Gandhi and his continued relevance for the world

Gandhi is a favorite punching bag in today’s India.

I see social media full of content (typically forward — content is always a challenge) about the so-called devious “sex” life of Gandhi. We most often forget that we know most of this because he spoke about this (and not because of any investigative journalism).

I find Gandhi is being blamed for almost everything that is wrong with India. The relative lack of progress, the failure to flex our muscles, for partition, for perpetuating the caste system, for installing Nehru — the list is pretty wrong. In the last couple of years, I feel increasing justification for his killing, often his killer being eulogized even by a Member of the Parliament, no less.

Though the scale is unprecedented, this is not new. I grew up in Bengal calling an insect with a foul smell “Gandhi Poka (insect)”, and the passage for tickles trains travelers to exit as “Gandhi gate”. And of course, the Gandhi topi was almost always seen as a symbol of a corrupt politician.

But here is the contradiction. On the Gandhi Jayanti, I see the only person who is showing real respect to him is Modi — the man we thought was pitting Patel against Gandhi’s enigma. And during the recent G20 conference, 20 Heads of State (well 19 + 1, actually) were at Raj Ghat paying their respects. Gandhi statues are coming up across the world with great respect, his name is being taken by all whenever we talk of global order and peace, and in many ways, he seems to the North Star the world is embracing in a very volatile, and increasingly divided world.

So where is the truth? Where does Gandhi stand today for humanity? What does he mean for all of us? I guess that to find the answer we need to back to Gandhi himself, or more so what he stood for, and died for.

Gandhi has fought for a few core values in his life (with my limited understanding) — harmony, dignity, and balanced development. He founded his political philosophy on deep religious values and virtues. That is why he did not believe eye for an eye, but rather reconciliation. He had focused on means more than the outputs (and outcomes). He believed that one needs to change oneself first — and then look at what others need to change. He wanted growth to be inclusive, not just measured by commercial success (as we see today it has reduced to a discussion about exports, reserves, and disposable income — a quick look at IMR/ IRR/ HDI/ literacy will show where we are).

We have blamed Gandhi for partition (without looking at what was the situation in the country then, and the options), a weak nation (well what the other 40 crores have been doing), power-hungry (though being the only credible state leader who refused to assume power), and coward (again remember he refused any protection — even when he came to Kolkata in 1946, or there was tangible threat to his life for a long time).

And while it may be very noisy on the surface, I suppose most Indians understand these.

In a recent interview, Prashant Kishore mentioned a survey done by his erstwhile organization IPAQ on the most revered leader of India, ever. All states were covered, and students from 20,000 educational institutions were included in the survey.

Gandhi came on the top by a mile and in all the states except two (Bengal and Punja, where Bose and Bhagat Singh tipped the scales, respectively).

What does this tell us? Though we may have our share of dissatisfaction about Gandhi (and we all have when a person of import and impact), except for a few we all understand what he set out to do and what he achieved.

Uniting a poor and illiterate country against the mighty British (the greatest empire ever), with nothing but conviction and hard work, communicating ideas like Swaraj and non-violence, and taking the entire journey to a conclusion is even difficult to imagine, save acting on.

Post WWII, the world saw relative peace. Generations have come in who have seen no major wars, and the associated misery. At least the developed world has seen growth and increased standards of living. But the wealth has not been distributed evenly, there is tremendous concentration — and increasingly that is being exploited by a set of populist leaders.

While war has broken out in Europe, Middle East peace has been pushed back, and China is coming out increasingly as an economic and military bully, the traditional center and left of center are finding it difficult to comprehend and act to arrest the resultant downslides. And add to that the fear of the unknown around Artificial Intelligence.

I see there are green shoots of Gandhi’s thoughts of integrated local development, human-centric technology, power of negotiations and accommodations, and complete private and public transparency, led by emotion and integrity — are being revisited.

I am hoping we will see more understanding and imbibing of Gandhi in days to come — beyond the symbolism of cap, loincloth, lathi, and charka. The world needs you now more than ever.