Gandhi was killed by me. Yes, no matter what happens, I will never make ‘that’ mistake again, to think that Gandhi was killed by ‘them’. Never will I see his assassination as an aberration, a freak incident and consign it to the dustbin overflowing with bloody regrets. Everybody tells me that the carnage in Gujarat was an aberration, a freak incident, a repeat of Gandhi’s murder? ‘They’ who killed Gandhi are no longer ‘they’; ‘they’ are my relatives, fondest uncles, closest friends, and friendliest canteenwallah. I see his murderers multiplying fast, yes, faster than even the Muslims! Is this impossible? Well, I closely saw his murderers in Ahmedabad, sitting on benign lotuses, distributing free trishuls to plant on his body. Oh, do you think I am dreaming? I saw his bruised ideals in innocent children with stab wounds and burnt eyes. Yes, these children can’t dream anymore. Those who have killed Gandhi have also taken the space in which my friends and I can dream of a free India. I am not brave enough to point out to you who killed Gandhi, but I’ll teach you to recognise his murderers. They are never alone. They hunt in packs. Ask Razir Bhai in Vatva (Ahmedabad) and he’ll tell you that they come in khaki uniform or even in holy saffron robes. But Muneera Bhen says that they come from a Lotus. ‘A strange mythological origin’, you might ask yourself, but you see, they stand for the Lotus, emblematic in Modern India of a virulently poisonous notion of India in which dissent is treason and belonging to any religion other than Hinduism is to be a potential traitor. And, you see the strange thing about recognising his murderers is that he could be your sweet, innocent doodhwala, who can one day shove cricket balls into a woman’s genitals in a fit of imagined dishonour, at a moment of rupture in India’s thousand year long civilization, and then return to lead the life of an ordinary Indian. Gandhi’s legacy was killed and is being repeatedly stabbed everyday, by me, by you and ‘them’ of course. When women of free India are paraded naked by the Panchayat in a village, India pays its homage to the Panchayati Raj system, Gandhi’s dream of Independent India. Progress and development are hallowed words, but today, more than anything, an anti-Pakistan feeling bonds me with you, and even with ‘them’. I feel an extraordinary pleasure when India defeats Pakistan, sitting in front of their televisions, millions of Indians hold kalashnikovs in place of remotes. A new boundary is now created between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Now those people who were closest to us have been distanced the furthest. They talk like us, wear clothes like ours, are as poor and struggle to live a dignified life like us. Yet we call the homes of the poorest and most disempowered Indian Muslims mini-Pakistans. That’s what has happened after Gandhi’s murder; losing control over ones’ life and living on the fringes of civilised India gets you automatic citizenship with Pakistan. Those who killed Gandhi looked at him as an impurity in the pure notion of India. Now the number of impurities is increasing. No longer are they only Muslims, but also troublesome tribals of Gujarat, and even Christians engaged in social service in areas where the Lotus is invisible. ‘I’ and ‘you’ have become impurities too; our religion won’t save us, just like it did not save Gandhi. Beware of those who show you the ‘other’, because they are fattening you for the final ‘kill’. Of course, his legacy lives with us. All great peoples’ legacies are like bottled pickle with a little of that special Indian preservative. This preservative consists mostly of nostalgia, a little bit of jingoism and heaps of hypocrisy. I know this from a simple source; those who killed him, now lead huge processions and garland the cremation ground on his death anniversary; I ask myself, perhaps his ‘legacy’ is easier to grapple with. He might have had some seriously uncomfortable truths for our great Indian middle-class. The economics of killing Gandhi is to preach ‘Swadeshi’ to the masses while wearing jet-black ‘Nike’ sneakers and brandishing a complimentary lathi. It is also to shop at ‘Shopper’s Stop’, while our farmers and labourers are denied their share of the global pie of cheaper seeds, tractors, batteries, radios…. Gandhi wanted to prevent cow slaughter but did he advocate the slaughter of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs when cows seem to be too many and too secular a target? Strangely as a part of his ritual assassination, key words like truth and non-violence also seem to have been killed. While a nuclear blast is as if all significant to usher India into a group of elite super-poor superpowers, it is hard to imagine Gandhi even recognising our country anymore. Gandhi had called them ‘Harijans’ and tried to bring them into mainstream India, where their shadows were not impure anymore. Yet, today they remain totally disempowered, except that the terms used to identify them keep changing- Harijans, OBC’s, SC’s, ST’s, Dalits, and Forward-Backward castes. But I don’t see them eating with us, I don’t see them in fancy suits and fancy schools, going to fancy European resorts. I see them lured by sops like reservations for jobs, but actually being used as lumpen elements to set fire to shops, create havoc, slit wombs and throats. To achieve this, a breed of desperate and sullen youth is nurtured in every town of India - in the slums where there is no water, no real houses and certainly no education. But, I am young so I don’t want to end like this; I’ll remind you of the Hindu woman who saved her Muslim friend during the Gujarat riots, and ended up being stabbed to death. Also all those people who stood in crowds, holding placards, shouting, marching against the war in Iraq, them too. Even myself, I live with a dream of communal peace and share it with my friends, relatives, even the canteen guy. In the minds of all these people, Gandhi’s ideas hold sway for they are moving towards a new Free India. Are you still wondering who killed Gandhi?
Moyukh Chatterjee III English
Moyukh Chatterjee III English
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