Today in Hinduphobia October 2, 2019: Gandhi in the Hinduphobic Imagination
Today is the 150th birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, affectionately called “Bapu” and “Mahatma,” bureaucratically ordained “Father of the Nation,” and increasingly reviled “racist/misogynist/casteist/Hindu-genocide-apologist.”
The government of India, presently led by what the English press very confidently and frequently calls a “Hindu Nationalist” party, has been celebrating Gandhi in a very big way for a whole year now. Last year, a beautiful music video of a famous Gandhi-associated bhajan featuring performers from around the world was released. Yesterday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Gandhi.
The reaction to this op-ed though seems to be playing out more in terms of the theater of diplomacy (India talks about Gandhi while Pakistan talked about Nukes) rather than the more complex question of what Gandhi means, or what Gandhi keeps getting made to mean, by various forces and interests, and what it all implies for truth, journalism, and the key concern of my series here, the survival of a long-resisting colonized people in the face of relentless genocidal craziness.
I want to outline here a broad history of Gandhi’s representation from the perspective of a critique of Hinduphobia. I believe that we can continue to debate Gandhi, revere him, criticize him, and generally deal with his legacy as we wish, more accurately only if we recognize that the figure of Gandhi is a key element in the broader politics of representation affecting Hindus worldwide. Hindus might increasingly reject him as they learn about long-suppressed histories of Hindu genocide and suffering in the early 20th century, but it is important to separate such criticism, in my view, from the different uses that the name, image, and “message” of Gandhi has been put in the context of Hinduphobia as a power play, from vast reaches of global geopolitics and violence to the simpler everyday context of Indians getting called “Gandhi” by random hecklers and racists in other countries.
Three eras of Gandhi in Hinduphobic Discourse
For the sake of brevity, let us begin by setting up three broad eras for our analysis of Gandhi representations in relation to the broader discourse about Hindus and Hinduism. The first era is the colonial one, lasting until the 1950s, when India was under British colonial rule. In this period, we see several things happening as far as media discourses are concerned. The systematic colonialist demonization of Hinduism more or less completes its journey from earlier missionary propaganda into supposedly secular journalism, such as Katherine Mayo’s infamous book Mother India.
Gandhi at this time is also being catapulted to global celebrity stature through books like Romain Rolland’s biography, written in the aftermath of the devastation of World War One. IRL, Gandhi is also back in India now, and widely seen as the leader of the freedom movement (where among other things he is blamed for lacking understanding and compassion for Hindus after their massacre at the hands of Muslims in the Moplah pogrom). This raises the question now of what exactly was going on with Hindu representation and survival even as Gandhi was both being elevated to sainthood and simultaneously mocked in the Western media. Did the celebration of Gandhi as a world-spiritual figure attribute some of his stature to his being Hindu? Simultaneously, how much of Gandhi’s demonization as a “half-naked fakir” for example, had to do with wider contempt not just for his “eccentricities” but for the entire Hindu community as a whole? I think we can see how in both cases, through a move of appropriation and decontextualization in the case of Gandhi-the-Great Soul, and through stereotyping in the case of Gandhi-the-Cry Baby, we see how a certain level of Hinduphobic denial and disdain was always in play.
The second phase of the Gandhi image spans the Cold War era in the West, and the post-independence Nehru-Indira Gandhi era in India. We see several things happen in this period. In India, Gandhi is wholly appropriated by a political party (though others pay respects to him too as “father of the nation” and such). Politically, this party also deploys the assassination of Gandhi as a tool to demonize and silence its rivals, and a Hindu viewpoint critical of Gandhi for his faults real or arguable in relation to the suffering of Hindus in one genocide after another from Moplah to Calcutta to Partition, is widely discredited and condemned to the shadowy margins. Gandhi becomes another deity in the modern Hindu pantheon (especially in old movies with all the worshipful songs to him sung by children), except perhaps in Hindu households where a sharper memory of loss and suffering remains. The simpler Hindus see their piety in him and the craftier elites get their votes and international stature with his figure even while enacting constitutions and policies that are systematically creating an apartheid-state against Hindus.
In the Cold War West, Gandhi remains a well-liked figure broadly associated with India and with a vague sense of Hindu spirituality, wisdom, and peacefulness. In the 60s, he becomes a civil rights icon, and children are taught nice things around him. John Lennon wears glasses that look like his, though I am not sure if it was intended (and Lennon-Ono were more skeptical/cynical I would imagine). But the most definitive Gandhi depiction of this period is of course Richard Attenborough’s epic 1982 movie. The movie is a soaring experience (at least it felt that way when I saw it with my parents, both of whom had memories of having lived through colonial rule — and my mother saw Gandhi in person at the Tenali railway station once, an iconic memory passed down for generations like a sacred relic). Salman Rushdie sniped at the movie (“Mahatma Dickie” was the phrase I believe), and others criticized several omissions, including the growing critique about Gandhi’s elevation at the cost of Dalit voices. But what is interesting about this movie which made Gandhi look very, very great indeed, is the careful way in which he is crafted as somehow “above-Hindu.” The movie does not depict any Hindu deities, customs, or traditions in any detail (except perhaps the scene where Gandhi describes his wedding ceremony to a foreign journalist). Gandhi is shown on equal terms with Christian missionaries frequently, and familiar with the Bible and so on. Was Attenborough’s epic an epic act of appropriation and denial? Perhaps.
The post-cold war, globalization phase in which we live is seeing the most intense contestations over Gandhi. India opened up its markets in 1991, and the subsequent TV and media boom found a return to Gandhi in all sorts of ways, the most famous of these being the 2006 movie Lage Raho Munnabhai, which coined the idea of “Gandhigiri” (protesting non-violently and with love, but with strength and gangster-like attitude). Once again, we do not see anything explicitly Hindu about Gandhi in all his, except perhaps that he is himself a deity, spirit, guru and so on. Politically, the Congress party and their ideologies continue to hold Gandhi as their exclusive icon of inclusivity (yes, it’s ironic), and to portray the ruling Indian Peoples’ Party as a divisive “Hindu Nationalist” force responsible for Gandhi’s murder. Prime Minister Modi, as mentioned earlier, continues to adore and elevate Gandhi seemingly without any false intentions. He is austere, like Gandhi, and has noble ideals of service that are more practical and civic rather than religiously Hindu in a known traditional sense (Modi’s famous dictum about toilets being more important than temples comes to mind). Of course, Prime Minister Modi has also been paid the ultimate compliment by President Trump of being granted the same epithet Gandhi is often given, “Father of the Nation,” itself.
The real concern, though is what Gandhi-adulation, and Gandhi-smearing, now mean to Hindus in a climate of extreme and toxic Hinduphobia. The dominant narrative (or corporate-package cliché, to be real), in the media is that there is a clear cultural-political dichotomy now between Gandhi (good guy) on one side, and Modi (bad guy) on the other. Where does the Hindu who is neither Gandhi nor Modi fit in now? More important, how does the Hindu who is neither get affected by this particular field of positions in the game of representation? Mainstream McMedia has most listeners and readers convinced there’s only one simple truth about India today, that it’s Gandhi v. “Hindu Nationalism” (while acknowledging that there are other criticisms of Gandhi too; see this new NPR piece for example). Being Hindu, somehow, is assumed to fall into the former category, along the lines of Shashi Tharoor’s book perhaps.
Given this field of positions, my sense is that the discourse on Gandhi remains, even if many Hindus (“nationalist” or otherwise) wish to believe otherwise, a discourse on Hindus. There is Gandhi the man and political figure, whom we can talk about. But there is the bigger issue, which is Gandhi the icon, media production, saint, fraud, devil, visionary, fool, all the rest. For the simple reason that there really has been no other modern global Hindu icon produced anywhere close to him, he remains in the popular global consciousness, a symbol of who we are. We can get respected and loved by strangers because of him, and treated with disdain and even violence, for that same reason.
The struggle against Hinduphobia needs to be informed by a closer understanding of the politics of representation around Gandhi in my view. Too many Hindu activists and lay scholars who are often rightly critical of Gandhi’s actions tend to blindly normalize the attacks on him even by known anti-Hindu fanatics without realizing the consequences. It is not surprising that one of the most vicious and unworthily elevated critics of Tulsi Gabbard today began his career as a Gandhi-smearer. Today’s Gandhi-smearers are not going to affect Gandhi’s image or stature, quite frankly, but they are going to affect how every Hindu is seen in school and in the office. That is the real game, and any smart Hindu or ally of Hindus against Hinduphobia should see through it. A critique of Gandhi from a Hindu viewpoint is valid and necessary, but it should not allow itself to be coopted by a much more dangerous genocidal project against Hindus which has managed to deploy an iconic Hindu (however Hindu other Hindus think he was or not) against them.
And: I highly recommend everyone read Gandhi’s 1909 manifesto Hind Swaraj once.
