Gandhi realized that truth is much more than not telling lies or keeping to the promises he made to his mother.
Mahatma Gandhi began his life with a determination to align himself with Truth. He called his autobiography “the story of my experiment with truth”. He must have found this title very fanciful. His life was not an experiment with truth. He truly believed that his life should be lived by the truth. He had determined to search for the truth and live by the truth, the truth as opposed to falsehood. He wanted to be truthful. He believed that living by truth was the best form of life. Truth and Politics If we understand his determination of living by truth it was not telling lies to his parents and his teachers and companions. He found it very difficult to tell lies to others. He was willing to face the consequences of telling the truth. He would not tell lies to defend his mistakes or failures. He was keen to go to England for studies. But that was against the religious belief of his community. He had to decide to practice vegetarianism in the midst of non-vegetarian culture of England. He made a promise to his mother that he will not smoke, drink and eat only vegetarian food. His mother gave him a necklace to wear. He continued to wear that long after his mother died, till it had totally disintegrated. He had to put up a brave face to not to get influenced by others and stand alone and live by his convictions. As he grew up his idea of truth began to assume a deeper meaning. He was struggling against discrimination based on colour and origin of birth. He faced discrimination in a very hard way when he was pushed out of the first-class compartment of a train and his luggage thrown out. He had bought a first-class ticket and by virtue of that he had the right to travel in the first-class compartment. But the society had another concept of first class. It was not based on the money you paid for the ticket of the first class but by the colour of your skin. Here the rights have different meaning. South Africa was not the birth place of the white. They captured, occupied South Africa and started running over the native Africans. Gandhi realized that truth is much more than not telling lies or keeping to the promises he made to his mother. He understood Truth as Swaraj. This journey of Gandhi to Pretoria was his first lesson in Swaraj. All through his fight in India for Swaraj he was guided by the Truth. Truth became experiment because the truth began to have greater and deeper meaning in his life. He asserted that if anyone says that truth has no relevance to politics then he does not know what truth is and what politics is. The Truth has become political, politics for truth. “To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any file of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the filed of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.” Here Gandhi is very clear. For him religion is not an institution or set of doctrines. His God is Truth and hence his religion is to pursue the Truth and realise the truth in and through politics. To pursue the truth and pursue the truth through politics is religion. His politics has been to gain Swaraj, to establish swaraj in the society. Gaining independence from the British was for Gandhi a political struggle, struggle for Swaraj. And Swaraj was the manifestation of the truth. Swaraj for Gandhi was not only gaining freedom from British Raj but it was also prosperity for the citizens of India. It is better quality of life for all. It included communal harmony, availability of means to earn one’s livelihood, being able to vote and bring a government, which will ensure this to power. Politics for truth means the political power that forms the government should work for Swaraj. “I know that I have before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. One cannot involve in Politics for truth unless one reduces oneself to zero. So long as a man does not of his free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him.” Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated before he could be part of the politics for Swaraj. In the night between August 14 and 15, 1947 when Jawaharlal Nehru was making the famous “While the whole world was sleeping …” speech, Gandhi was walking along the alleys of then Calcutta with the plea to stop communal violence. For Gandhi there was nothing to celebrate when the Indians were fighting among themselves on the lines of religion. There was no Swaraj. The Indians were ruled not by the Truth but by the communal ideology. “To me, peace between Hindus and Muslims is more important than the declaration of independence”. “I cannot rejoice on August 15, I do not want to deceive you. But at the same time, I shall not ask you not to rejoice. Unfortunately, the kind of freedom we have got today contains also the seeds of future conflict between India and Pakistan (in real sense between the Hindus and the Muslims). How can we therefore light the lamps?” (Mahatma Gandhi) In every society, state has two main pillars. One political system and the other economic system. These two systems have to work together to ensure Swaraj for the people. In this frame work there is no place for poverty, exploitation, illiteracy, disease, discrimination, disharmony. Those who own the productive assets are, according to Gandhi “trustees” on behalf of the citizens. They are accountable to the citizens and their assets are meant to provide for the needs of all, in this the first person should be the poorest of all - living down the street. When politics is at the service of truth, Swaraj, then governance will only be organized in such a way that those in the seat of political power are servants of the citizens. They have to work, meet the needs of the people. Our Pratham sevak came to power with the promise that he would bring back all the black money from foreign countries back to India and every citizen will get Rs. 15,00,000 in their account. He also introduced demonetization and made all the middle class and lower middle class to stand in line before the ATMs. Over 100 people died in the line. His promise was to put an end to black money; to put an end to terrorism. After the said person comes to power, he does not deposit that amount into the accounts of the people but tells them that it was a “jumla”. This is a classical case of politics serving the untruth. It is a denial of the real purpose of politics. We have innumerable examples of such jumlas. Indira Gandhi declared the famous slagan of “Garibi Hatao”. Politics and politicians have changed from what they were during the time of Mahatma Gandhi. Corruption at high places is the order of the day. Politicians and the bureaucrats are known to be corrupt. There is no question of who is corrupt and who is not corrupt but it is a question of who is more corrupt, and who is who is most corrupt. Once Mahatma Gandhi said I would go to the length of giving the whole Congress a decent burial than put up with the corruption that I see so rampant among the Indian officials under the British Rule” BJP party claims there is no corruption in their party. There were no incidences of corruption that could be pointed out. There was not a single incident of corruption in the ten-year rule of BJP. But then there is a case of electoral bonds. Business people can contribute to the political parties in the form of electoral bonds. The donors’ name will not be disclosed nor the amount will be declared. The bill of corruption under the name “Electoral bonds” has the approval of the parliament. But it was passed as a finance bill. This process itself is irregular. Today, 90% of the funds under the electoral bonds have gone to the BJP. Handing over most of the ports, airports to Adani is an act of corruption which has taken the wealth created from the tax payer money and handing over to one or two persons. “The gap between the have and have nots will continue to grow if the present trend is allowed to continue. This is because there is an exponential aspect to wealth creation. Stated in global terms, wealth on a worldwide scale will grow exponentially, if the governments avoid breaking the global wealth machine. As a result, the entire economic system becomes poorer with fewer jobs. Moreover, schemes aimed at aggressive welfare intervention have destroyed people’s dignity, robbing them of any sense of accomplishment. In the end, the political tension created by vastly unequal income distribution will likely be difficult to measure and predict, and even harder to control. Highly entrepreneurial economies create big winners and losers”. (David Smick, The World is Curved.) ∎
