India is celebrating the completion of 75 years of its freedom. Yet there is another 75th anniversary we need to talk about. It's been 75 years since October 2, 1947. October 2 is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. What is the significance of October 2, 1947? Now we know it was to be the last birthday of Gandhi's life. He had completed 78 years. At a time when the average life expectancy was 32 years for an Indian, completing 78 years was no small thing. Looking at Gandhi's days at that time, it would not have been wrong to assume that he might go on living for many more years. Joy for some but pain for many. It was definitely not easy to be in the presence of someone who keeps challenging your received wisdom and asking you to examine yourself.
Gandhi was soon to be assassinated, barely three months after this birthday. Just as Gandhi's presumption of more years to live naturally was not wrong, the apprehension that he might be assassinated had also intensified in the last years of his life. Death was hovering over Gandhi. Recall the threat of the then chief of the RSS that, if need be, Gandhi could be silenced.
This birthday was special. The purpose to which Gandhi had dedicated his life had been achieved. The British, who had imprisoned him and his friends in response to 'Quit India' were finally compelled to leave India. Therefore, on the birthday which came immediately after August 15, Gandhi could have said that he felt fulfilled.
But freedom from British rule was not all Gandhi was aiming at. Liberating India from the British was only a part of his larger programme. Equally, an important task was to free India from caste. To destroy caste, as he had realised in the 1930s. While it was relatively easy to overthrow British rule, the task of freeing the country's people from the clutches of caste was far more difficult. And third, rather the first objective was to free Hindus and Muslims from the violence of mutually malicious competition. These were the three major motives of Gandhi's life. For all this, he wanted his Indians to have a sincere commitment to the search for truth. They should be ready to sacrifice themselves in a non-violent way to achieve that truth, which is what Gandhi had willed.
We can say, looking back, that while taking account of his life and his engagement with his people, Gandhi was more dissatisfied and agonised on the occasion of his birthday. None of the expectations he had nursed in his heart would be realised before he closed his eyes. This was a painful realisation he had while he was being congratulated.
Gandhi also had to accept that Indians had rejected non-violence. Gandhi had to admit in his last days that the people of India had adopted non-violence in the struggle with British rule only because they could not compete with the armed British. They were no match to them. As soon as they were convinced of the departure of the British and the power came into their own hands, they proved that non-violence was only a strategy for them, not a policy. Time and again, he said and wrote that the belief of the people of India in non-violence and Khadi was superficial and hypocritical.
Similarly, he was also able to see that the 'upper castes were not interested in playing their role for justice to the Dalits, which he had demanded from them after the infamous Poona Pact. Would this have led him, along with Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel, to request Dr B R Ambedkar to preside over the constitution-making process for a free India? What better way to free India from the laws made by Manu? If Manu had made a law according to which Dalits, women and society were obliged to live for eternity, now had come the time when the organisation of society and its life had to be done under the supervision of a man whom Manu's law wanted voiceless. Now the nation had to speak in his voice. Was this the response of Gandhi and his friends to the treachery of the "high castes"? And is it that the "high castes" which felt defeated then are taking revenge on Gandhi and Ambedkar by openly shredding the Constitution to pieces using the very institutions it had created?
Around his birthday 75 years ago, Gandhi realised that he might not live to see his next birthday. He wrote to his friends and well-wishers that he did not know what would happen the next moment, or whether he would live. "I'm sitting in a fire pit," Gandhi wrote. It was to consume him finally.
Freedom was only two months old. She was struggling to take shape. What form it would take depended on the decisions people were making. What would they decide? What would be their choice? They had to decide about our society and the organisation of our lives. They had to make their choice. What would emerge after that?
Gandhi painted an imaginary picture before the people of India 75 years ago, on October 25, 1947. He was writing an article on new universities. In this article, he talked about Hindu-Muslim relations. It is a long quote but worth reading in full.
"Assume that the unthinkable has happened and that not a single Muslim can remain in the Union safely and honourably and that neither Hindu nor Sikh can do likewise in Pakistan. Our education will then wear a poisonous form. If, on the other hand, Hindus, Muslims and all the others who may belong to different faiths can live in either Dominion with perfect safety and honour, then in the nature of things, our education will take a shape altogether pleasing. Either people of different faiths, having lived together in friendship, have produced a beautiful blend of cultures, which we shall strive to perpetuate and increasingly strengthen, or we shall cast about for the day when there was only one religion re-presented in Hindustan and retrace our steps to that exclusive culture. It is just possible that we might not be able to find any such historical date, and if we do and we retrace our steps, we shall throw our culture back to that ugly period, and deservedly earn the execration of the universe. By way of example, if we make the vain attempt of obliterating the Muslim period, we shall have to forget that there was a mighty Jama Masjid in Delhi second to none in the world, or that there was a Muslim University in Aligarh, or that there was the Taj in Agra, one of the seven wonders of the world, or that there were the great forts of Delhi and Agra built during the Mughal period. We shall then have to rewrite our history with that end in view. Surely today we have not the atmosphere which will enable us to come to a right conclusion about the conflicting choices."
There were conflicting choices. Gandhi wanted the people of India to come to the right decision about the choices. Some organisations, through a man, responded to him with bullets. But the rest of the nation then moved on the path he had asked it to do. We made a constitution to ensure equality, freedom, justice and fraternity to all, without discrimination.
It was a brave decision. Also a penance for what the people had done to Gandhi in his last days. For their betrayal. But those who were hiding in the shadows and working stealthily after getting defeated now control the nation.
They are reversing the decision made by our ancestors after Gandhi's warning. They are rewriting our history. We are being asked to retrace our steps to find an exclusive culture of India which never was a reality. The unthinkable has happened. This year marks the 75 anniversary of the warning of the then 78-year-old man Gandhi. What choices do we have now other than ignoring the anniversary of the warning?
(The writer teaches at Delhi University)
(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
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