Mahatma Gandhi arrived in England in the autumn of 1931 wearing loin cloth, sandals and a blanket. Recently released from prison, to the British press Gandhi seemed a frail and rather strange figure. In India at that time he was a national hero capable both of challenging British Rule and uniting the various factions in the campaign for Home Rule.
In 2013, a statue of Gandhi was placed in Parliament Square. The strange little man, looking on his plinth much as he did when he arrived in 1931, is now officially an honoured part of Britain's history. Not everyone was pleased. Almost seventy years after his death Gandhi continues to challenge and divide opinion.
On the face of it, the extreme reactions of some to the man and his ideas are hard to understand. What's not to like about nonviolence? In our time as much as in Gandhi's the attempt to bring change and peacefully resolve conflict has to be a better option than fighting in the streets. But of course, there is more to Gandhi than meets the eye. Academic work over the past ten years highlights some of the areas where the 'Great Soul' was not as radical as we might wish.
Gandhi's assassination in 1948 shocked the world. His killer, Nathuram Godse, was part of a Hindu Nationalist faction that held the Mahatma responsible for the partition of India. He wasn't - Gandhi himself was deeply distressed by the Two Nation solution - but as Godse said during his trial, for some the Father of the Nation had proved to be the Father of Pakistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment