‘Father of a Nation’

The works included in this show are from the last 10 years of my engagement with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, his complex life and philosophy and his activities that influenced the world’s view on politics and human rights.  Growing up in the 1980s in Kerala, I had a very different perspective about him. I used to read a lot of literature that criticized the political incorrectness of the Congress party and Gandhi himself.   At a latter stage I started observing many other factors that probably had layered perspectives on truth, they cannot be characterized as single but dynamic.

While moving from a small town to a mega city, my internal rhythm of absorbing realities and critical rejections went through a massive shuffle.  My viewpoints were colored by different sentiments and I started looking at Gandhi more like a ‘political saint’ whose ‘rigidness’ of truth and values had no parallel in the political history of the world. His ‘militant nature’ in keeping a non-violent resistance was as dangerous as it was to stand in the middle of a battlefield unprotected. I was fascinated by the errors he committed, the belief systems he was glued to, and the contradictions with which he nurtured his philosophy. All the more important, the last few years of his life were a test with his own experiments and its effectiveness in a larger social system. According to him, he failed miserably because of the nation witnessing massive massacres and unparalleled cruelty.

For me, it is interesting to ‘reinvent’ Gandhi at a time when his vision is being abandoned by the state and his image is protected as a religious icon. India’s openness to the global market and a rampant capitalist takeover that shook and uprooted most of the small-scale industry and farming sector was only a starting point. Growing religious fundamentalism and communal based polarization and violence was to follow.

I was observing a similar situation in our neighboring country, China, whose father of the nation had been transformed into yet another icon and the country was moving towards a systematically organized capitalist mode while asserting its militant communist position.  To my mind the principles on which a nation is built are collapsing on a daily basis.  This makes me look back and forth to the very idea of a nation and raise a fundamental question: Would fathers of any nation have imagined a nation in the manner in which its people carry their vision forward? How and when do the raw materials that build a nation change its property? When do the politically engaged visionaries of the world become mere creators of a gigantic myth called ‘nation’?

Growing intolerance over the idea of a nation and who is a nationalist has become the debate of the hour. I believe Gandhi offers more clues on this debate than anyone else. Gandhi is the body of a nation who was shot thrice in the wake of its own freedom.

Gigi Scaria
Delhi, August 15, 2017