Indians are a nation who seems to be lusting, esurient,
desperate and yearning for Gods and demi gods. We make Gods out of stone,
marble, drift wood and even mortals- lucky are the ones amongst us upon whom we
thrust that status often to their glee. These idiosyncrasies are a lesser
matter when compared to the outrage we express over iconoclasm and even honest
analysis and discussion about the human Gods we made. Their infractions are
seldom examined or condemned.
Recent times have seen a liberal dose of critical analysis of
Gandhi -bashing as some call it - Mahatma
‘bashing’ (sic) criticism. We thrust upon him a status akin to God’s, the
most revered, the infallible mortal, the
holy man, Mahatma, the spartan saint, who lived in our midst. The eulogy in the
words of Albert Einstein, and which strikes reverberantly, “Generations to
come will scarce believe that such a one as this in flesh and blood walked upon
this earth”. Correspondingly there has been fierce defence of Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi- vociferous indignation of any criticism of Gandhi, his utterances,
philosophy,or his life.
Why Gandhi alone, we have other mortal Gods to whom we
prostrate, let us be hugged and kissed, watch them agape and resent bitterly
and sometimes hysterically when they are criticised. We automatically are tuned
to become agitated, flustered and resent when our beliefs, faith and fantasies
are questioned, are seemed to be threatened by scholarly dissection and
argument. We fret and accuse of betrayal, irreverence and rudeness when the
comparative cocoon that we built is exposed or threatened.
We made a living God of Sachin Tendulkar the cricketer. When
an international Tennis player innocently admitted that she is not aware who
this Tendulkar is, cudgels where raised in India and virtual stones were pelted
at the tennis player for her audacious admission. Remember cricket is played by
a miniscule number of countries when compared to the vast appeal of Tennis. We
let Tendulkar hijack a whole nation and cricket insisting and wrenching what he
wanted- a farewell series a swan song. And like Nehru’s famous “tryst with
destiny” speech, we broadcast live Tendulkar’s 45 minutes grandiloquence from
the stadium. We even recast the stands at the stadium to accommodate his mother
so she could watch him play from a comfortable vantage point. We awarded him the
responsibility as the Member of Parliament and he rubbished it with callousness.
We seem to believe that other countries
and people are not blessed with legends.
We cast away old and disenabled parents in the streets of farway
strange towns and in the insensitive cruelty of temple towns and run after fat over fed cow
like women and men whom we elevated to pedestals and anointed them as living
Gods. We run to them hallucinated and gets intoxicated when they hug us
supposedly washing away our sins and agonies. We resist any probity in their
lives and in the conduct of the vast empire they deftly built and sustain out
of our imbecility and blindness.
Arundhati Roy’s recent comments on Gandhi in a lecture led to
hoarsely resentment and accusations of blasphemy. Poet and respected social
& environmental activist Sugatha Kumari, a Gandhi fan herself shot off a center page article in a
daily rebutting Arundhati’s irreverence of the Mahatma and demanding, even
pleading kindness, respect and an iota of reverence are shown to Gandhi; his
life be seen as a beacon of unflinching struggle in the path of truth and
nobility.
Why do we make Gandhi a saint and God? Why is it blasphemous
if we dissect his life, analyzing it, page by page, word by word, deed by deed?
Why do not we accept and understand that he was a mortal like any and was
infallible? Why do not we understand that he may have erred, had weird beliefs
and even seedy behavior, which he claimed was his way of understanding his
limitations and cleansing his sinful thoughts etc.
Arundathi based the lecture on the lengthy forward she wrote
for the book of unpublished historical speech of Baba Saheb Ambaedkar. The
quotes, anecdotes and incidences where borrowed from archives and facts.
Gandhi’s reluctance and stubborn fire-walling of the abolition of caste in
Hinduism, his opposition to the agitation of the untouchables of Mumbai- the Mahad
satyagraha when untouchables resisted the ban that was slapped on them from
sharing waters of the public well; Gandhi’s parsimonious attitude to the Vaikon
sataygraha when untouchables objected to the cleansed area around the Vaikom
temple where they were banned; Gandhi’s opposition to the labour strike against
the Mill owners in Mumbai when he ranked their satygraha as “duragraha’ – greed-
devilish force,(possibly because the Mill owners were Gandhi’s staunch
financiers). Gandhi’s attitude towards the blacks in Africa is bailed out by
Sugatha Kumari as an aberration She uses his comparative young age as an excuse for his mindset towards
ethnic blacks and the socially marginalized.She often in the article states that Gandhi's life as the title of his autobiography was "An Experiment with Truth".
Like what most of us have been fed about Gandhi, he was not evicted
off the train at Pietermaritzburg when he asserted the non-whites right to
travel I class. Gandhi was not endorsing
the right of the blacks, but for equal status of passenger Indians – the elite
and middle class Indians like he. Gandhi’s attitude towards caste is
perplexing. While he maintained that caste and discrimination was unjust and
untouchability was evil he steadfastly endorsed the division of labor based on
caste. He refused to admit that caste was the evil cloak of Hinduism.Imagine division of labour in today's world based on caste in which one is born- something not of individual volition!
Gandhi was a wile politician. He was perhaps the first
Indian politician to ostentatiously play the communal card with his egregious “Khilafat
Movement”. Goodness, Mother of God what had Indian Muslims got to do with the abolition
of the Caliphate and the end of the Ottoman Empire in faraway Turkey?
His blatant blackmail with the weapon of satayagraha
proclaiming fast unto death until the award of separate electorates for
untouchables was withdrawn was perhaps the most cruel and unkind slap on the
very same people he ceremoniously elevated as “Harijans”, ironically meaning
“children of God”! He used satygraha s a potent black mail to even foster his autocratic views.
Why was SugathaKumari mute in her article about Gandhi’s
infamous experiments with celibacy when he slept naked with his two young
nieces? Because he was Gandhi and had the halo Indians gave around his being,
he escaped criminal censure and was not accused of being willy. Yes that may have
been a great experiment on self-control for him and his faithful. But do we
care to ask what the poor, helpless young girls had to go through- their state
of mind?
Is it not time we chastened and saw icons and great men as
mortals and as people who would err, stumble and yet walk through like many?
Are we not trivialising their lives when we give them a doughnut – halo and
elevate them as Gods? What is blasphemous if we critically dissect their life-
be it Gandhi, Christ or Mohamed?