Gandhi I

Seldom has there been a name more powerful, more symbolic, and more epoch-making than ‘Gandhi’. Unequivocally, across cultures, countries and religions, that name brings the same images to every mind, even 60 years after the bearer of that name passed away: a frail old man, walking the dusty plains of India armed with nothing but self respect and throwing off the biggest empire in the history of mankind without even once lifting his hand in violence of any sort. Now that’s an image that shall not be equaled for centuries to come.

Today, that name and the message of its bearer have become lost. His own countrymen today think of him as old-fashioned. Its astonishing how an idea as powerful as “satyagraha” lost all support and backing within hardly a few months – (a few months!) of it having delivered the biggest victory of the first half of the twentieth century against the largest empire via the most peaceful means! Yes, to all those who take objection to the title of India’s victory against the British Empire as being “the biggest victory of the twentieth century”, let me remind you that by the measure of the population emancipated, the long standing effects on the global economy, and the causal effect towards the independence of other Asian and African countries and to the eventual proverbial “setting of the sun on the British Empire”, India’s victory does merit that title.

But then, why did it all become so obsolete to the following generation, why did his name become equated with, of all things, weakness?!! A man whose idea destroyed a 250 year old empire certainly can be anything else but weak! I’m not going to enter the debate of Gandhism and its message, but in fact going to make an effort to put that man under the microscope and try to see what he actually did. Yes, he was a man, nothing but a man, who all his life denounced the title of “Mahatma” and should hence be studied in that light, which will do more justice to his work than putting him on a “Mahatmian” pedestal and dismissing his work as passé.

Until recently, I too like my generation Y (generation X having been dismissed around the millennium!) was misled into thinking that Gandhi was in fact a spiritually inclined, pure-souled Mahatma, whose ideas were hence outdated in today’s age. Then, I read his autobiography and read a wonderful book and saw a marvelous motion picture that capture the real Gandhi, the man behind the falsely and forcefully imposed mask of Mahatma, the book: Freedom at Midnight and the movie: Gandhi. I now have a clearer and truer picture of that man and his ideas. Without taking too much of your time, I’d like to explain those two things in a little detail.

The man was, like everyone else, a product of his time. His time was one where British law, and British rule was considered monolithic and just. Hence, he too like many others of that time went to England, and became a barrister-at-law. Although, this step is generally dismissed as just preliminary information about Gandhi, I feel that this was in fact a very important step. Deep knowledge of the British law actually armed the young Gandhi with the weapons necessary to use that same law against its very creators. What do you think satyagraha actually is? You think it is some weak-kneed approach to achieve the end? No. Absolutely not. Satyagraha is the shrewdest technique invented to fight a government following the western law and philosophy of life. It is a technique in which you can use the very founding principles of law over which the government stands to defeat it. Gandhi was a very perceptive man, and that is very aptly captured when General Jan Smuts (the General in South Africa when Gandhi started satyagraha) told a reporter that “Gandhi is as shrewd a man as any that you will meet!”

Years after I first read about Gandhi, I read a science fiction novel from the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, in which the lead protagonist says “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. And that my friends, is what Gandhi practiced all his life. Come to think of it, violence was not at all the desired solution to throw off the British regime. It is amply captured in the movie ‘Gandhi’ in the conversation between the British viceroy and Gandhi, after the Amritsar massacre. The viceroy asked Gandhi, if he was suggesting the “preposterous” idea that the British simple walk out of India. Gandhi very calmly tells him: “Yes, in the end Sir, you will simply walk out, because one hundred thousand British men simply cannot control three hundred and fifty million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate. And that is exactly what we intend to achieve. Peaceful, nonviolent, non-cooperation, till you yourself see the wisdom of leaving.” Do you see the brilliance of the plan? This is not some hogwash of a coward old man, No Sir! This is a discerning mind propounding a simple yet powerful trick to win a victory.

And I believe that although all the politicians after him dismissed him, the common man of India had understood the power that this man embodied. Show me any other man who managed to capture the attention and command the obedience of three hundred million people without using any force. Gandhi was as brave a man as any there have been.