Modi's hidden fear of Gandhi

The Modi governments increasingly unGandhian style of governance is matched by its fervour for Gandhi turning tidal in its intensity which was on display during his 150th birth anniversary celebrations At the root of this contradictory behaviour is the Modi governments hidden fears of Gandhi who must therefore be reimagined and turned benignThis strategy is discernible in Prime Minister Narendra Modis New York Times piece of October 2 In it he lists three leaders whom Gandhi inspired ndash Martin Luther King Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela All three are dead It is as if Gandhi had resonance only in a certain historical context he must be boxed in the past Modi quotes Mandela as saying Gandhis nonviolent resistance inspired anticolonial and antiracist movements internationally in our centuryGandhi however opposed the British Indian state not just because it was colonial and racist but because its principal instrument of commanding the allegiance of people was fear At a prayer meeting on July 29 1947 Gandhi explained I am not going to suggest to the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir to accede to India and not to Pakistan The real sovereign of the State are the people of the Statehellip This is my belief and that is why I became a rebel because the British claimed to be the rulers of India and I refused to recognise them as rulersThe Modi governments conduct in Kashmir is typical of the imperious coercive ruler who in the Gandhian paradigm must be opposed Gandhi obviously would have been disapproving of armed resistance However the government has also incarcerated leaders who have never espoused or engaged in violence against the state This is because they could discover the Gandhian antistate spirit and overcome their fear to assert their sovereigntyIt was certainly unGandhian of Home Minister Amit Shah to suggest in Kolkata that no religious group other than Muslims has to fear the exercise of preparing the National Register of Citizens It was a shocking example of the state scaring a social group with threats of discrimination In the same city on August 17 1947 Gandhi was reported as saying If a minority in India minority on the score of its religious profession was made to feel small on that account he Gandhi could only say that this India was not the India of his dreams The state was bound to be wholly secularIt is no surprise that Modis New York Times piece did not articulate ideas of secularism or religious coexistence which defined Gandhi and for which he paid with his life Telling the world about it would have implied Modi tacitly accepting that lynching in the name of the cow violates the Gandhian principle of religious pluralismOn August 20 1947 Gandhi said In India no law can be made to ban cowslaughter I have long pledged to serve the cow but how can my religion also be the religion of the rest of the Indians It will mean coercion against those Indians who are not HindusModi celebrated India testing an antisatellite weapon with a speech to the nation on March 27 Compare this to what Gandhi said to scientists who wanted to know what their response should be to the government asking them to undertake research in furtherance of war Scientists to be worth the name should resist such a state unto deathIt might be an education for Modi whos perceived to hound rivals to learn from Gandhi the wisdom of forgetting past hurts In 1942 Gandhi and his wife Kasturba were imprisoned in Agha Khan Palace Pune where the latter fell seriously ill Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai who was British Indias agent in the United States told the American public that the government wanted to release Kasturba but she wished to remain with her husband Gandhi alluded to this incident in a 1947 letter to a senior Home Ministry official What poisonous falsehoods he Bajpai spread at the time Ba Kasturba died Should we spurn him if he wants to help us now The loss shall be ourshellip So we will have to forget our old prejudices and work in unityModi glosses over these compelling aspects of Gandhis life in his New York Times piece which ends with a plea Let us work shoulder to shoulder to make our world prosperous and free from hate violence and suffering Modi invokes this Gandhi abroad as his legacy constitutes Indias soft power that can be tapped to promote its interests He does not at home as Gandhis morality would indict the Indian states captains for fomenting hate So much safer to appropriate Gandhi reconstitute public memory of him as Indias sanitary and environment inspector and reduce the risk of Hindutva facing popular resistanceThe writer is a journalistThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates