How relevant are Gandhi’s teachings today?

BRP Bhaskar

As India and the world mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, which falls on Wednesday, it is not unreasonable to ask how relevant his teachings are today.

He lived an epic life during which he grew from a rather unsuccessful lawyer to an unusual mass leader who electrified his followers to a point where many were willing to die for the cause of freedom and enraged his critics to a point where some of them conspired to kill him.  

When an assassin’s bullets felled Gandhi, Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of his time, said, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

Gandhi’s transformation from lawyer to leader began in South Africa, where he had gone to do legal work for an Indian businessman. There he received a rude lesson in racism when he was bundled out of a First Class rail compartment because he wasn’t white.

That experience cured him of the belief that his British education had made a difference to his racial status. But he remained an admirer of Britain and its ways.

He organised Indian immigrants in South Africa and agitated peacefully for a fair deal. In the process, he became conscious of the religious, linguistic and cultural differences among Indians and the need to overcome them for effective joint action.

All through his South African days Gandhi remained an admirer of the West. When a tribe took up arms against the whites, he offered to mobilise an Indian ambulance corps to serve wounded white soldiers.  The South African government told him they already had an ambulance unit but the tribesmen had none and he should help them.

In his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi says he told the tribesmen that it was their good luck that the whites were ruling them!

His unconventional agitations in Africa attracted Western media attention and information about them reached India, winning him many admirers before he returned home in 1915 at the age of 45. On meeting him, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore hailed him as a Mahatma (great soul) and adoring millions endorsed it.

Notwithstanding Gandhi’s lack of sympathy for the aspirations of the blacks, Nelson Mandela in Africa and Martin Luther King Jr in America owned him up as their guide and endeavoured to follow the path of peace and non-violence he had shown.

His faith in Western virtues still intact, the first thing Gandhi did on his return was to aid Britain’s World War I effort by helping in the army’s recruitment drive. He believed when the war ended a grateful Britain will reward India with the status of Dominion, which the white colonies had.  

About 1.3 million Indians saw active service during the war. They were deployed in Europe, Africa and Asia to defend Britain’s imperial interests. About 74,000 of them were killed.

The Indian army played a critical role in Britain’s victory. But India did not become a Dominion. Instead, it saw an unprovoked firing on peaceful protesters in Jallianwala Bagh, near Amritsar, in which about 400 people were killed.

Gandhi called a nationwide strike to protest the massacre. The response it evoked proclaimed the emergence of a leader with an appeal across the country. Less than a decade after his return from Africa, he was the tallest leader of the Indian National Congress, which was spearheading the freedom movement.  

Gandhi gave high priority to Hindu-Muslim amity but reluctantly acquiesced in the partition of the subcontinent. When communal riots broke out he devoted his energies to putting out the flames and restoring peace. That angered a Hindutva group and prompted it to plot his murder.

Gandhi took up the issue of caste discrimination but never rejected the concept of “Chaturvarnya” on which the inhuman system rests. In recent years Dalit groups in India and some black groups in Africa have re-evaluated Gandhi’s record in the light of the principle of equality.

In Gandhi’s time, environmental protection was not a live issue. But one of the popular slogans of the environment movement today is a Gandhi quote:  “The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party subscribes to the Hindutva ideology, today often invokes Gandhi’s name in his speeches. He also gives him credit for his government’s Swatch Bharat (Clean India) programme.

Some of Gandhi’s ideas certainly call for re-evaluation. Some others demand re-validation.  These are processes that must go on.

Beneath the simplicity Gandhi projected was a complex personality. There is enough in his legacy for each gneration to find its own Gandhi, depending upon its interests.-n Gulf Today, Sharjah,  September 30, 2019

The blessing and curse of real estate boom

BRP Bhaskar

The pace of urbanisation has accelerated with the central and state governments aiding the process. Reuters

The impending demolition of four high-rise buildings with a few hundred posh apartments in the Kerala city of Kochi has brought to the fore the issue of unregulated urban growth across India. In the wake of globalisation, the country has been witnessing explosive growth of its centuries-old metropolitan cities and emergence of new urban conglomerates in many states.

A century ago, as he emerged as the tallest leader of the freedom movement, Gandhi said, “India lives in the villages.” He constantly drew attention to the plight of the villagers. He discarded western clothes and wore loincloth to identify himself with them.

The 2001 census, the first of this century, showed India was still predominantly rural with 74 per cent of the people living in more than 600,000 villages. At the next census in 2011, India was still rural, but the village population had come down to 69 per cent. Since then the pace of urbanisation has accelerated with the Central and state governments aiding the process.

In 2015 the Centre announced a plan to build 100 “smart” cities in different states. Since it has provided little information on the progress of the project, it is not clear how many are taking shape and how smart they are.

According to current official projections, the urban population will not exceed the rural population until 2050. However, the next census, due in 2021, may find many small states more urban than rural.

The old cities have suffered enormously due to failure of the authorities to manage the problems of growth.  The new ones are grappling with problems like pollution and poor infrastructure. From the 1970’s, the Centre enacted a series of laws to protect the environment and ensure that air and water are clean. Most states have been tardy in implementing them.

The construction industry expanded rapidly as the breakup of joint families, increasing household income and aspirations of the rising middle class raised the demand for houses. In areas where there was scarcity of land, high-rise buildings started coming up.

In 1994 the Centre made environmental impact assessment and environmental clearance for projects compulsory.

In 2006, the Manmohan Singh government exempted township and area development projects covering less than 500,000 square metres from environmental impact assessment and construction projects of less than 20,000 square metres from environmental clearance.

To speed up economic development, the Narendra Modi government diluted environment regulations further. This, coupled with corruption at the political and official levels, made it possible for unethical businessmen to flout laws with impunity.

The modus operandi of colluding politicians and officials is to grant clearance for a project and issue notices later calling attention to violations of the law. The issue is then taken to the court where it remains long enough for the builders to complete the projects, taking advantage of the absence of orders staying the construction.

In Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and other cities, many constructions were found to be in violation of the law but the authorities allowed the irregularities to be compounded on payment of a fee. Quite often the hardship that innocent flat buyers will suffer is cited to justify the lenient attitude towards offenders.

In one Kerala case, the high court, while holding the construction violated the coastal zone management regulations, let the building stay, saying demolition may pose an even greater danger to the environment.  The Supreme Court upheld the decision.

However, when an identical case from Kerala reached the apex court later, it ordered demolition of the illegal constructions in which some 400 families had bought apartments.

The state government and the apartment owners sought review of the decision but the court remained firm. Observations by the judges during the hearing indicated that their tough stand was based on the assertion by experts that the severe floods that hit Kerala and other states in recent years were a direct consequence of illegal constructions in environmentally sensitive areas.   

 A property brokerage firm which conducted a survey in nine cities found more than 400,000 flats in the “affordable segment” lying unsold. But, with the economy in the doldrums, the government believes it cannot afford to let the real estate sector slacken.

Its market size was $ 120 billion in 2017. Industry spokesmen are looking forward to a new boom.

Builders are reluctant to adopt green technology. Unless the government ensures that the growth target is achieved respecting the laws, the blessing of urban living will come with the curse of environmental degradation. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, October 8, 2018.

How relevant are Gandhi’s teachings today?

BRP Bhaskar

As India and the world mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, which falls on Wednesday, it is not unreasonable to ask how relevant his teachings are today.

He lived an epic life during which he grew from a rather unsuccessful lawyer to an unusual mass leader who electrified his followers to a point where many were willing to die for the cause of freedom and enraged his critics to a point where some of them conspired to kill him.

When an assassin’s bullets felled Gandhi, Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of his time, said, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

Gandhi’s transformation from lawyer to leader began in South Africa, where he had gone to do legal work for an Indian businessman. There he received a rude lesson in racism when he was bundled out of a First Class rail compartment because he wasn’t white.

That experience cured him of the belief that his British education had made a difference to his racial status. But he remained an admirer of Britain and its ways.

He organised Indian immigrants in South Africa and agitated peacefully for a fair deal. In the process, he became conscious of the religious, linguistic and cultural differences among Indians and the need to overcome them for effective joint action.

All through his South African days Gandhi remained an admirer of the West. When a tribe took up arms against the whites, he offered to mobilise an Indian ambulance corps to serve wounded white soldiers.  The South African government told him they already had an ambulance unit but the tribesmen had none and he should help them.

In his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi says he told the tribesmen that it was their good luck that the whites were ruling them!

His unconventional agitations in Africa attracted Western media attention and information about them reached India, winning him many admirers before he returned home in 1915 at the age of 45. On meeting him, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore hailed him as a Mahatma (great soul) and adoring millions endorsed it.

Notwithstanding Gandhi’s lack of sympathy for the aspirations of the blacks, Nelson Mandela in Africa and Martin Luther King Jr in America owned him up as their guide and endeavoured to follow the path of peace and non-violence he had shown.

His faith in Western virtues still intact, the first thing Gandhi did on his return was to aid Britain’s World War I effort by helping in the army’s recruitment drive. He believed when the war ended a grateful Britain will reward India with the status of Dominion, which the white colonies had.

About 1.3 million Indians saw active service during the war. They were deployed in Europe, Africa and Asia to defend Britain’s imperial interests. About 74,000 of them were killed.

The Indian army played a critical role in Britain’s victory. But India did not become a Dominion. Instead, it saw an unprovoked firing on peaceful protesters in Jallianwala Bagh, near Amritsar, in which about 400 people were killed.

Gandhi called a nationwide strike to protest the massacre. The response it evoked proclaimed the emergence of a leader with an appeal across the country. Less than a decade after his return from Africa, he was the tallest leader of the Indian National Congress, which was spearheading the freedom movement.

Gandhi gave high priority to Hindu-Muslim amity but reluctantly acquiesced in the partition of the subcontinent. When communal riots broke out he devoted his energies to putting out the flames and restoring peace. That angered a Hindutva group and prompted it to plot his murder.

Gandhi took up the issue of caste discrimination but never rejected the concept of “Chaturvarnya” on which the inhuman system rests. In recent years Dalit groups in India and some black groups in Africa have re-evaluated Gandhi’s record in the light of the principle of equality.

In Gandhi’s time, environmental protection was not a live issue. But one of the popular slogans of the environment movement today is a Gandhi quote:  “The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party subscribes to the Hindutva ideology, today often invokes Gandhi’s name in his speeches. He also gives him credit for his government’s Swatch Bharat (Clean India) programme.

Some of Gandhi’s ideas certainly call for re-evaluation. Some others demand re-validation.  These are processes that must go on.

Beneath the simplicity Gandhi projected was a complex personality. There is enough in his legacy for each generation to find its own Gandhi, depending upon its interests. --Gulf Today, October 1, 2019.o