‘Govt’ Gandhi is being replaced by parties with new official figures, ‘weak’ Gandhi is criticised in popular discourse, ‘political’ Gandhi is a powerful force for grassroots people’s movements
Gandhi
is introduced to us by some commentary as an old, weak, and impractical man – supposedly an awkward compulsion that has no place in the extremely professional, aggressively competitive, and essentially tricky world of politics.
This image of Gandhi is not evoked by his opponents alone to make him politically irrelevant. It is a dominant section of our political class that finds Gandhi’s ideas practically unfeasible. This strange neutrality of Gandhi’s self-claimed sympathisers creates a highly misleading conception that Gandhi does not have any
political significance
in the present context.