Justice gave voice to people in post-independent India: Gopalkrishna Gandhi at DH Sparks event

Former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Friday said justice was the keyword in India's independence struggle and it helped in giving voice to the people in the post-independent era which would not have been possible during the British Raj.

Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, said the yearning for political freedom coupled with justice led India into an electoral democracy where voices of people were given prominence, which in otherwise would not have possible in the Raj.

He was speaking at 'DH Sparks' digital discussion on 'Have we lived up to the ideals of the freedom struggle?' in which Vikram Sampath (author of 'Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past'), Priya Ravichandran (author of 15 for Republic) and Aakash Singh Rathore (author of Ambedkar’s Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India) participated.

Gandhi said only 'Swaraj' (self-rule) could have given Indian people a voice and not the British Raj and one of the biggest contributions of the independence struggle was electoral democracy.

He also listed eradication of untouchability, reducing the age of consent, reducing the death rate, Right to Information, apolitical nature of Indian military and the reach of communication tools like mobile phones to the remotest part of the country among the most important features of realising the ideals of the freedom movement.

"Our soldiers have minded their own business. They remained soldiers and it has been a great achievement of our freedom struggle. It did not morph into political powers as we saw in the neighbourhood," he said.

Sampath, however, argued that there were multiple streams of freedom struggle but a "linear, monochromatic" history is being fed into the mainstream. He said several sections of the country are yet to make peace with each other and referred to the recent rioting in Bengaluru.

On the missteps India took after Independence, Gandhi said Emergency was a blot and it may be an aberration but it set a bad precedent. He said we are still devising many ways to subvert electoral democracy and cited the hold of money power in elections.

Rathore, on his part, said that in the present day, even without declaring Emergency, it is now possible to do things that were done during Emergency. "The Emergency gave an opportunity to counter it. It is not the case now," he said.

Ravichandran said neither the Independence Struggle nor the Constitution was a product of men alone and women played a huge rule in both.