Gandhi

The issue of apology that surrounds one particular historical figure arguably pitches every gamut of politics around the said solitary figure.

Walking from Dandi: In Search of Vikas by Harmony Siganporia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022; pp xvi + 292, `1,495.

Examining M K Gandhi’s attitude towards South African natives during his sojourn in South Africa, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, in their book The South African Gandhi, have accused Gandhi of racism, arguing that Gandhi kept his struggle for British concessions for indentured Indians in South Africa separate from the struggle of Zulu people for freedom from colonial rule, because Gandhi considered the natives racially inferior and called them Kaffirs—a derogatory term used against them by the Whites as well as Indians. However, accusing Gandhi of racism indicates a misrepresentation of his ideas in transition, and the word Kaffir does not connote a racial slur.

The paper attempts to understand the two competing models of postcolonial modernity on the issue of the village, that is, one representing a Gandhian perspective and the other a liberal Western perspective led by B R Ambedkar. M K Gandhi’s idea of the village was developed through his imagination of an ideal state that had an appeal from the masses and was also sought as the rightful response to the British colonial rule, whereas Ambedkar’s idea of the village was derived from his existential experience of living in Western countries as well as in Mumbai. The idea of modernity as comprehended by Ambedkar envisioned the end of community and emergence of a society where anonymity of the individual’s birth-based status would be the dominant feature of social life. These contrasting models of postcolonial modernity on the status of the village were apprehended and expressed by the members of the Constituent Assembly from 9 December 1946 to 26 November 1949.