RW Attempts to Undermine Gandhi’s Contribution to Freedom Movement

British historian Eric Hobswam famously stated that history is as important to (sectarianism) nationalism as poppy is to an opium addict. The Right Wing is surging with great speed; its ideologues keep a matching pace to construct the history that suits their political agenda of exclusion of some and glorification of their past. In this direction, medieval Indian history was the major one to be mauled by showing particularly that the medieval period of Indian history was an era of Islamic Imperialism and by projecting the Muslim Kings in bad light, which helped them create hate against today’s Muslims.

Even ancient Indian history, a golden period for them, was manipulated to show the Aryans, their ancestors were the indigenous people of this land.

Coming to the freedom movement, the Right Wing first focused on Jawaharlal Nehru, the colossus who articulated and practiced secularism in India. He was aware that practicing secularism in India was not easy as large sections of Indian society were in the grip of blind religiosity. He was the one to see the threat of majoritarian (Hindu) communalism and equated it to fascism.

Nehru said minority communalism was at worst separatist. His mentor, Gandhi, though murdered by the one who was trained by RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and was working for Hindu Mahasabha, could not be demonised easily. Gandhi’s place in the global arena and in the heart of Indian people was at its peak.

Now, as the communal Right Wing feels it is on firm feet, its ideologues are beginning the exercise of over-projecting some of Gandhi’s shortcomings and undermining his contribution to freedom.

This January 30, 2025, as the nation was paying tributes to the father of the nation (who was assassinated on this date) many portals were relaying videos to propagate that Gandhi’s was just one of the efforts in India getting freedom. They were propagating that Gandhi’s efforts had just a marginal effect on the British leaving India.

In the past few years, the glorification of Godse in the form of Twitter (now X) storms for ‘Mahatma Godse Amar Rahen’ (Long Live Godse) have been witnessed painfully. The Ilk of one Poonam Prasun Pandey have been enacting the shooting of Gandhi’s effigy and then blood dripping from it.

Observing national mourning on January 30 by siren being sounded at 11 a.m for two-minute silence has been muted. This year, the Maharashtra state circular on the two-minute silence at 11 a.m, did not even mention Gandhi.

As we observed Gandhi Martyrdom Day on this January 30, many of these irritants flashed in our minds. He was given the honorific ‘Mahatma’ by none other than Noble laureate poet Rabindra Nath Tagore. It is propagated that Gandhi-Congress ignored Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. The fact is that Bose and Congress had some differences on strategy but the core agenda of freedom from British rule remained the same. It was Netaji who addressed Gandhi as the ‘Father of the Nation’. He also named one of his battalions of Azad Hind Fauz (Free India Army) as Gandhi battalion. It was Gandhi-Congress who fought the cases of prisoners of Fauz by forming a committee with top lawyers like Bhulabhai Desai, Kailashnath Katju and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Also, the propaganda that Gandhi did not do anything to save the revolutionary Bhagat Singh’s hanging is being instilled into the social common sense. They hide the fact that it was Gandhi who wrote to Lord Irwin to cancel Bhagat Singh’s hanging. Irwin showed his inability to accept this request as all British officers in Punjab had threatened to resign if Gandhi’s request was accepted. Most interestingly Bhagat Singh requested his father Kishan Singh to support the ‘General’ of the Freedom movement (Gandhi), which his father did by working for Congress.

The attempt to undermine Gandhi comes in the form of nitpicking the three major movements that he launched. The Non-cooperation Movement of 1920, which was the first real attempt to involve the average people in the struggle against British, as per them was ineffective as it was withdrawn due to the Chauri Chaura incident, where the crowd had burnt a police station killing many policemen.

Also, the Right Wing alleges that Gandhi’s support for Khilafat was demoralising, as it related to supporting the restoration of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Let’s remember, it was this move which brought in Muslims in large numbers into the vortex of the popular anti-British struggle.

Also, the Mappila (Moplah) rebellion is supposed to have been an aggressive move by Muslims against Hindus. The fact is that this rebellion was that of poor Muslim farmers against Janmis (Landlords, who were mostly Hindus), and the British authorities were protecting the interests of landlords.

On the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930, the Right Wing counter is that it just led to the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. This pact was a major step in furtherance of the pressure by the Indian freedom struggle. The accusation is that the Salt March by Gandhi did not lead to abolition of the salt tax which it aimed at. The fact is people could produce salt after this, and its illegality was lifted.

As far as the 1942 ‘Do or Die’, ‘British Quit India’ movement is concerned, it is true that as Gandhi and the major leaders of Congress were arrested, the movement did take a violence turn. The point is that it created huge awareness about getting freedom from the British, it came as a culmination of the long process of creating mass consciousness, which began picking up after the 1920 Non-Cooperation Movement.

There is no denial that revolutionaries, Bhagat Singh and others like Subhash Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj and revolt of the Naval Ratings were valuable add-ons to the whole process of rising consciousness among people toward longing for freedom and cementing the bonds of Indian-ness. Gandhi’s contribution is monumental, as it created the fraternity, the Indian-ness among the people. Congress leader Surendranath Banerjee aptly described it as “India: Nation in the Making”.

These were twin aspects of the freedom movement. One was to struggle against the British and two to ‘build a nation: India’ through this. Gandhi understood that bringing people together was the core of the process of getting freedom. The recent flourishing attempt by Right wing communalists totally ignores the process of people, the masses waking up and constituting India as a nation. This was the greatest endeavour for which Gandhi is really the ‘Father of the Nation’.      

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.