Patel vs. Gandhi?
By Rajmohan Gandhi
THIS PIECE was prompted by the following lines in a recent article by Kalpana Sharma: "A few days after the killing spree began in Gujarat, the respected peace activist and Gandhian, Nirmala Deshpande, went to Ahmedabad. She was waiting at the Circuit House to meet two former Prime Ministers, I. K. Gujral and V. P. Singh, who had also come on a peace mission. A complete stranger walked up to her and asked her officiously who she was and what her business was in the city. Ms. Deshpande quietly introduced herself and said she was a Gandhian. To this the man reportedly said, with considerable aggression in his voice, `remember, this is the land of Sardar Patel. We don't want to hear all this talk about Gandhi.' And so saying, he walked off yelling `Jai Shri Ram'."
Gujarat's Hindu militants, like Hindu and Muslim militants elsewhere on the subcontinent, have for years been fighting an emotional war with Gandhi, whose very name stands for the rights of the weak and the vulnerable. This war in the militants' hearts is also a fight with their consciences, which cannot approve of the slashing and burning of innocents. Since taking on Gandhi as well as their own consciences is not easy, Gujarat's Hindu militants have needed a weighty ally, and they claim to have found one in Gujarat's own Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
But the Patel they are fielding against Gandhi is a Patel of their imaginings, not the Patel of history. As India's Home Minister, this latter Patel, undoubtedly a staunch Hindu, protected innumerable Muslim lives, as was acknowledged by, among others, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, the Muslim League leader from Uttar Pradesh who left for Pakistan some months after Independence. This Patel of history, who banned the RSS after the Mahatma's assassination, was also for some time (in 1947-48) on the hit list of Hindu Mahasabha extremists.
This Patel of history defended Urdu's place in All India Radio programmes, supported the 1950 Nehru-Liaqat Pact (over which Syama Prasad Mukerji resigned from the Indian Cabinet), and backed the constitutional provision that explicitly listed the freedom to propagate one's faith as part of religious freedom. In February 1949, this Patel of history declared that "Hindu Raj was a mad idea", adding, "it will kill the soul of India".
In the six months between freedom and Gandhi's death, the Mahatma, Nehru and Patel constituted a crucial triumvirate that agreed that independent India would be not a Hindu Rashtra but one that offered equal rights to all. After Gandhi's departure and until Patel's death in December 1950, Patel and Nehru differed on several matters but not on some fundamentals. With the help of others including Ambedkar, Maulana Azad, Rajendra Prasad and Rajaji, they entrenched secularism and equality in the Constitution.
Rather than expose ugly hate and murderous ill will, Gujarat's Hindu militants prefer to don the respectable mask of Sardar Patel. His soul must squirm at this deceit and at what Hindu militants are doing in Gujarat in his name, even as it squirmed at the 1947-48 barbarities.
When on January 13, 1948, Gandhi began what was to be the last fast of his life, the Sardar was not pleased, for in some ways the fast was a comment on the failure of the Indian Government to ensure everyone's safety. But Patel acknowledged that communal hate and violence had driven Gandhi to the extreme step, and when during the fast he heard some people demanding the expulsion of Muslims from India, the Sardar responded with these words: "You have just now heard people shouting that Muslims should be removed from India. Those who do so have gone mad with anger. Even a lunatic is better than a person who is mad with rage."
Shocked and pained though they were by Godhra, Gujarat's citizens were not "mad with rage". The State's Hindu militants were; they harboured and executed unspeakably cruel designs. If some of them find the courage to admit what they did and seek forgiveness from God and from those linked to the brutally killed or ruined, that could be the start of a new day; and the same is true for those who torched the train at Godhra. But, Gujarat's Hindu militants should not be allowed to get away with the claim that they are Sardar Patel's followers; they cannot be allowed to add to their misdeeds the disfiguring of his honoured name.
That last fast of Gandhi's, undertaken in Delhi, is not without relevance to today's scene in Gujarat. Asked who the fast was directed against, Gandhi answered that it was addressed to all in India and in Pakistan: he wanted everyone "to turn the searchlight inwards". He also had specific requests involving Delhi, a city from which some groups wished to remove every Muslim. Gandhi said Muslims should be allowed to hold their annual fair at the tomb of Khwaja Qutbuddin, a fair that some groups had vowed to prevent. Mosques converted into temples and gurdwaras should be returned. Muslims should be ensured safety in their homes. And the economic boycott imposed against Muslims in some Delhi localities should be lifted.
Declaring that his fast was addressed "to the conscience of all", including "the majority community" of Pakistan, Gandhi added that he wanted the Indian Government to release Pakistan's agreed share of the assets of undivided India, which amounted to Rs. 55 crores. Because of the Kashmir conflict, New Delhi had withheld the payment but Gandhi felt that a commitment could not be dishonoured.
His demands accepted by a large body of Delhi's citizens, including representatives of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, and by the Government of India, Gandhi broke his fast on the evening of January 18. Seven men who were in a conspiracy to kill Gandhi went to his prayer meeting on January 20, where Madanlal, one of the seven, threw a grenade behind Gandhi, but others intending to attack lost their nerve and slipped away. Ten days later, another of the seven, Nathuram Godse, returned to the scene and killed Gandhi.
The Hindu militants' rewritten history explains the assassination as having been triggered by Gandhi's stand over the Rs. 55 crores, but the conspiracy predated that stand. Linking the deed to the Rs. 55 crores was part of an attempt to sell the assassination to the Indian public, just as wearing the mask of Sardar Patel is part of the bid the "sell" the Gujarat misdeeds.
Two months before his death, Gandhi said, "when someone commits a crime anywhere, I feel I am the culprit." If only a few of Gujarat's politicians and police officers had felt like that! When in January 1948 an influential Sikh leader, Giani Kartar Singh, spoke of cruelties against Sikhs in Pakistan and added, "afflicted men cannot be balanced men and everybody cannot be Mahatma Gandhi", the latter commented: "Mahatma Gandhi is neither an angel nor a devil. He is a man like you."
During his last fast Gandhi addressed Gujaratis in an article in his journal Harijan. Asking them to realise the importance of Delhi, India's "eternal city" from which no Indian could be excluded, he placed before them a vision of a democratic India where women, untouchables, toilers, the humblest and the lowliest would feel themselves the rulers of India along with the tallest in the land. Gandhi's heart would have been crushed afresh to learn that some tribals and Dalits allowed themselves to be used in the Gujarat carnage, and that women from "good" families joined in the looting. The developments call for deep reflection.
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Thursday 31 October 2013
Patel vs. Gandhi?
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