Fine and Dandi

Some parochial flavor at last! I had been thinking of putting up something India-centric for a while now and yesterday's Hindu article was a godsend for my cynical pen to start moving again. I wonder if the Open Page guys are going to indulge me , because this is a bit stronger than the usual platitudes. Here it is then, "Dandi is redundant"

Dandi is redundant

It is no great feat of the imagination to conjure up an image of the Mahatma sitting at his rickety charkha, spinning slowly, determinedly, a vision of India as a macrocosm of a self-sustained village community. It would be equally facile though, judging by current political events, for one to imagine him spinning in his grave at the continual defilement of his legacy by his very own political progeny – the Congress.

The AICC headquarters informs us that the Congress, to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the historic Dandi March, seeks to ‘re-enact’ it for a period of 26 days, beginning March 12. The ostensible purpose is to apprise the younger generation of the “great legacy the country has inherited from the Father of the Nation”.

The Salt March, as it is usually called, is one of the finest examples ever, of the power of symbols. Gandhi’s determined rebellion against the perceived injustice of the British administration galvanized millions of heretofore apathetic Indians to join the ranks of the ‘Civil Disobedience Movement’. The march to Dandi was a call to arms for a people long inured to suffering iniquities uncomplainingly. Concomitantly, it acted as a rite of passage for M K Gandhi, allowing him the psychological leverage to become the undisputed arbiter of the direction of the freedom struggle for more than a decade.

The Salt March was a deliberate attempt to subvert the power of the administration, an orchestrated act of anarchistic demagoguery. While unqualifiedly a stroke of political genius in its own context, one ponders over the possible significance of a ‘re-enactment’ of the same 75 years hence, by none but the ruling party. Why should a democratic, civilized, and developing nation want to relive anti-establishment activities?

The Dandi incident was one of the barely half-dozen occasions in Gandhi’s political career where he welcomed the Press. His intention, en route to the Gujarat coast, was quite simply, publicity for the statement of his resolve to persist with the freedom struggle. And yet, even though his scheme was incredibly successful in vitalizing the masses, he did not resort to publicity stunts like this one save as a last resort. And, more importantly, he would carry through each and every one of his public resolves irrespective of physical, mental or political cost.

It is perfectly acceptable for cultural heroes to be glorified. Gandhi, in this respect, probably deserves an exceedingly higher pedestal than the usual assortment of skilled murderers and raconteurs that populate the Hall of Fame of popular perception. It is therefore, understandable, in the typical Indian hagiographical context, for the nation to pay homage to the great man on the anniversary of his achievement.

But then, how much of the soul of the march to Dandi does the Congress hope to encapsulate for the benefit of the younger generation? Can they, or anyone else for that matter, even dream of empathizing with the fervor of dedication that those earnest followers of Gandhi felt as they walked alongside his frail form? What is it that they hope to ‘re-enact’? The physical aspect of the march – the 241 miles from Sabarmati to Dandi? Paula Radcliffe would probably do it better.

How do you celebrate the occasion of one frail, loincloth-garbed ascetic’s gesture of revolt against the might of the British Empire? Well, if you are the Congress, you start by forming an organizing committee with patrons-in-chief and patrons-of-programme and chairmen and vice-chairmen running around primping for the cameras. For a month’s duration, you spend money on pomp and splendor that might have come in very handy indeed for the starving poor in AP or the tsunami-hit destitutes in TN.

One may choose, alternatively, to be incensed or baffled by the cavalier use that the Congress makes of its rich legacy of upright statesmanship and homogeneously nationalistic ideation. It has, thanks to the internal collapse of the Indian far Right, been able to rid itself of its minority-appeasement policy but is now in danger of drifting back to the old days of toadyism to the ‘dynasty’. The megalomanic charisma of Indira is yet to wear off the senior cadres and insofar as the rejuvenation of the party is concerned, the sooner it is past, the better.

Which is why it is painful to find the leading lights of the Congress indulging in anachronistic jingoism at a time when India, both as a society and an economy, is preparing to take wing as a power to contend with. It would be a far grander gesture of political maturity should the Congress from this embarrassing prospect.

It is almost excruciatingly clichéd to point out that Indian politics, for uniquely indigenous reasons, is extremely corrupt and decadent. It is also palpable that political stunts like Advani’s Rath Yatra affect large, extremely gullible segments of the voting population. To ask our worthy representatives to refrain from manipulating the populace for electoral gains is akin to praying for snowflakes in Hell.

How, then, do we convince our leaders that, with all due respect to the Father of the Nation, we, his descendants, need to move on?