ગાંધીજીએ ભિન્ન-ભિન્ન ધર્મોના સમુદાયો અને અનુયાયીઓ વચ્ચે ‘સમભાવ’ કેળવવાનો સંદેશ જીવનપર્યંત આપ્યો હતો. એ સુવિદિત છે, પરંતુ રાજ્ય અને નાગરિક વચ્ચેના સંબંધસૂત્ર અંગે તેઓની ભૂમિકા ‘સેક્યુલર’ એટલે કે ‘ધર્મનિરપેક્ષ’ રાજ્યની હતી. વીસમી સદીના ચોથા દાયકાથી એક અથવા બીજા સંદર્ભે તેઓનું આ મંતવ્ય પ્રગટ થતું રહ્યું છે. એ નોંધપાત્ર છે કે ગાંધીજીએ રાજ્ય ‘સેક્યુલર’ હોવું ઘટે, એવું મંતવ્ય અંગ્રેજી શબ્દ ‘સેક્યુલર’ પ્રયોજીને એકાધિક વાર વ્યક્ત કર્યું છે.

ગાંધીજીએ તેમના પુસ્તક ‘મંગળપ્રભાત’માં આશ્રમવાસીઓ માટે ‘સર્વધર્મ – સમભાવ’ના વ્રત વિશે ભાષ્ય કર્યું તે પછીના જ વર્ષે, સન ૧૯૩૧માં, કરાંચીમાં કૉંગ્રેસનું અધિવેશન યોજાયું. પ્રમુખસ્થાને સરદાર વલ્લભભાઈ પટેલ હતા અને ગાંધીજી ઉપરાંત પંડિત નેહરુ તથા મૌલાના આઝાદની તેમાં ચાવીરૂપ ભૂમિકા હતી. આ અધિવેશન ઐતિહાસિક બની રહ્યું, કેમ કે તેમાં ભવિષ્યનું સ્વરાજ કેવું હશે, તેની રૂપરેખા આંકવામાં આવી. મુખ્યત્વે ‘મૂળભૂત અધિકારો તથા આર્થિક કાર્યક્રમ’ અંગે ઠરાવ થયો અને તેમાં સ્વતંત્ર ભારતમાં દરેકને સરખા અધિકાર સાથે, વાણીસ્વાતંત્ર્ય આદિ મૂળભૂત અધિકારોની માંડણી થઈ. આ અધિકારોની માંડણીમાં એમ સ્પષ્ટ રૂપે જણાવાયું કે ‘રાજ્ય ધર્મની બાબતમાં તટસ્થ રહેશે’. આ મુદ્દો, અંગ્રેજી ભાષામાં જેને ‘સેક્યુલર’ કહેવામાં આવે છે, તેવા રાજ્ય વિશે હતો પરંતુ ઠરાવમાં ‘સેક્યુલર’ શબ્દનો સીધેસીધો ઉલ્લેખ કરવામાં આવ્યો નહોતો. પરંતુ પછીનાં થોડાંક જ વર્ષોમાં ગાંધીજીએ ‘સેક્યુલર’ શબ્દ સાથે વિચારોની માંડણી કરી હતી, એ સૂચક છે.

કરાંચી કૉંગ્રેસમાં આ ઐતિહાસિક, ઠરાવ પંડિત નેહરુએ ઘડ્યો હતો. આ કારણે પછીના સમયમાં એવી ચર્ચાને વેગ મળ્યો કે ગાંધીજીની ‘સર્વધર્મસમભાવ’ની ભાવના ઠરાવમાં પ્રતિબિંબિત ના થઈ તે સૂચવે છે કે ગાંધીજી અને નેહરુ વચ્ચે વિચારભેદ હતો. અલબત્ત, માનવ-જીવનમાં ધર્મની ભૂમિકા અંગે વિચારભેદ કે દૃષ્ટિભેદ હોઈ શકે છે, પરંતુ જ્યાં સુધી રાજ્ય અને ધર્મનો સવાલ છે, ત્યાં સુધી તો બન્નેની ભૂમિકા સમાન છે, એવું ગાંધીજીના સન ૧૯૩૧ પછીનાં વક્તવ્યો કે લખાણોથી સુપેરે સ્પષ્ટ થાય છે. સન ૧૯૩૩માં જ્યારે તત્કાલીન કેન્દ્રીય ધારાસભામાં ‘અસ્પૃશ્યતા’ અંગેનો ખરડો વિચારાધીન હતો, ત્યારે ગાંધીજીએ આ ખરડાને ટેકો આપીને જણાવ્યું કે ‘જે રૂઢિ માનવજાતની નૈતિક ભાવનાથી વિપરીત હોય તેને ‘સેક્યુલર’ રાજ્ય ટેકો આપી શકે નહીં. આપવો ઘટે પણ નહીં (ધી ક્લેક્ટેડ વર્ક્સ ઑફ મહાત્મા ગાંધી, વૉ. ૫૫, પૃ. ૧૧૯. હવે પછી આ સ્રોત સી. ડબલ્યુ. એમ.જી. તરીકે) આ ખરડા સામેની ટીકાટિપ્પણમાં જ્યારે એમ કહેવાયું કે એ ખરડો ધાર્મિક બાબતમાં અનુચિત દખલ કરે છે, ત્યારે ગાંધીજીએ સ્પષ્ટતા કરી કે એવી ઘણી બાબતો છે, જેમાં રાજ્ય દ્વારા ધાર્મિક પરંપરામાં દાખલ કરવાનું જરૂરી બની રહે છે. અલબત્ત, અનુચિત દખલ ટાળવી રહી. આ પછી સન ૧૯૩૫માં તેઓએ કેન્દ્રીય ધારાસભાના કેટલાક સભ્યો સમક્ષ જણાવ્યું કે ‘જો સમગ્ર હિંદુ સમાજ અસ્પૃશ્યતા દૂર કરવાની વિરુદ્ધ મત ધરાવતો હોય તો પણ તેઓ ‘સેક્યુલર’ ધારાસભાને આવું વલણ સહી લેવાની સલાહ નહીં આપે.’ (સી. ડબલ્યુ. એમ.જી.વૉ. ૬૦, ૧૧૭)

આ સઘળાં મંતવ્યો સૂચવે છે કે ગાંધીજી રાજ્ય અને ધર્મ વચ્ચેના સંબંધો અંગે પૂરી સ્પષ્ટતા ધરાવતા હતા એટલું જ નહીં ‘સેક્યુલર’ શબ્દનો પ્રયોગ પણ વીસમી સદીના ચોથા દાયકા દરમિયાન કરતા રહ્યા હતા. પાંચમા દાયકા દરમિયાન જ્યારે આઝાદી બારણે ટકોરા દઈ રહી હતી, ત્યારે અને આઝાદી પછી તરતના ગાળામાં પણ તેઓએ રાજ્યના ‘સેક્યુલર’ લક્ષણ વિશે વક્તવ્યો આપેલાં છે. સન ૧૯૪૬ના સપ્ટેમ્બરમાં તેઓએ એક ખ્રિસ્તી મિશનરીને જણાવ્યું હતું કે,

જો હું સરમુખત્યાર હોત, તો રાજ્ય અને ધર્મને અલગ રાખત. હું મારા ધર્મ માટે પ્રતિજ્ઞાબદ્ધ છું. એને માટે હું પ્રાણ આપું, પરંતુ તે મારી અંગત બાબત છે. રાજ્યને એની સાથે કંઈ લાગતું-વળગતું નથી. રાજ્ય તમારી ઐહિક સુખાકારી, સ્વાસ્થ્ય, સંદેશાવ્યવહાર, વિદેશ સાથેના સંબંધો અને ચલણ આદિ વિશે પગલાં લેશે, પરંતુ તમારા ધર્મ અંગે નહીં. એ(ધર્મ) દરેકની વ્યક્તિગત બાબત છે. (સી.ડબલ્યુ.એમ.જી., વૉ. ૮૫, પૃ. ૩૨૮).

સન ૧૯૪૭ના ઑગસ્ટની સત્તરમીએ, આઝાદી પછીના ત્રીજા જ દિવસે પશ્ચિમ બંગાળના નારખેલદંગા મુકામે તેઓએ જણાવ્યું કે ‘રાજ્ય સંપૂર્ણપણે’ ‘સેક્યુલર’ હોવું ઘટે. વધુમાં સૂચવ્યું કે ‘રાજ્ય દ્વારા કોઈ પણ ધર્મવિશેષની શૈક્ષણિક સંસ્થાને સહાય ના કરવી જોઈએ.’(સી.ડબલ્યુ.એમ.જી.,વૉ.૮૯, પૃ. ૫૬)

ગાંધીજી કેવળ મંતવ્ય વ્યક્ત કરીને અટક્યા નથી. જ્યારે સોમનાથ મંદિરમાં જીર્ણોદ્ધારની ચર્ચા ચાલી, ત્યારે સન ૧૯૪૭ના નવેમ્બરમાં, તેઓએ દિલ્હીની પ્રાર્થનાસભામાં જણાવ્યું,

એક ભાઈ મને લખે છે કે જે સોમનાથ મંદિર હતું, તેનો જીર્ણોદ્ધાર થશે. તેને માટે પૈસા જોઈએ અને ત્યાં જૂનાગઢમાં શામળદાસ ગાંધીએ જે આરઝી હકૂમત બનાવી છે, તેમાંથી તે પચાસ હજાર રૂપિયા તેને માટે આપી રહ્યા છે. જામનગરે એક લાખ રૂપિયા આપવાનું કહ્યું છે. સરદાર (વલ્લભભાઈ) આજે જ્યારે મારી પાસે અહીં આવ્યા, ત્યારે મેં એમને પૂછ્યું કે સરકાર થઈને તમે ત્યાં એવી હકૂમત બનાવશો કે જે હિન્દુધર્મને માટે પોતાના ખજાનામાંથી જેટલા પૈસા જોઈએ તે કાઢીને આપી દે. હકૂમત તો બધા લોકો માટે બનાવવામાં આવી છે. અંગ્રેજી શબ્દ તો તેને માટે ‘સેક્યુલર’ છે. અર્થાત્ તે કોઈ ધાર્મિક સરકાર નથી અથવા એવું કહો કે તે એક ધર્મની નથી. ત્યારે તે એવું તો ના કરી શકે કે ચલો, હિંદુઓ માટે આટલા પૈસા કાઢીને આપી દે, શીખો માટે આટલા અને મુસલમાનો માટે આટલા. આપણી પાસે તો એક જ મુદ્દો છે અને તે એ કે બધા લોકો હિંદી છે. ધર્મ તો અલગ-અલગ વ્યક્તિનો અલગ-અલગ રહી શકે છે. મારી પાસે મારો ધર્મ છે અને તમારી પાસે તમારો. (પ્રાર્થના-પ્રવચન, ખંડ-૨, પૃ.૧૩૫, સસ્તા સાહિત્ય મંડળ તથા સી. ડબલ્યુ. એમ. જી., વૉ. ૯૦, પૃ. ૧૨૭)

ગાંધીજીના સન ૧૯૩૩થી શરૂ કરી આઝાદી આવી ત્યાં સુધીનાં વક્તવ્યો દર્શાવે છે કે આઝાદ ભારતનું રાજ્ય ‘સેક્યુલર’ રહેશે, તે અંગે તેઓ અને પંડિત નેહરુ વચ્ચે કોઈ વિચારભેદ નહોતો. અહીં પ્રશ્ન એ થાય છે કે સર્વધર્મસમભાવ તથા ‘સેક્યુલર’ રાજ્ય કે તેના ‘સેક્યુલારિઝમ’ વચ્ચે કોઈ પ્રકારનું અંતર ખરું કે નહીં? ગાંધીજીની જે અપેક્ષા આશ્રમવાસીઓ પાસે હતી, તેને તેઓની દૃષ્ટિએ આદર્શ સ્થિતિ ગણવી જોઈએ, પરંતુ રાજ્યના સંદર્ભમાં, સ્વતંત્ર ભારતના રાજ્યના સંદર્ભમાં ગાંધીજી તે ‘સેક્યુલર’ હોય, ધર્મની બાબતમાં તટસ્થ હોય – એવી ભૂમિકા ધરાવતા હતા. એક ડગલું આગળ જઈને એમ પણ કહી શકીએ કે રાજ્ય સર્વે ધર્મો પ્રત્યે સમાન આદર રાખે, તેવી ગાંધીજીની આશા-આકાંક્ષા હતી. તેઓની વિચારસૃષ્ટિમાં આધ્યાત્મિક પાસું અગ્રગણ્ય હોવાની સાથે રાજ્યપ્રકરણી પાસું પણ સંકલિત હતું, એ નોંધવું રહ્યું. આ રાજ્યપ્રકરણી પાસું ગાંધીજી જેને પ્રાચીન ભારતની ‘સાંસ્કૃતિક લોકશાહી’ની પરંપરા ગણતા હતા, તેની સાથે પશ્ચિમની લોકશાહીની તેમજ નાગરિકત્વની પરંપરાના સરવાળાની સહિયારી ભૂમિકા પર અંકુરિત થયું હતું, એમ કહી શકીએ.                          

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સૌજન્ય : “નિરીક્ષક”, 16 અૉક્ટોબર 2014, પૃ. 02 અને 17

While true political legitimacy has to be premised on popular will, on the desire for self-determination, and on the capacities and capabilities of a government, it resides in a more subtle quality that has to do with the inherent morality of any structure of power that purports to rule a people in their name and for their own good

Every October 2, for the past 66 years, Indians have reflected on the legacy of Mohandas Gandhi, born on this day in 1869, and killed on January 30 in 1948. This moment of reflection has sometimes gone by in a haze of indifference, at other times sparked deep criticisms of the flaws and contradictions in Gandhi’s thought, and on yet other occasions has been observed as a day of ahimsa, non-violence. This year after the general election and the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Gandhi Jayanthi feels like a poignant crossroads. Young Indians seem not to have any particular attachment to Gandhian ideals like ahimsa, swaraj and satyagraha.

Is Gandhi still relevant?

Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s invocations of the Mahatma’s name are frequent, but not always convincing: Gandhi is either diminished into a parochial Gujarati figure, or reduced to a formula and a cliché. In the current administration’s rhetoric, Gandhi is not the fountainhead of modern India’s political selfhood but rather a mere icon to be monumentalised and trivialised in one go. Why just Gandhi, it could be Swami Vivekananda who is trotted out one day, Sardar Patel another day, and Babasaheb Ambedkar when his name happens to suit a given purpose. The particularities of the beliefs and ideas of each of these individuals, and their very different, often incommensurable contributions in the making of modern India, are of no relevance in an atmosphere of illiterate nationalistic jingoism and complete ideological vacuity.

But like with any thinker of such enormous and lasting influence, Gandhi’s repertoire of ideas turns out to be more surprising and more resilient than we might realise after many decades of having him be a part of our default political furniture.

If ideas like non-violent sovereignty, the dignity of the poor, the power of truth, and the difficult practices of moral courage are not fashionable today, there is nevertheless a key lesson Gandhi taught us, that remains as relevant in our own time as it was during the British Raj. This is the lesson about the true sources of political legitimacy, and how to recognise them, no matter what the outer garb of sovereign power or the architecture of a state.

Gandhi showed Indians and the world that the ultimate legitimacy in politics comes not from brute force, not from the state apparatus, and not even from mechanisms of political participation, electoral choice and representative self-government. All of these are limited, and all of them are fallible. The popular mandate of Hitler did not make Nazi rule legitimate. The benign despotism of the British in India did not make colonial rule legitimate. Totalitarianism that enters riding on the coat-tails of democracy, or imperialism that seems bent over with the self-inflicted burden of delivering benighted natives from their ignorance and backwardness — neither of these forms attains legitimacy merely because it is successful in capturing power on the basis of professed good intentions.

True political legitimacy has to be premised on popular will, on the desire for self-determination, and on the capacities and capabilities of a government, for sure. But in the end it exceeds and transcends all of these factors, and resides elsewhere, in a more subtle quality that has to do with the inherent morality of any structure of power that purports to rule a people in their name and for their own good.

Lessons from a flood

An illustration from recent events: the devastating floods in Jammu and Kashmir in early September were on the face of it a sign of climate change, environmental calamity and the inadequacy of early warning and disaster management systems. But as the weeks have passed, with houses still submerged; telephone, television, radio and Internet services still down; roads, bridges and highways in a shambles, and government infrastructure unable to come back up to provide even a hint of civic normalcy, it becomes clear that the real crisis in the Valley is a crisis of political legitimacy.

The State government has next to no legitimacy because it failed so completely to warn and evacuate citizens as the waters of the Jhelum began to rise to dangerous levels after unusually heavy rains; it failed to re-establish a basic quorum of ministers, legislators, bureaucrats, police officers and municipal workers who could operate out of private homes or makeshift offices while the government’s own buildings were under water; it failed to marshal, collect and distribute relief supplies that were pouring in from all parts of India and the world at the Srinagar airport; and it failed to provide a modicum of on-the-ground support to the agencies most involved in search, rescue and relief operations for the first few days — the Indian armed forces, the National Disaster Response Force, and the informal and spontaneously arisen Kashmiri citizens’ groups that worked tirelessly in almost every neighbourhood in the deluged State capital, Srinagar.

But these multiple failures of the local government in the face of the biggest natural disaster that the State has ever seen, are only premised on its already low credibility based on a track record of an indifferent administration, weak and faltering alliances, and the inability to put pressure on the Indian and Pakistani governments to resolve their long-running disputes and take concrete steps to break the perpetual political deadlock of Kashmir. The truth is that the floods only provided an alibi for a State government that has barely functioned for its entire term in office. That Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s National Conference (NC) was elected to power is a fig leaf that scarcely covers how much the party and its leadership is disliked and mistrusted by the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who knew well before the floods that theirs was a government mostly missing in action.

After the floods, even the pretence of law and order, of administrative control, of the delivery of basic services to the citizenry, disappeared entirely. Given that State elections stand to be postponed from December 2014 to next summer, there is no reason to expect that the abysmal standard of governance will suddenly be raised now. Persistent flood conditions and their aftermath, a looming winter, an impending durbar move to Jammu, and, very possibly, a spell of Governor’s Rule make it unlikely that the very politicians and administrators who abandoned their people will belatedly rise to the occasion and do later on what they ought to have done for the past month.

There are at least two positions on the electoral process as a route to political legitimacy in the State, especially in the Valley. Members and leaders of mainstream political parties like the NC and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) participate in State elections, enter into alliances with national parties like the Congress and the BJP, and form and run the State government if elected to power. Others like the Hurriyat leadership and their supporters do not participate in elections. Their contention is that Jammu and Kashmir is essentially not like any other State of the Indian union, and should not proceed as though it were exactly that, until such time as the overarching dispute about the status of Kashmir is settled in national and international fora.

The terrible predicament of the people of the State is that they have to choose between on the one hand, leaders who do participate in Indian electoral democracy and try to provide at least a semblance of representative self-government, howsoever interim its character — but then make a mess of their regime. On the other hand, there are leaders who don’t participate electorally at all, but don’t have the leverage to actually restate the problem and restart to the process of multilateral dialogue and conflict resolution from scratch. It’s a lose-lose bind. The floods only press home the reality that it’s a pathetic choice between a leadership that can’t govern in fact and one that won’t govern on principle.

In a situation of extreme crisis, like a natural disaster, this dilemma stops being abstract and becomes all too real. Neither a helpless Chief Minister wringing his hands on the Indian media sans his cell phone and his secretariat, nor a popular separatist personally delivering water and food to hundreds of stranded residents of his locality in Srinagar in a small makeshift boat, can present a viable answer to the question that has hovered over the Himalaya since Partition: Who really commands political legitimacy in Kashmir?

Over and above democracy

It has been suggested that what Gandhi has to give to Kashmir is the usual message — non-violence. Militants should put down their weapons, fundamentalists should embrace their neighbours and everyone who has lived through the conflict should renounce anger and vengeance to chart a new path to freedom. But in fact the real relevance of Gandhi to Kashmir — and more so in light of the floods, which have washed away all existing structures of authority, such as they were — is to table once more the question of political legitimacy.

How is political legitimacy in Jammu and Kashmir to be earned? Who can demonstrate having it? From rebuilding Srinagar after the devastation, to repatriating Pandits, to putting in place enduring systems of environmental management, to demilitarisation, to resuming talks with Pakistan, to tackling corruption, to instituting processes of rehabilitation, justice and reconciliation for all those affected by 25 years of war — what needs to be done, and who will do it?

Gandhi’s achievement in forcing a subcontinent and later an empire to re-examine the very foundations of sovereignty urgently needs recalling. Not only have the floods in Kashmir left an entire regional population without any kind of government, whether popular or unpopular, but down south, in Tamil Nadu, another electorally powerful and massively admired leader, Ms. Jayalalithaa, has had to forfeit her mandate in the face of corruption allegations. Her democratically ratified legitimacy is nevertheless not sufficient to protect her from criminal charges in a court of law. And at the centre, a majority win for Mr. Modi and the BJP still leaves open the question of who this government really speaks for, who it represents and sees itself as representing, and who gets left out of its ambit.

The writing is on the wall: in a fractured democracy like India, numbers alone do not tell the whole or the true story of legitimate rule. Legitimacy has to be earned the hard way, through good governance, transparency, probity, lawfulness, justice, inclusivity and the capacity to demonstrate, both every day and in a crisis, that a government really is not just by and of, but also for the people.

(Ananya Vajpeyi is the author of Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India.)

courtesy : "The Hindu", 04 October 2014

Mani-Talk :

As Mahatma Gandhi's 145th birth anniversary comes up, the question returns: is Gandhi relevant to the 21st century? Niranjan Ramakrishnan, of Tamil origin but based now in Portland, Oregon, the cutting edge of 21st century technology in the US, seeks to give an answer in his Reading Gandhi in the 21st Century (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2013; book is going to be launched in India shortly). The most appropriate way of celebrating Gandhi Jayanti, it seems to me, would be to distribute the book free to all 12th class children and undergraduates (where required in translation, 138 pages) for each of the next generation to try to find the answer for themselves.

Ramakrishnan juxtaposes two contradictory predictions about Gandhi's continuing influence in the post-Gandhi future, one by Bertrand Lord Russell in 1952 and the other by a distraught Nehru in the immediate wake of Gandhiji's assassination. Russell believed that "while (Gandhi's) memory deserves to be revered, it would be a mistake to hope that India will continue to have the outlook that to him seemed best. India, like other nations, has to find its place in the modern world, not in the dreams of a bygone age. His work is done and if India is to prosper, it must be along other roads than his."

Nehru, haunted by the assassination of a few hours earlier, proclaimed, on the other hand, that, "The light that has illumined this country for many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country, and the world will see it…"

Who was right? "Both" would be Ramakrishnan's answer. For the fact is that India, from Nehru to Modi, and particularly in the Manmohan Singh era, has got so wedded to measuring progress in terms of GDP that much of what Gandhi had to say has begun to be seen as eccentric, outmoded, and perhaps even reactionary, the fantasies of a man who wanted to keep India poor. It would have been a charge to which Gandhi would have pleaded guilty. For while he certainly foresaw the prospect of economic growth, and even welcomed it to the point where "it would meet every man's need", he was also repelled by the inevitable concomitants of the worship of Mammon: the aggravation of obscene inequalities, pervasive malfeasance and widespread damage to the environment. If it was growth that benefitted a few at the expense of the many, demeaned the freedom of the individual, and was in violation of Nature, that appalled Gandhi and led him to seek an alternative in restraining wants:

"Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication of wants but in the deliberate and voluntary restriction of wants. Therefore, the ideal of meeting an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare"

Ramakrishan points out that an India in which the predatory Empire is replaced by a corrupt and domineering politico-industrial elite was not Gandhi's ideal. Apprehending the worst, Gandhi warned, "Every palace that one sees in India is a demonstration, not of her riches, but of the insolence of power that riches give to the few, who owe them to the miserably requited labours of the millions of the paupers of India." The palaces then were of the feudal Maharajahs and Nawabs. Now they are those of the denizens of Dalal Street and Nariman Point.

Gandhi also foresaw that it was the successful Indian who would be the biggest roadblock in the way of the unsuccessful. Ramakrishnan reminds us of the answer that Gandhi gave an American missionary who asked Gandhi what he most despaired of in India. Gandhiji replied, "The hard-heartedness of the educated Indian". The number of educated Indians has increased manifold. So, has the "hard-heartedness" of the burgeoning middle-class. Where, as Ramakrishnan remarks, "The genius of Gandhi lay in making urban India confront its conscience, and establishing the connection in the urban mind that India would make no viable progress while rural India was being bled white", in 21st century India indifference to the poor is combined with concentration on the better-off succeeding ever-more spectacularly. Gandhiji warned, "For India to run after the Golden Fleece is to court certain death ?" Is a Utopia predicated on unending material fulfillment even possible, leaving aside its desirability.

That is why he preferred a model of development in which all would participate – Panchayat Raj – even if it meant that the overall level of economic performance would be modest, for such an India would be an India of equality and dignity for all where the worth of the individual would be recognized as paramount and hence his freedom ensured, not an India of a few succeeding astoundingly while the rest wallow in misery at the bottom of the heap. He was always wary of the selfishness of the successful. His measure was not how high the successful Indian had reached but how high the poor had been pulled up and the more successful restricted their consumption to come level with the rest. It is a lesson the India of neo-liberal economics has not only forgotten but mocks. Ramakrishnan reminds us that Gandhiji cautioned us to remember, "How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige exact from man". And hence too his favourite hymn, Vaishana jana to tene hi kahiye, peerha parayi jane je : "Call them alone the people of God who take the woes of others as their own."   That should be the Battle Hymn of our Republic.

Among the few relevant quotations that Ramakrishnan does not cite, I would highlight the reply Gandhiji gave to a correspondent who asked what his "dream" was for independent India. Gandhi replied, "I shall work for an India (note: not "dream", but "work") in which the poorest shall feel it is their country (note: the stress on a sense of "ownership" of programmes meant for their welfare and "belonging" to a larger cause – the nation) in whose making (note: the individual as "nation-builder") they have an effective voice (note: not just a voice, as "the poorest" have when they cast their vote, but an "effective" voice – a decisive say – in the building of their own future and that of the nation".  Where Gandhi's final disappointment was the Constitution drafting committee's refusal to countenance village democracy as the basic building block of our democracy, we now have, thanks to Rajiv Gandhi, Parts IX and IXA of the Constitution that enshrine democratic decentralization in both rural and urban India. The failure to effectively implement these critical provisions of the Constitution, while concentrating on an economic model that consolidates the concentration of wealth and income in a relatively few, thus "privatizing segments of our electoral process", as Ramakrishnan puts it, is to jeopardize both our democracy and our development. We need an India that Gandhi desired "in which the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land".

In a wide sweep, besides the defining 21st century features of neo-liberal privatization and globalization of the world economy, Ramakrishnan takes in global terrorism, global multiculturalism, and  global environment questions, to ask whether Gandhi had anything of relevance to say on these matters which had not even entered the global vocabulary 66 years ago when Gandhiji was shot. His answers are both surprising and educative.

On terrorism, Gandhi recognized that, at bottom, the terrorist succeeds when he spreads general panic among the populace at large, and pushes Governments into becoming more and more authoritarian, less and less liberal in protecting hard-won individual freedoms, and imitative of terrorist methods in responding to terrorism.  The "fundamentalist" Gandhian response was to refuse to be terrorized by terrorism, but to confront it with "fearlessness", not by "seeking justice through murder… (for) our people will become victims of our atrocities." How could Gandhi have so presciently foreseen Batla House? He wanted us instead to confront terrorism by being "gentle, truthful, humble, knowing, willful yet loving, never criminal and hateful". It is a lesson the 21st century needs to learn all the way from Barak Obama to the constable on the beat.

On multiculturalism, another 21st century global imperative, Ramakrishnan points out that "To Gandhi, there was no clever artifice around divides other than transcending them…The path of stoking hatreds against some third group or power was anathema." The only hope, as Gandhi saw it, lay in his refusal to let his "house be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any". It is a lesson for all, not just Indians, to learn as the world, particularly the developed world, adjusts to the greatest migrations from the global South to the global North ever known to humankind. To India, as to the world, Gandhi said, "I do not expect the India of my dreams to be wholly Hindu or wholly Christian or wholly Mussalman, but I want it to be wholly tolerant."

And on the environment, Ramakrishnan has Gandhi remind us: "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million (now 1 billion 300 million) took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts." The world is being stripped bare by big business locusts. Climate change is not, for our generation, a challenge for the future but a here-and-now matter. The Gandhian warning that "trading in soil fertility for the sake of quick returns would prove to be a disastrous, short-sighted policy" has been proved to be true. Citing the MIT's Limits to Growth report, Ramakrishnan points to their prediction that "a global economic collapse as a direct consequence of galloping consumption resulting in the exhaustion of natural resources" to underline Gandhiji's insistence on self-restraint as the only sure way of preventing a global environmental holocaust.

The 21st century is not all that far from Gandhi. He died more than half a century before the onset of the new millennium, but for us to consider Gandhi to be Jurassic Park would be to do ourselves the greatest disservice.  Our grateful thanks are due to Niranjan Ramakrishnan for reminding us of this.

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(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha)

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