[Marxism] A comment on Gandhian nonviolence

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

He, and he alone, was responsible for the transformation of the
demand for independence into nationwide mass movement that mobilized
every class of society against the imperialist, yet the free India
that came into being,
divided and committed to a program of modernization and
industrialization,
was not the India of his dreams. His sometime disciple, Nehru, was
the arch
proponent of modernization, and it was Nehru's vision, not Gandhi's
that was
eventually - and perhaps inevitably - preferred.

Gandhi began by believing that the politics of passive resistance and
nonviolence should be effective in any situation, at any time, even
against
a force as malign as Nazi Germany. Later he was obliged to revise his
opinion, and concluded that while the British had responded to such
techniques because of their own nature, other oppressors might not.

Gandhian nonviolence is widely believed to be the method by which
India gained independence. (The view is assiduously fostered inside
India as well
as outside it.) Yet the Indian revolution did indeed become violence,
and
this violence so disappointed Gandhi that he stayed away from the
Independence celebrations in protest. Moreover, the ruinous economic
impact
of World War II on Britain and - as British writer Patrick French
says in
his book Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and
Division -
the gradual collapse of the Raj's bureaucratic hold over India from
the mid
'30's onward did as much to bring about freedom as any action of
Gandhi's.
It is probable, in fact, that Gandhian techniques were not the key
determinants of India's arrival at freedom. They gave independence its
outward character and were its apparent cause, but darker and deeper
historical forces produced the desired effect.

These days few people pause to consider the complex character of
Gandhi's personality, the ambiguous nature of his achievement and
legacy, or even the real cause of Indian independence. These are
hurried, sloganizing times, and
we don't have the time or, worse, the inclination to assimilate many-
sided
truths. The harshest truth of all is that Gandhi is increasingly
irrelevant
in the country whose "little father" - Bapu - he was. As the analyst
Sunil
Khilnani has pointed out, India came into being a secularized state, but
Gandhi's vision was essentially religious. However, he "recoiled"
from Hindu
nationalism. His solution was to forge an Indian identity out of the
shared
body of ancient narratives. "He turned to the legends and stories
from the
India's popular religious traditions, preferring their lessons to the
supposed ones of the history".

It didn't work. In today's India, Hindu nationalism is rampant in the
form
of the Bhartiya Janta Party. During the recent elections, Gandhi and his
ideas have scarcely been mentioned.

In the early 1970s the writer Ved Mehta spoke to one of Gandhi's
leading political associates, a former Governor-General of
independent India,
C.Rajagopalachari. His verdict on Gandhi's legacy is disenchanted,
but in
today's India, on the fast track to free-market capitalism, it still
rings
true: "The glamour of modern technology, money, and power is to
seductive
that no one - I mean no one - can resist it. The handful of Gandhian who
still believe in his philosophy of a simple life in a simple society are
mostly cranks".

What, then is greatness? In what does it reside? If a man's project
fails,
or survives only in irredeemably tarnished form, can the force of his
example still merit the extreme accolade? For Jawaharlal Nehru, the
defining
image of Gandhi was "as I saw him marching, staff in hand, to Dandi
on the
Salt March in 1930. Here was the pilgrim on his quest of truth, quite,
peaceful, determined, and fearless, who would continue that quest and
pilgrimage, regardless of consequences". Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi
later said, "More than his words, his life was his message". These
days, that message is better heeded outside India. Albert Einstein
was one of many
to praise Gandhi's achievement; Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai
Lama, and
all the world's peace movement have followed in his footsteps.
Gandhi, who
gave up cosmopolitanism to gain a prove resilient, smart, tough,
sneaky and,
yes, ethical enough to avoid assimilation by global Mc Culture (Mac
culture
too). Against this new empire, Gandhian intelligence is a better
weapon than Gandhian piety. And passive resistance? We'll see.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?A5674167C

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