"The trouble with the idealized Gandhi", as Salman Rushdie wrote someyears back, "is that he's so darned dull, little more than a dispenser of homilies and nostrums ("An eye for an eye will make the whole world go blind") with just the odd flash of wit (asked what he thought of Western civilization, he gave the celebrated reply, "I think it would be a great idea").
The real man, if it is still possible to use such a term after the generations of hagiography and reinvention, was infinitely more interesting, one of the most complex and contradictory personalities of the century. His full name, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was memorably--and literally--translated into English by the novelist G.V. Desani as "Action-Slave Fascination-Moon Grocer," and he was as rich and devious a figure as that glorious name suggests."
Some years before that we had published some extractsfrom Patrick French's reassessment of the man from his book Liberty orDeath which provoked many of our readers to writeback in anger.
In the same essay, Rushdie had concluded, "These are hurried,sloganizing times, and we don't have the time or, worse, the inclination toassimilate many-sided truths. The harshest truth of all is that Gandhi isincreasingly irrelevant in the country whose "little father"-- Bapu--hewas".
It would seem that some of our regular readers agree, for they seem to havestarted a discussion, The"Anti-Mahatma Gandhi" wave amongst Hindu youth in our Free Speecharea (
On the occasion of Gandhi's birth anniversary, we offer a re-look at those controversial extractsand offer yet another appraisal from an upcoming book, In Search of Gandhi, byB.R. Nanda, that might place his belief in non-violence in some perspective: Gandhi And Non Violence
We should provide a rider, though, to use Rushdie's words again, "Gandhibegan by believing that the politics of passive resistance and nonviolenceshould be effective in any situation, at any time, even against a force asmalign as Nazi Germany. Later, he was obliged to revise his opinion, andconcluded that while the British had responded to such techniques because oftheir own nature, other oppressors might not."
And so it seems. Ironically, though, recently there was the peacenik from Pakistan, none other than the good General Musharraf who, during his visit to the Rajghat, wrote in the visitor's book: "Never has the requirement of his (Mahatma Gandhi's) ideals been felt more severely than today, specifically in the context of Pakistan-India relations. May his soul rest in eternal peace."
Before we say Amen, why don't you read the above and join us in FreeSpeech?