[Reader-list] The Lost Banality Of Evil

[Jeebesh]

dear All,

Recently i came across this review by Tridip Suhrud of a biography on  
Modi. Tridip is a scholar and translator based in Ahmedabad. His  
translation of "Harilal Gandhi: A Life by Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal"   
has been an important work. I am enclosing two other essays by him in  
this post to pre-empt a barrier to some prejudiced missiles that will  
come immediately :).

It will be worthwhile to think a little calmly on the issues that are  
being raised by Tridip.

warmly
jeebesh

The Lost Banality Of Evil

TRIDIP SUHRUD

IT’S NEITHER A face nor a mask. It’s an eerie, disfigured,  
dismembered, disembodied image. It is not a person, nor a head that a  
headhunter would collect. It shows a fragment of a cityscape, half- 
ethnic kite festival where the kites appear as brand ambassadors. But,  
oddly, there is no sense of play or festivity. The image is not  
locatable, it can’t be grounded or given a body. It’s a kind of head  
that would address a populace, precisely because it’s not located in  
people, in locality or in himself. In that sense it’s eerie. Modi’s  
dismembered head (Narendra to his biographers) appears as the head of  
some ritualistic sect or cult. His eyes might appear to some  
advertiser as steely, but bereft of body they appear frozen. Semiotics  
of the cover of the book provides better psychoanalysis of the man  
than the contents of the book.

The fable reverses itself. It’s not the myth of the headless warrior  
horseman. It’s the myth of the head without the body. In the myth of  
Modi, the body has disappeared; his own and the body political. It’s a  
body-less leader, chaste, celibate, hyper-masculine only in context of  
the State. An archetypical symbol of a demagogue, who is located  
nowhere but wishes to sway all. It’s a deeply Manichaean book. There  
is one source of good, one idea of good, the rest are evil; symbolised  
by opposition, his own party-men, the dissenters and the recalcitrant  
pseudo-secular English press. One wonders how a democratic leader can  
polarise the populace into such a binary of opposition, where he is  
the Self and the rest are the totality of others. No amount of formal  
propaganda can break the political unconscious of a story where the  
General (as his biographers call him) thinks that he exists, therefore  
we are. The logic is inevitable; if we differ we cease to exist.

The Modi myth is the mother-goddess myth gone awry. Here is a man  
incapable of care and nurturance reincarnating himself in, and as, an  
act of violence. His biographers don’t realise that authoritarian  
personalities are both bad myth and bad politics.

Modi’s biographers write history in a funny way. The fragment of life  
where Modi was a RSS pracharak to the time that Vajpayee sent a  
reluctant Modi to be the Chief Minister of Gujarat belongs to history  
and biography. History is history only pre-Godhra. Godhra is a  
conspiracy, the riots a rumour and the bad press merely gossip. In  
this, the quest for truth and justice, search for compassion, the need  
of reconciliation, have no place. They are utopian in the original  
sense of the term, because they don’t belong to this story. They have  
no location, and hence, legitimacy. As sociologist Shiv Visvanthan  
reminded us, Modi, after Sanjay Gandhi, is the most sinister myth of  
Indian politics. Both depoliticised politics in the name of the  
political. If evil ever pretended to be good in the guise of  
development, Sanjay and Modi are the siblings of modernity that we can  
do without.

The trouble with a man like Modi is that he does not belong to history  
but only to the world of news, where he continually reinvents himself.  
Modi as news has to happen again and again. In fact, it’s because he  
is news that biography sounds dated. Modi makes better sense when he  
distributes his masks that we wear or on the hoardings of the  
Information Department of Government of Gujarat, hyphenated with  
information about CNG or a new gas find. As you consume the city you  
also consume Modi as a fragment of it. One must confess that Modi’s  
PRO and the information department do a better job than Kamath and his  
collaborator. One does not doubt that Modi is a presence but it’s a  
presence that needs a biographer of the scale of Eric Erickson,  
Alexander Misterlisch or Ashis Nandy. Because they would have been  
able to weave the relationship between the ordinariness of the man and  
the gigantism of evil. They alone could have explained the  
seductiveness of evil. Kamath and Randeri are too banal to understand  
the banality of evil.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=hub180409the_lost.asp

-------------------------------
Re-editing' Gandhi's Collected Works
TRIDIP SUHRUD
	
(Economic and Political Weekly November 20, 2004 4967)


Gandhiji had a unique capability of attracting men and women of great  
talent and commitment towards him and his cause. Maganlal Gandhi, Henry
Polak, Herman Kallenbach, Imam Saheb Abdul Kadar Bavazir, Mahadev  
Desai, Pyarelal, Swami Anand, Vinoba, Kakasaheb Kalelkar, Kishorlal  
Mashruwala, Narhari Parikh, Miraben and many others like them were men  
and women of exceptional virtues. They were thinkers and servants of  
the people. Gandhiji was fortunate during his lifetime, and even after  
his assassination there were individuals and institutions ready to  
commit themselves to the preservation and propagation of his legacy.  
It was a similar impulse that guided the project to compile all of  
Gandhiji’s writings and make them available to readers.

The project, which was conceptualised in February 1956, came to be  
known as the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG). The government  
of India decided to create an advisory board and vested all control  
and direction of the project in the board. Morarji Desai was the  
chairman of the board. At various
points several individuals worked as members of the board. These  
included Kakasaheb Kalelkar, Devdas Gandhi, Pyarelal, Maganbhai Desai, G
Ramachandran, Shriman Narian, Jivanji P Desai, P M Lad, R R Diwakar,  
Ramdhari Sinha ‘Dinkar’ and Shantilal Shah. From 1956 to 1959, Bhartan  
Kumarappa and Jairamdas Doulatram worked as the chief editor of the  
project. In February 1960, K Swaminathan – a man who was equally  
comfortable with the European literary and philosophical tradition,  
Sanskrit poetics and Tamil literature as well as the ashram of Ramana  
Maharshi – was appointed
chief editor. He continued to work on the CWMG project till his  
eyesight began to fail him in his early nineties. A project that was  
conceived in 1956 was
closed in 1994 with the publication of the 100th volume. Men such as U  
R Rao, R K Prabhu and C N Patel assisted Swaminathan.
The task before the CWMG editorial team was not easy. Gandhiji’s  
writings were spread over three countries – South Africa, India and  
England. They were in government files, in offices of newspapers, with  
thousands of individuals who corresponded with him and in the diaries  
of his
companions like Mahadev Desai. Gandhiji wrote mainly in three  
languages, English, Gujarati and Hindi. The CWMG team decided to bring  
out these volumes at least in these three languages. The work on the  
Gujarati version, called Gandhiji No Akshardeh, was entrusted to the  
Navajivan
Trust, and the publications division of the ministry of information  
and broad casting, was responsible for the English and
Hindi versions. Each document had to be verified and authenticated.  
Gandhiji’s associates, H S L Polak and Chhaganlal Gandhi were called  
in to verify and authenticate South African papers. The government,  
like other institutions, participated in the process of acquiring new  
material. The government, for
example, acquired a substantial part of the Gandhiji-Herman Kallenbach  
correspondence at an auction in South Africa in the early 1990s. They  
tell a story of an abiding
friendship.
The editors and the advisory board
decided on three guiding principles: (a)
the aim of the series would be to reproduce
Gandhiji’s actual words, (b) reports of his
speeches, interviews and conversation in
indirect speech would be included when
they were proved to be authentic beyond
doubt, and (c) later research was likely to
lead to the discovery of more material –
the Gandhi-Kallenbach correspondence –
and all such new material would be published
as supplementary volumes. Of the
100 volumes, 1-90 reproduced Gandhiji’s
writings, speeches, letters, interviews, and
notes in chronological order; volumes 91-
97 were the so-called supplementary
volumes which dealt with material that
had become available later, while volumes
98-100 contained index of subjects,
index of persons and a volume containing
prefaces to the set. The CWMG has long
since come to be recognised as one of the
finest examples of editorial and translation
work undertaken anywhere in the
world. At least two generations of Gandhi
scholars have expressed their deep indebtedness
to these self-effacing men. Except
for a fine biographical sketch by
Ramachandra Guha it is very difficult to
find any recent assessment of
K Swaminathan, of C N Patel, there is
nothing of consequence to be found in
English. But the CWMG endured.
Until recently, that is. In 1998, the
publications dvision decided to ‘re-edit’
the CWMG. The exercise was aimed at
bringing uniformity, strict chronology and
authenticity. Uniformity meant that all
volumes ought to be of the same size –
of 500 pages each! Chronology required
that all the material of the supplementary
volumes be incorporated at its appropriate
chronological order. The publisher’s
note in the revised edition of 2001 has
this to say about authenticity: "The
objective of the series is to reproduce
Gandhiji’s actual words as far as possible;
reports of his speeches, interviews,
conversations which did not seem to be
authentic have been avoided, as also
reports of his statements in indirect form"
(emphasis added). The exercise thus
involved a process of re-authentication
and therefore subsequent deletion of
material ‘which did not seem authentic’.
It also involved a process of realigning the
material from supplementary volumes. The
exercise, which began in 1998, resulted
in the publication of a revised edition of
100 volumes of CWMG, in English and
Hindi. A CD-ROM version was also
published.
The entire exercise is deeply flawed. We
are not informed who the chief editor of
this set is, the editorial team and advisory
board remains a mystery. What, if any,
were the measures adopted to ascertain the
authenticity of material that has been
omitted? We are not even given a listing
of the material that has been thus found
inauthentic and deleted.
‘Re-editing’ Gandhi’s
Collected Works
The exercise to ‘re-edit’ the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
is non-transparent and flawed, and displays an inefficiency and
callousness that makes the revised publication incapable of being a
standard reference. The new edition should be scrapped, and the
original collected works reinstated as the only and most authentic
version of the writings and utterances of Gandhi.
Economic and Political Weekly November 20, 2004 4968
A group of individuals and independent
scholars in Gujarat have been examining
the revised print edition and the CD-ROM.
Our exercise is yet ongoing, but the findings
are deeply disturbing. There are about
500 entries missing from the CD-ROM
version, but they must not all be inauthentic.
Of these, about 215 entries have been
subsequently added to the revised print
edition. There are about 300 entries missing
from the print edition. Thus, we now
have three versions of the CWMG: the
original, the revised edition of 2001 in
print, and the CD-ROM version. The
individual prefaces of the original set
became irrelevant in the process of restructuring
the data. The revised edition as well
as the CD have omitted all the prefaces
and even the independent volume of prefaces
has been excluded in the revised
edition. In the original set, each volume
contained a list of sources and
acknowledgements specific to that particular
volume. The new editors failed to
even identify the sources for each volume.
Instead, they have taken the list of sources
of the original set, combined them and
printed as one consolidated list that occupies
42 pages in each volume. Thus, 4200
pages of data that is largely meaningless
to a reader have been added. The indices
have been similarly mauled. The original
had 4,000 main entries and 9,000 subentries
for the volumes of indices. In the
revised edition, a significantly large number
of sub-entries are missing thus making
‘action’ a verb and robbing it of all its
philosophical significance. Vinoba Bhave
and Bhave, Vinoba are different individuals
for the editors. Many key entries have
been reduced in size.
The work is incapable of becoming a
standard reference. Let us take the supplementary
volumes. One of the main aims
of the exercise was to bring chronological
uniformity to the set. It therefore required
subsequently acquired material to be incorporated
as per date and year. The table
gives a summary of missing entries from
volumes 91-97, the supplementary volumes
of the original CWMG.
The table demonstrates that even the
exercise of rescheduling has been done
with an ineptitude, inefficiency and callousness
that is shocking. Are we to assume
that these letters – many of which
are housed in the national archives, the
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and
the collection of the CWMG itself – are
now found to be inauthentic? We do not
know if the entries have been re-edited in
Table: List of Missing Items
Number Vol No Vol No Sr No As
(old) (revised) Per Old Vols Date Description
1 97 10 2 1909 Letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi
2 97 26 addenda 3 March 17, 1922 Letter to Mazharul Haq
3 97 26 45 March 18, 1922 Letter to Prabhudas Gandhi
4 97 26 46 April 2, 1923 Letter to Kashi Gandhi
5 97 26 47 April 8, 1923 Letter to Narandas Gandhi
6 97 56 209 August, 28, 1932 Letter to Nirmala Gandhi
7 97 80 330 April 22, 1941 Letter to Prabhudas Gandhi
8 97 80 331 May 23, 1941 Letter to Prabhudas Gandhi
9 91 21 addenda 14 November 18, 1920 Letter to Narhari D Parikh
10 91 21 addenda 15 November 18, 1920 Letter to Anasuyaben Sarabhai
11 91 22 addenda 16 February 26, 1921 Letter to Anasuyaben Sarabhai
12 91 27 addenda 21 April 8, 1924 Letter to Manilal Doctor
13 91 30 addenda 23 February 21, 1925 Letter to Rameshwardas Birla
14 91 32 addenda 25 August 14, 1925 Letter to G D Birla
15 91 36 addenda 29 After October 10, 1926 A Talk
16 91 37 addenda 30 1926 Letter to Haribhau Upadhyaya
17 91 38 addenda 31 January 24, 1927 Letter to Mridula Sarabhai
18 91 42 addenda 38 Before August 1, 1928 A Letter
19 91 6 50 On or after February 25, Letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi
1907
20 91 6 51 February 10, 1907 Letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi
21 91 6 52 February 20, 1907 Letter to P S to Governor, Transvaal
22 91 6 53 March 1, 1907 Letter to Chhaganlal Gandhi
23 91 19 230 March 23, 1920 Telegram to Mathurdas Trikumji
24 91 23 269 Before June 30, 1921 Letter to Kunvarji Anandaji Kapadia
25 91 26 306 March 6, 1922 Letter to S A Brelvi
26 91 26 308 After March 21, 1922 Letter to Baba Lakshmandas
27 91 26 309 Before August 24, 1923 A Note
28 91 27 310 February 28, 1924 Message to Romain Rolland
29 91 27 311 March 4, 1924 Letter to C Vijayaraghavachariar
30 91 27 312 March 12, 1924 Telegram to Jawaharlal Nehru
31 91 27 313 On or after March 13, 1924 Letter to Ramdas Gandhi
32 91 27 314 March 17, 1924 Letter to Ramdas Gandhi
33 91 27 315 March 24, 1924 Letter to Mahadev Desai
34 91 27 316 March 25, 1924 Letter to Radha Gandhi
35 91 38 554 January 23, 1927 Letter to Ramkrishna Chandiwala
36 91 38 555 January 24, 1927 Letter to Anasuyaben Sarabhai
37 91 38 556 January 31, 1927 Letter to Anasuyaben Sarabhai
38 91 38 557 February 3, 1927 Letter to Motiram Shaukiram Adwani
39 91 38 558 February 6, 1927 Letter to Motilal Roy
40 91 38 559 February 7, 1927 Message to International Congress
against imperialism
41 91 40 614 After November 25, 1927 Letter to Anasuyaben Sarabhai
42 93 74 332 October 10, 1938 Letter to Mathurdas Trikumji
43 93 74 333 October 13, 1938 Letter to Pyarelal
44 93 74 374 January 21, 1939 Letter to Mathurdas Trikumji
45 95 26 43 March 5, 1922 Letter to the Editor, The Survey,
New York
46 95 26 44 December 1922 A Letter (Presumably to Madan
Mohan Malaviya)
47 95 27 45 March 31, 1924 A Silence Day Note
48 95 27 46 Before April 3, 1924 Letter to Anasuyaben Sarabhai
49 95 32 53 August 21, 1925 Letter to C Ramalinga Reddy
50 95 32 54 On or before August 31, Letter to Haribhau Upadhyaya
1925
51 95 32 55 After September 23, 1925 Fragment of a letter
52 95 35 63 May 12, 1926 Letter to Amy Jacques Garvey
53 95 38 70 Before January 10, 1927 Letter to Vasumati Pandit
54 95 38 71 January 10, 1927 Letter to Vasumati Pandit
55 95 38 72 After February 2, 1927 Letter to Vasumati Pandit
56 95 38 73 After February 2, 1927 Letter to Vasumati Pandit
57 95 43 90 December 18, 1928 Letter to Benarsidas Chaturvedi
58 95 45 94 March 23, 1929 Letter to Prabhavati
59 95 80 154 May 14, 1941 Letter to Venkataswami Naidu
60 95 84 163 August 27, 1944 Telegram to M A Jinnah
61 96 4 1 July 3, 1905 Letter to Millie Graham Polak
62 96 9 2 September 19, 1908 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
63 96 9 3 February 9, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
64 96 9 4 April 5, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
65 96 9 5 June 19, 1909 Draft Will and Testament
66 96 9 6 June 21, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
67 96 9 7 June 22, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
68 96 9 8 June 23, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
69 96 9 9 July 3, 1909 A Letter
(Contd)
Economic and Political Weekly November 20, 2004 4969
70 96 9 10 July 3, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
71 96 9 11 July 7, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
72 96 9 12 July 17, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
73 96 9 13 July 21, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
74 96 9 14 July 30, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
75 96 10 15 August 7, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
76 96 10 16 August 12, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
77 96 10 17 August 20, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
78 96 10 18 August 28, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
79 96 10 19 August 30, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
80 96 10 20 September 10, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
81 96 10 21 September 17, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
82 96 10 22 September 24, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
83 97 10 23 October 1, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
84 97 10 24 October 27, 1909 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
85 97 10 25 November 14, 1909 Letter to Millie Graham Polak
86 97 10 26 November 15, 1909 Letter to H S L Polak
87 97 22 286 January 22, 1921 Letter to H S L Polak
88 97 23 287 April 10, 1921 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
89 97 24 290 September 29, 1921 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
90 97 72 311 December 28, 1937 Telegram to Herman Kallenbach
91 97 74 319 January 20, 1939 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
92 97 75 320 February 5, 1939 Letter to H S L Polak
93 97 75 321 March 2, 1939 Telegram to Amrit Kaur
94 97 75 322 March 8, 1939 Letter to Herman Kallenbach
95 97 75 323 March/April 1939 Notes to Herman Kallenbach
96 97 75 324 March/ April 1939 Note to Herman Kallenbach
97 97 81 327 August 30, 1941 Letter to H S L Polak
the sense of providing a new ‘improved’
translation, improving Gandhiji’s writings.
One chance evidence shows that such
an exercise might have been attempted.
Following are two excerpts of a letter to
G D Birla, which was written in Hindi, a
comparison of the two shows that linguistic
changes might have also been
attempted.
Bhaishri Ghanshyamdasji,
God has given me mentors. I consider you
as one of them. Many of my children, many
sisters and elderly people such as you and
Jamnalalji want to see in me perfection.
Knowing this how could I be distressed
by your letter. I want you always thus to
caution me.
You have three complaints: (i) that I absolve
the Swaraj Party of the charge of corruption;
(ii) that I gave a certificate to
Suhrawardy; and (iii) that I have been
trying to make Sarojini Devi the president.
In the first place, it is a man’s duty to hold
fast to truth as he sees it after due striving,
even if it should appear a mistake to the
world. He cannot become fearless otherwise.
I desire nothing so much as moksha.
But I would shun even moksha if it went
against truth and non-violence (CWMG,
Vol 91, pp 525-26).
Dear Shri Ghanshyamdas,
God has provided me with consciencekeepers.
You, I think, are one of them.
Some of my own children, some ladies
and a few grown-ups like Jamnalalji and
yourself want to make me a perfect man.
Regarding you thus, how could I be offended
by your letter? In fact, I want you
always to caution me in this manner.
You complain against three things: One,
my absolving the Swaraj Party of the charge
of corruption; two, my giving a testimonial
to Suhrawardy; and, three, my trying to
get Sarojini Devi elected as [Congress]
president.
In the first place, it is one’s duty to say
only that which, after a painstaking inquiry,
one has come to regard as the truth,
even if the world considers it to be an error.
In no other way can one become fearless.
I cannot consider anything dearer to me
than moksha. Yet even that moksha I would
renounce if it were to conflict with truth
and non-violence (CWMG, E book, Vol
29, p 29).
If this is any indication, it proves that
the exercise has been not just of re-arranging
and deleting but also of re-editing the
textual matter.
Such callousness to a work of archival
nature cannot be tolerated by any individual
committed to academic and intellectual
integrity. It is our demand that the
revised edition, including the CD-ROM,
be recalled and scrapped, the original
CWMG be reinstated as the only and the
most authentic version of the writings and
utterances of Gandhiji. The government
must take statutory steps to ensure that no
attempt to re-edit or recast the CWMG is
made even in future.
Table: List of Missing Items (Contd)
Number Vol No Vol No Sr No As
(old) (revised) Per Old Vols Date Description


--------------------------------
In Defeat, Let Us Reclaim Our Selves

TRIDIP SUHRUD


A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was asked to explain my preference for Gujarat. The  
first of the three responses I gave was the resonance of the Gujarati  
language. As I tried to articulate this, I recognised that the  
response, though honest, was part romance, part longing. Because, for  
the past few years, my relationship with the Gujarati language,  
Gujarati literature and Gujarati society has been tenuous and marked  
by longing.

It was not always so. My emotional and intellectual core was built in  
and through Gujarati. It was the language of home and also of school  
and college. Gijubhai Badheka, Kakasaheb Kalelkar and Jhaverchand  
Meghani filled my childhood. Govardhanram Tripathi’s Sarasvatichandra  
was my sole companion during the hot, dusty afternoons of my  
adolescence. And there was KM Munshi too. I read his racy prose  
breathlessly. His trilogy excited the imagination, delighted the  
heart. But, then as now, I remained partial to the world of love,  
valour and sacrifice that Meghani created. His characters loved  
deeply, waited till the end of time and fought righteous battles to  
the death. Swami Anand, Kakasaheb, Prabhudas Gandhi, KG Mashruwala and  
Ramanlal V. Desai opened for me the world of Gandhi. Poet Sundaram  
brought to us the sublime beauty of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother of  
Pondicherry through the journal Dakshina. Umashankar Joshi was our  
poet laureate. Nagindas Parekh made not only Tagore and Bankim  
available in Gujarati, but also the Bible, which sounds more true to  
me in Gujarati even today. Later, under the watchful eye of Achyut  
Yagnik and Ashis Nandy, I entered the 19th-century world of Narmad,  
Karsandas Mulji and Manibhai Nabhubhai more academically but without  
the joy of doing so diminished in any way.

My understanding of Gujarati society as also its critique was framed  
by Gujarati writing. I understood the nature of intense spiritual  
longing through the painful conversion to Christianity by my favourite  
Gujarati poet Manishankar Bhatt, “Kant”. As Bapu drew me more and more  
towards him, I began to recognise the liminal existence that he had in  
Gujarat’s society and economy. Gandhi’s denial of private property and  
personal family as the sole heir to legacy went contrary to the ethos  
of Gujarati mercantile capitalism. His emphasis on a casteless  
existence perturbed the Gujarati middle class then as it does now. His  
conviction that one could be a good Sanatani Hindu only when one is  
simultaneously a good Christian, a devout Muslim and a faithful Parsi  
challenged our narrow, sectarian way of being religious. Caste and  
communal conflict was a constant reminder that Gujarat was capable of  
turning against itself in a frenzied celebration of violence with  
unnerving regularity. Through all this, my world of emotions and ideas  
continued to grow, enriched by a new aesthetic sensibility and  
academic training. The modernism that we had created in art and  
literature had once recognised and even celebrated the homo-eroticism  
of Bhupen Khakhar’s paintings and the sexual economy of his stories  
and plays. But, as we embraced the modern political economy of  
production and consumption, of trans-national linkages, the modernism  
of a Bhupen, a Ghulam Sheikh or a Suresh Joshi slipped away from us.

The Gujarati language around me had begun to alter. The most  
definitive sign of this came during the debates around the dam on the  
Narmada. For the first time after the Mahagujarat movement, which led  
to the creation of the Gujarat state, Gujarati society and polity  
attained near unanimity on the Narmada issue. This unanimity had a new  
tone. All those who opposed the dam, raised the issue of the  
rehabilitation of the displaced or brought forth environmental audits  
were termed anti-Gujarat. We had found our “developmental other”. This  
led to the erasure of dialogue on either side. Gujarat, with its long  
and generous tradition of voluntary work rooted in self-volition, grew  
weary of NGOs. With this, we forgot the criminal tribes that  
Ravishankar Maharaj had hoped to free. We also forgot the tribals,  
called Raniparaj by Gandhi and Veddchi’s grand old man, Jugatram Dave.  
The selfless service rendered to the Dalits by Thakkar Bapa and  
Parikshitlal Majumdar receded to the margins of our collective memory.  
We forgot the legitimacy of autonomous acts, acts which allow one to  
be moral. Did we understand the autonomy of Anasuya Sarabhai who  
fought for the mill-hands of Ahmedabad against her brother Ambalal? Do  
we understand the rectitude of SEWA and Ela Bhatt?

THIS IDEA of forces ranged against us, the people of Gujarat, came to  
be deeply etched in our minds after the violence of 2002. We had once  
again turned against ourselves in a macabre dance of violence. In the  
demonology we created, we were either victims or spectators. As  
spectators, we could merely watch without bearing witness. Had we any  
memory of Mahadev Desai, we would have understood the difference  
between a spectator and a witness — Mahadev showed us the way to be  
witnesses. A witness is a bearer of Truth.

After 2002, the Gujarati language has not been the same — it had no  
desire to hear pleas for compassion, pity, justice, love, remorse and  
reconciliation. A language that could not hear of compassion and pity,  
of penance that cleanses and purifies, cannot be the language of  
Gandhi. It was not a language of caring and nurturance but of  
machismo. We wished to purge all that we saw as effeminate in us  
through our newfound hyper-masculinity. But in so doing, we also  
purged our language and our cultural selves of all that was feminine;  
we shut doors on other cultural and psychological possibilities that  
the recognition of pain and suffering, of nurturance and healing,  
could have given us. We foreclosed the possibility that some critics  
might have been moved by genuine love for Gujarat and the desire to  
see it recover aspects of its linguistic memory and cultural  
possibility.

At a moment when a significantly large part of Gujarat celebrates a  
stupendous victory for Narendra Modi and “Gujarati asmita”, I want to  
raise a small, still voice sustaining and weaving memory towards an  
alternative future. A voice that urges us to recognise the legitimacy  
of autonomous action, reminds us of the possibilities that we have  
closed for now. It is a plea to restore to our language categories of  
compassion, pain, love and nurturance. It is a plea for the feminine  
in us that is weighed under our masculine asmita.