Every time a revolutionary like Bhagat Singh, Udham Singh or any other showed the nation manhood in striking hard at the British, their biggest critic turned out to be Gandhi. Of course, he had his reasons to do so and only three of them are being provided here to save the reader from boredom. They were as follows :
1. Gandhi was temperamentally and physically unsuited for real revolutionary activity and could only settle for secondary soft politics which was never potent enough to drive away the deeply entrenched colonists from the motherland. To maintain his stance before the British and before the gullible masses of India that he was after all the apostle of peace and non-violence, he had to, necessarily, keep denouncing the extremists whenever they undertook any mission of revolutionary terrorism or armed insurrection. This made his position safe before the British and his movement secure in the minds of countless mild Indians who hardly had the strength to take to revolutionary armed struggle but could somehow participate in their weak ways in the Mahatma's compromised struggle for independence. Gandhi always feared a diminution in political popularity and frequently felt threatened by the fact that the revolutionaries would catch the imagination of the public which would diminish his political position. As such, he did everything to undermine the revolutionary movement through bitter vitriol unleashed in his newspapers and in interviews otherwise.
2. Gandhi's verbal denunciation of the revolutionaries was symptomatic of his intolerant temperament despite his pious protestations to the contrary. He simply had to rule the roost in the national politics of the day and for this he could stoop to any level as would later be evident when he plotted the downfall of Subhas Chandra Bose, President of the Tripuri Congress, in the most heinous way and later lied to Bose, categorically denying any involvement of his in the said treachery when it was known to the wide world that it was he who had masterminded Bose's enforced resignation from the Congress Presidency, the executive councils of the Congress and, finally, from the Party itself. This much for Gandhi's being truthful and engaging in the truth-force or satyagraha.
3. A fundamental meanness of character often overrode the Mahatma's otherwise undeniable nobility of being in his political career making him stoop so low as to call the great patriot Udham Singh, assassin of Michael O'Dwyer, a madman whose act of revolutionary terror was but an exercise in lunacy. This the Mahatma said not to save Udham Singh from the gallows but to keep his political career on track. Gandhi was simply incapable of containing within himself his narrow-minded mean outlook and its envious expression thereof whenever he felt threatened in any manner by valorous acts of the revolutionaries which he feared might catch the imagination of the masses and sweep him off the crest of collective control. He knew full well that he was incapable of such valour or such absolutely selfless love for the motherland that the revolutionaries possessed, traits he realised he had in much smaller a measure in his being.
That devotees of the Mahatma keep chirping at this distant date in their futile attempt to defend their hero of epic compromises with the motherland's best interests is hardly surprising for that is the basic character as of now of this debilitated nation that has lost all sense of manhood. In fact, this universal trait in effeminacy and selfish cowardice that characterises a vast number today, also held sway over much of the intelligentsia in the days of colonial servitude which allowed Gandhi such a foothold in the Congress and through it in the national psyche. Had Indians been more virile, the Mahatma would have had to pack bag and baggage and resume operations elsewhere in a milder clime.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Udham Singh
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