Is India Independent?

When the first Prime Minister hoisted the Tricolour in the Red Fort and celebrated India’s “tryst with destiny”, Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta trying to bring peace between the two warring religious communities.  The Mahatma did not celebrate the Independence.  He was sad.  India had not become independent, according to him, because real independence is liberation not only from colonial powers but also from the evils within the human heart.  Until every Indian is free from ignorance and superstition, from hatred and violence, India is not free, argued Gandhi. 

India is not free even today, seven decades after Independence.  India is still haunted by the spectres of communalism.  The Mahatma must still be weeping.

But the Mahatma has been driven out from the country.  He can weep elsewhere.  The history textbooks in the BJP-governed states are being rewritten without any mention of Gandhi and Nehru.  Rajasthan has already replaced these visionary leaders with Savarkar, Hedgewar, Deen Dayal Upadhyay and religious leaders like Vivekananda and Aurobindo. 

Amit Shah releasing a publication at the inauguration of 29th Savarkar Sahitya Sammelan, dedicated to Savarkar's life and works, in Mumbai in April. [Frontline]

 

As an article in the latest Frontline says, Savarkar deserves to be introduced to school students because he is ‘said to have led a march of his classmates to stone a mosque after rumours of cow slaughter gained currency. This was his “revenge” against the “atrocities” committed against Hindus during Hindu-Muslim riots.’  The writer goes on to say that ‘If Savarkar stoned a mosque as a boy, it is almost in the fitness of things that today he is being resurrected in school textbooks by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has in its ranks men and women who watched or abetted the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.’

None of these ‘heroes’ projected by BJP in the new textbooks made any significant contribution to the freedom movement.  But they contributed much, very much indeed, to the communal hatred which was what Gandhi and Nehru, along with many others, tried to combat.  Bringing such people as role models for young students may yield some temporary political dividends but will be disastrous in the long run.

The present leadership in the country is playing with volatile religious sentiments with nefarious motives.  I know there will be powerful rhetoric delivered from Red Fort’s ramparts tomorrow.  I also know that the rhetoric will be deadlier than atom bombs.  Insidious power of hatred concealed in patriotic coating. 

No, it’s not Independence that will be celebrated.  I stand with the Mahatma wherever he is.  I wish I could redress his grief.