6
Political Exigencies
In common parlance, ‘groupism’ carries negative connotations; it has a hint of conspiracy to it. But ‘group formation’ is one of the strongest primordial urges of human beings. Belongingness to a group provides a sense of physical, psychological and emotional security to a person. But such a sense of security does not come for free—most groups demand undivided loyalty from its members. When two or more groups that a person belongs to are not in competition, the question of loyalty becomes secondary. However, sometimes even simultaneous membership of non-competitive groups can become problematic. In such a situation, a Muslim in ‘secular’ India may have to face a question impossible to answer: what are you first, a Muslim or an Indian? The intensity of gaze when a similar question is posed to an ‘outsider’ in a theocratic state can be extremely unsettling. Regardless of the confidence that adherents of modernism have in the idea of identity as an individual choice, the reality on the ground in much of Southasia is that caste, community, language, region, religion and sect are more powerful markers of belongingness than supposedly secular group identities such as class, nationality, profession or aspirations.
Assertion of group identities seems to have emerged due to the failure of liberal ideologues to provide space for distinctive communities within a state under the hegemony of a majority community. Even in Marxist discourses, the cacophony over class drowns out all other differences. Class consciousness too, however, treats people of different race, gender, caste, religion, language or disability differently. The politics of difference is thus as legitimate as libertine egalitarianism or utopian equality. Only when identity politics becomes rigid does it raise justifiable alarm. The oppressed turning into oppressors of a different kind is not change for the better.
Assertion of group identities and competing politics of differences—different forms of resistance—have created their own pathologies. Identity comes from being identical with each other; but every identity has considerable differences of age, class, gender, ability or aspirations within it. In order to downplay these differences and present a unified front against the perceived ‘other’, militant identity groups take resort to coercion. Some of these coercive techniques have come to be known as fundamentalism, warlordism and extremism. A thread common to all these methods is their reliance on violence. Since monopoly of legitimate violence rests with the state, terrorism is the favoured tool of fundamentalists, warlords, militants, insurgents and all kinds of extremists. Terrorism, however, has created its own nemesis. Counterterrorism is often a bigger threat to political stability and peace: it gives unintended legitimacy to terrorism. Common people are unwittingly caught in a cross-fire over which they have no control.
Fundamentalism
Like most emotional motives, fundamentalism defies definition. One of the broadest definitions of ‘pure fundamentalism’ is by Martin E. Marty and R. Scot Appleby who opine that it comes about when ‘fundamentalists seek to replace existing structures with a comprehensive system emanating from religious principles and embracing law, polity, society, economy and culture.’1 Frustrations with the existing system give rise to fanaticism for ‘systems emanating from religious principles’. These religious principles are evoked either with the narration of the imagined glories of a ‘pure’ past or a promise of heaven in afterlife.
Splendours of the age of ‘purity’, the ‘pollution’ brought about by ‘foreign invasions’ in the past and possibilities of future prosperity are cleverly woven to create a political platform of Hindutva by Hindu fundamentalists. The imagery is so strong that it has succeeded in luring highly educated and superficially modern adherents. But the premise that underlines this vision is that the Indian experiment in democracy, federalism and social justice, begun during the independence movement has failed. In essence, it is fundamentalism driven by frustrations.
Fanaticism that emanates from the promise of heaven in afterlife, if one embraces ‘death’ for the glory of God, too, is a result of exasperation with this life. But unlike defeatist fundamentalists willing to kill to settle scores, those willing to die do so in ecstasy. It is difficult to deal with those who accept death triumphantly. This is what makes Islamism such a feared form of fundamentalism in the contemporary world. Glories of a pure past do not stand closer scrutiny—the supposed Hindu Rashtra never existed except in the imaginations of some bigots. Southasia has always had panoply of myriad faiths and multiple cultures surviving together in a plural civilization. But how does one deal with ‘heaven’ that does not need substantiation and hence cannot be refuted?
Mohamad Guntur Romli, an Indonesian scholar of Islamic theology, unravels the myth of heaven without appearing to be disrespectful.
The Arabic word for heaven is “jannah”. According to Al-Mu’jam al-Wasith dictionary, “jannah” has two synonyms, “hadiqah” and “bustan”. These two words share a root meaning, the word for garden. For Arab society, surrounded on all fronts by bone-dry deserts and burning heat, a garden was the most beautiful place they could imagine: lush, peaceful; an oasis. Because of that, it is no surprise that the description of the pleasures of heaven (dar al-na’im) in the afterlife resemble the gardens that are so familiar to us but for Arabs remained fantastical places. Gardens filled with verdant trees, myriad flowers, cool ponds and eternally flowing rivers. Beautiful angels, ravishing and ready to be ravished, populate Heaven. Here is a depiction of heaven that is rather material and succeeds in arousing sexual urges. Heaven is thus made in this worldly image, crammed with those human habits they have tasted on earth. Then for what reason do they curse the pleasures of this life, if only to expect and enjoy those very pleasures in afterlife?
He provides the answer too:
If we change “jannah” by one letter to “jinnah”, it no longer means “heaven” but “madness” (al-junun). Indeed heaven has made men mad. The terrorists who dare to kill themselves and slaughter others as they do are “mad” about heaven.2
It brings to mind Friedrich Nietzsche’s dark diagnosis: madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.
Fundamentalism is politicization of religion and its antidote has to be created through rekindling hope in the project of ‘nation-building’, yet another term that has acquired sinister connotations due to what has been happening in its name in Afghanistan3 and Iraq. If political collectives fail to inspire confidence, religious, communal, class or downright criminal groups will invariably emerge to fill the space.
Politicization of crime and criminalization of politics, two trends that have begun to worry Southasian scholars, are said to be results of callousness and corruption of the ruling class. The apparent connection is too obvious to need clarification. But politicization of crime, as it happens when politicians patronize criminals in a quid pro quo of protection in lieu of financial and/or electoral support, too has an element of identity that makes the transaction appear somewhat respectable, at least to the in-group members of society. Criminalization of politics—when criminals contest elections from jails and come out victorious—often has caste or community connotations in addition to the element of coercion. Mafia groups in Mumbai, extortionists in Bihar or protection rackets in New Delhi are often organized around ethnicity, caste, language and religion. The underworld, it would appear, is not much different from the everyday world in terms of intra-group cohesion or intergroup competition. Warlordism—creation of loyal bands that draw inspiration and sustenance from the lord-protector—is fundamentalism of a micro kind.
Extremism
In the insurgency discourse of Southasia, militancy is associated with ethnic or national struggles while extremism invariably means left-wing extremism. Leftwing extremism that drew its inspiration from universalistic aspirations of Marxism and Leninism—workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains—have been replaced with the Maoism version where ethnicity and identity are as important components as class solidarity and communist visions. This is the combination that made Maoists in Nepal into an unstoppable force. Perhaps the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has this volatile concoction in mind when he keeps characterizing Naxalism as India’s biggest internal security challenge.
The strength of left-wing extremism is also its main weakness—its armed tactics make it look bigger than it is and attracts equally effective retaliation from the state. Whenever the state takes resort to force—in Indian Kashmir, for example—it is not difficult to hear voices of dissent. But public silence greets repressive measures against left-wing extremism in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh4 or Jharkhand. Ever since the Naxalbari uprising in May 1967, dozens of eruptions all over Southasia have failed to make any significant change in the lives of the poor. Due to the intensity of reprisal, left-wing extremism has proved to be counter-productive. But such is the attraction of revolution that its embers keep getting rekindled by every generation. Extremism will continue to undermine electoral democracy and attempts for peaceful socioeconomic transformation.
Terrorism
Terrorism has always been a contested term. It is exemplified in a popular axiom, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. The media analysis of terrorism5 is based on three differing definitions of terrorism—official, alternative and oppositional.
There is very little consistency in the official definition. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, violence by left-wing groups was invariably terrorism while regressive bands, such as al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, who were considered as freedom fighters waging jihad against the ‘evil empire’. The emphasis changed after 9/11. Now al-Qaeda is a terrorist outfit. ‘We are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call evil by its name,’ President George W. Bush had told West Point cadets in a speech in 2002. The dictionary definition (Oxford) has no such moral pretensions when it defines terrorism: ‘the use of violent action in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to act’.
In all official discourses, terrorism is an ‘evil’ on all counts: motive, means, actors and impact. Terrorism seeks to overthrow legitimate governments through violence. The asymmetrical nature of conflict can claim innocent lives. Actors involved in terrorism are somehow the ‘other’ or the ‘different’ in an enemy or pejorative sense of the term. Terrorism creates fear far beyond its direct impact and may make a government ineffectual or foolish or both. No wonder, even those governments that had a violent past look at all acts of terrorism with revulsion. The UN global counter-terrorism strategy proclaims: ‘The General Assembly reiterates its strong condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes, as it constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.’
The alternative definition of terrorism is different only in detail, not in essence. It questions the legitimacy of the government and asks whether the state is living up to the standards set by it. Rights activists also reject repression as a legitimate means of fighting terrorism. When the National Commission to investigate the 9/11 terrorist attacks found fault with almost everyone connected with security but failed to nail responsibility on anyone, the fallacy of preparedness of the state was fully exposed. The alternative stand on terrorism provides some kind of legitimacy to the official viewpoint.
Oppositional conceptualization invokes principles of violence as the option of last resort and right to self-determination. Oppositional groups insist that when states are oppressive, resort to violence is legitimate. The second principle about the right to self-determination flows from the first: when the state does not allow dissent, adopts repressive measures and uses naked violence to suppress genuine aspirations for independence or freedom, violent uprising becomes inevitable and terrorism is a part of it.
Increasingly, however, insurgent groups claiming their right to use terrorism have begun to lose legitimacy. Even suicide attacks stand stigmatized. Contrary to general perception, USA’s ‘war on terror’ has given some respectability to an act that was denounced merely as an aberration in the past. But strategic moves made by the hyperpower in the name of fighting terrorism everywhere have made other states wary of USA’s real intentions. In this see-saw, an effective and coordinated effort to fight terrorism politically has suffered gravely. It seems that politics of terror is going to be around for quite a while.
Corruption, callousness, criminalization, fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism are pathologies of politics that exist in some measure and in some or other form in every society. It is the efforts that are made to fight such menaces that really count. These problems have acquired added salience in Southasia mainly for three reasons. First, the spectre of ‘failed state’—the state when institutions of state don’t work, instruments lose credibility and injunctions cannot be implemented—is used to interfere directly in the internal affairs of a country as was the case in Nepal at the height of Maoist insurgency. Second, repressive regimes are supported by international powers for short-term benefits as by USA in Pakistan or China in Burma. The third and the gravest of all risks is the use of terrorist threats to justify hybrid regimes with dictatorial overtones.
Various remedies are being tried in Southasia to face the challenges posed by the spread of fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism. Sadly, ‘armed solution’ is the default position of almost all states even though it has been found that this is a ‘high-cost, low-return’ method of countering violent protests. As Arundhati Roy puts it succinctly,
The military solution hasn’t worked in Kashmir or Manipur or Nagaland. It will not work in mainland India. It may not be that the masses will rise in disciplined revolutionary fervour. It may be that we will become a society convulsed with violence, political, criminal and mercenary. But the fact remains that the problem is social injustice, the solution is social justice. Not bullets, not bulldozers, not prisons.6
One may add to the list of failures of violent counter-insurgency, ‘It hasn’t worked in Jaffna. It hasn’t worked in Rolpa. It hasn’t worked in Chittagong. It will probably fail in Balochistan too.’ Unlike writer-activist Arundhati thought, it is difficult to be sure how social justice can be ensured when governments are perpetually engaged with the exigency of saving themselves from collapse.
The civil society has been trying alternative networks to give a sense of hope to the victims of political pathologies. Human rights, gender rights, child rights, cultural awakening, arts, crafts, literature and festivities help ‘drain the swamp’ that breeds terrorism. But such efforts invariably have a very long gestation period. Increasingly, civil society initiatives have begun to bring issues of systems of immunity and culture of impunity to light. Resettlement of the internally displaced, restitution and reconciliation are being discussed openly. But yet again, solutions outside of politics are not sustainable.
On the political front, Marxists have been way ahead of others in rekindling an assimilative ideology based on class solidarity. For reasons specific to the region— strong family, caste, clan, religion, linguistic and cultural ties—Marxism has less appeal in Southasia than tradition-based political slogans. In this milieu, it remains to be seen whether the bhadralok leadership of CPM in India or the petty bourgeoisie party apparatchiks of UML in Nepal can counter the fiery posturing of the People’s War Group and CPN (Maoists). But democratic socialism is a possible solution of checking right-wing regression as well as left-wing extremism.
The rediscovery of Gandhian politics could be one of the ways of countering democratic deficit, cronyism and corruption, fundamentalism, extremism and militancy. The problem with Gandhian solution is that it requires a very high level of awareness, discipline and detachment. That is something in extremely short supply. Unbridled commercialization in every field of life—education, health, marriage, ambitions and entertainment—has transformed potential citizens into impatient consumers hankering for instant gratification. It is difficult to count upon the altruistic drives inherent in every person. In the short-term, there is no other way than to count upon the learning ability of democratic institutions to improve their ways of handling political exigencies.
Then there is always the inherent strength of common Southasians. People in Nepal rose up in millions—in terms of the percentage of population out on the streets, the April Uprising, 2006, was an unprecedented event in the history of political protests in the world—to throw away the royal yoke. Enthused by the protest march of lawyers, even a cynical commentator like Tariq Ali was forced to acknowledge, ‘There was something delightfully old-fashioned about this struggle: it involved neither money nor religion, but principles.’7 If such things can happen in Nepal and Pakistan, they can happen almost everywhere in Southasia.
Relevance of the Middle Path: Rediscovering Gandhi for All Southasia
by
C. K. Lal
Attribute it to the power of the Empire, but Southasians have no hesitation in embracing Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Marx or Mao as their own. In one country, where the Turkish Ataturk is a role model of ‘enlightened moderation’, the proponent of real enlightened moderation is an ‘Indian’. In the countryside of another Southasian nation, where guns rule, the epitome of courage with conscience is seldom remembered. Is it a deep-seated inferiority complex which makes Southasians oblivious of the legacy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi? From South Africa to the United States, proponents of peaceful protests draw their inspiration from the pioneer of ahimsa. But most Southasians look at him through the tinted glasses of bigoted nationalism and see a nationalist ‘Indian’. Within India itself, Gandhi is consigned to history textbooks and his values dismissed as romanticism in the power corridors of Delhi and the state capitals. However, more than a concerted effort to rehabilitate his memory, it is the needs of the time that will establish the primacy of Gandhi as a Southasian ideal who foresaw the complexities of the region and devised a middle path to face the challenges of the future. His legacy is a shared Southasian heritage and the region will discover his relevance as it enters into yet another turbulent phase in its history.
These are sanguine times for some Southasians. Unocal alumnus Hamid Karzai has declared the dethroned King Zahir Shah as the Father of the Afghanistan nation, once destroyed and then rebuilt to the specifications of the US Pacific Command. (Spokesmen for both Unocal and Karzai have since denied any such relationship.) Bangladesh is happy being at the centre of SAARC and BIMSTEC, two sets of idiosyncratic alphabet mixes that stand for largely ceremonial organizations. Bhutan is enthralled by the prospect of democracy which King Jigme Singye Wangchuk has promised to introduce by 2008. The Burmese junta has just shifted its capital to correct the feng shui and entrench itself further. India isn’t exactly shining, but some Indians are certainly gloating over the prospect of becoming the back office of the world in the next one, two, or three decades depending upon whether you are talking to a free-market fundamentalist, a socialist planner or a self-proclaimed pragmatist; they all seem to share the same Brahminical dream of making it big without getting their hands dirty.
Pakistan is content with a general-in-sherwani espousing enlightened moderation on the strength of a couple of F16s with nuclear capabilities. Nepal is rediscovering its golden days of ‘monarchical democracy’ by importing Chinese arms. President Mahinda Rajapakse of Sri Lanka is proud to have ridden the wave of anti-LTTE sentiments in the South even though his victory has put the peace process of Serendib in peril. All in all, the power elite of Southasia are happy and content. Very few, too few it seems, have the time or inclination to remember the frail old man in a dhoti striding the length and breadth of the subcontinent with a toothless smile on his face. But just as these are the best of times for some, there are many others for whom these are the worst of times. In a region where paradoxes are the rule rather than the exception, the Dickensian metaphor of two cities is the most accurate description of everyday reality. Just below the shine of the thin silver lining, there is the reality of an unpredictable dark cloud hovering over Southasia.
The al-Qaeda organization recently claimed, with some justification it seems, that it still holds large swaths of Afghan territory under its control. An Islamist upsurge threatens Bangladesh, a country that grew out of violent conflicts, first for religious homogeneity and then for independent cultural identity. The racial regime of the Drukpa in Bhutan has refused to mend fences with the Lhotsampa it forced to flee. The deepening grip of the Burmese junta is enticing its neighbouring countries into dealing with an abhorrent regime. The democratic decay in the biggest democracy of the world has become quite alarming: members of Parliament guzzle local development funds and accept bribes in order to raise questions in the Lower House. The royal-military rule in Nepal is digging in its heel. The unity of Sri Lanka’s people stands threatened. The dilution of Tibetan culture will be a great loss of all human heritages, but most Southasians appear blissfully unaware of the processes that have been unleashed by Beijing upon the ‘roof of the world’.
This is the time when the modern apostle of peaceful resistance needs to be rediscovered. M. K. Gandhi’s ideas were extremely powerful during the independence struggles of Southasia. His beliefs and methods are even more important today in a region passing through the pangs of adulthood—decomposing democracy, arrogant autocracy, insecure intelligentsia, boastful business, and violent conflicts are actually symptoms of the coming of age of a region that had remained mired in orthodoxy and hopelessness for centuries. When status quo is too oppressive and change threatens to tear the place apart, Gandhi’s vision beckons like the proverbial light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. But first, a powerful myth must be broken to reclaim Gandhi for entire Southasia. Indians have done a great disservice to the Mahatma by appropriating his legacy for a truncated Bharat that is India. Gandhi was an apostle of a non-Brahminic tradition whose teachings and practices are the common heritage of humanity. Every Southasian has as much right to stake a claim upon his teachings as any flag-waving Bharatiya.
Misunderstood Messiah
Any attempt to depict the teachings of the Mahatma in a hurry would be inherently preposterous. After all, his own writings span 100 collected volumes and there are numerous other works, which delve into his work and thought. Unable to access the true depth of his life and message, his legions of admirers do the next best thing—they portray him through epigrammatic quotations often lifted and quoted completely out of context. From the mischievous ‘I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers’ to the rhetorical ‘what difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?’ and from the banal ‘It is unwise to be too sure of one’s wisdom’ to the profound ‘whatever you do will be insignificant, but it’s very important that you do it’—all kinds of quotable quotes have been picked up and paraded according to the bias of the presenter. So much so that Gandhi has become some kind of an emblem of the high-end alternative lifestyle where laptops are Macs, khadi serves for silk, watches are handcrafted but in Zurich, and there is no taboo on sipping wine from paper cups. These ‘page three Gandhians’ of jet-set Hindi-stan have done more harm to the memory of the Mahatma than the armies of RSS swayamsevaks doing calisthenics in khaki shorts. Caricature too is a form of tribute, but not when the object of spoof is too complex to be understood through inexpert simplification.
Presenting Gandhi as the ‘Father of the Nation’ of India was one of the grossest simplifications made by the otherwise erudite Jawaharlal Nehru, with his own visions of Indian grandeur. In fact, that appellation rightfully belonged to Chacha Nehru himself more than to anyone else. Along with Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, it was Nehru who wanted an independent India even at the cost of its division. Nehru probably thought that he was paying his mentor a tribute by having him declared the father of the independent but truncated territory that became present-day India. In fact, that title downgraded the contributions of an outstanding Southasian of Gandhi’s stature. Unlike Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Don Stephen Senanayake, or Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, Gandhi did not set out to form a state in the Westphalian sense, or be the ruler of a pre-nationhood tribal homeland. The Mahatma consistently aimed higher. In a region wracked by centuries of colonialism, the Mahatma wanted to build nothing less than a whole new civilization. If building a state through conquest, compromise or consensus was his sole aim, he would not have died a broken man, deeply disappointed by the Partition which still created countries that most political leaders of his time wanted. Keep in mind that Gandhi was nowhere near the Red Fort celebrations when the ‘tryst with destiny’ was heralded by Jawaharlal.
In many ways, Gandhi was an inheritor of the non-Brahminic tradition of Hindu philosophy. It is not just a coincidence that the Gandhian ideology began to take shape after Gandhi visited Champaran in the backwaters of Bihar in 1917, an area that has been the natural refuge of non-Vedic scholars throughout history. Bihar and parts of the Ganga plains that now fall in modern Nepal have always been home to non-Brahminic paths of salvation. Householder King Janak refined his beliefs in participation without attachment in Mithila. Mahavir and Buddha, born into Vaishya and Kshatriya clans respectively, began their movements against entrenched Brahminism from this region. Gandhi led the movement against indigo planters in Champaran. In the decayed remnants of historic Vaishali, he probably began something even bigger—a quest for selfdefinition. There, in the cradle of the Lichchhavi civilization, he initiated a movement to restore the dignity of every individual irrespective of race, caste, class, gender or age. For a society steeped in the tradition of codified hierarchy, this was nothing less than a ‘total revolution’, an expression that the disillusioned Marxist Jayaprakash Narayan appropriated once he embraced Gandhism in the early 1970s.
Gandhi surmised with uncanny intuition that there was not much material surplus left in India to redistribute among its 350 million people. Theories of Marx had little resonance in an area of agricultural decline and industrial darkness. Centuries of plunder by waves of raiders had killed the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of the Yamuna-Ganga plains where commerce had become a dirty term associated more with deceit than fair trade. The mythic duo of baker and butcher trading with each other in self-interest as immortalized by Adam Smith had no use for subsistence farmers residing in villages with almost no connection with each other. There had to be a third way, thought Gandhi, as he saw the depth of physical and moral poverty of fellow human beings on his way to, and in, Champaran. He saw the alternative in the dream of Gram Swaraj where individuals did trade with each other, though not for profit but to ensure collective survival through self-help and self-sufficiency. The British Empire, founded on the principle of trade and rooted in the traditions of the East India Company, found it hard to understand a logic where profit did not deserve even to be denounced. Ergo, the British had to go and let India find her way.
Goal established, Gandhi searched for the right mix to advance his cause. He had seen the efficacy of non-violent protests in South Africa. He refined it further by adding the element of self-inflicted suffering, probably derived from the Buddha’s teaching—the same Sakyamuni who had walked these mid-Ganga plains two-and-half millennia earlier. The importance of prayers may have been inspired by Mahavir’s meditations. Was the spinning wheel an indirect homage to Kabir, the weaver-prophet of Benaras who had sung the songs of salvation through faith in the self and bread-labour?
The potency of Gandhi’s terms is often lost in translation. For example, ahimsa is much more than a passive strategy of non-violence; it is an active seeking of the absence of violence. The literal meaning of satyagraha suggests an insistence on truth, but it is much more than a tool of protest; it proposes a whole new way of life centred on the power of belief in one’s own convictions. Brahmacharya is not just celibacy; it is an adoption of the righteous path.
Going beyond non-attachment and goal-seeking, aprigraha is a total commitment to truth in every aspect of a seeker’s life. Asahayog is often translated as non-cooperation. But there is no negativity in Asahayog; it suggests instead an insistence on proactive cooperation. If ethics are to a society what morals are to an individual, Gandhi sought to establish certain principles of ‘ram rajya’ derived more from the Buddha and Mahavir than from Valmiki or Tulsi Das, two popular bards believed to have penned the epic Ramayana in Sanskrit and Awadhi, respectively.
To the band of ambitious westernized oriental gentlemen around him—M. A. Jinnah in his Saville Row suit, the Etonian Nehru or the upwardly mobile middle-class geniuses such as Rajendra Prasad and B. R. Ambedkar—these principles were blasphemous to the ideals of freedom set out by the French Revolution, the American War of Independence and the Russian October Revolution. Gandhi’s teachings questioned everything they thought they knew. It was heresy they had to accept only because it seemed to work: Gandhi’s appeal galvanized the masses. No other apostle since the Prince of Peace in 500 BC has been accepted by the ruler and the ruled alike. Gandhianism had acquired the potency of a new religion, a way of life that had to be resisted by those who wanted to build India or Pakistan in the image of Britain, France or the United States of America. Gandhi’s most trusted lieutenants—Jinnah, Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel—followed his strategy faithfully, but without the conviction that the means propounded were the ends in themselves.
Nehru wanted to build an India which would be a hybrid of Mauryan glory and Mughal splendour. Fearful of his fate in such an entity dominated by the personality of a self-assured Kashmiri Pandit, Jinnah, a non-believing Shia within a Sunni-majority Muslim community, sought an alternative vision of a secular polity governing over a homogeneous population of the faithful—an Islamic ram rajya. He found it in the aspirations of the United Provinces’ landed gentry longing for an Awadh renaissance patterned after the court of the last nawab of Lucknow, Wazid Ali Shah.
That Nehru could never replicate the Mauryan glory in a pauperized India was a foregone conclusion. His ‘tryst with destiny’ freedom speech was in fact the swan song of a disillusioned Emperor Ashoka who suddenly found that the India he was about to rule held no resemblance to the India he had bargained for. Like all images of an idealized past, the secularism of the Awadh court was only partially true; Hindu subjects of the nawab had accepted a second-class status long before Wajid Ali Shah had begun to sing and dance like Radha. Jinnah’s oft-quoted speech, before the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947, ‘You are free to go to your temples …’, was thus fundamentally flawed; in any ram rajya, the rule of the enlightened is based on the principle of its complete acceptance by all the rest.
Gandhi had, therefore, already died the day India and Pakistan became independent. Like most visionaries, the Mahatma had been way ahead of his time. Colonial India was not ready for his revolution. It accepted his politics, but with strong reservations, and then only because his methods seemed to work to the amazement of his sophisticated contemporaries. Gandhi’s famous retort that he was a politician trying to be a saint was perhaps an acceptance of defeat of his life’s mission. In 1947, he was ready for the parody that independent India would make of his life and teachings. Nehru consigned him to the pantheon of gods no sooner had the Hindu zealot killed him and his ashes consigned to the Yamuna. More zealots kill him every time they garland his statue, parade him through the streets in religious processions and ridicule him as the Father of the Indian nation, which bears no resemblance to his formulations. Pakistanis kill him every time they denounce the man who first sought to establish Muslim pride through his Khilafat Movement (the Quaid had thought, with remarkable foresight, that it was madness to rekindle Islamic passions) and worked for the interests of Pakistan even after partition.
Method in Madness
Sincerity was the source of Gandhi’s power. He believed in the purpose of his mission and worked to achieve a unity between his thought, speech and actions. His modus operandi was based upon mobilization of the people rather than the political parties. Once these noble goals were established, he had no hesitation in using the nascent media of his time to advance his cause. Whether it was his fast unto death, or the long walk to defy the Salt Law, theatrics was built into the Mahatma’s every protest. The media loved it and its power shamed the rulers every time a reporter sent a dispatch from the boondocks of the far-flung empire. With a mischievous twist, Gandhi used the very instruments of empire to undermine it from within. Various leftist groups have since tried to replicate this technique, but since they ignore the fundamental feature of this moral method of political arm-twisting—non-violence—they fail to create a favourable impact and cannot move the masses.
Gandhi improvised on the anarchic impulses of Marx and established that any action meant honestly to recreate cannot be called destruction. Jinnah and Nehru, the other two outstanding lawyers from the Temple Inn, could never appreciate the ancient Hindu logic of dying to be reborn. Like other god-fearing and law-abiding English gentlemen, Westernized Oriental Gentlemen (WOGs) at the fag end of the empire loved order and feared anarchy. They could not recognize the method in the madness of Gandhi, who had experienced first-hand the tyranny of ‘order’ that then existed in Indian society—caste, untouchability, gender discrimination and an utter disregard for health and sanitation. These issues could not wait for either Jinnah’s homeland or Nehru’s utopia. A revolution was needed to reform the Indian mindset, and revolutions are by definition anarchic. Order implies continuation of the status quo.
Fear of anarchy has to be overcome in order to initiate long-needed changes in the existing order that had institutionalized inequality for millennia.
All the societies within Southasia are passing through a dangerous phase of disillusionment and hopelessness. In some parts, as in Nepal, Telangana, Jharkhand and Marathbada, political entrepreneurs are seeking solutions by reinventing Maoism. In West Punjab, East Bengal and Saurashtra, experiments in militant Islam and Hindutva are vitiating the environment of peaceful coexistence. East of the Brahmputra, a fascist upsurge plagues separatist movements and racist rulers alike. Elsewhere in the region, there is a dangerous drift and listlessness. Rediscovering Gandhi in these times is essential if one seeks the play of sanity in Southasia.
The challenges have multiplied since Gandhi died in 1948. Commercialized newspapers, instantaneous television images, impromptu SMSs and mindless blogs have made the task of creating a unified answer to the empire of market fundamentalism extremely difficult. But responses are being crafted that raise hope. The human rights movement in Pakistan, the agitation by the Narmada evacuees, the voices of dissent in Bangladesh that speak for its Hindu and Buddhist minorities, the modest Sarvodaya experiment of Sri Lanka, the ongoing people’s movement in Nepal and the transformation of erstwhile socialists in the Yamuna-Ganga plains—all are indications of churning of a society on the threshold of change.
Like most philosophies, Gandhism too needs to be rediscovered by every generation to suit the needs and aspirations of its time. That Gandhi has endured and thrived in the dreams of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela alike is ample tribute to his memory. He has become even more important after the end of the Cold War and the consequent declaration of the Clash of Civilization in the wake of 9/11. Mull over the ancient Christian aphorism about turning the other cheek in its transformed Gandhian version—‘an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind’—and there is no way you can ignore the force of his ideas and their relevance in our times.
‘Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth,’ wrote Albert Einstein. Hindus and Muslims schooled in the belief of the birth of a redeemer in every epoch may find it unbelievable that a scientist of Einstein’s stature failed to see that there was no way Gandhi could not have emerged in a region virtually at the edge of collapse in early 20th century. Passing through almost a similar phase once more at the start of the 21st century, Southasia will have to rediscover Gandhi because redeemers are not born whenever they are needed. They have to be found in their philosophies.
(This essay by C. K. Lal was first published as the cover story on Gandhi in January 2006 issue of Himal Southasia. Accessible on the web at: http://www.himalmag.com/2006/january/cover story 1.html)