Gandhi Jayanti is the VIP’s day out. Broom in hand, facial cavities,nose and mouth, safely masked, body bedecked in freshly starched spotless kurta pyjamas adorned with flashy bundies the VIP waits expectantly on some non-descript street. A battery of cameramen facing him jostle for space. A hump of pre-strewn litter on an otherwise clean stretch separates them from the VIP. On cue, he starts waggling the broom over the litter. Cameras explode with sounds of shutter clicks. Video cameras capture every twitch of his body fibre and the glitter of litter. Mikes are thrust into his face, someone shouts, Sir, take off the mask else the voice will get garbled. He graciously obliges with a condescending grin suffusing his countenance. Gandhian cliches, homilies and resolves for citizens flow into those mikes as ritual messaging of Swacch Bharat to be passed over, loud and distinct , instantly to masses through the idiot box.
Next pic ,he stands before a newly built toilet instead of the litter on the road, and the rest follows. Later in the day, he will say much the same thing with greater eloquence,duly embroidered with seminal Gandhian quotes and thoughts in meets, seminars, conferences, other such events. Over to next year.
That’s how Gandhi Jayanti manifests itself - cleaning streets, and building toilets to shit at home rather than in open spaces ; and mouthing platitudinous references to Gandhi and affectations of faith in his principles.
In reality, Gandhi is a forsaken God ,a ‘Father of the nation’ who competes for reverence in some states with the cow as the ‘mother of the nation’. He practiced what he preached, his followers only preach what he practiced. He advocated a simple living humble enough to earn the epithet of ‘half-naked fakir’. Today’s ‘fakir’ netas present fashion spectacles in monogrammed suits, Bylagri specs, Movado watches , Mount Blanc pens et al costing lacs of rupees.
But on a serious note, Gandhiji has been more read than acted upon. He denigrated capitalism for its exploitative excesses and demeaning competition. Nehru agreed but did not embrace his Gram Swarajya , the self-governing self-sustaining entity, for being impractical. So he plumbed for a via media ,Fabian socialism. Even this Gandhi ji rejected ‘No amount of socialisation can eradicate the evils of capitalism.’
Ironically, Modinomics has swung to a more vicious concoction of capitalism - crony capitalism, where the commanding heights of economy pass increasingly and inexorably to fewer and fewer chosen hands. The levers of state power emasculate public sector by doing little to salvage and revitalise ailing PSUs like BSNL, MTNL, Air India , LIC that facilitates entry and growth of crony capitalists. At the extreme, it displaces public enterprises totally like HAL by Reliance in Rafale deal. The new DPP reserves production of four categories of defence equipments for private entries selected by the state thus hobbling defence PSUs. If Gandhi disfavoured capitalism but he intensely abhorred plutarchy.
Indian footprints in capitalism were made in the 1980s. Since then the top 0.1% of earners have captured more growth than all of the bottom 50% put together ,while the middle 40%
have not benefitted at all. India remains among the most unequal nation in the world. And the income/wealth gap is only widening, and more worryingly none seems worried. The Gandhian conception of property being held in trust by owners for managing in common interest now does not even merit a public debate. Property is privately held by a few for only self aggrandisement. As one third of Indians go to sleep with just one meal a day ,more and more enter the millionaires club every year. Gandhi foresaw this long ago ,but none believe him even now.
As a way out he evangelised village and cottage industries as the only available option to gain full employment in villages. But there are no takers for his ideation of small is beautiful. The prevailing dogma is big, so big that it is ‘too big to fail’. Production not in villages but for villages, on its vestiges.The unsavoury saga of Land Bill is testimony to it.
Gandhi’s heart lay in villages and its development . But urbanisation aggressively swallows up more and more of agricultural land. Industrial hubs , SEZs , industrial corridors, highways, bullet trains, progressively and stealthily eat into it as well. That will eventually destroy rural communities ,convert rural labourers, small and marginal farmers into daily wage earners ; their individuality squelched to become slaves of an all embracing modernism. On their ruins will be built highly urbanised gated communities , the smart cities , serviced by slums beyond its gates ; slums peopled by those displaced from the very lands on which the cities shall stand.
Admittedly, the world has moved way beyond Gandhiji’s conception of Hind S waraj to have any pertinancy. But why disregard the core principle behind this thought - individualism. The state is soulless ,its power, Gandhi observed “does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality”. The human being has a soul and a conscience which endows him with an innate right to rebel, through acts of civil disobedience, against policies that he considers morally wrong. Today, when the VIP hollers from the podium about Gandhian legacies he needs to answer why protestors showing black flags or shouting anti PM slogans at the venues of his meeting or on the sidelines of his motorcade are blocked, thrashed, arrested and prosecuted ,or explain the even more ridiculous act of requiring people to shed anything black on their body - burka, black dupatta, black hair bands, black pants, salwars, black shirts before entering venues of PMs. It is totally unGandhian.
Even greater challenge to the individual’s freedom is the entry of state into private homes through technological innovations, be it Aadhar, social media analytics, or internet surveillance. Contrary to the Gandhian precept of decentralised power the state aided by tech is relentlessly burgeoning into one uncontrollable leviathan. And its power is getting concentrated in one individual both in the state and within a political party. From a cabinet system of governance we have unwittingly moved to a presidential form and one where both executive and legislative initiatives flow from one fountainhead. A cabinet exists, only as a rubber stamp as evidenced by Rafale and Demonetisation episodes, and ministers sally forth as pygmies.
Lastly, a majority rule, Gandhi wrote, in ‘Young India’ could not run roughshod on issues on which the minority harbours strong views. Contrarily, we see the state energetically rushing through issues of triple talaq and masjid not being integral to Islam, issues hotly contested by the ignored Muslims. The state needs to take them along too.
While Gandhi wanted Indians to see themselves primarily as Indian citizen but also as Indian Hindus and Indian Muslims, a political entity fertilised in a religious soil. Let it stay that way, Mr VIP even after the Gandhi Jayanti celebs end.
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