Gandhi but not Gandhi 1.1

I wrote about the Gandhi dream in my last post. This is a continuation of that dream.

From Ritwik’s tutorial, my brain moved to Gandhi talking to a villager in Sabarmati Ashram. Gandhi was passionately describing his concept of an ideal village. The villager then asked Gandhi that why doesn’t he take another tour and spend more time in villages this time.
Like he did in Shegaon in 1936, he could create a model village in each state. The villager had been very impressed with the clear preference Gandhi gave to village upliftment  and didn’t want this visionary to expend all his energies on getting Swaraj for the country. Gandhi replied to him by saying that truth had drawn him into the field of politics. He explained that in his idea of Swaraj for the country, village development was a given. The demand for Swaraj comes from knowing that we consider our civilization to be far superior to British civilization. Gandhi reaffirmed his stand by telling the villager what he had written in Young India in 1921, that Indian civilization can be best seen in its villages as the cities have been corrupted by British influence. 

While thinking about the ‘Mahatma’, my mind leaped to the person behind the Mahatma. I was seeing the scene from Gandhi movie where he’s pushing Kasturba out of his house for disobeying the rules. For Gandhi, his principles were his embodiment of truth. How did such a man live with the casual disregard of his fundamental ideas? As Independence drew nearer, the differences between his concept of India and what the Congress wanted widened. It was as if the strength of his ideas died with Kasturba in 1944. In Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi had the benefits of physical strength. Near Independence he was a frail old man. I saw this old man trying to feebly argue with Nehru on what India should be founded on. 

Gandhi: “The talks we had yesterday have given me the impression that there is not much difference in our outlook or the way we understand things.”  

Nehru: “Except our constant clash over modernity. In my view, it is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.” 

Gandhi: “The British gave us some of their technology. But is laying down another railway line going to improve the condition of our villages? For India to prosper and for all its people to develop, the villages need to be self-sufficient. They should have the power to govern themselves. The State should defend the country with its army but not become an apparatus of controlling the villages.”

Nehru: “I am still convinced that of all the big problems that face India today nothing is more important than the development of scientific research, both pure and applied, and scientific method.  This is indeed the basis and foundation of all other work.”

Gandhi: “I wouldn’t give so much emphasis to external knowledge, Jawahar. Ideally, I would rule out all machinery, even as I would reject very body which is not helpful to salvation, and seek the absolute liberation of the soul. ”

Nehru: “But Bapu, how can your idea of Swaraj which transcends even the human body be understood by the millions who’ll be stepping into a new India? It is like salvation, it is what we can strive for but it is unattainable in this world. I am sorry Bapu but I agree with Middleton Murry who said about your condemnation of machinery that in the urgency of your vision , you forget that the spinning wheel that you love is also a machine and should be abolished on your principles. While Murry doesn’t understand your vision completely, I know you want the development of masses and it cannot come with just a spinning wheel and other handicrafts. We need the power of technology.” 

Gandhi: “I am not advocating complete eschewing of technology. I am not aiming at destroying railways or hospitals, though I would certainly welcome their natural destruction. Neither railways or hospitals are a test of a high and pure civilization. ”

Nehru: “But Bapu as you had said earlier, your concept of Swaraj requires a higher simplicity and renunciation than what people are prepared for. Moreover, India will fall out of tune with time if we focus only on developing its teeming villages.”

Gandhi: “I fully believe in what I wrote in 1909 because it has proven true in experience. If I were the only one left who believed in it, I would not be sorry. For I can only testify to the truth as I see it.  

Both of them clung to their beliefs and the conversation stopped at an impasse. After a while Gandhi said: “The more I contemplate the differences in outlook and opinion between the members of the Congress and me, I feel that my presence is unnecessary even if it is not detrimental to the cause we all have at heart. ”

From that impasse, my dream blurred out. I’m quite surprised at how lucidly I remember this dream. Assuming that this conversation between Gandhi and Nehru would have happened some time before Independence, I feel Gandhi’s pain at how things played out after Independence until his assassination. Besides the Partition carnage, he had to see India heading in a direction very different from his ideas. One of his last notes in 1948 contained what is now widely published as his talisman. Gandhi’s talisman is in every NCERT textbook but I do not think it was focused on even once. Especially not in the plans after Independence as the Mahalanobis model was adopted. Nehru’s beliefs in the commanding heights of the economy were based on trickledown effect, an economic theory that is now regarded as a failure in most cases. Had even a portion of Gandhi’s ideas about development been implemented, we’d have had a different India. The Panchayati Raj Institutions are being strengthened today and AYUSH doctors are employed in Government healthcare centers. We are perhaps a little closer to Gandhi’s India now, than in 1948. Whether we adopt his ideas now or not, there remains a complex power dynamics which shows how the most powerful mass leader of the twentieth century failed to implement his dreams for the country he freed.