Gandhism

"After the ceremony, Nehru and other Congress leaders addressed a mass meeting on the river bank. As the meeting ended, Ran Ahmed Kidwai whispered to me: "Jawaharlal has performed the last rites not only of Gandhi but of Gandhiism as well. Now that the master has gone, there will be no one to discipline the crowd. The High Command is dead.""

"It takes a permanent suspension of the power of discrimination to believe in the syrupy Gandhian syncretism which still prevails in India. The Mahatma’s outlook was neither realistic nor Indian. Not even the Jain doctrine of Anekantavada, “pluralism”, had been as mushy and anti-intellectual as the suspension of logic that is propagated in India under Gandhi’s name. It could only come about among post-Christian Westerners tired of doctrinal debates, and from their circles, Gandhi transplanted it to India."

"We may also refer to a few other cherished ideals of Gandhi. One of them was the universal adoption of Charka or spinning wheel and Khaddar or home-spun cloth. These might be economically helpful to certain classes, but the whole thing was carried to a ridiculous excess when, failing voluntary acceptance, at Gandhi’s insistence, regular spinning was endowed with a mystic power and made an essential qualification for the membership of the Indian National Congress, and habitual wearing of Khaddar a necessary qualification for holding any office in the Congress organization. This was indeed a unique feature in a political organization, to which posterity will look back with amazement, not unmingled with…amusement, as the idiosyncrasy of a great political leader. No wonder, that in popular view the semi-religious cult of Charka shortly came to be regarded as a panacea for all evils…from which India was suffering. That myth has been exploded and the Charka is now mostly heard of only in connection with the ceremonial function on the death or birth anniversary of Gandhi. But the Charka was really a symbol of Gandhi’s undisguised contempt for, and open hostility towards, mechanized industry of all kinds…"