– Vignesh Harshavardhan V
January 30th, the day of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, is celebrated as Martyrs’ Day in India. But this is not the only martyr’s day India celebrates: we celebrate seven such days in total. March 23rd, which marks the death of the three communist revolutionaries: Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru, is the second most popular martyrs’ day. However, the nation’s conscience, as well as the official protocol which dictates that the first citizens of India pay obeisance to Gandhi’s memorial at Raj Ghat, marks out the Mahatma’s death as the most important among the seven martyrs’ days celebrated in India. We must perceive this prioritising as being not only because of Gandhi’s stature and influence on Indian polity and history, but also because of the nature of the death itself and the reasons behind it.
Gandhi is known for his core principle of satyagraha, non-violent political resistance. And it is this idea that has been the most influential worldwide, influencing greats such as Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. But Gandhi also advocated affiliated principles such as Sarvodaya (Welfare for All) and Sarva-Dharma-Samanatva (Equal Respect for All Religions), and it was while he was working towards these principles through satyagraha that Gandhi was killed. His last fast was to bring about peace between Hindus and Muslims after the post-partition violence and the Kashmir war.
From his killer’s courtroom speech, we can safely state that Gandhi was killed because he was perceived to have sided with the religious minorities of the newly formed nation of India. Among many delusional declarations, his killer states: “Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims” and “the accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately.” The killer goes on to further say that though he bears “no ill will towards anyone individually but …had no respect for the present government owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time, I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.” Thus, Gandhi was primarily killed because he stood in support of the religious minorities of India. This realisation is important as it reveals the greatest fear of the anti-social fringe elements that killed him. We might interpret the attack on Gandhi’s body as necessitated because at the time of death he was engaging in Satyagraha while embodying Sarvodaya and Sarva-Dharma-Samanatva, as was the case multiple times in the past.
With this in mind, let us take a detour to popular culture and consider the plot of Rowling’s Harry Potter. Those familiar with the storyline would know that though the prophecy of the one who would vanquish Voldemort would apply to both Harry and Neville, Voldemort chose Harry as the boy who would kill him. In attempting to kill Harry, Voldemort ends up losing his own physical form. We are reminded of Master Oogway’s statement (from Kung Fu Panda) that one often makes one’s own destiny in the effort to prevent it from happening. Evil chooses its own vanquisher in attempting to destroy its conception; in this case, religious fundamentalism (with attendant evils of patriarchy, feudalism, and casteism) marked Satyagraha employed towards Sarva-Dharma-Samanatva as the weapon that will end it.
Where do we go with this knowledge? As politics that highlight differences of religious and racial identities fuel more and more violence, those of us in academic institutions have failed to repeatedly invoke and engage with Gandhi’s ideas as well as his experiments in implementing them. The humanities and social sciences don’t accord Gandhi the same stature as Marx, Foucault, Althusser, or Chomsky. The tendency has been to “cancel” Gandhi from across the political and ideological spectrum. We must keep in mind that all thinkers have their own failings in both their personal and public lives.
What are cited as Gandhi’s personal faults, be it visiting a sex worker (he did not engage in the act itself), giving in to lust when his father was on his deathbed, or the testing of his sexual self-control, are all information gathered from Gandhi’s own writing. Marx’s infidelity and arrogance, Althusser’s murder of his wife, Foucault’s debatable sexual practices, or Chomsky’s testimony for Epstein have not led to systemic disregard for their ideas. What are seen as limitations of Gandhi’s public action with respect to caste and untouchability, for example, are only assessments of Gandhi’s initial views on caste, and do not do justice to the Mahatma’s evolving views on caste and his anti-caste practice. In all, it would be foolhardy to ignore the breadth of Gandhian thought evidenced in his collected works, which runs to 100 volumes, totalling 50000 pages.
I see Gandhi as a compromise of kinds. I do not intend to be flippant when I say I see Gandhi, the man and his ideas, as being analogous to India, as the practice of eating chicken is to Indians. The majority of Indians, in terms of social groups, are non-vegetarians who eat red and white meat. Of those who eat red meat, some eat beef, others avoid beef, and yet others avoid pork. The only non-vegetarian food that can be said to be consumed by all social groups, including traditionally vegetarian ones, is chicken.
Chicken is a product of capitalism that fuels the large-scale production of broiler chickens, which are then aggressively marketed through corporate food chains and other channels. Just as Gandhi was funded by wealthy Indian industrialists of the time (remember Sarojini Naidu’s quote that it cost a lot to keep Gandhi poor), the idea of Gandhi was spread (dare we say “campaigned”) across every nook and cranny of India. But chicken, and I’m quoting a Facebook post of my school classmate from 2013, died for us, for India.
Chicken is perhaps a compromise, but it could also be a consensus. I would like all Indians not to be intolerant towards beef-eating, just as I would like them to be accepting of the ideas of Babasaheb Ambedkar on caste-eradication, or of socialist principles of land redistribution, or of feminist principles on the right of women to work or marry as per their choice. But that is a goal to be achieved with an initial starting point that all can meet at. Gandhi was the starting point for such an idea of India. And he still is. Perhaps it might be a stretch on my behalf to think that the idea of chicken-eating might be what will eventually lead people to realise that killing their fellow Indians for eating beef is absurd, let alone inhuman. But I am convinced Gandhi, as thought and action, as word and deed, might be what we need to double down on at present. More so when we consider that India’s greatest instability, right from its birth in 1947, has been that of religious intolerance. Chicken died so that all Indians could sit and eat together, shoulder to shoulder. We must believe Gandhi died for the same reasons, because he actually died for you. Gandhi is true love. Ishwar Allah Tero Naam, Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwan.
Reference
Godse, Nathuram. “Why I Killed Gandhi.” Archive.org. Retrieved 21-01-2026. https://ia803202.us.archive.org/11/items/why-i-killed-gandhi/why-i-killed-gandhi.pdf
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Article 19 