Gandhiji
GANDHIJI
(Tatoodi)
Gandhiji was an extremely great man next only to Lord Shrikrishna. India should be proud of him and thankful to God for sending him to India.
We Indians tend to see our heroes as perfect persons and to not only ignore but also justify their shortcomings. If you are like them, stop reading this article because you will not like it. There are hundreds of millions of words written in his praise and no need for this writer to add to them.
As a human being, howsoever great, Gandhiji did have some incorrect views and made some mistakes even with his best intentions.
He had himself said (or written); 'અલ્પાત્માને માપવા માટે સત્યનો ગજ કદી ટૂંકો ના થશો.' meaning 'May not the yardstick of truth ever shorten to measure a lesser being'. (Not an exact translation but close to it.) But it should be lengthened for measuring greater beings like him, which is why I dare to write the following. Leaders should be held to higher standards than the followers.
Gandhiji gave us eleven principles to live by. Ten of them are very good but the eleventh was the deal-breaker. The ten rules are, in short; truthfulness, non-violence, no stealing, not collecting needless things, self-help, abandoning untouchability, fearlessness, using indigenous products, treating all religions equally. The eleventh is abstinence or celibacy. He insisted that even husband and wife must be celibates except for the purpose of having children. His obsession against sex was rooted in his guilty conscience arising from the fact that, in the middle of a night, he was with his wife when his sick father died in his absence. But he punished his followers for his natural youthful indiscretion. For that matter, he could have been in a bathroom at that time. He could not see or even if he saw it, he would not accept the fact that it is neither possible nor necessary for people to be celibates. Even Shrikrishna has said, “धर्माविरुध्धो भूतेषु कामोSस्मि Dharma aviruddho bhooteshu kaamo asmi" meaning, “I am the sex drive that does not obstruct the performance of one’s duties.” (Geeta 7:11) The choice of words here is significant. He did not say “धर्मायुक्तो कामोऽहं dharmayukto kaamo aham”. Now, since very few, if any, people can really curb their sex drive, violation of this rule was inevitable. Once a rule is broken, even if it were totally impracticable, it paves the way for breaking the other rules. This is the main, or perhaps the only, reason why Indians and Gujarati's in particular have forgotten Gandhiji’s ideals.
Gandhiji's obsession for abstinence caused him to oppose birth-control measures. The interested reader may want to see the transcript of his interview with Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of birth control movement, as recorded in Pyare Lal's 'Mahatma Vol. 4'. In response to all the valid arguments put forth by her all he kept saying was that a couple should make love only if they wanted a child. He never gave any convincing answer to her pleading for his support. If an ordinary person like this writer had talked like that hse would have been considered ridiculous.
Another mistake Gandhiji made was coining the word ‘Harijan’ even if it was out of great compassion for the downtrodden. None can doubt or disagree with his purpose. But he made the same mistake that he wanted to correct, that of judging people not by their individual merits but by the family of their birth and unintentionally replaced one bad thing with another. The idea that Brahmins were worthy of all the privileges just because of their birth in certain caste was wrong. Equally wrong is the idea that all people born in certain families are ‘the people of God.’ Even the harijans themselves now do not like to be called so. The word he should have used is ‘Svajan’ meaning ‘our own people’, or ‘Parijan’ meaning ‘relative’ to make the upper caste Hindus realize that the shudras were as much a part of the Hindu society as the others. Historically, the upper classes have been treating the shudras and the foresters (adivasis) as if they were outsiders. Calling them ‘Svajan’ or ‘Parijan’ would have avoided and can still avoid the ‘us against them’ feeling that prevails in Hindu society.
Gandhiji’s insistence on religiousness was also misplaced. Probably he found it necessary to concentrate on fighting the British and not fight the tyranny of all religions. He did get us the freedom from the British and we must be grateful to him for that. But who is going to liberate God as well as us from the shackles of the religions? Treating all religions as equally good cannot make sense because each one says that it is the only one approved by God. Some of them are so exclusive that all other religions are considered blasphemous. The only possible conclusion is that all the religions are equally bad and wrong.
Two more minor matters come to mind. The way Gandhiji made Mr. Kallenbach throw his telescope into the ocean water was not so good. It could have been given away to the crew of the ship for their use. Also, the way he found a loophole in his vow not to drink milk or eat dairy products, after it was practiced for some time, to allow goat milk as a substitute for cow or buffalo milk, was not really an 'experiment in truth'. He just found a loophole. It was an exercise in legality and semantics. It would have been a true adherence to truth if he had admitted his mistake in taking the vow in the first place and abandoned it.
None of the above, of course, diminished his greatness in any way.