Click to play videoThe blasts in Ahmedabad have left the city shaken and shocked. But amidst all the violence, Sabarmati Ashram remains an oasis of peace. The ashram where Mahatma Gandhi spent a significant period of his lifetime stands a quiet witness to the horror that unfolded on July 26.
What would Gandhi have done in the times of terror?
Noted historian Dr Ramchandra Guha and Gandhian scholar Dr Tridip Swaroop debated this on the show Weekend Edition with Rajdeep Sardesai.
Dr Ramchandra Guha said that he thought that Gandhi would have certainly advised restraint and he would have tried to calm down feelings and sentiment.
"We should remember that without the Gujarat Muslims, there would have been no Gandhi and maybe even no India. His first funders, his first promoters, the office-bearers, the activists of the Natal Indian Congress, the leaders of the Satyagraha Movement were all Muslims and Parsis and later on South Indians. So I think Gandhi would have reminded us that we are country that is a wonderfully diverse and rich mosaic. We don't know who is behind the terror attacks - they could be Indians or foreigners. Whichever be the case, Gandhi would have counseled restraint and would have reminded us of this unique diverse fabric," Guha said.
Dr Swaroop said, "Gandhi would have told us to understand pain and to be empathise with those in pain. That understanding of pain is missing in our present day political and social leadership. Unless you have a theory of pain, you cannot have a theory of healing and that's where I think Bapu was so good."
He said that Gandhi's first concern would have been to alleviate pain and then to work with the communities. "If he were in Ahmedabad now, a Hindu Ahmedabad and a Muslim Ahmedabad could not have been created on such impermeable terms in the first place. If Gandhi had been a living presence in Ahmedabad, we would not have been talking of two Ahmedabads in the first place."
"The fact that we speak of two Ahmedabads is also proof that Gandhi is no longer available to us as a social imagination in Ahmedabad," Swaroop added.
But Gandhi was in the days of no terror, when ahimsa (non-violence), could have been used as a weapon. Would ahimsa work in the day of the hi-tech bomb against terrorists?
"If you look at the kind of response to the fact that there was a possibility of the Japanese and the Germans actually landing in India, he spoke that time of whether India was ready to meet that kind of invasion with sacrifice. He would have wanted sacrifice without anger and I think what Ahmedabad did this time was just that. There was no anger. There was pain, there was grief, there was lamentation, but there was no anger really in the aftermath of the bombing," Swaroop stated.
At this point, Dr Guha piped in saying, "I don't think Gandhi would have gone in for the politics of vengeance or retribution and I think Ahmedabad in the last few days has shown some of that. Think of 1947 Calcutta when everyone was ready to butcher and kill the other community and Gandhi was able to calm them down. His message of understanding, reconciliation, empathy, suffering with the people who suffer is what he was about."
Dr Swaroop said that his fear this time around was not as much of retributive violence, but a fear that we might create a state and society which has a phobia around security.
"That kind of policing could create another spiral of violence and that could be unleashed by the state which narrows the space of democratic imagination and therein could lie a serious problem," he said.
Over the last 60 years, in the India after Gandhi the country has witnessed various kinds of violence and it is now experiencing urban terror, but is this a cycle of violence we are caught in or will there be a return to Gandhi's spirit?
Ramchandra Guha was of the opinion that to tackle the current phase of terror, India needed Gandhi, but it also needed much more than Gandhi. "We need to restore institutions of democratic governance. We need to stop political interference with police and security services. One of the best ways of stopping terror is still with policing but when every Chief Minister appoints the police commissioner he or she likes, every MLA thinks he has the divine right to appoint a superintendent of police, things can't function smoothly," he stated.
"I think Gandhi was a great believer in the autonomy and integrity and transparency of public institutions. That also needs to be tackled if we are going to face this problem of terror," Guha concluded.
They both agreed that Gandhi was as relevant today as he was when he was alive. Indians simply need to rediscover Gandhi's message.
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