Reassessing Mahatma Gandhi: Controversies, Contradictions, and Forgotten Voices of India’s Freedom Struggle
Gandhi is the most successful fraud on earth.” — Nirad C.Chaudhuri.
Since my school days, I have always heard that Mahatma Gandhi was a barrister. Naturally, I assumed he must have been very educated and highly knowledgeable. Later I learned that throughout his life Gandhi managed to earn only one educational certificate — a matriculation pass. In 1887, Gandhi barely passed matriculation with a third division.
At that time, one didn’t need to pass any formal exam to become a barrister; working for some time as an assistant to an elderly and experienced barrister was enough to gain membership in the bar.
But even for that assistantship, Gandhi’s Indian educational credentials were not considered acceptable. So, Gandhi had to sit for the London University matriculation exam again. He failed the first time. The second time he passed barely and thus became eligible to work as a barrister’s assistant.
Many great people in that era lacked formal education for example, Rabindranath Tagore but they were profoundly self-taught. Gandhi’s behaviour shows he lacked even that self-cultivation.
Gandhi said, “A true satyagrahi should always desire to die at the hands of the aggressor, but never desire to kill.”
Yet even the smallest creature fights for survival. In the real world, Gandhi’s doctrine collapses instantly.
Gandhi believed receiving a vaccination was a sin. His opposition came from rejecting Western medicine. He saw injections and operations as violence.
In 1946, when Kasturba Gandhi had severe malaria, doctors prescribed penicillin injections. The British government even brought penicillin from London for her treatment. But Gandhi, calling it “violence,” refused to allow her to be injected. As a result, Kasturba died.
But when Gandhi himself suffered from severe dysentery in 1922 during imprisonment, he willingly accepted injections and recovered. Later, when he suffered from appendicitis, he even underwent surgery.
Subhas Chandra Bose remarked:
“Whenever Gandhi withdrew a movement at the British command, he would start a fast to mask his own mischief and divert public attention.”
Gandhi’s fasts and imprisonments, Bose said, were part of British strategy.
According to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar:
“Gandhi was a worshipper of the strong and a tyrant to the weak.”
While in South Africa, Gandhi once compared Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Some Muslims got offended. On 10 February 1908, a group assaulted Gandhi severely. From that day on, Gandhi stopped criticising Muslims entirely , even their gravest crimes no longer appeared as crimes to him.
Though Gandhi claimed to live a simple life, the British provided him with special comforts. In 1922, when he was jailed in Pune, he was allocated two rooms one for sleeping, one for spinning the charkha, etc.
His daily food included:
• 250 grams of wheat bread
• butter
• 1.25 kilograms of goat’s milk
• four oranges
• two lemons
• 50 grams of raisins
• baking soda
And yet we are told to mourn his hardships as if spinning the charkha alone brought India independence. That is why, under pressure, we must wish “Happy Birthday” to a forced Father of the Nation.
When Shaheed Bhagat Singh was to be hanged, the preacher of “Ahimsa Parmo Dharma,” Gandhi, said:
“We do not seek our freedom at the cost of Britain’s destruction.”
He also said Bhagat Singh’s glorification was harming the nation, and that the hanging should be expedited so that the upcoming Congress session on March 30 in Karachi would not face disruptions.
So, according to Gandhi, hanging someone was not an act of violence.
When Udham Singh killed General Dyer in London, Gandhi called him a madman. That is why Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote:
“Gandhi is the greatest and most successful fraud on earth.”
Another martyr, Jatin Das, died during a hunger strike in jail. Gandhi was in Agra at the time. When asked to offer a garland to Jatin Das’s mortal remains, Gandhi refused. Jatin Das’s supreme sacrifice stirred no sympathy in him. Yet Gandhi and the Congress supported the British in World War II , a war where soldiers did not exchange sweets out of love; it was sheer violence.
What an astonishing apostle of non-violence!
In the 1939 Congress presidential election between Subhas Bose and Gandhi’s chosen candidate Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Gandhi declared he would retire from politics if Pattabhi lost. Bose won by a landslide, though he later resigned to preserve Gandhi’s “honour.” Gandhi, however, remained in politics until death.
Similarly, Gandhi once said that Pakistan would be created only over his dead body yet Pakistan was created with his full support.
Gandhi launched three major movements (Satyagrahas). Strikingly, he withdrew all three midway. Yet India is told that spinning a charkha gave us freedom a laughable fiction.
Historian R. C. Majumdar wrote:
“To garland Gandhi as the hero of India’s freedom is to mock the truth. To say that he won independence through satyagraha and the charkha is the height of absurdity. Calling him the hero of independence is an insult to those who bled for the nation.”
Sri Aurobindo said:
“India will be free only to the extent she frees herself from Gandhism.”
Clement Attlee , the British PM who signed India’s independence document visited Kolkata in 1956 and stayed with Governor P. B. Chakraborty. Chakraborty asked him:
“What made you leave India so quickly?”
Attlee replied:
“Because Subhas Bose’s military activities had caused rebellion to grow inside the Indian Army and Navy. They were no longer loyal to the British.”
When Chakraborty asked how much Gandhi’s non-violence contributed to the British departure, Attlee smirked and said:
“Minimal.”
The very people who fled India out of fear of Netaji admitted it. Yet for 74 years, we have been banging our heads over Gandhian philosophy.
⸻
Ayan Choudhury
Sources:
1. Ambedkar vs Gandhi
2. Gandhiji’s Misdeeds
3. Ami Subhas Bolchhi
4. Subhas Ghore Phere Nai
5. Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiment With Truth
6. Hastantar — Srikrishna Ghosh
7. Works of Nirad C. Chaudhuri and historian R. C. Majumdar
8. Post of Shri Sanjay Kumar.
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