who are interested in them that I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after truth I have discarded many ideas and leant many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, and, therefore, when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he still has faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two on the same subject.” We need to liberate Gandhi from the frozen walls of his early writings and place him in the context of a dynamic freedom struggle and then make an assessment of him on the basis of what he did rather than what he said and wrote during the early part of his career.
But why is Gandhi relevant today? If his major contribution lay in leading the liberation struggle against imperialism, why do we still need him, now that formal imperialism is a thing of the past? Gandhi is relevant today for a whole range of reasons. It is interesting that in the post War-world, Gandhi has been used much more creatively and innovatively outside India than within India. In particular, two important leaders, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, have utilized Gandhian techniques of struggle very effectively. Whereas we in India have only tried to follow him, movements in other parts of the world have creatively utilized Gandhi as a resource and thereby also developed him. Likewise the global environmental movement has found an important reference point in Gandhi.
But above all, Gandhi is indispensable today, because only he provides a framework – a way out – for the innumerable conflicts – actual and potential – that have enveloped the modern world. Twentieth century has been the century of empowerment. State systems, people, groups and communities – all have become immensely more powerful than ever before. As a result the possibilities of conflicts have increased manifold. Conflicts between a State and its people, between State and State, and between different ethnic groups are rampant today. Moreover modern conflicts can be much more destructive, given the fact that highly developed technologies of destruction are available. The world as a whole is never too far away from total annihilation. It is here that Gandhian techniques of protest, non-violence and conflict management are needed more than ever before. Under modern conditions of all round and well diffused empowerment, the notions of victory and defeat have lost their meaning. The choice is only between collective survival and collective suicide. Only Gandhi has a framework that offers the way out of the impasse.
[Salil Misra teaches history at the Ambedkar University, Delhi (AUD)]
