UNDERSTANDING THE FOUNDING FATHERS
An Enquiry into the Indian Republic's Beginnings
Rajmohan Gandhi
Aleph
138 pages; Rs 299
One such old-fashioned skirmish broke out between Booker winner Arundhati Roy and historian Rajmohan Gandhi in 2014. In a book-length Introduction to B R Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste (Navayana), Ms Roy, winner of the 1997 Man Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things, accused Mahatma Gandhi of maintaining a status quo in matters of caste, and not really eschewing it despite his professed love for Harijans.
Professor Gandhi, who has taught political science and history at the University of Illinois and is now a scholar-in-residence at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, found himself in the unenviable position of defending the Mahatma, who is also his grandfather. In a series of articles in The Economic and Political Weekly, Professor Gandhi refuted Ms Roy's position.
Now, in this slim book, Professor Gandhi takes his arguments forward. His quarrel this time is, however, not with Ms Roy but two equally fascinating characters - Swami Sachidanand, a religious leader from Gujarat, and Perry Anderson, the well-known American historian. Both are critical of the Gandhi legacy but for different reasons.
The swami is of the opinion that Gandhi had misunderstood the threat of Islam to Hindus and his preaching of ahimsa was so incorporated in the Indian psyche that the country lost the 1962 war with China. Professor Anderson, on the other hand, argues in his book, The Indian Ideology (2014), that Gandhi was not really a pacifist and helped carve out a country where Muslims would always be in the minority and at the mercy of the Hindus. In fact, Professor Anderson advises Indians to tear down the ideals of Gandhi, as well as India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his deputy, Sardar Patel. He proposes - though not directly - an alternative triumvirate of Ambedkar, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League and Pakistan's first governor-general, and Subhas Chandra Bose, who, if they had come to power after Independence, would have constructed a different country, he claims.
Professor Gandhi writes about his reluctance to take on the task: "Should Indians be bothered by a charge sheet and call to action drawn up by a wide-ranging American professor?" However, he is informed by friends how the theses of these two individuals were being used by populists in a manner that could harm the minorities of the subcontinent - and he reluctantly agrees to write this slim book. It is a good thing that he does. Over the past few months, the debate over nationalism that was sparked by alleged "anti-national" comments by some Jawaharlal Nehru University students has turned vicious, seemingly permeating every aspect of our civic life, with senior political leaders as well as fringe elements calling for deportation or beheading of citizens who refuse to chant "nationalistic" slogans. In such a political climate, a book examining the legacy of the founding fathers of the nation and the roots of the republic by one of the foremost historians is not only timely but also essential.
Professor Gandhi builds his defence through erudition. I haven't read neither Mr Sachidanand nor Professor Anderson, so I cannot comment on their theses. But some of their claims quoted by Professor Gandhi seem far-fetched or even absurd. For instance, Mr Sachidanand claims in one of his books that he was a great admirer of Gandhi and his work for the emancipation of the Dalits, as the swami is also an anti-caste campaigner. But he changed his opinion after the disastrous Indo-China war. He recalls in one of his books how he met a soldier on a train who told him how while fighting the Chinese army, he was confronted with a moral dilemma over killing fellow humans and therefore fired in the air. Mr Sachidanand relates this to Gandhi's ahimsa infecting the combative spirit of the Indian army. This anecdote immediately reminded me of Dev Anand-starrer Prem Pujari (1970) and its pacifist protagonist, who refuses to fire at Chinese aggressors. That India's drubbing in the war was a result of policy and tactical errors - and not Gandhian philosophy - does not need to be elaborated. Professor Gandhi does quote from the relevant sections of the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report to disprove such assertions.
The response to Professor Anderson's book is more elaborate. By quoting extensively from the writings of Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Jinnah and Bose, Professor Gandhi proves that - unlike Professor Anderson's claim - "each of them seemed closer to Gandhi than to one another... the three did not offer, or attempt to offer, an alternative leadership for the subcontinent."
However, having made his case, Professor Gandhi, in the Conclusion, quotes extensively from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their assessment of the 1857 Revolt, to accuse Professor Anderson, a believer in the New Left, of disliking Gandhi because the American academic is essentially a racist. Professor Gandhi, however, does not quote anything from Professor Anderson's writings to prove this accusation, which can be easily disproved by the fact that the three men he celebrates - Jinnah, Ambedkar and Bose - are also sons of the subcontinent.
But this is the only blemish in this otherwise gem of a book.
An Enquiry into the Indian Republic's Beginnings
Rajmohan Gandhi
Aleph
138 pages; Rs 299
More From This Section
In this degenerate age of Twitter wars and Facebook fights, duels between intellectuals have become rarer and a little old-fashioned. The acrimonious debate between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in the 1950s, or the one between Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen in The Statesman were eagerly awaited by their contemporaries.
One such old-fashioned skirmish broke out between Booker winner Arundhati Roy and historian Rajmohan Gandhi in 2014. In a book-length Introduction to B R Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste (Navayana), Ms Roy, winner of the 1997 Man Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things, accused Mahatma Gandhi of maintaining a status quo in matters of caste, and not really eschewing it despite his professed love for Harijans.
Professor Gandhi, who has taught political science and history at the University of Illinois and is now a scholar-in-residence at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, found himself in the unenviable position of defending the Mahatma, who is also his grandfather. In a series of articles in The Economic and Political Weekly, Professor Gandhi refuted Ms Roy's position.
Now, in this slim book, Professor Gandhi takes his arguments forward. His quarrel this time is, however, not with Ms Roy but two equally fascinating characters - Swami Sachidanand, a religious leader from Gujarat, and Perry Anderson, the well-known American historian. Both are critical of the Gandhi legacy but for different reasons.
The swami is of the opinion that Gandhi had misunderstood the threat of Islam to Hindus and his preaching of ahimsa was so incorporated in the Indian psyche that the country lost the 1962 war with China. Professor Anderson, on the other hand, argues in his book, The Indian Ideology (2014), that Gandhi was not really a pacifist and helped carve out a country where Muslims would always be in the minority and at the mercy of the Hindus. In fact, Professor Anderson advises Indians to tear down the ideals of Gandhi, as well as India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his deputy, Sardar Patel. He proposes - though not directly - an alternative triumvirate of Ambedkar, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League and Pakistan's first governor-general, and Subhas Chandra Bose, who, if they had come to power after Independence, would have constructed a different country, he claims.
Professor Gandhi writes about his reluctance to take on the task: "Should Indians be bothered by a charge sheet and call to action drawn up by a wide-ranging American professor?" However, he is informed by friends how the theses of these two individuals were being used by populists in a manner that could harm the minorities of the subcontinent - and he reluctantly agrees to write this slim book. It is a good thing that he does. Over the past few months, the debate over nationalism that was sparked by alleged "anti-national" comments by some Jawaharlal Nehru University students has turned vicious, seemingly permeating every aspect of our civic life, with senior political leaders as well as fringe elements calling for deportation or beheading of citizens who refuse to chant "nationalistic" slogans. In such a political climate, a book examining the legacy of the founding fathers of the nation and the roots of the republic by one of the foremost historians is not only timely but also essential.
Professor Gandhi builds his defence through erudition. I haven't read neither Mr Sachidanand nor Professor Anderson, so I cannot comment on their theses. But some of their claims quoted by Professor Gandhi seem far-fetched or even absurd. For instance, Mr Sachidanand claims in one of his books that he was a great admirer of Gandhi and his work for the emancipation of the Dalits, as the swami is also an anti-caste campaigner. But he changed his opinion after the disastrous Indo-China war. He recalls in one of his books how he met a soldier on a train who told him how while fighting the Chinese army, he was confronted with a moral dilemma over killing fellow humans and therefore fired in the air. Mr Sachidanand relates this to Gandhi's ahimsa infecting the combative spirit of the Indian army. This anecdote immediately reminded me of Dev Anand-starrer Prem Pujari (1970) and its pacifist protagonist, who refuses to fire at Chinese aggressors. That India's drubbing in the war was a result of policy and tactical errors - and not Gandhian philosophy - does not need to be elaborated. Professor Gandhi does quote from the relevant sections of the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report to disprove such assertions.
The response to Professor Anderson's book is more elaborate. By quoting extensively from the writings of Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Jinnah and Bose, Professor Gandhi proves that - unlike Professor Anderson's claim - "each of them seemed closer to Gandhi than to one another... the three did not offer, or attempt to offer, an alternative leadership for the subcontinent."
However, having made his case, Professor Gandhi, in the Conclusion, quotes extensively from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their assessment of the 1857 Revolt, to accuse Professor Anderson, a believer in the New Left, of disliking Gandhi because the American academic is essentially a racist. Professor Gandhi, however, does not quote anything from Professor Anderson's writings to prove this accusation, which can be easily disproved by the fact that the three men he celebrates - Jinnah, Ambedkar and Bose - are also sons of the subcontinent.
But this is the only blemish in this otherwise gem of a book.