Aditya Sinha: Happy birthday, Gandhiji!

If Mahatma Gandhi were still alive hed be 148 years old having survived countless assassination attempts by both jehadis as well as rightwing terrorists Hed long ago have received a Nobel Peace Prize only to have global dogooders call for it to be snatched back after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition or the 2002 Gujarat riots Sabarmati Ashram would have a fridge and airconditioning Hed have the largest Twitter following in the world more than Katy Perry and Barack Obama combined He would be prolific on Snapchat India would have stopped calling him Father of the Nation addressing him as Forefather of the nation or even Greatgreatgrandfather of the nation He would have agreed that Sachin Tendulkar is a cricketing godIllustrationRavi JadhavMost newspapers however wouldnt give Gandhiji a singlecolumn story tucked away inside Their marketing departments would forbid it concerned with keeping the products content in alignment with the target segment of young readers with disposable incomes Media owners wouldnt allow it because 70 years after Indias Independence theres no more mission to pursue but only lipsmacking profits plus why annoy the government of the day The government would prefer the focus away from Gandhiji worried he might expose its bankruptcy of talent and its drought of ideas to grow the economy it would taunt him as a Lutyens freedom fighter Middleclass apoplectics would swamp the Internet with photoshopped memes and fake news about himPerhaps Gandhiji would be a popular panelist on TV news channels bringing a calming presence to their shoutfests Even the most bombastic anchors would have to pay deference to him though given their calibre it is more likely that Gandhiji would be repeatedly shouted down or talked over He would no doubt have moments of lucidity and offer sage advice which the nation would really want to know from him but sometimes he would be lost in the past mistaking contemporary leaders for figures long dead Imagine Gandhiji advising a puzzled former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh to abjure the path of violence and socialismIt is likely that politics would not be much different even if Gandhiji were still alive He would forever regret how Kemal Ataturk knocked the bottom out of his Khilafat movement ending the final time that Muslims rallied behind him after 1921 Pakistan became an inevitability By the 1950s even the government in Karachi which later shifted to the newlyconstructed Islamabad would have stopped issuing the joint passport later he might have found his visa applications rejectedGandhiji would also regret that he backed down from the fight that Dr B R Ambedkar urged him to fight against casteist oppression and discrimination Though Gandhiji tried to walk back his paternalistic writings on the subject in the 1930s and though he listened to Ambedkar more and more in the 1940s it is likely that Ambedkars 1956 conversion to Buddhism was an inevitability whether Gandhiji lived or not Perhaps the battle against casteism in Gandhijis view was futile after all he was never a revolutionaryGandhijis fault was his pragmatism He would have acquiesced to India exploding a nuclear bomb in 1974 though he might have resorted to penance through fasting He might have sorted out the Kashmir issue by coopting the Hurriyat Conference and have them renounce separatism He might not have objected to crony capitalism for after all his own movement and lifestyle was maintained by the industrialists of the dayYet it is also true that it was his pragmatism that enabled India to gain Independence No one has since then been able to mobilise Indians on the scale that he did Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar might have united as many Indians but thats not the same thing He used Hindu symbols and signifiers to do so thus he could not do war on caste Ironically it was the rightwing that attempted to shoot him down on October 30 1948 blaming him for Partition and its consequencesGandhiji would have regretted Indira Gandhis Emergency Rule and might have protested alongside Jai Prakash Narayan He might have thrown his weight behind Chandrashekhar as the prime minister after Rajiv Gandhi instead of V P Singh he might have persuaded the communists against the historic blunder of not making Jyoti Basu the prime minister in 1996 though that would not have altered events much and he probably would have advised A B Vajpayee to eat less samosa and jalebiGandhiji was undoubtedly as Indian as they come the embodiment of India in all its strengths its pride its flaws its faults its successes its failures its culture its traditions and its imperfections No wonder he endures despite intermittent efforts to kill him again and againAditya Sinhas crime novel The CEO Who Lost His Head is available now He tweets autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom