Gandhi’s quotemartial

This then is where Gandhiji’s message shall be evaluated — in the fine print in advertisements and in shrill contestations in Lok Sabha. On the closing day of Parliament’s winter session, Mani Shankar Aiyar of the Congress and Ravi Shankar Prasad of the NDA council of ministers scanned a longago tract to ascertain for the Mahatma posthumously where his priorities lay: would he have given precedence to the expediencies of national honour over his adherence to non-violence, or not? The text at hand was an article penned by Gandhi in 1920 (‘Doctrine of the Sword’) and the legislators duelled over a recent DAVP advertisement. The government erred, held Aiyar, by highlighting this line: “If the choice is only between cowardice and violence, I do believe I would advocate violence.” It should atone, he said to vehement counterarguments by Prasad, by releasing another notice, with these words from the same article: “Non-violence is infinitely superior than violence.”

The MPs will, we are certain, continue to spar, but their inclination to precis Bapu’s philosophy into tidy soundbites — thence to be propagated through advertisement — is ominously tuned to the times. It has, of course, been happening for some years now. The flight of the Mahatma’s dictums into promotional material has been proceeding apace. Some years ago Macintosh computers recruited the great man to their cause by mounting hoardings showing him spinning his beloved charkha and captioning the image with the words “think different”. The masterful mobiliser of symbols had now been appropriated as a symbol of innovation and simplicity. The prospect of the Father of the Nation being drafted to sell a variety of goods was alarming enough to spur his great-grandson to action. Last year Tushar Gandhi contracted an American marketing firm to stop Bapu’s name and image from being misused. He, in turn, invited a barrage of criticism. How dare he, never mind the lineage, presume to own the Mahatma?

It’s a question that must be put to Messrs Aiyar and Prasad too. Who is empowered to decide how Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would have reacted to a particular situation?