I am not sure if Gandhiji thought about it in this way or not, but when you have a large illiterate, superstitious mass of people who have been rendered humiliated and emasculated by a ruthless, exploitative foreign power, what recourse do you have in order to inspire your countrymen other than championing the exact opposite by being and advocating that everyone else be compassionate, inclusive and proudly self-sufficient?

I too believe that a creed of compassion, inclusiveness and self-sufficiency carried to extreme can lead to adverse consequences as it has done for India, but that is not the fault of all the great men who led us to independence. Instead, it is the fault of those who followed them after independence and refused to open their collective mind to the possibility that the ideas (and the leaders )that were best for achieving independence may not be the best for achieving progress; or to the possibility that true inclusiveness requires acceptance of one’s limits, that true compassion requires a resolute commitment to one’s security and that for most nations true self-sufficiency only comes through trade and inter-dependency.

Nevertheless, in order to have any chance succeeding as a nation we have mature psychologically as a people. One of the requirements of psychological maturity is that we stop seeing all things in black and white; we have to begin to accept that two seemingly contradictory things are not always so and can be believed at the same time without going insane.

Being human, most visionary thinkers and leaders in history have demonstrated the flaw of being too slow to realize the ideas that they advocate for a particular set of circumstances may not be the best ideas for completely different goals.For all of us it should be possible to admire Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru as great men and awesome leaders of India’s struggle for freedom and to simultaneously believe that they had many ideas that were harmful to Independent India’s quest for rapid economic and political progress.

Indian economy was shock-proofed by the practice of self-sufficiency at the village level.What happens in other parts of the world does not affect a village economy.

Now instead of talking about villages,lets talk about energy in urban areas.I come from maharashtra where the energy crisis is deepening day by day.

To counter this we have adopted the path of self-sufficiency by taking to Solar products.Now can you explain whether this is right or wrong.

If we heed to your advise and depend on MSEB for power,we would end up spending the evenings in darkness and having cold water for an early morning bath(The gas cylinders have lately gone up in price)

He didnt have enough support for his policies in Congress; his real ascent was after the leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai and the “extremists” went away from Congress. Incidentally, it was only after around 1915- that alternative political parties came in to prominence. Prior to that, Congress was reduced to “firmans” or entreaties to British for their “sense of fair play”.

Would anyone explain the Khilafat movement, the charkha,the support for the WW1 and nearly for WW2 and not stalling RajGuru’s and Bhagat Singh’s trial?

No sirre; the history speaks otherwise.

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In any case, fundamentally there is nothing wrong with the ideal of local self-sufficiency, to the degree possible. E F Schumacher wrote a very good book on that “Small is beautiful”. I believe you have read it as well.

The idea that the world is second best is not new. Clearly first best ideas are difficult to implement. Practicalities automatically ensure we choose workable solutions, rather than the “theoretically best” solutions. The fact that Gandhi choose techniques that fit in with the Indian ethos, and that those worked clearly indicates he was aware of the necessity of being practical. He didn’t die fasting.

50 years later, it has become the national passtime to pull down Gandhi and Nehru for everything that is wrong with India. We really ought to move on.

On an unrelated note, Kirthi Ramakrishnan in response to one of your earlier posts said
“

While I don’t disagree that population is a real issue, I prefer to concentrate on things which are practical and positive and have a reasanable chance of acceptance and success. Things like RISC, microfinance etc give hope and optimism while ideas like population credits and controls are restrictive, pessimistic, and scary. It is a path of high resistance and will not get traction when alternatives exist.”

She/he has put it perfectly. Your ideas on population control and credits are indeed unfortunate. In a country like India, as much as we sorely need a national agenda for education, healthcare etc, change shall happen in small steps, in local communities. And in general, such changes are also more sustaining. Catalysing such changes call for optimism and hope.

Yes, Gandhiji (perhaps the only person I don’t mind adding a “JI” to) committed some mistakes; yes some of his fast unto death were very close to a blackmail; but I don’t agree with him being called an egotist. I can’t argue in favor of him coz I don’t believe in his ideology, but that won’t stop me from respecting Gandhiji. Every such article makes me respect the man even more.