Not easy to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan: Rajmohan Gandhi

At a time when India is increasingly sliding down the path of intolerance, when mob lynching has become a new normal and appropriation of Gandhi is being done by none other than whose forefathers have killed him, question arises –what is Gandhi, how should we remember him?

Was he a saint-politician or unbelievable combination of flesh and blood as Einstein famously said of him? Was he a freedom fighter or messiah? Why is it important for us to remember Gandhi today?

Answers to all these questions have come up in the form of book Why Gandhi Still Matters: An Appraisal of the Mahatma’s Legacy, written by his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi.

In his book, Rajmohan Gandhi tries to elaborate Gandhi’s life and thinking on ranges of issues from Hindu nationalism to his politics of Satyagrah, his relationship with Kasturba and, his love-hatred relation with Jinnah and Ambedkar. In a personal, yet objective style, Rajmohan Gandhi explains in detail why India should care about Gandhi’s legacy.

In an e-mail interview to National Herald, Rajmohan Gandhi says he believes it is a tumultuous time for India, but he did not miss to mention that won’t be easy for right-wing forces to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan.

What are the reasons responsible for the rise of Hindu Nationalism? Do you think that India is on the road to become a Hindu version of Pakistan?

Hindu nationalists have worked hard for almost a century. Let us not deny them credit for persistence.

Muslim nationalism obtained Pakistan with help from Hindu nationalism, using the latter’s rhetoric to justify its demands. Three years before Jinnah uttered similar words in 1940, Savarkar said that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations. The two extremisms fed on each other.

Each was founded on an alluring idea: ‘Your’ problems are created by ‘them’. ‘Free yourselves from Hindu domination,’ said Jinnah to the Muslims, ‘and your problems will be solved.’ The result was Pakistan, and you can see how wonderfully problems have been solved there.

‘Free India from all traces of Muslim influence,’ say the Hindu nationalists. ‘If possible remove the mosques. Remove Urdu. Purify Hindi. Banish beef. All your problems will be solved, and there will be jobs and housing for all.’ Before long, the failures of Hindu nationalism, like failures in Pakistan, will be there for all to see, and for all to feel.

The appealing idea of holding someone else responsible for all our ills was patently untrue. But quarrels among opponents improved the image of Hindu nationalism, which was helped by mistakes made when those who were not Hindu nationalists were in power.

Hindu nationalism has exploited resentments and disappointments among leaders within the large secular camp. It has manipulated old media and energetically used new media.

Hindu nationalism is also a natural fit for some successful Indians who want to avenge earlier slights from the West by projecting a militant India on the world stage.

However, India will not willingly or easily become a Hindu Pakistan. Ego clashes among Hindu nationalists may derail their train. Secularists may show the wisdom to put aside their rivalries. Bold new leaders from hitherto marginalized groups – adivasis, Dalits, lower castes, Muslims – may unitedly help to take India forward.

These are my hopes and prayers. But beyond these I nurse a few certainties.

The common sense and decency of the ordinary Indian – and the need for India to recover respect in the world – compelled Narendra Modi to offer his mild and belated condemnation of lynchings.

The ordinary Indian will continue to show the way. The typical Hindu will not meekly obey dictates to shout particular slogans, eat specific foods, or wear prescribed marks on the body. He or she will not meekly obey orders to hate fellow Indians because they are Muslim or Christian or Sikh or whatever.

Thinking inside one’s home is totally different from mob psychology. Anyone who reflects calmly realises that India’s good lies in its communities living in mutual friendship and mutual respect with neighbouring communities. No amount of hysteria will abolish this truth.

If schools and colleges are pressurized to teach Hindu nationalism – there are indications of efforts in this direction – then it is Hindu nationalism that will suffer. Eventually bored minds will be tempted to rebel.

Dalit and Left activists often allege Gandhi that Gandhi was not favour of complete annihilation of caste. Do you think that Gandhi had missed an opportunity? Do you think if had he stood firmly with Ambedkar, there would have been a change in mindsets? Maybe even the Rohit Vemula alienation and the Una incident would not have happened?

Scholars have conclusively demonstrated that Gandhi’s utterances over time on questions related to caste were strategic. Once he secured his hold over the Indian public, and the freedom struggle was no longer in danger of being taken over by the far right, he came out openly with his radical views on caste, which were already being demonstrated in his ashrams.

Ambedkar’s induction in free India’s first cabinet and his crucial service through the Constitution were not chance occurrences. Gandhi, Nehru and Patel knew what they were doing when they urged Dr Ambedkar to play those roles.

Even if we erroneously assume that Gandhi was not as radical as he should have been, it is a sign of immaturity to wish that long-dead heroes should have solved all our problems. Do the Brits blame Churchill or Queen Victoria for their ills today? Are the Americans inspecting archives to see where Lincoln or Roosevelt or Kennedy can be blamed for this or that problem?

Why should Indians think that Gandhi should have solved all the problems of his time, and also of our times? Indifference to the problems of the so-called lower castes, Dalits, adivasis, Muslims and the vulnerable is a powerful and troubling reality in our land. Let us face it squarely.

Let us light candles of courage and compassion in our hearts and aim to change mindsets around us. Let us not take searchlights to Gandhi to see where he should have done better.

He did an incredible job. For his magnificent work, he was killed. Seventy years later, let us leave him in peace.

Do you agree with the premise that as a religion Hinduism, with its caste systems, is an upper caste socio-religious construct created to maintain a hegemony over the lower castes and Dalits? Do you think Hinduism has space for the lower castes?

No, I cannot condemn Hinduism, and I certainly believe in a Hinduism that needs, values and assists the lower castes.

Have people used tradition and the name of Hinduism to ill-treat millions? They have!

But was Christianity responsible for World War II and the Holocaust? Is Judaism the reason for the oppression today of Palestine? Is Buddhism behind the difficulties that Tamils face in Sri Lanka and the Rohingyas in Burma? Did Buddhism create problems inside and between China and Japan in the 20th century? Not Islam but a travesty of it has created problems in many Muslim-majority lands.

No one who has heard or read the Tulsi Ramayana, or the songs of Raidas, Surdas, Kabir, Narsi Mehta, Namdev, Mira, or any one of the hundreds of our country’s religious saint-poets will blame Hinduism for the cruel realities of domination and oppression. None of the people I have named, or the hundreds like them, went about creating an upper-caste hegemonic construct.

Greed for power created it, and fear perpetuated it.

Hindu parents who try to teach mercy, kindness, truthfulness, unselfishness and equality to their children through stories from the Hindu tradition are not deluded persons.

And let us not blame Islam, a religion that down the ages inspired large numbers of ordinary people to do caring and difficult things for fellow humans, for ugly realities in many ‘Muslim’ lands.

We should ask, do we as Hindus (or Muslims or Christians or Jews or Buddhists) have space in our minds for the suffering of the oppressed, whether from our own or another community?

And we should get to know one another, and work to form a community of all Indians as a stepping stone towards a global community. How many of us truly know the daily lives and sincere practices of people of a religion different from ours? How many have taken the trouble to find stories from traditions other than our own that also teach caring, sharing and compassion? We have opinions, not knowledge, about others.

You said, Gandhi remains to be an interesting character – full of contradictions and complexities, despite his relevance our times. How do you, as his grandson, remember him? Who is he for you and how has he shaped you?

I recall him both as a grandson and as a careful student of his life. As a boy going from 10 to 12 in Delhi who often saw my grandfather when he was going from 76 to 78 and India was going from 1946 to 1948 (years of thrill and pain), I was inspired by my direct observation of his fearlessness and his friendliness even to those angry with him.

If I have tried, no doubt in a very unsatisfactory way, to remain true to the inner voice inside of me, my grandfather is perhaps the most important reason.

If I want to work, for whatever time is left for me and in my own poor way, for an India of liberty, equality and fraternity, his life is an important reason.

For me he is a loved, loving and inspiring grandfather, a fantastic Indian from the 19th and 20th centuries who gave everything he had inside of him for India’s freedom, for Hindu-Muslim friendship, for empowering the weakest, for an India where none was high and none low, and a world figure whose story continues to reveal more and more remarkable things.

I want to be loyal to him, which from my study of his life means that I must above all be loyal to truth and to my conscience.