Undermining the Mahatma?

Republic Day is upon us. There is to be a statue of Subhas Chandra Bose at India Gate, the merging of the flames to fallen soldiers at the same venue, and the withdrawal of Gandhi’s favourite hymn “Abide with Me” from the Beating of the Retreat ceremony. Each has set off a controversy.

Debates are unlikely to have arisen if changes had been brought about in a spirit of consultation with experts and public opinion outside government — all the more necessary because the present regime is widely seen as trying to change history to get even with its opponents.

Before anything, however, a matter of protocol: Does a statue salute? The hologram of the proposed granite Bose statue is seen in the salute pose. Is this not disrespect to the hallowed patriot and freedom fighter?

The Sangh Parivar, seen as an ideological unity of outfits most of which didn’t exist back in the day, kept out of India’s struggle for freedom. And yet it is desperate to claim its mantle. It seeks to do this by aligning itself with great personalities of that saga who had even small differences with Gandhiji and his stalwart disciple Nehru, and then magnifying these. In this effort are frequently dragged in Sardar Patel and Netaji Subhas Bose.

Bose, who tried to inject the show of military-style heroism into the anti-colonial movement, fell out with Gandhi almost from the start, and subsequently with Nehru, especially when he sought succour from Hitler’s Germany and its ally imperial Japan to defeat British rule. The Bose statue owes to this, many believe.

The Eternal Flame, to honour soldiers who fell in the war with Pakistan that created Bangladesh, has been put out and evidently merged with a new flame lit at the National War Memorial nearby. If just one flame was needed, could not the new be merged with the “Amar Jawan Jyoti” which was an emotional part of generations of Indians?

Evidently, there is politics here again. The Bangladesh war was won under the leadership of PM Indira Gandhi, whose name the regime is in a hurry to forget on account of its intimate connection with Nehru. It does not matter that the Bangladesh victory is Independent India’s most significant.

Withdrawing the non-denominational hymn that Mahatma Gandhi loved, after 71 years, is ideological, not political. The name of Gandhi’s assassin has flourished under the present dispensation. The whittling of Gandhi, not just Nehru, is becoming a small industry.