On M K Gandhi

In college, I became enamored with subaltern ways of thinking.  I joined a group of activists who considered Gandhian philosophy as worthy not just of study, but of veneration and following.  The inspirations or western echoes of Gandhian philosophy, from John Ruskin to H W Thoreau to E F Schumacher, were also considered venerable.  Capitalism, Wealth, Arms, and Science were considered evil, and village life, manual labor, simplicity were virtues.

I met and worked alongside many activists: Sunderlal Bahuguna (who was a nice man), Medha Patkar (who was alright as well) and some weirdos who moved around in Delhi in Khadi clothes.  I was a confused man looking for direction and I learnt a lot in those years, and damaged some of my teeth for good by using some badly made daatun instead of toothpaste.

Once we went to the under-construction Tehri dam in the Himalayas, and the group leader lied to an engineer working at the dam in order to tour the site and to get some details about the dam's features.  Later that engineer came to know of our true intentions, and as he looked down on us from a small hill, we (or at least I) remember lowering our faces in shame.  Wasn't truth in the means, as important as truth in the end?

I now regard M K Gandhi as little more than an easily influenced simpleton who could write reasonably well, who was put forward by the politically savvy as a "pure" symbol of their less-than-pure political ambitions, and who was finally ignored and discarded when his usefulness had lapsed.

His ideas on almost everything are wrong.  He had no understanding of science, or of philosophy, or of politics, of human sexuality, or of nation-building.  His charisma was mostly due to him being regarded as a "noble soul" because he had returned from the West and despite being of means and being well-connected, dressed and acted as a poor and devout man.  His English-speaking followers (the western journalists and acolytes) also increased his aura of being a great man.

He treated his wife and children abominably, was an unusually obstinate man who then suddenly changed his views on a topic, had little understanding of physiology but thereby not deterred from lecturing others, and had too many contradictions in his life and work to be considered seriously.

The one feat I do credit him with is capitalizing on the guilt of a squeamish ruling class by practicing non-violent civil disobedience (in the manner prescribed by Thoreau).  This would not have worked against a more ruthless agressor, so the success of his strategy is more a credit to the British morality, in a sense.

His most well-considered work, Hind Swaraj, is written in the form of a dialog where Gandhi assumes the role of the wise man tutoring a noob.  In college, one of the men I admired (the late Professor Dinesh Mohan) raised an outcry when he held that book high and criticized it openly as he read passages from it that decried modern medicine, education and feminism.

Being enamored of him is perhaps excusable for a naive young man, and I know of no man of understanding (in my opinion) who still considers him worthy of admiration, what to talk of emulation.  Perhaps worthy of study, if only to understand why Indians quickly fall at the feet of godmen to this day.

His idea of going on a hunger strike to force a decision from his opponent is infantile, and is still followed in India.  But now the ruling class is more ruthless, and they break the fast and the resolve of such naive fools quite easily.