Mahatma Gandhi Sought Everyone To Be Free-'Free To Dissent'

He embraced those who differed from him as he knew it’s only human to be imperfect

- Rajmohan Gandhi

Gandhi’s critics, dissenters and foes have not been a major focus for my research. True, Sardar Patel and Rajaji, whom I have studied in some detail, were oft- dissenting Gandhi allies. Jinnah, whom I studied for my Understanding the Muslim Mind, was for a while Gandhi’s ally and an adversary for much longer, whereas Ghaffar Khan, also the subject of a biography by me, was a non-dissenting ally for life.

Nonetheless, having looked fairly closely at Gandhi, I have a picture of the thread of dissent in his story.

During his student years in London (1888-91), after two eminent leaders of the Vegetarian Society he had joined, Alfred Hills and Dr Thomas Allinson, disputed over Allinson’s Book for Married Women, which advocated artificial birth control, Gandhi opposed the bid of Hills to remove the doctor from the society. However, as Gandhi would put it, “Dr Allinson lost the day,” and “in the very first battle” of this kind, Gandhi found himself “siding with the losing party”.

Some years later, during Gandhi’s South Africa phase, a young white associate named Symonds “often humorously assured (him) that he would withdraw his support” if Gandhi was “ever found…in a majority”. In 1906, when Gandhi journeyed to London on behalf of South Africa’s Indians, Symonds joined him there, took down Gandhi’s dictation, typed countless letters, affixed stamps and posted the envelopes.

In Gandhi’s words, he had “toiled for us day and night without payment”. Not long after this, Symonds suddenly died. He became, one might say, a loved bead on Gandhi’s thread of dissent.