જાન્યુઆરી, 1948ના રોજ મહાત્મા ગાંધીની હત્યાનું ઔચિત્ય શું હતું, તે અંગે હત્યારા નથુરામ ગોડસેએ દિલ્હીમાં વિશેષ અદાલત સમક્ષ એક બયાન આપ્યું હતું. આ બયાન સાર્વજનિક થવું જોઇએ? ઘણા સમયથી ચાલતા આ વિવાદનો અંત લાવીને કેન્દ્રીય સૂચના આયોગના આયુક્ત શ્રીધર આચાર્યુલુએ એક આદેશમાં ગોડસેના બયાન સહિત ગાંધીજીની હત્યાના દસ્તાવેજ રાષ્ટ્રીય અભિલેખાગારની વેબસાઇટ પર મૂકવાની સૂચના આપી છે. તેમણે કહ્યું છે કે, ‘નથુરામ ગોડસે અને એના સહ-આરોપી સાથે કોઇ સહમત ન હોય પણ, એમના વિચારોને ઉઘાડા કરવાનો ઇન્કાર ન થઇ શકે.’

આચાર્યુલુએ એમ પણ કહ્યું છે કે ગોડસેના વિચારો સાથે સહમત હોય તેવી વ્યક્તિ પણ ભિન્ન મત ધરાવતી વ્યક્તિની હત્યા કરવાની હદ સુધી ન જઇ શકે. વિચારોની અસહિષ્ણુતાના આજના દાૈરમાં આ એક મહત્ત્વનો નિર્ણય છે. અસહિષ્ણુતાનો મતલબ છે કોઈ ધર્મ, જાતિ અથવા વ્યક્તિના વિચાર, રહન-સહન, વ્યવહાર કે રુચિને પસંદ ન કરવી, બર્દાશ્ત ન કરવી તે. સહમતી અને સહનશીલતા માનવ જીવનના પાયામાં છે. વસ્તુત: આ સંસાર વિશ્વાસ, આત્મીયતા અને સહયોગનું પાલન કરીને જ જીવિત છે.

સહઅસ્તિત્વ એ પ્રકૃતિનો નિયમ છે. ઇકોલોજીની માન્યતા છે કે સૃષ્ટિ સંતુલન ઉપર ટકી છે. આ રોકેટ સાયન્સ નથી. આપણા શરીરમાં પ્રત્યેક કણ પોતાને ટકાવી રાખવા માટે પાડોશી કણ ઉપર નિર્ભર છે. દરેક કણને એ પણ ‘ખબર’ છે કે એના જીવતા રહેવા માટે બીજા કણનું જીવતા રહેવું આવશ્યક છે. દરેક જીવ અને દરેક પ્રજાતિ સહઅસ્તિત્વના આ નિયમ પર કરોડો વર્ષોથી ટકી રહી છે. પ્રકૃતિમાં એક જીવ બીજા જીવને ત્યારે જ મારે છે જ્યારે એને ભોજનની જરૂર હોય છે. માત્ર માણસના કિસ્સામાં જ એવું બન્યું છે કે એક માણસ બીજા માણસને વિચાર માટે મારે છે.

અત્યારની વૈચારિક અસહમતીનો પાયો ગાંધીજીની હત્યામાં છે. ગોડસેએ સરેઆમ કહ્યું હતું કે એને ગાંધીના વિચારો સામે વાંધો હતો. તે વખતે ગોડસે લઘુમતીમાં હતો, અને શ્રીધર આચાર્યુલુ કહે છે તેમ, ત્યારે કોઈને અંદાજ પણ ન હતો કે માત્ર ભિન્ન મતનો આધાર લઈને કોઈ માણસ ગાંધીજીની હત્યા કરી નાખે. આજે આ હકીકત છે, કલ્પના કે અંદાજ નહીં. ભારતીય સમાજ અને લોકશાહીનો પાયો ભિન્ન મતમાં ચણાયો હતો, અને આજે આપણે એક રાષ્ટ્ર તરીકે સંસારમાં જે સાહસ અને ભરોસા સાથે ઊભા રહીએ છીએ એનું કારણ આ સહઅસ્તિત્વ છે.

કોઈ પણ સમાજની મહાનતાનો પુરાવો એની મૌલિકતા અને અનોખાપનમાં છે. મૌલિકતાની ક્ષમતા જ એ સમાજને પ્રચલિત મતથી વિરુદ્ધ હોય તેવી વ્યક્તિને સહન કરવાની તાકાત બક્ષે છે. સોક્રેટીસ, ક્રાઇસ્ટ, બુદ્ધ કે ગાંધીજી નોખા હતા અને પ્રચલિત ચોકઠામાં ફિટ થયા ન હતા. સમાજે એમને સહન કર્યા એમાં એમનું નહીં, સમાજનું જ ભલું થયું હતું. કેચ પણ અહીં છે. સમાજ જેમ જેમ સંપન્ન અને સફળ થતો જાય તેમ તેમ એનું ગર્વ વધતું જાય અને કટ્ટરતા આવતી જાય.

ભારતને આજે ગૌતમ બુદ્ધની મૌલિકતા કે ગાંધીજીના અનોખાપનની જરૂર નથી, અને એટલે જ ભિન્ન મતને સહન કરવાની ક્ષમતા ઓછી થઇ રહી છે. સંપન્ન સમાજની ટ્રેજેડી એ હોય છે કે એનામાં અ-ભય(સિક્યુરિટી)ની જરૂરિયાત વધી જાય છે, અને એ સમાજ નિર્ભય બનવા માટે જાત-ભાતનાં બંધનો, નિષેધ અને મનાઇમાં જીવતો થઈ જાય છે. ગોડસેએ ગાંધીજીની હત્યાના સમર્થનમાં જે બયાન આપ્યું હતું તે આવા જ ડરને કારણે જાહેર કરાયું નથી.

પૂરા સંસારમાં સંવેદનશીલ માહિતીઓ એવા સંશયથી છુપાવવામાં આવે છે કે એને સાર્વજનિક કરવાથી ગલત માણસો એનો ગલત ઉપયોગ કરીને સુરક્ષા સામે ખતરો ઊભો કરશે. કેન્દ્રીય સૂચના આયોગના આયુક્ત શ્રીધર આચાર્યુલુ એવા મતના છે કે ઉચિત ખુલાસાની ઉપસ્થિતિમાં શંકા કે ગોસિપનું નિવારણ થાય. ગાંધીજીની હત્યા કેવા સંજોગોમાં થઈ હતી, અને એની પાછળ કયાં કારણો હતાં, તેને લઇને ઘણી ચર્ચા છે. આ દસ્તાવેજો સાર્વજનિક થવાથી ઘણી બધી બાબતો સ્પષ્ટ થશે, અને એ આવકાર્ય છે.

ઉદાહરણ તરીકે ગોડસેના એક સહકાર્યકર મદનલાલ પાવહાએ એવો દાવો કરેલો છે કે ગાંધીજીની હત્યા માટે 3થી 4 લાખનું ફંડ ઊભું કરવામાં આવ્યું હતું. તે વખતે ભારતના એક મોટા હિન્દુ વર્ગમાં એવી માન્યતા ઘર કરી ગઈ હતી કે ગાંધીજી નકામી જીદ કરીને પાકિસ્તાનને ‘ફેવર’ કરી રહ્યા છે, અને ગોડસેએ જે કર્યું એ ‘ફરજ’ના ભાગરૂપે કર્યું હતું. જાણીતા સમાજશાસ્ત્રી આશિષ નંદી એક કિતાબમાં લખે છે કે ગોડસેને રાષ્ટ્રીય સ્વયંસેવક સંઘમાં લડાયકતા ઓછી દેખાઇ હતી અને હિન્દુ મહાસભામાં એ ‘રાજકીય પૌરુષત્ત્વ’ વધુ દેખાયું હતું.

ગાંધીજી ઉપર અગાઉ પણ એક હુમલો નિષ્ફળ રહ્યો હતો, અને સરકાર પાસે બાતમી હતી કે ગાંધીજીના જીવને જોખમ છે. ગાંધીજીની હત્યા રોકી શકાઈ હોત? આ અને એવા અનેક સવાલોની સ્પષ્ટતા હત્યા સંબંધી દસ્તાવેજો જાહેર થવાથી થઈ શકશે. નથુરામના ભાઈ ગોપાલ ગોડસે (જેમને પણ જેલ થઈ હતી) ‘ગાંધી વધ ક્યોં’ કિતાબમાં લખે છે કે ધરપકડ પછી (રાજમોહન ગાંધીના પિતા) દેવદાસ ગાંધી નથુરામને મળવા પોલીસ સ્ટેશન ગયા હતા, જ્યાં નથુરામે એમને કહ્યું હતું, ‘તેં આજે પિતા ગુમાવ્યા છે. મારા કારણે તને દુ:ખ પહોંચ્યું છે. તને અને તારા પરિવારને જે દુ:ખ આવ્યું છે, તેનું મને પણ દુ:ખ છે. મારો વિશ્વાસ કરજે, મેં આ કામ અંગત દુશ્મનીમાં નથી કર્યું, ન તો મને તારા માટે કોઈ દ્વેષ છે કે ન તો ખરાબ ભાવ. મેં આ કામ માત્ર અને માત્ર રાજકીય કારણસર કર્યું છે.’ ગોપાલ ગોડસે પુસ્તકમાં નથુરામના વસિયતનો ઉલ્લેખ કરે છે. જેમાં એણે લખ્યું હતું, ‘સરકાર જો અદાલતમાં મેં આપેલા બયાન પરથી જ્યારે પણ પાબંધી હટાવી લે ત્યારે એને પ્રકાશિત કરવાનો અધિકાર હું તને આપું છું.’

આ બયાન હવે જ્યારે સાર્વજનિક થશે ત્યારે સૌથી વધુ ખુશી કદાચ ગાંધીજીના આત્માને જ થશે કે ગલતફેહમીઓ, ગલત હકીકતો, ગલત દાવાઓ અને પોસ્ટ ટ્રુથના આ દૌરમાં એમની હત્યા લોકતાંત્રિક પારદર્શિતાને વધુ વ્યાપક બનાવવાના કામમાં આવી.

સૌજન્ય : ‘બ્રેકિંગ વ્યૂઝ’ નામક લેખકની સાપ્તાહિક કોલમ, ‘રસરંગ’ પૂર્તિ, “સન્નડે ભાસ્કર”, 12 માર્ચ 2017

India is Gandhi's country of birth; South Africa his country of adoption. He was both an Indian and a South African citizen. Both countries contributed to his intellectual and moral genius, and he shaped the liberatory movements in both colonial theaters.

He is the archetypal anti-colonial revolutionary. His strategy of non-cooperation, his assertion that we can be dominated only if we cooperate with our dominators, and his nonviolent resistance inspired anti colonial and antiracist movements internationally in our century.

Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilized our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms.

The Gandhian influence dominated freedom struggles on the African continent right up to the 1960s because of the power it generated and the unity it forged among the apparently powerless. Nonviolence was the official stance of all major African coalitions, and the South African A.N.C. remained implacably opposed to violence for most of its existence.

Gandhi remained committed to nonviolence; I followed the Gandhian strategy for as long as I could, but then there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be countered through passive resistance alone. We founded Unkhonto we Sizwe and added a military dimension to our struggle. Even then, we chose sabotage because it did not involve the loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Militant action became part of the African agenda officially supported by the Organization of African Unity (O.A.U.) following my address to the Pan-African Freedom Mov

ement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in 1962, in which I stated, "Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence."

Gandhi himself never ruled out violence absolutely and unreservedly. He conceded the necessity of arms in certain situations. He said, "Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor …"

Violence and nonviolence are not mutually exclusive; it is the predominance of the one or the other that labels a struggle.

Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 at the age of 23. Within a week he collided head on with racism. His immediate response was to flee the country that so degraded people of color, but then his inner resilience overpowered him with a sense of mission, and he stayed to redeem the dignity of the racially exploited, to pave the way for the liberation of the colonized the world over and to develop a blueprint for a new social order.

He left 21 years later, a near maha atma (great soul). There is no doubt in my mind that by the time he was violently removed from our world, he had transited into that state.

No Ordinary Leader – Divinely Inspired

He was no ordinary leader. There are those who believe he was divinely inspired, and it is difficult not to believe with them. He dared to exhort nonviolence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded on us; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self-interest with group interest without minimizing the importance of self. In fact, the interdependence of the social and the personal is at the heart of his philosophy. He seeks the simultaneous and interactive development of the moral person and the moral society.

His philosophy of Satyagraha is both a personal and a social struggle to realize the Truth, which he identifies as God, the Absolute Morality. He seeks this Truth, not in isolation, self-centeredly, but with the people. He said, "I want to find God, and because I want to find God, I have to find God along with other people. I don't believe I can find God alone. If I did, I would be running to the Himalayas to find God in some cave there. But since I believe that nobody can find God alone, I have to work with people. I have to take them with me. Alone I can't come to Him."

He sacerises his revolution, balancing the religious and the secular.

Awakening

His awakening came on the hilly terrain of the so-called Bambata Rebellion, where as a passionate British patriot, he led his Indian stretcher-bearer corps to serve the Empire, but British brutality against the Zulus roused his soul against violence as nothing had done before. He determined, on that battlefield, to wrest himself of all material attachments and devote himself completely and totally to eliminating violence and serving humanity. The sight of wounded and whipped Zulus, mercilessly abandoned by their British persecutors, so appalled him that he turned full circle from his admiration for all things British to celebrating the indigenous and ethnic. He resuscitated the culture of the colonized and the fullness of Indian resistance against the British; he revived Indian handicrafts and made these into an economic weapon against the colonizer in his call for swadeshi – the use of one's own and the boycott of the oppressor's products, which deprive the people of their skills and their capital.

A great measure of world poverty today and African poverty in particular is due to the continuing dependence on foreign markets for manufactured goods, which undermines domestic production and dams up domestic skills, apart from piling up unmanageable foreign debts. Gandhi's insistence on self-sufficiency is a basic economic principle that, if followed today, could contribute significantly to alleviating Third World poverty and stimulating development.

Gandhi predated Frantz Fanon and the black-consciousness movements in South Africa and the U.S. by more than a half-century and inspired the resurgence of the indigenous intellect, spirit and industry.

Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for nonviolence, justice and equality.

He exposes the fallacy of the claim that everyone can be rich and successful provided they work hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry. He preaches the gospel of leveling down, of emulating the kisan (peasant), not the zamindar (landlord), for "all can be kisans, but only a few zamindars."

He stepped down from his comfortable life to join the masses on their level to seek equality with them. "I can't hope to bring about economic equality… I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor."

From his understanding of wealth and poverty came his understanding of labor and capital, which led him to the solution of trusteeship based on the belief that there is no private ownership of capital; it is given in trust for redistribution and equalization. Similarly, while recognizing differential aptitudes and talents, he holds that these are gifts from God to be used for the collective good.

He seeks an economic order, alternative to the capitalist and communist, and finds this in Sarvodaya based on nonviolence (AHIMSA).

He rejects Darwin's survival of the fittest, Adam Smith's laissez-faire and Karl Marx's thesis of a natural antagonism between capital and labor, and focuses on the interdependence between the two.

He believes in the human capacity to change and wages Satyagraha against the oppressor, not to destroy him but to transform him, that he cease his oppression and join the oppressed in the pursuit of Truth.

We in South Africa brought about our new democracy relatively peacefully on the foundations of such thinking, regardless of whether we were directly influenced by Gandhi or not.

Gandhi remains today the only complete critique of advanced industrial society. Others have criticized its totalitarianism but not its productive apparatus. He is not against science and technology, but he places priority on the right to work and opposes mechanization to the extent that it usurps this right. Large-scale machinery, he holds, concentrates wealth in the hands of one man who tyrannizes the rest. He favors the small machine; he seeks to keep the individual in control of his tools, to maintain an interdependent love relation between the two, as a cricketer with his bat or Krishna with his flute. Above all, he seeks to liberate the individual from his alienation to the machine and restore morality to the productive process.

As we find ourselves in jobless economies, societies in which small minorities consume while the masses starve, we find ourselves forced to rethink the rationale of our current globalization and to ponder the Gandhian alternative.

At a time when Freud was liberating sex, Gandhi was reining it in; when Marx was pitting worker against capitalist, Gandhi was reconciling them; when the dominant European thought had dropped God and soul out of the social reckoning, he was centralizing society in God and soul; at a time when the colonized had ceased to think and control, he dared to think and control; and when the ideologies of the colonized had virtually disappeared, he revived them and empowered them with a potency that liberated and redeemed.

[The liberator of South Africa looks at the seminal work of the liberator of India]

courtesy : http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/sacred_warrrior.htm?utm_source=Gandhi-Journal-Articles&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Gandhi+Journal+Article-III+%28+February+2017+%29+-+The+Sacred+Warrior

Mahatma Gandhi (right) and Jawaharlal Nehru in conversation at the All-India Congress committee meeting. In December 1946, as Gandhi walked across East Bengal’s shattered villages, Nehru and Jinnah flew to London together to find a solution to the great discord between the Congress and the Muslim League on the scope of the new Constitution. (Getty Images)

Seventy years ago, as the year turned from 1946 to 1947, we were not yet a free nation but were becoming one. We were not yet a divided nation but were becoming one. We did not have a prime minister but we had someone who was becoming one.

Described officially as vice-president of the Governor General’s executive council, Jawaharlal Nehru was PM-designate. But of a nation that he knew, as did Gandhi, was in the throes of a division. In the West, and in the East, of undivided India, freedom and Partition were in the air. With the worst massacres in recent memory having torn human beings apart in the eastern parts of Bengal and in Bihar, Gandhi was where the violence was, where the pain and desolation were. He was in the Noakhali region of Bengal.

In the first week of that December 1946, as Gandhi walked across East Bengal’s shattered villages, Nehru and Jinnah flew to London together, at the invitation of Attlee’s government, to find a solution to the great discord between the Congress and the Muslim League (ML) on the scope of the new Constitution. ‘The last ditch’ is a phrase that could be said to have been devised to describe that effort. Can an undivided India be saved? Jinnah was clear. For him saving undivided India from division was not the aim. Creating Pakistan was. Jinnah was as a clenched fist. Tight, firm. The talks, held over December 3 to 6 failed. London said it would not contemplate “forcing… a constitution upon any unwilling part of the country”. There was no chance for the talks to have succeeded. On the 6th, failure was officially announced and the two leaders flew back, Jinnah ebullient, Nehru in deep gloom.

On the 28th, he did what was the most natural thing for him. With Congress president Acharya Kripalani, he went to Gandhi, carrying with him his great burden of care, of worry. Fear he did not know. But gloom he did. He carried with him all his churning emotions to place them before the Mahatma, and seek from him the gift of some light in the dark, some hope in the hopelessness. He reached Srirampur around midnight and turned in to meet the Mahatma first thing in the morning. But the 77-year-old host was up by 2.30 am to check if the few rudimentary arrangements he had made for Jawaharlal in that little village had worked for the guest’s comfort.

No, he was told. Why? Jawaharlalji refused to have any special comforts made for him. Kripalaniji, likewise. But I had told you to, he up-braided people around him. What could we do, Bapu, when we told Jawaharlalji that Bapu has ordered us to give you these essentials he said: ‘Disobey him!’

Gandhi smiled at this. “That is Jawaharlal”, he said “so let it be”.

Over the whole of December 29, Nehru gave Gandhi an account of the ML’s obstinacy at the London talks. He pleaded with Gandhi to leave Noakhali and return to Delhi so as to be there for the Congress and the interim cabinet to turn to, to consult. Gandhi was adamant that his work was where suffering was, Noakhali where Hindus had been slaughtered and Bihar, where Muslims were butchered. Nehru tried again, on the 30th. To no avail.

He had brought with him for his host, apart from the burden of his gloom and worry, a gift. A gift for the Mahatma? What gift – material gift – could Nehru possibly give to Gandhi and in that hour of the deepest darkness and sorrow, in the very heart of communal frenzy? And what is that gift that Gandhi would accept, not return or turn over for ‘public use’? It was, from the author of The Discovery of India, a pen, a fountain pen. The extraordinary Gandhi chronicler CB Dalal in his re-creation of Gandhi’s daily chronological sequence has a cryptic entry (in Gujarati) against December 28, 1946, Srirampur: “Jawaharlal and others came to meet. Gift of a fountain pen from Jawaharlal”. I have tried without success to learn more about that pen, its make, its present lodgement. I have not succeeded. Perhaps a reader of this column, a diligent researcher, archivist or a Gandhi museum conserver, will enlighten us about it.

I do not know but would like to believe that the following note to Nehru written at 3 am on December 30, 1946, was written with that new pen: “Your affection is extraordinary and so natural! Come again, when you wish, or send someone who understands you and will faithfully interpret my reactions…Nor is it seemly that you should often run to me even though I claim to be like a wise father to you, having no less love towards you than Motilalj i…. (But) somehow I feel that my judgment about the communal problems and the political situation is true … So, I suggest frequent consultations with an old, tried servant of the nation.”

On New Year’s day, as Gandhi left Srirampur he spoke to the villagers about his own shortcomings. “Point out my faults to me,” he told them. “Friends are friends only if they do that”.

Seventy years on, we have become good at faulting that old, tried servant of the nation. And adept at not consulting him.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is distinguished professor of history and politics, Ashoka University

courtesy : "The Hindustan Times", 06 February 2017