Nobody embodies the deep and enduring connections between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy as well as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – the Mahatma – whose statue is being unveiled in Parliament Square today. Gandhiji will find himself set permanently in stone very close to the place he occupied transiently, in flesh and blood, on his first night in London more than one hundred and twenty five years ago.
Gandhiji’s struggle to break Britain’s imperial hold over India and to force the world’s oldest democracy to create the world’s largest one are the stuff of history and legend. But even as he waged this struggle, he admired Britain, valued many of the things it stood for, and cherished his friendships with scores of Britons.
During the Battle of Britain he was moved to tears at the thought that Westminster Abbey might be bombarded. So great was his regard for British values that he would condemn many unfair and unjust practices as “un-British”. His closest friends, confidantes, and counsellors, in South Africa, which proved to be the training ground for his experiments with non-violent means of resisting oppression and satyagraha (truth force) were English.
One of his deepest spiritual bonds was struck with C.F. Andrews, the only person who called him by his first name “Mohan” whereas the world referred to him more respectfully as Bapu or Gandhiji.
In short, Mohandas Gandhi became the Mahatma not just because Britain gave him the cause that would define his life but also the human and other connections that made the fight for that cause possible.
Today, India and Britain have come a long way since the parting at the “midnight hour” of 1947.
Historical legacies form the ties that bind our two countries: language, the enlightenment values of democracy, free speech, pluralism, religious freedoms, and rule of law, and institutions such as the merit-based civil service, civilian-controlled army, independent judiciary, and a raucously vibrant press. These bequests have had lasting effects on us.
Mature nations transcend bitterness and acrimony.
In Parliament Square there is also a statue of Sir Winston Churchill, arguably the man who opposed Gandhi most resolutely. Some would detect an irony in the great Prime Minister sharing a public space with the man he once decried as a ‘half-naked fakir’.
May be there is irony but even Churchill would have acknowledged that the resolve, determination and even cunning he showed in standing up to a mighty military machine that threatened the very existence of a proud and free people was replicated by Gandhi in his seemingly unequal battle against the world’s mightiest Empire.
What will link Churchill and Gandhi together is their strength of character. But it is a greater tribute to Britain to recognize Gandhiji’s contributions and choose to place the “seditious, half-naked fakir” next to his one-time nemesis, Churchill and, of course, next to the man Gandhiji inspired, Nelson Mandela. For that gracious gesture, my government and all of India are deeply thankful to the tireless work of the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, including its Chairman, Lord Meghnad Desai, to the prodigious talent of sculptor Philip Jackson, and above all to the capacious, Gandhi-like spirit of the British government and its people.
