From the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate April 2005 Newsletter (The Saffron Dollar) comes this great quotable:
"Mr. Modi of course had compared himself to Gandhi, by drawing the ridiculousI definitely don't think that even Modi can spin this one that far off the mark. Still, as I've said before, I can't give all the credit to the organizers of the mobilization against his speaking gigs in the States. Regardless, Modi and his ilk will continue to use this as a wedge and a rallying point for those who believe that the United States is a bully around specific issues. Can't argue with the conclusion, but I don't agree with this particular angle. Of course, India entered the playground of the so-called "superpowers" decades ago, and now has to play by their rules to get ahead in the game - from vying for a seat on the UN Security Council to being considered a regional power, it seems like that's India's plan.
and nonexistent parallel between his U.S. visa denial/cancellation, and Gandhi's
forced expulsion from a train in racist South Africa early when he was a young
lawyer -- an event that triggered his nationalist anti-colonial sentiments and
impelled him to embark on a lifelong struggle against the British empire. The
closest link between Modi and Gandhi is that Modi's RSS assassinated the
Mahatma, and its followers are carrying on the legacy of Savarkar's fascist
collaborationist dream. This is one truth no amount of chicanery can mask."
But speaking as someone who was born in the U.S., it sometimes feels as if India has a chip on its collective shoulder about its status in the world. The nuclear pissing contest with Pakistan, the staunch refusal of aid for its citizens in need after the December tsunamis devastated Tamil-Nadu and Pondicherry, its clear insecurity as the only Hindu majority nation in the world. That definition is clearly an oversimplification of a nation as diverse as India (and this is another point, raised a bit in a comment exchange in this post: I know that India is diverse, but even though it sometimes legislates tolerance (which is still more than I can say about the United States) it still doesn't deal with the inherent and inherited biases concerning caste, class, religion, culture, gender, orientation, ability, and on and on).
India is an interesting conundrum. On one hand, the nation celebrates M. Gandhi and a sanitized view of his canonization in the world imagination. On the other, it seems that many Indians are very conflicted about the nation's legacy, and seem to favor displays of physical (military, economic, intellectual) over moral and ideological strength. Still - I hear so many different opinions about M. Gandhi and his legacy (from both the right and the left) that it's difficult to place him in proper context. There are issues of selective historical memory (blame the writers and censors of history) and political opportunism (or is it strategy?) that have guided the dialogue for a long time.
M. Gandhi has a place in India in a way more befitting a monarch than a lawyer who became the face (and many would argue, the soul) of the revolution. He's on all the paper currency. His face now seems, in the new capitalism, to be an ubiquitous logo of national merit for a product (in my last visit to India, I saw the image of Gandhi on a lot of products that didn't seem connected to satyagraha, independence, or cotton). I guess there would be a good market for Gandhi™ brand salt, if someone thinks of it.
While the legacy of M. Gandhi has been distilled to specific points (much like the legacy of Dr. King in the U.S., where non-violence is celebrated, but his later views on economic justice are not on the typical liberal's playlist), the legacy of other leaders from his time have also been distorted. Gujaratis still think that Vallabhbhai Patel would have been a better first prime minister than Nehru, claiming (these are my words) that Patel had a backbone and Nehru conceded too much. These are the same folks who believe that the creation of Pakistan was facilitated by political arm-twisting that Nehru could not contain. I have a lot on this particular issue, but I'll table that for a future post.
Subhas Chandra Bose is still a mystery to many people - his attempts to bring India's plight to Hitler, and his belief in armed struggle, are the only aspects that many focus upon.
Meanwhile, the neo-capitalists tend to blame Nehru's socialism specifically, and the whole Nehru/Gandhi dynasty generally, for keeping India's markets closed to the world for so long. They seem to feel that "India Rising" in the 90s, and "Shining" under BJP control, is directly linked to the move towards privatisation, free market competition, and allowing India's boundless talents to compete on "equal" ground with the big boys. I would suspect that the nuclear jockeying with Pakistan (as well as the refusal to take aid) are also efforts to show the world that India is not in the "third world" anymore.
I would like to believe that some of Nehru's legacy (written by someone who has only dabbled in Indian and world history at this point) is connected to the inspirational rise of independence movements in the 50s and 60s in colonized nations around the world. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations, it is hard to believe that India was once a leader in this movement. That India was once respected in this new paradigm of leadership for fighting for its liberty and winning against the British (though the human cost of liberation and especially Partition were so scarring for the nascent nation).
India stood at a crossroads at some point in its history, when it could have continued to lead and support the non-aligned nations, but instead, began to focus on its own nation-building, and eventually stopped challenging the status quo set by the so-called first and second world nations. To play in that game, India had to enter the nuclear arms race, the global marketplace, and the continued advancement of the elite, at the expense of the rest of its population, and the larger global movement. And so here we are, with a nation that hasn't paid attention to its population explosion, hasn't dealt with the gaps between the affluent and the destitute, and is barreling full speed ahead towards an AIDS pandemic.
