Gandhi Jayanti: Why Mahatma Gandhi deserves our admiration only in parts and not for India's freedom

The lack of philosophical clarity is what led Mohandas Gandhi to chase, all his life, one of his pet causes: Hindu-Muslim unity at the cost of Hindu lives, and his naïveté about the benevolence of the British colonial rule A hundred and fifty-four years after his birth, the people of India are still unsure about the exact legacy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. An incensed Bipin Chandra Pal wrote a furious letter to Motilal Nehru correctly cautioning that “blind reverence for Gandhiji’s leadership would kill people’s freedom of thought and would paralyse by the deadweight of unreasoning reverence their individual conscience.” More than a decade after this speech, the iconic journalist, editor, litterateur, philosopher and Gandhi’s junior contemporary, DV Gundappa, wrote the following in a deeply insightful essay in his biweekly, Karnataka: “Before Gandhi’s advent, there was an open atmosphere in public discourse….debates, discussions and arguments on various subjects…went on unhindered. Here is how Michael Edwardes characterises the spiteful tactics of the saint: “For any aspiring rebel, the treatment of Subhas Bose was a lesson in practicalities, a brutal reminder of the authoritarian, Gandhian truth: do not fight the Mahatma.” [Emphasis added> Essential to Mohandas Gandhi’s Mahatma-hood were his tactics of frequent demonstrations, public marches, and flooding prisons — all without any apparent purpose. In a brazen exhibition of its shamelessness, the AICC in September 1945, passed a resolution declaring that “it would be a tragedy if these [INA> officers were punished for the offence of having laboured, however mistakenly for the freedom of India.” [Emphasis added> The freedom struggle of a Christian moralist From a cultural perspective, the Congress party’s clean break from its past under Gandhi’s leadership is tied to a fundamental factor: Gandhi’s twofold misunderstanding. ”[prominent Congressmen> under Gandhi’s leadership…made no secret of the fact that they adopted Non-violent Non-cooperation as a politically expedient but not like, Gandhi, as a creed…Gandhi himself admitted…late in life…that none of his followers believed in Satyagraha as a creed…and admitted, “even 14 years of trial have failed to yield the anticipated result.” […> “[Gandhi> placed the cult of non-violence above everything else—even above the independence of India…to him the Congress was a humanitarian association…for the moral and spiritual regeneration of the world…but his followers looked upon the Congress as a purely political body… […> “The tragedy of Gandhi’s life was that [the> members of his inner council, who followed him for more than twenty years with unquestioned obedience, took the fatal steps leading to the partition of India without his knowledge, not to speak of his consent.” [Emphasis added> In fact, the tragic fate of RC Majumdar’s scholarly career after India attained independence in itself is eminent testimony to the spectacular failure and the logical conclusion of Gandhi’s misplaced espousal of Satya, Ahimsa and Satyagraha.