Martyrs’ Day: Why Mahatma Gandhi is still relevant today

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) is, of course, regarded as the father of the nation. Today, 77 years later, he continues to be revered as such — despite attempts by the Sangh Parivar to place his assassin Nathuram Godse on a pedestal instead.

For the younger generations who might be wondering at his relevance and worth, given the furious propaganda they are immersed in, here is a quick guide to why he continues to be so important — across the world and not just in India, as a leader of people and not just a ‘politician’ (though of course he was one of the foremost of his time, that ‘half-naked fakir’, as Winston Churchill would call him, half disgusted, half wondering at his gall — and his influence).

• Mahatma Gandhi remains a major national figure in India — comparable to Abraham Lincoln in the United States, Charles de Gaulle in France, Winston Churchill himself in the UK, Mao Ze Dong in China and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. 

• The Mahatma was a moral philosopher who gave the world a universal, accessible strategy to combat injustice — namely, non-violent protest. He called it ‘satyagraha’, which has been followed and adopted in many countries across the world since his death, including in the United States.

• Gandhi was a Hindu, yes, but his was not the Hindutva of our times. He was an original thinker on matters of religion. He lived — and, indeed, died — for the cause of harmony between India’s two largest religious communities, Hindus and Muslims. At a time when the world is once again riven with discord and disharmony between different faiths and  peoples, his relevance has actually increased.

  He was a deeply religious person and a devout believer in Hinduism himself, true. He was deeply immersed in Hindu traditions. But even in his time in South Africa, before he became a freedom fighter and shook off the colonial yoke, he promoted Hindu–Muslim harmony. In South Africa, his closest associates were Muslims. In India, he tried to bring about a compact between these two large communities. He failed — because Partition happened, Hindus and Muslims turning on each other. The lesson he hoped to teach is yet to be mastered here.

• Gandhi was also a prolific writer. His collected works run to 90 volumes. His autobiography has been translated into more than 40 languages. An early political text written by him, Hind Swaraj, is still taught in universities around the world. The issues he was grappling with there are still alive today across the world. His autobiography is available in hundreds of editions and in dozens of languages — every major international publisher has published it.

• Gandhi was, of course, remarkable as a peace activist — and yet, despite being derided as a pacifist, epitomised extraordinary courage. His walk through riot-torn Bengal in 1946–47 was heroic, a 77-year-old man walking through the villages of eastern Bengal, in the midst of epidemic outbreaks of malaria and dysentery, just to bring Hindus and Muslims in his nation together at a time of deep strife and mutual suspicion. 

• As an advocate of Indian traditional livelihoods and crafts, Gandhi was often criticised as regressive for his gesture of spinning thread every day; but it was a key symbolic gesture that continues to hold value for India by our current definition and for Indians — for he was trying to break down the boundaries between mental and manual labour and dissolve caste distinctions, as well.

  Gandhi also believed in economic self-reliance. A major factor in India’s underdevelopment was that its indigenous industries had been destroyed under British colonial rule. We were importing cloth from England, particularly Manchester. So, he was saying, ‘We will spin our own cloth and we’ll do it ourselves using decentralised methods. Each of us will spin something.’

  At a time when Indians had been taught they were inferior to the West, Gandhi was effectively saying we were enough — nay, better. That no one was the ‘guru’ of us.