Still relevant philosophy

Why Gandhi Still Matters, Rajmohan Gandhi, Aleph Book; Rs.499, Pages 200 The political appropriation of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy has been going on for decades. Now the trend has spread to unlikely quarters. Gandhi peers at us from posters, sharing space with his ideological opponents. Even personal effects like his spectacles, have been used as logos in government propaganda. Commercialisation has been a parallel process, initially for marketing products purportedly of cottage industries, and then for a whole range of other things. The powers that be appreciate the brand value of the name Gandhi. In this context, Prof. Rajmohan Gandhi’s latest book is welcome for it brings a breath of fresh air into cobwebbed corners of sarkari daftars and glittering platforms where Gandhi brands are appropriated or generated by professional marketing managers. This little book is the revised text of lectures Rajmohan Gandhi delivered at Michigan State University in the autumn of 2016. The author has added to that in the last chapter an insightful review of the long term significance of Hind Swaraj, “the only theoretical work Gandhi ever wrote”. Unlike political dynasts and their worshippers, Rajmohan Gandhi perceives “no case for identifying Gandhi’s descendants as a major part of his legacy”. However, the personal memories of the author impart to the narrative a spin that is all his own. Although a conventional narrative of Gandhi’s life does not seem to be on Rajmohan Gandhi’s agenda in this work, chapters three to five and chapter eight offer an outline, while some other chapters focus on particular issues, e.g, casteism and Ambedkar, Gandhi’s relationship with Winston Churchill, and Gandhi’s concept of ahimsa. Rajmohan Gandhi enriches his account with personal reminiscences of some of Gandhi’s famous followers, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. The author’s own memories of encounters with them bring these figures of history to life. The last chapter serves as Rajmohan’s own evaluation of Gandhi’s enduring contribution in terms of ideas. Thankfully, Rajmohan has an eye for the significant detail. “In different corners of India, from posters stuck to a tree trunk maybe, or to a lamp post, wall, or billboard, a Gandhi wearing spectacles under a bald head often looks at Indians, usually next to a text which may read, ‘Let is make India clean’, or a call of that sort. For me, the eye-glasses are a reminder of Gandhi the reader, writer and independent thinker.” The implicit message one gets in this brief review of Gandhi’s ideas and his life is that the Mahatma stood alone, not only in 1947, but at many critical points in his life and the nation’s history. His individuality was evident in the very first political tract he wrote, Hind Swaraj. Rajmohan Gandhi recognises that work as Gandhi’s major theoretical pronouncement and proposes that it contains four major themes: ‘the Empire’ signifying political domination and racial inequality, non-violence as a creed, the practice of satyagraha, and the worth of individuals as a value. Among these…