Gandhi and Nehru, the two personalities, indeed
have never particularly represented or represents any region or caste in the
public imagination, the way Patel represents Gujaratis and Ambedkar represents
Dalits. But the two have conveniently been made verbal punching bags by Hindu
rightists, Muslim rightists, ultra-leftist folks etc. And many people, out of
sheer ignorance of facts, have fallen for the lies and half-truths circulated about
them. While Gandhi and Nehru are indeed certainly not above criticism, myths
still need to be busted, for the secular and democratic constitutional setup
they left us with, which cannot be bartered for anything.
Without ado, let us get straight onto the
myth-busting with respect to Gandhi-
Myth 1:
He was a British agent out to curb the revolutionaries using violent methods to
fight British rule, and it is certain that he did not want to save the life of
Bhagat Singh.
This is a popular myth being peddled by
Gandhi-haters nearly everywhere. The revolutionaries, resorting to individual
acts of violence against policemen and other government officials, did not have
any coherent countrywide mass presence to stir up an organized rebellion that
would drive the British out of India. To unite such a large country in secrecy
for having an armed rebellion on Indian soil would have been very difficult in
India, and the scenario cannot be equated to Czarist Russia during the First
World War, for instance. The only organized armed rebellion since 1857 that
occurred was by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army (INA)
launched from abroad with the help of global powers clashing with Britain.
Further, Gandhi’s methodology of struggle wasn’t
about dialogue as the Liberal League desired, but of resistance that involved
economic boycott. Which led to much economic loss to England including shutting
down of textile mills in the country itself and entailed much personal
suffering by way of bearing lathi blows and courting imprisonment. The Liberal
League maligned Gandhi as an anarchist and strictly supported the policy of
only having negotiations. Besides, some people who later in the 1940s, resorted
to violence to fight the British, like Jaiprakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohia and
Aruna Asaf Ali. They continued to admire Gandhi and have good relations with
him (in spite of his disapproval of their methods) and even invoked his legacy
on a number of issues once he was no more. Gandhi himself said that violence was
better than cowardice and supported the army action to defend Kashmir in
1947-48. Interestingly, even Bhagat Singh, in spite of his disagreement with
Gandhi on a number of issues, did not write off Gandhi’s struggle as being
intrinsically worthless or opposed to national interests. Even after adopting
violent methods, he participated in a Congress demonstration against the Simon
Commission led by Lala Lajpat Rai. In fact, in one of his speeches, Bhagat
Singh had given a brilliant analysis of the Swarajist wing of the Congress
contesting elections. In his widely acclaimed pamphlet ‘The Philosophy of the
Bomb’, he clarified that he and his comrades are not among ‘those who have no
regard for the Congress and hope nothing from it’ and it would be ‘grievously’
wrong to think so for him and his comrades ‘fully realise the part played by
the Congress in awakening the ignorant masses a keen desire for freedom’ and
they ‘expect great things of it in the future’.
Bhagat Singh had been conferred the death penalty
by the judiciary for his murder of Saunders, and Gandhi’s pact with the Viceroy
Lord Irwin certainly did not lead to his hanging. As for those who desired that Bhagat Singh
not be hanged (almost the entire nation), many among them were at the most only
expecting a commutation to transportation for life i.e. being sent off to the
Andamans, where there was brutal torture and from where few ever returned. It
is impossible for anyone to ascertain what Gandhi and Irwin discussed behind
closed doors, but what Gandhi and Irwin told the public later was that Gandhi
did press for a commutation of the death sentence. Even Netaji Subhash Chandra
Bose, while representing the left-wing of the Congress at the Karachi session
said, “It must be admitted that Gandhi did try his very best”. This is also
acknowledged by Kuldip Nayar in his authoritative book on the life of Bhagat
Singh, ‘Without Fear’.
Unsurprisingly, Irwin did not agree, which is
understandable from a British standpoint as leniency towards those who murdered
British officers could set a dangerous precedent with life-threatening
consequences from the British point of view. Was it worth letting go of the
pact for this reason? Perhaps not, for had that been done, we may not have had
the Government of India Act, 1935, passed as a consequence of the Second Round
Table Conference, which paved the way for the democratic institutions that came
to be a part of our constitution after independence. While addressing the INA,
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose proudly recalled how the Congress had governed so
well under the Government of India Act, 1935, which proved Indians could govern
themselves.
While Bhagat Singh was undoubtedly a great
martyr, there were many other revolutionaries across India who suffered and
sacrificed as much. Besides, that some have suffered and sacrificed for the
country employing violent means does not necessarily imply a policy of
benevolence on their part when they come to power.
As for conspiracy theories floated by the likes
of Marxist writer Hansraj Rahbar about Gandhi being a British agent, Rahbar’s
factual contents are often inaccurate. For instance, talking of the Congress
moderates being expelled from the party by the extremists in the Surat session
in 1907 instead of vice versa, which was actually the case. No official
documents or correspondence within the British government anywhere reflect
Gandhi being pro-British, and suggest much to the contrary.
Gandhi did favour
Indians joining the British war effort in World War I as a diplomatic gesture
also because the British officially hinted at greater Indian self-rule in
return (which ended in betrayal, leading to Gandhi asking for complete
non-cooperation with British rule and heavy economic boycott of British goods),
but also because he felt that in order to practise true non-violence, one had
to be courageous. He argued that a mouse doesn’t forgive a cat out to eat it,
and only when one feels empowered, can non-violent resistance be possible;
else, cowards cannot offer any resistance, and he felt that military training
would help Indians with the same.
Gandhi wrote-
“And I contend that they will not
regain the fearless spirit until they have received the training to defend
themselves. Ahimsa was preached to man when he was in full vigour of life and
able to look at his adversaries straight in the face. It seems to me that full
development of body-force is a sine qua non of full appreciation and
assimilation of Ahimsa.”
As Modi-supporter Aravindan Neelakandan has pointed
out-
“That Gandhi was aware that this recruitment - a conscious voluntary
decision - which also violated the colonial concept of only some Indian
communities as 'martial races' would help in having a truly national army for
India in the modern era. He wrote:
‘I implicitly believed that if we were to devote our attention exclusively to
recruiting, we should gain full responsible government in a year’s time, if not
sooner. And instead of allowing our utterly ignorant countrymen to enlist
nolens volens, we should get an army of Home Rulers who would be willing
soldiers in the knowledge that they will be soldiering for the country’.”
Myth 2:
He appeased the religious minorities and helped in the partition of India,
being ultra-generous in giving aid to Pakistan.
This is a completely baseless allegation. Gandhi
opposed the Muslim League as much as he opposed the Hindu Mahasabha, as Prof.
Makarand Paranjape, a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has pointed
out in considerable detail in his acclaimed book The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi. While his support to the
Khilafat Movement was a miscalculation, he was steadfast in his opposition to
the partition. However, when a very vast number of Indian Muslims desired
partition at any cost, leading to rioting in places like Calcutta in 1946,
there was no alternative. They would have continued fighting for it even after
independence and any attempt to prevent partition by fasting unto death would
have only escalated violence. So, he deployed that weapon effectively to
maintain communal harmony instead.
Contrary to what some suggest, Gandhi never
opposed the deployment of police forces to quell the Moplah riots earlier in
the 1920s. He condemned the Muslim rioters (in his article in 'Young India'
dated 27th October 1921, he called the Moplah violence "tyranny" and
"terrorism"), and he only reminded them that they violated the tenets
of their own religion, by declaring - "The Mussalmans must naturally feel
the shame and humiliation of the Mopla conduct about forcible conversions and
looting, and they must work away so silently and effectively that such a thing
might become impossible even on the part of the most fanatical among them."
(Indeed, the Quran has many verses preaching peace, religious tolerance and
human brotherhood like 2:256, 5:2, 5:8, 5:32, 6:108, 6:151, 49:13, 60:8 and
109:6; those suggesting that peaceful verses in the Holy Quran are superseded
by violent verses, which the vast majority of practising Muslims globally
regarded as contextual, would actually do well to note that verse 109:6 appears
towards the end of the book, and preaches nothing but peace.) He also appealed
to the nation at large to not stereotype all Muslims for the acts of some
(indeed, some Malayali Muslims protected
Hindus in those riots
too), which was necessary to prevent further rioting elsewhere in the country.
He wanted to visit Kerala too to personally campaign for peace, but was
disallowed by the British government from doing so. The Congress had passed
this resolution – “The
Congress deplores the acts done by certain Moplahs by way of forcible
conversions and destruction of life and property, and is of the opinion that
prolongation of the disturbance in Malabar could have been prevented by the
Govt of Madras accepting the proffered assistance of Maulana Yakub Hassan and
allowing Gandhi to proceed to Malabar.” Yes, when initially news of the anti-British
Moplah uprising came to light without details of attacks on Hindus coming in,
Gandhi, while distancing himself from violence, accepted it as a legitimate
struggle against imperialism, and that one statement of his has been quoted out
of context to malign him, and interestingly, not all the Moplah rebels were
anti-Hindu, some even taking
along Hindus without converting them to fight the British!
To my mind, there is no doubt that Islamism (right-wing
political Islam) is the biggest ideological threat of our times to human rights
values globally the way Nazism was once, but just as genocidal hatred of
Germans did not lead to Nazism’s defeat, but in fact, the support of
anti-Nazism Germans did, liberal and
moderate Muslims valuing humanity (see, for example, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this, nor is it the case that such Muslims are necessarily
either apostates of Islam or highly ignorant of their scriptures, them doing
their own contextual interpretation of the Islamic scriptures, as discussed here), who need not be seen as exotic exceptions, should not
be alienated, and one should not become the monster one wishes to defeat. Other than taking due legal action against specific
Muslim extremists violating the law (something I wholeheartedly support),
neither genocidal hatred nor generalised repression of Muslims (which will
boost Muslim extremism, nor are, as mentioned earlier, Muslims alone in some of
them getting radicalised in the wake of being subjected to genocidal hatred)
nor denigration of the Islamic scriptures (which will lead to moderate
practising Muslims**** insisting that the problematic aspects in the Muslim extremists’
version of Islam are misinterpretations*****, and if this criticism comes not
from atheists or agnostics but from active practitioners of other faiths,
Muslims will cite the seemingly controversial aspects from the scriptures of
those other faiths, leading to more of often ugly theological debates and less
of any resolution of any actual problem on the ground) nor offering
bordering-on-support sympathy to Muslim extremism, portraying only Muslims as
perennial victims in a melodramatic fashion (as I have discussed here, here, here, here and here), can solve the problem of Muslim extremism - only promoting reform among Muslims with an appeal to humanistic
rationality and a liberal interpretation of the Islamic scriptures, while
standing with Muslims for their genuine human rights concerns, can. If it is
argued that reform is impossible in Muslim societies, it may be noted that
Muslim women in South Asia have moved from being largely confined to the
household in the 19th century to now Katrina Kaifs, Sheikh
Hasinas and Hina Rabbani Khars. About how reform is possible in Muslim
societies, examples can be cited of Kasim Hafeez, who initially wanted to become a terrorist seeking to blow up Jewish
civilians but later changed his standpoint to standing for Jews’ human rights
and the Israeli state’s right to exist, after visiting Israel (though still
squarely not exactly becoming an uncritical admirer of all Israeli state
policies), while still remaining a practising Muslim, and also Majid Nawaz, who, from being a terrorist earlier, has now turned into a Muslim
reformer facing death-threats from Muslim extremists. Psychological
deradicalisation techniques that successfully worked on Nazis have even worked
with jihadists on several occasions, as you can see here, here, here and here. Morocco has banned the veil (while I support anyone’s right to don a
headscarf out of support for personal liberty, I disagree with the same for
veiling, for not only is it regressive in the extreme but is also a security
hazard, with even men donning veils to commit crimes like theft, but being
almost unrecognisable even in CCTV footage, full-body veils making you much
more unrecognisable than face-masks, and indeed, a cultural Muslim like Javed
Akhtar has also supported banning the veil!), Tunisia and the UAE
have come to recognise marriages between a non-Muslim man and a Muslim woman
(as you can see here and here), Sudan
has banned female genital mutilation and unilateral and arbitrary triple talaq was indeed abolished in most Muslim-majority countries (including
Pakistan) before India.
Thus, it would be incorrect to say that Muslim societies cannot reform. Indeed,
there are already full-fledged Muslim-majority secular democracies like Albania
[that has been tolerant to Jews (as you can see here and here)
and legalised homosexuality (something all Muslim legislators in Germany also voted in favour of) and euthanasia] and Senegal, which can be held up as role models.
Another myth is that Gandhi wanted the king of Afghanistan to invade India and
bring it under Islamic rule. This is again a false allegation. In May–June 1919, the
Afghans and the British had fought a bloody war ending in 2,000 casualties,
both Afghan and British-Indian, before a peace treaty was
signed. Towards the end of 1919, Gandhi had also begun mobilizing support from
Hindus and Muslims for the Non-Cooperation Movement. In a Young India article
on 4 May 1921, Gandhi wrote he would ”in a sense, certainly assist the Amir of
Afghanistan, if he waged war against the British Government. That is to say, I
would openly tell my countrymen that it would be a crime to help a Government
which had lost the confidence of a nation to remain in power.” In the same
article, Gandhi clarified what he meant: that the British government often used
geopolitics and “the Afghan bogey” to deny independence to India, and thus “kept
us under the perpetual fear of our neighbours and the whole world, and drained
India of her splendid resources, so that she has lost faith in herself either
for defence or for dealing with the simple problem of the growing poverty”.
Even during the partition riots, among the first
places visited by Gandhi was Noakhali where Hindus were being targeted by
Muslim extremists.
And during the Direct Action Day riots, he was
almost killed by a Muslim, but his excellent rendition of a Quranic verse Surah
Fateha made that Muslim become his disciple. When Gandhi visited Muslims in a
relief camp in the Old Fort in Delhi during the partition riots, he was greeted
with slogans of “Gandhi Murdabad!” He was certainly not admired by communal
Muslims, as much as he is accused of siding with them according to sections of
the Hindu right.
Mahatma Gandhi’s emphasis on protecting Indian
Muslims who desired to stay back in India can be justified on two grounds – one
was that many Indian Muslims had genuinely opposed the partition. And the
second, that Gandhi wished to create an “idea of India” which was inclusive
unlike Pakistan or Nazi Germany.
As
for all those advancing the contention that all Muslims should have been
expelled from India at the time of the partition (for which Muslims born in
India after 1947 still cannot in the least be blamed even by this bigoted line
of argumentation), it is essential to understand that that would have involved
ceding Pakistan more territory and resources, resulting in even more Hindu
displacement, and basing the very idea of nationhood on exclusionary lines has
never worked well for any country. It may also be noted that even in the 1940s,
there were secular Muslims subscribing to the idea of a united India (not just
some theocratic-minded clerics seeking large-scale religious conversion and an
orthodox Islamic agenda for the whole of undivided India but even genuinely
liberal Muslims defying them*), some of
whom like Allah Baksh, Maqbool Sherwani and Shoebullah Khan were martyred opposing Jinnah’s two-nation theory
(and they were indeed right, given that Muslims killing each other in
sectarian, linguistic and extreme theocracy-moderate theocracy-secularism
clashes in Pakistan enjoy lesser security of life and property and given its
completely sham democracy, lesser civil liberties and even worse economic
prospects than Muslims in India). The Congress of the freedom struggle all
along opposed the idea of partition on the ground that India would be for all
Indians, who would be given equal rights, irrespective of religion. Therefore,
to do a sudden U-turn on the part of the Congress and change its standpoint of
India being for Indians of all religious groupings on the eve of the partition
would have validated the Muslim League's rather nonsensical allegations before
the world. More importantly, an India that denies itself to some Indian
citizens may go down the slippery slope to be denied to all Indian citizens
with puritans trying to define “Indian-ness”. We've seen how countries like
Germany, Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, which chose the path of
exclusion, lost their democratic character with thekedars of
the majority community certifying who a “true” citizen is, even from within the
majority community, to snuff out all dissent on any matter at all (and how
important retaining democracy is, is explained by the authoritarian Chinese
state’s suppressing news of the coronavirus pandemic showed how Chinese
citizens and the rest of humanity had to pay a price for lack of democratic
accountability there) and/or got embroiled in civil war. Since independence,
many Indian Muslims have indeed served Indian national interests well as diplomats as also in the security forces and the intelligence
agencies, even in foiling the Pakistani
deep state’s nefarious designs, and even otherwise contributing to
nation-building by way of social and ecological service, and there is no
rational basis to categorise Muslim citizens of India with a clear sense of
loyalty to the country as being completely exotic exceptions within their
religious grouping in India [if someone is
more comfortable with 'Jai Hind' rather than 'Vande Mataram' for he/she can
respect, but not bow before or worship anyone other than God Almighty, be it
his/her own parents or the motherland, based on his/her religious convictions,
so be it, if he/she is otherwise a law-abiding citizen (bowing before graves of
Sufi saints is also seen by many law-abiding, moderate Muslims as un-Islamic)
and a green flag with a crescent is a flag of Islam, like a saffron flag is a
flag of Hinduism or a blue flag with a discus is a flag of Ambedkarite
Buddhism; a green flag with a crescent is NOT a flag of Pakistan, unless
accompanied by a white strip to the left],
as though Indian Muslims are guilty of being anti-national until proven
innocent. As much as just like many Indian Tamils wanting the Indian state to
harbour complete antipathy to the Sri Lankan state, even if it goes against
Indian national interests, and many Indian Gorkhas wanting unconditional
friendship with the Nepalese state even as it makes absurd claims on
Indian territory, many Indian Muslims do
have a strong affinity to non-Indians sharing their religious identity, like
the Palestinian Muslims, and therefore, want the Indian state to harbour
complete antipathy to the Israeli state, unfortunately complicating Indian
strategic and economic interests owing to vote-bank considerations, and some
Indian Jews born and raised in India prefer to serve in the Israeli military
rather than the Indian military, something such people from all these
communities (who still can't be called overall anti-India) must ponder over
when they want the rest of the Indian nation to care very much for them as
fellow citizens, and it may also be mentioned that there are Indian-origin
far-right Hindus living and working in Muslim-majority and Christian-majority
countries, sometimes even acquiring their citizenship (while Arab countries
don’t usually confer citizenship to expats, even if Muslims, many Indian-origin
Hindus have become citizens of Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia and
Indonesia), but with hatred of Muslims and Christians, wanting their own
security as minorities but shamefully not for Muslim and Christian minorities
in India, but in any case, whatever one’s peacefully held views, however
problematic, no one ought to be subjected to unlawful violence, any tolerance
of which only paves the way for a breakdown of the rule of law. While national patriotism is often the last refuge of many a
scoundrel, as some would argue is the case with Gautam Adani, trying to portray
foreign research on his alleged wrongdoings as an attack on India, healthy
national patriotism is necessary till national borders remain a reality, and
just as we care for the security and prosperity of our household (which is not
to say that we are inhuman towards those in other households), our
nation-states remain our larger homes, and if we want the state framework to
deliver for us, we too should be invested in the same, especially with a
democratic framework. While the dynamics of
a conflict zone like Kashmir are different and there have also indeed been some
non-Kashmiri Indian Muslims who have cheered for Pakistan over India in cricket
and hockey matches based on religious affiliation, overall, there is no
evidence to suggest that they represent the Indian Muslim sentiment at
large. In fact, a
Hindu acquaintance of mine, who studied at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU)**,
told me that while those cheering for Pakistan in cricket were quite a vocal
lot there, the vast majority of Muslims did cheer for India, and this was in a
Muslim-majority setting where the apparently pro-India majority did not have to
conceal its true feelings, and another friend of mine, who is an Assamese Hindu
from Guwahati and who is very resentful of the illegal Bangladeshi Muslim
influx in his state, told me that on a train journey, he overheard a
conversation between two Muslims from AMU bashing the students who cheer for
Pakistan. Also, another friend of mine, whose father is an Indian Army officer,
once told me that he loves the Muslim community (though I don’t support any
stereotyping, positive or negative!), for once, his father was fired at by
militants in Kashmir and his father’s driver, a Muslim, rushed to bear the
bullet to save his father’s life! He also narrated another anecdote of how a
Muslim officer once donated blood to save his father’s life and my friend
asserted that he was not in the least ashamed of the fact that “Muslim blood”
(whatever that is supposed to mean!) runs through his veins! Just to be clear, I do not particularly advocate looking
at national heroes and heroines through the prism of their religious identity,
nor do I necessarily attribute such heroism to the religion such
heroes/heroines were/are born into or chose/choose to subscribe to (to take an
example, the great freedom fighter Obaidullah Sindhi, who opposed the politics
of the Muslim League, was a convert to Islam from Sikhism, and late RSS-BJP
leader KR Malkani, in his book The Sindh Story, has acknowledged
Obidullah’s secular outlook), but only to clarify that people of no religious
identity should be negatively stereotyped, and it must be mentioned that there
is actually room for
interpretation of Islamic
scriptures in conformity with humanism and secular national patriotism, even
holding interests of fellow countrymen of other faiths over foreign
co-religionists, to which many devout Muslims subscribe. Also, like with other communities, there are Muslims
who may be rational on some issue from our standpoint and irrational or biased on
another, but so long as they are not committing any heinous crime, they ought
not to be dehumanised.
It is essential to distinguish between a Yasin Bhatkal and an
APJ Abdul Kalam, a Mumtaz Qadri and a Salman Taseer, an Aurangzeb and a Dara
Shikoh, a Burhan Wani and a Maqbool Sherwani, a Jinnah and an Ashfaqullah Khan.
Otherwise, should all Sikhs and Tamils be hated for the actions of Khalistanis
and LTTE respectively? It is evident how unfair and counterproductive Hindu
extremism is to fighting Muslim extremism, which is only pushing more and more
moderate Muslims to radicalism, other than taking the country as a whole in a
fascist direction by interfering with people's civil liberties.
Anyway,
as for those ringing alarm-bells about Muslim demographics in India, it may be
noted that overall, the Muslim population growth rate has been declining in India with greater access to education, something acknowledged for Indians across religious lines even by India’s
current foreign minister S. Jaishankar from the BJP, and there is much regional disparity, with the population growth rate of say, Muslims in Kerala
being less than that of Hindus in Uttar Pradesh owing to the former, as an
aggregate whole, being more educated, and the Muslim-majority Union Territories
of J&K and Lakshadweep have among the lowest fertility rates among Indian states and Union
Territories. And yes, even otherwise, if someone sees Muslims potentially
outnumbering Hindus in India as a real problem, they should appeal to the
Indian government to legally impose a two-child norm for all Indian citizens,
irrespective of religion (private member bills by BJP members aside, the Modi
government has not yet endorsed the idea of such a legislative proposal), which
will make it completely impossible for Muslims to outnumber Hindus*** and is,
in any case, much-needed given the strain on resources (our overpopulation is
something that was also pointed out by Congress leader Manish Tiwari in the wake of the
shortage of hospital beds during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic,
and Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi too prepared such a private member bill), and there is no naivete or purblind
sentimentalism in pointing out that randomly rioting against or lynching some
average Muslims, which can indeed even provoke a counter-reaction, is neither a
fair nor a sensible way of dealing with the supposed demographic threat!
Attempts on Gandhi’s life had been made on
several occasions even before the idea of partition surfaced, by Marathi
Brahmin extremists who had everything to lose from Gandhi’s non-casteist,
secular political ideology, as elaborated in the indeed very well-researched book
Gandhi ki Shahadat by Jagan Fadnis.
As for being ultra-generous in giving aid to Pakistan, Pakistan had waged war (not
officially) against the then sovereign princely state of J&K before its
accession to India, not against India, and Pakistan would have won against
India had India defaulted on its agreed upon payment of 55 crore rupees to
settle the partition accounts.
While Gandhi did stay clear of debates surrounding violence by Muslim
extremists over alleged blasphemy, hesitant to uphold freedom of speech hurting
religious sentiments lest it divide the society further and sometimes made
extreme pacifist statements about resisting Islamist violence by complete
non-violence, when the partition riots erupted, he did ask Hindus to take to
violence in self-defence if the need be, as acclaimed historian Rajmohan Gandhi
has acknowlewdged in his biography of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and this fact
has been acknowledged by RSS chief MS Golwalkar as well, in his book A Bunch of Thoughts. To quote Golwalkar-
“Once when the Muslims went on a rampage and attacked the Hindus in Ahmedabad,
the Hindus began fleeing from their hearths and homes. Gandhiji castigated them
saying, ‘Why are you behaving like cowards? You take my name and repeat the
word ahimsa parrot-like and run for your life under that shelter. My
non-violence is not of the cowards, it is of the brave. Instead of running away
in such a cowardly fashion it would be far better for you to fight, to kill or
get killed’.”
When Pathan tribal raiders started looting people in J&K across religious
lines and raping and killing non-Muslims in J&K, Mahatma Gandhi did support
Indian Atrmy action in Kashmir.
Gandhi even wrote and spoke much on Christian
missionaries employing financial incentives to convert people to their faith.
He deemed the practise as unethical and condemned but was not in the least
against Christianity as faith or Christians in general.
Myth 3: Gandhi Favoured Nehru as India’s PM because
Nehru was his stooge.
Firstly, Nehru had serious differences with
Gandhi over a host of issues, from Gandhi’s usage of religious symbols to
economic development models to Nehru’s objection to the idea of seeking
Dominion Status before complete independence. Also, many passages in Nehru’s
autobiography border on mocking some of Gandhi’s ideas, written during Gandhi’s
lifetime.
Gandhi chose Nehru to become prime minister
because, as Ramachandra Guha points out-
“(Nehru) most reliably reflected the pluralist,
inclusive idea of India that the Mahatma stood for. The alternatives — Patel,
Rajaji, Azad, Kripalani, Rajendra Prasad — had, by contrast, somewhat sectional
interests and affiliations. But Nehru was a Hindu who could be trusted by
Muslims, a U.P. wallah who was respected in the South, a man who was admired by
women — like Gandhi, and like no one else, he was a genuinely all-India
leader.”
Rajaji was indeed known for his sexist outlook, him being uncomfortable with
female legislators, civil servants and constitution-framers. As for Patel, he
did have some degree of bias against Muslims, as reflected by Patel suggesting
that it was all right for some Hindus to feel averse to hosting Muslim in their
own homes for Muslims are meat-eaters, and Gandhi countered him by pointing to
the fact that very many Hindus and non-Muslims globally do consume meat. This
dialogue has been recorded by Gandhi’s private secretary Mahadev Desai. Patel
also once inaugurated a Hindu-only swimming pool when the Congress was strongly
opposing not only separate electorates but inter-religious sporting events
(notably in cricket) and any segregation in non-religious public places on the
basis of religion. Patel also clearly had a racist worldview even when it came
to fellow Indian citizens from Northeast India, even though his Congress party
had several leaders of the freedom struggle from there, like Moje Riba from the
present-day Arunachal Pradesh. In a letter Patel wrote to Nehru in November
1950 (much before the Sino-Indian War of 1962), he mentioned-
“China is no longer divided. It is united and strong… All along the
Himalayas in the north and northeast, we have on our side of the frontier a
population ethnologically and culturally not different from Tibetans and
Mongoloids. The undefined state of the frontier and the existence on our side
of a population with its affinities to the Tibetans or Chinese have all the
elements of potential trouble between China and ourselves… The people
inhabiting these portions have no established loyalty or devotion to India.
Even Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas are not free from pro-Mongoloid prejudices…
Bhutan is comparatively quiet, but its affinity with Tibetans would be a
handicap.”
Ironically, Tibetans became hostile to China
after the withdrawal of autonomy, with Bhutan emerging as India’s great friend!
Darjeeling and Kalimpong have had internal issues with West Bengal, but no
anti-India secessionist sentiment of any consequence, and Gorkhas from these
regions have a stellar record of contribution to the Indian Army, even in the
Sino-Indian War of 1962. Also, Sardar Patel was completely wrong in saying that
the culture of India’s northeast is the same as that of the Chinese and the
Tibetans! Moreover, as noted Indophilic Myanmarese writer Thant Myint-U points
out, even secessionists in regions like Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and
Meghalaya have no great love for China. He mentions-
“…there is no indication that people in the
Northeast have any desire to come under Chinese domination. Militant groups have received Chinese
training and support, at least in the past, but this was done opportunistically
and not out of any special affinity to Beijing.”
In fact, he mentions that he noticed among them,
“a sense of dread that, with China’s growing stature and influence”, the little
ethnic communities “caught between ‘India proper’ and China would find it
harder, not easier, to maintain their separate identities and traditions.”
Another instance that can be quoted in this
regard to demonstrate the northeasterners having no special affinity to China
is an extract from the renowned novel Bitter Wormwood by noted Naga novelist
Easterine Kire, which is stated hereunder (all the characters here are Naga)-
“The two of them kept turning the knobs. They first listened to some songs and them to
more news broadcasts. There were about
four channels they could listen to. One
was a Chinese station where a woman spoke very rapidly in Chinese. Mother and son laughed uproariously at that
because they couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying. Even the static made them giggle. Eventually, they made a habit of tuning the
radio into the station where news was broadcast in English.
Patel was also narrow-minded on the language
question, insisting that South Indian and North Indian must learn Hindi. The
speech he delivered in Madaras (Chennai) on 12th February 1949, his opening
words were- "You want me to talk to you in English. I shall obey your
command, but take it from me that it will not be long before you yourselves
will have to speak in our national language. If you do not do that, you will
drag the country backwards. We have to exert our maximum effort to go forward.
Unless you do that, I am afraid, you will suffer.
This attitude led to civil war in our
neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Indeed, Indians who are not
native Hindi-speakers find it unfair that native Hindi speakers should get en
edge over them in government recruitments.
While Nehru is often blamed for his management of
Kashmir, it was Patel who didn't take any initiatives to integrate J&K like
other princely states and he didn't act even on a letter from Nehru warning of
Pakistani intrusion (which did happen in October 1947) and speaking of
plebiscite offers, that's how Patel integrated Hyderabad and Junagadh by
claiming popular support as opposed to the rulers' will and conducting
plebiscites; so, that wasn't Nehru’s blunder either, and it was thanks to
Nehru’s UN intervention that Pakistan was labeled as the aggressor and asked to
vacate POK, only after which a plebiscite is to be conducted in the whole of
the erstwhile princely state! were it not for Nehru, Jammuite, Ladakhi and
Kashmiri non-Muslims would have started suffering much greater oppression and
persecution since 1947.
In any case, Patel passed away in 1950, and even
had he been the prime minister, he inevitably been succeeded by Nehru, making
this debate futile to a great extent. Further, as Praveen Davar has pointed
out- “Patel himself knew that Nehru was far more popular than him amongst the
masses and hence never faulted the Mahatma for the choice of his heir and
successor. He was also big enough to say to the American journalist Vincent Shean
with reference to a huge crowd of nearly 3 million that had come to hear him
and Nehru in Bombay: 'They come for Jawahar, not for me'.”
Myth 4: He was anti-Dalit.
To completely reject hierarchical caste
identities as irrelevant and support intercaste marriages took Gandhi time till
the 1930s. He fought for Dalit rights, spent time in Dalit colonies and
accommodated them in his ashram. However, he did not see eye to eye with
Ambedkar’s politics of separate electorates.
There were many Dalits in and backed by the
Congress, like Jagjivan Ram and Balu, who preferred Gandhi’s approach to
fighting untouchability based on rationalism and a humanistic understanding of
Hinduism over Ambedkar’s aggressive identity politics. Though the Hindu right
has tried to appropriate the legacy of Ambedkar, as it has tried to appropriate
the legacies of Bhagat Singh and SC Bose, Ambedkar was critical of Hinduism as
faith, not getting entangled in whether untouchability was a misinterpretation,
and converted to Buddhism. It is true that he did criticize Muslim societies over
a number of issues, but he was happy cooperating with the communal Muslim
League on a number of occasions, including even Jinnah’s infamous call for
“direct action” as Arun Shourie has pointed out in his book Worshipping False Gods.
Interestingly, the inspiration for leaders of
oppressed people fighting for justice elsewhere globally, like Martin Luther
King (Jr.) and Nelson Mandela was Gandhi and not Ambedkar.
Myth 5: He was a Hindu extremist.
This is indeed an absolutely ridiculous idea
floated by Muslim communalists. The Mahatma was an admirer of Prophet Muhammad
(and I may add, the Quran; he knew the Arabic language and often read the Quran
in its original text in that language). Some accuse Gandhi of having made
certain negative generalizations about Muslims as people, which may seem to be
the case if seen out of context. However, it is necessary to understand that
Gandhi clarified time and again that Islam stood for peace and tolerance, and
though many Muslims were aggressive, it was because of the sociological factor
of a minority psychosis and as for Muslims of non-Indian ancestry, for having
descended from nomadic warrior societies. Gandhi also said that the Sikhs were
an aggressive lot for their own historical reasons, and going by history, even
Christianity had a bloody record, but “not because Jesus was found wanting, but
because the environment in which it spread was not responsive to his lofty
teaching”.
Gandhi did acknowledge that Islam had produced
great soldiers of non-violence. In a speech he delivered at Calcutta (now
Kolkata) to a gathering of Indian Christians, he made it a point to mention the
following, even though it was not particularly warranted since the speech was
on Christianity and non-violence –
“In my opinion, it is not true to say that Islam
is a religion of the sword. History does
not bear that out.”
In this context, he was referring not only to
India but Arab and Kurdish Muslims with a tolerant outlook.
Some of Gandhi’s closest comrades happened to be
devout Muslims like Maulana Azad (also a victim of much false propaganda) and
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (the latter is known as Frontier Gandhi, who was hated
by Muslim Leaguers for having opposed the partition and spent much time in
Pakistani jails after the partition).
In fact, in Gandhi’s case, he continued to plead
for peace between Hindus and Muslims till his last breath, risking his life
going to riot-affected areas, appealing for peace to save Muslims’ lives which
Jinnah never did, and his very last fast, which was to be unto death, was to
stop the killings of innocent Muslims in Delhi, and his prayer meetings
included verses from the Quran in spite of protests by Hindu extremists. He did
not abandon his tolerance, in spite of being aware of the threat to his life
from Hindu (and Muslim) extremists, and it was his strong commitment to
ensuring that Muslims who chose to stay back in India get their due that cost
him his life. His killer was a Hindu extremist, who, during his trial, accused
Gandhi of being a Muslim-appeaser.
As a leading historian, Irfan Habib mentioned in
a lecture at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) referring to the period of the
partition riots-
“Only one man seemed to stand forth to prevent
the destruction of this University and massacres of Muslims in western Uttar
Pradesh, and that was Mahatma Gandhi. He was insulted when he went to Muslim
refugee camps at Jama Masjid and he was insulted when he went to Hindu refugee
camps! Day in and day out, he suffered insults. On 13th January 1948, he went
on fast. And what were the demands of the fast? One was that Muslims must be
protected and those people who had been leading mobs against Muslims must sign
that they would not do such thing again. And there were names of RSS and Hindu
Mahasabha leaders in his list.”
That Gandhi is despised by extreme communalists
of all hues demonstrates his impartiality!
Myth 6: He was racist.
The legacy of Gandhiji lately suffered a backlash
with the charge of racism when one of his statues was removed in December 2018,
from a university in Ghana after students rallied against it. All because they
said that the mahatma was a ‘racist’. A
statue of the leader was also protested against in California and another one
was vandalised in South Africa. This allegation was attributed to the letters
written by a younger Gandhi wherein he had used derogatory slurs for the native
blacks of South Africa who were his fellow inmates in prison in South Africa.
Like all human beings, Gandhi’s view evolved over
time, and initially, he indeed did harbour some racial prejudices but he also,
in due course outgrew them. That he did, as a 24-year old in South Africa,
while locked up in jail, used racial slurs for black criminals who were his
fellow inmates, cannot be the benchmark of understanding Gandhi’s views on the
race question in a holistic sense. Indeed, not only did Gandhi in private
letters, exhibit some degree of disdain for the blacks, he openly, in a letter
to the Natal parliament in 1893 and in a petition in 1895, as also in a speech
in Mumbai in 1896 and in a writing in 1904, exhibits his racist bias. However,
at a later stage, from 1908 onwards, Gandhi had by now overcome his prejudices
and 18th May 1908, in a speech in Johannesburg, referring specifically to
Africans, Asians, Europeans and the mixed: “If we look into the future, is it
not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races
commingle and produce a civilisation that perhaps the world has not yet seen?”
In 1928, the first English edition of ‘Satyagraha in South Africa’ was
published in which he expressed his admiration for the South African blacks,
calling them ‘the tallest and the most handsome’ race in South Africa, admiring
their ‘black skin shining like ebony’. He urged his fellow Indians “to steer
clear of all narrow and one-sided conceptions of beauty, and be free from the
improper sense of shame and dislike we feel for our own complexion if it is
anything but fair’”, which clearly shows how his views had evolved from 1908
onwards. After all, if he is branded as racist for what he said before 1908,
why should anti-racist view from 1908 onward not be factored in, especially
given that he earned the title of ‘Mahatma’ only after returning to India in
1915?
By the 1930s, so impressed was Gandhi by African
American interest in the idea of peaceful resistance that in February 1936, he
said to Howard Thurman, the African-American thinker, who was calling on him in
Bardoli in Gujarat: “Well, if it comes true it may be through the African
Americans that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to
the world.”
Myth 7: He was a supporter of the capitalist classes, wanting to
prevent the peasantry and workers from getting their rights.
Ironically, it was Gandhi, more
than anyone else, who made the Congress a mass organization. He did not support
an aggressively leftist economic agenda, and his idea of trusteeship was
utopian. But aggressive Marxism has come
to be rejected even in Cuba and China, for the private competition is indeed
what incentivizes good quality production of goods and services. Prof. Makarand
Paranjape has documented his discomfort with the palatial house Birla gave him
in Delhi, quite unlike his humble ashram in Ahmedabad, and personally modestly
stayed in only a part of it. Yes, he took corporate funding for his mass
movements, but how was he to run such huge mass campaigns otherwise? Don’t all socio-political
movements even today largely take funding from sympathetic corporates?!
Myth 8: About Gandhi’s sexual practices
Gandhi did take to sexual practices that fit the textbook
definition of adultery, admitting that these were slips from his vow of
celibacy in his personal experiments with the truth. However, he made no secret
of the same, and one can criticize him for the same, but one cannot accuse him
of being intellectually dishonest.
Mahatma Gandhi, arguably the greatest man of the
20th century, a man who shook an empire without the use of force, and gave the
peasants of Champaran justice. A man whose frugal lifestyle is hard to emulate
by anyone who wishes to do the same to show off. A man who brought millions
of Indians, irrespective of religious
affiliation and regional denomination, together to fight for a cause and
removed the fear of prison from their minds. A man who saw the evils in state
centralization much before it had virtually destroyed India’s economy and
disintegrated a superpower. A man who rightly continuously advocated the
importance of direct economic upliftment in the villages as opposed to the
theory of ‘trickle-down effect’, which has failed. A man who rightly understood
the need for social reforms such as the eradication of untouchability, low
status of women, child marriage and drinking and drug addiction. A man who saw
the harmful consequences of big technology on the environment, and asserted
that the earth has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed, much
before international leaders started talking about ‘sustainable development’
and signed so many protocols and international conventions related to the same.
A man who truly understood the nature of parliamentary democracy, which rightly
in his opinion was a fish-market with rival elites contesting for power. He
also asserted that for democracy to be successful, people must be disciplined
and enlightened. A man who showed the world the mettle of Indian civilization.
But indeed, no man is perfect, and the same is
true for this mahatma. While his concept of a struggle based on truth and
non-violence is very much relevant in the context of social reforms, which can
actually only come about with the genuine change of heart. The same is not true
for politics, which is a power game, and a change of heart can be brought about
in individuals, but not in an establishment like a colonial power. It is silly
to expect all the millions of Indian people to stay non-violent when their kith
and kin were being shot dead by the police, and only a few fetish acts of
violence like the one at Chauri Chaura made Gandhi call off the Non-Cooperation
Movement. Also, his hope that the British would grant autonomy to India if we
supported them in World War I was rather impractical. His calling Jinnah
‘Qaid-e-Azam’ or the supreme leader of the Muslim world when his party members
were losing to Muslim Congressmen in provincial elections and rejecting Subash
Chandra Bose’s offer of weakening the Muslim League in Bengal when it had
formed a coalition with the Krishak Praja Party cost India dear and the ‘direct
action’ of the Muslim League led to partition. His concepts of ‘individual
satyagraha’ (to not embarrass Britain’s war effort) and joint trusteeship of
capitalists and workers were most impractical. Gandhi’s Khilafat Movement also
failed to give reactionary Muslims a modern, secular approach to politics as
was evident from the Moplah riots in Kerala, and it was a greater embarrassment
for Gandhi when Turkish revolutionaries like Mustafa Kemal Pasha abolished the
very institution of the Caliph in favour of secular democracy. It is also a misconception that India owes
its independence directly to Gandhi – Britain’s financial weakness after World
War II, coupled with pressure from the new superpowers (USA and USSR) led to
the decolonization process the world over, and the reason for India’s speedy
independence after the war was the series of revolts in the Armed Forces after
the INA trial.
But, rather than levelling healthy criticism
against Gandhi for these valid points, much of the criticism against Gandhi we
hear of is unfortunately communal in nature.
At long last, I would like to leave the readers
to ponder over some quotations of Gandhi-
“Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations
of the world cease to exploit one another.”
“I do not want my house to be walled in on all
sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be
blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my
feet by any.” (implying that we should
be open to good influences from other cultures while retaining our own cultural
identity)
“A disciplined and enlightened democracy is the
best thing in the world.”
“Law is not to make black white or white black
but to enthrone justice.”
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
“Three quarters of the miseries and
misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes
of their adversaries and understood their points of view.”
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
*Interestingly, there are practising and cultural Muslims even
in contemporary times who have been vocal for a gender-just, religion-neutral
uniform family law (uniform civil code) for Indians across religious lines,
without hair-splitting debates on interpreting scriptures or examining age-old
customs on questions of legal rights. Public figures among them have included former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and even others very critical of
the BJP like actor Saif Ali Khan, columnist Tariq Ansari, activist Laila Tyabji and academician Sadaf Munshi, a position shared even by historians Romila Thapar (I do have my strong disagreements with her on very
many other matters) and Ramachandra Guha very
opposed to the BJP. Indeed, I too support the passage of a uniform civil code,
rejecting waiting for some elusive consensus from orthodox patriarchs at the
expense of our female citizens’ rights, and issues of personal laws clashing
with modern human rights values keep cropping up not only for Muslims, but also
Hindus (as you can see here, here, here, here and here), Christians, Zoroastrians (as you can see here, here and here)
and Jews,
and a uniform civil code in line with the fundamental rights of Indian citizens
under the constitution can close that matter, undermining regressive clergy. I
do believe that more and more Indians of minority religious groupings should
come out in support of a uniform civil code to demonstrate their genuine
commitment to Indian constitutional values (like gender equality in this
context) in a spirit of shared Indian nationhood rather than invoking them only
against Hindu majoritarianism. Also, tax exemptions given to Hindu Undivided
Families (HUFs) should be made available to similarly structured Indian family
businesses of all religious groupings.
**AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia are universities ranked highly even
by bureaucratic accreditations done under the Modi sarkar. I personally know Hindus who are
economics, law or media graduates from Jamia Millia Islamia and who have had a
great time there, and Hindus who studied at AMU too without any problem, notwithstanding much entirely false and sometimes
blown-out-of-proportion propaganda. None other than PM Modi has personally acknowledged the high standards of research at
Jamia, and indeed,
people there have come up with patentable
inventions. Jamia is
also appreciable for using solar energy and reaching a near-zero carbon footprint, other than rainwater harvesting as also acknowledging the third gender in admission forms. The rights of minorities to administer
educational institutions have been protected under Articles 29 and 30 of our
constitution, as is the case with jurisprudence in many other countries, and
even Pakistan has Christian colleges and now a proposed Hindu university, and the US too has a Hindu university.
***Census reports have
established that Hindus are more polygamous than Muslims, even though it is
illegal for the former, and I myself know a Hindu electrician in Delhi who has
engaged in bigamy. Puranic lore is full of multiple marriages by a single man –
to quote some prominent examples, Krishna had thousands of wives, prominent
among whom were Rukmini, Satyabhama and Jambvati; his father Vasudev had two
wives, Devki (Krishna‘s mother) and Rohini (Balram‘s mother), and Ram‘s father
Dashrath had three wives, besides even Bheem having a wife other than Draupadi
(Ghatodkach‘s mother) and Arjun too had several, including Chitrangada and
Krishna‘s sister Subhadra. Also, Islam mandates a limit of four wives and a
responsibility of the husband to look after his multiple wives (if he has
multiple wives in the first place) equally well, though I do agree that even
this is anachronistic today. As for harems, these too have not been a monopoly
of Muslim rulers, and the practice has existed among Hindu rulers too, such as
in South India, and even among Buddhist rulers in Sri Lanka.
Many people in India criticise Muslims
for having many children because they practise polygamy, even though that isn't
very common among Muslims either and as for children, it actually doesn’t make
a difference to the number of children as long as the number of reproductive
women remains the same. Four women would respectively give birth to the number
of children they would, irrespective of whether they are married to one man or
four different men! In fact, polygamy is not prohibited by Hinduism as a faith,
and, in fact, it was outlawed for Hindus only after independence, and Nehru faced
stern opposition for
the same from orthodox Hindus.
****See examples of practising Muslims stopping fellow Muslims from taking the
law in their hands even against violent anti-Muslim extremists threatening
their own lives, soon after an attack or attempted attack on innocent Muslims here, here and here.
*****Speaking of apostates of Islam (“ex-Muslims”) criticising their
former religion, there is a fairly well-known website run by an apostate and
basher of Islam who has even offered a cash prize to anyone who can disprove
his allegations against Prophet Muhammad (but there are books by apostates of
other religions criticizing their former religions too, the most famous one
being ‘Why I Am Not a Christian’ by Bertrand Russell, and there’s also ‘Why I
am Not a Hindu’ by Kancha Ilaiah, levelling very strong allegations), but
practically, he is the judge of the debate, or to go by what he is saying, the
“readership” of the website, a rather non-defined entity. In fact, he has
acknowledged that he came across a Muslim who “intelligently argued his case
and never descended to logical fallacies or insults” and while that
Islam-basher “did not manage to convince him to leave Islam”, that Muslim
earned his “utmost respect”, which implies that practically, the Islam-basher
is the judge of the debate. Likewise, that Islam-basher has mentioned with
reference to a scholar of Islam he debated with, that the latter was “a learned
man, a moderate Muslim and a good human being” and someone he (the
Islam-basher) has “utmost respect for”. So, that Islam-basher’s critique of
Islam, whether valid or invalid, has no relevance in terms of making blanket
stereotypes about the people we know as Muslims or even practising Muslims. By
the way, that Islam-basher bashes Judaism too. And it is worth mentioning that
I have encountered several practising Muslims on discussion groups on the
social media, who have, in a very calm and composed fashion, logically refuted
the allegations against Islam on such websites. Indeed, as you can
see here and here,
there are several other apostates of Islam who have stated that while they have
personally left Islam for good thinking that the extremist interpretations are
correct and moderate ones wrong (as is the case with apostates of many other
religions), they have equally explicitly emphasised that that does not in the
least mean that they believe that most people identifying themselves as
practising Muslims support violence against innocent people, and this applies very well to apostates like Salman Rushdie and
Taslima Nasrin, who despite being largely disowned by the Muslim community and
being on the hit-list of Muslim extremists (but still not retracting their
criticism of Islam), spoke out fiercely against the Gujarat riots of 2002 and
the Dadri incident. Rushdie opposed the idea of voting to power Modi as India’s
PM and later supported the award wapsi, while Nasrin expressed
horror at the prospect of the cancellation of a Ghulam Ali concert in Mumbai on
Shiv Sena pressure, and she, as an atheist, has openly declared in her book
'Exile: A Memoir' that she wants not only Islam but Hinduism and all other
existing religions to die out the way the Pharonoic and Olympian faiths have, but ideologically, not by denying people religious freedom.
