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every INdian knows beyond the name !!!

By all means, do. That’s what this forum is for. I do not claim to be any where near an expert on Gandhi. I have in the past noted a tendency on the part of his admirers to overlook the flaws and almost—ALMOST–make him into a kind of Jesus figure.

The difficulties in India are difficulties all emerging First World states have had. India “came into” the 20th Century so quickly, plus with the added problems of partition, that I am occasionally amazed the country held together at all. But that speed–as well as other problems which you hint at–have contributed to something (he says with great understatement) of a mess.

But that is not the Gandhian perspective, which considers the rest of humanity, to be an extension of the self. See it like this : We all have feelings, thoughts and emotions that we value in ourselves. But it is not just us, but other human beings too, who possess these same qualities. Thus, it is possible to ‘extend’ ourselves, to care about someone else as much as we care about ourselves. We all do it with our families, and occassionally with close friends. Gandhi propagated extending it further to all humanity.When this happens, ‘my’ need becomes only a small part of my concern. Tending to ‘my’ need alone, feels like tending to only one body part when the whole body is in pain. And this is pretty much what Gandhi believed in. When he saw his fellow human beings (whom he cared or claimed to care for, as much as he cared for himself), in pain, he decided to do whatever he could to reduce their pain. In this case, it was to share all his wealth, and live a life no better or worse from his poor fellow beings. 

I know what the next objection to this would be : Would such a philosophy not totally wipe out “individualism”? Well yes…. However, this would not create an Orwellian dystopia either.  Gandhi may have been a socialist of sorts, but he was not a communist. He did believe in equal distribution of wealth, but he believed that this should come from an individual level (yes, I know this sounds far-fetched in today’s world), and not through authoritarian measures. Also, in a Gandhian world, human happiness and safety would not be secondary to an abstract “ideal”. All actions would be carried out solely to increase human happiness and pleasure, much like the actions of capitalism purport, except that in this case, the goal of those actions would not be the happiness of the ’self’ alone, but happiness other similar beings as well.Also, I must clear the misconception that Gandhi was opposed to industrial technologies. That is most definitely not the case. He himself has made this clear in much of his literature, in which he claims that he had no qualms in using technology which was mass-produced by Indians at that time , such as the type-writer and the telephone (both of which he used regularly). His call for rejection of mill-made British cloth, and hand-woven Indian cloth, was his prescribed way of “passive resistance”. He rejected the attempts of the few Indians who tried to use violent means to rid the British off the country. He propagated what he believed to be a simpler rationale. If all Indians were to stop using British products, there would be no motivation for the British to stay in India, and they would leave on their own. It was not just cloth. He propagated boycott of all British products, irrespective of whether they were handmade or machine-made.

If Indians at the time had the capital to invest in large mills and produce their own cloth, he would not objected to it one bit. His idea was that ‘lack of capital’ was no excuse to stop buying British products. Use whatever you have in your hand, even if it is the spinning loom (which every almost Indian house at that time had), and make your own products, was his rationale.

As for the Nehru-Gandhi conflict, it is true that Nehru did not base any of India’s economic policies on Gandhian lines. He created a ‘mixed’ economy, which was a mix of capitalism and communism, neither of which Gandhi approved. Gandhi believed in a “village development” model. Considering the fact that over 80% of India at that time lived in villages, he believed that all of India’s wealth should be used to develop and modernize villages, and bring them (in terms of infrastructure) to the level of the cities. Nehru on the other hand believed in rapid industrial growth, mainly centred around the cities.

In hindsight, Gandhi made a valid point. Some of the large cities in this country today have advanced infrastructure which is no different from that of metros in developed countries. But at the same time 40% of the people in this country (all in villages) have absolutely no access to water or electricity!

As a symbol, Gandhi is powerful, and certainly many of his philosophical concepts are wonderful. But Nehru, who had the problem of actually creating the country Gandhi worked to bring out, thought him a capricious and unrealistic leader. My own take is that Gandhi never minded applying non-violence, no matter how many people were killed in the process (and not all by the British). And his rejection of industrial technologies (the famous dictum that all Indian leaders should learn to work a hand loom being one of his symbolic lunacies) was utterly implausible in a nation with so much poverty that could only be alleviated by massive production and distribution programs…

Most people know Gandhi the symbol. The man was a considerable mixed bag.

The single hardest thing to do is to live your life with no contradictions. I feel faced with them every day.