January 30 is the death anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement whom the Congress party adopted as its foremost ideologue to garner public support and reinforce its political supremacy.
In a democratic country, one way to gain power is to elevate an individual to a god-like status, exaggerate their contributions, and present oneself as a loyal follower. Over time, this individual becomes a symbol of legitimacy, and their followers use self-crafted legacy to justify their party’s rule. Congress did exactly that by raising Gandhi on a high pedestal, shielding him from criticism, and doggedly propagating his beliefs and convictions as gospel while sidelining other leaders who challenged his primacy and disagreed with his worldview, including Periyar and Ambedkar.
But Congress leveraged Gandhi not just during his lifetime but even during his death and afterwards. Every time an existential crisis bedevilled Congress—like its leaders facing corruption charges, questions over its disastrous policy moves, or doubts over their competence—the party quickly pulled out the Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi card, seemingly to deflect criticism and project itself as the sole guardian of Gandhi’s legacy and its political opponents as opposed to ideals cherished by Gandhi.
It all began in the early 20th century when a faction of the elite political class within the Congress party began to heavily promote and idolize Mohandas K. Gandhi, elevating him to a status that few other leaders of the independence movement attained. For all practical purposes, Gandhi was beyond reproach and criticising him or the beliefs propounded by him resulted in political ostracisation, several authors including Vikram Sampath and Sanjeev Sanyal have described in their recent treatises, Bravehearts of Bharat and Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom respectively.
Congress often turns to Gandhi in times of difficulty or crisis, as they have built him up as a leader who is above criticism. Over the years, Congress has elevated Gandhi’s status to such an extent that any examination of his actions is met with strong opposition from Congress leaders and its friendly Left ecosystem. This is because Gandhi’s role in India’s independence has been greatly exaggerated, making it difficult to have a dissenting viewpoint without facing backlash and ‘cancel’ calls from those who have deified him.
The veneration of Gandhi also included sidelining of other notable leaders, including the likes of revolutionary crusaders such as Bhagat Singh, whom people argue did not receive much support from the Congress party after the British rewarded him with a death sentence. Several other freedom fighters, like Veer Savarkar, were either vilified for exaggerating Gandhi’s contributions or were ignored as Congress-friendly historians began chronicling a sycophantic account of India’s freedom struggle.
The Congress party’s leaders, who had previously elevated and idolized Mohandas K. Gandhi, continued to invoke his legacy even after India’s independence, especially when they saw their hold on power waning. The practice continues to this day as the Left-Congress ecosystem continues to leverage MK Gandhi for scoring political brownie points and projecting themselves as his earnest followers, and therefore, beyond reproach.
Though the ecosystem keeps milking the self-crafted legacy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to assert its ideological legitimacy and arrest its political decline, it has hardly been loyal to his ideals. While the current members of the ecosystem and Congress party claimed to be unswerving followers of Gandhi, in reality, it is just a pretence—a charade to continue exploiting him for electoral gains—and using his ideals to virtue signal against their opponents.
The disdain for Gandhian ideals and principles is not a recent phenomenon. It existed for more than 8 decades before India was free from oppressive British rule. Senior members within the Congress party held a dim view of Gandhi’s ideals, with many within the party trashing them and openly questioning his beliefs.
For instance, Periyar EV Ramasamy, one of the stalwarts of the Left, was a staunch critic of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Periyar, once a “star speaker” for Congress, opposed Gandhi vigorously and fervently criticised his idea of India. Similarly, Gandhi also locked horns with Ambedkar over their difference in opinions on Hinduism and the caste system, and the redressal mechanism for the backward classes.
The Congress, as an institution, too, was disrespectful of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi even though they used his political heft and popularity among the masses to build its credibility. As the British declared that they would finally be leaving India, Gandhi reportedly asked for the disbanding of the Congress party. However, the party turned a blind eye to his recommendation and continued playing an active role in India’s politics.
Even after independence and Gandhi’s subsequent death, the Indian National Congress, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, did not embrace the values and ideals cherished by him. It took more socialist and secularist views under consideration, keeping away from Gandhi’s unabashedly staunch Hindu credentials.
Gandhi believed in the importance of rural development and advocated for village-based industries. However, Nehru’s Congress gave it short shrift and adopted alternative models, which resulted in the displacement of rural communities and overcrowding of urban centres, culminating in deteriorating quality of life in metros and soaring unemployment in the hinterland.
One of the causes championed by Gandhi was the preservation of the tribal population’s habitat. However, Congress implemented policies that resulted in the forced relocation of tribal people from their ancestral lands, which went against Gandhi’s principles of non-violent resistance and respect for the rights of marginalised communities.
But significantly, the Congress party’s betrayal of Gandhian ideals is most evident in its contempt of Hindus and its stand on cow protection, an issue that was close to Gandhi’s heart.
Arguing passionately in support of cow protection, Gandhi had this to say in an article on Young India:
“The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in human evolution. It takes the human being beyond this species. The cow to me means the entire sub-human world. Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. Why the cow was selected for apotheosis is obvious to me. The cow was in India the best companion. She was the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made agriculture possible…”
“Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world. And Hinduism will live so long as there are Hindus to protect the cow… Hindus will be judged not by their TILAKS, not by the correct chanting of MANTRAS, not by their pilgrimages, not by their most punctilious observances of caste rules, but their ability to protect the cow.”
However, the contemporary Congress party not only scorns the idea of cow protection but allows killing cattle as a means to object to the current BJP government’s attempts to ban the sale of bovine in the markets for slaughter purposes.
In 2017, members of the Youth Congress slaughtered a cow in full public view in Kannur, in the communist-ruled state of Kerala, where appeasement and anti-Hindu politics has been the norm for many decades. In a public gathering, a cow was slaughtered, cooked and served. She was cut into pieces while a group of workers barbarically sloganeered. And the incident was filmed. Years later, senior Congress leader and former president Rahul Gandhi met Rijil Chandran Makkutty, the Youth Congress leader who slaughtered the cow, as part of his ambitious programme, ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra.’
Besides, Congress and the Left ecosystem routinely use ‘gaumutra’ jibes to insult Hindus and their beliefs. Even Islamic terrorists using ‘gaumutra’ jibes to justify the killing of Hindus had not prevented Congress leaders from employing it to mock their political opponents.
All his life, Gandhi strove to establish interfaith harmony. While Congress threw its weight behind the endeavour as a part of its strategy to deify Gandhi, the party’s hollow commitment to the cause came to the fore with the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom when several Congress leaders allegedly led violent mobs to target Sikhs after the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
The 1984 Anti-Sikh riots took place in the aftermath of the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31st October 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards as revenge for Operation Blue Star. From 1st November to 4th November, Sikhs across the country were killed. The government figures suggest the angry mobs, many of which were led by Congress leaders, brutally murdered 3,350 Sikhs.
However, Congress not only shielded those who carried out the pogrom but also rewarded them.
Sajjan Kumar was one of the many Congress leaders accused of involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre. Even after grave allegations against him, Congress rewarded him with a ticket to contest elections in 1991, which he subsequently won. He also won the 2004 general elections on the Congress ticket from the Outer Delhi seat with the highest-ever votes at 8,55,543 votes. A Sanjay Gandhi loyalist, he served as a Member of the Committee on Urban Development and Committee on Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme in 2005.
Another Congress leader accused of leading mobs to kill Sikhs was Jagdish Tytler, who was subsequently given tickets to contest the election by the Indian National Congress and also made Union Minister of Civil Aviation first and then the labour department. He had contested the 2004 elections and won as well. Tytler continues to remain a mainstay of the party’s Delhi unit, often attending meetings and weighing in on his opinions on matters of import.
Other high-profile Congress leaders, including Kamal Nath, HKL Bhagat, Arjun Das, and Dharamdas Shastri were also linked to the bloodcurdling massacres of Sikhs in North India in 1984.
The dichotomies, however, demonstrate that all grandiloquence about Congress following in the footsteps of MK Gandhi is just humbug, aimed to mask the pretence and assert moral supremacy. Congress has long since divorced itself from Gandhian principles, and its routine invocation of Gandhi is nothing but a Hail Marry pass intended to extract political mileage and cover up for its otherwise glaring inadequacies and shameless hypocrisy.
