Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, honoured as the ‘Father of the Nation’, sits on the highest pedestal of the social and political psyche of India and its citizens, but how many have given a thought to the fact that Gandhi too, was a mere mortal and similar to other human beings, erred, and erred quite a lot?
As a psychologically evolved country, it is about time that we, as a community, look beyond the rhetoric associated with Gandhi, and unravel the real ‘Mahatma’.
With Rajesh Talwar’s new release, ‘The Mahatma’s Manifesto’, it is time to remember the legacy of the man and the Mahatma, as this insightful work delves into Gandhi’s revolutionary ideas, with a particular focus on his 1909 book Hind Swaraj, which laid the groundwork for India’s struggle for independence. Talwar critiques Gandhi’s rejection of modernity, industrialization, and Western thought, arguing that these ideas are impractical and regressive.
Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj advocates for a return to a simpler, more traditional way of life, with a focus on self-sufficiency and passive resistance. However, Talwar contends that this vision is isolating and economically stifling, and that it denies the complexities and potential of a rapidly evolving world.
In The Mahatma’s Manifesto, Rajesh Talwar offers a searing critique of Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj dismantling the idealistic and often impractical vision laid out by the father of the nation. With sharp analysis and unflinching clarity, Talwar exposes the contradictions and flaws in Gandhi’s rejection of modernity, industrialization and Western thought.
Rather than the revered path to freedom, Hind Swaraj emerges as a regressive manifesto, advocating a return to an antiquated past that denies the complexities and potential of a rapidly evolving world. Talwar challenges Gandhi’s vision of self-sufficiency as a blueprint for national development, arguing that it is an isolating, economically stifling fantasy that undermines India’s progress.
This unapologetic and provocative critique, challenges readers to consider Hind Swaraj as more than a historical relic.
Rajesh Talwar has served the United Nations for over two decades across three continents including in senior-level positions. He has worked as an Executive Officer heading the Human Rights Advisory Panel with the UN in Kosovo, as a Legal Adviser to the Police Commissioner for the UN in East Timor, and as a Deputy Legal Adviser with the UN in Afghanistan. He continues to work as an international consultant on justice, human rights, and policymaking.
‘The Mahatma’s Manifesto’ Author Rajesh Talwar
In what ways do you think MK Gandhi’s ideas revolving around Hind Swaraj were impractical and not infallible?
Most of the ideas that Gandhi expressed in Hind Swaraj are impractical. Gandhi hated machinery in general. He reserved a special hatred for the train which he considered to be the Devil’s messenger. Of course, he himself used the train extensively but he didn’t see the contradiction in doing that. If Gandhi hated machinery, following on logically, he also hated science, industry and even cities. His idea that human beings would do without machinery and cities were extremely impractical if not fantasies.
That is not all by any means. There is much more in Hind Swaraj that is impractical and fallible. For instance, he lashed out against the medical profession and considered the use of vaccines to be barbaric. He is on record for having stated that it was far better to die a painful death than to take a vaccine. Speaking for myself, having worked for the United Nations over a period of two decades, in many of the countries I worked in, the UN carried out immunization programmes. According to a WHO report released only last year, at least one hundred and fifty million lives were saved due to vaccination and immunization programmes. Had it been up to Gandhi all of these people would have been dead.
Most of the ideas expressed by Gandhi in Hind Swaraj are backward, archaic, patriarchal and irrelevant to the needs of modern India. Almost all of it is not only fallible, but represents extreme folly as well.
How do you think Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj could prove to be regressive and stifling for the nation’s development?
We would have had no industry, except for handloom and cottage industry if we had followed Gandhi. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi expresses the view that there is no need to teach subjects such as physics, chemistry and biology. Although he himself spoke and wrote excellent English, he was against the idea of Indians learning English. Many of us in India today lament that fact that India followed Nehruvian socialism for so many decades.
It was only from the nineties onwards that the economy picked up and millions of Indians were lifted out of poverty following economic reforms initiated by Dr Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. However, we often forget that India’s economic condition would have been far worse if we had followed Gandhi’s views. To put it somewhat dramatically but accurately, had we followed Gandhi’s ideals, India would have been partitioned multiple times. We would have had no defence capability, you see, because the Mahatma did not see a need for it. Pakistan was partitioned once in 1971 when Bangladesh was created. Had we followed Gandhi, we would have lost that war as well as all our other wars with Pakistan. India as we know it today would not have existed.
What, on the contrary, do you reckon were the strengths of Hind Swaraj and its ideas?
The great writer Oscar Wilde writes somewhere that the mark of a sophisticated intellect is the ability to hold in one’s mind two seemingly opposing ideas at the same time. There was much that was admirable and great about Gandhi. He was a mix of the wise, the foolish and the absurd.
For instance, he was nothing short of a political genius when he launched the Dandi March, the Satyagraha movement or when he targeted British industry. In the same way, not everything in Hind Swaraj needs to be discarded. There are some brilliant ideas penned there on non-violence, on preventing conflict and dealing with it that remain relevant for not only India but for the world. But unfortunately, they form only a small part of his book.
How apt, according to you, is idolising Gandhi as the father of this nation? Does our great nation need a father who was a mere mortal? What factors do you think led to the idolising of Gandhi and other freedom fighters getting lost in the shadows of Indian history?
To be honest, I don’t think the nation of India needs a father. Why not a mother instead? If for the sake of argument, we insist that our nation, must have a father, it cannot be Gandhi. Why do I make this assertion? It is because the first and foremost duty of any father is to keep his family secure. In my book I write on how the bloodshed that followed Partition could have been minimised if not avoided with some forward planning on the lines of what Dr BR Ambedkar had suggested. Gandhi also does not deserve to be a father based on the vision he had for India.
He really wished for women to stay at home, for India to remain an agricultural society. We would have had no IITs, no Indian Institute of Science and few Indians would have spoken English had we followed his vision. Thirdly, a father needs to provide a semblance of stability. Gandhi changed his views on caste and on many other issues’ multiple times; his was not a stable intellect. Furthermore, Gandhi does not deserve to be the father of this great nation because he lacked democratic credentials, and a father needs to be fair-minded and even-handed while dealing with his children.
Our nation is nothing without the democratic values enshrined in our Constitution. Why do I say Gandhi was not democratic? He did not wish for Subhash Bose to contest for the Congress Presidency in 1939, and when Bose refused to withdraw, he put up his own candidate Sitaramayya. Gandhi’s candidate was resoundingly defeated, which upset the great man hugely, such that he stated: ‘Sitaramayya’s defeat is my defeat.’ Thereafter, he put such obstacles in Bose’s path that he had no alternative but to resign.
This is not the only important example of Gandhi’s non-democratic ways. Had it not been for Gandhi, Nehru would never have become the first prime minister of India. It was Sardar Patel who had all the votes, but Gandhi prevailed upon him to withdraw. In a word, Nehru did not become prime minister through a democratic process but through Gandhian diktat.
Let me give you a final reason why, in my view, Gandhi should not be the father of the nation. He was not a good father to his own children; how could he be the father of the nation. As regards your question on how Gandhi became such a political superstar in the Indian firmament, I believe that this was because he convinced everyone that he was a holy man. The simplicity of his attire and living helped to convince ordinary people. Personally, I believe that his spiritual vision too was a limited one. His experiments with bathing and sleeping with young women were hardly spiritual, although he claimed that this was the case.
What makes ‘The Mahatma’s Manifesto’ a must-read for all?
There are hundreds if not thousands of books written on Gandhi, but few of those books, if any, paint an authentic, true to life picture of the man and his views. The chief merit of my book is that in less than two hundred pages, a clear picture of the real Gandhi emerges. Our nation has now matured and we should no longer treat Gandhi as a holy cow of sorts, who cannot be criticised.
My book encourages critical thinking, and there is a strong need for a critical evaluation of Mahatma Gandhi and his legacy. He was a complex man, and there is a good, bad and even an ugly side to him. My book praises him and his views where it is deserved but also reveals and exposes his flawed thinking on very many subjects.
