What would Gandhi have done today?

In this hate timeIt is worth asking: what will Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the illustrious organizer of the Salt March and Tatkal, do? strike, have done? Would he have written a tweet, made a meme, centered around an election campaign? girl, girl power“(I’m a woman, I can fight)?

lessons in urgency

In 1947, at a time when hate speeches against Muslims surrounded the public discourse, Gandhi did not misuse his words. He spoke of communal harmony, friendship and love immediately and repeatedly in countless prayer meetings, speeches and articles. A man of action and not mere words, the Mahatma toured riot-hit areas, destroyed mosques and refugee camps, held talks with locals and sought “all-party” agreements to maintain peace in 1947.

In his trademark calm but firm voice, he demanded that the illegally confiscated mosques be returned to the owners of his community. Faced with black flags and slogans demanding “death to Gandhi” Gandhi dead, Gandhiji did not bow down at Amritsar railway station. He drafted a resolution which was passed at the All India Congress Committee session of November 1947, ratifying:

“India has been and is a country of fundamental unity and the aim of the Congress is to develop this great country into a democratic secular state, where all citizens enjoy full rights and are equally entitled to the protection of the State, Whatever religion they belong to. The Constituent Assembly has accepted it as a fundamental principle of the Constitution. It is the duty of every Indian to respect it.”

75 Years Later, a New Kind of Created Hate

Seventy-five years later, it is 1947 once again, but even worse. Because 1947, even if it was covered in blood, brought with it the hope of a clear dawn. The urgency of building and rebuilding two torn but new nations drove its founders, bureaucrats, refugees to work. Anger and fury were replaced by the construction of new homes, refugee colonies replaced by new neighborhoods, even cities.

But now we have a new kind of created hatred, its ugliness on the loudspeakers on which so many unemployed youth dance, displayed on social media and in everyday conduct. The question of whether Muslims are in India in terms of equality has been reopened – in housing societies, in streets and markets to temples, in educational institutions, in political discourse. And for an answer, Gandhi’s Congress protested softly, lest the Hindu majority vote even more for propagators of such hatred. Or the emerging alternative is that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) invests in a strategic bigotry in the vain hope that they will be able to ‘shut down’ the bigotry at will.

Still Gandhi is here

But forget the petty, petty Political class for a moment. A historian studying this era will encounter Gandhi elsewhere. Among the social workers who provided oxygen and food to the COVID victim and migrant worker. Among the non-violent women of Shaheen Bagh and the farmers at the Singhu border. Among the journalists filling Kashmiri jails under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. Among those brave editors who assist brave journalists to document hate speech at so-called religious gatherings and add to the historical record.

In the writings of those opposing the imposition of Hindi, we recognize Gandhi – an expatriate returnee who brought an immigrant’s conceptual look to the problem of establishing unity in India’s diversity, a diversity he assimilated and embodied in South Africa. Learned to give Among the fearless lawyers who have taken up the issue of Muslim women fighting the hijab ban in the Supreme Court, we see the spirit of Gandhi as a lawyer and educationist who always held the right to education as essential and fundamental.

For the Gandhians in India, their talisman remains: “Remember the face of the poorest and weakest man you have ever seen, and ask yourself, is the move you are contemplating to be of any use to him? Will happen. Will this gain him anything? Will this restore him to control over his life and destiny?” The amulet, still hanging in dusty town halls and municipal offices, calls for bulldozers against the poor, ignored. Would have applauded those who pointed their sharp fingers at the bulldozers last month.

Gandhi as an alliance builder

Gandhi, who reorganized the Congress at the start of the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920, slashed its membership fees, and favored the regional vernacular as a medium of communication in provincial congresses, would have cried out at the laxity of the Grand Old Party today. The organizer of that excellence must have immediately begun self-destruction, the hard work of forging a greater alliance, playing the role of kingmaker behind the scenes, but not seeking power for himself, knowing that his strength lies elsewhere. He would have expressed his views, sought advice, consulted with like-minded leaders, as evidenced in the more than a hundred volumes of his collected works.

Those who claim to be Gandhi’s political successor must show his courage, vision, wit, empathy, his clever sense of strategy and timing, his work ethic and organizational acumen – all his gifts, that made the Congress a real one. Formed a people’s party. This is not a tall order; He has a lot of Gandhian fighters to learn from in India’s civil society and even among the Congress and other opposition parties.

Or, in the words of a rap song, ” your time will comeOur time will come, indeed. No house will be spared when this fire breaks out.

Niti Nair is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. His book ‘Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia’ is due out in the spring of 2023 from Harvard University Press.