Many westerners who became fascinated with India during the colonial period believed that India possessed a uniquely spiritual heritage. This conviction was so strong that it persisted into the postcolonial era. Yet as analysts like Romila Thapur have shown, this notion of India's unique religious heritage was flawed from its inception. 

        According to Thapur in her essay "Communalism and Ancient Indian History" (in Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, People's Publishing House: New Delhi, 1977) the idea that India is more spiritual than other nations was begun by 19th century European scholars, many of whom, feeling alienated from their own society because of the changes being brought about by industrialization, sought utopias in the non‑industrial east. In keeping with the psychological needs that drove this search, they developed the idea that, from the beginning of subcontinent culture, "Indians were always concerned with metaphysics and philosophical speculation." Such a reality was precisely what these scholars were looking for ‑‑ a society in which ideas mattered more than industrial productivity and messy urbanization. 

        This western analysis of Indian culture as uniquely spiritual from time immemorial was developed in spite of the fact that there was no past record that justified this analysis. In the past, neither Indians themselves nor outsiders visiting India had agitated for the idea that India's spiritual/philosophical traditions were somehow extraordinary. As Thapur makes clear, "Ancient Indians never saw themselves as more spiritual than their neighbors in adjoining or far‑away lands". Thapur additionally states that the historical record shows that ancient visitors to India "from other equally significant cultures, such as the Greeks, the Chinese and the Arabs" didn't record that India possessed "any markedly distinctive spiritual characteristics." Yet in spite of such evidence to the contrary, the colonial vision of India as uniquely spiritual persisted. Not only did this vision satisfy the utopian, anti‑industrialization leanings of western intellectuals, it also gave western power‑brokers a rationale for why India, mired in a pre‑industrial murk that was supposedly traceable to the country's "spiritual" orientation, was dependent on the west for its economic salvation. 

        This western preoccupation with India's so‑called spirituality has assumed many forms over the years and still remains a major obstacle in the way of accurate western appraisals of the subcontinent. For instance, the U.S. counterculture of the 1960s, in spite of its attempts to develop an anti‑imperialist vocabulary and life‑style ‑‑ continued in updated form the Indologists' vision of India: India was, for the U.S. counterculture, a pre‑technological paradise, a place of strange and soul‑stirring religious beliefs, a seductive land of yogic disciplines, exotic theories of meditation, and mind‑expanding sitar music in the background. Even today, Hari Krishna devotees, some of them leftover hippie types from the 60s, can still occasionally be found haunting various U.S. locales. Each of these devotees unconsciously proselytizes for the old colonial view that India's character is essentially spiritual and non‑technological. It is in this context that I think of Mahatma Gandhi ‑‑ or at least the image of him that's been produced by political commentators and romanticizers. I always approach the question of Gandhi's character with a touch of trepidation. On the one hand, I recognize that he was a skilled leader sincerely committed to the idea of an independent, decolonialized India. Yet he was also a pigheaded man who arrogantly imposed, upon everyone he met, an inflexible model of exactly how that struggle had to be waged. Unfortunately, that model didn't contain a clear strategic sense of how to best handle India's vast cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. That Gandhi's vision suffered from this limitation has been obscured from us by how Gandhi is usually portrayed: as a saint. The fact that Gandhi, India's most famous anti‑colonial leader, is usually depicted as more of a religious holy man than a political liberator has had the following ironic effect: Gandhi's supposed saintliness has played into the hands of those westerners who still view India from a colonial or neocolonial perspective. This was true of Richard Attenborow's epic movie about Gandhi, just as it has been true of much of the biographical literature on Gandhi. 

        Example. 

        In the book Gandhi, George Woodcock makes the following observation about the nonviolent activist and Indian independence movement leader: 

                         When the Indian National Congress, which he had led intermittently as a movement dedicated

                         (George Woodcock, Gandhi, Fontana, Colins, London, 1972, p. 6) 

        The above quote contains an interesting assumption ‑‑ i.e., that remaining disengaged from political parties is an act of freedom unachievable by those who immerse themselves in such parties. Consequently Woodcock views Gandhi's "extraordinary persistence" in remaining aloof from such parties as an action that makes him one of "the few free men of our time" ‑‑ certainly an accolade if there ever was one. Yet it's a deformed accolade, not only because the equation between refusing to join a political party and the achievement of freedom is questionable, but also because it caters to that western perspective which assumes that India's historical uniqueness lies in its religious heritage, its penchant for seeking ways to "transcend" mundane realities. Catering to this perspective, whether intentionally or not, has its consequences. In Woodcock's book, at least one consequence is obvious: Gandhi's personality provides the author with an opportunity to exoticize Indian history by reducing it to its religious elements. 
       

        Woodcock displays this tendency when discussing what he believes to be Gandhi's essential philosophical characteristic: 

                           Much in his career remains unexplained if we forget his insistence that religion and politics

                           India to confer power over destiny . . . (p. 10‑11) 

        In such an analysis we find the basic elements of the western myth that Gandhi is the modern culmination of India's ancient spiritual history. Since Gandhi is viewed as such a culmination, and as one of the "few free people of our time", his politics is imbued with a larger‑than‑life moral quality that dwarfs everything else in sight and results in "the great divergences between Gandhi's revolutionary ideas and techniques and those of other contemporary revolutionists." 

        From such a perspective it follows that whatever his personal contradictions might have been, Gandhi was the leader of the Indian independence movement, the one who was so responsive to fundamental Indian traditions that only he, in his sometimes enigmatic but always vital and charismatic way, could tap deep into the mood of the masses and move them historically forward. In such a picture, Gandhi is viewed as a one‑man moral vanguard, willing to challenge not only Britain's but also India's major moral/political deficiencies ‑‑ for instance, Indian untouchability, usually cited as the most "primitive" aspect of the Indian caste system. Such over‑celebrations of Gandhi's character have repeatedly led to serious misreadings of modern subcontinent history, particularly with regard to the untouchable or dalit issue. Woodcock's adulation of Gandhi leads to precisely such a misreading, as when he states, "The progress toward ending untouchability in India has been mainly the result of his (Gandhi's) work and that of his close disciples." 

        Although incorrect, Woodcock's proclamation that Gandhi led the fight against untouchability is predictable, since it follows logically from his romantic assumption that Gandhi, as a modern-day sanyassin involved in a quest for moral/spiritual purity, must, by definition, be India's "true leader" in all areas of major importance. Such an assumption reduces a very complex moment in Indian history, a moment that produced a variety of charismatic leaders, to the biography of a single "extraordinary" man: Gandhi. In doing this, a skewed analysis is produced of key issues like trends within the independence movements and the struggle against untouchability. 

        Yet in spite of this, westerners and many upper‑caste Indians find it convenient to view Gandhi as the leader of the assault against untouchability. They are moved by the specter of a socially privileged man (Gandhi, from an upper‑caste vaishya background) who melodramatically thrust aside his social privilege through symbolic acts like washing latrines, an untouchable occupation. Such a picture of Gandhi flatters the egos of those more privileged sectors of the global population who believe the solution to the world's miseries resides in their power to intercede in history on behalf of the downtrodden. Such a worldview, masking itself as a type of realism, maintains that the downtrodden are incapable of liberating themselves and that in order for the dispossessed to be liberated they must rely on the intervention of social‑activist types from more economically well‑off or educated backgrounds. 

        Such is the neocolonial and/or upper‑class view. Of course, the downtrodden often have a different vision of reality; therefore, it isn't surprising that the untouchable community, unlike Woodcock and other romanticizers of Gandhi's contribution to the struggle against untouchability, haven't shown the same enthusiasm for describing him as their liberator. As a despised underclass within Indian society, untouchables were (and remain) free to analyze Gandhi's behavior not from the standpoint of how dramatic it was for him to display public sympathy for them, but rather from the perspective of what he did and didn't do in terms of articulating their goals and aspirations, not his. 

        From this perspective, Gandhi failed. Nothing better illustrates this than his political conflicts with Ambedkar, the most dynamic leader of the untouchable community both during the independence struggle and in the immediate post‑independence period. 

        Ambedkar always maintained Gandhi was more of a threat to the untouchable community than its savior. His principle objection to Gandhi was the non‑violence advocate's insistence on viewing untouchables as an integral part of the Hindu community, rather than as a self‑contained minority oppressed by the Hindu community. Unlike Gandhi, Ambedkar believed that, in order for untouchables to achieve their full political and social rights, they had to be liberated from their position within existing Hinduism, since it was precisely Hinduism which had for centuries oppressed untouchables by institutionalizing their "lower than low" status in Indian society. While Gandhi maintained that the issue of treating untouchables fairly was a moral one that turned on the good faith of Hindus willing to purify Hinduism of caste bigotry, Ambedkar maintained that what untouchables needed wasn't Hindus' good faith but rather legal guarantees that in a free India untouchables would be subject to no "invidious discrimination against" them. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, "What Gandhi and Congress Have Done to the Untouchables" in Ambedkar's Writings and Speeches, Vol. 9, Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, Bombay, p. 46) As Dhananjay Keer, Ambedkar's biographer, wrote of Ambedkar's vision ‑‑ 

                           The basis of his politics lay in the proposition that the Untouchables were not a sub‑section

                           (Dhanajay Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission, Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1981, p. 351) 

        Given the nature of their political disagreements, it isn't surprising that one of the more dramatic clashes that developed between Gandhi and Ambedkar was over the question of how untouchables should be integrated into India's electoral system. In the early 1930s, Ambedkar, voicing the majority view of the untouchable community, argued that untouchables should have the "right to elect their own men as representatives" and that caste Hindus not be allowed to participate in untouchable elections. (Ambedkar, p. 47) The rationale behind this strategy was that only in such a way could the untouchable community avoid the subtle oppression of having their representatives selected for them by caste Hindus, who made up the majority of the overall electorate. If special seats weren't reserved for untouchable representatives elected by the untouchable community, Ambedkar argued, untouchables would remain subordinate to the already dominant castes. 

        Gandhi would have none of this. He saw such arguments for untouchable electoral independence as laying the basis for a fatal fissure within the unified (and Hindu‑dominated) India he hoped would emerge after independence. Consequently Gandhi, the untouchables' supposed deliverer, tore into the untouchable leadership with all the resentment of late 1950s/early 60s northern white U.S. liberals when Black leaders suggested racism wasn't just a southern Jim Crow phenomenon but was a disease infecting the whole nation, including their own back yard, the north. In an attempt to put Ambedkar in his place, Gandhi accused him of unfamiliarity with the essential nature of Indian society, of having a warped personality as the result of his deprived background, and of improperly claiming to represent the untouchable community. When these comments resulted in massive untouchable demonstrations against Gandhi, he nonetheless remained unmoved. Gandhi's position was clear: untouchables who wouldn't listen to him were untouchables who were wrong. The end result of Gandhi's stance was a tidalwave of upper caste vilification directed against Ambedkar, who at one point felt compelled to confess to a crowd: "At present I am the most hated man in Hindu India. I am represented as a traitor, I am denounced as an enemy of the Hindus, I am cursed as a destroyer of Hinduism, and branded as the greatest enemy of the country." (Keer, p. 201) 

        In the end, after Gandhi adopted the tactic of a death fast against the untouchables' demand for a separate electorate, Ambedkar was forced to compromise and Gandhi got what he wanted: the cancellation of the proposed separate electorate. 
        
        But although the battle was over, the war wasn't. As Gandhi continued to refuse to cede control of the anti-untouchability movement to the untouchables themselves, Ambedkar's analysis of Gandhi's leadership flaws persisted. He saw the Mahatma as "a deep-dyed Hindu" (Ambedkar, p. 288) who romanticized untouchable poverty and illiteracy by patriarchally referring to the downtrodden as Harijans ("children of God"). Ultimately, to Ambedkar, Gandhi's greatest flaw was a lack of incisiveness, a tendency, when confronted with problems like caste bigotry or the squalor and hierarchicalness of village life, to utter "many platitudes . . . but no views or suggestions of a constructive character." (Ambedkar, p. 55). From Ambedkar's perspective, such characteristics in the final analysis rendered Gandhianism sensible on one level but undemocratic on another. "Gandhianism is a paradox," Ambedkar wrote. "It stands for freedom from foreign domination, which means the destruction of the existing political structure of the country. At the same time it seeks to maintain intact a social structure which permits the domination of one class by another on a hereditary basis." (Ambedkar, pp. 290-91) 
        
        Conflict between Gandhi and the untouchables continued throughout the duration of the independence movement, and in 1946, a year prior to independence, it came to a head once again. In that year a series of untouchable demonstrations and non‑violent actions were directed against the Congress Party and its Gandhian ideas concerning a unified Hinduism. As before, the untouchables (60 million in number at the time) wanted to be legally viewed as a separate electorate so that they'd be guaranteed self‑determination in the post‑British period. Gandhi's response was to ridicule the protesters for parodying his own notions of non‑violent agitation. (p. 383) Bad feelings boiled and hundreds of untouchables were eventually arrested. (p. 384) For these people, unlike for caste Hindus and their privileged western counterparts, Gandhianism didn't represent a series of grand pro‑untouchable gestures but merely one more obstacle to their full liberation. Ambedkar remained passionately anti‑Gandhian even after independence. One way he expressed this was by rejecting Hinduism, converting to Buddhism and in the process leading thousands of other untouchables to do the same. 
        
        The untouchables' pre‑independence fears concerning the possibility of their continued disenfranchisement after independence had been achieved turned out to be justified, as shown by post‑independence events. Although independent India officially abolished untouchability, untouchables, who make up approximately 15% of India's population, have remained India's chronic underclass, liberated on paper but crushed by social‑economic realities. It isn't surprising then that the old fury against Gandhi and Gandhianism still, decades after the original clashes, rises to the surface in dramatic ways in contemporary India. One example: when the film Gandhi was released on the subcontinent, untouchables in Bangalore protested the event by entering a theater and emptying baskets filled with snakes in the aisles, thereby creating a panic among the audience. 
                
        Untouchables had once again struck out against the man whom Woodcock and many other westerners still describe, in spite of the facts, as the untouchables' savior. 
        
        Gandhi's failures with regard to the untouchable community were symptomatic of his inability to view political realities from a non‑Hindu perspective. Although Gandhi authentically yearned to achieve a spirituality that was above the doctrinal bickerings of the various world religions and above the divisions within Hinduism itself, he confused his desire to do this with the fact of actually doing it. This confusion led Gandhi to the disastrous conclusion that he was truly impartial and therefore the articulator of universal truths. Consequently, it never occurred to him that the reason he couldn't stomach the untouchables' anger against Hinduism wasn't because he had developed a politically advanced conception of national unity, but was rather because he was too much of an upper‑caste Hindu to appreciate the logic of the untouchables' rage. Similarly, Gandhi could never get it through his head how his conception of Ram Raj ‑‑ i.e., the idea that Rama, the hero of an ancient Indian/Hindu myth, was the perfect symbol for a de‑colonized India ‑‑ was an insult to a significant portion of the Indian population. Once again, Gandhi's problem here was his intractable Hinduism. He was incapable of grasping in any meaningful way that Muslims were justifiably suspicious of an anti‑colonial vocabulary that rallied the public's emotions by using Hindu imagery (i.e, Rama, etc.). Nor did it seem important to him that there was a South Indian tradition of viewing Rama, not as an indigenous hero, but as a lightskinned Aryan conqueror from the north who had subjugated the darker‑skinned Dravidian population and had turned them into lower‑caste laborers. 
        

        Unfortunately for the independence movement and for the period following the independence movement, Gandhi's philosophical commitment to a pluralistic India did not offset the religious, caste and regional tensions that his north Indian, upper caste, Hindu conception of national unity had set in motion. For all his famed "simplicity," Gandhi had in fact aimed for something large and complicated: universality. Tragically, he failed in this aim. 

        This failure didn't mean, however, that he didn't have his strengths ‑‑ his vision of non‑violence was moving, moral and often effective; and his capacity to outwit the British in clever and frequently endearing ways was truly remarkable. 

        Yet in the end he was not a leader who understood the kinds of compromises, class/caste analyses and ecumenical structures that are necessary for building lasting coalitions. His legacy therefore includes not only some amazing examples of nonviolent organizing, but also a number of problems that characterize post‑independence India: Hindu‑Muslim clashes, continuing alienation of untouchables, etc. 

        Often the west finds it more convenient to ignore Gandhi's shortcomings than to analyze them. This allows the west to simplistically applaud or criticize the so‑called spiritual character of Gandhi's political leadership, then to claim that his spirituality was an inevitable product of Indian history, which is supposedly uniquely religious, as opposed to western society which is supposedly more scientific and pragmatic. This view of Gandhi and India suits the west just fine, since it lays the basis for evaluating India as in need of western technocratic/industrial guidance so that India can survive in the modern world. 

        Of course, there is nothing particularly new about this idea; it is an updated version of the pre‑20th century western glorification of colonialism as a civilizing force.