How would Mahatma Gandhi have reacted to India in 2020?

How would he react to what we have made of his life’s work? When I say we, I mean all of us, We the People of India. We are all collectively responsible for where we find ourselves today.

Did we do enough to build on the legacy bequeathed to us by Gandhiji and the freedom struggle, of which he was the foremost leader? Did we do enough to pinpoint the weaknesses in that legacy and make good the shortcomings? It is to these questions that we need to seek answers to be able to answer the first question: How would Gandhiji react to India in 2020?

Among the most striking features of 2020 so far have been the fallout of the attempts at communal polarisation by invoking the CAA and the NRC, the attempt to give a communal colour to the widespread peaceful protests against these measures and link them with the February riots in Northeast Delhi, and using the restrictions on movement and assembly imposed by the Pandemic to curb civil liberties and detain and question a large number of students and other activists under draconian provisions of UAPA and the Sedition law.

How would Gandhiji have reacted to this? We can try to answer this by looking at examples from his own practice. We know he was a firm believer in the necessity of civil liberties. One quote from him should suffice:

‘Liberty of speech means that it is unassailed even when the speech hurts. Liberty of the press can be said to be truly respected only when the press can comment on the severest terms upon and even misrepresent matters. Freedom of association is truly respected when assemblies of people can discuss even revolutionary projects.’

The only line that he drew was that of non-violence, as will become clear in the next quotation:

“Civil liberty, consistent with the observance of non-violence is the first step towards Swaraj. It is the breath of political and social life, it is the foundation of freedom. There is no room here for dilution or compromise, it is the water of life.”

How did he put these ideas into practice? How did he treat those with whom he had ideological and political differences? Not just statements of faith in civil liberties but actually living out these conceptions which I have just talked about. That is, defending people with whom you do not agree, defending your opponents, defending people with whom you may have sharp differences.

The first example is of the Meerut Conspiracy Case. In March 1929, the British government was very worried that left and communist activities were increasing in India. There was a flourishing of left-wing activity and organizations in India, especially between 1927 and 1929. Subhash Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru had both committed themselves to socialism. They had formed Youth Leagues all over the country.

So, what the government did was very interesting, and has very contemporary resonances. They picked up those who they thought were the extreme wing of the left, hoping thereby to divide the left and the national movement. They arrested 32 people, among whom were trade union leaders, political leaders, including three British Communists who had come to India to help in the organization of the trade union movement.

They were put up for trial in Meerut, and very soon the Meerut Conspiracy Case became a national cause. The British had thought that they would isolate the left-wing activists, suppress them, convict them and send them for long terms to jail and thereby finish off the movement.

Instead, what happened was that Jawaharlal Nehru, M.A. Ansari, and M.C. Chagla, took up their defence, became their lawyers. They said we will defend the Communists. Gandhiji himself visited the Meerut prisoners in jail to show solidarity with them, just as Jawaharlal Nehru had visited Bhagat Singh and his comrades in jail to show solidarity with them. Speeches of defence made by them in the court were carried in major nationalist newspapers, and this was how, for the first time in fact, ordinary Indians became familiar with Communist ideas.

Another example is the manner in which Gandhji dealt with Subhas Bose with whom he had developed serious differences in 1939, leading to Subhas Bose’s resignation from the position of Congress President. Subhas had expressed his displeasure by obstructing the functioning of the Bengal PCC.

Gandhiji, having drafted the Working Committee resolution taking disciplinary action against Subhas Bose for defying the party leadership’s efforts to reorganise the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee and thus violating party discipline and disobeying the orders of the Congress President without appealing to the Working Committee, AICC, etc., defended Bose’s ‘perfect right to agitate against the action of the Working Committee and canvass public opinion against it’.

Gandhiji further said: “And those who disapprove of the action of the Working Committee are certainly entitled to join any demonstration in favour of Subhas Babu. Unless this simple rule is observed we shall never evolve democracy”. Both sides to the dispute, pro-Working Committee and pro-Subhas groups could express their viewpoints by holding meetings and counter-meetings. Gandhiji argued, “These meetings, both for and against, should be regarded as a means of educating public opinion.”

As Nehru said, democracy in the final analysis is about dialogue, it’s about whether you are willing to listen to your opponent or not. Gandhiji could open a dialogue with the revolutionaries when he emerged as the leader of the national movement during the Non-cooperation movement.

The revolutionaries’ methods were totally opposed to Gandhiji’s and yet he called them for a dialogue. He said to them, I don’t know whether in the long run my methods will prove to be the right ones or yours, but in order for me to experiment and try out my method of non-violence, it is necessary that you suspend your violent actions, because if at the same time violent incidents happen, my method will not really get a chance to be tried out. So, I ask you to suspend your politics for the period of this movement, the Non-cooperation movement. Give me a chance to try out my methods; if I fail, you take forward your methods. And the revolutionaries did suspend their activities.

This was the level of dialogue that existed between opposing political strands within our national political struggle, which is why we not only won the battle for freedom but were able to establish a functioning democracy.

It is this dialogue, the essence of democracy that is being increasingly taken away. If we are unable to reverse this trend, we would have lost the India bequeathed to us by Gandhiji and our national liberation struggle, an India which Nehru so painstakingly tried to take forward after independence.

(Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of History at JNU and former Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)