Sony OTT aired an adaptation of "Freedom at Midnight". The motivation to tell the story of Indian independence and Gandhi's role has always been there, despite the hatred we see in social media.
[Reproduced from my post in another blog site.]
From Anand Ranganathan to sundry SM warriors, it has become fashionable to abuse Gandhi. Their hatred for Gandhi and my reading of Savarkar’s biography made me a Gandhi sympathiser – just like leftist trolls converting a centrist to a Modi Bhakt.
Gandhi had his share of mistakes the country still grapples with. But to hate him for his very existence is purely ignorance. To appreciate Gandhi’s positive contribution to this county, we need to understand the context.
Since the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni, many parts of the country were in frequent wars. Even territories not touched by the Islamic invaders had their share of wars. In these wars, sibling rivalry, family feuds, conspiracies and frequent backstabbing were quite common. The point is – in the Indian community, it was easy to turn one against the other. An observer of left wing politics can see how this has played out in the past 30-40 years.
The Mughal empire and the promising Maratha empires also did not escape the treachery. Because of that, the British were the de facto rulers of mostly impoverished people with the kings and a few aristocrats sharing the loot before they went to the British. Since the British were the ultimate beneficiary, wars between princely states were reduced. The first war Indian Independence of 1857 (mischievously labelled as just a mutiny by the British) had further weakened the namesake administration.
Later part of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth saw the rise of leaders from erstwhile powerful communities like the Chitpavans of Maharashtra and the Kayastha for Bengal. Rest of the communities did not have the luxury of thinking about the nation. They looked at western examples to fight imperialism and resorted to violence for freedom. (A few exceptions are there, but they were just exceptions.)
Violent struggles have a lot of limitations. They can’t induct and hold members together easily. Suspicion and fear are the hallmarks of every such secret violent group. It is also easy for the government to break these groups with fear as the key. (An example of this limitation – The Nashik Conspiracy case in which Savarkar was awarded dual life sentences, of the 35 people convicted, all but one were Brahmins. The case was a success for the government because a few of the conspirators turned approvers for various reasons.)
In this context Gandhi enters. His primary objective was to keep the people together, make the freedom struggle as broad based as possible. Till the arrival of Gandhi, Congress was not a people’s movement, but was limited to a few hundred intellectuals across the country. The credit for making the freedom struggle as a people’s movement must go to Gandhi. His approach was novel – for people to join the freedom struggle, there should be no room for fear of severe punishment or suspicion on fellow fighters. Those who were already poor had nothing to sacrifice and they were not expected to sacrifice to be part of the non-violent freedom struggle. His impact on second rung of leaders deserves a separate article.
But he also went out of the way to woo Muslims and tried to integrate the marginalized. The first one was a disaster for the nation. His attempt to integrate the oppressed / untouchables with cooperation from the caste Hindus was only partly successful. Untouchability was reduced to a great extent. We owe our social reforms to Gandhi more than to any other so-called “reformer”.
We can say Gandhi went overboard on appeasing Muslims, but other leaders did not consider Muslims as enemies. They all had the risk of committing the same kind of mistakes. Their objectives were unimaginably big for small people like us; they should not be judged on a few mistakes made in achieving their lofty goals.
Gandhi also influenced many indigenous thinkers like Dharampal, J C Kumarappa and Ram Swarup. Gandhi’s ideas on village centric governance and economy deserve more attention and debate.
Post independence, it was essential to maintain the image of Gandhi as the great unifier for a country that has a constant risk of separatism. But for Gandhi, I can’t imagine a unified democratic India. Hating him for his approaches and judging him for his personal life are pure ignorance of history and human nature.
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