Great Soul

Mahatma Gandhi handed India's destiny over to anti-hindu forces

The latest American book on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Joseph  Lelyveld’s, has drawn a lot of attention. This was mainly  because of its allegations about yet more eccentric sexual aspects of his Mahatma-hood on top of those already known. 

Lelyveld, in particular, over interprets Gandhi’s correspondence with German-Jewish architect Hermann Kallenbach as evidence of a homosexual relationship. 

Bapu’s  fans intoned the same mantra as the burners of Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses: “Freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to insult revered figures.” Well, if it doesn’t mean that, it doesn’t mean much. 

In particular, Lelyveld has all the more right to disclose what he found in  the Mahatma’s bedroom because the latter was quite an exhibitionist  himself, detailing every straying thought and nocturnal emission in his

sermons and editorials. But do these tickling insinuations carry any weight?  Other, more troubling, aspects of Gandhi’s résumé are far more deserving  of closer scrutiny. Some unpleasant instances of his impact on India and Hinduism have been discussed thoroughly in a new book, Eclipse of the

Hindu Nation: Gandhi and His Freedom Struggle, by Radha Rajan, editor  of the Chennai-based nationalist website, www.vigilonline.com.  Rajan has already authored, with Krishen Kak, NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry (2006), a scholarly X-ray of the NGO  scene, exposing this holier-than-thou cover for both corruption and  anti-India machinations. The present book, likewise, takes a close look at a  subject mostly presented in the broad strokes of hagiography. In particular, she dissects the Hindu and anti-Hindu content of Gandhi’s policies. Both   were present, the author acknowledges, but there was a lot less Hindu in   him than mostly assumed.

Rama had Vasishtha, Chandragupta had Chanakya, Shivaji had Ramdas,  but Gandhi never solicited the guidance of any Hindu rajguru. By contrast,in his long formative years, he read Christian authors and welcomed the  advice of Christian clergymen. This way, he imbibed many monotheistic prejudices against ‘heathen’ Hinduism, to the point that in 1946 he insisted  

for the new temple on the BHU campus not to contain an “idol”.  Gandhi took his Hindu constituents for granted, but never showed any  concern for specific Hindu interests. The story that he staked his life to   quell the massacres of Hindus in Noakhali in 1947 turns out to be untrue:  His trip to East Bengal took place under security cover and well after the   worst violence had subsided. There and wherever Hindus were getting  butchered en masse in 1947-48, he advised them to get killed willingly,   rather than fight back or flee. It is breathtaking how often his writings and  speeches contain expressions like: “I don’t care if many die.” And it was  

the first time in Hindu history that anyone qualified going down without a   fight against a murderous aggressor as “brave”.   All his fasts unto death proved to be empty play when he refused to use   this weapon to avert Partition, in spite of promises given. It was the only

 time when he ran a real risk of being faced with an opponent willing to let him die, rather than give in. Rajan documents how unpopular he had become by then, not only among fellow politicians who were exasperated at his irrationality, but also the masses suffering the effects of his confused policies. Had Gandhi not been murdered, he would have been consigned

to the dustbin of history.

Gandhi made a caricature of Hinduism by presenting his own whimsical conduct as quintessentially Hindu, such as the rejection of technological progress, maintaining sexual abstinence even within marriage and, most consequentially, extreme non-violence under all circumstances. This

concept owed more to Jesus — “turning the other cheek” — than to  Hindu-Buddhist ahimsa. He managed to read his own version of  non-violence into the Bhagavad Gita, which centres on Krishna rebuking  Arjuna for showing Gandhian passivity. He never invoked any of India’s

warrior heroes and denounced the freedom fighters who opted for armed struggle.

The author acknowledges Gandhi’s sterling contribution to the weakening of caste prejudice among the upper castes. His patronising attitude towards the Harijans will remain controversial, but the change of heart he effected among the rest of Hindu society vis-à-vis the Scheduled Castes (SC) was  revolutionary. However, once educated SC people started coming up and  

speaking for themselves, his response became abusive. Thus, a letter is reproduced in which the Mahatma with chilling pedantry belittles an  admiring Constituent Assembly candidate from the scavengers’ caste for  his “bookish English” and because “the writer is a discontented graduate”.

Gandhi further insults him when he says that “I fear he does no scavenging  himself” and thus “he sets a bad example” to other scavengers. A very few  readers would have expected such a behaviour from the Mahatma. Likewise, Gandhi’s supposed saintliness is incompatible with his well-documented mistreatment of his sons and his faithful wife. Here too, Gandhi’s sexual antics receive some attention. The whole idea of an old man seeking to strengthen his brahmacharya (chastity) by sleeping with naked young women, is bad enough. Perhaps we had to wait for a woman author to give these victims a proper hearing. Rajan documents the fear with which these women received Gandhi’s call to keep him company, as well as their attempts to avoid or escape this special treatment and the misgivings of their families. She praises the self-control of Gandhi’s

confidants who, though horrified, kept the lid on this information out of concern for its likely demoralising effect on the Congress movement. The Mahatma wasn’t equally discreet; he revealed the names of the women he   had used in his chastity experiments, unmindful of what it would do to their social standing. When Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel expressed his stern disapproval of these experiments, Gandhi reacted with a list of cheap allegations, which the  former promptly refuted. Lowly insinuations turn out to be a frequent presence in the Mahatma’s correspondence. As the author observes:“Reputed historians and other eminent academicians have not undertaken so far any honest study of Gandhi’s character. Just as little is known of his  perverse experiments with women, as little is known of his vicious anger  and lacerating speech that he routinely spewed at people who opposed him   or rejected him.” While careful not to offend the powerful among his  occasional critics, like his sponsor GD Birla, “he treated those whom he

considered inferior to him in status with contempt and in wounding  language”.  Unlike in Lelyveld’s account, the references to Gandhi’s sexual gimmicks  here have political relevance. More importantly, Gandhi’s discomfort with  Patel’s disapproval was a major reason for his overruling the Congress  workers’ preference for Patel and foisting his flatterer, Jawaharlal Nehru, as 

Prime Minister on India instead. Thus, argues Rajan, he handed India’s  destiny over to an emergent coalition of anti-Hindu forces. To replace  Nehru as party leader, he had his yes-man JB Kripalani selected, not oincidentally the one among those in the know who had explicitly okayed

the chastity experiments. The Mahatma’s private vices spilled over into his  Public choices with grave political consequences.