{"id":102,"date":"2004-09-08T16:52:41","date_gmt":"2004-09-08T21:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=102"},"modified":"2004-09-08T16:52:41","modified_gmt":"2004-09-08T21:52:41","slug":"was-gandhiji-a-liberaliser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200409\/was-gandhiji-a-liberaliser\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Gandhiji a liberaliser?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longtime readers of my blog know that I am not an admirer of Gandhiji. A while ago, Ramnath sent me a link to an article <\/a> by Swami Aiyar which purports to show that Gandhiji, unlike Nehru was not a socialist, but committed to a free market.<\/p>\n

Sorry, but the article sounds thoroughly convoluted to me. You can prove anything by selectively quoting a person and giving your own interpretation to what he said. This is the same Gandhiji who said “Honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.”<\/i> What does that statement tell us about his attitude towards capitalism?
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\nHow does the view of Gandhi-as-a-free marketeer square with his idea of self-sufficient villages? Remember that he wanted each village<\/i> not only to be self-governing (which is okay), but also self-sufficient. He wanted every village to consume only what it produced within itself. You can spin this and reinterpret self-sufficiency as self-reliance, i.e. evey village should stand on its own without depending on handouts from others, but then what happens to the trusteeship concept? What is the point of a rich man holding his money as a trust for society if it is wrong for him to give it to others? <\/p>\n

In any case, Gandhiji never made clear what role the government would have in implementing his ideas. I have this fantasy of some modern-day Gandhiji going to Gujarat and offering satyagraha, only this time instead of making salt, he will brew alcohol. I would love to see the government having to choose between violently ending a satyagraha and violating Gandhiji’s ideals. In the same vein, I wonder what will happen if Pradeep Dalvi, playwright of the banned Mee Nathuram Boltoy<\/a> went ahead and got the play performed in a public garden. Will anyone notice the irony of using violence to guard the honour of the apostle of non-violence? <\/p>\n

It is pointless to try to spin Gandhiji’s words to make it sound as if he was a supporter of free markets and liberal ideas. He was not one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Longtime readers of my blog know that I am not an admirer of Gandhiji. A while ago, Ramnath sent me a link to an article by Swami Aiyar which purports to show that Gandhiji, unlike Nehru was not a socialist, but committed to a free market. Sorry, but the article sounds thoroughly convoluted to me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}