It has been a commonplace for as long as anyone can remember that we in India deify our great men and then quietly ignore their teachings. This view has been endlessly repeated in respect of Gandhiji. There is some merit in it. Many of those who wax eloquent in praise of him from public platforms indulge in activities which are wholly contrary to whatever he stood for. Some of them do not care if they even compromise the national interest in order to promote their narrow and short-term interests. But broadly speaking, it is not true that India has put Gandhiji on a pedestal and then proceeded to ignore him. It would be a poor commentary not only on us but also on him if this were indeed the case. For if it would show what scant respect we have for one we call “father of the nation”, it would also show what little impact he has had on the nation despite having been its unchallenged leader for three long decades. Surely this cannot be true. And if it is not, as it cannot be, it becomes necessary to re-examine the assumption regarding the so-called neglect of Gandhiji.
India, as has been noted by any number of individuals in different contexts, is going through several revolutions, social, economic and political, at the same time. This has involved an ever growing interaction between imported ideas and technologies on the one hand and the Indian social reality and heritage on the other. Gandhiji and what is called Gandhism were themselves products of this interaction as was Mr. Nehru and other stalwarts beginning with Raja Rammohun Roy. Since the interaction has not ended, the imported as well as the inherited are undergoing change in the crucible that is modern India. This is inevitably creating confusion, leading to the twin outcries that India is making a hash of parliamentary democracy and that it is ignoring its heritage of which Gandhiji is seen as a part. These propositions are two sides of the same coin and speak of our inability generally to grasp the laws of social development. There are, of course, people who would like to entomb Gandhiji in his writings as if they were revelations from God just as there are those who believe that Gandhiji’s historic role was over with the achievement of independence. But clearly neither side appreciates the dynamics of modern India. Both are fundamentalists in their different ways and have little relevance to the country’s complex realities.
India’s continuing concern with the uplift of the scheduled castes and tribes is too patent a fact to need to be recalled. So is its attempt to ensure fair treatment to the minorities. But some other aspects of what is happening in India deserve to be noted. The country is, for instance, making an enormous investment in order to raise agricultural production and thus to improve the quality of life in the countryside. Surely, a central Gandhian plank is being implemented even if the means belong to this age than to his. Similarly, while it is true that we have not sought to build self-sufficient village republics, it, too, cannot be denied that the countryside has acquired an enormous hold on the political system and those who operate it. And without almost anyone discovering it, Indian society is widening the area of its autonomy vis-à-vis the state. Maybe certain social and economic forces are pushing the country in that direction. But Gandhiji did not think up his prescriptions in a vacancy. These, too, reflected the social and economic reality of India.