Gandhi: behind the icon - Searcher for truth

31/01/1998

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi 50 years ago shook India and the world. What is his legacy today? How far was he a saint, how far a political agitator? Was his idealism too other-worldly? Two expert observers of India give their judgement. FAR FROM being a wise and balanced saint, says Patrick French in his book about India?s passage to partition, Liberty or Death, Gandhi from the late Thirties onwards was an emotionally troubled social activist and a ruthlessly sharp political negotiator.

Fifty years after Gandhi?s assassination we still have not got beyond that dualism ? Gandhi the good, or Gandhi, if not the evil, the cloacal charlatan. Patrick French makes much of Gandhi?s views on excrement and his concern for chastity. Elevating Gandhi to sainthood is not helpful because it only encourages the demolition squad to highlight his ambiguities. Gandhi himself said: Saint is too sacred a word to be lightly applied to anybody, much less to one like myself who claims only to be a humble searcher after Truth. But failure to recognise that Gandhi?s life was a genuine search for truth is to deny later generations the wisdom he learnt.

George Orwell, who was no admirer of Gandhi, was able to bridge that dualism. He wrote: Gandhi?s whole life was a sort of pilgrimage, in which every act was significant. Gandhi lived his search for truth, and judged the truth by his own experience, warning that it is wrong to expect certainties in this world. That is what makes him difficult to understand. In his writings we find a lengthy and honest record of his search but we do not find a code of morals or a practical theory of economics; we find, rather, guidelines for a search.

In politics Gandhi is best known for his insistence that violence is not justified in any cause. He said he had learnt this from attempting to dominate his wife. That was Gandhi learning from his own life and applying the finding to politics, to public life. He would not allow any difference between personal and political morality.

Gandhi took the same stern view of wealth creation, saying that an economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values. He learnt to be critical of mass production from his experience of the destruction of India?s village industries. But his was not a blanket condemnation, for he accepted that there were essential industries and that not all rural manufacturing could be revived.

Gandhi was saying that respect for the right to work must be part of any economic policy. He would tell today?s politicians to face up to the contradiction between their promises of more worthwhile jobs and modern production and management methods. He was, of course, profoundly concerned about poverty but he realised that blind pursuit of wealth was not the answer. Anyone living in India today must be painfully aware that the enormous increase in the world?s wealth over the 50 years since Gandhi was assassinated has not removed poverty.

Gandhi?s suspicion of certainty derived in part at least from his profound reverence for the Bhagavadgita. The Gita teaches that we should concern ourselves with the rightness of our actions, rather than their outcome. Gandhi believed in action but warned that the consequences might well be unexpected. Thus he opposed utilitarianism because we could not be certain that the outcome of what we thought were useful actions would in fact be so.

He opposed a linear, or cause-and-effect, theory of history. But that did not mean he was an early post-modernist, because he held a very positive view of the power of right action. Surely this must be the answer to the crisis the Churches are now facing if Christians truly believe in divine providence. The Churches? task is to act rightly, having confidence that God will look after the consequences of their actions. To be pessimistic, and to search frantically for solutions, is to doubt God?s providence.

Gandhi learnt another lesson relevant to the Churches too. So much theological effort goes into trying to unite Churches. Gandhi said: I have come upon this inestimable boon, that all that is permanent in ancient Hindu culture is also to be found in the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, and Zoroaster. Might God not intend a Christian unity in diversity, indeed a unity of all religions in diversity?

If I have interpreted Gandhi correctly, I will inevitably be accused of advocating relative religion and relative morals. But there was nothing relative about Gandhi?s life, no compromises. I often think that he is ignored now because his austerity was so far beyond us that we feel he cannot be relevant. By acknowledging the courage and nobility of his life, and still accepting his imperfections, surely we can see the relevance of his search.
*** Mark Tully is has lived and worked in India for many years as a BBC correspondent.