As Martyrs' Day, January 30, approaches, it’s time to remember the legacy of the man and the Mahatma. The UN human rights legal advisor and well-known author Rajesh Talwar has come out with his ‘The Mahatma's Manifesto’ (Om Publications) which delves into Gandhi’s revolutionary ideas, with a particular focus on his 1909 book ‘Hind Swaraj’, which in many ways is his most important work. Talwar critiques Gandhi's rejection of modernity, industrialization, and Western thought, arguing that these ideas are impractical and regressive.

‘Hind Swaraj’ advocates for a return to a simpler, more traditional way of life, with a focus on self-sufficiency and passive resistance. However, Talwar contends that this vision is isolating and economically stifling, and that it denies the complexities and potential of a rapidly evolving world.

Talwar's work has been praised by notable figures, including Khushwant Singh, who reviewed his book "The Judiciary on Trial" and recommended it as a must-read. With "The Mahatma's Manifesto" Talwar continues to offer thought-provoking insights into the complexities of Indian history and politics.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

THE SAINT’S COMMANDMENTS

If a doctor, he will give up medicine, and understand that rather than mending bodies, he should mend souls.
— Mahatma Gandhi

The last chapter of Hind Swaraj is as much a call for action as it is a set of moral prescriptions. The commandments are addressed, in the main, to three kinds of Indians: lawyers, doctors and the so-called ‘wealthy Indians’ who contributed so much to the Congress party’s coffers.

Gandhi was a strange man in many ways. One of these was the way in which he combined strokes of practical genius with long-winded and impractical ‘idealism’. In other words, there was a part of Gandhi that was highly aware of the world of realpolitik, where he could even be rightly considered a political genius. The famous Dandi march to protest against the salt tax, the idea of non-violent resistance, the Swadeshi campaign—these were part of ‘Genius Gandhi’. There was another misguided and absurd side to him as well, which formed a part of his psyche and persona. This was the Gandhi that combined a hatred for all things modern, including most manifestations of industrial society, such as trains, aircraft and machines, in general. This was also the Gandhi who discouraged education in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, geography, history and the English language. This was the Gandhi who hated the injection but loved the enema, and who believed that moral and religious teaching should have primacy over all other subjects. It was also the Gandhi who carried out bizarre experiments, in bathing and sleeping with young women.

But let us now come to the problematic aspects of the last chapter of his manifesto. There are problems here, even before the Mahatma begins on his commandments.

Consider, for example, his acceptance that there would be skirmishes between religious communities post-Independence. The communities are not named, but clearly he would have been referring to the two main religious groups, the Hindu majority and the large Muslim minority, of undivided India. There seems to be a kind of practical acceptance, but is this really the case? Gandhi wrote:

If the English vacated India, bag and baggage, it must not be supposed that she would be widowed. It is possible that those who are forced to observe peace under their pressure would fight after their withdrawal. There can be no advantage in suppressing an eruption; it must have its vent. If, therefore, before we can remain in peace, we must fight amongst ourselves, it is better that we do so.

When Partition happened, the scale of arson, rapes and killings that took place shook Gandhi. He had never anticipated this. He did not blame the British for failing to preserve the peace. There were, I suspect, several reasons for this.

First, it was in a sense not their fault, or, to be more accurate, not entirely their fault. Yes, there was British culpability in as much as the partition of the country was rushed through; that was clearly a blunder of Himalayan proportions, as were the hastily drawn borders, but the Congress too had been caught napping.

Secondly, Gandhi had been saying all along in his manifesto—and one imagines he remained consistent in this view even though Independence was not to happen until several decades later—that there was no need for the British to protect the weak. He may have meant this in the context of minor skirmishes and killings (a few hundred deaths only?), but surely he would not have extended his comments to apply to the communal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims grasping at each other’s throats. This is what he writes: ‘If, therefore, before we can remain in peace, we must fight amongst ourselves, it is better that we do so. There is no occasion for a third party to protect the weak. It is this so-called protection which has unnerved us. Such protection can only make the weak weaker.’

With such views, articulated again and again, how could Gandhi have then blamed the British? And this brings us to the third reason why Gandhi could not. He blamed himself for what happened, and he was to blame, in a sense.

Although generally active and dynamic, Gandhi became too passive once it was clear to everyone that Partition was inevitable. The death of his dream of an undivided India may have been responsible for that inertia, for he was a fighter to the core. For so many years, he had steadfastly clung on to the idea of an undivided India—even proposing plans as unrealistic as making Jinnah the PM. He never stopped to consider that a partition of the country could take place and that a Plan B was needed for that eventuality.

There are many who believe that the bloodletting that followed Partition was completely unpredictable. An alternative argument can, however, be advanced: that it was foreseeable, and that there should have been planning and preparation to diminish the bloodletting that took place. Gandhi, and the Congress under his leadership, should have carefully considered what B.R. Ambedkar had proposed, if they hadn’t studied or thought over the matter themselves.

In the nineteen ‘commandments’, or moral prescriptions, that Gandhi gives in the last chapter, he maintains strange balance of thoughts that are brilliant, practical and effective, and some that are vague, incoherent and impractical..

Using nineteen separately stated points, he follows a strange logic in advising those Indians who are imbued with ‘real love’ for the nation. Many of these commandments could easily have been integrated—as will become evident as we move along. It almost appears that the Mahatma wished to have an impressive number of commandments, so rather than integrating them, he issued separate commandments to lawyers, doctors, and so on. Was it the case that after making his recommendations—for instance, abolishing the railways and aircraft, getting rid of all machinery, and not studying any of these subjects—in earlier chapters, he realised that they were mostly negative in character. In the end, he found himself at a bit of a loss when it came to making concrete recommendations to help realise his manifesto. It is also strange that lawyers receive such prominence in terms of the commandments because the manifesto itself has only a single chapter devoted to them. In order to demonstrate the hollowness or meaninglessness of these commandments it may be useful to dissect them …

[The excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers]