 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are going to discuss a controversial figure and an iconic figure today Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. We have with us Dr. Talat Ahmad. She is the co-director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and she has recently written a book called Mohandas Gandhi Experiments in Civil Disobedience. So welcome to NewsClick. Thank you. I want to begin with what triggered you to write this book and you have reexamined Gandhi's life and his political life. What were the basic reasons why you set out to do this? Thank you very much for inviting me here. Yes, I suppose Gandhi as you say is an incredibly iconic figure and one of the things that I've been struck as a historian is how new generations of young people in particular are still looking to Gandhi. In Britain you know where I live it's very pronounced particularly amongst young students and other young people. I think particularly when they're looking to how social change can come about in society. So for example in Britain we have a mass movement evolving against climate change. This has been the largest movement that we have seen in British society for almost 30 years and the activists that are engaged in this are using the tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience. This is a movement that began in October 2018 and they've had three major bouts of civil disobedience. When they first began they brought London to a standstill because what they did is they had mass protests on various bridges the main arteries into London and they just sat down and refused to move until the police moved them. They just brought London to a standstill at that time. We've also had as a result of this school kids that have been involved. We've had school children walk out of schools on two Fridays in the last 12 months in enormous protest against lack of effective controls on climate change activity. So the issue of the climate, the issue of the planet has really galvanized young people throughout Britain as it has done in Europe, in America and in Britain the movement is called Extinction Rebellion and I know that there's also an Indian chapter of this and it's a worldwide movement and what's really phenomenal is that when these people have been asked why they are engaged in this kind of activity they've invoked Mohandas Gandhi's name. We have people who as I say they will just there will be thousands of them that will just sit down in protest so we have people that just sat down in protest outside the Ministry of Defence. We've had people who have used glue and they've glued themselves to pavements to walls in protests against the armaments industry and protests against various government agencies that they are targeting because they are refusing to do anything serious about carbon emissions and these people have also been willing to get themselves arrested and again when they have been arrested they don't show any opposition, they don't resist arrest in any shape or form and again when they have been interviewed and asked why they have all cited Gandhi's non-violent civil disobedience as the catalyst for this, as the inspiration for this. Is it working? Will this help save the environment? That's a really big question and I suppose in a way the short answer would be that you know we won't know until the business is done but on the other hand what I think is quite fascinating for me as a historian is that when we look at civil disobedience and particularly the use of non-violence this isn't the first and only time that this has happened since Gandhi's death. In Britain we've had civil disobedience that was used back in the early 1980s for example against the cruise missiles that were coming into Britain. We had a movement then which was called the Greenham Common Women's Movement where they built a camp outside of Greenham Common which was going to be the base of where these cruise missiles were going to come and they had a camp out there, they exercised non-violent civil disobedience, it didn't stop the cruise missiles from being brought into Britain so in that sense one could argue that the movement against it was ineffective. So I think it's you know people cite obviously things like the civil rights movement in the United States, people even talk about African emancipation as being another inspiring point in terms of Gandhi's non-violence. For me as a historian it was really imperative to interrogate at a very serious level how Gandhi actually embarked upon civil disobedience in order to try and examine what worked and what didn't work in there because Gandhi obviously is a larger-than-life figure, he was in his lifetime and even more so since his death in some respects, he's become even more iconic, more symbolic, absolutely you know the Mahatmaism has really been in the making in the last 70 years, more so than it was in his own lifetime and of course sadly a lot of misconceptions can exist about an individual, a lot of half truths can also enter the narrative and because he is such a huge figure I think it's really important that people actually do make a study of him, so for example again in Britain we have people in Extinction Rebellion who put on training sessions in non-violent direct action and that's all very laudable, it's fantastic, it's very good that they do this and it's very good that they have tens of thousands of people that are involved and engaged in wanting to learn the art of non-violence and how to practice it in as a political strategy but I also think it's really important that people and activists should learn from history so I think it's imperative that people should attempt to at least read what Gandhi had written himself about his own movements, it's also important that people should read other biographies that have been written about Gandhi and other studies that have been done about him not just my book and so I'm hoping that if my book is able to do anything if it is at least able to propel a new generation of activists particularly in Britain but also hopefully here in India to actually go and seek for themselves who the real Gandhi was, what it was that he did, what it was that he didn't do, what he sanctioned, what he was okay with etc then it will have served a purpose. At the time when Gandhi ran his civil disobedience in India we were under foreign occupation and many of these civil disobedience movements now are against their own government so how is that moment different from now? Is civil disobedience is a non-violent protest actually viable in these circumstances of being under control of your own government? Is it in fact more effective now because you have less of a sanction for the state to oppress its own people whereas the colonial power could have done anything to which of a country it governed? Now again that's a really good question because I think that at one level yes one can look back in history and say well of course when there was colonial oppression then somehow there was legitimacy to have opposition against that but now that we've had independence for over 70 years that somehow we now live in a new society but I think that that also is something that fundamentally ignores some of the challenges of what post-colonial societies had and I think that if we think about for example whether it's in India or whether it's in different countries in Africa it's clear that the dream of what independence was supposed to bring for most people has perhaps not transpired at all so I don't find it at all surprising that in country after country in the so-called global south there have been oppositional movements against their own states because we still have societies which are racked by division poverty still exists oppression still exists against various groups I mean even in Britain you know people think of Britain as being a nice liberal democracy there have always been oppositional movements from below against British governments so I don't think that the key differences is whether or not it's a colonial state or not or a post-colonial state the key question is what kind of society it is and what are the grievances that people feel about the world that they live in and I think it's only when one examines what the grievances are and what the vast inequalities are within society only by doing that can we then come close to approximating why it is that we will have movements of opposition they don't exist just for the sake of existing they exist because there's a very stark reality in those societies and so the non-violent talk about non-violence actually imposes on the people a very great burden of not doing certain things not acting in certain ways and the but the issue is that if you do act in certain ways which are violent or seen as violent then the state would have even more power to crack down on you so this is something that the activists would have to constantly consider and and Gandhi provides a way out of that challenge he does in many respects yes I suppose that you know for Gandhi the use of violence is seen as being completely non permissible in his eyes whether it's by the state or whether it's by movements and in his own lifetime these were very real questions that he had to grapple with because although his movements and particularly every one of the major movements that he launched he launched them in the name of non-violence however violence did occur so in my book I go through a whole series of scenarios of his major campaigns whether it's in South Africa or back at home in India and in each one of these scenarios he leads the campaign in opposition in each one of these scenarios violence is employed and it has been employed by the state and in each one of these scenarios Gandhi then calls off the movement because what happens is that violence also takes place on the part of the resistors and Gandhi calls the movement off because violence has been employed by his own side and for me this is where the tension and this is where the interrogation and this is where the debate really needs to be about because in his own lifetime he faced criticism from people for calling off these movements you know Gandhi was a great communicator he spoke with everyone and anyone it didn't matter whether you agreed or disagreed with him he would have debate and discussion with you he had debates and discussions with people within his own camp around congress he had debates with people from the right but also in his lifetime he faced big debates from people who were on the left so for example he had enormous debates and discussions with the left in terms of the congress socialist and the communist party of India in my own book one of the things I detail is the correspondence that Gandhi had with PC Joshi for example in 1945 at that time he was the general secretary of the communist party of India and two decades before that in 1927 Gandhi entered a lengthy correspondence with Sacklatwala who was the first communist MP to be elected in Britain eventually became a member of the Labour Party and in both of these discussions it was about the question of non-violence that was at the heart of this because what both Sacklatwala and Joshi were talking about is what do you do when the state is violent towards you and this is a question that wasn't just asked by those two it was asked by many activists within Gandhi's own lifetime it was asked by people following the big bout of civil disobedience in 1930 when that movement was perhaps the most non-violent that Gandhi had ever led on his own side and yet the colonial state put over 60,000 people into jails and then by 1934 they very effectively physically crushed any aspect of civil disobedience over tax and other issues similarly when we think about the Quintindian movement in 1942 you know not only was Gandhi detained and you know leading members of the congress were detained but the government the viceroy at the time Linlithco he gave the go-ahead for aerial bombardments of cities like Bombay as they were then and Linlithco himself said that what we are facing in 1942 is the biggest threat to British power in India since the 1857 mutiny and I'm not going to get caught out that way was his attitude and that's why he unleashed the level of repression that he did again one of the things that I go through in my book is the early 20s when Gandhi has his non-cooperation movement and it is very striking to me because Gandhi calls off movements all the time when violence is used on his side but he's quite particular as to who he blames for violence so for example in the small town of Charichurra in 1922 when you have because one of the key things about Gandhi's movements is that although they're called under a very specific rubric the masses of Indians at the time they brought to that movement their own set of grievances so you had grievances against landlords you had grievances against stallholders shopkeepers you had grievances against employers and Gandhi you know at one level perhaps Gandhi was impervious to the fact that the masses were bringing their own set of grievances to his movements and it really comes to fruition in that town because you have protests taking place in that town against inflation and hikes in food prices because people just can't afford to buy bread they can't afford to buy the art to make their chapati and so there are enormous protests taking place and the police arrest three of the protesters and as a result you have people from the local locality going to the police station to demand the release of their of their of their tense people the police for various reasons are told that they've got to defend this and they let off some rounds and they arrest more people but they also shoot some people who are killed obviously in a scenario like that tempers are very very hot on both sides and because Indians had been killed you have the villagers and the townspeople they come to the police station and they are rioting and in the violence that ensues the police station is set on fire 22 policemen die now obviously nobody is happy with that situation the villagers weren't happy with that situation nobody was now Gandhi calls off done violence immediately as that incident happens but what is very striking to me when you look at his pronouncements at what he writes in newspapers at the time and you also look at the pronouncements of congress who are acting under his guidance and his leadership they sent condolences to the widows and the families of the policemen nothing wrong with that but there are no condolences that are sent to the Indians who've been killed there are no words of solace for their families and their widows instead they are described as being a mob by Gandhi and by the congress leaders and this happens again and again this is repeated I mean this is you know this is one of the things that I found when I was doing the research for my book is that there is a consistent pattern to this and so one of the questions I pose is that it's all very well talking about civil disobedience being nonviolent but actually we have to get quite concrete about this because what does it mean in a very real situation so for example in Britain with extinction rebellion the police have been used against them obviously in terms of arresting people there's not been the level of violence by the state as it existed in colonial India or as existed by the British state in previous protest before but it may come and then the question is what does a movement do when the state uses violence this is a question that's being posed very starkly in Hong Kong for example where again there are many people that are saying ah you see in Hong Kong people are invoking Gandhi there as well and they are but there is a real issue there because what do you do when you have a violent state that is going to not just use repression but use that repression to completely cut the movement and to destroy the movement and crush it so I think that these are very important questions and if civil disobedience and nonviolent civil disobedience is going to be employed as a political strategy which it usually is and this is really where my book is trying to interrogate this then it's very important that people should be very serious about this you know I find it amazing that the world over Gandhi's name is known it's known by little school children but people don't really have any real knowledge of Gandhi and one of the things I say to people and particularly to young activists in the UK is that if you really want to want a Gandhi then at least go and read him at least go and read what has been written about him read everything and anything educate yourself about Gandhi in a very serious way because otherwise to just talk and invoke Gandhi in a very loose manner you're not really doing justice to him in his life and you're not really doing justice to the kinds of campaigns that you're involved with either so do some serious reading debate with people discuss with people because Gandhi did that as well you know wherever you stand on Gandhi one cannot deny is that he did enter debate and discussion so if contemporary generations are serious about invoking Gandhi then they should make a serious study of him right but he did not leave behind a blueprint for how to be non-violent absolutely course he didn't and again in that sense I suppose one could argue that the beauty of that is that anyone can read everything and anything into it you can employ it in whichever way you wish to you know so for example you know in in something else that I've written about Gandhi which is to do with the afterlives of civil disobedience one of the things that I found quite intriguing is how you have a whole scenario of various politicians all over the world claiming to stand in Gandhi's legacy I found it quite amusing that for example Barack Obama talked about how Gandhi had influenced him from a very young age and he did this as president of the biggest and mightiest state on the planet just as he was about to order bombardment of Iraq so you know for me when you have politicians doing this you have to ask yourself a serious question which is you know a how serious are they about Gandhi how serious are they really about non-violence and in a way is this also not typical of what some politicians do when they want to try and cloak themselves in the mantle of such an iconic figure and use him perhaps for their own purposes I mean you know we have a similar thing in Britain as well because obviously as you can imagine we have various public places which are named after Gandhi so there's a big statue that was unveiled in the House of Parliament and we had David Cameron and George Osborne all saying there's nothing more fitting than to have the father of the Indian democracy outside the mother of all Parliament with no sense of irony that the mother of all Parliament as a British Parliament did the most to oppress India and you know a quarter of the world that the British controlled at that time so I find it quite amusing ironic and very very very dishonest that you have all manner of the political class the world over that want to try and make Gandhi into a very safe iconic figure for their own purposes so I think that there is a real issue here about what the real legacy of Gandhi is as well and again you know if you think of the Pune pact if you think of Gandhi and Ambedkar's communication with each other there was a lot of violence that the Dalits faced at the time of demand for a separate electorate but at that time Gandhi did not back down he did not say okay we'll come back to this again he stuck to his position against the idea of separate electorates would you know two questions would that have been a good or a better idea for India considering the extent of caste discrimination that still prevails in the society and second I know Gandhi is contradictory I know he's not a comfortable figure but does this incident actually show a very big flaw in his idea of nonviolence again that's a really big question and obviously I'm aware that there are all kinds of contemporary debates in India about this but what I do know about with certainty is that yes in his own lifetime over the issue of caste and untouchability Gandhi was completely opposed to untouchability of that I have no doubt you know he was very sincere about this and he was very sincere about how he wanted to see an eradication of the way that you had caste depression throughout India however his dealings with Ambedkar from what I have found I don't particularly think were that noble you know in the debates over the separate electorates and what he did that year in in 1932 I think leaves a lot of questions that have to be talked about the way that he was willing to use the fast and therefore to use violence in some respects to his own body you know fast unto death to stop the separate electorates and not just that but the fact that Ambedkar was forced to back down by fellow Dalits because they were aware that if Gandhi had fasted himself to death the people that would have been given the blame would have been Dalits and therefore there would have been even more of a bloodbath against Dalits all over India at that time for this now I find that very troubling because that to me opens up a big can of worms about what Gandhi and Gandhism is you know the fact that he could not understand that Dalits had a right to have their own political representation and to decide for themselves their own future in his own lifetime I think really displays and I argue this in my book a real sense of his own elite caste and class prejudices which were really coming to the fore that somehow he believed that caste high caste groups could somehow be persuaded through a moral conscience to behave well towards untouchables now that might well be the case you know I'm not in a position to state otherwise on that but the point for me remains that surely it is the right of those people themselves to act as agents and catalysts of their own future and their own present not for someone else to decide what that should be for them and a similar thing you know a similar thing I find over his issue on women over his issue on peasants that there is a paternalism that is at the heart of Gandhi that one cannot deny and therefore a figure that is held up as an iconic figure of radical liberation I think needs to have that level of scrutiny you know there needs to be interrogation about exactly how radical Gandhi and his ideas were in his own lifetime because you know I do think that the element of deep paternalism does betray a deep social conservatism particularly about certain social issues and caste was certainly one of them in his own lifetime right when at that time everything was on the drawing table absolutely everything afresh why not this as well there were recent protests in South Africa about installing a statue of Gandhi where you know where do you where would you locate protests like this coming very long after Gandhi has died and very long after his role in that country has been sort of consecrated as you know he was great and then suddenly you have people saying that look he wasn't that great why does this happen is is something like that necessary in India or do we just need to hear those people who are already saying that they have problems with Gandhi on cars etc you know what's really going on in South Africa what can India learn I think it's quite instructive at lots of levels I suppose the whole movement that Gandhi should fall as it's called in throughout Africa you know beginning in Ghana where they wanted a statue removed because what's happened is that you've had a new generation of people who suddenly have discovered that Gandhi in his early life in South Africa had to put it quite mildly very pejorative attitudes towards the African population and there's no getting away from that he did I you know in his initial few years in South Africa he behaved very much as a colonial subject who believed that Indians had a right to be treated as equals I should clarify that he actually believed that respectable Indians had a right to be treated as equals under empire and because because he went to South Africa to represent the professional class the urban layers of these you know the lawyers the business community etc it was very much their interests that affected him it was their interest that he went to represent and it was through their lens that he saw the world and in a way that's not surprising given his own caste background and everything else this is what Gandhi's world was so not only did Gandhi not really have any understanding of the vast majority of Indians who were from predominantly Tamil or Bengal background who of course were the plantation workers and working in the mines and what have you but of course it goes without saying that if he didn't if he didn't understand them he obviously was also not going to understand the vast majority of the population of South Africa that were African and that's the reason why he initially was absolutely outraged that Indians were placed on the same level as the Africans and that's why he objected to being called a Cooley Barrister and all of this kind of language because of course what he was expressing was that I'm an educated Indian we should be treated as equals under this empire so that was certainly true and there's nothing that anyone can do to deny that however I think it's completely inaccurate historically to leave the story at that because Gandhi did undergo a change in his life in South Africa and he did come to understand the oppression against Africans and he also came to understand the oppression against the vast majority of the Indian population and not just the Indians but also Chinese population in South Africa and the Colards and that's what I think is quite distressing about some of the calls that Gandhi should fall because for me Gandhi is not a Cecil Rhodes you know Rhodes was an unapologetic defender of empire Gandhi was not that so I think that it's good that a new generation have suddenly come across these kinds of questions but what should what this should lead to surely is a questioning about the fact that we still live in a racist society whether it's South Africa whether it's Ghana whether it's any of the European countries you know Britain where I come from and I'm sure there are issues here in India as well that there are there is fundamental inequality that still exists within our society and it's that that needs to be interrogated and talked about not demands that Gandhi should be removed because in a way you know statues are not really that important you know Vladimir Lenin once said that statues are only good for pigeons and I think he was quite apt in that but the you know the point is that in a country like South Africa you can't have a position where there are no statues to Gandhi or no streets named after him because he was part and parcel of the fabric of that society and so therefore it's not about changing that and removing his names what this should be about is an opportunity for a new generation of people to actually be very serious and pose serious questions and not just think that oh if we just remove a statue of Gandhi somehow we've solved the problems of racism in Ghana or South Africa or any other problems because you haven't because what you've not done is actually tackle some of the deeper underlying causes of those problems in the first place if you're serious about being an agent for yourself then you're only going to learn this through through your own colleagues through your own collectivity in terms of the activity that you're engaged in and the social movements that you're a part of is that activism itself that's going to lead to questions and the way that you answer those questions and how you resolve those issues is going to be through collective debate and discussion yourselves in the movements that's what a movement is really about and yes there are certain things that we can learn from history and we have to absolutely imperative but you yourself are going to have to take decisions about this so read Gandhi by all means read about him by all means but more fundamentally I would say to people you need to read debate discuss and take action read debate discuss and take action again and again all right thank you so much for joining us that thank you thank you very much for having me thank you for joining us click