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The Spirit of Gandhi: An Obituary |
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Written by Vijay Rana
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Tuesday, 15 August 2006 |
 Victim of Hindutva Fascism
Gandhi's spirit may not have inspired many Indians, but it was his spirit that guided Martin Luther King to dream of racial equality for blacks in America. It was the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi that gave Nelson Mandela the unconquerable courage to defeat the evil of apartheid.
On 7th April 2002, a Hindu fanatic assassinated even the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi. The crime was committed in his own Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, from where the saint of Sabarmati once launched his peaceful campaign, the world famous Salt March, against the mightiest Empire in the world.
That day a small group of peace activists had gathered in Sabarmati Ashram. They had come to promote peace in a city that has seen some of the most horrendous communal violence during the last month. Among those gathered was Medha Patkar, the tireless campaigner of Narmada Bachao Andolan. Many Gujaratis believe that her campaign has delayed the completion of Sardar Sarovar Dam. They see Medha Patkar as one whose antics have contributed to the shortage of water in the drought struck Gujarat.
So when Medha and her Gandhian friends were deliberating on the prospects of communal harmony in Gujarat a crowd led by the Gujarat BJP's youth wing president Amit Thakar invaded the Gandhi Asharam. Thakar leaped upon her. Threw her on the ground. Pulled up her hair while continuing to shout abuse. A powerful leader from the party in power has physically assaulted an elderly lady in Gandhi Ashram.
The state police kept an inactive vigil on Thakar and his mob. However, it acted later, not against the perpetrators of human indecency, but against those who were determined to expose this episode, the press people and camerapersons. Some of them were injured badly. One of them ended up with a fractured scull. For the first time the soil where the messiah of mutual tolerance once preached non-violence was stained with blood. Such a thing didn't happen even during the British Raj.
Sabarmati Ashram is an inspiring place, a sacred place and a place that rekindles righteousness in an ordinary human being. It's a place where one can still find the last vestige of the lost tribe of simple, honest and trusting Gandhians. I had that experience in 1998.
I visited Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram while doing a BBC radio series about elderly people in India. A tall, frail elderly disciple of Gandhi was guarding the hut, where Gandhi once lived. I said to him that I want to go inside the room, instead of looking at it from outside. He opened the lock and let me in and then went to attend some of his other duties. He didn't know me. It was due to his unfailing trust in human decency that I had the most elating experience of my life. I sat where once Gandhi sat. I leaned on the writing desk on which Gandhi once jotted down his letters. I saw his virtually mangled eyeglasses. I touched his Spinning wheel. I fondled and even picked up his cute little monkeys, reminding us not to see, hear or speak evil. I felt as if the spirit of the Mahatma had possessed me.
The guard of Gandhi's hut returned soon. He told me the brief history of his life. He had come to Sabarmati Ashram in the last days of Mahatma Gandhi and decided not to go back home. Fifty years after his master's death he was still guarding the meagre possessions of the Mahatma.
Gandhi was the highest Hindu; the greatest devotee of 'Rahgupati Raghav Raja Ram'. Gandhi might have been born in Gujarat, but the Gandhian spirit-the spirit of peace, non-violence, mutual tolerance, communal co-existence, economic self-reliance and social equality-was born in South Africa in the 1890s. Not many people recognise that there was a significant Muslim contribution in the evolution of the Gandhian spirit.
It's a fascinating story. It was Dada Abdulla, an illiterate ship-owner and trader who gave the inexperienced England returned Barrister, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, his first professional assignment-a first class return ship fare from Bombay to Durban and a sum of #105 for a case against one of his cousins, Tayeb Khan Mohammad.
When Gandhi was thrown out of the train at Maritzburg station on a wintry night, he sent a telegram to Dada Abdulla, who asked some of the local Indian merchants to help Gandhi to reach Pretoria.
After his victory in the case Dada Abdulla gave Gandhi a farewell party before his departure to India in June 1894. The party was attended by almost all the Muslim merchants of Durban. The discussion soon focused on a controversial bill being debated in the Natal Assembly. The bill sought to disfranchise Natal Indians.
The merchants pleaded that they were unlettered and need the help of 'Gandhi bhai'.
Gandhi agreed to stay for one more month in South Africa. For next two decades he continued to fight the evil of racial segregation. History would have taken a different course had Dada Abdulla not stopped Gandhi in South Africa.
Gandhi began his 'experiments with truth' in South Africa. He evolved his philosophy of Satyagriha in South Africa and he began his politics of mass participation in South Africa. The spirit of Gandhism was born in South Africa and Dada Abdulla had a role in the making of that spirit.
Today Hindu hardliners abuse Gandhi. The most common complaint is that he caused the partition of India. Nothing can be far from the truth. He was the man who did the most to prevent the partition and to stop the bloodshed that accompanied it.
Today the Congressmen hardly talk about Gandhi. They have many other Gandhis to bow to.
Communists never believed in him and had always been sceptical about his cardinal belief- the non-violence.
And the present day leaders of the downtrodden Dalits call Gandhi a Ghaddar or betrayer. Can politics be most unjust than this? Throughout his life Gandhi fought to eradicate untouchability. He forced his numerous upper-caste Ashramites to clean toilets, so that they could realise what it was like to be a toilet cleaner. Gandhi practiced what he preached.
Though the spirit of Gandhi has been dying a slow death for the last fifty years in India. Its last rites were outrageously performed on the 7th April 2002 in his own Ashram at the banks of Sabarmati.
The Spirit of Gandhism: Born 1894, Durban, South Africa
Died on 7th April 2002, Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad, India
It was survived by none.
Reprinted from http://www.samachar.com/features/100402-vijay.html |
Sunday, 12 October 2008
