अपने लिए शुभरात्रि और ब्रह्ममूर्हत वालों को सुप्रभात Gandhi was a great dissenter, a subversive mind, who challenged modernity to dream the dream of alternative societies. The BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), both of which are modernising, nationalist groups, never felt at home with him. Now in power, the BJP is seeking to make Gandhi more digestible. The BJP’s modernisation schemes, especially its emphasis on security, would be antithetical to Gandhi. They therefore seek to domesticate him by reducing him to a fragment, to little discourses about drainage, sanitation and cleanliness. Gandhi is reduced to textbook civics and social work, to a civics without ethics or politics. It is one of the most profound acts of depoliticisation. Gandhi, as the little dream of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) temporarily showed, can outshadow the BJP. In domesticating Gandhi into its framework of governance, the BJP is settling scores with its great opponent, by reducing him to a little social worker. At a deeper level, it does not see that jihad is incompatible with satyagraha. One can understand this better when one watches the BJP’s semiotics of security and the strongman. In seeking to create an inflationary idea of Sardar Patel, a statue bigger than the Statue of Liberty is being installed. It is prussianising the Indian state, creating a machismo around governance and security which was antithetical to Gandhi. Gandhi was a strong leader but whose content of leadership came from an ethics of conviction. He did not need the paraphernalia of the state to create a strong leadership. The BJP’s depoliticising of leadership and its gargantuan-ising of Sardar Patel has to be seen as part of the false myths it is creating. The strength of Sardar lay in curbing his ego and working with Nehru. The BJP does not have the strength to show such leadership. Gandhi and the giant of Bardoli are empty hoardings to the BJP. Let me emphasise that it is the depoliticisation of history, the dwarfing of Gandhi into boy scout virtues, that makes the BJP both appear virtuous while it eats into the power of alternative imaginations which can threaten its legitimacy. thehindu/opinion/lead/lead-article-old-repressions-new-tyrannies/article6545466.ece
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 23:01:14 +0000
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