Turning ‘Bapu’ into a ‘Mahatma’ has done him tremendous harm, says great-grandson

Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and author of the massive book ‘Let’s Kill Gandhi! A Chronicle of His Last Days, The Conspiracy, Murder Investigation and Trial’, spoke to Open about the legacy of the late leader of India’s freedom movement and the efforts to denigrate him both by his so-called supporters and his detractors. Edited excerpts:

 Has the Congress after Gandhi done justice to his political message?

Following the grand commemoration of Bapu’s birth centenary in 1969, a sense of fatigue crept into Indian politics. Gandhi’s ideals were gradually reduced to mere ritualistic observances. In the post-emergency era under Indira Gandhi, even those rituals began to fade, confining his legacy to just two dates—October 2 and January 30.

Indira Gandhi’s Congress drifted away from the essence of his ideology. In the 1980s, particularly after the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, the party lost its claim as the inheritor of Gandhi’s political legacy. By then, it had also begun shedding the Nehruvian legacy. In the 1990s and early 2000s, as the BJP pushed its Hindutva politics, the Congress responded with a misguided strategy of soft Hindutva, which proved disastrous. Today, Rahul Gandhi remains one of the few voices in the party that occasionally signals a slow return to the core philosophies of both Nehru and Gandhi.

A writer recently remarked that the Hindu Mahasabha cannot destroy Gandhi’s legacy because even the Congress, a party that ruled India for decades after his death, failed to do so. What do you make of that statement?

The Congress never actively sought to dismantle Gandhi’s legacy, but it did engage in a dishonest pretence of inheriting it. This weakened his legacy, allowing right-wing forces to legitimise their campaign of slander and hatred against Bapu. For this, the Congress party and self-proclaimed ‘Gandhians’ share the blame.

Gandhi has become a whipping boy for criticism from various ideological groups. Why is this happening?

For a long time, Communists made Gandhi their ‘whipping boy’. Socialists grudgingly accepted him. Congress, despite claiming to be his ideological successor, was dishonest in its approach. Hindu fundamentalists have always hated Gandhi and have worked to dismantle his legacy—ironically aided by radical Dalit and Ambedkarite groups. As a result, Bapu was left defenceless and reduced to a mere caricature. With him gone, self-styled ‘Gandhians’ monopolised his image, isolating and insulating what remained of his legacy.

Why do people refuse to see Gandhi as a human being who also made mistakes?

Ours is an idol-worshipping society. We deify our icons, attributing divine qualities to them, which makes it difficult for us to accept their flaws. The same has happened to Bapu. By turning him into a ‘Mahatma,’ we have done him tremendous harm—first, by elevating him to an almost god-like status, and second, by fostering the belief among his admirers that he was incapable of making mistakes.

AmbedkaritesBapuDalitsfundamentalismIndian freedom struggleIndian politicsMahatma GandhiWeb Exclusive