Selfie-obsessed India celebrates its selfless founder

National Post, 13 December 2019

A century and a half is not long in the life of an ancient nation like India, but Mahatma Gandhi seems today as from an entirely alien place and age.

ERNAKULAM, KERALA, INDIA — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on Oct. 2, 1869; his life bore fruit in the birth of the Republic of India 78 years later. But even then, the free India being born anew was drifting away from Gandhi’s vision. He would not live long in the new India; five months after independence he would be assassinated.

The Gandhi sesquicentennial is being marked all over India; the birth of the father of the nation. “Gandhi 150” signs — the “0” often rendered as his famous spinning wheel — are ubiquitous.

Gandhi has a position in India quite unlike, say, Canada’s Sir John A. Macdonald or America’s George Washington. Though history registers him alongside other political liberators, he is not purely, or perhaps even principally, that. One might rightly consider him the spiritual father of the nation, whose lessons about enduring things — truth, justice, liberty, holiness — had implications for passing things, like politics and statecraft. There was a book some 30 years ago about American politics entitled “Statecraft as Soulcraft.” Gandhi put it the other way around. He laboured to shape the Indian soul, and consequently the Indian state.

In the religious house where I am staying his portrait hangs in one of the common rooms. Jesus Christ is on the opposite wall. There is no question of equivalence of course; Gandhi’s image is analogous to holy pictures of the saints which are common enough in Catholic houses, both houses of worship and family homes.

Is Gandhi best thought of as a saint? The title by which he is more commonly known — Mahatma — means “great soul” and is something like a living saint.

Gandhi was a man of the word. Upon his return to India from South Africa, he edited for 15 years a daily newspaper to which he contributed a daily editorial. But the word to which he was most devoted was the word of truth, the word about God. Christians would find echoes here of the Word of God.

For much of his public life, his principal addresses were given in the context of prayer meetings. He may not have been a religious leader in the strict sense, but he was most certainly a leader who was deeply religious and could not be understood apart from his religious convictions. He sought to lead others on a path of personal conversion, not primarily political activism.

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