tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/gandhi-12850/articlesGandhi – The Conversation2023-09-08T14:05:41Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131052023-09-08T14:05:41Z2023-09-08T14:05:41ZBharat: why the recent push to change India’s name has a hidden agenda<p>The invitations to a state dinner to mark India’s hosting of this year’s G20 came not, as you’d expect, from the office of the president of India, but from the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/07/india-or-bharat-g20-invitations-throw-up-question-dating-back-centuries">president of Bharat</a>”. This has prompted speculation from observers both at home and abroad about whether this signifies an official government intention to rename the country.</p>
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<p>Some have <a href="https://www.livemint.com/politics/news/will-bjp-rename-bharat-if-india-bloc-rechristens-itself-bharat-arvind-kejriwal-11693915259439.html">suggested</a> that the ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata arty) is rattled, and is responding to the adoption of the <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/i-n-d-i-a-indian-national-democratic-inclusive-alliance-2024-elections-confusion-over-2-different-full-forms-for-opposition-alliance-4219182">acronym INDIA</a> (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) by a group of more than two dozen opposition political parties ahead of the general elections in 2024.</p>
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<p>There are numerous <a href="https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/trending/india-or-bharat-netizens-use-humour-to-debate-wonder-if-institutions-names-would-change-541603">debates taking place online</a> – both humorous and serious – about whether this name change ought to go ahead.</p>
<p>There’s a <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/india/bjp-mp-stirs-row-seeks-to-rename-india-to-bharat-1241795.html">growing push among BJP MPs</a> to adopt the name change, since “India” – the conventional English rendering of the country’s name – to some at least, symbolises “colonial slavery”. There have been <a href="https://news.abplive.com/news/india/india-to-bharat-country-name-change-what-supreme-court-said-1627743">previous petitions</a> seeking such a name change, but these were dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2016, and again in <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-or-bharat-here-is-what-sc-had-to-say-on-renaming-in-2020/articleshow/103398304.cms">2020</a>. </p>
<p>Just days before the G20 invitation went out, Mohan Bhagwat, head of the nationwide right-wing paramilitary organisation RSS (<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/03/706808616/the-powerful-group-shaping-the-rise-of-hindu-nationalism-in-india">Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh</a>) – the ideological parent of the BJP – <a href="https://time.com/6310821/bjp-rename-india-bharat/">called explicitly</a> for the use of “Bharat” rather than India, <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mohan-bhagwat-asks-people-to-use-name-bharat-instead-of-india/article67273901.ece">saying</a>: “We don’t have to think about whether anyone outside will understand this or not. If they want to, they will, but that is not our problem … The world need us today, we don’t need the world.”</p>
<h2>Constitutional change</h2>
<p>The recent flurry of speculation reopens old debates that were <a href="https://www.barandbench.com/columns/india-or-bharat-what-constituent-assembly-debated-and-what-supreme-court-held">discussed and resolved</a> in the Constituent Assembly in September 1949. Article 1 of the constitution, which deals with the name and territory of the Union, refers to the country as “India, that is Bharat”. In other words, the two names for the country have since always been understood as being synonymous. So the proposed change would mean altering the constitution to remove the reference to “India”. </p>
<p>Adding to the mix is the fact that a special session of the Indian parliament <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/govt-likely-to-move-bill-to-rename-india-as-bharat-in-parliaments-special-session/articleshow/103381210.cms?from=mdr">has been called</a> for September 18-22, thus fuelling speculations that this in on the order of business.</p>
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<p>But it’s unlikely that the path to the name change will be a formal one in the first instance. Like many significant changes that accommodate long-held demands of the Hindu nationalist right-wing in India, any name change will probably need to follow a process of societal normalisation.</p>
<p>For example, take the decision in April 2023 to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/14/mughals-rss-evolution-outrage-as-india-edits-school-textbooks">remove from school textbooks</a> references to the (Muslim) Mughals who ruled over the subcontinent between the 16th and 19th centuries. The push for this began to gain momentum in 2016 with the informal <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/up-front/story/20160321-the-great-mughal-whitewash-audrey-truschke-south-asian-history-828594-2016-03-09">#DeleteMughalsFromHistory</a> hashtag in 2016. </p>
<p>So the G20 dinner invite is merely an opening gambit in a longer play.</p>
<h2>Rise of the Hindu right</h2>
<p>Part of the rationale offered by supporters of the name change is that Bharat is an indigenous term that goes back in history and was prominent in the anti-colonial struggles – for example, the slogan “<em><a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/jaipur/aradhana-mishra-bharat-mata-ki-jai-slogan-viral-video-8926590/">Bharat Mata ki Jai</a></em>” (Hail to mother Bharat). But there are other more important political ideological factors that must not be missed.</p>
<p>As the backbone of the right-wing in the country, the RSS (founded in 1925) has always carried a vision for India as a Hindu nation that extends far beyond electoral politics. In this transformation of Indian society and polity, the idea of <a href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/hindu-nationalists-strategy-of-othering/">“othering” non-Hindus</a> has been crucial, and at various times has targeted Muslims, Christians, non-Brahmins, secularists, atheists, dissenters and so on.</p>
<p>So the proposed change of name from India to Bharat is not an anti-colonial move. Rather it is the creation of a binary designation whereby those who continue to espouse an “Indian” identity will, over time, become politically labelled as an “other” to the true and authentic “Bharatiya” (resident of Bharat) who is the “ideal” Hindu or Hindu-ised citizen.</p>
<p>In my 2017 <a href="https://www.nitashakaul.com/uploads/Kaul-2017-Journal_of_Labor_and_Society.pdf">analysis of the rise of the right</a> in India, I outlined the strategic ways in which the right relies upon contradictory leveraging of various dualities. One that I identified was India versus Bharat. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/on-the-difference-between-hinduism-and-hindutva/">Hindutva</a>, or political Hindu right-wing vision of India cherished by the RSS and BJP, is one where Bharat stands not just for a country that is India, but also connotes an idyll of pure Hindutva morality.</p>
<p>The right is seeking to create a new wedge between those who live in India and those who live in Bharat. Much like the divide between Remainers and Leavers in the UK is a legacy of Brexit, this kind of divisive politics has long-term consequences as the meanings attached to specific terms are altered. </p>
<p>The entities Bharat and India are constructed for particular political purposes. The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said in 2013: “<a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rapes-occur-in-india-not-bharat-says-rss-chief-mohan-bhagwat-509401">Rapes do not happen in Bharat, they happen in India</a>.” </p>
<p>But facts matter little in the face of politically charged ideologues. Contemporary India is marked by a politics of distraction, where the recovering of some idyllic past is used by the right to obscure from view the failures of the present when it comes to equal rights and freedoms for citizens, competitive politics and the rule of law. </p>
<p>For citizens in need of life and livelihood security, a renamed Bharat is a hollow promise trading on manipulated narratives of past glory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nitasha Kaul does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The move to rename India as ‘Bharat’ is part of a push by the Hindu nationalist right to create an ideologically pure state that in reality never existed.Nitasha Kaul, Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1981852023-01-27T16:03:09Z2023-01-27T16:03:09ZGandhi’s image is under scrutiny 75 years after his assassination – but his protest principles are being revived<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506801/original/file-20230127-26-tjrx0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Harshit Srivastava S3/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi remains, even <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/death-mahatma-gandhi">75 years after his assassination</a>, a useful symbol for many in India. For secularists, the leader of the country’s independence movement represents an imagined India of the past. For the current government, he is a means by which it can soften its international image.</p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.littlemag.com/nandy.htm">2002 essay</a>, academic Ashis Nandy, mentioned four versions of Gandhi, who led India’s move from British colony to independent nation. </p>
<p>The first is the Gandhi of the Indian state and of official Indian nationalism. The second is a puritanical and sombre figure, apolitical and dependent on state funding, the subject of university seminars debating: “What would Gandhi do?” </p>
<p>The third is the “Gandhi of the ragamuffins”, opposing mechanisation, large-scale development and a high-consumption economy. The fourth is Gandhi the non-violent revolutionary, a worldwide phenomenon, influential in movements but no longer feared by tyrants, nor taken seriously by the left. </p>
<p>Over the past two decades, however, Gandhi and his legacy have taken a thorough beating.</p>
<p>Reappraisals of Gandhi are, admittedly, long overdue. Titles such as “Mahatma” (“high souled” or “venerable” in Sanskrit) and “Father of the Nation” have worn thin since his death, as new events in India and worldwide that brought new scrutiny to his life, work and politics. </p>
<p>Some of these seem far-fetched, for example <a href="http://amanpanchayat.org/the-sinner-and-the-saint-2/">equating Gandhi with Osama bin Laden</a> and global jihadists on the grounds that they were similarly based on a “sacrificial humanitarianism”. <a href="https://theworld.org/stories/2013-01-30/was-gandhi-bisexual-letters-go-display-65th-death-anniversary">Speculations about his sexuality</a> provoked a debate about his supposed “celibacy”. In the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, his strange practice of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women">sleeping next to naked young women</a> was openly discussed. </p>
<p>The rise of much-persecuted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit">Dalit</a> people (previously known as untouchables) in political and intellectual spaces over the past two decades has given rise to trenchant criticisms of Gandhi’s complicity in the preservation <a href="https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/anilkumar-pv/">of caste dominance</a>, and the hypocrisy in his stands repeatedly that favoured the preservation of caste over justice and emancipation. Economist and politician Bhimrao Ramji “Babasaheb” Ambedkar’s <a href="https://thewire.in/history/mahatma-gandhi-jayanti-ambedkar-caste">evisceration of Gandhi’s politics</a> is now more widely known and accepted than ever before.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-uttar-pradesh-election-result-is-important-for-narendra-modis-plans-177192">Why the Uttar Pradesh election result is important for Narendra Modi's plans</a>
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<p>Of those images of Gandhi named in the essay, some are now seen as enemies <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/pm-modi-talks-of-narmada-a-day-after-rahul-gandhis-walk-with-medha-patkar/articleshow/95646275.cms?from=mdr">of the vision of progress</a> of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi. Others have been refined to sit comfortably within <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=245762184196590">the cultural nationalism</a> of Hindutva, the project of creating a constitutional Hindu state and institutionalising its version of Hindu culture and social order in contradiction to Gandhi’s vision of a <a href="https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/gandhi_religion.html">multi-faith nation</a>. </p>
<p>Those using Gandhi’s methods of protest are now likely to be labelled “<a href="https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/am-i-an-urban-naxal">urban Naxal</a>”, a Hindutva shorthand for intellectuals and activists involved in struggles of the rural poor, and have draconian legal charges slapped on them. </p>
<p>Gandhi’s international influence and reputation is now much diminished. Gandhi’s use of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-34265882">racist words</a> for black Africans has fuelled righteous outrage against him. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46051184">Malawi’s government stopped construction</a> of a Gandhi statue after these accusations, though pressure from Modi’s government resulted in the <a href="https://www.nyasatimes.com/lilongwe-mahatma-gandhi-statue-unveiled-at-indian-high-commission/">completion of the statue</a> later. </p>
<p>In Ghana, Gandhi’s statue was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/12/14/676691788/university-of-ghana-removes-gandhi-statue-after-faculty-outcry">pulled down</a>. <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/black-lives-matter-protests-gandhi-statue-targeted-in-london/story-PhDYQb8WxzhAwJySGpRhsM.html">Black Lives Matter movements in the US</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53025407">in the UK </a> also branded him a racist, and called for removal of his statues.</p>
<h2>How Modi uses Gandhi</h2>
<p>The most far-reaching bid to move India away from the nation that Gandhi imagined has come from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS was briefly <a href="https://thewire.in/history/sardar-patel-rss-ban-1948">banned after Gandhi’s killing</a> for its involvement in the crime. It espouses a violent communal polarisation with an anti-minority politics, and several episodes of <a href="https://scroll.in/article/912533/the-modi-years-what-has-fuelled-rising-mob-violence-in-india">mob lynching</a> with impunity, have been the fertile ground for its rise. </p>
<p>While Gandhi emphasised truth, <a href="https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/two-faces-editorial-on-bjp-govts-manipulative-ways-to-spread-fake-news/cid/1870851">fake news</a> has been has been used to mobilise mass support for Hindutva. The RSS also tries to quote <a href="https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2022/sep/16/mohan-bhagwat-quotes-gandhi-says-west-looks-at-indian-philosophy-2498732.amp">Gandhi in support</a> of their political approach.</p>
<p>However, Hindutva organisations organise tableaux annually to <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/hindu-mahasabha-recreates-mahatma-gandhis-assassination-in-up-1985761">re-enact</a> the assassination on January 30 1948. Those elements of the RSS who supported “Gandhian socialism” are in political hibernation.</p>
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<img alt="Men sitting at a long table wearing medical masks, with an image of Gandhi behind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506804/original/file-20230127-26-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Indian prime minister Shri Narendra Modi chairing a meeting of the cabinet, in New Delhi on July 14 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">YashSD/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Modi, the Hindutva state and the new official nationalism, though, still need Gandhi. Under Modi’s modernisation fetish, major Gandhian ashrams, like <a href="https://www.gandhiashramsabarmati.org/en/">Sabarmati</a>, have been given such a <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/un-gandhian-makeover/article36535134.ece">tourist-friendly facelift</a>, seemingly stripped of all historical gravitas. </p>
<p>Modi launched his <a href="https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/government_tr_rec/swachh-bharat-abhiyan-2/">Swachh Bharat</a> (or Clean India] campaign using Gandhi as the logo. Home minister Amit Shah <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/india-had-diverted-from-ideals-of-mahatma-gandhi-pm-narendra-modi-got-it-back-amit-shah-2818626">claims</a> that Modi is Gandhi’s true modern manifestation. </p>
<p>Modi supports the construction of Gandhi statues worldwide. <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/every-indian-proud-to-see-mahatma-gandhi-s-bust-at-un-says-pm-modi-122121501237_1.html">At the UN</a>, Modi said he represented the land of Gandhi, claiming that erecting a bust at the UN headquarters was a matter or pride for all Indians. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/10/2/bjps-gandhi-paradox">Modi’s Gandhian paradox</a> is that the only Gandhi he wants to assimilate into his project is a Gandhi shorn of his core beliefs, principles and modes of political action. </p>
<p>Is the influence of Gandhi’s ideals finished then? Not quite. Activists from the <a href="https://www.businesstoday.in/panorama/photo/the-activists-and-leaders-who-were-detained-while-protesting-against-the-citizenship-amendment-act-5943-2019-12-19">anti-Citizenship Amendment Act</a> movement (an attempt by Modi to end Muslims’ <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/1/30/gandhis-death-anniversary-galvanises-indias-anti-caa-protesters">constitutional equality with Hindus</a>) claimed to be follow Gandhian principles of popular protest. The farmers’ movement against Modi’s plans to give corporations power over <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/periscope/farmers-peaceful-protests-and-mahatma-gandhi/">Indian agriculture</a> also tried to mobilise Gandhi’s legacy to their cause.</p>
<p>Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, there is a clearer picture now of the man, stripped of much of the myth and mystique. A resource for many social movements forging alternative ways to meet contemporary challenges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Subir Sinha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Seventy five years after his killing, Gandhi’s image is under scrutiny, but the Indian government likes to use it for political gain.Subir Sinha, Reader in the Theory and Politics of Development, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1691302021-11-08T13:42:41Z2021-11-08T13:42:41ZHow one atheist laid the foundation of contemporary Hindu nationalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430383/original/file-20211104-19858-16kqm1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=59%2C0%2C3934%2C2646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh take part in a march in Ahmedabad, India.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-hindu-nationalist-group-rashtriya-news-photo/1235931212?adppopup=true">Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>India’s position as a secular nation is under threat. </p>
<p>Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the country’s <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/india-muslims-marginalized-population-bjp-modi">200 million Muslim minority</a> population has been increasingly targeted. Over the past few years, so-called cow vigilante groups have attacked Muslims for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36518974">consuming beef</a>, an act that many Hindus consider to be sacrilegious. </p>
<p>The ruling party has also <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-politics-media-analysis/indian-journalists-say-they-intimidated-ostracized-if-they-criticize-modi-and-the-bjp-idUSKBN1HX1F4">come down heavily</a> on free speech. </p>
<p>Concerned by these developments, 53 American universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Columbia, co-sponsored a three-day conference, “<a href="https://dismantlinghindutva.com/">Dismantling Hindutva</a>” in September 2021 in which scholars discussed the rise of Hindu nationalism.</p>
<p>India is the <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/hold-on-to-that-idea-of-india-the-worlds-largest-democracy-celebrates-its-75th-independence-day-tomorrow-where-are-we-as-a-nation-two-views/">world’s biggest democracy</a>. But according to several experts, that democracy is <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/02/global-democracy-has-a-very-bad-year">under threat</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/saba-sattar-797766224/">South Asian affairs</a>, I’d argue that it is important to understand that India’s move to a Hindu identity has roots in the early 20th century, when it was part of the British colonial empire.</p>
<p>In 1923, an anti-colonial revolutionary, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hindutva/XEdEQgAACAAJ?hl=en">Vinayak D. Savarkar</a>, first invented the term Hindutva, which loosely translates to “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/hindutva-vinayak-damodar-savarkar-pdf/hindutva-vd-savarkar_djvu.txt">Hindu-ness</a>.” This view emphasized that a native of India, even if not a Hindu, could fully embrace the geography, languages, and religions of “Mother India.” </p>
<h2>A movement inspired by a non-believer</h2>
<p><a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/spotlight/Atheist-fundamentalists/articleshow/6014430.cms">Savarkar was an atheist</a>, with little interest in religion, other than for political use. In 1910, he was <a href="https://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/vinayak-damodar-savarkar">sentenced to life imprisonment</a> for his participation in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7s415.5">plot to assassinate</a> the British Assistant Secretary of State Curzon Wyllie. </p>
<p>It was during his <a href="https://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/vinayak-damodar-savarkar">imprisonment</a> that Savarkar wrote his foundational treatise, “Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?”</p>
<p><a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/692">Christophe Jaffrelot</a>, one of the most noted scholars on Hindu nationalism, calls Savarkar’s work “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15zc7zj.45">the first charter of Hindu nationalism</a>.” Savarkar sought to unite religions native to India against Muslims and Christians, who were considered to be outside invaders. </p>
<p>Back then, Savarkar wanted to call the Indian subcontinent <a href="https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/veer-savarkar-hindutva-india/38073/">the great Hindu Rashtra</a>, or nation encompassing a common geography, religion and culture. Adherents of other religions, such as Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, would simply need to pay homage to Hindu culture and accept a national identity within the larger Hindutva framework. The same would apply to “foreigners,” such as Muslims and Christians, as long as they did not attempt to impose their own rule.</p>
<p>At first, the concept of a Hindu identity did not include a religious creed. Instead, it espoused bringing forward identity politics based on the perceptions of dominant ethnicity and nationalism.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Khilafat-movement">Khilafat movement</a>, a 1919 pan-Islamist campaign that encompassed the Islamic world and had a profound impact in uniting the Indian Muslim community, radicalized Savarkar. </p>
<p>The unity of Indian Muslims during this period in contrast to the divided caste-based Hindu community amounted to a threat, according to Savarkar, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7s415.5">gave rise</a> to a political party, the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hindu-nationalism-and-indian-politics/2E218CFDC1A1052F511A311C45D5A3D2">Hindu Mahasabha</a>, in 1921, in which he was a leading figure.</p>
<p>Following his release from prison, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Hindutva/ezS6SHt0hPwC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=vinayak+savarkar+more+radical+after+prison+against+muslims&pg=PA143&printsec=frontcover">Savarkar’s rhetoric</a> became less inclusive and grew correspondingly hostile toward Muslims. </p>
<p>In his 1963 book “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Six_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History/IajTDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">Six Glorious Epochs</a>,” written shortly before his death, Savarkar stated that Muslims and Christians wanted to destroy Hinduism. He also contended that India <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4408848">should enforce the kind of authoritarian rule</a> that was imposed in totalitarian Germany, Japan and Italy during World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man bows before a statue and a mural of a man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430384/original/file-20211104-21790-1xwm8cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man pays homage to the leader of Hindu nationalism, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in Pune, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-visit-to-the-hostel-room-of-veer-savarkar-on-the-news-photo/1146939046">Milind Saurkar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Savarkar also believed Muslims in law enforcement and the military were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244310000144">potential traitors</a> and their numbers needed to be kept in check.</p>
<p>Savarkar’s views became the foundation of contemporary Hindu nationalism. </p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<h2>The new shade of nationalism</h2>
<p>In 1925, another leader, K.B. Hedgewar, emerged near Mumbai and created the <a href="https://www.rss.org/Timeline.html">Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS</a>. Today, the RSS is the umbrella organization of the <a href="https://www.bjp.org/en/ourphilosophy">BJP</a>, the ruling party.</p>
<p>By the 1940s, RSS membership base grew to <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/politics/in-its-91st-year-rss-plans-to-reach-each-of-600-000-villages-of-india-115102101117_1.html">600,000 volunteers</a>. Today, it has well over <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/03/706808616/the-powerful-group-shaping-the-rise-of-hindu-nationalism-in-india">5 million</a>. Under Modi, Hindu nationalism has been <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rss-has-benefited-greatly-under-modi-government-1187765-2018-03-12">brought</a> to mainstream politics, and Hindu nationalists now hold prominent cabinet- and ministerial-level positions in government.</p>
<p>The RSS was twice banned as a political party. Once was after <a href="https://southasia.ucla.edu/history-politics/hindu-rashtra/nathuram-godse-rss-murder-gandhi/">Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by former member RSS Nathuram Godse</a>. The second time was more recent, following the <a href="https://thewire.in/communalism/rss-sangh-parivar-babri-masjid">demolition</a> of Babri mosque – a holy site in the north Indian city of Ayodhya – in <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/harsh-mander-on-bans-and-organisations-in-the-name-of-national-security/article7770177.ece">1992</a>. The demolition led to nationwide riots where 1,000 people, <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/babri-masjid-bloody-aftermath-across-india-147823-2011-12-05">mostly Muslims, were killed</a>. Hindu nationalists claim that the site is the birthplace of Lord Rama. In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/ayodhya-verdict-understanding-the-supreme-court-judgment/story-G7mzXfBFEDJ88PmuLj8CpL.html">allowed a Rama temple</a> to be constructed at the contested site.</p>
<p>After the first ban, the RSS and Mahasabha created their own political party called the <a href="https://theprint.in/politics/on-this-day-69-years-ago-200-leaders-formed-jana-sangh-it-is-now-the-bjp/528070/">Bharatiya Jana Sangh</a> – the predecessor to the current BJP – in 1951. The Jana Sangh ran on a platform of “<a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7s415.5">Indianizing</a>,” or assimilating, all minorities into a unified Hindu nation.</p>
<p>For centuries, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24590025">Muslims were perceived</a> by many Hindus as another ethnic group or a subcaste within South Asia, not as an external threat that needed to be warded off. But Savarkar did not believe so. He wanted to bring about an <a href="https://theprint.in/opinion/savarkar-wanted-to-smash-caste-system-cooked-prawns-and-didnt-worship-the-cow/161016/">internal cohesion</a> among various Hindu groups to protect against any external invasion.</p>
<p>Savarkar’s treatise was the <a href="https://www.thequint.com/news/politics/maharashtra-bjp-manifesto-proposes-bharat-ratna-for-veer-savarkar">foundation</a> for the <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/archive/01830/BJP_election_manif_1830927a.pdf">2014 BJP manifesto</a>, which set the party’s agenda to mend the “discarded vision” of a Hindu nation.</p>
<p>Secularism is written in India’s <a href="https://www.india.gov.in/my-government/constitution-india">constitution</a>, but the BJP’s <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha-2019/analysis-highest-ever-national-vote-share-for-the-bjp/article27218550.ece">reelection</a> in 2019 demonstrates that India may be undergoing a fundamental change and embracing a Hindu identity. </p>
<p>The Rama temple construction is expected to be <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/ram-temple-may-open-to-devotees-ahead-of-2024-lok-sabha-poll-1016182.html#:%7E:text=The%20Ram%20Temple%2C%20which%20is,elections%2C%20due%20in%20May%202024.&text=Prime%20min">ready before the next parliamentary election in 2024</a>. The building and celebration of a Hindu temple on the grounds of a destroyed Muslim mosque is, I believe, emblematic of India’s transition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Saba Sattar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar on South Asian affairs traces the growth of Hindu nationalism, started by an atheist anti-colonial revolutionary, to the one adopted under Modi’s government.Dr. Saba Sattar, PhD Student in Statecraft and National Security, The Institute of World PoliticsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1576662021-03-25T14:30:39Z2021-03-25T14:30:39ZHow women in India reclaimed the protest power of ripped jeans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391695/original/file-20210325-15-1jxqpcr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C1637%2C827&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After an Indian politician recently tried to shame a woman for wearing ripped jeans, women's responses were swift and sharp.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Twitter/@prag65043538, @sherryshroff, @ruchikokcha)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recently-elected Indian chief minister associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government sparked a swift and impassioned social media storm after he made a negative comment about a woman wearing ripped jeans on March 17. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru93HCjh7EQ">speaking at a workshop</a> organized by the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said he was shocked and outraged after he encountered a woman on his flight wearing ripped jeans. The minister took issue with her exposed knees. Rawat also pointed out that the woman was with her children and a leader of an NGO. He said these two facts combined with the ripped jeans put her moral values even further into question. The clip was <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/tirath-rawat-ripped-jeans-controversy-all-you-need-to-know-1781166-2021-03-19">circulated widely</a> in the Indian press. </p>
<p>Maybe it was the creepy way Chief Minister Rawat described himself scanning the woman’s body with his gaze or the shaming tone he used when he asked her where her husband was. Or perhaps it was the judgemental way he expressed his opinion that ripped jeans were incommensurate with running an NGO and being a mother, and not in line with his version of Indian values. Or it could even have been the casual way he felt he had the right to interrogate her clothing choice at all.</p>
<p>But women across India responded in protest with alacrity and speed as they <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56453929">posted photos of themselves in ripped jeans</a> on social media. Some even cut holes into their jeans before posting the defiant images. At one point, <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ripped-jeans-jibe-continues-to-draw-flak-people-flood-twitter-for-2nd-day/articleshow/81580095.cms">#RippedJeans was top trending on Twitter in India</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1372403763164684293"}"></div></p>
<p>As an art historian of South Asian visual culture, I am interested in the ways images convey meaning. Why did ripped jeans cause such a stir? What are the codes contained in this seemingly simple but ubiquitous fashion trend? </p>
<p>Historians and writers such as <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/why-i-believe-modi-is-indira-gandhi-on-steroids-by-ramachandra-guha-2262369">Ramchandra Guha</a> have acknowledged how serious affronts to civil rights occurring in India today have been steadily eroding India’s democracy. Within these deep and structural challenges, the recent ripped-jeans demonstrations offer a glimmer of hope. The online storm is a sign that India’s democracy is resilient and that protest can emerge in unexpected ways.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-india-modis-nationalism-quashes-dissent-with-help-from-the-media-125700">In India, Modi’s nationalism quashes dissent with help from the media</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>The meaning of clothing</h2>
<p>India has a history of using clothing to convey political meaning and even as a strategy to incite change. As anthropologist Emma Tarlo explains in <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3629913.html"><em>Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India</em></a>, what one chooses to wear has long been understood as a maker of meaning, a way of both expressing and shaping personal identity. </p>
<p>For example, in 1903 (as I’ve written about <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Power_and_Resistance.html?id=GRe4uAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">elsewhere</a>) the wealthiest man in India at the time, the Nizam of Hyderabad, chose to wear a simple western suit to the 1903 Delhi Durbar, a ceremony marking the coronation of the British monarch. In so doing, he instigated the displeasure of a British colonial administration who liked to see their native rulers dressed as spectacles of South Asian finery. </p>
<p>Later, Mohandas K. Gandhi wore a dhoti to have tea at Buckingham Palace in 1931. The dhoti, made out of hand-spun cotton, was part of <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Clothing_Gandhi_s_Nation.html?id=XxtuAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">the larger khadi movement</a> to protest the import of cheaper-than-local machine-made British products that led to the decline of the Indian textile industry. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Gandhi walks in his dohti next to men in suits." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391523/original/file-20210324-19-1jrrt73.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mohandas K. Gandhi in England, 1931.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/Collection/Landing/Mahatma-Gandhi/4fd6c5ff3482499b9457140fb6495a74/5">(James Mills Collection/AP)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Jeans go global</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/global-denim-9781847886323/"><em>Global Denim</em>,</a> scholars explore the different contexts of jean wearing around the world. Jeans in India have a specific history and context — and the meaning of a pair of jeans has evolved since the 1970s when they were first popularly introduced.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.economist.com/united-states/2016/03/26/the-meaning-of-blue-jeans">Jeans</a> have humble beginnings. They were developed as a durable attire for mine workers in the United States in the 1930s, but grew in popularity through association with cowboy films. In 1955, James Dean secured the jean’s association with youth culture, rebellion and counterculture when he wore them in <em>Rebel Without A Cause</em> to arousing effect. By the 1970s, this popularity had expanded. Punk and grunge bands put gaping holes in jeans to convey anger toward convention and society’s obsession with material things. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men lean against a rock. Both wear jeans." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391512/original/file-20210324-17-15ckbmk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A movie still from ‘Sholay,’ 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sippy Films)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a kid, whose family had migrated from India to the U.S. in the mid 1970s, I recall being a wide-eyed ‘80s teenager in a New York City store. The shop carried two floors of nothing but ripped jeans. I was shocked that the store had been able to source so many second-hand jeans. Only later, did I understand that clothing manufacturers had started producing new jeans with holes in them as part of their product line. In this way, they had turned dissent into a marketable fashion statement.</p>
<p>In India, the jean was popularized in the post-independence period with exposure to western films. The clamour for jeans received a huge boost when irresistible bad boy film star <a href="https://www.thequint.com/news/india/denims-are-not-just-an-american-legend-but-an-indian-one-too">Amitabh Bachchan</a> wore jeans in the 1975 mega-blockbuster, <em>Sholay</em>. The jeans were a reflection of the youthful and rebellious nature of his character. </p>
<p>But jeans were still inaccessible to the majority of India’s youth. India’s self-sufficient economic policies made access to foreign brands difficult or very expensive. Indians eventually turned to tailors <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/fashion/the-evolution-of-jeans-from-19th-century-californian-mines-to-everyday-indian-wardrobes/article6643869.ece">to stitch</a> their jeans. Finally, by the '90s there were domestic brands of jeans to be had, although foreign brands still had cachet, especially in urban areas. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1372173221978542081"}"></div></p>
<p>After India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s, foreign brands became more available, albeit still expensive. Ripped jeans came soon after with the increased exposure to international trends. </p>
<p>So in India, jeans were associated with the West, modernity and youth culture. That is to an extent still true. But jeans with holes have the added association with protest and dissent. </p>
<h2>Protest power</h2>
<p>Chief Minister Rawat has since apologized. But the backlash to his comments seems to be as much about his and his party’s policing of women’s bodies as about their policing of free speech, which ripped jeans have come to symbolize in general. </p>
<p>Today, shopping for my 14-year-old daughter in Toronto, it is hard to find anything but ripped jeans. In fact, ripped jeans are so mainstream that in some sense their association with rebellion and dissent has been muted by the process of commodification. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1373984055411150850"}"></div></p>
<p>This is a market that even <a href="https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/how-sanskaari-is-your-jeans-baba-ramdev-launches-ripped-jeans-which-is-sanskaari-enough-to-keep-our-indianness-intact-356435.html">BJP allies have invested in</a>. One company, owned by a yoga guru that sells ripped jeans tweeted: “Our jeans are ripped, but we haven’t ripped them so much also so as to lose our Indian-ness and our values.” </p>
<p>Ironically, Chief Minister Rawat’s comments, which sound out of touch not only for their arcane notions of modesty but also the agency they ascribe to ripped jeans, have infused new vigour into an old symbol. At least for a moment in India, it seems, ripped jeans have reclaimed their protest power.</p>
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<p><em>This is a corrected version of story originally published on March 25, 2021. It was James Dean who starred in 'Rebel Without a Cause,’ not Marlon Brando.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deepali Dewan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After an Indian politician disparaged a woman for her lack of morals because she was wearing ripped jeans, an online protest erupted, reviving the original protest-culture of the ripped jean.Deepali Dewan, Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Art & Culture, Royal Ontario Museum / Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1551012021-02-17T13:20:33Z2021-02-17T13:20:33ZWhy Indian farmers’ protests are being called a ‘satyagraha’ – which means ‘embracing the truth’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384576/original/file-20210216-23-9cmxyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=138%2C53%2C6934%2C4690&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian farmers hold a protest on the outskirts of Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/farmers-shout-slogans-as-they-block-a-highway-during-their-news-photo/1230997831?adppopup=true">Narinder Nanu/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past few months, farmers protesting in India’s capital, New Delhi, have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/indian-farmers-are-a-powerful-force-in-indian-politics-and-heres-why-their-protests-matter-154537">demanding the repeal of three farm laws</a> that were passed last year. These largely peaceful protests have been referred to as a “satyagraha” by many in the <a href="https://countercurrents.org/2020/12/farmers-protest-a-national-satyagraha/">Indian media</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/national/peaceful-satyagraha-of-farmers-in-national-interest-rahul-gandhi">politicians</a> and <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/adopting-satyagraha-farmers-protest-should-go-on-patkar-7168259/">activists</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://polisci.indiana.edu/about/faculty/ganguly-sumit.html">political scientist</a> who writes on Indian politics and society, I argue that the choice of this word, which means “embracing the truth,” is important to note.</p>
<p>It evokes a long political history that goes back to the Indian nationalist movement against British rule. </p>
<h2>The first satyagraha</h2>
<p>In 1917, Mahatma Gandhi, one of the leading icons of the Indian nationalist movement, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-society/article/abs/champaran-and-gandhi-planters-peasants-and-gandhian-politics-by-jacques-pouchepadass-pp-xxii-277-oxford-new-delhi-oxford-university-press-1999/1601CFED25679B1F58B19368A1FDA030#">started a political protest</a> in the village of Champaran in what is today the eastern state of Bihar. </p>
<p>The movement was on behalf of poor farmers who had been forced to grow indigo used in the making of dyes. The British colonial authorities who saw this as a lucrative trade coerced the farmers into growing the crop even as they were poorly paid. If the farmers refused, they were heavily taxed. </p>
<p>Gandhi <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-asiatic-society/article/abs/champaran-and-gandhi-planters-peasants-and-gandhian-politics-by-jacques-pouchepadass-pp-xxii-277-oxford-new-delhi-oxford-university-press-1999/1601CFED25679B1F58B19368A1FDA030#">organized a nonviolent protest</a> on behalf of the farmers. That was when the word satyagraha was used for the first time in the context of a political protest. </p>
<p>The use of this form of protest was both ethical and instrumental. The moral dimension sprang from Gandhi’s convictions. The practical element had to do with the realization that violence against the might of the British colonial empire was counterproductive. </p>
<p>Gandhi had first arrived at the idea of using nonviolent protest as a tactic in his <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26014">early years as a lawyer</a> in South Africa, where he was concerned with the maltreatment of the Indian community under British rule. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://baraza.cdrs.columbia.edu/satyagrah/">concept of satyagraha</a> was in turn <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23607222?seq=1">drawn from his extensive reading</a> of the works of the British poet and social critic John Ruskin, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. </p>
<p>Gandhi melded their ideas into what he had learned from the ancient <a href="https://theconversation.com/aid-to-dying-what-jainism-one-of-indias-oldest-religions-teaches-us-60828">Jain faith</a> about the concept of “ahimsa,” which involves minimizing harm to all living beings. </p>
<h2>Dandi march</h2>
<p>In Gandhi’s view, and that of his followers, satyagraha involved a passionate commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. To that end, he and his followers not only shunned all violence but steadfastly fought against social injustices. </p>
<p>Gandhi used the concept effectively in a protest against the colonial salt tax laws. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Mahatma Gandhi, salt march, April 6, 1930, Dandi, India" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384578/original/file-20210216-23-1hjvdp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mahatma Gandhi on the beach near Dandi, India, during the salt march on April 6, 1930.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GandhiSaltSatyagraha/52761c42bc874cd0a1c843e40722995e/photo?Query=dandi%20AND%20march&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=15&currentItemNo=10">AP Photo/Deutscher Photo Dienst/W. Bossard</a></span>
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<p>The Salt Law under colonial rule had prohibited the private production of salt, forcing Indians to buy this vital dietary staple at high market prices set by the British. </p>
<p>In 1931, Gandhi <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195672039.001.0001/acprof-9780195672039-chapter-9">organized a march that went across much of the country</a> to the seaside town of Dandi, in the western state of Gujarat. In a gesture of defiance to the Salt Law, Gandhi and his followers picked up natural salt from the beach as a way to demonstrate that they had a right to produce their own salt. </p>
<p>The British colonial authorities met this resistance with <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/On_the_Salt_March.html?id=5BtuAAAAMAAJ">considerable violence</a> and imprisoned Gandhi along many of the protesters. However, Gandhi and his supporters refused to back down. They conceded that they had broken the law by collecting salt from the seashore and were prepared to suffer the legal consequences. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The memories of this episode have become part and parcel of the history and folklore of the Indian nationalist movement. Accordingly, it is hardly surprising that the protesting farmers embraced the concept of satyagraha as part of their protests. </p>
<p>For over six months they have led protests as a tactic and have steadfastly refused to budge from their principal demands, which involve repealing the three new farm laws that the Indian Parliament passed in September 2020 which, if implemented, would dramatically <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/world/asia/india-farmer-protest.html#:%7E:text=The%20demonstrators%20are%20demanding%20that,and%20private%20investment%2C%20bringing%20growth.">cut back on government support</a> for agriculture and move farmers toward an open national market. </p>
<p>Farmers fear these drastic changes and, despite <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/india-farms-protests/indian-farmers-agree-to-meet-government-over-contentious-farm-laws-idUSKBN2900EM">government entreaties</a> as well as <a href="https://www.vox.com/22279960/modi-india-rihanna-farmer-protests">crackdowns</a>, they have refused to budge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sumit Ganguly receives funding from the U.S. Army War College. </span></em></p>The term was first used in 1917 for a political agitation that Mahatma Gandhi launched against the British, on behalf of farmers.Sumit Ganguly, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1336052020-04-17T12:11:15Z2020-04-17T12:11:15Z1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords’ indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327346/original/file-20200412-8893-1ihy43t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C56%2C4200%2C4011&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cremation on the banks of the Ganges river, India.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crémation-sur-les-bords-du-gange-à-benarès-inde-circa-1920-news-photo/833384176?adppopup=true">Keystone-France via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In India, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a staggering <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0116-x">12 to 13 million people died</a>, the vast majority between the months of September and December. According to an eyewitness, “There was none to remove the dead bodies and the jackals made a feast.” </p>
<p>At the time of the pandemic, India had been under British colonial rule for over 150 years. The fortunes of the British colonizers had always been vastly different from those of the Indian people, and nowhere was the split more stark than during the influenza pandemic, as I discovered while researching <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zQnyI1cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my Ph.D. on the subject</a>. </p>
<p>The resulting devastation would eventually lead to huge changes in India – and the British Empire. </p>
<h2>From Kansas to Mumbai</h2>
<p>Although it is commonly called the Spanish flu, the 1918 pandemic likely <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-american-history/americas-forgotten-pandemic-influenza-1918-2nd-edition?format=PB">began in Kansas</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwy191">killed between 50 and 100 million people</a> worldwide. </p>
<p>During the early months of 1918, the virus incubated throughout the American Midwest, eventually making its way east, where it <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/210420/worldwide_flu_outbreak_killed_45000_american_soldiers_during_world_war_i">traveled across the Atlantic Ocean</a> with soldiers deploying for WWI. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Indian soldiers in the trenches during World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-soldiers-in-the-trenches-world-war-i-1914-1918-news-photo/463957843">Print Collector / Contributor via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Introduced into the trenches on Europe’s Western Front, the virus tore through the already weakened troops. As the war approached its conclusion, the virus followed both commercial shipping routes and military transports to infect almost every corner of the globe. It <a href="https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/product/Influenza-Pandemic-of-1918-1919/p/0312677081">arrived in Mumbai in late May</a>.</p>
<h2>Unequal spread</h2>
<p>When the first wave of the pandemic arrived, it was not particularly deadly. The only notice British officials took of it was its effect on some workers. A report noted, “As the season for cutting grass began … people were so weak as to be unable to do a full day’s work.” </p>
<p>By September, the story began to change. Mumbai was still the center of infection, likely due to its position as a commercial and civic hub. On Sept. 19, an English-language newspaper reported 293 influenza deaths had occurred there, but assured its readers “The worst is now reached.” </p>
<p>Instead, the virus tore through the subcontinent, following trade and postal routes. Catastrophe and death overwhelmed cities and rural villages alike. Indian newspapers reported that crematoria were receiving between 150 to 200 bodies per day. According to one observer, “The burning ghats and burial grounds were literally swamped with corpses; whilst an even greater number awaited removal.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Members of the British Raj out for a stroll, circa 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-british-raj-walking-together-in-an-indian-news-photo/3398825?adppopup=true">Fox Photos/Stringer via Getty images</a></span>
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<p>But influenza did not strike everyone equally. Most British people in India lived in spacious houses with gardens and yards, compared to the lower classes of city-dwelling Indians, who lived in densely populated areas. Many British also employed household staff to care for them – in times of health and sickness – so they were only lightly touched by the pandemic and were largely unconcerned by the chaos sweeping through the country. </p>
<p>In his official correspondence in early December, the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces did not even mention influenza, instead noting “Everything is very dry; but I managed to get two hundred couple of snipe so far this season.”</p>
<p>While the pandemic was of little consequence to many British residents of India, the perception was wildly different among the Indian people, <a href="https://www.saada.org/item/20130823-3118">who spoke of universal devastation</a>. A letter published in a periodical lamented, “India perhaps never saw such hard times before. There is wailing on all sides. … There is neither village nor town throughout the length and breadth of the country which has not paid a heavy toll.” </p>
<p>Elsewhere, the Sanitary Commissioner of the Punjab noted, “the streets and lanes of cities were littered with dead and dying people … nearly every household was lamenting a death, and everywhere terror and confusion reigned.” </p>
<h2>The fallout</h2>
<p>In the end, areas in the north and west of India saw death rates between 4.5% and 6% of their total populations, while the south and east – where the virus arrived slightly later, as it was waning – generally lost between 1.5% and 3%. </p>
<p>Geography wasn’t the only dividing factor, however. In Mumbai, almost seven-and-a-half times as many lower-caste Indians died as compared to their British counterparts - <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001946468602300102">61.6 per thousand</a> versus 8.3 per thousand. </p>
<p>Among Indians in Mumbai, socioeconomic disparities in addition to race accounted for these differing mortality rates.</p>
<p><iframe id="9Mq9o" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9Mq9o/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The Health Officer for Calcutta remarked on the stark difference in death rates between British and lower-class Indians: “The excessive mortality in Kidderpore appears to be due mainly to the large coolie population, ignorant and poverty-stricken, living under most insanitary conditions in damp, dark, dirty huts. They are a difficult class to deal with.” </p>
<h2>Change ahead</h2>
<p>Death tolls across India generally hit their peak in October, with a slow tapering into November and December. A high ranking British official wrote in December, “A good winter rain will put everything right and … things will gradually rectify themselves.” </p>
<p>Normalcy, however, did not quite return to India. The spring of 1919 would see the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre">British atrocities at Amritsar</a> and shortly thereafter the launch of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/noncooperation-movement">Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement</a>. Influenza became one more example of British injustice that spurred Indian people on in their fight for independence. A <a href="https://www.saada.org/item/20130128-1271">nationalist periodical stated</a>, “In no other civilized country could a government have left things so much undone as did the Government of India did during the prevalence of such a terrible and catastrophic epidemic.”</p>
<p>The long, slow death of the British Empire had begun.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct that the final quote is not from a periodical published by Mahatma Gandhi, but rather a separate nationalist publication of the same name based in New York.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maura Chhun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the 1918 influenza pandemic struck India, the death toll was highest among the poor.Maura Chhun, Community Faculty, Metropolitan State University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1244702019-09-30T23:13:34Z2019-09-30T23:13:34ZWhat Gandhi believed is the purpose of a corporation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294918/original/file-20190930-194832-l8j4uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gandhi had a lot to say about how business leaders should behave. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-I-IND-APHS350554-India-Gandhi/c89cd2aea24248f08ecf9ff2342efcc1/49/0">AP Photo/James A. Mills</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mahatma Gandhi is celebrated across the globe as an idealist who <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-violence-that-helped-india-break-free-from-colonial-rule-57904">used civil disobedience</a> to frustrate and overthrow British colonialists in India. </p>
<p>The popularity of his nonviolent teachings – which <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/world/mahatma-gandhi-inspired-nelson-mandela-martin-luther-king-narendra-modi-world-leaders-inaugurate-gandhi-solar-park-at-un-hq-7399061.html">inspired civil rights activists</a> such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela – has obscured another important facet of his teachings: the proper role of business in society. </p>
<p>Gandhi argued that companies should act as trusteeships, valuing social responsibility alongside profits, a view recently <a href="https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redefines-the-purpose-of-a-corporation-to-promote-an-economy-that-serves-all-americans">echoed by the Business Roundtable</a>. </p>
<p>His views on the purpose of a company have inspired generations of Indian CEOs to build more sustainable businesses. As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=f3o9qJ4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholars</a> of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ldgGoNYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">global business history</a>, we believe his message should also resonate with corporate executives and entrepreneurs around the world.</p>
<h2>Shaped by globalization</h2>
<p>Born in British-ruled India on Oct. 2, 1869, Mohandas K. Gandhi was the product of an <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/how-globalization-4-0-fits-into-the-history-of-globalization/">increasingly global age</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://hbsp.harvard.edu/search?N=&Nrpp=10&Ntt=geoff+jones+bajaj">Our research</a> into Gandhi’s early life <a href="https://www.gandhiservefoundation.org/about-mahatma-gandhi/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi">and writings</a> suggests his views were radically shaped by the unprecedented opportunities that steamships, railroads and the telegraph provided. The growing ease of travel, the circulation of print media and the increase in trade routes – the hallmark of the first wave of globalization from 1840 to 1929 – impressed upon Gandhi the myriad of challenges facing society.</p>
<p>These included vast inequality between the rich West and other parts of the world, growing disparities within societies, racial tension and the crippling effects of colonialism and imperialism. It was a world of winners and losers, and Gandhi, although born into an affluent family, dedicated his life to standing up for those without status.</p>
<h2>The horrors of industrialization</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294905/original/file-20190930-194824-61g38b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi, center seated, at his law office in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1902.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-South-Afric-/f3c6cdf9ede6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gandhi studied law in London, where he encountered the works of radical European and American philosophers such as Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Ruskin – transcendentalists who advocated intuition over logic.</p>
<p>Ruskin’s moving discussion of the ecological horrors of industrialization, in particular, <a href="https://www.mkgandhi.org/autobio/chap95.htm">caught Gandhi’s attention</a> and led him to translate Ruskin’s book <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.5387/page/n3">“Unto This Last”</a> into his native Gujarati.</p>
<p>In 1893, Gandhi took up his first job as a barrister in the British colony of South Africa. It was here, not in India, where Gandhi forged his radical political and ethical ideas about business.</p>
<p>His first public speech ever was to a group of ethnic Indian businesspeople in Pretoria. As Gandhi recalls in his candid autobiography “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300234077/autobiography-or-story-my-experiments-truth">The Story of My Experiments with Truth</a>”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I went fairly prepared with my subject, which was about observing truthfulness in business. I had always heard the merchants say that truth was not possible in business. I did not think so then, nor do I now.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gandhi returned to British-occupied India in 1915 and <a href="https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/319088-PDF-ENG?Ntt=sudev+sheth&itemFindingMethod=Search">continued to develop</a> his ideas on the role of business in society by talking to prominent business leaders such as <a href="https://archive.org/details/HindSwaraj-CWMG-028/page/45">Sir Ratanji Tata</a>, <a href="https://archive.org/details/inshadowofmahatm00orie">G.D. Birla</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/details/togandhiancapital00gand">Jamnalal Bajaj</a>. </p>
<p>Today, the children and grandchildren of these early Gandhi disciples continue to lead their family businesses as some of not only India’s but the world’s most recognized conglomerates.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294919/original/file-20190930-194842-itphr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi often spoke with prominent Indian industrialists, such as Jagal Kishore Birla, far left, of the Birla Group.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The role of business</h2>
<p>Gandhi’s views of what trusteeship really means were expressed in great detail in his widely popular <a href="https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/journals-by-gandhiji/harijan">Harijan</a>, a weekly periodical that highlighted social and economic problems across India. </p>
<p>Our study of Harijan’s archive from 1933 to 1955 helped us identify four key components of what trusteeship meant for Gandhi: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>a long-term vision beyond one generation is necessary to build truly sustainable enterprises</p></li>
<li><p>companies must build reputations that foster trust across transactions and with all sections of society</p></li>
<li><p>business enterprise must focus on creating value for communities</p></li>
<li><p>while Gandhi saw the value of private enterprise, he believed the wealth a company creates belongs to society, not just the owner. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Gandhi <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1948/jan/31/india.fromthearchive">was murdered</a> in 1948, just after India secured independence. However, his ideas have continued to resonate deeply with some of India’s leading companies. </p>
<p>Interviews conducted for Harvard Business School’s <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/Pages/default.aspx">oral history archive</a> turned up surprising evidence in recent decades of Gandhi’s role in guiding modern companies in a variety of countries toward more sustainable business practices. </p>
<p>“We have to take care of all stakeholders,” says billionaire <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/interviews/Pages/profile.aspx?profile=rbajaj">Rahul Bajaj</a>, chairman of one of India’s oldest and largest conglomerates, recalling his grandfather’s association with Gandhi. “You can’t produce a bad-quality and high-cost product and then say, I go to the temple and pray, or that I do charity; that’s no good and that won’t last, because that won’t be a sustainable company.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/interviews/Pages/profile.aspx?profile=ajain">Anil Jain</a>, vice chairman and CEO of the second largest micro-irrigation company in the world, recalls: </p>
<p>“My father was greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi who believed in simplicity – he believed that the real India lives in villages, and unless villages are transformed to become much better than how they are, India cannot really move forward as a country.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294920/original/file-20190930-194829-atc6b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi’s pacifism made him a leader among civil rights activists – but he was a leader among CEOs too.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arthur Simoes/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What would Gandhi say</h2>
<p>Gandhi’s views were constantly evolving in dialogue with the business community, and this is one reason why they remain so relevant today. </p>
<p>Imagine a Gandhian perspective on today’s tech companies. He would perhaps ask proponents of self-driving cars to consider the impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of cab drivers around the world. He would ask proponents of e-commerce to consider the impact on local communities and climate change. And he would ask shareholders whether closing factories to maximize their dividends was worth making communities unsustainable. </p>
<p>Gandhi didn’t have had all the answers, but in our opinion he was always asking the right questions. For today’s business leaders and budding entrepreneurs, his wise words on trusteeship are a good place to start. </p>
<p>[ <em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although Gandhi is best known for expelling the British from India and inspiring the likes of King and Mandela, he also wrote a lot about the behavior of good business leaders.Geoffrey Jones, Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Harvard UniversitySudev Sheth, Senior Lecturer, The Lauder Institute, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1234342019-09-16T11:59:41Z2019-09-16T11:59:41ZBritish troops massacred Indians in Amritsar – and a century later, there’s been no official apology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292306/original/file-20190912-190002-cvd3j2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar, India, where hundreds were killed on April 13, 1919, under British colonial rule.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-Jallianwala-Bagh/528950b8b49f4cc6a1e031b0f1504c33/2/0">AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby recently visited the site of a brutal massacre that happened in 1919 under the British colonial rule in India and offered his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/justin-welby-apologises-in-name-of-christ-british-massacre-amritsar">personal apologies</a>. He expressed his “deep sense of grief” for a “terrible atrocity.” </p>
<p>Earlier in April, then U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May <a href="https://time.com/5566864/india-massacre-apology/">told the House of Commons</a> that the episode was “a shameful scar on British-Indian history.” However, she had stopped short of apologizing.</p>
<p>The massacre is still remembered in India as a symbol of colonial cruelty. Here’s what happened a hundred years ago. </p>
<h2>Killing unarmed protesters</h2>
<p>After World War I, the British, who controlled a vast empire in India, agreed to give Indians limited self-government due to India’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33317368">substantial contribution</a> to the war effort. </p>
<p>These reforms, named the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/gentlemanly-terrorists/reforms-of-1919-montaguchelmsford-the-rowlatt-act-jails-commission-and-the-royal-amnesty/D97CA2DF6D0AEBDD9AD2066DB1504C04/core-reader">Montagu-Chelmsford reforms</a> after the secretary of state for India and the viceroy of India, promised to lead to more substantial self-government over time.</p>
<p>However, around the same time the British had passed the draconian Rowlatt Acts, which allowed certain political cases to be tried without trial. And the trial was also to be conducted without juries. The acts were <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/gentlemanly-terrorists/reforms-of-1919-montaguchelmsford-the-rowlatt-act-jails-commission-and-the-royal-amnesty/D97CA2DF6D0AEBDD9AD2066DB1504C04/core-reader">designed to ruthlessly suppress</a> all forms of political dissent. </p>
<p>The Rowlatt Acts were designed to replace the constraints on political activity that had been embodied in colonial rules, known as the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4366436?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Defense of India Rules</a>, which had been in force during World War I. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, there were <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Gandhi.html?id=boDAE8MLAJMC">widespread public protests</a>, led by the noted Indian nationalist leader, Mahatma Gandhi. </p>
<p>As part of this nationwide agitation, some 10,000 individuals gathered in a park in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on April 13, 1919. Since this protest was in defiance of a curfew which prohibited political gatherings, Brigadier-General <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Butcher_of_Amritsar.html?id=XuQC5pgzCw4C">Reginald Dyer</a>, who was stationed in the nearby city of Jalandhar, decided to take action. </p>
<p>Troops under his command blocked the sole entrance to the park, called Jallianwallah Bagh. Without warning they <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/amritsar-massacre">opened fire</a>. The British <a href="https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2019/04/12/jallianwala-bagh-100-how-many-people-actually-died-a-numbers-tale.html">officially estimated that 379</a> people died. The unofficial count was more. Close to <a href="https://www.thestatesman.com/india/100-years-on-britain-admits-jallianwala-bagh-massacre-a-shameful-scar-1502744574.html">1,200</a> were injured.</p>
<p>Dyer’s men stopped firing only after they had run out of ammunition. The soldiers did not offer any medical assistance to the wounded, and others could not come to their aid because of the imposition of a curfew on the city. </p>
<h2>An apology long overdue</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292308/original/file-20190912-190050-151f2x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wall of the Jallianwala Bagh, the site of the 1919 massacre, with bullet marks on it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-US/6500ffc8801f48ec8daa8e49731ef339/6/0">AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, convened an inquiry commission which led to Dyer being relieved of his command. However, upon returning to the United Kingdom, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/650872?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">he found support</a> for his actions among a segment of the British population. </p>
<p>In India, there was widespread shock and horror over this wanton use of force. The Nobel Laureate in literature, Rabindranath Tagore, protested by renouncing his knighthood, which he had received from the British Crown in 1915. <a href="http://dart.columbia.edu/library/tagore-letter/letter.html">Writing to the viceroy</a>, Tagore decried “the disproportionate severity of the punishment inflicted upon the unfortunate people.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://polisci.indiana.edu/about/faculty/ganguly-sumit.html">political scientist</a> who has written on the impact of British colonialism on India, I believe that the legacy of this episode, along with <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674027244">a host of other ugly events</a>, continues to trouble Indo-British relations.</p>
<p>Britain, for the most part, has failed to come to terms with its tragic colonial heritage in South Asia and elsewhere. In the wake of the the archbishop’s apology, I believe, it is time for the British government to follow suit. </p>
<p>An unequivocal apology to the memory of the victims is long overdue.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sumit Ganguly receives funding from the US Department of State, I am a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.</span></em></p>A hundred years ago, peaceful Indian protesters were massacred under British colonial rule. A scholar argues why a formal apology is overdue.Sumit Ganguly, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1178022019-05-26T13:52:20Z2019-05-26T13:52:20ZNarendra Modi’s victory speech delivers visions of a Hindu nationalist ascetic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276479/original/file-20190526-20851-17rysyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=509%2C107%2C3176%2C1528&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses party supporters, standing next to his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah at their headquarters in New Delhi, India, May 23, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP/Manish Swarup)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the recently concluded Indian parliamentary elections, the electorate gave a thumping majority to current Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/awaits-india-narendra-modi-sweeping-victory-190525104312697.html">to lead the nation for another five years</a>. In his victory speech at the BJP headquarters, Modi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/india-election-results.html">addressed the nation</a>. </p>
<p>Throughout his speech, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/d551f9335136428ab1abd22ad7cb5b6c">Modi crafted an image of himself as a Hindu ascetic</a> who renounces worldly possessions, not for personal liberation but to serve the nation’s needy — a <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/society/faith/faith-column-jamadagni-speaks-on-the-essence-of-karma-yoga/article19365340.ece"><em>karmayogi</em></a>. This image of the selfless Hindu ascetic devoted to the nation has been carefully <a href="https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/446/841">cultivated over decades by the Hindu right.</a></p>
<p>The creation of this figure is partly a response to the British colonial <a href="https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/books/TheCrownofHinduism_10002254">denigration of Hindu ascetics</a> as <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo25135790.html">wilfully idle, otherworldly, apathetic and apolitical</a>. It is also a response to the secular middle class derision of monks in saffron robes entering politics. </p>
<p>India has seen a remarkable public resurgence of Hindu ascetics in politics since the 1980s, with the ascendance of the Hindu right. Notable political figures include the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, MP Sakshi Maharaj and MP Uma Bharati, among others. </p>
<p>Although not dressed in saffron robes like his compatriots, Modi’s biography speaks to nationalist ascetic virtues: celibacy, renunciation of family and service for the nation. He left his home in his teenage years and <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/narendra-modi-humans-of-bombay-interview-part-2-1427633-2019-01-10">wandered the Himalayas for two years</a>, <a href="https://www.biography.com/political-figure/narendra-modi">joined the militant Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organization of the BJP,</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/narendra-modi-admits-he-has-a-wife-but-says-he-knows-little-about-her-9251870.html%20to%20work%20for%20the%20national%20good">abandoned his wife</a> for the nation. </p>
<p>Symbolically, Modi chose <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Varanasi">Varanasi</a>, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities and the spiritual home for Hindu ascetics, <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/politics/narendra-modi-chose-varanasi-in-2014-lok-sabha-election-in-2019-the-holy-city-returns-the-favour-6689551.html">as the constituency to represent at the close of his election</a>.</p>
<p>Nationalist asceticism is valourized by the Hindu right, but it also holds appeal for a broad section of Hindus. Modi’s victory speech impresses the audience with the popular image of the Hindu ascetic devoted to the nation’s cause.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276442/original/file-20190525-187179-5gp0xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers celebrate outside BJP headquarters in New Delhi India on May 23, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP/Altaf Qadri)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Performance of ascetic humility</h2>
<p>Amit Shah, national president of the BJP, set the stage for the prime minister’s address with a heart-pumping, chest-thumping victory speech offering data on states, towns and personalities that had suffered unprecedented losses for the Congress party. Rejoicing over the BJP’s continued supremacy in the Hindi heartland in the 2019 elections, Shah was exuberant about the party’s electoral successes in eastern India. </p>
<p>Following these high-pitched, triumphalist accounts of electoral victories, which the audience greeted with thunderous applause, Modi took the podium to address his supporters as the crowd chanted “Modi-Modi.”</p>
<p>What ensued was a spectacular public performance of humility. Reminding the masses of his <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/25/from-chaiwallah-to-chief-minister-modis-eventful-journey/">humble origins</a>, Modi repeatedly applauded the generosity of the voters for filling his <em>fakir’s jholi</em> (ascetic’s bag). In sharp contrast to Shah, he instructed his supporters to move ahead with humility. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276441/original/file-20190525-20851-18uy0er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Narendra Modi is blessed by his 90-year-old mother, Hiraben, in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Modi, who worked in his father’s tea shop at the local railway station, began his political rise as a teenager after he joined the militant Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Modi made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC3ooUmAkqg">three promises</a> and asked the people to hold him accountable on these promises for the tenure of his public office. First, he said he would not do anything with ill intent. Second, he vowed not do anything for himself. That is, he would not make any personal gains from his public office. Third, he promised he would dedicate every moment of his time and every cell in his body to serving the country.</p>
<p>Modi’s self-deprecating speech — replete with references to Hindu mythology (god of clouds), Hindu practices (cleansing oneself with a bath in the river Ganga) and the Hindu epic <em>Mahabharata</em> — speaks to a receptive Hindu majority. </p>
<h2>Using Hindu religious texts in politics</h2>
<p>Modi’s three promises consolidate the image of the <em>karmayogi</em> — articulated in one of Hinduism’s primary texts, the <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Bhagavad_Gita/"><em>Bhagavad Gita</em></a> — without having to name it. </p>
<p>The <em>Bhagavad Gita</em> is the Hindu right’s religious text of choice. The book starts at the beginning of an epic war and reveals a battlefield discussion between prince Arjun and his charioteer Lord Krishna. Arjun feels squeamish going to war against his own family. Lord Krishna encourages him to think of himself as a <em>karmayogi</em>: someone who works with detachment without anticipating the fruits of his labour. </p>
<p>In his speech, Modi informed his listeners that he had a busy day. Therefore he did not have the opportunity to look through the poll results and would look later that night. Thus, he put forth himself as a detached and selfless worker for the nation.</p>
<p>As Modi publicly rededicates himself to serve the nation at the beginning of his second five-year political mandate, this coded messaging will appeal to his <a href="https://thewire.in/politics/election-results-2019-narendra-modi-new-india">Hindu sympathizers</a>. Many of them are fed up with corrupt politicians and feel marginalized by privileged liberal elites. A humble, Hindi-speaking prime minister elicits their trust. Others feel encouraged to uphold their religious identity. </p>
<p>Many of these same people believe that secularism is an <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/04/fate-of-secularism-in-india-pub-78689">unmanly appeasement of religious minorities, especially Muslims</a>. </p>
<h2>Crafting images of devotion</h2>
<p>A few days before the election results were declared, images of Modi draped in a saffron shawl <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/prime-minister-narendra-modi-offers-prayers-at-kedarnath/article27175547.ece">meditating in a cave</a> emerged. His election victory speech fleshed out this <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-bc-as--india-elections-modi-20190524-story.html">self-representation as an ascetic</a>. Modi presents himself as a Hindu ascetic walking from door to door seeking alms (votes), thankful for the generosity of the masses.</p>
<p>In an ironic twist, the voter becomes the kind benefactor, rather than the prime minister, who can improve the lives of the poor. Such skillful use of imagery also tells the Indian public that while Modi may be the prime minister of India, he continues to be one of them. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276478/original/file-20190526-187153-7eewg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to the crowd during a political campaign road show in Varanasi, India on April 25, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP / Rajesh Kumar Singh])</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alms">This alms-seeking</a> ascetic narrative invokes Modi’s humble origins. It emphasizes his strong personal virtues of dedication and hard work. This is what allowed him to climb through the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to become the leader of the largest democracy in the world. </p>
<p>It’s a reminder to those frustrated with the Congress Party’s dynastic politics that this humble son of the soil, with limited English fluency, has proven his ascendancy over the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48391041">privileged, English-speaking Gandhis</a>. </p>
<p>More so, it offers assurances to his supporters, many of whom speak a variety of vernacular tongues — but especially to his Hindi speakers — that the days of the liberal, English-educated elite are over.</p>
<p>Modi’s carefully crafted, religiously coded public enactment of unabashed patriotic loyalty is a dog whistle that those who support his vision of a Hindu majoritarian “new India” can hear loud and clear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chandrima Chakraborty receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>India’s re-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a victory speech that presented himself as a selfless and humble ascetic. This vision goes far to promote a Hindu nationalist ‘new’ India.Chandrima Chakraborty, Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1171032019-05-14T14:33:47Z2019-05-14T14:33:47ZThe background story to a statue of Gandhi and the University of Ghana<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274343/original/file-20190514-60537-167evc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C541&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gandhi's statue, which sat in this quad at the University of Ghana, caused great controversy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">TG23/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In December 2018, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/14/racist-gandhi-statue-removed-from-university-of-ghana">was removed</a> from the University of Ghana’s campus in response to protests from students and staff. They argued that the Indian activist had been a racist who denigrated black Africans. Professor Ernest Aryeetey was the university’s Vice-Chancellor when the statue was erected. Here, he explains how the university made the decision to accept the statue, a gift from the Indian government, in 2016.</em></p>
<p>I received a request in early 2016 through my secretary that the Indian High Commissioner would like to come and see me. We knew each other quite well from several events at which we’d met. When he came, he indicated that the President of India was going to pay <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/pranab-mukherjee-first-indian-president-to-visit-ghana/story-pZf5c3tE6QTKxJKnYmKSxK.html">a state visit</a> to Ghana, and wanted to visit our university. </p>
<p>He also informed me that it was customary for the President to make a presentation to the people of any country he visited. Traditionally, this had been a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, world famous for his role as the father and architect of <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/india-and-pakistan-win-independence">Indian independence in 1947</a>. My first thought was, “Is the President going to carry a statue all the way from New Delhi to Accra?” The answer was “yes”. </p>
<p>The High Commissioner informed me that the visit and the gift had already been discussed and agreed with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the President of Ghana. We ended the meeting with me assuring him that we would think about it and get back to him.</p>
<p>I used the time to read quite a bit about Gandhi and came to understand better what he stood for. </p>
<h2>Gandhi</h2>
<p>I learned that he was 23 years old when he went to South Africa and lived there for many years. I read things attributed to him that were undoubtedly racist under any circumstance. </p>
<p>I read how he referred to blacks as “kaffirs” in some of his early writings and immediately remembered that <a href="http://www.cilt.uct.ac.za/usr/cci/publications/aria/download_issues/2004/2004_MS4.pdf">derogatory expression</a> from my reading of the Christian leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Prester-John-legendary-ruler">Prester John</a> at school. It was obvious to me that in the early days, he saw his fight to liberate Indians from oppressive laws imposed by white men, as being different from that of the struggle of the black man. </p>
<p>I also read that he later joined hands with some black groups to resist white oppression. As I read more and more about him, I couldn’t help seeing that the Gandhi that came to the attention of the world in the 1930s and 1940s, and gave the British Empire so many headaches, was very different from the young lawyer who had arrived in South Africa a few years after leaving the UK. </p>
<p>I understood that Gandhi was celebrated for the things he taught the world in his later years, through his writings, ideas and lifestyle. He was celebrated for seeking peace for all the peoples of the world.</p>
<p>Having understood the context of Gandhi’s fame and renown, I had no difficulty in informing a meeting of the senior management of the university that I thought we should accept the request. There was some resistance, but ultimately the meeting decided that the statue was acceptable to the university. It was to be located at the recreational quadrangle behind the Balme Library.</p>
<h2>Some dissent</h2>
<p>A couple of weeks after the President’s visit and the statue’s unveiling, I saw an email on the university’s mail system questioning the appropriateness of having the statue of Gandhi on the campus. The main argument was that Gandhi was racist. A few others responded, echoing this belief.</p>
<p>Rather uncharacteristically, I decided to respond. I knew full well how such misinformation could get out of hand. I had also experienced first-hand at South Africa’s University of Cape Town how the “Rhodes must fall” campaign had been hijacked by self-seekers. </p>
<p>So I wrote a carefully crafted response on the intranet, and also indicated to the authors of the misinformation that I was ready to debate them. It was obvious that they were not used to debates, even though they were on a university campus. They were used to sending out poor opinions and no one questioning them. After my intervention the misinformation fizzled out.</p>
<p>I completed my term as Vice-Chancellor in July 2016. Weeks later, the issue flared up again and the statue was ultimately removed.</p>
<p>There is still no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the University of Ghana had the authority to take the decision it did to accept and erect the statue. The proper procedures were followed. And the country’s government fully endorsed our actions.</p>
<h2>The issue of racism</h2>
<p>I have come to view the experiences of Gandhi as very similar to the <a href="http://www1.cbn.com/biblestudy/how-saul-became-the-apostle-paul">transformation of Saul into Paul in the Bible</a>. Once I accept the conversion of Paul, I can very easily forgive the early Gandhi. There are no explicit accounts of a transformation like Saul’s, but the tone of Gandhi’s writings changed significantly over time.</p>
<p>The young lawyer made what I would easily describe as very racist remarks in his campaign to gain more rights for the Indian in South Africa. He showed very little interest in the affliction of the black man and believed that the black man’s fight was different from that of Indians. </p>
<p>When he left South Africa and returned to India, and came face to face with the Indian caste system, he saw it as being as dehumanising as what Indians and black people went through in South Africa. He found the poor Indian to be not any better off than the Indians in South Africa. </p>
<p>In his writings about self-government and independence, he emphasised peaceful coexistence with all races. He spent time teaching people how to resist oppression in a peaceful way. It is this pursuit of peaceful coexistence of the races that caught the world’s respect and attention. This is what attracted Martin Luther King to his ideas. It is this same ideal that he shared with Nelson Mandela. Indeed, this is what inspired Ghana’s own <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/nkrumah-kwame">Kwame Nkrumah</a> to speak about what he learned from Gandhi.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ernest Aryeetey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gandhi was celebrated for the things he taught the world in his later years, through his writings, ideas and lifestyle. He was celebrated for seeking peace for all the peoples of the world.Ernest Aryeetey, Professor of Economics, University of GhanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1065652018-11-28T11:10:17Z2018-11-28T11:10:17ZGandhi is still relevant – and can inspire a new form of politics today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247478/original/file-20181127-76746-125mwkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gandhi spinning in the 1920s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi#/media/File:Gandhi_spinning.jpg">By Unknown - gandhiserve.org via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seventy years after Gandhi’s assassination on the streets of New Delhi, Ramachandra Guha’s new book, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-48, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/196463/gandhi-the-years-that-changed-the-world-1914-1948-by-ramachandra-guha/9780385532310/">reopens a familiar debate</a> around his legacy. What was Gandhi’s message? What were his politics? What can we learn from him today? And is he still relevant?</p>
<p>Guha, presenting the second half of a biography that began with his 2013 book, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/09/gandhi-before-india-ramachandra-guha-review">Gandhi Before India</a>, offers a straightforward but detailed narrative in which “the Mahatma” negotiates a principled path between the warring political trends of the age. Historian of empire, <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-making-of-mahatma">Bernard Porter</a>, welcomed Guha’s work and its subtle defence of a “gentler, more tolerant and consensual forms of politics” that is now, in the age of Donald Trump, Brexit and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, on the decline in the West and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Others are more biting. Fellow Gandhi scholar <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/04/gandhi-1914-1948-ramachandra-guha-review">Faisal Devji</a> charges Guha with neutralising the Mahatma’s radicalism. Meanwhile, author <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/gandhi-for-the-post-truth-age">Pankaj Mishra</a>, reexamining Gandhi’s writings in a “post-truth age” of “furious revisionism”, uncovers a “relentlessly counter-intuitive thought” left untapped by Guha’s tales of a “bland do-gooder”. </p>
<h2>Resurrection</h2>
<p>All these accounts, however, seek to resurrect Gandhi <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/arguing-for-india-what-gandhis-ideas-mean-today">as a political mentor for today</a>. Modern politics – and its new formula of Twitter hashtags, populist sloganeering and strongman dictators – may seem an unlikely place for the teachings of Gandhi to offer fresh inspiration. But just such a thing also happened during the Cold War, when politics faced some very similar problems.</p>
<p>Gandhi is sometimes imagined sitting beside a spinning wheel pouring scorn on science and modernity. Indeed, when asked by a reporter what he thought of “Western civilisation”, he famously replied: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/21/opinion/meanwhile-gandhi-for-one-would-have-found-it-funny.html">“I think it would be a good idea.”</a> </p>
<p>But his politics were more complex than this. Gandhi read the works of Western political thinkers including John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy. India was being sucked into a global economy based on the exploitation and automation of labour. Industrial capitalism – and its partner, imperialism – only cemented uneven power relations and alienated one Indian from the next. He believed what was needed, instead, was a social and economic life based around local production for local needs, something that would also foster greater cultural enjoyment. </p>
<p>But is the current post-truth age still able to make use of this simple, authentic message?</p>
<p>A look into early 1950s Indian history provides some clues. When India achieved independence in August 1947 – with Jawaharlal Nehru as its first prime minister – Gandhi, it is supposed, remained as a spiritual and moral, rather than political, guide. His vision of a “village India” died in 1948 with his <a href="https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/mahatma-gandhi-economic-beliefs-that-are-still-relevant/story/283518.html">assassin Nathuram Godse’s bullet</a>. And as Cold War ideological competition ramped up between communism and capitalism, rapid and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/144998/cold-war-world-new-history-redefines-conflict-true-extent-enduring-costs">centralised economic growth seemed inevitable</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247482/original/file-20181127-76752-dvhgf1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nehru and Gandhi share a joke in Mumbai, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi#/media/File:Nehru_gandhi.jpg">By Max Desfor for Associated Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some intellectuals, however, returned to the Mahatma’s ideas in this new and hostile climate. In 1950, the CIA covertly funded the <a href="https://www.theawl.com/2015/08/literary-magazines-for-socialists-funded-by-the-cia-ranked/">formation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom</a> (CCF), an organisation which brought together liberal and leftist intellectuals from around the world to discuss the threat posed by Soviet collectivism to free cultural expression.</p>
<p>In sponsoring conferences and magazines in which these intellectuals could articulate their views, the CIA hoped it could channel their anti-authoritarianism to a useful Cold War end. But this did not work out. CCF branches often acted as <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/136622/congress-cultural-freedoms-ultimate-failure">repositories for radical aspirations</a> which could find no other home.</p>
<p>The Indian Committee for Cultural Freedom (ICCF), formed in 1951, was a <a href="https://thewire.in/history/cia-sponsored-indian-magazines-engaged-indias-best-writers">striking example</a>. Freedom First, its maiden publication, eschewed cultural criticism for discussions of domestic politics. The CCF’s push for the formation of a new journal, Quest, which reversed this was in vain, with one writer taking the opportunity to rail against a Westernised Indian “ruling class” whose interest in state-led development was bound to create “a situation reminiscent of the looking-glass world” – in other words, <a href="http://freedomfirst.in/quest/quest-archives.aspx">to impose Western ideologies onto India</a>.</p>
<h2>A stateless society</h2>
<p>These writers – often former freedom fighters who had gone to prison for their travails – wanted a new egalitarian politics they sometimes termed “direct democracy”. Views on how this should be approached varied, and as the decade wore on, some took to advocating for a pro-capitalist, if also welfare state-friendly, programme. </p>
<p>Others, though, found in Gandhi a source of optimism. In 1951, <a href="http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/remembering-vinoba-bhave/">Vinoba Bhave</a> and other social reformers committed to Gandhi’s “sarvodaya” – progress of all – concept, founded the <a href="https://www.thequint.com/videos/news-videos/remembering-vinoba-bhave-father-of-bhoodan">“Bhoodan Movement”</a>. This was aimed at encouraging landowners to redistribute land without violence and rapidly reduce inequality in agrarian India.</p>
<p>This fascinated the ICCF. Marathi trade unionist and columnist, Prabhakar Padhye, named Bhoodan one of several reform movements capable of constituting “a new social force in the life of the country”. The ICCF’s annual conference welcomed the movement, with speakers calling for a “Gandhian” politics which made <a href="http://freedomfirst.in/archives/archives.aspx">“cooperation, rather than competition, the rule of life”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247479/original/file-20181127-76767-1mmywwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi#/media/File:Gandhi_with_Lord_and_Lady_Mountbatten_1947.jpg">Via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon, key ICCF writer, Minoo Masani, <a href="http://www.unz.com/print/Encounter-1954dec-00008/">reported</a> on a tour undertaken around the Indian state of Bihar with fellow member Jayaprakash Narayan. Speaking with crowds of peasants and rural poor, Narayan bracketed together totalitarianism and the welfare state as inherently coercive. What the pair supported was “Gandhism” – or a more spontaneous and participatory politics which “like anarchism or communism, visualises ultimately a stateless society”.</p>
<p>The point is that these intellectuals were drawing on Gandhi in defiance of an oppressive global political climate and its relentless classification of different ideas and visions as good or bad, communist or anti-communist, modernist or traditional.</p>
<p>In its vacuous rhetoric and sleazy sloganeering, the early Cold War era was like today. And then, as now, Gandhi’s ideas were of renewed interest. As we now face a global dearth of alternative political ideas, perhaps it’s no wonder we are turning again to the Mahatma for inspiration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Shillam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ideas of Mahatma Gandhi are currently enjoying a resurgence – but is this a consequence of our post-truth age or of something deeper?Tom Shillam, PhD Candidate in History, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/834042017-10-02T00:51:52Z2017-10-02T00:51:52ZWhat Gandhi can teach today’s protesters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188230/original/file-20170929-21580-on1yzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mohandas K. Gandhi during a prayer meeting on Jan. 22, 1948.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi – commonly known by the honorific Mahatma, the great-souled one – emphasized nonviolent resistance in his campaign for Indian independence.</p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4873#.WcgSR4prxgc">as my research shows</a>, Gandhi has become an iconic figure for people seeking social change, including communities across the United States.</p>
<h2>Explaining nonviolence</h2>
<p>For Gandhi, nonviolence was <a href="http://mettacenter.org/nonviolence/introduction/">not simply the absence of physical violence</a>. Self-rule and radical democracy in which <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/village_swaraj.pdf">everyone participates</a> in the governance process were also part of Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence. </p>
<p>He believed that self-rule should extend to all people, rich and poor, male and female, and at all levels of society. To him, authority over others was a form of violence. To achieve that vision, he encouraged <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/village_swaraj.pdf">participation</a> of women and the lower castes in economic and political matters.</p>
<p>These ideas about violence and authority had <a href="http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Echernus/NonviolenceBook/">circulated in the U.S.</a> in the 19th century, especially among the Christian peace churches such as the Quakers and Mennonites. In this view, equality and the lack of hierarchical structures are forms of nonviolence. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188231/original/file-20170929-21580-10q23pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi breaking his fast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Max Desfor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Gandhi, it was the <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/gandhi/">Indian religions, Hinduism and Jainism,</a> that shaped his activism. His mother, a devout Hindu, taught him the importance of fasting as a form of self-discipline and religious devotion. From the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Jains.html?id=jt6-YXE2aUwC">Jains</a>, with whom he grew up, he learned <a href="http://simplicitycollective.com/the-simple-life-past-present-future">nonviolence and nonpossessiveness</a>. In particular, he drew on the Hindu text <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-bhagavadgita/9780231064682">“Bhagavad Gita”</a> (The Song of the Lord) for a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v7i1.65">religious framework</a> on the values of simplicity, duty and nonviolence. </p>
<p>All this translated into Gandhi’s peaceful expression of protest of which the most potent “weapon” was fasting. </p>
<h2>Nonviolent resistance</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.history.com/news/gandhis-salt-march-85-years-ago/print">Salt March of 1930</a> is one of Gandhi’s best-known acts of peaceful resistance.</p>
<p>Under colonial rule, the British taxed Indians for salt and declared that making or collecting salt was illegal. Since salt is necessary for survival, this issue affected each and every Indian. They considered this law unjust and morally wrong. </p>
<p>Gandhi organized a 241-mile march across western India to the city of Dandi in Gujarat, in western India, where he collected salt, illegally. He started with 78 people. But as the marchers proceeded, thousands more <a href="http://www.history.com/news/gandhis-salt-march-85-years-ago/print">joined</a>. Weeks later, his unarmed followers marched to a government salt depot, where they met violent retaliation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.history.com/news/gandhis-salt-march-85-years-ago/print">In the words</a> of American journalist <a href="https://100years.upi.com/uni_anecdotes_1921.html">Webb Miller</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“At a word of command, scores of native police rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads…Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Gandhi, resistance meant placing one’s own body in harm’s way, open to the possibility of injury, imprisonment or even death. And that is what made it such such a <a href="https://gandhianiceberg.com/">powerful political tool</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188232/original/file-20170929-21580-1s28zqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. giving a speech at Selma, Alabama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Horace Cort</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Years later, Martin Luther King Jr., who met with Gandhi, would employ similar ways of <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/mahatma-gandhi/9780231159593">nonviolent resistance</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, it was the visceral horror of what happened in the two countries that rapidly <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=4873#.Wc5XnUqGOL0">swung public opinion</a>. </p>
<p>During the Indian independence movement, descriptions of British clubs striking unarmed Indians in the Salt March drew <a href="http://www.calpeacepower.org/0101/PDF/SaltMarch.pdf">worldwide sympathy</a>. Back in the U.S., Americans watched with horror as Birmingham police set dogs upon African-Americans during a peaceful civil rights protest in 1963. This pushed President Kennedy to take action and eventually led to the <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-Movement.aspx">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>.</p>
<h2>What can we learn from Gandhi</h2>
<p>In my research, I found many communities in the U.S. replicating Gandhi’s model: <a href="https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/sustainable-communities/possibility-alliance-ze0z11zmar">Possibility Alliance</a> in La Plata, Missouri, and <a href="http://cherithbrookcw.blogspot.com/">Cherith Brook Catholic Worker House</a> in Kansas City, Missouri, are among those who have used nonviolent protests to raise their voice against racial and economic injustices. </p>
<p>But, for others, as we have seen in recent months, keeping protests peaceful can be difficult. There were reports, for example, of <a href="https://www.apnews.com/116336dc947e4e8faba1d5ccd1805398/US-colleges-confront-a-new-era-of-sometimes-violent-protest">violence during protests on college campuses</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/03/the-violent-rally-trump-cant-move-past/?utm_term=.b1ad0432c46d">rallies against or in support of President Trump</a>. The <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">Black Lives Matter movement</a> has been accused of rioting, for example, in Baton Rouge where members <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-trumps-america-black-lives-matter-shifts-from-protests-to-policy/2017/05/04/a2acf37a-28fe-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.215639f125de">blocked intersections</a>. </p>
<p>At times, oppressive regimes might themselves retaliate violently, blaming the protesters for their retaliation. King too was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-did-too/?utm_term=.e7f011b56452">criticized</a> for inciting violence. Only later was he labeled ”<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-did-too/?utm_term=.7eaa43dc78a3">passive and nonconfrontational.</a>“ </p>
<p>For contemporary protesters, Gandhi and King’s political strategies could provide some valuable lessons. The peaceful resistance that the two pursued was more effective in exposing hard truths about injustices. And it is worth remembering what King wrote, in his <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">Letter from a Birmingham Jail</a>, that he
"earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83404/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Whitney Sanford receives funding from University of Florida Center for Humanities in the Public Sphere.</span></em></p>For Gandhi, whose birth anniversary is Monday, Oct. 2, nonviolent resistance meant placing one’s own body in harm’s way to expose social injustices, which made it a powerful political tool.Whitney Sanford, Professor of Religion, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816572017-08-16T01:39:31Z2017-08-16T01:39:31ZHow a British royal’s monumental errors made India’s partition more painful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182114/original/file-20170815-27845-qq4xou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lord Louis Mountbatten, viceroy of India, met with Indian leaders to discuss partition.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Max Desfors/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The midnight between August 14 and 15, 1947, was one of history’s truly momentous moments: It marked the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-road-to-indias-partition-82432">birth of Pakistan, an independent India</a> and the beginning of the end of an era of colonialism.</p>
<p>It was hardly a joyous moment: A botched process of partition saw the slaughter of more than a million people; some 15 million were displaced. Untold numbers were maimed, mutilated, dismembered and disfigured. Countless lives were scarred.</p>
<p>Two hundred years of British rule in India ended, as <a href="http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/mountbattens-blunder-of-himalayan-proportions">Winston Churchill</a> had feared, in a “shameful flight”; a “premature hurried scuttle” that triggered a most tragic and terrifying carnage.</p>
<p>The bloodbath of partition also left the two nations that were borne out of it – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/india-70-partition-pankaj-mishra.html">India</a> and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/08/partition-pakistani-perspective-170807064330685.html">Pakistan</a> – deeply scarred by anguish, angst, alienation and animus.</p>
<p>By 1947, the political, social, societal and religious complexities of the Indian subcontinent may have made <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-road-to-indias-partition-82432">partition inevitable</a>, but the murderous mayhem that ensued was not.</p>
<p>As a South Asian whose life was affected directly by partition, and as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=l6nq2hkAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar</a>, it is evident to me that the one man whose job it was, above all else, to avoid the mayhem, ended up inflaming the conditions that made partition the horror it became. </p>
<p>That man was Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India.</p>
<p>How did Mountbatten contribute to the legacy of hatred that, <a href="http://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/2017/02/16/najam-publishes-paper-on-pakistan-at-70/">72 years later</a>, still informs the bitter relationship between India and Pakistan?</p>
<h2>A murderous orgy</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182117/original/file-20170815-26751-nbdmth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People crowd onto a train as mass displacement happens during partition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Let us begin by recognizing the scale of barbarity that was unleashed by the <a href="http://www.yasmin-khan.co.uk/book/the-great-partition-the-making-of-india-and-pakistan/">mishandling of partition</a>.</p>
<p>No one has captured this more poignantly than Urdu’s most prominent short story writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, who according to his grandniece and eminent historian <a href="https://ase.tufts.edu/history/faculty/jalal.asp">Ayesha Jalal</a> “marveled at the stern calmness with which the British had rent asunder the subcontinent’s unity at the moment of decolonization.”</p>
<p>In <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9949.html">“The Pity of Partition,”</a> Jalal channels the content of Manto’s work in Urdu to write:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Human beings had instituted rules against murder and mayhem in order to distinguish themselves from beasts of prey. None was observed in the murderous orgy that shook India to the core at the dawn of independence.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As author Nisid Hajari reports in <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/06/how_india_and_pakistan_became_enemies_excerpt_from_nisid_hajari_s_midnight.html">“Midnight’s Furies,”</a> a chilling narrative of the butchery: “some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps, claimed partition’s brutalities were worse: pregnant women had their breasts cut off and babies hacked out of their bellies, infants were found literally roasted on spits.” </p>
<p>Indeed, it does not matter which was worse. What is important to understand is that <a href="http://www.1947partitionarchive.org">partition</a> is to the psyche of Indians and Pakistanis what the Holocaust is to Jews. </p>
<p>Author <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple">William Dalrymple</a> calls this terrible outbreak of sectarian violence – Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other – “a mutual genocide” that was “as unexpected as it was unprecedented.”</p>
<h2>Could the genocide have been avoided?</h2>
<p>The violence was not, in fact, entirely unexpected. On August 16, 1946, literally a year before actual partition, a glimpse of what was to come was on display: In what came to be called <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/99/1/285/76382/Suranjan-Das-Communal-Riots-in-Bengal-1905-1947?redirectedFrom=fulltext%22%22">“the week of the long knives,”</a> three days of rioting in Calcutta left more than 4,000 dead and 100,000 homeless.</p>
<p>The hellish proportion of the slaughter that was to come was, however, unnecessary. </p>
<p>Well before the August of 1947, those following the tumultuous political boil in India – including U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman – fully understood that it was time for Britain – now a flailing power made <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521458501">bankrupt</a> by World War II – to <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1946/jul/18/india-cabinet-mission">leave India</a>. </p>
<p>As 1947 dawned, the task before the British was to find the least worst way to retreat from India: to manage the chaos, to minimize the violence and, if at all possible, to do so with some modicum of grace. </p>
<p>To perform this job, King George VI sent his cousin <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/archives/cataloguedatabases/mb/index.page">Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor (“Dickie”) Mountbatten</a> to India as his last viceroy. This great-grandson of Queen Victoria – the first British monarch to be crowned Empress of India – was, ironically, given the task of closing the imperial shop, not just in India but around the world.</p>
<p>In India, he proved to be monumentally unequal to the assignment.</p>
<p>Mountbatten arrived in India in February 1947 and was given until June 1948 – not 1947 – to complete his mission. Impatient to get back to Britain and <a href="http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/mountbattens-blunder-of-himalayan-proportions">advance his own naval career</a>, he decided to bring forward the date by 10 months, to August 1947 (he eventually did become first sea lord, a position he coveted because it had been denied to his father). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182118/original/file-20170815-29205-lll5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lord Mountbatten being received on his arrival to India. In this picture he is shaking hands with Liaquat Ali Khan, who became the first prime minister of Pakistan. Next to him is Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the first prime minister of India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/saktishree/9516157162/in/photolist-97MRkQ-axXVsQ-fuUYU5-fuUKcf-fuECd8-fuV3w7-fuEAMZ-fuUMZd-fuV3m3-fuEz1e-fuUF1W-fuEK8D-7Ym2Zy-sktp2-7YhNEc-7Ym645-fuEK4p-7YhPFv-oWiWsE-96H4cc-i3L5d6-zVbqEf-PpkPP-Af1QDH-AgubN7-7YhRo4-fuEPj6-fuV3oq-xjFJT9-Sw9wHD-fuUCyY-Afqkim-qTvUP8-tsw7Nh-GKHJH9-GKPiKa-HCroRo-GKPiLc-tKdrFc-sy563B-vNsxd">Saktishree DM</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How crucial were those 10 months? </p>
<p>I would argue, they could have meant the difference between a simply violent partition and a <a href="http://www.yasmin-khan.co.uk/book/the-great-partition-the-making-of-india-and-pakistan/">horrifically genocidal partition</a>. </p>
<h2>A hurried drawing of border lines</h2>
<p>The context for a bloody partition was set with the decision to sever Bengal in the east and Punjab in the west in half – giving Jinnah what he called a <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/the-road-to-partition/jinnah-partition/">“moth-eaten Pakistan.”</a> That killed any hopes of <a href="http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153717">a federated India</a>, which was Jinnah’s preference, if it allowed for power sharing and autonomy to Muslim majority provinces. </p>
<p>To decide the fate of 400 million Indians and draw lines of division on poorly made maps, Mountbatten brought in <a href="http://tribuneindia.com/2006/20060924/spectrum/main1.htm">Cyril Radcliffe,</a> a barrister who had never set foot in India before then, and would never return afterwards. Despite his protestations, Mountbatten gave him just five weeks to complete the job. </p>
<p>All of India, and particularly those in Bengal and Punjab, waited with bated breath to find out how they would be divided. Which village would go where? Which family would be left on which side of the new borders?</p>
<p>Working feverishly, Radcliffe completed the partition maps days before the actual partition. Mountbatten, however, decided to keep them secret. On Mountbatten’s orders, the partition maps were kept under lock and key in the viceregal palace in Delhi. They were not to be shared with Indian leaders and administrators until <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Jinnah_India_Partition_Independence.html?id=vY__QQAACAAJ">two days after partition</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Jinnah_India_Partition_Independence.html?id=vY__QQAACAAJ">Jaswant Singh</a>, who later served as India’s minister of foreign affairs, defense and finance, writes that at their moment of birth neither India nor Pakistan “knew where their borders ran, where was that dividing line across which Hindus and Muslims must now separate?” </p>
<p>He adds that as feared and predicted, this had “disastrous consequences.” The uncertainty of exactly who would end up where fueled confusion, wild rumors, and terror as corpses kept piling up.</p>
<p>As historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Wolpert">Stanley Wolpert</a> writes in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shameful-flight-9780195393941?cc=us&lang=en&">“Shameful Flight,”</a> Mountbatten kept the partition maps a closely guarded secret, as he did not want the festivities of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shameful-flight-9780195393941?cc=us&lang=en&">British transfer of power</a> to be marred or distracted.</p>
<p>“What a glorious charade of British Imperial largesse and power ‘peacefully’ transferred,” <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shameful-flight-9780195393941?cc=us&lang=en&">lamented Wolpert</a> as he contemplated the possible implications of Mountbatten’s hubris. </p>
<h2>70 years later</h2>
<p>As the preeminent biographer of all the major political actors of British India’s last days, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shameful-flight-9780195393941?cc=us&lang=en&">Wolpert</a> acknowledges that many – and, most importantly, Indian political leaders themselves – contributed to the chaos that was 1947.</p>
<p>But there is no room for doubt in Wolpert’s mind that “none of them played as tragic or central a role as did Mountbatten.”</p>
<p>By botching the administration of partition in 1947 and leaving critical elements unfinished – including, most disastrously, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/10537286">the still unfinished resolution to Jammu and Kashmir</a> – Mountbatten’s partition plan left the fate of Kashmir undecided.</p>
<p>Mountbatten, thus, bestowed a legacy of acrimony on India and Pakistan. </p>
<p>It was not just <a href="https://library.ecc-platform.org/conflicts/water-conflict-indus-basin-between-india-and-pakistan">rivers</a> and <a href="https://tribune.com.pk/story/736390/post-partition-india-still-owes-pakistan-a-little-over-rs5-6b-says-state-bank/">gold and silver</a> that needed to be divided between the two dominions; it was <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-a-library-that-survived-the-partition-2528071">books</a> in libraries, and even <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0019464614550767?ssource=mfr&rss=1">paper pins</a> in offices. As <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urdu/tobateksingh/storynotes.html">Saadat Hasan Manto’s</a> fictional account conveys, the madness was such that even patients in mental hospitals had to be divided. </p>
<p>Yet, Mountbatten, the man who would <a href="http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/mountbattens-blunder-of-himalayan-proportions">fret incessantly</a> about what to wear at official ceremonies, made little effort to devise arrangements for how resources would be divided, or shared.</p>
<h2>Learning from history</h2>
<p>Nowhere does the unfinished business of partition bleed more profusely than in the continuing conflict between India and Pakistan over <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232902125_Kashmir_Ripe_for_resolution">Jammu and Kashmir</a>. </p>
<p>Would a little more attention and a few more weeks of effort in 1947 have spared the world a nuclear-tipped time bomb that keeps ticking on both sides?</p>
<p>We can never know the answer to this question. </p>
<p>Nor can, or should, I believe, India and Pakistan blame the British and Mountbatten for all their problems. Seventy-two years on, they have only themselves to blame for missing opportunity after opportunity to fix the <a href="http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2017/AP-Explains-Ahead-of-the-70th-anniversary-of-independence-for-India-and-Pakistan-relations-between-the-two-nations-created-in-the-Partition-are-as-broken-as-ever/id-9016ae63bb1a4233804372e19d0c4a42">troubled relationship</a> they inherited. </p>
<p>However, maybe, today, on the anniversary of their birth, both India and Pakistan can take a break from simply bashing each other and recognize that at times history can deal you a bad hand in many different ways – in this case, due to the hasty and monumental errors of a British royalty. But also recognize, it is on you to learn from history and fix it.</p>
<p><em>This piece was first published on August 15, 2017 and was updated to reflect the 72 years of partition of India and Pakistan.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adil Najam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The partition of India led to more than a million deaths. A scholar argues how British royal, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who hurriedly drew the new borders in secret, was largely responsible.Adil Najam, Dean, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824322017-08-14T17:03:45Z2017-08-14T17:03:45ZThe road to India’s partition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181971/original/file-20170814-28461-1qzr4be.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People fleeing on bullock carts as mass migration happened during the partition.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As citizens of India and Pakistan celebrate 75 years of their independence on August 15, they will also remember 1947 as the momentous year of their simultaneous birth. That year, the British quit their “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0167gq4">jewel in the crown”</a> and partitioned colonial India on the basis of religion. </p>
<p>What followed in the aftermath of the partition was <a href="https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/akhwaja/papers/The%20Big%20March%20-%20Migratory%20Flows%20After%20Partition%20of%20India%20Feb%202008.pdf">one of the largest forced migrations</a> of the 20th century. Over the next two decades, nearly nine million Hindus and Sikhs moved into India and approximately five million Muslims to a spatially fragmented East and West Pakistan. This movement was accompanied by <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-other-side-of-silence">horrific mass violence</a> which targeted women through rape and abduction and left an estimated million dead. </p>
<p>Scholars have called the partition the <a href="https://www.accpublishinggroup.com/us/store/pv/9788174369550/india-partitioned/mushirul-hasan/">“other face of freedom</a>.” </p>
<p>But, as late as the summer of 1946, hardly anyone could have foretold that partition would be the political solution to the transfer of power at the end of the long nationalist struggle for independence. Nor would people have predicted that it would lead to such horrific violence and mass uprooting, causing <a href="http://www.1947partitionarchive.org/">long-term memories of exile and loss</a>. </p>
<p>So what led to this division? And why 1947? As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&view_op=list_works&gmla=AJsN-F6msBHypIFVi3yhRBFP5ECqxJkxljY-r90Qr8ISdan3m-WvG2u8ofIMB_7kga11ZwuXYP67bo28pF6ScID22tdf3qsvDA&user=YPih_-IAAAAJ">scholar of South Asian history</a>, I would suggest that there are multiple and complex reasons. </p>
<h2>The long road</h2>
<p>In fact, many divisions had been <a href="http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/%7Esj6/gilmartin%20historiography%20of%20partition.pdf">a long time in the making.</a> </p>
<p>Early on, the British justified their subordination of India by claiming that <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/socioreligious-reform-movements-in-british-india/787AAF46ED2EF9405ECB1641CD82DD4A">Indians were socially and morally weak</a>. And they mistakenly viewed their Indian empire as a set of distinct communities. They also saw them as being in conflict with each other, ignoring the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520262690">interwoven cultural and shared traditions</a> at the time.</p>
<p>It was this British view that eventually translated into giving political representation based on religious identities. This meant that Indians could gain political power (however limited) only through separate electorates based primarily on their religion. Thus, Hindus could elect their own Hindu representatives and Muslims could do the same. </p>
<p>Scholars note that these trends taken together led to the emergence of Muslim separatism from the 19th century onwards. It culminated in the idea that Hindus and Muslims were distinct and that India comprised <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_sir_sayyid_meerut_1888.html">“two nations”</a> sharing different histories and cultures.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181837/original/file-20170811-13483-vul0w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People fleeing during partition sit on top of a crowded train.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The idea of Pakistan</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/BRAPRO.html">Other scholars</a> have argued that it was the politics of the 1930s onwards that led to the partition. </p>
<p>Here the key debate was about the demand for Pakistan, a separate homeland for Muslims. One of the reasons the idea of Pakistan started to gain popularity was that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/jinnah_mohammad_ali.shtml">Mohammed Ali Jinnah</a>, the leader of Muslim League, the main Muslim political party, did not define clearly the geographical coordinates of Pakistan. Indeed, the very vagueness of the location of Pakistan was what helped in <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521458501">getting support</a> from Muslims across India who were divided by language, culture and class and, most of all, geography. </p>
<p>Pakistan carried different meanings for different groups: To farmers in the Eastern state of Bengal it meant a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Peasant_utopia.html?id=4w9uAAAAMAAJ">“peasant utopia”</a> where they would be free of landlord oppression. For the elite Muslims in northern India, it meant a <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=1316615375">“new Medina</a>,” a new civilizational heart for Muslims in the subcontinent and beyond. </p>
<p>It should be said, however, that the idea of Pakistan was not supported by all Muslims: More than half of them would remain in India after partition. </p>
<h2>The road of many paths</h2>
<p>As the debate over Pakistan developed, other events were taking place as well. After 1935, Indians received a larger share of political representation under colonial rule. Such devolution of power, however, meant little as Indians were forced to join British efforts in the Second World War.</p>
<p>It was in the middle of the war, in August 1942, that Gandhi called for the British to “Quit India” permanently. The <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198284632.001.0001/acprof-9780198284635">famine in Bengal in 1943</a> that ravaged the lives of an estimated three million Indians added to perception of the colonial state’s negligence and inability to continue to administer its Indian empire. </p>
<p>All in all, the stage was set for discussions on India’s independence.</p>
<p>After the war, there were <a href="http://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300143331/great-partition">many options</a> on the negotiating table. These included the possibility of a united India with a strong center where Muslims would be equal citizens but a political minority, with no hope of leading a government. The Indian National Congress, the largest and main political party, had long advocated for such a united India. </p>
<p>However, given that in British India Muslims were around <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">25 percent</a> of the population, a united India would be dominated by majority Hindus. Under British rule, Muslims had come to enjoy representation through separate electorates and reserved legislative seats.</p>
<p>For Jinnah and the Muslim League then, the key issue was to ensure that Muslims had equal political representation in independent India. This was not going to be possible under the Congress plan for a unified India with a strong center.</p>
<p>Another option was to make India and Pakistan part of a federation. There were many other such combinations that were proposed. The inability of Indian political leaders, however, to work together at this crucial moment <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Modern_South_Asia.html?id=PaKdsF8WzbcC">made negotiations difficult</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/085640032000089744?journalCode=csas20">Some scholars</a> argue that it was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jawaharlal-Nehru">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>, leader of the Indian National Congress at the time, who insisted on a “secular” united India and thereby paved the path for a division. </p>
<p>However, partition was not, even at this late date, a necessary condition for the creation of the new nation of Pakistan. One possibility would have been India and Pakistan sharing political power in a federation. </p>
<h2>Turning points</h2>
<p>By the summer of 1946, the leaders of the Congress (claiming to represent majority Indians irrespective of caste and religion) and the Muslim League (claiming to represent Indian Muslims) met in Simla, the summer capital of British India, and later in Delhi with the British representatives regarding the contours of India’s freedom and the fate of Pakistan.</p>
<p>Two things severely impacted the direction such negotiations would take.</p>
<p>The first was the start of communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/99/1/285/76382/Suranjan-Das-Communal-Riots-in-Bengal-1905-1947?redirectedFrom=fulltext%22%22">Calcutta in August 1946</a> which quickly spread to different parts of eastern India. Although Gandhi’s efforts were able to quell the violence by December that year, the damage had been done. </p>
<p>Whether Hindus and Muslims would be able to live together – even though they had for centuries – became an urgent question in the minds of both Indians and British leaders. Partition emerged as a plausible solution. </p>
<p>Indeed, sizeable groups of Hindus from both <a href="https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Bengal_Divided.html?id=iDNAQcoVqoMC">Bengal</a> and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057791">Punjab</a> – the two major provinces that would be split between India and Pakistan – began to urge for such an outcome along with the Muslim League’s followers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181836/original/file-20170811-1313-a7wo7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Viceroy of India Lord Louis Mountbatten, right, speaks with Muslim League leader Muhammed Ali Jinnah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Max Desfor, File</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Amid such confusion, the last viceroy of India, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Mountbatten-1st-Earl-Mountbatten">Lord Louis Mountbatten</a> arrived in India from London in March 1947 with the mandate to transfer power quickly. Mountbatten, in an attempt to resolve the political impasse, persuaded many Indian leaders to accept a partition. </p>
<p>Consequently, <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer7/index.html">Mountbatten’s Plan of June 3, 1947</a> announced that not only would India gain independence in August 1947, a full year ahead of schedule, but also that it would be partitioned so as to accommodate the demand for a Muslim homeland.</p>
<p>Decisions made behind closed doors would decide the fate of millions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=203&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=203&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=203&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181854/original/file-20170813-27082-1r6fpd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The partition of India. The maps show the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan as a nation in 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p><em>This piece was first published on August 15, 2017 and was updated to reflect the 75 years of partition of India and Pakistan.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Haimanti Roy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At midnight on August 15, 1947, India achieved freedom from more than two centuries of colonial rule. Hours earlier, Pakistan was declared a new nation. Was partition inevitable?Haimanti Roy, Associate Professor of History, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/817662017-08-10T10:21:00Z2017-08-10T10:21:00ZHow the Partition of India happened – and why its effects are still felt today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181415/original/file-20170808-22982-ikgy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mahatma Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, 1947.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMountbattens_with_Gandhi_(IND_5298).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Partition” – the division of British India into the two separate states of India and Pakistan on August 14-15, 1947 – was the “last-minute” mechanism by which the British were able to secure agreement over <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/modern/maps1947/maps1947.html">how independence would take place</a>. At the time, few people understood what Partition would entail or what its results would be, and the migration on the enormous scale that followed took the vast majority of contemporaries <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/chronology/index.html">by surprise</a>.</p>
<p>The main vehicle for nationalist activity was the Indian National Congress, whose best-known leaders included <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/people/gandhi_1.shtml">Mahatma Gandhi</a> and <a href="http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/former_pm/shri-jawaharlal-nehru/">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>. Even before the 1940s, it had long argued for <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/indian-national-congress">a unitary state with a strong centre</a>; even though Congress was ostensibly secular in its objectives, organisations representing minority interests increasingly viewed this idea with suspicion, believing that it would entrench the political dominance of Hindus, who made up about 80% of the population.</p>
<p>At around 25% of its population, Muslims were British India’s largest religious minority. Under imperial rule, they had grown accustomed to having their minority status protected by a system of reserved legislative seats and separate electorates. The British system of political control hinged on identifying interest groups willing to collaborate, a governing style <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40400043">often described</a> as “divide and rule”.</p>
<p>The prospect of losing this protection as independence drew closer worried more and more Muslims, first in parts of northern India, and then, after World War II, in the influential Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab. In 1945-6, the <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1310662">All-India Muslim League</a>, led by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/12/jinnah-founder-pakistan-independence-partition-1947-archive">Muhammad Ali Jinnah</a>, won a majority of Muslim votes in provincial elections. This strengthened the party’s claim to speak for a substantial proportion of, but never all, the subcontinent’s Muslims.</p>
<p>Then came World War II – and suddenly, the political stakes in India were considerably higher. </p>
<h2>The end of the Raj</h2>
<p>When Britain took India into the war without consultation in 1939, Congress opposed it; large nationalist protests ensued, culminating in the 1942 <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/1942-quit-india-movement">Quit India</a> movement, a mass movement against British rule. For their part in it, Gandhi and Nehru and thousands of Congress workers were imprisoned until 1945. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the British wartime need for local allies gave the Muslim League an opening to offer its cooperation in exchange for future political safeguards. In March 1940, the Muslim League’s “Pakistan” resolution called for the creation of “separate states” – plural, not singular – to accommodate Indian Muslims, whom it argued were a separate “nation”.</p>
<p>Historians <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/26/arts/taking-on-pakistan-s-hero-then-taking-the-heat.html">are still divided</a> on whether this rather vague demand was purely a bargaining counter or a firm objective. But while it may have been intended to solve the minority issue, it ended up aggravating it instead.</p>
<p>After the war, Attlee’s Labour government in London recognised that Britain’s devastated economy could not cope with the cost of the over-extended empire. A <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer2/">Cabinet Mission</a> was dispatched to India in early 1946, and Attlee described its mission in ambitious terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavours to help her to attain her freedom as speedily and fully as possible. What form of government is to replace the present regime is for India to decide; but our desire is to help her to set up forthwith the machinery for making that decision.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An act of parliament proposed June 1948 as the deadline for the transfer of power. But the Mission failed to secure agreement over its proposed constitutional scheme, which recommended a loose federation; the idea was rejected by both Congress and the Muslim League, which vowed to agitate for “Pakistan” <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer2/index.html">by any means possible</a>.</p>
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<p>All the while, communal violence was escalating. In August 1946, the <a href="http://time.com/3879963/vultures-of-calcutta-the-gruesome-aftermath-of-indias-1946-hindu-muslim-riots/">Great Calcutta Killing</a> left some 4,000 people dead and a further 100,000 homeless.</p>
<p>By March 1947, a new viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, arrived in Delhi with a mandate to find a speedy way of <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/indiapakistan/partition4/index.html">bringing the British Raj</a> <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer5/index.html">to an end</a>. On June 3, he announced that independence would be brought forward to August that year, presenting politicians with an ultimatum that gave them little alternative but to agree to the creation of two separate states. </p>
<p>Pakistan – its eastern and western wings separated by around 1,700 kilometres of Indian territory – <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1751044.stm">celebrated independence</a> on August 14 that year; India did so the following day. The new borders, which split the key provinces of the Punjab and Bengal in two, were officially approved on August 17. They had been drawn up by a Boundary Commission, led by British lawyer <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-40788079/cyril-radcliffe-the-man-who-drew-the-partition-line">Cyril Radcliffe</a>, who later <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/indiapakistan/partition9/index.html">admitted</a> that he had relied on out-of-date maps and census materials.</p>
<h2>Torn apart</h2>
<p>Partition <a href="http://time.com/4421746/margaret-bourke-white-great-migration/">triggered</a> riots, mass casualties, and a colossal wave of migration. Millions of people moved to what they hoped would be safer territory, with Muslims heading towards Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs in the direction of India. As many as 14-16m people may have been eventually displaced, travelling on foot, in bullock carts and by train. </p>
<p>Estimates of the death toll post-Partition range from 200,000 to two million. Many were killed by members of other communities and sometimes their own families, as well as by the contagious diseases which swept through <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/the-road-to-partition/communal-disturbances/">refugee camps</a>. Women were often targeted as symbols of community honour, with up to 100,000 raped or abducted. </p>
<p>What can explain this intensely violent reaction? Many of the people concerned were very deeply attached not just to religious identity, but to territory, and Britain was reluctant to use its troops to maintain law and order. The situation was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/the-raj-war-peoples-history-second-world-war-yasmin-khan-review">especially dangerous</a> in Punjab, where weapons and demobilised soldiers were abundant.</p>
<p>Another unforeseen consequence of Partition was that Pakistan’s population ended up more religiously homogeneous than originally anticipated. The Muslim League’s leaders had assumed that Pakistan would contain a sizeable non-Muslim population, whose presence would safeguard the position of Muslims remaining in India – but in West Pakistan, non-Muslim minorities comprised only 1.6% of the population by 1951, compared with 22% in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). </p>
<p>And even though Pakistan was ostensibly created as a “homeland” for India’s Muslim minority, not all Muslims even supported its formation, never mind migrated there: Muslims remained the largest minority group in independent India, making up around 10% of the population in 1951. Gandhi himself was <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/mahatma-gandhi-shot">assassinated in January 1948</a> by a Hindu nationalist extremist who blamed him for being too supportive of Muslims at the time of Partition.</p>
<p>Both states subsequently faced huge problems accommodating and rehabilitating post-Partition refugees, whose numbers swelled when the two states <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/south_asia/2002/india_pakistan/timeline/1947_48.stm">went to war</a> over the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947-8. Later bouts of communal tension generated further movement, with a trickle of people still migrating as late as the 1960s. </p>
<p>Today, the two countries’ relationship is far from healthy. <a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-flare-up-puts-india-under-new-pressure-to-deal-with-pakistan-65741">Kashmir remains a flashpoint</a>; both countries are <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-the-idea-of-an-islamic-bomb-come-from-69385">nuclear-armed</a>. Indian Muslims are frequently suspected of harbouring loyalties towards Pakistan; non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan are increasingly vulnerable thanks to the so-called <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/pakistans-islamization-before-and-after-dictator-zia-ul-haq/a-19480315">Islamisation</a> of life there since the 1980s. Seven decades on, well over a billion people still live in the shadow of Partition.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a> is a seven-part podcast series from The Conversation, taking an in-depth look at the big issues facing India ahead of the 2019 Indian elections.</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266588/original/file-20190329-71003-uc9saw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-trailer-114641?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=AnthillHeaderBanner2114648">Click here to listen to the India Tomorrow trailer from The Anthill</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Ansari has previously received funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to explore the impact of Independence and Partition on life in India and Pakistan. </span></em></p>As the British Empire became an unaffordable burden, planning for India’s independence quickly ran into trouble.Sarah Ansari, Professor of History, Head of Department, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/805862017-07-17T00:38:51Z2017-07-17T00:38:51ZHinduism and its complicated history with cows (and people who eat them)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177211/original/file-20170706-26461-mfgsrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are cows sacred to all Hindus?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/incandopolis/12148626453/in/photolist-jvwToM-ocvh2o-7gJaQU-e3CTXm-54axnt-54eMeE-tHysJ-pmd5jd-zQ3ZV-faR6Cq-6FNN1C-8t26jm-pKiaCX-dwzPQt-5rBhiM-6UB5gD-nVbxhF-9HBZMP-fiufiL-g6HS4t-7LtWwK-ocE6KV-75KjJX-du1k9T-rYemwB-nuiaTX-47vqt6-e6JB5r-qbzuCX-dXSuEr-faiyyw-dHHaDG-cPivkY-edNyiQ-aqmNTP-ekXDV9-4rbMnh-bDCSmM-51Tpuf-aqput5-9aqn9f-nVbbG2-pg4nBb-S6dHjT-stTaFJ-fXBxYU-mMgwH-i1efbZ-c7GrCA-mQxGT8">PRODaniel Incandela</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just this past June, at a national meeting of various Hindu organizations in India, a popular preacher, Sadhvi Saraswati, <a href="http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/hang-those-who-eat-beef-as-status-symbol-sadhvi-saraswati/422764.html">suggested that</a> those who consumed beef should be publicly hanged. Later, at the same conclave, an animal rights activist, Chetan Sharma, <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/all-india-hindu-conclave-at-goa-event-gaumutra-drives-purification-ride-4709422/">said</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Cow is also the reason for global warming. When she is slaughtered, something called EPW is released, which is directly responsible for global warming. It’s what is called emotional pain waves.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These provocative remarks come at a time when vigilante Hindu groups in India are lynching people for eating beef. Such killings have increased since Narendra Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata party came to power in September 2014. In September 2015, a 50-year-old Muslim man, Mohammad Akhlaq, was lynched by a mob in a village near New Delhi on suspicion that he had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/03/inside-bishari-indian-village-where-mob-killed-man-for-eating-beef">consumed beef</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/world/asia/india-cow-mob-hindu-vigilantes.html">Since then</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/world/asia/india-lynchings-attacks-on-muslims.html">many attacks</a> by cow vigilante groups have followed. Modi’s government has also prohibited the slaughter of buffalo, thus <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/world/asia/buffalo-meat-industry-india-shutdowns.html?_r=0">destroying the Muslim-dominated buffalo meat industry</a> and causing widespread economic hardship.</p>
<p>Most people seem to assume that no Hindu has ever consumed beef. But is this true? </p>
<p>As a scholar, studying Sanskrit and ancient Indian religion for over 50 years, I know of many texts that offer a clear answer to this question. </p>
<h2>Cows in ancient Indian history</h2>
<p>Scholars have known for centuries that the ancient Indians ate beef. After the fourth century B.C., when the practice of vegetarianism spread throughout India among Buddhists, Jains and Hindus, many Hindus continued to eat beef.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/a-burnt-offering/">In the time of the oldest Hindu sacred text</a>, the Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.), <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/157-the-myth-of-the-holy-cow">cow meat was consumed</a>. Like most cattle-breeding cultures, the Vedic Indians generally ate the castrated steers, but they would <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Early_India.html?id=-5irrXX0apQC">eat the female of the species</a> during rituals or when welcoming a guest or a person of high status. </p>
<p>Ancient ritual texts known as Brahmanas (c. 900 B.C.) and other texts that taught religious duty (dharma), from the third century B.C., <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/157-the-myth-of-the-holy-cow">say</a> that a bull or cow should be killed to be eaten when a guest arrives. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Dharmasutras_Olivelle_1999.pdf">According to these texts</a>, “the cow is food.” Even when one passage in the “Shatapatha Brahmana” (3.1.2.21) <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbr/sbe26/sbe2604.htm">forbids</a> the eating of either cow or bull, a revered ancient Hindu sage named Yajnavalkya immediately contradicts it, saying that, nevertheless, he eats the meat of both cow and bull, “as long as it’s tender.” </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177212/original/file-20170706-9219-1tswjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cows painted over a door are believed to bring good luck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rfunnell/15266611124/in/photolist-pg4nBb-S6dHjT-aqpudG-stTaFJ-fXBxYU-mMgwH-dXSsQX-i1efbZ-mQxGT8-6UBgYv-bCgu2-ocuUGj-2adWjN-h2ctz-4Ak4mP-buzDJx-4DuE1V-8s4Ruo-ocvgC7-iBQz3M-nVakcy-2wqP8-ocE6sF-nKidX9-7hFHXs-DLjJr-dxyD8B-e8nJht-8hCNbR-e8toC7-aVM4M8-6TqDYT-6ZunDt-8vYSwW-e8toru-7LpqRh-h2EWm-6Tqy8g-fGBHr-ocuUVf-7RRpFA-oiAVt-7qoyhd-c7GrCA-mQzvx7-8ngWzN-5ifQ6-e8nHHn-oczB4b-aYUxtR">Ross Funnell</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>It was the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata (composed between 300 B.C. and A.D. 300) that explained the transition to the non eating of cows <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520040984">in a famous myth</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Once, when there was a great famine, King Prithu took up his bow and arrow and pursued the Earth to force her to yield nourishment for his people. The Earth assumed the form of a cow and begged him to spare her life; she then allowed him to milk her for all that the people needed.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This myth imagines a transition from hunting wild cattle to preserving their lives, domesticating them, and breeding them for milk, a transition to agriculture and pastoral life. It visualizes the cow as the paradigmatic animal that yields food without being killed.</p>
<h2>Beef-eating and caste</h2>
<p>Some dharma texts composed in this same period insist that cows should not be eaten. Some Hindus who did eat meat made a special exception and did not eat the meat of cow. Such people may have regarded beef-eating in the light of what the historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romila_Thapar">Romila Thapar</a> describes as a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Early_India.html?id=-5irrXX0apQC">“matter of status”</a> – the higher the caste, the greater the food restrictions. Various religious sanctions were used to impose prohibition on beef eating, but, as Thapar demonstrates, “only among the upper castes.” </p>
<p>As I see it, the arguments against eating cows are a combination of a symbolic argument about female purity and docility (symbolized by the cow who generously gives her milk to her calf), a religious argument about Brahmin sanctity (as Brahmins came increasingly to be identified with cows and to be paid by donations of cows) and a way for castes to rise in social ranking. </p>
<p>Sociologist <a href="http://www.sociologyguide.com/indian-thinkers/m-n-srinivas.php">M. N. Srinivas</a> pointed out that the lower castes <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Social_Change_in_Modern_India.html?id=Mf1PtqYBaQAC">gave up beef</a> when they wanted to move up the social ladder through the process known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskritisation">“Sanskritization.”</a> </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177213/original/file-20170706-26461-gfcgli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A central tenet of Gandhi’s teaching was vegetarianism. But he did not call for a beef ban.</span>
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<p>By the 19th century, the cow-protection movement had arisen. One of the implicit objects of this movement was the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/393920">oppression of Muslims</a>. </p>
<p>Famously, Gandhi attempted to make vegetarianism, particularly the taboo against eating beef, a central tenet of Hinduism. Gandhi’s attitude to cows was tied to his idea of nonviolence.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9aJyjYuTruAC&q=calf+love#v=snippet&q=calf%20love&f=false">He used the image</a> of the Earth cow (the one that King Prithu milked) as a kind of Mother Earth, to symbolize his imagined Indian nation. His insistence on cow protection was a major factor in his <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298258/the-hindus-by-wendy-doniger/9780143116691">failure to attract large-scale Muslim support</a>. </p>
<p>Yet even Gandhi never called for the banning of cow slaughter in India. <a href="https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/cwmg_volume_thumbview/ODg%3D#page/1/mode/2up">He said</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“How can I force anyone not to slaughter cows unless he is himself so disposed? It is not as if there were only Hindus in the Indian Union. There are Muslims, Parsis, Christians and other religious groups here.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Today’s India</h2>
<p>From my perspective, in our day, the nationalist and fundamentalist “Hindutva” (“Hindu-ness”) movement is attempting to use this notion of the sanctity of the cow to disenfranchise Muslims. And it is not only the beef-eating Muslims (and Christians) who are the target of Hindutva’s hate brigade. Lower-caste Hindus are also being attacked. Attacks of this type are not new. This has been going on since <a href="http://www.culturism.us/booksummaries/Hindutva%20Who%20is%20a%20Hindu4Posting.pdf">Hindutva began in 1923</a>. And indeed, in 2002, in a north Indian town, <a href="http://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/why-i-decided-to-convert-the-dalits-of-jhajjar/217730">five lower-caste Hindus were lynched</a> for skinning a cow. </p>
<p>But, as local analysis shows, the violence has greatly increased under the Modi government. IndiaSpend, a data journalism initiative, <a href="http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/86-dead-in-cow-related-violence-since-2010-are-muslim-97-attacks-after-2014-2014">found that</a> “Muslims were the target of 51 percent of violence centered on bovine issues over nearly eight years (2010 to 2017) and comprised 86 percent of 28 Indians killed in 63 incidents…As many of 97 percent of these attacks were reported after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power in May 2014.”</p>
<p>In 2015, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/gujarat-dalit-protests-una-gau-rakshaks-mohammad-akhlaq-modi-govt-2954324/">lower-caste Hindus were flogged</a> for skinning a dead cow, triggering spontaneous street protests and contributing to the resignation of the state’s chief minister. </p>
<p>As these and so many other recent attacks demonstrate, cows – innocent, docile animals – have become in India a lightning rod for human cruelty, in the name of religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80586/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Doniger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Vigilante Hindu groups in India have lynched several people for eating beef. A scholar traces the history of beef-eating in ancient India.Wendy Doniger, Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, University of ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722642017-02-01T19:06:02Z2017-02-01T19:06:02ZHugh Mackay: the state of the nation starts in your street<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155134/original/image-20170201-12681-1v3h6wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 'loss of community' is one of the most common concerns among contemporary Australians.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited version of the Gandhi Oration, delivered by Hugh Mackay at the University of New South Wales on January 30, 2017.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I wonder what Gandhi would have made of Australia in 2017 – a place that many people who live here regard as the best country in the world. </p>
<p>It’s true that we have a robust parliamentary democracy, even if we’re replacing prime ministers at an unsustainable rate. Paramedics <a href="http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/qld/2015/11/06/paramedics-longer-asking-pm/">no longer use</a> the question “Who is the prime minister?” as a reliable test of cognitive function of the bewildered or concussed.</p>
<p>We have our spectacular beaches, Sydney Harbour, our bush, our mountains, some of the world’s cutest wildlife and the world’s most liveable cities.</p>
<p>We have a well-educated population, with unprecedented numbers of students enrolled at our universities – many of which are world class.</p>
<p>We have relatively low unemployment. A high – though falling – rate of home ownership. A record period of sustained economic growth and a sound financial system, though accompanied by record – perhaps worrying – levels of personal and government debt.</p>
<p>This is a place where we pride ourselves on the fair go. A place where we enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press.</p>
<p>No wonder we’re such a highly desirable destination for tourists, immigrants and, yes, refugees. This is a place where you might think the dream of egalitarianism could finally come true. It is certainly a place where we have managed to create a harmonious society out of extraordinary cultural and ethnic diversity, bringing together people from almost 200 birthplaces around the world.</p>
<p>Remarkable.</p>
<p>And yet all is clearly not well. We are a society in the grip of epidemics of anxiety, obesity and depression – 20% of Australians experience <a href="https://www.sane.org/mental-health-and-illness/facts-and-guides/fvm-mental-illness-basics">some form of mental illness</a>.</p>
<p>More than 700,000 children are <a href="http://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/child-poverty-on-the-rise-730000-children-in-poverty/">living in poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Although we pride ourselves on our low rate of unemployment, we often overlook the problem of underemployment. About <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7094-australian-unemployment-estimates-november-2016-201612131600">2 million Australians</a> are either unemployed or underemployed. And 100,000 Australians <a href="http://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/index.php/about-homelessness/homeless-statistics">are homeless</a>.</p>
<p>We are further from egalitarianism than we were 50 years ago. We are showing signs of a disturbing retreat from the values of an open, tolerant society for which we were once famous.</p>
<p>How did this happen? Where did this edgy, anxious, too-violent society come from? This uneasy blend of arrogance and timidity?</p>
<p>Could it be the result of <a href="https://theconversation.com/income-and-wealth-inequality-how-is-australia-faring-23483">growing income inequality</a> that has produced an unprecedentedly large gap between rich and poor Australians, with greater numbers than ever before at the top and the bottom of the economic heap? Inequality certainly breeds insecurity, and poverty certainly has bad consequences for health. But anxiety and depression are not confined to any particular social or economic stratum.</p>
<p>Could all this anxiety be the result of declining respect in the community for our institutions – the church, politics, the banks, the trade unions, the media, even universities – which has led to widespread disenchantment and disillusionment? </p>
<p>After all, we create institutions to formalise many of the functions of our society: they exist to serve us, so when we suspect they are being corrupted by their own power, or becoming inward and self-protective in their focus, we are understandably disappointed, and perhaps even outraged. </p>
<p>You may have seen <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/distrustful-nation-australians-lose-faith-in-politics-media-and-business-20170118-gttmpd.html">recent media reports</a> of research by the Edelman organisation showing that trust in big business in Australia is in sharp decline. And we all know what has happened to respect for the institutional church – and for politics.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ipsos-survey-australians-want-a-strong-leader-to-take-country-back-from-rich-powerful-20170117-gtsu9v.html">international survey conducted by Ipsos</a> showed that more than 70% of Australians believe the nation “needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”; 68% believe “the economy is rigged to the advantage of the rich and powerful”; and 61% believe “traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me”.</p>
<p>That decline in respect for contemporary institutions of all kinds might well contribute to our level of anxiety, though I suspect the main response among people who lose faith in an institution is disgust rather than anxiety. They are more likely to switch off, or retreat into cynicism, rather than to worry about it.</p>
<p>I believe Mahatma Gandhi might have had something to say about all this. I suspect he would have wanted to remind us that if we lose our capacity for unconditional compassion, if we lose sight of our true nature as members of a society – and if we focus too much on our own wants, our own entitlements and our own gratifications, with little regard for the needs and wellbeing of others, there will be an inevitable threat to our mental health.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155131/original/image-20170201-12678-ddzaz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What would Gandhi have made of Australia in 2017?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Raminder Pal Singh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘We don’t know our neighbours’</h2>
<p>Over the years, my own research has consistently identified “loss of community” as one of the most common concerns among contemporary Australians. That concern is often expressed as a regret that local neighbourhoods are not functioning as well as they once did. </p>
<p>“We don’t know our neighbours” has become a cliché of contemporary urban life. That is never said with pride or pleasure: feeling like a stranger in your own street is bound to fuel your insecurities.</p>
<p>A disturbing piece of research from Edith Cowan University <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-matter-of-trust/2005/10/29/1130400400879.html">has shown</a> that only one-third of Australians say they trust their neighbours. Clearly, that could not possibly mean that 65% of neighbours are untrustworthy – what it must mean is that most people in our society don’t know their neighbours well enough to have learnt to trust them.</p>
<p>I’m not of course suggesting that the erosion of our commitment to the community we live in is the sole cause of anxiety, or even the primary cause in many cases. Anxiety and depression are often the result of a complex blend of biological and social factors. </p>
<p>What I am suggesting is that when we lose sight of our role as neighbours, the health of the neighbourhood suffers. And when the health of the neighbourhood suffers, we all suffer. </p>
<p>When we ignore our biological destiny as social creatures – people who need each other; people for whom a sense of belonging is fundamental to our wellbeing; people who utterly rely on communities to define us, sustain us and protect us – then our level of anxiety is likely to rise.</p>
<p>So is there less community engagement than previously? Are local neighbourhoods less stable and cohesive than they once were?</p>
<p>When you look at the evidence, it’s hard to argue with the popular perception.</p>
<h2>Winds of social change</h2>
<p>Let me remind you of some of the factors that have been propelling us in the direction of becoming a more fragmented, more individualistic, more competitive, more aggressive, less co-operative and therefore more anxious society.</p>
<p>First, the most obvious one: the rate and the relentlessness of social, cultural, economic and technological change. Ever since the Industrial Revolution radically changed the way we live and work, we have struggled to adapt to those changes. </p>
<p>And while, as a species, we are still – after 250 years – trying to absorb the impact of that revolution, we have had many more recent revolutions to cope with: the gender revolution, an economic restructure amounting to revolution, an information technology revolution, and even a revolution in our sense of who we are – our cultural identity as Australians.</p>
<p>The symptoms of those revolutions are familiar to us all:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>changing patterns of marriage and divorce, with 36% of contemporary marriages expected to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/mark-mccrindle/is-australia-really-the-l_b_9129164.html">end in divorce</a> and the consequential disruptions of families, friendship circles and communities – including for the 1 million dependent children who are <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/3310.0Main%20Features122014?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3310.0&issue=2014&num=&view=">now living with</a> just one of their natural parents;</p></li>
<li><p>a record <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/baby-drought-australias-fertility-rate-falls-to-10year-low-20151029-gklmvc.html">low birth rate</a>: meaning children, the great social lubricant, are in shorter supply than ever (while compensatory pet ownership has soared);</p></li>
<li><p>the rise of the two-income household, with a greater sense of “busyness” and less time and energy available to nurture the community;</p></li>
<li><p>our rapidly shrinking households – with the average now down to <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3236.0Main%20Features42011%20to%202036">2.6 persons per household</a> and single-person households the fastest-growing type, expected to reach 30% of all households within the next ten years – increasing the risk of widespread loneliness, social isolation, even alienation;</p></li>
<li><p>our increasing mobility (we move house on average once every six years);</p></li>
<li><p>our almost universal car ownership reducing footpath traffic; and</p></li>
<li><p>the IT revolution that has led us to confuse data transmission with communication, altered our perceptions of privacy and identity, and – above all – made it easier than ever to remain apart from each other.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The likely cumulative effect of those factors is easy to imagine. Taken together they exert great pressure on the stability and cohesiveness of communities. But that pressure is not irresistible – yet unless we resist it, the pressure will steadily increase the risk of fragmentation and social isolation.</p>
<p>It’s already clear that many of us are severely stressed by the struggle to keep up with the rate of change in our lives. One of the consequences of that stress is anxiety; another is violence – both physical and emotional – often in response to a seemingly small irritation that turns out to have been the last straw.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155135/original/image-20170201-12675-i3rvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s birth rate is hitting record lows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>All about me and my happiness</h2>
<p>A second source of pressure towards individualism and therefore greater fragmentation is exerted by the powerful propaganda coming at us from two very different sources, both carrying the same essential message: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s all about me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The increasingly sophisticated and increasingly pervasive influence of consumer mass-marketing promotes materialism and greed – more things will save you; more stuff will save you. This message is reinforced every day by political and other leaders who insist on reducing everything to economics. But the deeper message is that it’s all about my comfort, my prosperity, my wellbeing.</p>
<p>Essentially the same message – though in a very different guise – comes from the “happiness” industry, promoting the idea that we are all entitled to happiness – indeed, that happiness is our default position. </p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong: I love being happy – who doesn’t? I’m not an “anti-happiness crusader”, as someone recently suggested. </p>
<p>But I do acknowledge the truth of ancient wisdom on this topic: if you pursue happiness, it will elude you; if you think you’re entitled to be happy, then you’ve missed the point of happiness; if you privilege happiness above all other emotions, then you’ve failed to grasp one of the loveliest truths about the human condition – that we have a full spectrum of emotions for dealing with what life throws at us (the highs, the lows, the disappointments, the triumphs, the sadness, the gratifications, the pain, the loss … and the tedium) and every point on that spectrum is as valid, as authentic, as every other point, because every point on the spectrum has something to teach us about what it means to be human. </p>
<p>And no point on the spectrum makes sense without the context of all the others. So if I could bestow perpetual happiness on you … you’d never be happy.</p>
<p>The pursuit of happiness is a health hazard. And teaching our children that they are entitled to be happy, or that we expect them to be happy (C’mon, give us a smile) simply sets them up for later disappointment, and even anger:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why isn’t it turning out the way my parents said it would?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The effect of all this propaganda can be seen everywhere in the burgeoning “me culture” that has Western societies like ours in its grip. Think of the epidemic of selfies. Think of the primary uses of social media – not to communicate but to brag. Think of the growing emphasis on personal entitlement rather than civic responsibility.</p>
<p>The message of the me culture is antithetical to our true nature as communitarians; as people genetically programmed to co-operate rather than compete; as people whose very identity is inextricably linked to the groups we belong to; as people who will shrivel up (emotionally, if not physically) if we are not nurtured by the experience of engaging with the lives – and sharing the pain – of those around us.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155136/original/image-20170201-12678-1o8p0q0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The pursuit of happiness is a health hazard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The three big threats</h2>
<p>A third contributor to our present level of anxiety is the growing rumble of the three big threats – climate change, international terrorism and the threat of a major global economic disruption. </p>
<p>These things threaten us on such a large scale they seem utterly beyond our control In the face of threats like these, we feel so powerless, so vulnerable, that many of us deal with our anxiety – or our fear – by simply retreating into a shell of self-absorption.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I can’t control any of that, so I’ll focus on what I can control – the bathroom renovations, the school I send my kids to, the quest for a perfect latte.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What I’m suggesting is that, under the influence of all these factors, we are losing our sense of human connectedness and therefore our sense of compassion. </p>
<p>We are not living as if we need each other, though we do. We are not living as if our own health depends on the health of the communities we belong to, though it does. We are not living as if we understand that a good life can only be a life lived for others, though that’s all it can ever be.</p>
<p>How else can you make sense of the idea of a morally good life? You can’t be good on your own: morality is only ever about how we treat other people; goodness is inherently about responding to other people’s need of our kindness, charity, compassion, respect – our love.</p>
<p>Ah, love. It’s one of those words, isn’t it? We use it to refer to romantic passion, or close friendship, or even our affection for music, or food, or travel, or pets, or poetry. We routinely say we love all those things.</p>
<p>Those kinds of love are about our emotional responses – our affections. But the kind of love that transforms neighbourhoods, communities and entire societies actually has nothing to do with emotion at all, or even affection. </p>
<p>That kind of transforming love is motivational, not emotional; it’s a tough mental discipline that involves our commitment to the idea of kindness and compassion as a way of life. It’s the discipline of approaching every situation with a charitable disposition, with an inherent sense of respect for the other person, and with a determination to be kind – no matter what our differences may be.</p>
<p>This is the way we defuse violence. It’s the way we turn conflict into co-operation. </p>
<p>One of Gandhi’s wisest contributions to this way of thinking was to urge us to acknowledge that when we find ourselves in conflict with someone’s ideas, it is the conflict itself that is our opponent – not each other. Gandhi’s so-called <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/gandhi-and-passive-resistance-campaign-1907-1914">“passive resistance”</a> – a term he himself rejected – was really about replacing the force of violence with the combined force of truth and compassion – what he called <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/44-gandhi-explains-satyagraha">“soul force”</a>.</p>
<p>There is a very Christian idea – but not exclusively Christian – at the heart of this discipline. It’s the idea that we should expand our interpretation of “love your neighbour” not only by redefining what we mean by love in the way I’ve suggested – compassion might be a better word – but also by redefining the meaning of “neighbour” to include everyone, not just those who are like us and those we agree with, but those who are decidedly not like us and those we disagree with, as well. </p>
<p>It’s easy to be kind and compassionate towards those we like; not so easy towards those we don’t like. And yet how we respond to those we don’t like is the ultimate test of whether we have acquired the discipline most essential to mental health: the discipline of a loving disposition.</p>
<p>One consequence of our embrace of the loving disposition is that we would abandon the primitive and atavistic notion of revenge. In the same way as a truly civilised person renounces violence as a way of achieving our ends, so a truly civilised person renounces the idea that if I have been treated badly, then I am entitled to act badly in response. </p>
<p>Revenge is a way of bringing us both down to the same level of bad behaviour – wrestling together in the moral mud. The only possible response of the civilised person is to forgive and, where practicable, to help repair the damage.</p>
<p>That’s how we build a better society – by responding to bad behaviour with good behaviour; by responding to ugliness with beauty; by responding to treachery with integrity; by responding to lies with truth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155132/original/image-20170201-12675-1jdlwlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The threat of international terrorism contributes to our levels of anxiety.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>We can change</h2>
<p>To conclude, let me revisit the state of the nation – our growing disenchantment with institutions, our tendency to disengage from the serious social issues that confront us – homelessness, the plight of asylum seekers, the enduring problem of Indigenous Australians’ health and wellbeing, the problem of growing inequality of income, the fragmentation of families, neighbourhoods and communities, and – perhaps as a consequence of that – the rising epidemic of anxiety.</p>
<p>It’s easy to complain about “the state of the nation” and to wish that a leader could make everything right. There’s a very long history of human societies placing too much faith in their leaders to save them from whatever they think they need saving from. </p>
<p>In Australia, we’ve had a couple of very recent examples of what happens when we over-invest our faith in leaders – their fall from grace, and our ultimate disappointment in them, is all the more poignant. </p>
<p>It’s true that the best leaders can both inspire and reassure us by placing us in a narrative we can understand and by offering visionary policy solutions to our social and economic problems. But, as part of the general decline of trust in politics, our esteem for the current crop of leaders has plummeted. Both Donald Trump and Brexit can be partially interpreted as reactions to similar disenchantment in the US and UK.</p>
<p>In one way, that might be no bad thing. It might encourage us to look differently at the situation and take matters into our own hands by embracing the idea that the state of the nation actually starts in the street where you live.</p>
<p>We can’t manage the economy, but we can decide to spend and save wisely, and to be more generous to the needy – the marginalised, the disadvantaged, the brutalised.</p>
<p>We can’t stop the rising tide of technology but we can be its masters, not its servants.</p>
<p>And when it comes to the character and the values of our society, it really is up to us. We can have a powerful influence on the state of the various communities we belong to – in the neighbourhood, the workplace, the university, the church or other faith community, the sporting association, the book club or other community organisation. How we contribute to the miniatures of life – in our own family, street, suburb or town – will ultimately help to determine the big picture.</p>
<p>We all know how to act like neighbours when there’s a crisis – floods, bushfires, storms, or horrific events like the carnage in Melbourne’s Bourke Street two weeks ago. Of course bystanders rushed to the aid of the injured. Of course people instinctively help those in obvious pain and distress – that’s the kind of species we belong to.</p>
<p>So why does it so often take a crisis to remind us of our responsibility to the other members of our community – including the elderly and the isolated, whose need of help – perhaps in the form of nothing more than a bit of conversation – might not be as immediately obvious as an accident victim’s.</p>
<p>You think people aren’t as friendly as they once were – that, especially in Sydney, avoiding eye contact with strangers has become an art form? Then be more friendly. Start making eye contact with strangers. No – do better than that – start smiling and saying hello … at the bus stop, in a lift, in the checkout queue, and especially in the street or apartment block where you live. </p>
<p>You don’t know your neighbours? Try knocking on the door and introducing yourself. Become the kind of person who is always alert to the possibility that someone needs your help or attention.</p>
<p>Join a local book club or a community choir; participate in a community garden; play a team game with a local club; become a regular at your local café. In other words, engage. Be there.</p>
<p>And don’t worry about how you’re feeling about any of this – whether being kind to people is making you happy. That’s not why you’re doing it. </p>
<p>If you’re looking for something to worry about … worry about whether you gave someone your undivided attention when they needed it – whether you really listened, or just pretended to. </p>
<p>Worry about whether you apologised quickly enough – and sincerely enough – when you wronged or offended someone; whether you forgave someone readily enough when they wronged or offended you; whether you were there when someone – perhaps even a total stranger – needed your encouragement and support.</p>
<p>If enough of us start living as if this is the kind of society we want it to be, that’s the kind of society it will become. As Gandhi <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3343-you-may-never-know-what-results-come-of-your-actions">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Mackay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia is a place that prides itself on the fair go. And yet, all is clearly not well.Hugh Mackay, Honorary Professor of Social Science, University of Wollongong; Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Arts, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/704912016-12-15T15:15:43Z2016-12-15T15:15:43ZPope Francis, the superstars of radical nonviolence, and a bold move to change the politics of peace<p>Pope Francis will embrace active nonviolence when he delivers his <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/papa-francesco_20161208_messaggio-l-giornata-mondiale-pace-2017.html">World Day for Peace message</a> on January 1 2017. Invoking the ideology of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, the pope will urge people of all faiths to break the cycle of violence and, noting that after enduring two world wars in the 20th century, “today, sadly, we find ourselves engaged in a horrifying world war fought piecemeal”, he will call for everyone to become an “artisan of peace”.</p>
<p>Francis’ statement is the 50th World Day for Peace message. In 1967, Pope Paul VI, better known for his reiteration of <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">traditional church teaching on birth control</a>, instituted the celebration and, each year, popes have issued a message in which they have often introduced new ideas and concepts into the social teaching of the Catholic church. These have included ecology, human rights – and perhaps the most famous mantra in Catholic social teaching – Paul VI’s message: “<a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_p-vi_mes_19711208_v-world-day-for-peace.html">If you want peace, work for justice</a>”. </p>
<p>This year’s message exemplifies this trend and brings into the Catholic zeitgeist a word which has been the currency of most peace activists since Gandhi came to public prominence after World War I. This word is nonviolence, an idea and ideal that is frequently misunderstood. Francis’s message explores this word in some of its fullest meanings and, in doing so, affirms the importance of a particular style of the politics of peace. This is significant because it indicates a movement in the Catholic church’s focus on war and peace from the idea of a “<a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/global/why-catholic-church-moving-away-just-war-theory">just war</a>” towards an embrace of active nonviolence.</p>
<h2>The cost of violence</h2>
<p>For many, a common misunderstanding is that nonviolence is characterised by extreme passivity where Christians are expected to allow others to abuse them in anticipation of some future heavenly reward. Such a stance is justified by the often misunderstood teaching of Jesus “to turn the other cheek”. This gospel passage is cited in this year’s message but is situated in a very different way. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150345/original/image-20161215-26074-19t50ex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mohandas Gandhi, taken in late 1930s.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Francis uses the examples of the superstars of nonviolence, <a href="http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king">Martin Luther King Jr</a>, Gandhi, the Muslim nonviolent revolutionary <a href="http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/khan-abdul-ghaffar-khan-5505.php">Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan</a> and the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize-winner, <a href="http://nobelwomensinitiative.org/laureate/leymah-gbowee/">Leymah Gbowee</a> to disabuse us of this notion. </p>
<p>Here, Francis shows us how focused he is upon interfaith relations – and, through the use of these examples, Francis teaches that nonviolence is a radical practice that actively seeks to bring about the conditions of positive peace, that is a peace consisting of much more than the mere absence of war. These people did not add to the cycle of violence but instead actively wanted to break it. These are the people that Francis wants us to learn from and emulate. He wants nonviolence in this mode to permeate political life in all of its forms. </p>
<h2>Politics for peace</h2>
<p>Francis emphasises that “violence is not the cure for our broken world” – he says that the real cost of violence is “forced migration, enormous suffering and, too frequently, death”. Because everything is interconnected, achieving peace is the responsibility of all – from political leaders to ordinary people taking little simple steps. For Francis, every such response is significant – and this is the most empowering point that he makes: we all control the fate of the world through our actions.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150346/original/image-20161215-26065-bozysz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Superstar of nonviolence: Martin Luther King.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nobel Prize</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The empowering style of this politics for peace is not just explored on the level of principle. Specific programming for nonviolent action is recommended throughout the message. The most important of these is respect for integral human dignity – that people are relational beings who need to live in communities – a point which comes through most clearly in his advocacy of dialogue. In Francis’ view, violence permeates every aspect of society from the geopolitical to the familial. His assertion that we are in a “piecemeal” world war challenges the dangerous assumption that global threats to peace are a thing of the past. </p>
<p>In the West, it is too easy to think of violence as something that happens elsewhere, something we hear about in the media that can be switched off at will. But Francis strives to be a pope for the whole world and is calling people to realise that, because of the reality of interconnectivity, we are all responsible. None of us lives free from the tentacles of violence. </p>
<p>For Francis, this reach of violence corresponds to a wide agenda for nonviolent action. He calls on us to move beyond the tactical – we have to address issues such as nuclear proliferation, poverty, the refugee crisis and violence against women. And we have to do this in a principled way. We cannot accept the premise that force is somehow free from the constraints of morality. In contrast he asserts that force, like all human actions, ought to be mediated by morality. </p>
<h2>Everyone’s a winner</h2>
<p>According to Francis, this teaching is on <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5">Jesus’s Beatitudes</a> that human relationships should be mediated by love and justice. In this light, nonviolence becomes an act of love working for peace, justice and care for creation and for all people so that the discarding of no one can be justified. </p>
<p>This is a vision based upon concern for migrants, the sick, the excluded and marginalised, the imprisoned and the unemployed as well as victims of what would traditionally be considered violence. In such a manner, Francis fills in the content of positive peace. In turn, this helps situate his goal of building nonviolent communities, inhabited by nonviolent people who care for our common home.</p>
<p>Francis consulted widely and drew on diverse sources for crafting this year’s message. There are informal signals that an encyclical (a longer and more authoritative form of papal teaching) on nonviolence <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/cardinal-turkson-papal-encyclical-nonviolence-just-war-theory-plausible">will follow</a>. In the present message there is something designed to appeal to most people – from greens to conservatives to liberals – showing how Francis is practising what he is preaching and seeking to inspire a pilgrim church and others sympathetic to his message to work to heal a broken world. </p>
<p>Here, active nonviolence could heal the <a href="https://reformissio.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/fractures-in-the-foundation-of-st-peters-rock-the-current-catholic-crisis-and-the-evangelical-solution/">fractures within Catholicism</a> and other divided communities as people respond to Francis’s call. Through such tangible possibilities, his previously expressed sentiment reiterated in the conclusion of this message, that everyone can be artisans of peace emerges in a more cogent and fuller light.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We are living in a world war fought piecemeal. It is everyone’s responsibility to fight for peace.Maria Power, Lecturer in Religion and Peacebuilding, University of LiverpoolChristopher Hrynkow, Associate Professor, Department of Religion and Culture, University of SaskatchewanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/672692016-11-15T17:10:58Z2016-11-15T17:10:58ZGhana University row re-ignites debate about Mahatma Gandhi’s racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143877/original/image-20161031-15788-il2znt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mahatma Gandhi figurine at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Vienna.The call to remove his statute from the University of Ghana has reignited debate about his legacy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The statue of Mahatma Gandhi is to be <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.gh/index.php?id=358">removed</a> from the University of Ghana campus after a campaign by academic staff based on claims that the Indian leader was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/petition-calls-for-gandhi-statue-to-be-removed-from-ghana-university">racist</a>. Politics and society editor Thabo Leshilo asked Suraj Yengde about the controversy.</em></p>
<p><strong>Is the claim that Gandhi was racist valid?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. The respected book, <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26014">The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire</a> by academics Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, provides proof that Gandhi was not only racist but also sexist, misogynist, casteist, supremacist and a patriarch.</p>
<p>He displayed a contemptible attitude towards black Africans. He held the Indian to be “much superior, in capacity, reliability and obedience, to the average Kaffir”, as quoted in <a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL002.PDF">The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (p. 50-51)</a>. He constantly opposed integration of blacks and Indians and loathed the classification of Indians with the “Kaffir race”, also in The Collected Works (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 364</a>). (“Kaffir” is a derogatory term used to refer to black South Africans.) He found it “insulting” to be “placed in the same category with the Native” (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL004.PDF">p. 220</a>).</p>
<p>Gandhi assumed that the natives were “barbarians” and that they were “yet being taught the dignity and necessity of labour” (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 367</a>). On various occasions Gandhi successfully petitioned for separation of Indians (in the Collected Works again, here on <a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 368-9</a>) from the black Africans claiming the inferiority of blacks. </p>
<p>For example he wrote in an open letter (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 193</a>): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gandhi opposed inter-race relations, such as between an Indian man and a black woman. In his Gujarati version of <a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL010.PDF">Indian Opinion</a> (December 2, 1910) he admitted in inadvertently that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some Indians do have contacts with Kaffir women. I think such contacts are fraught with grave danger. Indians would do well to avoid them altogether (p. 414). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He believed that “the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race” (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL003.PDF">p.255-6</a>). </p>
<p>Gandhi’s patriarchy, sexism and misogyny are also well documented. He regarded women as manipulating creatures who invigorated fanciful phallic desires in men, squarely blaming women for the incidents of domestic violence, Rita Banerji writes in her book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Power-Defining-History-Societies/dp/0143064711">Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies</a>.</p>
<p>He apparently believed that women who were raped or sexually abused or whose “purity is violated” should consider suicide “through sheer will force”, according to Sujata Patel in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/323750/Construction_and_Reconstruction_of_Woman_In_Gandhi">Construction and Reconstruction of Woman In Gandhi</a> (page 278).</p>
<p>Gandhi was deplorable towards oppressed castes – spiritually and politically. He believed the caste and the <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/varna-Hinduism">varna system</a> to be the foundation of an ethical society, thus promoted separation based on caste vigorously. This translated into the public practices too, where he was on guard to snatch away the rights of “untouchables” for self-emancipation obtained via <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4398052?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">separate electorates</a>. </p>
<p>Many people have written about Gandhi’s bigotry, including some among his over 1,000 English <a href="http://www.vinaylal.com/ESSAYS(Gandhi)/nak7.pdf">biographers</a>.</p>
<p><strong>This does not accord with the image of Gandhi as a great leader and a canonised pacifist. How are we to understand the discordance?</strong></p>
<p>Gandhi is now an institution. His biographical image is reproduced so much that he continues to influence leading global moments and leaders. American President Barack Obama, for example, does not miss any opportunity to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/01/25/obama-long-inspired-by-gandhi-visits-his-memorial-in-india/">mention him</a> when referring to India. </p>
<p>Human rights advocates idolise Gandhi. His statues are all over the world. This works well for India’s diplomats and makes their job easy. Simply having a Gandhi photo on a office wall or his bust donated to some school or university institutionalises the Indian government’s presence in the foreign society. Something similar happened in Ghana but it was met with a backlash.</p>
<p>Gandhi was a unifying model but not a great leader. He certainly united India, at least the Hindu India, with his influence in the Indian Congress. But the moral leadership he is accorded seems suspect on closer examination. Indian jurist, economist and reformer Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s account exposes the Gandhi’s injustice against <a href="http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/41A.What%20Congress%20and%20Gandhi%20Preface.htm">“untouchables”</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhi’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html">relationship with women </a> has also been severely criticised. He held the disturbing view that women were simply the reproductive organs of society - <a href="https://sexandpower.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/">good only for bearing babies</a> and that the women who used contraceptives were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/27/mohandas-gandhi-women-india">whores</a> that had an itch for sexual pleasures. </p>
<p>Gandhi demeaned women. He had disturbing views on the biology of women. He held the periodical menstrual cycle to be a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Power-Defining-History-Societies/dp/0143064711">distortion of a woman’s soul by her sexuality</a>”.</p>
<p>Gandhi was also at odds with the liberal tradition of tribals (the indigenous Indians, also known as Adivasi) who consider intimacy between men and women as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705691/#ref7">liberating</a>. He thus excluded tribals from positions of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Power-Defining-History-Societies/dp/0143064711">responsible leadership</a>. </p>
<p><strong>What is the significance of Ghana leading the charge against Gandhi in this way?</strong></p>
<p>Ghana has a special place in African history as the first country to gain independence from colonial oppression. Inspired by Kwame Nkrumah’s pan-Africanist ideology, Ghana became a beacon of light for independence movements across Africa. Its freedom had a snowball effect of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2168387?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">colonial liberations</a> in Africa. </p>
<p>With their anti-Gandhi stance, Ghananian academics are leading the charge in determining the contemporary-modern history of Africa by disowning historical cults unfavourable to Africa. The Indian government’s choice of the symbol of Gandhi for its encroachment into Ghana’s campuses appears to have been a mistake.</p>
<p>Ghana is an important player in international and African politics. Its diaspora is well represented in the western hemisphere. This augers well for the spread of the message of the Ghananian academics. This will find resonance with the marginalised Indian groups such as the Dalits, Sikh and others.</p>
<p>The move by Ghana’s academics has certainly alarmed the government of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/ghana-academics-petition-removal-mahatma-gandhi-statue-african-heroes">Ghana</a>. If this movement were to take effect in other African countries it might force the Indian state to reconsider Gandhi as its export symbol to Africa, in a way that is cognisant of the continent’s long history of suffering. </p>
<p>Although Ghana is taking the lead against Gandhi, his racism is not lost to South Africans, as Desai and Vahed wrote in <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26014">The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suraj Yengde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most influential personalities in history, celebrated for his advocacy of non-violent resistance. But his dark side is now receiving increased attention.Suraj Yengde, Associate, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/608282016-06-10T17:29:12Z2016-06-10T17:29:12ZAid to dying: What Jainism – one of India’s oldest religions – teaches us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126173/original/image-20160610-29225-9kpg6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What do different end-of-life conversations look like?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=tpPFBVoMuWQBuIVjju7BbA&searchterm=death&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=318595376">Rose image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 9, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/patients-ponder-life-death-california-s-new-right-die-law-n588611">a law allowing patients</a> with terminal illnesses to end their lives with help from a physician came into effect in California, opening conversations about whether human life should be prolonged against the desire to die peacefully and with dignity.</p>
<p>A similar yet different conversation has been taking place in India for the past several years, but in reverse.</p>
<p>In one of India’s religious traditions, Jainism, those at the end of life can choose to embrace a final fast transition from one body to another. However, a recent court case has challenged the constitutionality of this practice. <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-1637-nonviolence-to-animals-earth-an.aspx">As an expert</a> in the religions of India and a frequent visitor, I have been following this issue with keen interest. </p>
<h2>A rite to final passage</h2>
<p>While on a visit to a Jain university in Ladnun, Rajasthan in western India in 1989, I had an opportunity to observe the practice of “Sallekhana” or “Santhara,” a somber rite through which one fasts to death.</p>
<p>A group of enthusiastic nuns rushed me in for a blessing being imparted to an octogenarian nun, Sadhvi Kesharji, who had taken this vow 28 days earlier. The nun had been diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease and been treated, but to no avail. </p>
<p>It was an auspicious moment. Her spiritual preceptor, Acharya Tulsi, praised her six decades as a nun and noted the lightness of her spirit and the strength of her resolve which guaranteed safe passage into her next incarnation. </p>
<p>She passed away 12 days later, in a prayerful state.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126171/original/image-20160610-29203-fmvnbk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Jainism, those at the end of life can embrace a final fast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=PsGbcBznXxduixvSfHvtjA&searchterm=jain%20nun&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=120292858">Jain nun image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not the only such case. It is estimated that some <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/02/436820789/fasting-to-the-death-is-it-a-religious-rite-or-suicide">200 Jains, both lay and monastic</a>, complete the final fast each year. Jains living elsewhere in the world observe the practice as well.</p>
<p>For example, two Jain women who were born in India but spent most of their adult lives in the United States <a href="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/taboo/videos/fasting-to-death/">chose to fast</a> in the last days prior to death. Vijay Bhade, a Jain woman from West Virginia, entered a fast unto death in 1997. A more recent case was Bhagwati Gada, from Texas, who suffered from advanced stage cancer and decided to fast unto death in 2013, after going through multiple rounds of chemotherapy. </p>
<h2>Who are the Jains?</h2>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Jains.html?id=5ialKAbIyV4C">Jainism arose</a> more than 2,800 years ago in northeast India. It teaches a doctrine proclaiming the existence of countless eternal souls who, due to their actions or karma, bind themselves to repeated lifetimes. </p>
<p>These souls could manifest as elemental beings in the earth or water or fire or air. They could evolve to become micro-organisms and plants or eventually take forms as worms, insects, birds, reptiles or mammals.</p>
<p>By committing acts of goodness, they might take human form and ascend to a place of everlasting freedom at the highest limits of the universe, from which they continue to observe forever the repeated rounds of existence experienced by the many souls below. </p>
<p>Jains <a href="http://www.jainworld.com/book/jainism/ch11.asp">do not believe</a> in a creator God or an external controller. All experiences, good and bad, are due to one’s own exertions. The <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/jai/5vows.txt">key to spiritual ascent</a> resides in the performance of five vows also shared by Yogis and Buddhists in India: nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, celibacy and nonpossession. </p>
<p>Jains believe the practice of these vows helps release fettering karmas that impede the energy, consciousness and bliss of the soul. Every ethical success lightens the soul of its karmic burden. Mohandas Gandhi, the well-known leader of India’s independence, who grew up in the company of Jains, employed these vows personally and as a collective strategy of nonviolence to help India overcome the shackles of British colonization.</p>
<h2>Freedom yes, but can there be coercion?</h2>
<p>Up until recent years, the fast unto death process <a href="http://www.jinvaani.org/acharya-shri-shantisagar-ji.html">has been celebrated</a> with newspaper announcements that laud the monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen who undergo this vow. But of late, questions are being raised whether it can result in coercion and cruelty.</p>
<p>In 2006, a young lawyer in Rajasthan, Nikhil Soni, <a href="http://rhccasestatus.raj.nic.in/smsrhcb/rhbcis/judfile.asp?ID=CW%20%20%20&nID=7414&yID=2006&doj=8/10/2015">challenged the constitutionality</a> of this act, stating that it violates the anti-suicide laws that had been in put place by the British to stop the immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre. The practice of widow burning has endured, despite many <a href="http://www.kashgar.com.au/articles/life-in-india-the-practice-of-sati-or-widow-burning">efforts to abolish the practice</a>. </p>
<p>The high court of Rajasthan ruled in favor of Soni in 2015, effectively making the practice of fasting to death punishable by law. However, some weeks later, the Supreme Court of India <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-lifts-stay-on-santhara-ritual-of-jains/article7600851.ece">placed a stay</a> on this ruling. The case is still awaiting its final verdict. Observant Jains claim this is an important part of their faith. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126175/original/image-20160610-29219-1e9egp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fast is a spiritually guided process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=GGBTe2nRw-4xe0V7YDc-5Q&searchterm=jain%20monk&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=172958246">Jain nun image via www. shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Entering the fast requires counsel and permission from one’s spiritual advisor. And the process of rejection of food is gradual. First, one takes some yogurt, then only milk, then only juice, eventually moving from water to total rejection of any nutrition or hydration. </p>
<p>Physicians state that this is <a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2015/10/terminal-dehydration-a-gentle-way-to-die.html">not death by starvation</a> but by dehydration. The body automatically <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Schiavo/story?id=531907">goes into a state of ketosis</a> (when the body starts to break down stored fat for energy), often accompanied by a peaceful state. </p>
<h2>Rights versus rites approach</h2>
<p>What can we learn from such spiritual practices?</p>
<p>Debates on end of life focus on the “rights” approach, thus appealing to the rational mind. Spiritual traditions on the other hand assert that it makes no sense to prolong suffering. They use a “rites” approach to the inevitable passing of the human body. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23444173?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Jains believe</a> that the soul has always been here, that the soul cannot be destroyed and that through the process of death, one transitions to a new body. </p>
<p>The Jain tradition shows how we can move without attachment into death rather than clinging to life. In their acceptance of the inevitable, they set an example that death is not an evil but an opportunity to reflect on a life well-lived and look forward to what lies ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I serve on the Advisory Boards for the International school for Jain Studies in Delhi, the Jaina Studies Centre University of London & the Ahimsa Center in Pomona CA.</span></em></p>California now allows terminally ill people to end their lives. In the 2,800-year-old Jain tradition, individuals can choose to fast unto death, when it makes no sense to prolong suffering.Christopher Key Chapple, Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology, Loyola Marymount UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/426022015-06-04T20:09:20Z2015-06-04T20:09:20ZGlobal progress on poverty is slowest for the poorest of the poor<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83494/original/image-20150601-17839-125gn0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The gulf between the world's poorest people and the rest of us is, if anything, widening despite global gains in lifting millions out of poverty. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_and_open_sewer_in_Kibera.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/hris1johnson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On launching the 2011 <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/reports.shtml">Millennium Development Goals Report</a>, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon <a href="http://undesadspd.org/Poverty/WhatsNew/tabid/1347/news/133/Default.aspx">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The poorest of the world are being left behind. We need to reach out and lift them into our lifeboat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This view is heard quite often. Yet other observers appear to tell a very different story. They use aphorisms such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rising_tide_lifts_all_boats">“a rising tide lifts all boats”</a>, or they point to evidence that <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/09/poverty-growth-and-world-bank">“growth is good for the poor”</a> and that the poor are <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Great-Surge/Steven-Radelet/9781476764788">“breaking through from the bottom”</a>.</p>
<p>Can we reconcile these seemingly conflicting views? In <a href="http://www18.georgetown.edu/data/people/mr1185/publication-79678.pdf">my paper</a>, I draw on the results from household surveys for developing countries spanning 1981 to 2011. I find that there has been considerable progress against poverty when one counts the numbers of people living below a wide range of poverty lines, including lines well below the international line of <a href="http://wber.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/2/163.short">$US1.25 per person per day</a>. Each line is fixed in real value over time and across countries.</p>
<p>The evidence indicates falling incidence and depth of absolute poverty in the developing world over recent decades. That is good news. But does it mean that Ban Ki-moon and others are wrong?</p>
<h2>What’s missing from the picture of poverty?</h2>
<p>This paper argues that something important is missing from the numbers generated by counting poor people over time. If overall economic progress is not to “leave the poorest behind” then it must, in due course, raise the lower bound to the distribution of permanent consumption levels in society. That lower bound can be called the consumption floor.</p>
<p>There are good reasons to look at what is happening to the consumption floor. An important school of moral philosophy has argued that we should judge a society’s progress by its ability to enhance the welfare of the least advantaged, following John Rawls’ proposed <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#JusFaiJusWitLibSoc">principles of justice</a>. By this view, a higher floor is not only preferred, but is the main criterion of distributive justice – subject to other criteria of liberty, as identified by Rawls.</p>
<p>The Rawlsian approach of using success in raising the consumption floor as an indicator of social progress has not been favoured by economists, but it has deep roots in thinking about development and social policy. In a famous example, in 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was asked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How can I know that the decisions I am making are the best I can make? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gandhi <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/gquots1.htm">answered</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The spirit of Gandhi’s talisman was echoed (in somewhat drier terms) 65 years later in a report initiated by the United Nations on setting new development goals. The report<a href="http://www.un.org/sg/management/beyond2015.shtml"> argued</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The indicators that track them should be disaggregated to ensure no one is left behind and targets should only be considered ‘achieved’ if they are met for all relevant income and social groups.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Endorsing this view, Kevin Watkins at the <a href="http://www.odi.org/">Overseas Development Institute</a> in London refers explicitly to Gandhi’s talisman and <a href="http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/8638.pdf">argues</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As a guide to international cooperation on development, that’s tough to top.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Social policies across the globe have also emphasised the need to raise the consumption floor.</p>
<h2>Assessing progress for the poorest</h2>
<p>Estimating the level of the consumption floor is difficult. I have proposed two methods of doing so. Both can be implemented with readily available data, although they make very different assumptions. </p>
<p>Both methods suggest a consumption floor today that is about half of the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. This is probably close to the consumption of essential foods for those living on around $1.25 a day.</p>
<p>My principal empirical finding is that, while the counting approach shows huge progress for the poorest, the Rawlsian approach of focusing on the floor does not. The distribution of the gains among the poor has meant that the expected value of the consumption floor has risen very little over the last 30 years.</p>
<p>The figure below gives the estimated level over time for the developing world as a whole. Very little progress in raising the floor is evident despite the progress (accelerating since 2000) in raising the overall average consumption.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84161/original/image-20150606-8706-1fdswdw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another perspective is shown below. This gives the absolute gain in consumption in the developing world over 1981-2011 by percentile, from the poorest (on the left) to the richest (right). Consistent with the lack of progress in raising the floor, we see that the gains are close to zero for the poorest, but rising to quite high levels. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84162/original/image-20150606-8692-wnjmg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is also consistent with what we know about rising absolute inequality in the developing world, as I recently <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/851">discussed</a>.</p>
<p>While policymakers would be ill-advised to look solely at the level of the floor in a given society, it does have normative significance independently of attainments in reducing the numbers of people living near that floor. The argument here is not that progress against poverty should be judged solely by the level of the consumption floor, but only that this should not be ignored as we think about development goals and social policies going forward.</p>
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<p><em>This article is based on the keynote address to the ACFID 5th University Network Conference at Monash University in Melbourne on June 4-5 2015. Follow the conversation @ACFID and @Monash_Arts #EvidencePractice.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Ravallion does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite progress in lifting people above poverty lines around the world, the picture is bleaker for people at the very bottom of the ladder. They have largely missed out on the gains of recent decades.Martin Ravallion, Professor of Economics and inaugural Edmond D. Villani Chair of Economics , Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/423322015-05-28T04:07:17Z2015-05-28T04:07:17ZThe books that shaped the rise and fall of the British empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83144/original/image-20150527-4818-1bz971c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new collection of essays explores the role of books in founding and dismantling The British empire.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When we talk about books, we generally think only of their inside - the words, ideas and themes that they contain. But what about the outside? Books are objects in the world. They undertake all kinds of work that exceeds just their words - they forge friendships, decorate our houses, store our momentoes and memories. </p>
<p>Books also have active political lives. They inspire social movements and bind people together. Books can stand as short-hand symbols for larger galaxies of ideas. </p>
<p>A new collection of essays <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Books-That-Shaped-British-Empire/dp/0822358271">Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire</a> explores the role of books in founding and dismantling The British empire. Written by scholars from South Africa, India, Barbados, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the US, the volume comprises ten essays, each on a book that shaped British imperial life. </p>
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<h2>Block-busters and obscure texts</h2>
<p>The ten books include five famous block-busters and five now-obscure texts that in their day were influential. </p>
<p>The five block-busters are imperial or anti-imperial classics: Robert Baden Powell’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Scouting-Boys-Handbook-Instruction-Citizenship-ebook/dp/B000RKW5BA">Scouting for Boys (1908)</a>, Charlotte Bronte’s <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm">Jane Eyre (1847)</a>, Thomas Babington Macaulay’s five volume <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1468/1468-h/1468-h.htm">History of England (1848)</a>. The anti-colonial texts are Mohandas Gandhi’s <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf">Hind Swaraj (1909)</a> and <a href="http://www.ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf">The Black Jacobins (1938)</a> by CLR James, the famed Caribbean revolutionary thinker. </p>
<p>The lesser-known texts are</p>
<p>• Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Sydney-Principal-Town-Australasia/dp/B00A2XEV1E">A Letter from Sydney (1827)</a> , influential in the colonisation of New Zealand and Australia.</p>
<p>• Charles Pearson’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/National-character-forecast-Charles-Pearson/dp/B00AR9R8A4">National Life and Character (1893)</a>, an Australian book predicting the rise of Asia and the end of the ‘white man’.</p>
<p>• <a href="https://ia700404.us.archive.org/33/items/acenturyofwrong15175gut/15175-h/15175-h.htm">Century of Wrong (1899)</a>, the pamphlet setting out the Boer cause in the lead up to the Anglo-Boer War. </p>
<p>• <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gE5zAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=">Totaram Sanadhya’s 1914 Fiji Mein Mere Ekkis Varsh</a> (My Twenty-one Years in Fiji) a Hindi pamphlet opposing indentured labour.</p>
<p>• Gakaara wa Wanjau’s 1960 <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gdIJAQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks">Mihiriga ya Agikuyu</a> (The Clans of the Gikuyu) written in a Mau Mau detention camp.</p>
<h2>How the 10 were chosen</h2>
<p>The volume is edited by a radical historian of empire, Antoinette Burton from the University of Illinois and myself, a scholar of print culture and book history from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.</p>
<p>In our introduction, we say that from the very beginning the book provoked fascination. “Oh wow! Which are the ten books?” was a common response.</p>
<p>While everyone had a different idea of which books should be included, our interlocutors accepted the premise that books could change empires. People envisaged a series of big books that founded empires (<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086537308582372?journalCode=fich20">John Robert Seeley</a>, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086537308582372?journalCode=fich20">Charles Dilke</a>, <a href="http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/350925/FD-Lugard">Frederick Lugard</a> were common examples) and a set of equally significant books that ended up dismantling them <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/">Frantz Fanon</a>, <a href="http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/87703/Amilcar-Lopes-Cabral">Amilcar Cabral</a>, <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Che_Guevara.aspx">Che Guevara</a>).</p>
<h2>How the books shaped aspects of empire</h2>
<p>In some cases the influence was direct. In 1901, when Australian parliamentarians debated the <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/immigration-restriction-act/">Immigration Restriction Bill</a> (a key part of the White Australia policy), the Australian prime minister held up a copy of Pearson’s book and read two passages from it. On the anti-imperial end of the spectrum, CLR James <a href="http://www.ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf">Black Jacobins</a> was widely taken as an allegory predicting the end of colonial rule in Africa. </p>
<p>Yet books equally have more diffuse and longer term effects – <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gdIJAQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks">Wanjau’s pamphlet</a> for example was less concerned with direct action against the British than with undertaking the long, slow work of preparing people for independence. </p>
<p>Books were deeply enmeshed with empire and were often used as symbols of British imperial authority, calling-cards of ‘civilization’. As one observer noted, “The English literary text … function[s] as a surrogate Englishman in his highest and most perfect state”. Books were held up as the ‘gift’ of empire and were used to portray colonialism as benign while masking its violent nature. </p>
<p>Books and documents were also instruments of ruling – the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-3">pass book</a> was used to control the movements of black people during apartheid in South Africa.</p>
<p>But books could equally be used by those opposing empire, a provocation to imperial power and a monumental statement of intent. James’ <a href="http://www.ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf">Black Jacobins</a>, an account of the late 18th-century slave revolt in Haiti initially appeared in a handsome 328-edition from Secker and Warburg.</p>
<h2>Some came from humble beginnings</h2>
<p>Yet, not all of the 10 books started out as books – many began life as pamphlets or newspaper articles, more humble forms which nonetheless exerted considerable influence. <strong>Century of Wrong</strong> became a calling card for the pro-Boer cause. <strong>Scouting for Boys</strong> appeared first as a newspaper series and then in small handbooks, a format that helped make scouting an international movement. </p>
<p>These texts travelled far and wide at times migrating through different media, appearing as newspaper serials and then rising up into books. Aiding their passage was the vast sprawling periodical and newspaper network that carpeted empire. <strong>Hind Swaraj</strong> began life in Gujarati in a two-part series in Gandhi’s Durban-based newspaper <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/media-and-journalism/history-indian-opinion-newspaper">Indian Opinion</a> before appearing as a booklet translated by Gandhi himself into English. </p>
<p>These streams of print culture made up the sinews and arteries of empire, linking its supporters while offering a mode of communication to its opponents. Access to this field of print culture was uneven and unequal, affected by capital, literacy, censorship. </p>
<p>Yet, much of this printed matter was not copyrighted – all periodicals for example legally reprinted material from each other. These carpets of print culture created a type of commons across empire, a zone of textual production not owned by one person. </p>
<p>Books in empire were dispersed across time and space – they were not bounded events. As instruments for and against empire, they formed part of the sprawling assemblage of the British empire, both extending its reach and limiting its legitimacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42332/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isabel Hofmeyr receives funding from National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>Books have active political lives. They inspire social movements and bind people together. Books can stand as short-hand symbols for larger galaxies of ideas.Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor of African Literature , University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/327942014-10-13T00:32:56Z2014-10-13T00:32:56ZAdmirable Nobel decision unlikely to spur India-Pakistan peace<p>The awarding of a shared Nobel Peace Prize award to a 17-year-old Pakistani girl, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-peace-prize-extraordinary-malala-a-powerful-role-model-32839">Malala Yousafzai</a>, and a 60-year-old Indian man, <a href="http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/who-is-kailash-satyarthi/1/395118.html">Kailash Satyarthi</a>, is historic and aimed at conveying multiple messages to global policy-makers. Both awardees have worked tirelessly for the rights of an estimated 180 million children worldwide who continue to be <a href="http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_publ_9221124169_en.pdf">used for harsh labour</a>. The impacts on their right to schooling are crippling. </p>
<p>No doubt, the common cause of child welfare has touched the Nobel committee, but this year’s prize is not unprecedented. <a href="http://www.unicef.org/about/history/index_56072.html">UNICEF</a> was awarded the prize in 1965 for a similar cause. </p>
<p>What is perhaps more consequential is the nationality, religions and age of this year’s recipients. A collective award to nationals of two rival nuclear powers hailing from two different religious groups that harbour immense animosity for each other is noteworthy. The age difference of the recipients highlights the transgenerational importance of fighting for children’s rights and for peace-building more generally.</p>
<p>The Nobel committee has perhaps also redeemed itself by recognising Satyarthi, an intellectual protege of Mohandas Gandhi. The untimely assassination of Gandhi in 1948, and the provisions in Alfred Nobel’s will for awarding the prize to living individuals only, was <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/gandhi/">symbolically noted by the committee</a> in awarding no peace prize that year. </p>
<p>It is also important to recognise the hidden hands of doctors in Pakistan and the UK who saved Malala Yusufzai after her assassination attempt. If she had not survived, she too would have been deprived of this honour.</p>
<h2>History of prize is sobering</h2>
<p>Now let us get to the other matter of any peace dividends this prize might have for the ongoing <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/kashmirtheforgottenconflict/2011/06/2011615113058224115.html">conflict between India and Pakistan</a> or between Hindus and Muslims. Unfortunately, the history of the prize in galvanising peace between acrimonious countries predicated in ethno-religious differences is very discouraging. </p>
<p>For example, the awarding of <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1994/">the 1994 prize</a> to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin has had absolutely no impact in moving Arabs and Israelis closer to conflict resolution 20 years on. </p>
<p>The success of the prize in motivating intrastate political peace or protecting dissidents is perhaps slightly more heartening. Yet here too the time it takes for any impact to be realised muddles any causality.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1991/">Aung San Suu Kyi</a> was perhaps protected from extreme persecution in Myanmar by her Nobel award. However, more than 22 years hence her participation in any electoral process remains elusive despite the ostensible “opening up” of the country.</p>
<h2>Sustained international engagement is needed</h2>
<p>The only way the peace dividends from this year’s prize could potentially be harnessed for Indians and Pakistanis alike would be if external powers with influence in the region played a meaningful mediating role. The asymmetry in power between the countries, both demographically and economically, trumps any nuclear equalisation factor one might envisage. Any expectations that both countries will somehow sort out their political issues and see the light of peace following the joint Nobel would be naïve. </p>
<p>India has far more economic might than Pakistan and any incentives for peace-building, despite their logic on ecological and even trade-related grounds, are easily subverted by security hawks. In such a situation, the only way to motivate a lasting peace would involve some form of international mediation on the long-standing territorial dispute between the countries. Major powers, particularly economic trading partners with India such as the United States, would need to invest political capital. </p>
<p>Gulf States such as the UAE or Saudi Arabia could exert similar influence on Pakistan and its powerful military, which maintains strong ties in the region. The Gulf states could also help counter the fundamentalist fervour and conspiratorial rhetoric that have forced Yousafzai into exile. (She lives in the UK for fear of further assassination attempts in Pakistan.)</p>
<p>Norway, which hosts the Nobel prize, tried its hand at mediation in South Asia in the case of the Sri Lankan conflict a decade ago. A military solution prevailed instead, so one may wonder how effective mediation might be. </p>
<p>India and Pakistan both realise their conflict has no long-term military solution. However, the “cool war” status quo serves the political elite in both nations. </p>
<p>Perhaps where the joint Nobel Peace Prize could make a slow but generational shift would be through changing public perceptions of regional conflicts. Both countries have to contend with abject poverty and human rights issues, which neither can afford to trivialise. A campaign to channel public funds from military expenditure towards joint human development goals could be an important next step for Yousafzai and Satyarthi.</p>
<p>However, only concerted international engagement can hope to secure lasting peace. Territorial conflict sadly continues to eclipse the collective good of securing a better future for Indian and Pakistani children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saleem H. Ali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The awarding of a shared Nobel Peace Prize award to a 17-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, and a 60-year-old Indian man, Kailash Satyarthi, is historic and aimed at conveying multiple messages…Saleem H. Ali, Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining and Affiliate Professor of Politics and International Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.