Gandhiji and His Ideals – Is It Fashionable to Criticize Them?

Currently prevalent political ideologies have been at pains to demonise India’s first Prime Minister; to use reductive and false narratives for a person mainly for his political ideologies. However, strangely, there has also been an ongoing effort to undermine the ideals that the father of our nation, Gandhiji stood for. While our leaders continue to go through the motions of honouring him with the customary Raj Ghat trips and the garlanding of statues at appropriate occasions, there seems to be a conscious effort to try and steer away from the ideals of inclusiveness, nonviolence and love that the man stood for. Why is this? Are Gandhi's thoughts and ideals just not trendy enough for modern India? Why has it become so fashionable to decry and denounce Gandhiji, his actions and all that he stood for?

Lofty words there from the President of the nation as he described Bapu as the “moral compass” of the nation and its people. In this Independence Day speech he also said that violence has no place in Gandhi’s country.

In the words of Gandhiji, independence has a significant element of self regulation of recognising the need to follow the law, not because breaking it means being punished but because following the law is the right thing to do.

A personage no less than the nation’s finance minister tweeted this picture today. Conspicuous by its absence is the image of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister; one of the chief architects of the freedom struggle. The fact that the image of the father of the nation is depicted as somehow secondary seems odd too.

This reply tweet personifies how Gandhi-bashing has become fashionable in recent times. The ideals of tolerance and acceptance are somehow seen as weaknesses; the concepts of truth and nonviolence viewed with a certain degree of contempt as somehow being outdated or unrealistic.

If there were tweets in support of the FM’s tweet, there were these as well; an indictment of what is seen as a recent attempt to manipulate history, present fake as fact. Many pointed out that the attitude of the current dispensation seems to point to their insecurity with the fact that there was no visible contribution to the freedom struggle from their ideological parent organisations.

While some tweets ‘fixed’ the picture, others pointed out that a social media ‘gimmick’ such as this cannot alter the fact that Nehru was not only the member of a particular party but a trenchant freedom fighter who spent years in jail, was beloved of the masses and a true statesman. Others also pointed out the fact that the image did not contain either the man behind India’s constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar or any minority figures who contributed to the freedom struggle; both telling facts.

When India’s new leaders were in Delhi celebrating the throwing off of the British yoke, Gandhiji was in Calcutta trying to bring about communal harmony. Gandhiji never held political office, nor did he ever court fame and power. Perhaps such an attitude of renunciation sits ill with the consumerist culture of today; so at odds with Bapu’s idea of India?

This is an oft quoted quote of Gandhiji; telling the world that we have to work to create the realities we want; about taking responsibility. However in today’s India, where the people as well as the leadership look to blame others and the past for current failings or to shrug off responsibility for making a change, this concept is perhaps outmoded.

It doesn’t matter how some people view Gandhiji and his ideals. It is immaterial matter how they shortsightedly decry what he stood for. If they now pin the blame for various social and communal ills on the man, this is their own misguided misfortune. The fact remains that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a man that inspired generations of leaders, thinkers and revolutionaries. He showed India the way to bring a mighty empire to its knees using nothing but an iron will. His ideals of compassion, inclusion, nonviolence and truth never can become stale or outdated. His great grandson, Tushar Gandhi puts it pithily in a tweet as he wishes his “fellow Indians freedom from Hate, Prejudice, Violence, Intolerance, Bigotry, Lies and Divisiveness.”