Gandhi for the young

Mains Paper: 2 | Personalities 
Prelims level: M.K. Gandhi 
Mains level: Human Values lessons from the lives and teachings of great leaders, reformers and administrators;

Context 

• As the packaging of the “official” Gandhi becomes the norm, I do not find the real/living Gandhi 
• Courage  resist the dictates of the “caste association”, and choose to go to England for higher studies;
• The foundations of Pedagogue  “integral education”.
• Creative  “salt” into a mass movement;
• Determined with his frail body walking through the villages of Noakhali with a lamp of truth amid the all-pervading darkness.
• The attempt to reduce him into a statist symbol, I fear, has kept many  particularly, the radical youth  separated from him.
• Even though they speak of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar, and romanticise Marx and Che, it is not so easy to find them engaging with Gandhi in a meaningful and creative way.
• It is important to see the relationship between radicalism and the spirit of courage.
• As we read Bhagat Singh’s diary — particularly his note on why he was an atheist — we experience an inspiring illustration of courage.
• The courage not to find “false consolation” by deriving the idea of God and “next life”.

No wonder, it attracts the young, but then, what about Gandhi? 

• Gandhi sought to inject courage in our consciousness, the courage to fight the aggression of the hyper-masculine colonial modernity through the spirit of “non-cooperation”.
• The ethics of satyagraha, and the cultivation of the qualities like endurance and even the “art of dying” by reducing oneself to “zero”.
• Marx died in the late 19th century. Yet, with the dynamic character of modern capitalism, culture industry, creative Marxists like Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse reinvented Marx, and made his essential spirit of criticality relevant for our age.
• Likewise, I believe, it is not altogether impossible to reinvent Gandhi in the changing times, and evolve a new language of resistance.
• Gandhi’s time of colonialism, religious reform and nationalist movement.
• While the seductive slogan of “good governance” hides the growing cleavage between the rich and the poor, the city and the village, and techno-managers and farmers, the practice of cultural nationalism promotes the militarisation of consciousness, and the expanding culture industry transforms the
• aspiring middle-class into greedy consumers and non-reflexive recipients of all sorts of “apps” and techno-solutions.
• Environmental degradation, lynching and cow vigilantism, rapidly growing pornographic mentality, caste, religion and gender.
• The question is whether the sensitive youth can find something in Gandhi to come out of this insanity.
• Two important ideas of Gandhi — “soul force” and “gentle anarchy”.
• Soul force cultivates the power of the self, our inner resources, and our ability to have control over body, diet and life’s needs.
• The ethico-political power of the people rather than a bureaucratic state.
• On January 30, 1948, when he was walking to attend the prayer meeting in Birla House in Delhi, he was trying to see sanity in the insane Subcontinent.
• Do the youth realise that killing Gandhi is like killing a dream, a possibility; and this demonic force has not yet disappeared from our society?

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UPSC Prelims Questions: 

Q.1) Consider the following statements regarding ‘Swadeshi movement’ of 1905:
1. It was the first Gandhian Movement.
2. It was triggered because of the partition of Bengal.
3. There was large scale participation of peasants in picketing foreign.
Which of the above statements are incorrect?
a) 1 only
b) 1 and 3
c) 2 only
d) 2 and 3
Answer:  B

UPSC Mains Questions:
Q.1) Describe the M K Gandhi’s contributions in upgrading human values towards Indian Society.