"Mahatma" Gandhi, commonly called "The Father of our Nation" in India, has a cult following of nearly an entire nation. The title (meaning great soul, which is generally reserved for saints) was given to him by his followers for his ideologies. While he is known for his non-violent methods of protest, he has become a symbol of peace around the world.
Gandhi played a massive role in India's independence, and his ideologies were well beyond his times, but does it justify the godly status he has today?
Any criticism of Gandhi is likely to be met with a lot of pushback in India, which is not surprising for a country whose education system lauds Gandhi in its textbooks for 11/12 years of formal education.
By over-emphasising Gandhi's importance in Indian history, we have not only pushed other freedom fighters to the sidelines but also glossed over his imperfections. Gandhi was racist, sexist and casteist.
You may have heard about how he refused to comply with racial segregation rules in a South African train and how that was the start of his fight against discrimination. His actual issue was not being considered secondary to white men but being put in the same group as Black men. He said in one of his many anti-Black statements that “ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw K*ffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."
Many of his supporters see him as the saviour of Dalits but he was an apologist for the caste system and was extremely patronising of Dalit activists. He strongly opposed their fight for autonomy. The term Harijan which he designated for Dalit people refers to the children of women who are bound to ritual sexual exploitation at Hindu Temples under the Devadasi system. They are called Harijan or Children of God so that the children’s paternity is not questioned. His support of Dalits was mere tokenism.
Though Gandhi championed women in politics, he was obsessed with his celibacy. He used women in his ashram in his "experiments" to test his celibacy by putting himself in predatory closeness to young women. He also believed that Indian women who were raped lost their value as humans and argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters for the sake of family honour if they had been sexually harassed. He was also strongly against contraceptives and labelled women who used them as whores.
While Gandhi's principles are groundbreaking and had a major impact on India's road to freedom, he had his pitfalls. Celebrating him as a person as opposed to celebrating his ideology is an insult to those he oppressed throughout his life.
Written by Anushree Appandairajan
Artwork by Zara Masood
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