This year marks the 75th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination (January 30, 1948) by a Hindu fundamentalist who thought the Mahatma was too soft towards Muslims. The significant anniversary comes at a time when his legacy, Gandhi’s thought, has been challenged by prevailing ideological currents. At a time when the status of his historical opponents, whose descendants now rule the country, is at an all-time high, Gandhi’s weakness, bending too far to accommodate Muslim interests, and his pacifism, which have been criticized by the radical Hindutva movement Seen as inhumane.
The Mahatma was killed for being too pro-Muslim, with the name of Rama on his lips; In fact, he came out of a fast organized to force his own followers, ministers of the new Indian government, to transfer a large portion of undivided India’s wealth to the new state of Pakistan. Gandhi had also announced his intention to desert the country he had failed to keep united and spend the rest of his years in Pakistan, a prospect that collectively choked Pakistan’s government.
But that was Gandhiji’s enigma in a nutshell: idealistic, quirky, quirky, and determined, a man who responded to no other drummer’s beat but forced everyone else to march to his own beat. Someone once called him a cross between a saint and a Tammany Hall politician; Like the best hybrids, he managed to pull off all the best of both and yet transcend their contradictions.
Now explain a paradox
This contradiction is reflected in the attitude of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva-inspired Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Mr. Modi, like other Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) campaigners, was trained in a strong dislike for Mahatma Gandhi, whose message of tolerance and pluralism was emphatically rejected by the Sangh Parivar as minority appeasement , and whose doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence, was seen as an admission of the unworthy weakness of masculine Hindus. Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar, whom Mr Modi has described as one of his heroes, expressed contempt for Gandhiji’s “perverted doctrine of non-violence and truth” and claimed it was “destroying the country’s strength”. bound to’. But Prime Minister Modi, despite his Hindutva mindset, admiration for Savarkar and lifelong association with the Sangh Parivar, has embraced Gandhi, hailed the Mahatma and even used his spectacles as a symbol of the Swachh Bharat campaign. Using it has been linked to an invocation. Recently to revive Gandhiji’s idea of service through ‘Swachhata Hi Sewa’ campaign.
It may or may not represent a sincere conversion to Gandhism. The prime minister is hardly unaware of Mahatma Gandhi’s tremendous worldwide reputation, and he is also a marketing genius who could not recognize the soft-power opportunity Gandhiji provided, not to mention the global public relations disaster that would ensue if They would have condemned an Indian who is universally admired. There may, therefore, be an element of insincerity in her new found love for the Mahatma, as well as a shrewd domestic political calculation.
But the ambiguity says a lot: when many members of Mr. Modi’s BJP call for Gandhiji’s statues across the country to be replaced with those of his killer Nathuram Godse, the prime minister is claiming the post of his fellow Gujarati for his own political gains. Want to , Also, there is a tangible dissonance between the official government embrace of Gandhi and the unofficial ideological distaste for this icon, which is promoted privately by members and supporters of the current ruling dispensation, some of whom have not hidden their views . that his assassination was, in his eyes, a patriotic act.
Darshan of the Mahatma
It is a well-understood reality that Gandhiji’s vision of openly practicing Hinduism was very different from that of Veer Savarkar and MS Golwalkar, prominent ideologues of the Hindu Mahasabha and its more militarized alter ego in the post-independence era. SS and eventually, BJP (formerly Jana Sangh).
Gandhiji adopted the central approach of Advaita Vedanta, which preached an inclusive universal religion. Gandhi saw Hinduism as a religion that respected and embraced all other religions. He was deeply influenced by the principles of non-violence and truth and both took on a deeper meaning when he applied them to the nationalist cause. He was a synthesizer of cultural belief systems: ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram’ had another line in his signature hymn, ‘Ishwar Allah tero naam’. This practice emerged from his Vedantic belief in the oneness of all human beings, who share the same soul and, therefore, should be treated equally.
Every Hindu did not like this kind of behavior. In his treatise on ‘Gandhi’s Hinduism and Savarkar’s Hindutva’, social scientist Rudolf C. Heredia places his two opponents within the ongoing debate between heterogeneity versus homogeneity in Hinduism, pointing out that Gandhi’s response Inclusive and ethical, Savarkar politicizes Hinduism as a majoritarian sect.
But Gandhi’s own understanding of religion, in the words of Heredia, “went beyond religiosity, Hindu as well as any other tradition. It is essentially a spiritual search for salvation, but the last and lowest in the world.” lies in the reality of service”. Unlike Savarkar who believed in conformity, Gandhiji was a synthesizer like no other, who took care to include Indians of other faiths in his broad and comprehensive understanding of religion. He not only Advaita Vedanta also drew inspiration from the Jain concept of ‘Anekantavada’ – the belief that truth and reality are perceived differently by different people from their different viewpoints, and therefore, no one concept can be absolute. True. This prompted him to once declare that ‘I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Parsi, a Jew’.
Hinduism and Hinduism, as I argue in my book Why I Am a Hindu, represent two very different and opposite ideas, with different implications for the role of nationalism and Hinduism. It is easier to admire the principles Gandhiji stood for and the way he claimed them than to follow them. But he represented an ideal that is betrayed every day by those who distort Hinduism to promote a narrow, exclusionary fanaticism.