 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have a special guest with us, G. M. Devi. His writer, his editor is a literary critic. He is a former professor and he's most well known for the People's Linguistics Survey of India. We're going to discuss Mahatma Gandhi, who's a birth anniversary celebrated on the 2nd of October and let's begin. Welcome to the program, Mr. Devi. Very, very happy to have you here. And it's also an important occasion, which on 2nd of October, it's almost like a habit that we recall Mahatma Gandhi. But I've always been curious, why is it that during times of conflict, violence, protests, that is when we remember Gandhi the most. Could you try to talk about why that is so? Well, if you think of Gandhi's life itself, it begins in times of great tension, international tension between Germany and England. Then comes the, I mean, there is the naval competition and clashes. Then comes the war war. He was part of the war. I mean, he became a healthy British government there. The first world war, so many several epidemics plagues here to face. He, in one, he worked as a volunteer in the second. He himself suffered from the epidemic. Then, of course, comes the second world war. I mean, he lived from the beginning to the end. In fact, when Gandhi becomes the most eminent rotary of nonviolence, that is after the Dandi March, which is in April 1931. That's just about two years before, that is April 1933, that Hitler came to power. And Mussolini was already in the saddle eight years ago, eight years before that. And from that time on, if you were to imagine the headlines of newspapers, they're about how how Romel attacked in Egypt, the allies, how several naval convoys were sunk. A convoy carrying about 4,000 cars, vehicles sunk and disappears for eight weeks or 10 weeks. Now, Gandhi's time was a time of riots, wars, epidemics, and a time of misery. It is not like Gandhi was doing tapasheria in some very peaceful forest. He was in the middle of the and therefore, we remember Gandhi because in those dark times, Gandhi kept the hope alive. Even when he, for instance, when he declared the Bharat, the Quit India movement, which was named by Yusuf Murali as Quit India, a month before the movement started in August 1942. In July, 42, Gandhi held a meeting at Varda and passed four resolutions to start such an Andolan, such a movement. And the second resolution of the four most important things for him in the year 1942, the second resolution was we must fight all forms of fascism wherever and whenever it becomes necessary. So here is a man who's actually confronting fascism, not just colonialism. He's confronting violence all the time. How many times attempts were made on his life? I mean, in the last attempt, that attempt becomes nefariously successful. But there are six attempts. And it's not just in India. And it's not just when he became a miniature, even in South Africa, there's an attempt on his life, two twice. And then later in India. And this is several years before 1948, that people wanted to kill him. So people, the princes were against him. They actually actively helped the killers. The Hindu Mahasabha was against him. There were then the people who did not agree with his path and wanted a militant resistance. They were against him. And people who were with him, themselves did not understand the spirit of non-violence. Because for Gandhi, non-violence was not an action or absence of action. Non-violence was a philosophical acceptance of not having agreed as a part of life. When he had accepted that idea from the Jain philosophy of Auparigraha, he mentions it in the Hinswaraj. Auparigraha is, I mean, at the end of the that book Hinswaraj, there are several resolutions. He says these are the things we need to do. And one is we must repent for where we are. And out of that repentance, our action must be. And our action must be held on the solid platform of non-acquisition of Auparigraha. Gandhi argued that a desire to hold, to grab, to possess is the mother, is the birth genesis of violence. So Gandhi's non-violence was not understood by others in his times. And his times were the most violent times. And that's why Gandhi was a great person. He was not supplying what was already available as a philosophy. He was producing a philosophy in times where there was a great want of non-violence. The moment you mentioned Hinswaraj, I am reminded of his home state, Gujarat, which is treading a path which is very different from the kind of ideals Gandhi espouses in that book at that time. There is a development which is ostensibly based on technology. There is a mall culture. There are attacks on minorities, there are attacks on Dalits, which have been going on for a very long time in the state. Why is it that the state where Gandhi was born and lived, the state, the site of his activism has traveled very far from what he believed? We cannot think of Gujarat just as the state that took birth in 1960. The linguistic states were created in India. It belonged to the Bombay Presidency. And that Bombay Presidency is spread all the way from to Kerala. Now, in those times, particularly in the 1920s, just as Gandhi took charge of the Congress, which he did in 1921, after the decline of Tilak, Lala Lashpatra and Bipinjana Rappal, Gandhi became the leader. In the same year, Munjay had Barista Munjay, another Barista, had conceptualized the Hindu Mahasabha. And the RSS took birth out of this Hindu Mahasabha and RSS. They started working. Now, their ideas had emerged from a frustrated generation post the Peshwa rule in Maharashtra, particularly the Brahmins. The Peshwa rule declined in 1818. And through the 19th century, the frustration kept mounting, finally coming to a kind of boiling point in 1890s when Tilak wrote his little booklet called The Nordic Home of the Aryans. Now, the Aryan Supremacy idea came up, Brahmin Supremacy idea came up, etc., etc. Right. What happened is, after independence, the monetary help for these ideas came from Baniyas, the merchant class. And Bombay was in the 1960s very rapidly industrializing. It did not remain a city of merchants. It never was, but it ceased to be a city of merchants. It was a city of industrial workers or industrial owners. The merchants were from Surat, from Boroda, from Bhavnagar. And so, patronage to RSS ideas, monetary patronage to RSS ideas was drawn from Gujarat. So, many of the Pracharaks of RSS housed themselves in Gujarat. For instance, Narendra Modi was a Pracharak. He was born in Gujarat, but he had deserted Gujarat or his family had deserted him. I do not know exactly which, but he was out of Gujarat. But as a Pracharak, he went back to Gujarat in Boroda. He was in Boroda in 1980s. And so many Manmohan Vaidya from Maharashtra went to Gujarat as a Pracharak. And so, Gujarat became the crucible for the Pracharaks. That means the Manik, the ideas had initially come from Savarkar, Helgevar, Gulvarkar, and from Nagpur, and also from Banaras. But because there was a time when RSS was run from Banaras for some years. But the monetary help came and the training hostels and training schools were built in Gujarat. At outside Amdabad, there are places where hundreds of RSS workers go, get trained, not hundreds, thousands can stay there, the large campuses. And therefore, Gujarat became ready for housing, providing hospitality for RSS. Now, why did it become a laboratory for Gujarat? The charitable nature of the people there, despite being rich, prosperous, people had been charitable because of their religious background. Jainism, Vaishnavism, giving was once life. And even very rich people in Gujarat remained quite simple, unlike in another state like Punjab. There was no body show of their wealth. They spent money in giving to where it was necessary. As a result of that, no left party ever took root in Gujarat. So, Gujarat had only Congress party. Whereas, if you think of other states, say Bengal, there was the Orissa, there was the Congress, and there was at least a faction coming out of the Congress in Orissa, or in Telangana, or a left party in Bengal, or left party, or there was a socialist party, Rajat PSP, or whatever, Janta Party in Maharashtra. Gujarat had only one party, and so Congress, and it had an uninterrupted regime there. To create an alternate party became easiest in Gujarat. It may in future become that much easy in Orissa perhaps now, because there is no other party. There was no second party. So, the BJP decided Gujarat had money, Gujarat had pracharaks, and Gujarat is a relatively small state, though its economy is large, its geographical area is also large. But actually, habitation of Gujarat is much, while the population of Maharashtra today is about 12 to 14 crores, population of Gujarat is still at about 7 crores, half the size. So, it had fewer districts. When Modi was in Gujarat, Gujarat had something like 22 districts. So, it was easier to manage. There was no second party, money was there, pracharaks were there, and the business people did not really mind who was in power. Business people were okay with whoever was in power, had they been nice to the business community. For all these reasons, there is one last reason, and that is during the JP movement, Gujarat suddenly became very violent, and that violence was not sorted out nicely. It was suppressed. It was also the time when influx of peoples started going to Gujarat for employment, and that generated animosity towards those from outside. Gujarat did not have a historically any hero, like Rajasthan had Rana Pratap, Maharashtra Chivaji, to turn back to say, yes, we were also heroic. Gujaratis were teased by outsiders as good Jews, and that was an insult. And so, they always felt that people laughed at them while they are producing wealth. They felt that they were being seen as cowards. All Hindi cinema showed Gujarati characters as very cowardly. And that hurt, said the BJP used it. And finally, the dietary habits of Gujaratis are very snobbish. They claim to be vegetarians when they are with somebody, and they quite enjoy eating non-vegetarian food. So, this vegetarianism had to be publicly declared, which means in every locality, housing society, those who openly say they were non-vegetarians were disallowed. And Muslims, therefore, came first on the target because of this diet thing. Then the Muslims had, Gujarat developed the first major refinery in India, IPCL, which later was a little stolen by Ambani from the government at a very thorough way price. The petrol, ONGC and IPCL petrol had made transportation a very flourishing business in Gujarat. And petrol was at four rupees a litre, or I mean, those were very distant times in history. Thousands of years ago, petrol used to be 20 rupees a litre. So, the transport business came under the control of the Muslims, and that had to be rested away from them. That was the feeling. So, all these reasons came together and provided an opportunity. This is a classic case of Hitler rose because of unemployment and poverty and depression. Here, a dictatorial mind came to power because of affluence, because of lack of employment, because of excessive consumerism, because of build sensibilities of the people. So, you're saying that in some senses, what Gandhi epitomized and what Gujarat became had to be opposites of each other. Gandhi was born in Gujarat, but was Gandhi born of Gujarat? Similarly, Modi was born in Gujarat, but whether Modi was Modi's born of Gujarat? These are questions that need to be sorted out. Gandhi tried to translate Plato into Gujarat. Gandhi accepted Raskin. Gandhi read deeply into Bible as well as Quran. Gandhi was a great admirer of Gautam Buddha. So, Gandhi gathered his ideas from all over, and of course, the 19th century American philosopher inspired Gandhi. Immersion was a, and so was Tolstoy, Gandhi's brain. So, Immersion, Tolstoy, Raskin, Plato, Buddha, Bhagavad Gita, the Gandhi's most favorite Upanishad was the Isha Upanishad. The Upanishads, all of those fell into Gandhi Jolie, the mentor. He gathered all of this. He took the very best from the rest of the world. He was born in Gujarat, but he cannot be characterized as a Gujarati thinker. Similarly, Modi is born in Gujarat, but Modi's gathered stuff from Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, from the, from the more recent African and Asian dictators. His ideological supply, supply line is from Nakhur and not from Amdabad. The Modi was not inspired by Gandhi's Sabarmath Yashiram. He was inspired by, by, you know, the Gulab bag or whatever bag in Nakhur. And so, so they are born in, but not born off. In one case, there's a man who brought the best of the world to Gujarat. And in another case, there's a man who brought the worst of the world to Gujarat. And yet both speak of nationalism. They're both claimed to be nationalist, very different kind of nationalist. Can you try and contrast their two ideas of India and nationalism? When the French Revolution took place, the three words were liberty, fraternity, equality. The idea of nation became very strong after the Napoleonic Wars. And some of the European nations went for nationalism, particularly Italy in the 1830s and Germany 1860s with Bismarck, Germany became nation. But some other European nations took the idea of liberty. For instance, Ireland, the Irish, Irish struggle was Sin Fin. And it was not national struggle. It was the struggle for the home rule. Sin Fin movement came to India through Anibesan later, which Tilak accepted for a few years, we had home rule league in India. Our struggle is called independent struggle. What I'm saying is the countries which harped on the idea of nation in the 19th century ended up in the mid 20th century as fascist nations. Those that were inspired by the idea of they had to fight these fascist nations. Now Gandhi, Tagore and Aurobindo, three great leaders, three great thinkers of the 27th century who were at the fourth nationalist movement very well knew the dangers of excessive nationalism. And therefore, while Tagore, who wrote and whose poem we use as a national anthem, and not just us but Bangladesh and Sri Lanka music of the national anthem goes from Tagore, Tagore chose to establish Vishwa Bharati, not Desha Bharati, not Rashtra Bharati. Similarly with Gandhi, Gandhi was extremely fond of two institutions he created. One was the Sabarmati Ashram. The second was Gujarat Vidyapit. He said Gujarat Vidyapit is for training students to participate in the national freedom struggle. But with Sabarmati Ashram, he said that is a place to train minds to take ideas of non-violence and truth forward. Sabarmati Ashram was not seen within a national context. Gujarat Vidyapit was. Gandhi decided that Gandhi failed that after independence, he might as well go to Pakistan and stay there. He would be at home there in order to bring about communal harmony. With Aurobindo, who had participated in 97, 98 national struggle after Wangabang and was imprisoned for that. And he had actually conceptualized Bharatmaka Mandir, the Mother India's temple. The last piece he wrote in 1950, he died in 1950, December. In February, he did the last piece of writing at the age of 78. And that piece was saying that the creation of the United Nations in 1949 was a great thing. And the world must become a federation of small nations, but one thing, one governance. No separate nation is necessary for the ultimate spiritual upliftment of humanity. Three great minds refuse the idea of nationalism almost before India became a nation, because they were wiser. Now this excessive nationalism of Mr. Modi and Hindutva nationalism is... I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you just briefly. When you say excessive nationalism, where is the excess? It would help if you could define that. Excess is in action. That is, at the slightest criticism of the idea, the holders of that idea, the advocates of that idea feel challenged, threatened. And anybody who criticizes is immediately described as one who is outside the idea of nation that is anti-national. So that excess is seen in action. How often the term is used, how often it is used, quite lightly. There is a case of a very famous case of a former prime minister who had a chai or dinner with some gentleman from Pakistan once. And it is perfectly fine if when you are in international politics, international scene, you're friends from various countries. For instance, there can be a prime minister who's gone off to Iran and is returning to India and suddenly halfway through feels that he should land in Pakistan, go and shake hands with the prime minister. I think that's very civilized and such an action should be advised. So there was a prime minister who had a guest at his place and because Punjab at one time was neither Indian nor Pakistan, it was Punjab. Some of the gurus were born on that side of the border, some were born on this side of the border, some of the poets on that side of the border. So it's all a mix of history. So immediately even a former prime minister was labeled as anti-national. That is excessive nationalism or an admiral or a field marshal or a general or a judge or a great professor or a great thinker, a Nobel Prize winner, they're all they can be labeled branded as anti-national. That is excessive nationalism. That was your question. I will return to your first question. That nationalism is founded on an idea of history, which in itself is non-scientific idea of history. In that non-scientific idea of history, the break that came after the industrialization in 1900 before Christ up to 1400 before Christ is ruled out. The historians of climate ecology tell us that actually those 600 years where the times and the nights became very cold, days were very hot and therefore desert desertification took place. Water shortage, acute water shortage made the city life non-viable and therefore cities got dissolved. The industrialization cities kind of chipped or fell apart and people started wondering. The Hindutva idea of history thinks that even those and then 500 years later came the Indic language or what we call the Indo-Aryan language. It came from the steppes, the Eurasian steppes had people who knew how to run carts, trying to try to horses and in moving carts with great speed if you throw arrows or the lethal capacity increases, therefore they were more effective and that's how they came here. They were nomadic types. They had no idea of city life. They brought another language to us. The irises wants to say that the Indus civilization also had the Sanskrit language and the Vedas are much older than what the Vedas themselves say. They are holding seminars to determine the birth date of Bhagwan Kushner. I mean, I really respect Bhagwan Kushner, a very wise person, a very absorbing philosopher. But to determine his birth date is a difficult task because when he came here, he came as an author. That means it was not the original birth. The original birth was elsewhere. We don't know when the original birth was. So to determine the date of birth of Kushner, then on the basis of that Mahabharat, on the basis of supposing the date of birth of that great God turns out to be a particular, then everybody born on that date can become author of Kushner in our time also. I mean, all kinds of things. That idea of history is not scientific history. It is not supported by archaeology sufficiently well. It is not supported by genetics sufficiently well. A hundred genetics and archaeology scientists came together in 2019, led by David Rick of Harvard School of Medicine, Harvard University and produced a paper about the ancient moment of population in South Asia because they felt greatly worried about the non-scient promotion of ninth non-scientific view of history. Idea of nation on the founded on non-science, that is one. And second, the idea of nation is funded on non-recognition of diversities. Our constitution defines India very clearly. India, I mean, when you open the constitution, immediately your eyes fall on a sentence which is India, which is a union, India that is Bharat is a union of states. That is, the states must unite to create India. India does not precede the states. The states precede, the idea of India is that we all come together. And unless that diversity is recognized, India does not become the India that is enshrined in the constitution. But this nationalism is founded on a certain desire to reject some of the founding principles of the constitution. So it is unscientific, non-constitutional. And finally, it is quite far from any humanitarian engagement with humans as they are. For instance, on the first day, we became the republic. Everybody who was here became citizen. Once and we became equal citizens, whether they were Jews, whether they were Parsis, they were Sikhs, whichever religion, they all became citizens of India. Once that question is sorted out, allowing Indians to get beyond caste, beyond religion, be humans at equal, be modern, be progressive, be great. Once that is resolved in 1950, revisiting it, creating new laws for citizenship, which are not evenly created, not created evenly for everybody. Discriminatory laws are created, attitudes are expressed, actions follow, calls for genocides are given quite openly, hate speech is promoted, nobody takes any action to curb that. All of that, if that is the idea of nationalism, certainly, I or anyone can call it excessive nationalism. We need certain awareness of being a nation to remain united, to conduct our affairs, but to take it to this extent, the smacks of things beyond the framework of the constitution, framework of civilization, and framework of social norms. All three frameworks were also recently very starkly violated when we saw the people who had abused Vilkis Bano and her family, the people who had raped her and who had murdered members of her family, were actually let free on remission. Now, what for Gandhi have thought if such an action had taken place in his time in front of him today? Gandhi was a trained barrister and he really respected law, and he would have taken the course to legal remedy. Now, in the other case where Tista Settler was arrested, Supreme Court just said that, oh, this is a conspiracy. Therefore, these people who are asking for justice must be punished. But in this case, Gandhi would have written a letter to the Chief Minister of Gujarat, made an appeal to his conscience. Would have written a letter to the President of India and Prime Minister of India. He would have sat on a fast. He would have gone to the family of Vilkis Bano. He would have gone to Vilkis Bano's house and sat there. He would have spent time there and cried with her to show that there is some humanity. He would have applied to the Supreme Court once again to revisit this case, open it. If that is not done, Gandhi would have moved other courts, international courts of justice. But Gandhi, in the face of injustice, always wanted not just to get justice or to challenge the perpetrator, but also to turn the perpetrator into a human being. Gandhi had a firm faith that the worst among the perpetrators also can be, through an appeal, through a moral appeal, can be brought to see where they lack humanity. He would have done that. By fighting in a shrill tone, in a way we acknowledge that the perpetrators are at the same moral level that we are. Gandhi knew how to put in a corner the perpetrator by making a moral appeal. But not a physical, not application of physical or any other force, just the moral force, just the spiritual force. That was Gandhi. And would that sort of help us explain also why we find, for example, Gandhi is not the person they picked, this government picked to put under the canopy at India Gate. When they decided to choose a person, they chose someone whom Gandhi himself had not, at one point, chosen. Could that sort of be an explanation that they want to, if not erase, then erase the legacy? Both is an admirable personage in our history, very fascinating, brilliant, courageous, imaginative and both should get what he deserves. That's a different thing. But when Gandhi's method started looking ineffective, some of his friends argued with him and they said that another method should be adopted. There is a long correspondence with Gandhi, of his friends with Gandhi about the futility of Gandhian methods to fight Hitlerism. There is also a correspondence with Gandhi about his methods to fight imperialism, colonialism, the futility. And the in Swaraj itself is that great debate about, which is a better method. Now, Gandhi's method was seen as inadequate by some people in the 1940s as inadequate to fight colonialism, inadequate to fight fascism. Both Hitler and his fascism are dumped, were dumped and forgotten and the name became attached with shame. Colonialism got dismantled and within a few years after the British left India, all over in Africa, in East Asia, in Latin America, colonialism was a word of the past and a word that people wanted to forget. But Gandhi's ideas remained there. People never wanted to forget, though people could not follow the ideas. But nobody, even Gandhi's worst enemy has not said that Gandhi was a bad man. Gandhi's ideas were dangerous. Nobody, nobody ever said that. People have mocked at him. People wanted to kill him. Some went and killed him. But the world in general never wanted to. In fact, whenever the question of who can we think of in the last 100 years or 200 years as among the greatest human beings, if you ask 10 or 15 persons, Gandhi's name would figure in that list. It's another thing he never got the Nobel Prize for Peace. His application went there three or four times. But history will do justice to Gandhi. And what has happened to Gujarat will change. People in Gujarat are also people. They are also intelligent and they also see the reality. I work with tribals in Gujarat and I know how they feel about the regime, how students and professors and teachers in universities think about it now. There are lots of agitations of teachers going on in Gujarat. University staff is on strike. There is a farmers agitation going on, the student agitation going on, the tribal agitation going on. There's a denotified and nomadic tribes movement going on there. The theater persons, film persons, writers, they all against the government. Propaganda is not, media is not. Those who pay the media on the up of the government, they are not against the government. That is a minority small number. Things will change. And Gujarat one day will, I am very sure, unitedly stand up and say, not now, but 10 years, 15 years, whenever, but not too far a date. Gujarat will come together and say, sorry, India. We troubled you a lot. All right. Thank you very much, Professor Devi for joining us.