One of
the most common things to see in India are quotes like these by Gandhi:-
“Be
the change you want to be in the world.”
“A customer
is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We
are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose
of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not
doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the
opportunity to do so.”
And of
course the ubiquitous images of him spinning the charkha or flashing his famous
toothless grin adorn everything. But
would the government and the ruling class whose shop runs on glorifying him
would call him a Mahatma if his more sinister quotes are endorsed everywhere?
Or that some uncomfortable opinions about him are included in the school
curriculum? Like, when Clement
Attlee had only one word to say when
asked about what effects Gandhi
had on the British empire- “Minimal”. Or when Lord
Irwin, with whom Gandhi signed the Gandhi Irwin pact of 1931 to bring the civil
disobedience movement to a close ,said “Gandhi would never do and he would not allow
the Congress to do anything which would cause difficulty to the British
Government or the British Empire.”
There are
megatons of skeletons in the closet.
His arrival
in India in 1915 was no mere coincidence. Tilak was released in 1914, and the
British couldn’t afford to have him leading the Congress again. Also, they
needed cannon fodder after
the huge man and material losses in Somme and Verdun ,for the first world war , which they
had understood , was not going to end for atleast a couple of more years. So
one of the first things Mr Gandhi did , was to recruit Indians for
his majesty to die like flies in the WWI ( more than 100000), for which he was
awarded the title of Kaiser e Hind.
On the
other hand, he suspended the Non
Cooperation movement because he was
saddened by the mob burning alive policemen in Chauri Chaura in todays
UP. Can you imagine the plight of people who had left their jobs and education
for two years for supporting him? The lives of these policemen serving the
British Raj were more precious than the lives of thousands of Indians soldiers
who died in the WWI for burra sahib and the hundreds gunned down in Jalianwaala
Bagh. Thats Satya and Ahinsa in a nutshell.
After all, its no
coincidence that Indian National Congress party, which was formed by a retired
civil servant AO Hume in 1885, has gone overboard in lionizing him.
At the
end of the first world war, the Ottoman empire started crumbling, and was
finally laid to rest in 1922. But the signs were evident much earlier, and the
Khilafat movement started by the Muslims of the subcontinent for the
reinstating of the Ottoman Caliphate was given full backing by Congress led by
Gandhi. Its amusing to note that Mustafa Kemal Pasha who led the anti caliphate
forces is regarded as Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Khilafat then
became an anti British movement and then an anti Hindu movement . The cost of
every grotesque Hindu Muslim unity by Mohandas Gandhi was to be borne by Hindus
alone, with copious amount of blood and dishonour. Anti Hindu riots broke out in all parts of the
country, and the most horrifying results were seen in Malabar, where Moplah
Moplah riots in Malabar where thousands of Hindus were butchered. Did Gandhi
condemn this violence? On the contrary , he called the Moplahs brave and
patriotic for doing their duty!
“.....The
Moplah revolt is a test for Hindus and Mussulmans. Can Hindus friendship
survive the strain put upon it? Can Mussulmans in the deepest recesses of their
hearts approve of the conduct of the Moplahs?........ The Hindus must have the
courage and the faith to feel that they can protect their religion in spite of
such fanatical eruptions.......... The Mussulmans must naturally feel the shame
and humiliation of the Moplah conduct about forcible conversions and looting,
and they must work away so silently and effectively that such things might become
impossible even on the part of the most fanatical among them. My belief is that
the Hindus as a body have received the Moplah madness with equanimity and that
the cultured Mussulmans are sincerely sorry for the Moplah’s perversion of the
teachings of the Prophet.”
Khilafat also
strengthened the Muslim League, making leaders of people like the Ali brothers
who swore by his name, but abandoned him soon as a dirty Kafir the moment they
didn’t need him to give them legitimacy, and fuelled separatist tendencies
which would cause the partition of the country less than three decades later.
Gandhism is an ideology
of convenience where there is an escape route available at the last moment.
Otherwise, Gandhi had said that the country will be partitioned on his dead
body. The country was partitioned, and he of course didn’t die. Thousands of
innocents did. Gandhism made tokenism and symbolism as our national character.
Lofty words with little or absent action. So, him going shirtless to show
solidarity with India’s poor didn’t solve poverty. Him calling depressed castes
as Harijan did nothing to elevate them (If you call any person of scheduled
castes as harijan today, you are certain to get a good beating). Calling manual
scavenging “highest of work” did not improve their status. And of course, all
the yarn he spun from his charkha did not clothe one poor man nor could cover
the body of a raped woman in partition riots.
His
thoughts on the hanging of Bhagat Singh,
Shivram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar, whose lives he did little to save while
signing the Gandhi Irwin pact:-
"The
government certainly had the right to hang these men. However, there are
some rights which do credit to those who possess them only if they are enjoyed
in name only."
“There can be therefore no excuse for suspicion that I did not want to save Bhagat Singh. But I want you also to realize Bhagat Singh’s error.I declare that we cannot win swaraj for our famishing millions, for our deaf and dumb, for our lame and crippled, by the way of the sword.”
“In the 1930s decade Gandhi instigated the INC to foment unrest in several Hindu Princely States and precipitate social tensions and instability either in the name of temple entry or civil liberties. This was a phrase known to Gandhi and which he used on many occasions when speaking of the Indian Princely states. Mysore, Rajkot, Jaipur, Travancore, Coachin, Talcher and Dhenkanal – all these Princely States bore the brunt of INC-led and instigated social and political reform movements. Needless to say, neither Gandhi nor the INC dared to foment similar tensions in territories ruled by Muslim Nawabs and Nizams.”
The
experiments with truth were nothing but distortions with truth. Of promoting
Sanatana Dharma as pacifism and surrender. He and
his followers parroted
“Ahinsa parmo Dharmaha” whereas the entire shloka is “Ahinsa Paramo Dharmaha,
Dharmo Hinsa yathev ch” (Non violence is a duty but so is righteous violence).
Didnt it occur to them there is hardly any Hindu god or goddess who isn’t
armed, or that sanatana dharma never shies away from glorifying bravery or
advocating to fight till the end to the cause of truth and justice?
Another
lie is that Gandhi gave us freedom. Single handedly, against an empire which
was ruling over one fourth of the world and kept 300 million Indians under
their thumb with less than a force of one hundred thousand of their citizens.
This kind of stupidity can only be propagated by charlatans and believed by
idiots. The British encouraged Gandhi to travel around the country because he
did a great job in pacifying the anger in the masses. The British empire
mercilessly destroyed all those who posed a real danger to them , may it be the
armed revolutionaries or armed uprisings. The Savarkar brothers were kept in
cellular jail in solitary confinement and tortured every day, Surya Sen was
bludgeoned to death just to give a few examples. The conditions which Savarkar
brothers or Jatin Das endured would have killed Gandhi within a day. All his
fasts and marches were weekend getaways compared to the unimaginable and
inhuman tortures that our real freedom fighters went through. Anyone can be a
philosopher sitting in Aga Khan palace, Anand bhawan or in Sabarmati Ashram
built by Birla.
What do we say about his experiments with celibacy, something that is not
even decent to be discussed on a family or public atmosphere:-
His views about rape victims are something which makes the word shameful
inadequate:-
“I have always held that it is
physically impossible to violate a woman against her will. The outrage takes
place only when she gives way to fear or does not realize her moral strength.
If she cannot meet the assailant’s physical might, her purity will give her the
strength to die before he succeeds in violating her…It is my firm conviction
that a fearless woman, who knows that her purity is her best shield can never
be dishonored. However beastly the man, he will bow in shame before the flame
of her dazzling purity.”
For someone who
advocated that a pious woman cannot be raped, this was the defence plan for
women faced with rape by rioters:-
Just before the
partition, both Hindu and Sikh women were being raped by the Muslims in large
numbers. Gandhi advised them that if a Muslim expressed his desire to rape a Hindu or a
Sikh lady, she should never refuse him but cooperate with him. She should lie
down like a dead with her tongue in between her teeth. Thus the rapist Muslim
will be satisfied soon and sooner he leave her. (D Lapierre and L Collins,
Freedom at Midnight, Vikas, 1997, p-479).
The
hypocrisy for
minority appeasement to promote Hindu Muslim unity is sickening. The upholding of Hindu
Muslim unity meant that Hindu lives didn’t matter. Moplahs were brave and
patriotic but there was no word about their victims. He called Abdul Rashid who
killed Swami Shraddhanand as Bhai but didn’t make any effort for Bhagat Singh,
Rajguru and Sukhdev. Not a word about the hundreds of Muslim engineered riots
which rocked the country from Khilafat to partition. He denied that anything
was happening in Noakhali while thousands of Hindus were being butchered there
and you went there only when the situation was calmed. After direct action day,
he went around preaching communal harmony with Bengal Premier HS Suhrawardy,
the man who was behind it all. And needless to say, it was him who brought a
spoilt playboy to politics because the party needed his daddy’s money, who
hadn’t done an honest day’s work in his life
and yet was called as Pandit and was given the country on a silver
platter to ruin for seventeen years after independence. Who gave Qaid e Azam
title to Mohammad Ali Jinnah ? Mr Gandhi.
Here
are some more gems:-
“I am grieved to learn that people are running away
from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the
non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore
is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is
the dying Lahore.”
“I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out
to kill them. I would be a real sinner
if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek
revenge. I must die without rancour. … You may turn round
and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say.
Such martyrdom will not be in vain.”.
"Hindus
should not harbor anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter
wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should
face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we
would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives. None should fear
death. Birth and death are inevitable for every human being. Why should we then
rejoice or grieve? If we die with a smile we shall enter into a new life, we
shall be ushering in a new India. (Prayer meeting, April 6, 1947, New Delhi,
CWMG Vol. 94 page 249)
“The few gentlemen from Rawalpindi who called
upon me, asked me, “What about those who still remain in Pakistan?” I asked,
why they all came here (Delhi)? Why they did not die there? I still hold on to
the belief that we should stick to the place where we happen to live, even if
we are cruelly treated, and even killed. Let us die if the people kill us, but
we should die bravely with the name of God on our tongue.” He also said, “Even
if our men are killed, why should we feel angry with anybody? You should
realize that even if they are killed, they have had a good and proper end”
(speech delivered on November 23, 1947)
“If those killed have died bravely, they have
not lost anything but earned something. … They should not be afraid of death.
After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers.”
“If all the Punjabis were to die to the last
man without killing (a single Muslim), Punjab will be immortal. Offer
yourselves as nonviolent willing sacrifices.” (Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at
Midnight, p-385)
On the other hand, he asked Hindus of
Noakhali to flee if they wanted to stay alive.
For unity, many
distortions had to be done, such as adding “Ishwar Allah tero naam” into Narsi
Mehta’s bhajan Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram, strengthening Muslim League and
people like Ali brothers who would be vital in the Pakistan movement, promoting
Hindustani ie a ghastly mishmash of Urdu and Hindi with terms like Badshah Ram
and Begum Sita, holding quran reading sessions in temples (but never geeta
reading sessions in mosques), forcing Hindu refugees out of the mosque where
they had taken shelter...the list is endless. Would he have gone on a hunger
strike to force Sardar Patel to pull back Indian army from eliminating Razakars
had he been alive in Oct 1948? Its anybody’s guess. Afterall, he did go on a
hunger strike to give those Rs 55 crore to Pakistan which came a lot handy to
it for bulking itself up against India.
Had he been even a Mahatma
had he died a natural death instead of being killed by Nathuram Godse? And did
Congress practice non violence by not controlling the riots after his death
which resulted in deaths of thousands of Chitpawan Brahmins (because Nathuram
was a chitpawan, all chitpawans were
deemed guilty. This would be repeated in 1984).
Can a person with absolutely zero vision for a strong and
modern India be called as a Mahatma and named its father? India is an eternal
land , not made by a mandate or a signature hence no person can be called its
father. But what does this society of little men care to think about this, who
will not think twice before voting for Dawood Ibrahim or Osama bin Laden if
they are promised reservations and freebies.
For a Jnaani, everything appears holy. The very meaning of Jnaanam is to see this non-dual unity -- Advaita Darshanam Jnaanam.
ReplyDeleteThe most difficult part is to look within -- into the lowness of our minds. No one else can help.