WHY I DO NOT LIKE GANDHIJI

Why I don’t like Gandhi?

Definitely I don’t hate Gandhiji he was a remarkable person one of the greatest leaders’ world have ever seen. He was a learned person who gave his personal comforts, gave up many temptations to achieve something big. What was this big thing? There I differ from many people who say he wanted welfare of Indian poor and oppressed. He wanted India’s independence but that was not all. That big thing for which he disregarded his carrier, his wife and children was something bigger than that.

Different people have different temptations. Some have lust for money, some for women, and so on. But after reading Fountainhead I realized there is one more dangerous class who has lust to just become famous. To control power without actually owning it. The character of Ellsworth Toohey who was looking as a hero to me suddenly changed to an ugly person because he could compromise anything just to become famous. And one image suddenly rose in my mind and that was of Mahatma Gandhi believe firmly that welfare of the poor Indians was never the thing in his mind because to achieve a just classless society is toughest battle which required selflessness while Gandhi’s way required something much easier and bound to give him that big thing he wanted. But people will still disagree with me. So finally I found an unbiased book written by a foreigner only, “Changing India” by Robert W. Stern and he has give just 3 pages but they prove remarkably that ideology of Gandhi was to transfer power from British to Indian middle class (bourgeois revolution) and never to end the exploitation of the poor. And the most evident proof of this is the present state of India where 60 years after independence 75 % people are living below Rs 20 a day

I will not say anything more just read his excerpts-

“Satyagrah as a strategy of interest served the middle classes. Gandhi hated adharma, disorder, and while he never read Euripides, I suspect he knew intuitively that middle classes save states. His own conservative bias and that of most of his lieutenants, and their unanimous desire to keep their nationalist struggle against the British from turning into a class struggle amongst Indians served to direct their mobilizing efforts at the middle. They were themselves the men of the middle, disproportionately of the upper middle and they had their own interests in the property and propriety. Perhaps the Hindu revivalism inherent in satyagrah and its mahatma had their particular appeal at the middle of the society. Society’s middle often provides the most enthusiastic audience for movements that rediscover the folk and its virtues. It may be as Eric Wolf suggests, that peasants who are most amenable to mobilization come from the middle of the rural society: rather than from the top where there is a vested interest in the status quo (as there was in India) or from the bottom where the poverty and debility preclude any organized and sustained movement –only rebellion born of despair. The middle classes also make states.

Might it have been otherwise in India? Did Gandhisim, in effect preempt the possibility of proletarian revolution in India? “
I believe yes and even Gandhiji knew that and that’s why he never asked the British to stop the hanging of Bhagat Singh, whom he knew will upset all his plans and ideals.

“Satyagrah was a part of a negotiating progress. It was meant of course, to increase the negotiating advantages of Congress, but there were advantages in it for Govt of India as well. Gandhi was a negotiator. Satyagrah imposed some limits that might not otherwise have been there on Govt of India’s ability to meet Indian Nationalism with violent suppression. But I do not think that these limits disadvantaged the British. You cannot sit comfortably on the thrones of Bayonets….and the Viceroy was not at a negotiating disadvantage. It was his govt, after all, that had the power. The power the Congress wanted and could only negotiate for.
Related and finally, Satyagrah was a strategy of reassurance for the middle classes. Gandhi would not allow the struggle against British imperialism to be turned into class war among Indians. Satyagrah of course proscribed violence: the modus operandi by everyone’s definition of class war. To this general promise that swaraj would not be allowed by the expropriation of property. Gandhi added more specific ideological and exemplary assurances.

Classlessness in India would be a product of class cooperation rather than class conflict. A product of negotiations between haves and have-nots. Gandhi recognized and renounced in burning words the barbarities of capitalist exploitation, but could not transcend his essential bourgeois outlook and would not!

This outlook was reflected time and again in Gandhi’s leadership of the congress. He readily accepted the support of Indian industrialists.”

(Even during his last time he was staying in Birla house given by a renowned industrialist and his close friend).

“Among peasants families it was generally the landed whom Congress sought to recruit to its banner and who rallied to its banner rather than merely responding to Gandhi’s charisma. He would “fast unto death” rather than allow the possibility of landless untouchables attaining autonomous political power. Within the Congress organization the men who supported Gandhi and whom he consistently supported were those who shared his faith in negotiated settlements and his bourgeois outlook. The only partial exception to this was JL Nehru, but Gandhi knew that Nehru’s allegiance was less to socialism than to a united congress and Indian independence”

Subhash Chandra Bose was another advocate of left politics and that’s why Gandhi shrewdly removed him presidency and ousted him from congress.

“NEITHER Gandhi NOR HIS SATYAGRAHIS FRRED INDIA”

I believe it was the 2nd world war which used so many resources of the British that they became incapable financially, personally and militarily to control vast areas like India. and that is why they left Burma and Ceylon also though they was hardly and independence movement there.
Moreover British relied on their military to control India. But the way their officers deserted and joined INA of Bose raised their alarm bells. Then 1946 revolution of INDIAN NAVY in which 26000 sailors revolted against the British assured them that it is risky now to rule India. So it is better that power be transferred to congress who are more pro British at least.

“ but the ongoing process of negotiations – occasionally interrupted but never terminated- that Satyagrah as a strategy of conflict set in train and kept on course , helped to ensure that Congress would inherit from the British the foundation and superstructure more or less intact on which bourgeois democratic state could be built the civil bureaucracies , police forces and military were passed over virtually intact(Mountbatten was made Governor General and all Admirals of Indian nay were British)there were no expropriations there were no serious thoughts bout the appropriateness of Bourgeois democracy for India. Gandhi we know did not want India to become a bourgeois democratic, capitalist, industrialized country; but he is rightly, if ironically, honored as the Father of the Nation.”

A British officer rightly says in movie “Gandhi-my father”: Gandhi is not a saint who takes interest in politics rather he is a shrewd politician who acts as a saint. What say?