La Grandeza de Gandhi

For me, Gandhi's greatness lies in the fact that his qualities can be admired at many different levels. The deeper you go, the more you find to admire. At the low end of the pool are the obvious things, like truth, non-violence, and the stewardship of the Indian freedom struggle. (Around here is also knowledge of all of Gandhi's faults.) But as you go deeper, you start appreciating his subtler qualities that don't get much airtime.

I will offer my own journey of Gandhi awareness as an example - starting with the obvious qualities and progressing towards the subtler ones.

Truth, Non-Violence, and Freedom

When I was a kid in school, I was told that Gandhi always spoke the truth, invented the non-violent protest movement, and drove the British out of India and got us freedom. I was too young to really appreciate the non-violence and the importance of freedom, but I was impressed by the honesty and truthfulness, even under the most difficult situations.

Gandhi Hating

As a teenager, I went through an anti-Gandhi phase. I started sympathizing with the viewpoint that Gandhi's non-violent methods actually slowed down India's freedom struggle, and we could have gotten free much faster by espousing more direct military action, as suggested by Subhash Chandra Bose and others. I also felt that there was merit in the view that British left India because there was nothing more left to plunder[1], and India was becoming a liability for them - in other words, India's freedom was more to do with British wanting out, and less to do with the Indian freedom struggle or Gandhi's greatness.

Non-Violence vs. Armed Resistance

Only later did I started appreciating the non-violence and peaceful non-cooperation movement. Over the years, I heard of more and more armed uprisings/resistance movements that either failed, or just continued to fester for years without really reaching any results. I also started appreciating how much courage it would have taken for Gandhi and others to calmly offer themselves up for beatings[2]. Most importantly, I got some understanding of how (very counter-intuitively for its time) this could actually be a far more powerful force than armed uprisings (which are usually on the fringes of society in most cases, and not really mainstream.)

And what I found most impressive at the time is that Gandhi invented this technique of non-violence and peaceful non-cooperation as a method of fighting unjust governments and other powers that be; and how this has inspired others all over the world and been used in many ways in many countries. This has literally changed the world. Especially amazing when you realize that when Gandhi first started doing this, neither his enemies (the British) nor his friends initially believed that it would work, but he saw further than them all, and succeeded in spite of all the naysayers.

Embracing the "common" man

Over the last few decades, as I saw various secessionary movements (called as freedom struggles by the supporters, and terrorist movements by the Government) fizzle out and die over the years, I began to appreciate the monumental difficulty of the task that the Indian freedom fighters faced. And I also began to see how it would be close to impossible for just the intellectuals of the early 1900s to really make much of a headway in the freedom struggle without the support of the society at large. Gandhi's greatness here lies in almost single-handedly changing the nature and composition of India's freedom struggle by involving the masses into what was until then the domain of intellectuals. It can be argued that this was a crucial turning point, and holding on to India became untenable for the British primarily because the common man had entered the struggle. And the methods Gandhi chose to do this are also very instructive - how he first understood the common man's concerns (i.e. his travels across the country immediately upon moving to India from South Africa), how he took efforts to show them that he could feel their pain (by living like them, instead of living like the intellectual that he was), and other things.

Politics - the art of the possible

More recently, as I see nations being ravaged by civil wars, and despotic dictators, and ridiculous levels of mis-governance, I begin to realize the magnitude of Gandhi's contribution to India, the free country. I am now amazed at how he managed to bring and keep together an organization as large and diverse as the Indian National Congress; how he brilliantly used persuasion, influence, veiled threats, mild threats, and major threats (e.g. fast-unto-death) to keep all the factions more or less aligned. For me, the fact that Gandhi "played politics" (some would argue "dirty" politics), makes him much more impressive than the saintly figure that is painted in our history books. It is a reminder that he did not live in a idyllic world of the past where just being a principled, honest, good guy was enough for him to rise to the top of the freedom struggle hierarchy. He lived in a messy world with vested interests, enemies and vendettas, and misguided charismatic leaders going against his vision - and he out-maneuvered them all to ensure that when India got independence, it was one country, and for 60 years afterwards, it has remained one country. And democratic. (For the purposes of this essay, we will ignore Jinnah and Pakistan, because that is a whole another story.)

I believe, that without Gandhi's practical, pragmatic, but still visionary stewardship of the Indian freedom struggle, India would have become like Africa after gaining independence. In 1922, Gandhi actually called off the non-cooperation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident because "India was

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