New-Found Mahatma Love

The PM’s appropriation of Gandhi is helping the BJP shape a new political persona

- Zia Haq

Cultural amnesia. It’s what makes historically ironic appropriations possible. amid a violent anti­cow­slaughter campaign in many states, these words by Mahatma Gandhi have a prophetic ring to them: “How can I force anyone not to slaughter cows unless he is himself so disposed? It is not as if there were only Hindus in the Indian Union. There are Muslims, Parsis, Christians and other religious groups here.” He said it during a prayer discourse on July 25, 1947.

The NDA government is all set to launch a year-and-a-half-long commemoration to mark 100 years of the Satyagraha movement, launched on April 11, 1917. Exactly a century ago to the day, the Mahatma started his influential Satyagraha (literally, ‘holding on to truth’) movement from Bihar’s Champaran district. The celebrations will culminate in Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary in 2019, to be marked by a bigger spectacle. It could hardly have escaped national attention. The BJP’s embrace of Gandhi and national icons, from Sardar Patel to Bhagat Singh and B.R. Ambedkar, is helping the party forge a new political persona.

Satyagraha was pivotal in the struggle against the British rule, rooted in a philosophy of upright moral courage and non-violent resistance. The proposed Champaran celebrations are being called “Swach chagraha” or holding on to cleanliness. Gandhi will come alive through his own writings, speeches, video footages and photographs in a country that has mostly forgotten him. Cloud-based shows on Gandhian tenets, the civil disobedience movement, gram swaraj—the concept of villages as vibrant and self-sufficient ‘republics’—should transfix viewers. The celebrations will pan out from the first places where the Satyagraha movements occurred: Champaran in Bihar and Kheda and Ahmedabad, in Gujarat.