Opinion Rajni Bakshi writes: Gandhi needs to be understood beyond binaries of love and hate

Today, Yunus is world famous as a pioneer of micro-finance and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As a boy growing up in what was then East Bengal, Yunus revered the protagonists of the Chittagong armoury uprising as martyrs. He had watched his father passionately involved in the struggle for the creation of Pakistan. So, in this household Gandhi would have been more of an opponent than a hero. And yet there was a welling-up of grief not only when Gandhi’s life was snuffed out but in recalling the moment decades later.

The same was probably true for millions of households across India where, on the evening of January 30, 1948, no one ate. Many of those people may have strongly disagreed with Gandhi on any number of things. Yet, the passing of Gandhi felt like a death in the family. Even more so, millions mourned because his being killed felt like an assault on an exemplar of the striving for swaraj, command over our self, our passions.

Yet today it is far more common to equate disagreement with rejection and/or vilification of the opponent. For example, the dominant narrative about Gandhi’s assassination encourages us to see it as a binary contest between diametrically opposing ideologies. Numerous dramas and films have already offered varied versions of Gandhi-Godse as a merely two-sided story. Even at an emotional level we tend to see the killing of Gandhi as a stark contest between love and hate.

This approach is convenient but dangerous. Such a divide makes life look simple, but it misleads because too much of reality is rendered invisible. This is dangerous because it strengthens the kind of politics that thrives on resentment against some “other” and is insecure in the face of ambiguities.

It could be argued that in everyday life there is a need to “keep it simple”. But this does not mean that a simplistic love-hate binary is all that we can manage. In fact, most people experience these emotions as a wide range spectrum within which they float about, almost constantly on the move. Love and hate are not the opposite ends of a table tennis table with each one of us being tossed this way and that.

This is why Gandhi’s life touched people in complex ways — as much inspiring as provoking. Yes, the popular telling of it, the card-board cutout version, became sadly one-dimensional. But even a fleeting, half-hearted, attempt to learn about Gandhi illustrates that life is made up of situations, experiences and truths that are multi-dimensional. It follows that intentions, actions and outcomes are inevitably muddled and move in a swirling manner – not binaries that can be tracked in straight lines.

This is why turning love and hate into a binary contest is as dangerous as raw hate by itself.

Maybe this is the essence of why Gandhi was an inspiring presence even in the lives of those who disagreed with or opposed him. His experiments with truth were well documented in real-time but it is unlikely that millions of people actually read those letters, articles or books. It was his own daily striving for “swaraj”, despite its many imperfections that generated an energy that flowed far and touched other lives.

Perhaps it was this that created the almost personal bond that countless people felt with Gandhi — even if they had never met or seen him. The American journalist Vincent Sheean was on-site on that winter evening when Gandhi was shot dead. Later, Sheean travelled on the train carrying Gandhi’s ashes for immersion at the confluence of Ganga and Jamuna. Sheean wrote: “The long journey of the train across the central plain of India was an evidence — if any were needed — of how every inhabitant, whatever his condition, felt this loss. Wherever the train stopped, and in a great many places where it did not stop, crowds of people had assembled for darshan. …In empty fields, at small villages and at crossroads it was even more impressive to see the peasants standing with their hands joined in the attitude of prayer as the train passed.”

Then and now, grieving over the manner of Gandhi’s departure goes with rejoicing in swaraj as a path to suprapersonal happiness.

Bakshi is an author and founder of the online platform, Ahimsa Conversations