The problem
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THIS issue of Seminar is our contribution to the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of M.K. Gandhi’s birth. Over the decades Seminar has continued to engage with the man, his ideas and his legacy in the tradition that he best exemplified – an open dialogue, with all the polyphony and effervescence that a dialogue on ideas and aspirations demands. Such a dialogue requires equipoise – neither symmetry nor balance but a steadfast belief that even acrimonious disagreement, fundamental critique, an expression of disenchantment, has legitimate place in dialogue. Gandhi’s lifelong aspiration and endeavour was to cultivate just such a state, detached and yet deeply engaged, awake when it was night for all others, continually seeking a ground that would make moral action possible.
Fifty years ago in 1969, the nation came together to celebrate the centenary of Gandhi’s birth. Similarly now, our state, civil society and institutions charged with holding Gandhi’s memory and legacy have begun to make plans for celebrations. But there is a vital difference between then and now. This distance is not only of time, of our times. In 1969 it was possible to speak of a deeply felt and entrenched presence of Gandhi, both personal and institutional. Mohan Singh Uberoi ‘Dewana’, speaking at Shimla reminded us that every possible traditional Sanskrit adjective had been applied to Gandhi: a brahmacarin, a mumukshu, a jivanmukta, a vairagyavan, an ahimsaka, a tapasvin, a vratinor vratacari, a bhakta, a sanyasin, a parivrajaka and, of course, a Mahatma.
It was possible then to speak of Gandhi, not in the past sense but as a living presence from whom we could learn collective non-violence, seek personal ethical guidance and conduct our collective political and institutional life in a way that would disappoint neither him nor his two comrades, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel. It was not necessary to invoke him merely as memory or history but as a challenge, a constant reminder of what could be. Gandhi was still a potentiality. He was for many a constant referent to the most basic ideas and ideals of polity, society, economy, of civilization and even life itself. This availability of Gandhi as a measure of things is what made him a deeply entrenched presence.
In 1969, Nirmal Kumar Bose was still in our midst. His presence, I imagine, would have brought, in a gentle but sharp way, the necessity of autonomous judgement vis a vis Gandhi Bapu. He would have reminded us that deep affection and fundamental disagreement can coexist. D.G. Tendulkar, probably saying little – as he had said all that he wanted to in his majestic portrayal of Gandhi: Mahatma – embodied a journey of an entire generation of Indians who sought to engage and comprehend the life of Gandhi. Pyarelal, in the absence of Mahadev Desai, showed us what it meant to bear witness to the truth of that man.
As one writes this five decades on, the distance cannot have been greater. It is not only generational anxieties born not out of personal biography, but an awareness that Gandhi is not our present and that, most certainly, his belonging to our future(s) is as slim as the fine thread he spun even with his left hand. That the Indian state has forsaken him is something we have all known for decades. But we still had (some) hope from his institutions and associates then. Vinoba at the time was a revolutionary possibility and not a misguided advocate of anushashan parva. The failures of the institutions that seek to bear his legacy is what characterizes our present attempts at memorializing the man. They have long ceased to be home to ideas of ethical innovativeness; their adherence to rituals is bereft of faith and they find themselves unaware of the fact of deep disenchantment of dalit, adivasi, women – the very person who was the last person for Gandhi – with Gandhi and his institutions.
These institutions and political formations alike have long forsaken Gandhi’s constructive activities, with giant sized contraptions made with chromium-nickel stainless steel and called ‘spinning wheel’ to replace his charkha made of wood, burnished with age and use. It is their steely unproductivity and grotesque ugliness that comes as a giant insult to what Nehru called ‘the livery of India’s freedom.’
The other marker of this great distance lies in the realm of political economy. In 1969 we could argue, or take solace in the belief, that if the country had failed to follow Gandhi’s notions of economy of permanence (J.C. Kumarappa would not object if the idea was also credited to his immensely creative master), the reason was not the intrinsic failure of the model but a failure of the leadership. We have today all but forsaken the notion that political economy fundamentally belongs to the realm of the normative, that economic ideas can and must be governed by non-economic values. Today, with the exception of those committed to deep ecology, the normative in the economic has little relevance in ‘normal times’ when ordinary human acquisitiveness takes precedence over those ideas which seek to limit greed.
We would like to believe, and there is some basis to our belief, that our most creative engagement with Gandhi can be seen in the realm of people’s movements. We recall the women who hugged the trees, the farmers who embraced jal samadhi, the fisherfolk who remind us of ethical modes of gathering the produce of the seas. And yet, we know that there are equally movements of people who celebrate violence, movements directed towards – at times in the belief that the state provides them immunity and hence impunity – smothering all expressions that seek to legitimize the ‘small, still voice’.
Despite the fundamental critiques of Gandhi, our disenchantment with his institutions, our lack of faith in the moral codes that could govern our economic behaviour and the increasing legitimacy of violence in our public life, we nevertheless continue to turn to Gandhi. We turn to him not in the moments of our celebrations – we know that he is a quintessential party-pooper – but in moments of doubt, despair, when we turn against ourselves in macabre violence. We have perhaps begun to recognize a fundamental fact, a fact that Gandhi tried to draw our attention to, that India is united in its poverty, deprivation, hunger and structures of violence. So long as these continue to perturb us, so long as we continue to aspire to rise above ourselves and seek to fulfil our human vocation of experiencing swaraj as rule over oneself and as self-rule, Gandhi would remain our ally.
TRIDIP SUHRUD
* The designations of A.K. Saran, P.C. Joshi, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Rajni Kothari, L.C. Jain, U.N. Dhebar, B.K. Roy Burman and Sharmila Rege refer to the period when their articles were originally published. Those for Tridip Suhrud, Vandana Shiva, Adi Godrej, Ashok Upadhyay, Gopal Guru and Shahid Amin reflect their current status.
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