Dear Mr Gandhi,
Since childhood, we are taught to worship you as
the best thing to happen to this country, the perfect human. There is no
escaping you in India. Your face smiles at us on banknotes, your name is given
to every other road or govt project. All others, most of whose contributions
far exceeded yours , are cunningly pushed to the background or obliterated from
history by the elements whose very business runs on deifying you.
The stay in South Africa for 21 years is said to be
the beginning of your greatness, which starts with you being thrown out of the
train compartment for not being white. Why then, inspite of your dedication to
non violence, were you so supportive of every British war effort which included
every imperialistic battles of theirs from the Zulu war to the Boer war in 1899
where you also served as a stretcher bearer? Was supporting the efforts of an
imperialist power not opposite to the principles of Satyagraha or non violence?
You called the native Blacks as “Kaffirs” and even forwarded a demand that Indians
should be allowed to use the same door as the whites instead of being forced to
share the entrances with “Kaffirs”. No wonder they don’t like you down there,
no matter how much we are told about your exemplarily work in South Africa.
Isn’t the year of your arrival in India, 1916 that
is, more than just a coincidence? The British needed cannon fodder after the
devastating losses of manpower in battles like Somme and Verdun on the western
front. You did an exceptional job in recruiting Indian soldiers to die for King
and the empire in the muddy trenches (which is anywhere from one to five
hundred thousand) for which you were awarded the title of Kaiser e Hind (http://indiafacts.org/deconstructing-gandhi-gandhi-recruited-indians-world-war/ ). On the other hand, the Non Cooperation movement
was suspended by you because you were saddened by the burning of a few
policemen serving the empire, leaving everyone who had followed you for two
years feeling cheated. Because the lives of a few policemen serving the empire
was worth more than the lives of thousands of Zulus, Boers and of thousands of
Indian soldiers who died in a useless war.
Hindu Muslim unity was your ultimate goal, at any
cost, the cost which was without exception, paid by the Hindus alone in copious
amounts of blood and honour. Khilafat movement (1921) went simultaneously with
the non cooperation movement and you supported it whole heartedly, the Congress
party making it its cause. You felt that the reinstating of the Ottoman Empire
which had made an inferno out of central asia for five centuries, which just
five years ago had killed a million plus Armenians, will bring about
Hindu-Muslim unity in our country. It was another matter that the very man who
was in the forefront for bringing the Caliphate to end and made Turkey what it
is today, Mustafa Kemal Pasha was given the name Attaturk (Father Turk) by the
Turkish population. So much for your knowledge of world affairs, Bapu. Because
the country paid a heavy price for your Khilafat dreams. It very soon became an
anti Hindu movement, the most horrific of which was the Moplah engineered
pogrom in Malabar where almost a hundred thousand Hindus were done to death.
But you 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 your name, but abandoned you soon as a dirty Kafir the moment they didn’t need you to give them legitimacy, and fuelled separatist tendencies which would cause the vivisection of the country less than three decades later.
Khilafat also strengthened the Muslim League, making leaders of people like the Ali brothers who swore by your name, but abandoned you soon as a dirty Kafir the moment they didn’t need you to give them legitimacy, and fuelled separatist tendencies which would cause the vivisection of the country less than three decades later.
Your words and preaching, Mr Gandhi are very nice to
hear. Its another matter that there was never any concrete action to back them.
You made Tokenism and Symbolism as our national character. So, just giving the
depressed classes a name like Harijan does not elevate them. What is needed is
massive social awareness raised by the likes of Veer Savarkar and Sri Narayana
Guru (No wonder that calling anyone a Harijan would result in bruises).
Remaining shirtless to show sympathy for poor doesn’t make their lives easier.
Calling manual scavenging as the “highest of work” did not honour the manual
scavengers. What was needed was to fight this evil on a war footing. How many
of India’s poor was your charkha able to clothe, excluding your party members?
Did your charkha make enough cloth to cover even one naked and battered body of
a woman gangraped in the partition riots? But then everything looked very cosy
from Agha Khan palace and the Birla built Sabarmati Ashram.
We are made to believe that you singlehandedly
destroyed the British empire. I also believed this for many days. But then
something happened:- I grew up and went to secondary school. An empire, which
was ruling over one fourth of the world , which could stand alone against the
Nazi Army for a year and a half before Soviet Union or America joined the war,
which kept 300 million Indians under their thumb with less than a force of one
hundred thousand civil servants, were chased away by you and you alone if we
believe the official history. Which no sane person would. Your methods were
tolerated because India was a part of the British empire. Had it been in a
setting like Soviet union or Nazi Germany, there wouldnt have been you or your
experiments with the truth beyond a year. The fact is that the British empire
mercilessly destroyed all the threats and real dangers to them , may it be the
armed revolutionaries or armed uprisings which came up every now and then
against them. Leaders like Veer Savarkar and Lokmanya Tilak were put away in
jail for many years, in conditions you wouldn’t have lasted more than a day.
The fact remains Mr Gandhi, that all your fasts and marches were weekend
getaways compared to the unimaginable and inhuman tortures that our real
freedom fighters went through.That is why when Clement Attlee, on a visit to
India in 1951 was asked about what effects you or your movements had on the
British empire, gave a monosyllabic reply “Minimal”. After all, its no
coincidence that your party, which was formed by a retired civil servant AO
Hume in 1885, has gone overboard in lionizing you.
You are someone who is proclaimed as the role model
for human behaviour. Yet, what justification can there be for your celibacy
experiments (which had a severe impact on the women in question), something
which cannot even be talked about on public forums?
Any discussions about this is a taboo in India, but
that does not prevent the media outside:-
Your 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.”)
What about
your lifelong teachings which did a great job in neutering the Hindu populace out
of any valour, and promoting Hinduism as something which believes in nothing
more than pacifism and surrender?
You & your followers stood not for the truth
but the distortion of it, of promoting Sanatana Dharma as pacifism and
surrender. You 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). All this talk of turning the
other cheek is found in no Hindu scripture, but the new testament. What this
skewered teaching did to the psyche of this country is seen even today as
inspite of being the biggest democracy and a formidable military power, we
inspire hardly any fear in our enemies as they are confident that their attacks
will go unanswered.
Non Violence and Satyagraha were meant to be borne
by the Hindus alone. Hence the Moplahs were brave and patriotic but there was
no word from you on their victims. For you, Shivaji Maharaj ,Maharana Pratap
and Guru Gobind Singh were misguided patriots. You called Abdul Rashid who
killed Swami Shraddhanand as Bhai yet you didn’t make any effort to save Bhagat
Singh, Shivram Rajguru or Sukhdev Thapar from the gallows while signing the
pact with Lord Irwin to end the Civil Disobedience movement ("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."). You had absolutely nothing to say about any of
the hundreds of religious riots which took place from the Khilafat movement to
the partition . You never condemned the Jallianwaala bagh massacre yet you
called Udham Singh as a madman. You went to fast until death on the matter of
separate electorates for the depressed classes as it was divisive to the
society but were silent on the issue of separate electorates for the
Muslims in 1932 .During London bombings, you advised the Englishmen
to vacate their houses for Hitler, you called for the Jews to commit collective
suicide in order to become immortal in history, but you forgot Mr Gandhi, that
your baloney didn’t have any effect on anyone except the gullible masses of
India. After the Direct Action Day massacre in 1946, you went around preaching
peace tagging yourself with HS Suhrawardy, the very man who was on the
forefront for causing them. You 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. It was you who gave the title of Qaid e Azam to
Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was you who brought a spoilt playboy to the forefront
of Indian politics (because the party needed his father’s money) and pushed the
capable Sardar Patel to a secondary role. You had absolutely no sympathy for
Hindu and Sikh riot victims of the partition riots (“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.”). You advised the Hindus
and Sikhs of West Punjab to bravely court death and chided the ones who had
escaped to India for “cowardice” (“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.”), you advised the women
threatened with rape in West Pakistan to lie still with their tongue between
their teeth to cooperate with their “brothers” [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).]. On the other hand, during your pace march to Noakhali, you
told the Hindus to flee if they wanted to save their lives. Why this double
standard, Mr Gandhi? And what does this tell us about your mentality? ("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)
But your last fatal blow was yet to come. You went
on a fast unto death unless Rs 55 crores were given to Pakistan (which it
gleefully used in its Kashmir invasion of Oct 1947), which was given. Earlier
you had said that the country would be divided only over your dead body. The
country was divided and no hunger strike or satyagraha from you in protest. Had
David Ben Gurion been like you, Golda Meir like Nehru or had the Jewish
leadership been like the Congress, the Jews would have joined the Sumerians and
Babylonians as museum artefacts. It was Nathuram Godse who made you a
martyr, otherwise your popularity was at its lowest towards the end of your
life.
Could you have been repackaged by Congress and your
disciples like Birla and Bajaj (who benefitted the most from the four decades
of license permit raj) as a Mahatma had you died a natural death, instead of
being shot dead by Nathuram Godse? Did the Congress follow non violence by not
controlling the riots which were engineered post your murder which cost the
lives of more than 6000 chitpawan Brahmins (because Nathuram Godse was one)?
No Mr Gandhi, I cannot call you a Mahatma even by
the wildest stretch of imagination. Mahatama or great soul is someone who
dreams to make his country and his people as the strongest and leads like a
warrior from the front, beyond pious platitudes. And neither can I call you the
father of the nation because India is an eternal land and not formed by a
mandate or someone’s signature on a piece of paper. When the greats revere in
being called as their country’s sons and daughters, then why should you be
called as its father?
But its not you who is the reason for the debacle.
Its a collective failure, of a people who have no interest in learning anything
from history and no desire of improving themselves or rising beyond pettiness
towards a greater consensus.
The question is how are you relevant in today’s
world, you who had called India to destroy its rails and post offices and
become a functioning anarchy,without having a least vision of a nation state,
your ideals of sending unarmed soldiers to the invading enemy so that his heart
melts on seeing them offering themselves for sacrifice? Of silence being the
best speech when forget national stage, even an individual cant get things done
by being silent? Or saying that ‘’nirbal ke bal raam ‘’when it has been proved
throughout history that god is on the side of the biggest battalions? Or your
vision not going beyond India being an agrarian economy when its known that
agrarian countries will always be run over by the industrial ones? Or by not
advocating even one value that would have made a strong self reliant India with
model society and citizens?
Happy Birthday Mr Gandhi, out of formality.
Sincerely,
A proud Indian.
