On the evening of 8 October, MPs from the INDIA bloc, including Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, started a sit-in protest against India’s Chief Election Commissioner at Raj Ghat, the Mahatma’s memorial in New Delhi. Mahatma Gandhi is back at the centre of India’s oppositional politics and public imagination. Protestors dressed as Gandhi have emerged across the country.
At protests in Mumbai on the same issue on October 2, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke called Gandhi “the soul of India”.
Because of his views but because of his basic insight that to change politics, we must work on its foundations: society, community, and the individual, he remained relevant for that long not. These are significant examples. The protests the country has seen in recent months are the strongest and potentially the most consequential in years. Mr. Rahul Gandhi and the INDIA bloc MPs appear to be effectively mobilising against the establishment. And Jan Suraaj’s focus on education and accountability is refreshing in a region where social justice has descended into cynical politics based on caste, religion, and patronage. The world’s largest democracy is experiencing a churn — as illustrated by cross-regional protests, mobilisation of Opposition lawmakers, courageous citizen action, and the emergence of a new party with a strategy to break the mould of regional politics in the Gangetic region. That Gandhi is at the heart of this churn speaks to his utility to those wishing to inject civility and decency into India’s public life, mobilise the masses for systemic change, and redefine electoral issues. On the right, the ruling establishment recast Gandhi as the symbol of cleanliness of physical spaces — streets, offices, transport, and hospitals. The Swachh Bharat campaign put Gandhi on government letterheads. It made Gandhi visible but changed what he came to mean in the public imagination: not modern India’s tallest political leader and a source of political renewal, but a symbol for the country’s quest to cure itself of being at ease with its own filth. This was an attempt to depoliticise Gandhi, to erase the fact that he possesses ideas for radical political change. But Gandhi is more than his problematic views. He had a public career of five decades. This is what the right in India has done vigorously, capitalising on the fact that Gandhi’s successors abandoned that space after independence. It is little surprise that they have found Gandhi useful. He is helping them develop those ideas and, most crucially, giving legitimacy to non-violent protest. It is proof that Gandhi survives in India’s collective consciousness. He remains relevant to any social force that seeks bottom-up political change, for which India’s neighbours too have shown a keen desire.
India’s citizens need not deify Gandhi; they must assess him for things he said and did in his time, some of which are offensive in our changed context. Forces that want decency and civility in public life, and accountability in politics, have discovered that they must start by changing what society should expect from politics, and that individuals should think of themselves as citizens with the right to demand accountability rather than subjects who must do as told.
