From repression to redemption?


Gandhi’s life and death have by now entered the realms of legend and myth. The logic and ethos of post-independence India is considerably different from that of the freedom struggle. Ours is an age of disillusionment and cynicism, if the freedom struggle was one of idealism and hope. Writing about the reception of the stories of the Puranas in a later age, R. H. Zimmer says: ‘But the myths of the Puranas come down to us reshaped by a definitely post-heroic, anti-tragic age of Indian religion and philosophy’ (Zimmer and Campbell 1946: 178). Similarly, our understanding of Gandhi is also shaped by our own scepticism about the perfectibility of the human condition, both personal and political. Many of Gandhi’s ideas, beliefs and projects, therefore, seem not just antiquated, but quaint. The present ‘religion’ of India, which to all appearances seems to be consumerism, is at considerable odds with Gandhi’s virtue-orientation and emancipatory commitment. But both Gandhi’s life and his death will continue to disturb, puzzle and challenge us. The latter especially, as we have seen, was designed to provoke and haunt us as only the Oedipal, taboo-breaking patricide of the murder of the Father of the Nation might.

But in the manner and matter of his death, Gandhi not only brought peace to Delhi and to India, but also gave a definite shape to the future of a new nation. As Gyanendra Pandey observes in Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India:

Perhaps Gandhi’s arrival in Delhi was the turning point; perhaps his intervention gave to secular nationalist elements the moral strength they needed to renew the fight for the composite and tolerant India that so many had dreamed of; perhaps his very presence stunned the government and an army of stupefied Congress workers into action.

(2004: 141)

Gandhi’s presence and actions galvanized the dispirited and derailed leadership to reiterate its commitment to a democratic and secular country, where many varieties of faiths, ethnicities and cultures could have a place and feel secure. But in the atmosphere of hostility and conflict after the Partition, it was Gandhi’s presence in Delhi that ensured that Muslims were accorded the status of full citizens of the Indian Union rather than being looked at with suspicion and pushed out of the country.

Pandey quotes how a Muslim gentleman described Gandhi’s arrival in Delhi: ‘Sukhe dhanon mein pani pad gaya’ (water sprinkled on dry seeds) (ibid.: 142). After Gandhi’s arrival in Delhi, no major outbreak of violence or rioting occurred in the city. Pandey continues:

In the event, the fast, and Gandhi’s subsequent martyrdom, did work something like a miracle. The demand for continued Partition, for the driving of every Muslim out of every part of Delhi, lost its immediate appeal; many Muslims were able to return to their homes and mohallas, and perhaps for the first time since late 1946, the people of Delhi began to return to the business of living and of rebuilding their lives, their uprooted city and their future.

(Pandey 2004: 143)

Maulana Azad wrote that the impact of Gandhi’s fast was ‘electric’ and Qidwai, another eye-witness that Pandey quotes, observed ‘contrition written on people’s faces, a stoop in their walk, tears in their eyes’ (ibid.); another Muslim, after Gandhi’s death, remarked, ‘Duniya hi badal gayi’ (the world itself changed) (ibid.: 145). Indeed, Pandey contends that ‘Gandhi achieved through his death even more than he had achieved through his fast’:His success at this juncture conveys an unusual message about the meaning of politics and the possibility of a new kind of political community. It is an improbable story of how a certain kind of bodily sacrifice in the public sphere – and a refusal by one outstanding leader to give his consent to the particular conception of the political community that was emerging – changed the nature of sociality at the local level. … The assassination of Gandhi wiped out the blaze of Hindu-Muslim violence in such a way that ‘the world veritably changed’. The fire of sectarian strife that had raged for months, or rather years, died down as if such strife had never occurred.

(Ibid.)

If we examine the record, we shall have to agree with Pandey and historians like him about what Gandhi accomplished in the kind of death he chose for himself.

But this extended meditation on the death of Gandhi must now be interrupted. A journey like this does not have a destination, or at any rate one fixed closure: if it has a direction then it is from repression to redemption. The whole country, as we have seen, wants to avoid confronting the meaning of Gandhi’s death. This patricidal act is ‘unbearable’ to Hindus in particular and is repressed deep into the recesses of their collective psyche. But the event also had profound implications for the Muslims of the subcontinent, especially for the state of Pakistan. For the one take-away from Gandhi’s death is that Hindu-Muslim amity is the precondition for peace in the subcontinent. At the state level this will mean an Indo-Pak entente, spelled out and adhered to sincerely by both parties. Thanks in great measure to Gandhi, India both as nation and people, did not become a mirror image of Pakistan. After 66 years of independence, it is fairly obvious which model is preferred by the large majority of the people of South Asia: India’s pluralism, religious tolerance and freedom seem a much more attractive bet, while Pakistan’s Islamism, despotism and militarism stands discredited both within that country and in the region. Gandhi’s death also ought to make Hindus reflect upon who they wish to be: insecure, defensive, mistrustful, aggressive and domineering, or self-confident, open, trusting, non-aggressive and egalitarian.

Gandhi’s murder and the Partition of India of which it was the most poignant symbol put the two newly independent nations in a state of permanent pollution, from which the only release is through a process of repentance and commitment to peaceful co-existence. The defilement and impurity wrought by hatred in our hearts needs to be cleansed through a renewed commitment to a non-sectarian, democratic, plural and humane society implied in Gandhi’s idea of Svaraj. We have the capacity to recreate our future by revisiting and reinterpreting our past. Such has been the main attempt of this book. But as there are multiple narratives of Gandhi’s life, there will also be multiple narratives of his death, with this one far from claiming to be definitive or final. Here, by looking at the manner in which the Mahatma has been memorialized, we have tried to tease out why and how he died. Gandhi died once, though he has been killed many times over, by those who hated him and what he stood for – as if killing him once was not enough or killing him over and over again would actually finish him off. But what did his death mean? It is this question that we have tried to address and answer. Gandhi showed us a way to be modern without denying our traditions, how to be an inclusive and non-hierarchical nation, how to flower as individuals without losing entirely our characteristically communitarian and collective way of living. He also showed us how to be secular and deeply religious at the same time, how to be Sanatani Hindus without hating or disrespecting other religions, how to be Indian, even Asian, without opting out of a universal world culture. Perhaps it is a gynocentric civilization such as ours which will have the strength and the courage to confront and overcome the shame of our patricidal act in slaying the Father of the Nation and turn it into a moment of continuous self-examination and transformation.


THE END