Gandhi - Myths maketh Man?

“There’s a tendency in Indian history to have everyone as either a demon or an angel.  There is a tendency to deify individuals, or retroactively cancel them.” - William Dalrymple.

We see many debates attempting to classify historical characters as good or bad. Should the Moghuls be appreciated for their architecture, or condemned for their tyranny? Was Tipu Sultan a hero for standing up to the East India Company, or a villain for massacring the Mandya brahmins?  

To me, this doesn’t make sense. History’s job is to report things as they happened. It doesn’t have a duty to assign moral labels to its characters. Nor does a student of history. All historical records suffer from one bias or another. Stone inscriptions and copper plates were commissioned by the Maharajas. Biographies and poems were composed by scribes patronized by the Sultans. In interpreting history, the more dispassionate we are, the better. Further, this attempt to classify humans as heroes or villains is futile. In general, human beings defy classification. It’s not useful to debate whether someone is good or bad. It’s like trying to study a point that occurs in a 1000 dimensional space by viewing it in 2 dimensions.

Mohandas Gandhi has received arguably more such 'black-or-white' attention than anyone else. This article attempts to look at some of the common myths around the man, in an attempt to introduce some nuances into the conversation.

Myth: He was Secular

If a man dies muttering, ‘Hey Ram!’, on being shot, would you call him secular? While he was on his way to a public prayer meeting? 

Secularism is the separation of state from religion for the rulers. For commoners, it means the suppression of religious expression in public spaces. Gandhi certainly doesn’t qualify as a secular person by that definition. He carried his religion wherever he went. He is known to have suspended high-stake political negotiations with Lord Irwin either for prayers, or for impromptu sermons on the merits of vegetarianism and atma-shakti (soul force). He suspended his civil disobedience movement when it turned violent, and withdrew for ‘meditation and prayers’.

What Gandhi actually believed in is pluralism. He was assertive about his beliefs. Obsessively so. And he stood up for the right of others to practice their respective religions with equal fervour. He practiced his religion unapologetically. And conducted multi-faith prayer sessions, much to the chagrin of orthodox religious leaders. 

I believe secularism as a predominant theme was a subsequent arrival in the Indian political scene, thrust down India’s throat by people who didn’t believe much in religion anyway. But that’s a topic for a different day.

Myth: He was a dear old soul

Gandhi was a politician. A good one. He had the uncanny knack of perceiving how actions and gestures would be interpreted by the masses, journalists and the opinion-makers. While he generally meant well, not all his actions came out of his love for his fellow beings.

Chris Caldwell writes:

Gandhi was ruthless. Americans may think of his doctrine of satyagraha, or passive resistance, as having drawn on something they possess in abundance: niceness. No. On the contrary, it drew on things that are in very short supply in Western democracies: self-abnegation and a willingness to endure suffering and even violence. It was meant not to flatter or cajole the colonial occupier but, reasonably or not, to remove from him every last scrap of moral legitimacy.

Gandhi exploited the sanctimony of the empire.  The British saw themselves as an upright, model nation, and it was important for them to be *seen* doing the right thing. Gandhi's actions were designed to shine the light on their not-quite-British actions. Allowing the rulers to hurt him and his followers without raising a finger in retaliation was designed to highlight the horrors of repression. Each incident involving police brutality, each hunger-strike, each imprisonment was exploited to erode the moral authority of the ‘superior-race’ that had given itself the responsibility to govern ‘lesser’ peoples. (Paraphrasing Rudyard Kipling here).

William Shirer cites an incident to show Gandhi's ability to ruthlessly haggle and hold out for what he wanted. He describes how Gandhi refused to confirm his participation in the Round Table conference in England, until he got the party’s endorsement to be the sole negotiator. The British were eager to announce that Gandhi would participate in the conference. His colleagues were anxious to finalize the agenda well in advance. Gandhi seemed serene and unaffected by all that urgency, and would not confirm his participation until he got the carte-blanche to be India’s sole representative at the conference. The Indian National Congress debated, dawdled and granted his wish at the eleventh hour. 

Myth: He remained a dear old soul

We know that people don’t remain the same all their lives. Remember that neighbourhood grandpa who seemed wise and cheery, but turned stubborn and unreasonable as he aged? Gandhi was that person.

While Gandhi was eccentric all his life, he seems to have acquired all his indefensible quirks late in his life.

His eccentricities were well-documented by his young friend, William Shirer. Gandhi used to test his celibacy by sharing his bed ‘in a platonic way’ with young women to test his own vow of celibacy. Nehru called the practice ‘unnatural and shocking’. Nirmal Kumar Bose, one of Gandhi’s followers, was disillusioned, and left the ashram over the issue.  While Manu Gandhi,  his grand-niece, and Sushila Nair, his doctor, described the events as consensual and non-sexual, there appears to have been some implicit coercion. As a person of power, and a lawyer himself, he would have surely recognized what the law calls ‘undue influence’ that he had over the younger women?

Likewise, his advice to the jews to surrender themselves to the tyranny of Nazis, and the advice to Hindus to ‘reform the Muslims by passive submission’ in the religious riots seem to display a lack of touch with the realities of the time.These statements must have come across as stubborn, self-righteous, and callous to the terrified people he was advising.

Myth: His followers loved and obeyed him at all times

His followers didn’t always agree with him. Often they acted in defiance of his orders. When he advocated frugality, his followers often rolled their eyes and effectively worked around him. People like Sarojini Naidu and Mohammed Ali Jinnah (when he was still in Congress) were dismissive of his pleas for frugality and lived their normal lives. Nehru thought his call for celibacy was unnatural. 

In 1934, an earthquake shook Bengal, killing thousands. Gandhi, in his typically fatalistic way, labelled the earthquake a divine payback for Bengal’s treatment of dalits. Rabindranath Tagore, who was his friend and a fellow nationalist, publicly rebuked him for the statement.

Such disagreements with his followers manifested themselves on bigger occasions as he aged. In 1940, there was a debate within the Indian National Congress as to India’s participation in the war. While the nationalists resented the colonial rule unilaterally enlisting India in what was then a European conflict, they disagreed on how to respond. Gandhi advised his countrymen to collaborate with the British Government until the war was over. His view was that the push for full independence could resume after the war. 

Many of his followers felt that the time was right to negotiate the terms of participating in the war. People such as Rajaji and Kalki Krishnamurthy advocated leaving satyagraha to Gandhi, while other leaders, under the Congress umbrella, assumed the  leadership in the struggle for independence through negotiations, without compromising the principles of non-violence. 

In 1941, the nationalist leaders met in Bardoli and made a resolution, which was later ratified by Congress. The essence of the resolution was that satyagraha protests would not be carried out under the banner of Congress. Members of the Congress party, including Gandhi would be free to organize individual protests. (Hence the name individual satyagraha). The Congress party would engage the British Administration in discussing the terms for full independence, and the terms for the full country to participate in the war. While Gandhi launched the movement, and was presented as the figurehead, this was essentially a compromise, and perhaps the strongest sign of the dilution of Gandhi’s unquestioned hold over Congress.

Gandhi also proposed, unsuccessfully, that the Indian National Congress dissolve itself (as a political movement) after independence. This was while he was urging the Brits to disengage themselves quickly after independence, not lingering for peacekeeping. (“Leave us to anarchy; leave us to God!”). Thankfully, his followers didn’t heed his call. 

The final act that demonstrated Gandhi’s lack of hold over his erstwhile followers caused him to take his final fast unto death.

As per the terms of partition, Pakistan was to get a sum of Rs. 550 million from the united India’s coffers. The first instalment was paid. However, after the Pakistan army entered the conflict over Kashmir, the Government of India withheld subsequent payments over the unprovoked act of war. Mountbatten felt, and Gandhi agreed, that it was a dishonourable act. 

Gandhi tried to persuade Nehru and Patel that India should honour its commitment and release the funds, and was rebuffed.

In his final fast unto death He went on a fast unto death for communal harmony in Delhi. While there are mixed opinions as to whether his fast was partially to persuade the government to release the funds, it’s clear that he was quietly confident that the Indian ministers would not deny the wishes of their erstwhile leader. He was indeed proven right. India did release  the funds, but the fact that he had to resort to an emotional blackmail shows how far his influence had eroded.

Myth: He willingly agreed to Partition India

Nothing was farther from the truth. Gandhi had seen in Noakhali how deep the religious divide was. With the prospect of partition looming, he was willing to propose Jinnah as the prime minister of united India to address the Muslim League’s concerns about the status of Muslims after independence. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre write:

“He could not budge Nehru and Patel. There was a limit to the price they were prepared to pay to keep India united and prevent the tragedy, and handing over power to their foe Jinnah exceeded it. They did not share Gandhi’s conviction that partition would inevitably lead to violence. Broken-hearted, Gandhi would have to report to the viceroy that he had not been able to carry his colleagues.”

As I wrote elsewhere, his only failure was to not anticipate how hard it was to make one set of people yield for the greater common good. He asked his followers to give up power, as they were the only ones whom he could ask. He fully anticipated the subsequent bloodshed.  But subsequent events proved that the religious divide was so deep that partition was an inevitability. The partition and the violence might have been postponed if Nehru and Patel acceded to his wishes, but not entirely avoided.

Myth: He was treated well by the British, as he was a collaborator

This is perhaps the most ridiculous claim. As we saw earlier, Gandhi’s peaceful resistance was designed to make the British look bad. And the rulers had learnt their lessons in earlier incidents in Dhandi. They wouldn’t hand him a victory by punishing his non-violent protests by violent methods. 

The other argument used in support of this claim is to contrast the relative comfort of his imprisonment with the brutal treatment of Vinayak Savarkar. Jeyamohan provides an excellent rebuttal in his Tamil article (English translation here behind paywall). Savarkar was convicted of conspiracy to murder and trafficking of weapons. The rulers could justify a harsh punishment without risking their public reputation, given the nature of the crime. Jeyamohan argues that all governments, past and present, attempt to secure maximum punishments for violent crimes to serve as deterrents, and the British were no exception. 

Jeyamohan is clearly no fan of Savarkar. He argues that Savarkar’s patriotism is beyond doubt, but his methods were violent, and hence the punishment was harsher - deservedly so.

Myth: He was all about equality of men

Early in his political career,  in South Africa, he seems to have stood up for the rights of the Indians, but not of the black people. This article cites several instances where he sought to place the Indians in a higher social strata than the native (black) population: “What did Mahatma Gandhi think of black people?”. (Caveat: note that the Washington Post describes its primary source as controversial.)

By all evidence, he seems to have developed a more egalitarian attitude later in life. 

William Shirer, who seems to have been an admirer overall, has expressed his disapproval over Gandhi’s treatment of Kasturba Gandhi, the latter’s wife. While the marriage seems to have been an amicable one during the time of the time the two men regularly met, Shierer notes that Gandhi seemed to speak to all the women around him, notably Sarojini Naidu and Miss Slade (a.k.a. Miraben), but never to Kasturba. He also seemed to have been the final, fatal decision to refuse “western” treatment to Kastuba at her deathbed. Shirer also wonders in his book if Kasturba approved of Gandhi’s oath of celibacy relatively early in his life.

Myth: His role was ‘minimal’

Gandhi was positioned as the figurehead of the whole independence movement. Although it’s a gross simplification (and exaggreration) to credit India’s independence to him, his role in the independence movement was substantial. 

Radical leaders such as Subhash Chandra Bose and Vinayak Savarkar had their respective spheres of influence, but no leader reached the grassroots like Gandhi did. He was from Gujarat, not the Hindi heartland. He was able to reach people from all parts of India, even in provinces where Hindi and Gujarati were not spoken. He had a knack of speaking directly to people, beyond language barriers. When the national movement decided to boycott British goods, including clothes, he spoke directly to the workers of the spinning mills in Manchester explaining the motives, and was able to achieve a connection. That took considerable courage as well as skill.

Leaders of substantial standing and accomplishments saw it fit to follow him. The list of his followers was impressive. The list included  people of great intellect, such as Rajaji and Sarojini Naidu. Several state leaders accepted him as their leader. People from wealthy backgrounds, such as the Nehrus, abandoned (or at least moderated) their wealthy lifestyles to follow him. 

Indian history is full of instances where mighty societies failed because they couldn’t agree on a common leader. The great Marathas lost out to the British due to internal quarrels. The Rajaputs couldn’t unite to fight the Moghuls. Many rulers chose to collaborate with either the British, the French or the Moghuls, rather than strike an accord with their neighbouring kingdom, ignoring cultural commonality. Gandhi provided a glorious exception to this general rule. Barring the last few years of his life, he united a fractured country; and led a team of formidable personalities. 

Prior to his arrival, the Indian National Congress was a society for the Indian elite to facilitate representations to the British. There was no grassroots participation. Gandhi changed it in the 1920s. On hindsight, it seems like an obvious thing to have done. But it was a profound move at that time. So were the symbolic gestures of simple clothes (to identify with the masses); and homespun cotton (to symbolize the rejection of foreign clothes). These gestures took the idea to the masses like no upper class forum could have.

A frequently quoted line, attributed to Clement Atlee, is that Gandhi had a “minimal” role to play in the independence battle, and that the mutiny of the armed forces and their loyalty to Subhash Bose’s Indian National Army were much greater factors. This article refutes the argument. The story is of doubtful authenticity, and is inconsistent with all Altlee’s public speeches, writing, and the tribute he paid at Gandhi’s death.

So, was Gandhi good or bad?

In the early years of India’s Independence, the leaders placed great emphasis on what they termed ‘nation building’. Deification of Gandhi was perhaps done to unite the nation, give something for the people to look up to. Nuances were lost. Simplistic statements such as ‘Gandhi got us freedom’ found currency.

He was named the ‘Mahatma’ (the great soul), and the father of the nation. I’ve seen posters of Lord Vishnu’s avatar that portray him as the last avatar. The manner of his death made such deification easy, and even inevitable. His killers wanted to punish him for favouring Pakistan. But they failed, as his assassination ended up drawing parallels with Christ’s crucifixion.

All this aura made people question everything when they discovered his human frailties. The disappointment made it easy to believe all negative stories. Even the vile, baseless stories that question his parentage found buyers. 

Coming to where we started, Gandhi has an extraordinary place in world history. His life, thoughts, successes and failures are extensively documented. We have the material to discover the man, if we choose to look for him. Any attempts to project only one side of the man are misguided at best.