Chennai: Were Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose antithetical in their approach to India’s freedom struggle? Not necessarily. In some bold, reflective strokes on the two great heroes who shaped Indian nationalism, eminent philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and Rajaji, sees their respective mission in India’s march towards freedom from British rule as complementing a larger purpose.
A stunningly nourishing dose to this much-debated aspect of contemporary Indian political history unfolds in the recently released, The Seven Sages – Selected Essays by Ramchandra Gandhi, which DC took a sneak peek at. A. Raghuramaraju, Professor of Philosophy, Central University, Hyderabad, has edited this rare collection published by Penguin India. Ramu Gandhi, as the thinker was widely known, brilliantly analyses two strands of an equally dramatic and complex forward movement in our freedom struggle in the early 1940s’, after World War-II broke out and amid the row over should India cooperate with Britain’s war efforts or not.
“In 1942, you will remember, Gandhi wages the Quit India Movement. That’s when the Second World War has begun and racism manifested in the backyard of Europe, right?” poses Ramu. “But racism, in its institutionalised form, had been practised in India for a couple of centuries by the British Empire,” emphasises Ramu. Thus, “It occurs to Gandhi to battle, to give a battle to racism.” The Mahatma’s ‘Quit India’ call in 1942 against the British also meant ‘end racism’, argues Ramu.
“I am not a historian, professionally at all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if imaginative historical research were to reveal that this struggle of Gandhi’s against institutionalised British racism…empowered the British to fight Hitler in some way. I think we got there first, because of this struggle against racism in 1942. Gandhi’s colleagues are amazed. There are photographs, documentary footage which I have seen, where they all look puzzled and Gandhi looks excited,” says Ramu.
This presumption that, intellectually and culturally, “we are the European race”, a powerful self-image that contributed to the rise of fascism, got a severe jolt by Gandhi’s 1942 do or die cry in India to ‘end racism’ as it is a “form of dualism’ of a very high order, in Ramu Gandhi’s view. “This is another way of seeing the strand of Advaita Sadhana in Gandhi’s public life,” muses Ramu, for whom the allied powers’ fight against Hitler was in some way energised by the Mahatma’s 1942 ‘Quit India’ call.
In his second bold interpretative stroke, Ramu turns to Subhas Chandra Bose, heading the Indian National Army (INA) in 1943. “I can see that without the 1942 (Quit India) Movement being followed by the capability demonstrated by Subhas Chandra Bose, that India was perfectly capable of winning her freedom through conventional military means, but chose on the mainland (India) not to do so in search of a higher power, Gandhian Ahimsa would not have had the credibility that it did have,” says Ramu. Sans the 1943 INA Movement, “I doubt very much if the 1942 Movement could be seen as a pioneering example of what I would call a non-dualist revolution, which has to be non-violent,” says Ramu.
And again, without the Mahatma’s 1942 Movement, “Subhas Chandra Bose’s INA Movement would be seen as a little tantrum in the Far East of Indian prisoners of war, no more. But it can now be seen in more heroic terms, because of this juxtaposition of 1942 and 1943.” Thus Bose in 1943 “preserves the honour of Ahimsa” and this historical sequence “is tremendously important,” Ramchandra Gandhi has underscored.
