THE TIMES OF INDIA October 1, 2005It is commonplace to link India's failings in tackling large-scale poverty and destitution, to its inability to live up to the lofty vision of its founding fathers when they fought for independence. This line of thinking, however, can be turned around. It is precisely because we place Gandhi and Nehru, particularly the former, upon a pedestal that we do not examine their thoughts too closely. If we were actually to become intimate with what, for example, the father of the nation had to say, we might raise troubling questions. From a pragmatic perspective what matters is not how many tears one sheds, but how many children one saves. Indian politicians are typi-cally good at the former, but short on ideas when it comes to the latter. And they don't depart from Gandhi in that respect. If one takes the principal weapons that could save Indian children — modern medicine, high incomes and education (particularly female literacy) — Gandhi was ambivalent about the last two, and decidedly against the first. When Kasturba was dying, Gandhi would not allow doctors to administer penicillin to her. The incident is usually cast in a heroic mould by hagiographers, but it is reasonable to query whether this would have been Kasturba's uncoerced choice in the matter. Coherence or intellectual consistency are not hallmarks of Gandhian thinking. And it is not enough to gloss this as indicative of flexibility or lack of dogma. Gandhian fuzziness and lack of clarity have had severe negative consequences for India. Its later variant has been the trademark hypocrisy of Indian politicians for which, not accidentally, the iconic image in popular culture is the bumbling figure in a Gandhi cap. Gandhi's idea of the charkha as the solution to India's pauperism is similarly whimsical. If we had to personally weave all our clothes on a charkha, there would be greater pauperisation, not less. Gandhi's fetish for the charkha, and the mythical self-sufficient village economy that it represents, translated into the impulse to preserve small-scale industry from competition in independent India. Sectors reserved for small-scale industry could not develop economies of scale and consistent output of internationally competitive products. He opposed not just England but the industrial principle itself, spawning a loony Luddite left as well as a hard-right swadeshi brigade more strongly entrenched in India than anywhere else in the world. The paradox is that Gandhi was financed by industrialists: the Birlas, the Sarabhais, the Bajajs. As Sarojini Naidu trenchantly observed, it cost a fortune to keep Gandhi in poverty. The Gandhian model is usually played off against the Nehruvian one, but it is useful to remember that Nehru was Gandhi's protege. The economic autarky that Nehru instituted was a scaled-up version of Gandhi's self-sufficient village. It was a bad idea diluted, which helped extend its sway. Six decades into Independence we should be able to look our national heroes in the eye, warts and all.
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