When an Indian-born man I knew a couple of decades ago expressed an intense dislike for Mohandas Gandhi, I found it a bit surprising. Wasn’t the “Great Soul,” that quintessential 20th-century icon, India’s George Washington?
That certainly is the narrative created by historians — who, history has taught us, can tell a lie — and works such as Richard Attenborough’s award-winning 1982 film Gandhi. But there is a reason why Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie responded to that movie by lamenting, “Deification is an Indian disease. Why should Attenborough do it?” And with Gandhi back in the news owing to a newly published biography about him, it’s fitting to examine what that reason might be.
Any discussion of Gandhi should start with what most characterizes his image: non-violence and respect for all peoples. And the image certainly is a bit different from the reality. Everyone knows, for instance, about how Gandhi advocated non-violence in India’s struggle against the British; what is less well known is that, after the British’s 1906 declaration of war against the Zulus in South Africa, Gandhi encouraged that nation’s Indians to support the military effort, writing, “If the Government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.” And while the British weren’t amenable to this — thus, ironically, doing more at that time to ensure Indian pacifism than the drum-beating Gandhi — he was appointed a Sgt. Major in the British army and allowed to lead a stretcher-bearer corps.
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