Bhapu Gandhi, father of the nation, conscience of all men

Last Oct. 2, was Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. CNN World online article

wrote: “Mahatma Gandhi, known in India as ‘the father of the nation,’ was born 150 years ago today, on Oct. 2, 1869. His birthday is a major national holiday called Gandhi Jayanti, and it is marked with a prayer for peace, ceremonies and events throughout the country. The United Nations has also declared Oct. 2 as the International Day of Nonviolence to honor Gandhi’s message.”

When India became part of the British Crown

The foundations of British rule or the Raj was laid only after the Indian Mutiny. An Act of Parliament in 1885 brought its rule to a close and its Indian territories became part of the British Empire – PAX Britannica. India was now ruled by the Crown through a viceroy. Though the Raj was very Victorian and conservative with its main objective of economic profit and political control, its abiding legacy was the political unification of the subcontinent and the introduction of modern Western education, a centralized civil administration and judicial system, along with a wide network of railway and postal services.

The founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885 gave Indians a platform from which to demand freedom from foreign rule. Their ideology was provided by Gandhi’s message of non-violence and economic self-reliance. Finally weakened by World War II and under growing international pressure, England granted India formal independence in 1947.

Non-violent civil disobedience to gain self-rule

Bhapu Gandhi is the endearing name of the Indians for Gandhi – “Father Gandhi.” It would be chanted by crowds wherever he went. Also called Mahatma (“great spirit”), British trained barrister MK Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 as a protest against apartheid. He traveled across the subcontinent launching a moral crusade that encouraged non-violent “civil disobedience” against colonial rule. Gandhi delivered his powerful message of freedom at public meetings. Huge crowds turned out to register their support.

Gandhi persuaded the Indians that they must persist in non-violent non-cooperation to prove to the British their right to selfrule their country. They burned the western suits from Leeds and Manchester, England and made their own homespun cotton cloth, the “khadi” which they wore in public as a statement of their patriotism. The police surrounded such public assemblies often brutally beating the audience. Brilliant lawyers Nehru and Jinnah, who joined Gandhi’s national movement enjoyed iconic status in India and Pakistan after Independence.

Gandhi’s imaginary self-reliant village of 1,000 souls

“My imaginary village consists of 1,000 souls. Such a unit can give a good account of itself, if it is well organized on a basis of self-sufficiency. An ideal Indian village will be so constructed as to lend itself to perfect sanitation. It will have cottages with sufficient light and ventilation, built of a material obtainable within a radius of five miles of it. The cottages will have courtyards enabling the householders to plant vegetables for domestic use and to house their cattle. The village lanes and streets will be free of all avoidable dust.

“It will have wells according to its needs and accessible to all. It will have houses of worship for all, also a common meeting place, a village common for grazing its cattle, a cooperative dairy, primary and secondary schools in which industrial education will be central factor, and it will have village Panchayat courts for settling disputes.

“The villagers should develop such a high degree of skill and artistic talent. When our villages are fully developed, there will be village poets, village artists, village architects, linguists and research workers. Today the villages are dung heaps; tomorrow, they will be like tiny gardens of Eden, where dwell highly intelligent folks whom no one can deceive or exploit.”

Extinction of the village industries

“The extinction of village industries would complete the ruin of the 700,000 villages. Industrialization on a mass scale will necessarily lead to passive or active exploitation of the villagers. Mechanization is good when the hands are too few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is criminal to displace hand labor by the introduction of power-driven spindles unless one is at the same time ready to give millions of farmers some other occupation in their houses (such as crafts, local preserved foods for tourists, etc.). But simple tools and instruments and such machinery saves individual labor and lightens the burden of the millions of cottage industries.”

What the government can do

“It is legitimate to ask what Congress Ministers can do. In these times of scarcity of food and clothing, the government can render the greatest help. It is possible to clothe today the whole of India in homespun cotton cloth, called ‘khadi’, on the smallest outlay in the shortest time possible. Each provincial government will supply the villagers with cotton seed or cotton whenever required, at cost price and the tools of manufacture also at cost, to be recovered in easy installments payable in, say, five years or more. They will supply them with instructors wherever necessary and undertake to buy surplus stock of ‘khadi,’ provided that the villagers have their cloth requirement supplied.

“An exhibition should be encouraged to present the ideal village. But books, charts and products should be used to show what industries give increased income and how.”

Mahatma Gandhi, the man of peace and self-reliance

Mahatma Gandhi is the most influential Indian of the 20th century whose shadow continues to loom large over the country even 60 years after his death. He struggled and dreamt of an India free not only from the yoke of the British rule but also free from the evils of poverty, illiteracy, untouchability with all its citizens enjoy equally the fruits of freedom and prosperity.

Many of his revolutionary ideas, termed as idiosyncrasies then, are fashionable concepts followed by today’s generation. And the resurging popularity of “Gandhigiri” is proof of Gandhi’s continuing relevance in the 21st century.

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