By Airpeace W. Rani
The adage ‘great men come once in many centuries’ rings true with the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lovingly known as ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ to the world over and a ‘Bapu’ or ‘Father of the Nation’ to the Indians at large. He was born to Karamchand and Putlibai Gandhi in Porbandar in Gujarat on October 2, 1969. After finishing his early education in India, he went to study Law and Jurisprudence in London University College, London in 1888. He started his career as a barrister in South Africa. His long association with the discriminated Indian community in South Africa made him a human rights activist. On the eve of the First World War in 1914, Gandhi returned to India. He devoted the rest of his life fighting for India’s independence which came to fruition in 1947. Gandhi was not born great nor did he try to be one. He only followed the simple ideals for a noble cause in a great way. The greatness of Gandhi is not in the man but in his soul, the ‘Mahatma’. In the year 2000, Mahatma Gandhi was voted as the world’s greatest man of the second Millennium in contemporary era. He has left many incredible deeds and laudable creeds for the world to follow from both his personal and public life as well. While making a memorial lecture on his life, one may utter the need for many MK Gandhis to cure the wounds of the modern world but that would be just a half way house between hope and reality because Gandhi’s philosophy is not a cup of tea for everyone to digest leave alone for one to profess.
The 2nd of October is celebrated as Gandhi Jayanti in India and is declared a national holiday as a mark of respect to Mahatma Gandhi. Various programmes may be conducted to commemorate the life of this great saint on this day. The day gained international importance in the year 2007 when the UN declared it as the International Day of Non-Violence. This Day was created to realize the relevance of non-violence in the pacific settlement of many conflicts and problems in the world. 2nd October was chosen by the UN thereby recognizing the philosophical connection between the UN human rights principles and those that Mahatma Gandhi used in his socio-political movement. Gandhi being the champion of non-violence, it is befitting that his birthday be observed as International Day of Non-Violence.
Gandhi was not a not a political thinker as such but he followed a certain philosophy in his life and work. One of the most notable features of Gandhi’s thought is his advocacy of non-violence or Ahimsa. It may be observed that the concept of Ahimsa was not an original contribution of Gandhi and had been known and practiced in India since ancient times. Gandhi merely lifted it from the individual plane and applied it to various walks of life, viz., domestic, institutional, economic and political. His concept of Ahimsa was quite extensive and did not merely imply avoidance of violence. He also included in it avoidance of injury through thought, words or deeds. Thus he considered a harsh speech or thinking bad of others also as violence. On the other hand if a life was destroyed for the sake of those whose life was taken, Gandhi would consider it also as Ahimsa. Gandhi is said to have got a calf in his ashram poisoned because its unbearable agony and suffering was beyond cure. Gandhi’s non-violence was a positive concept based on goodwill towards all. It even included love for the evil doer, and may even involve conscious suffering on the part of the person who practices it. It implies absence of malice towards the opponent and hate of the evil (sin) without hating the evil doer (sinner).
The concept of non-violence has a very close association with the people of Meghalaya in the sense that the trajectory of Meghalaya into statehood was based on it. The chauvinistic politics of Assam triggered the hill people like the Khasis, Garos and the Lushais to demand for political autonomy in the form of statehood for themselves. This quest for identity by the minority tribal like the Khasis and Garos was materialized with the emergence of the middle class among these communities. The hill state movement for the Khasis and Garos in the 1960s was spearheaded by the elite group of that time. The leaders of the All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC) who led the statehood movement were deeply influenced by Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and satyagraha. They looked upon Gandhi as a champion of social justice and believed that whatever steps they take on Gandhian principles would be justifiable as the same is enshrined in the Indian Constitution. Gandhi’s dharma, ahimsa and satyagraha were their catchwords and ultimately the new hill state, Meghalaya, was born in 1972 through the non-violent movement steered by the Non-Violent Direct Action Volunteer Corps of the APHLC. Having said all this, the author does not deny the stray incidents of violence during the hill state movement for Meghalaya.
Moreover, it was also claimed that the hill tribes of Meghalaya are peace loving people by their very nature. They profess a belief of loving oneself and respecting others. They uphold the ideals of earning righteousness and peaceful coexistence with others and a harmonious relationship with nature. Many of the earlier writers among the local people painted the tribal of Meghalaya as one of the most unique and special kind of human species on earth. But all these tall claims are nothing but a hollow romanticism as the same does not hold water vis-à-vis the historical evidences of time as far as the history of the Meghalaya hill tribes are concerned. Killing, robbing, bullying and harassment of different sorts and even ethnic clashes are not uncommon among these tribes. They have been involved in violent battles and warfare among themselves and against intruders and invaders alike. For instance the Khasis used to call their land as ‘ka ri umsnam’ or the land of bloodshed. In fact the term ‘ka ri umsnam’ or ‘ka ri umsnam u ‘ni u kong’ is yet to be properly explored academically. Does the term signify that the Khasis conquered their present land through bloodshed or does it suggest infighting among themselves or any inter-hima bloodshed of some sort?
A ‘turbulent zone’ of the country is one of the negative remarks tagged to India’s North East today because of militancy, insurgency, violent civil societies et al. The region also exemplified the nastiest hotbed of ethnic conflict in the country. Among the Northeastern states Manipur tops the list as far as violence is concerned and today Meghalaya is no less. Taking Gandhi’s definition of non-violence as discussed above into consideration we can say that violence prevailing in Meghalaya today cuts itself in two dimensions i.e. physical violence and violence through words and thoughts. The first dimension can be seen in the form of insurgency, the alleged militant actions of civil society organizations, jingoistic and tribal chauvinistic politics of student bodies, anti-social activities like rape, killing, physical attack on suspected witchcraft practitioners, looting, ethnic conflict and even the brutal and senseless firing by police personnel on civilians et al.
The psychology that teaches us as to ‘why people behave the way they do’ tells us that physical violence is a mere expression of the inner thoughts and ideologies of the person. Such thoughts gets expressed when they are activated by external factors. Injury to human life is not caused only by swords and guns but words and actions. Against this backdrop, violence in Meghalaya can be seen from a different angle. Who will be responsible for Meghalaya’s insurgency and militant activism among our youth? Don’t we think that corruption, dereliction of duty, failed governance, lack of progressive policies and development are like abstract violence committed by our government that ultimately triggered our young people to take up arms? Is it on this ground that the HNLC opposed the celebration of International Day of Non-Violence in Meghalaya? Moreover, violence to fellow citizens can take a direct as well as an indirect form. It is direct when people are directly affected but indirect when it is through pollution and environmental hazards. In this case, we may consider that economic activities which destroy the environment and that may have an adverse impact on people’s life as violent economic activities. Even street hawking which encroached upon footpaths as livelihood earning grounds is violent to me a pedestrian.
One may argue that Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence is irrelevant in today’s world but the question is what is relevant then? Can darkness dispel darkness? If ahimsa and satyagraha fails, is it because they are meaningless philosophies or because the ‘satyagrahis’ have failed them? To be successful with non-violence one has to be a true holder of truth and not a mere pretender with hidden agenda. However, what is unfortunate is that the greatest apostle of non-violence who never believed in bullets fell prey to them and was violently killed in 1948.
Author’s email: [email protected] Shillong-o4, Mob.no: 9615614322