Gandhi: The Final Years

It was in Bihar that Mahatma Gandhi had made his first mark, politically speaking, after returning from South Africa in 2015. It was where the Champaran Satyagraha gave him an unbreakable grassroots connection with the poorest Indians. In 1946, alongside the bloodletting in Bengal, there was a pogrom in Bihar. If in Bengal it was the Hindus who were targeted, in Bihar it was the Muslims. The time was ripe, this time for Hindu extremists, to fan the flames and urge Biharis to take revenge on Muslims for what had happened in Bengal. All the dry powder needed was a spark. We are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a great chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.

As Jinnah declared Direct Action Day, India feared a tsunami of violence. Mahatma Gandhi struggled to hold together the unwinding threads of unity that he had so painstakingly woven. At the concluding session of the Muslim League Council, Jinnah declared: “Today we bid goodbye to Constitutional methods… We have forged a pistol and are in a position to use it.” Nowhere was the communal carnage worse than in Noakhali. Once again, Gandhi showed that miracles may be slow in the making but, where there is determination, they are possible. We are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a great chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.

As the communal landscape worsened, the political situation was in utter disarray. Mahatma Gandhi found that his former proteges and political wards had little time or use for his advice. He found himself increasingly isolated despite the crowds that always surrounded him. “One calls himself my beta, the other calls himself my chela. Par meri koi nahi sunta,” he lamented. There couldn’t be a more telling line. Political jostling ruled, with the British playing the leading role. The interim regime’s finance ministry was held by the Muslim League and it did all it could to trip up the government. There were reports of commandos fomenting trouble, ammunition dumps being organised in many regions – all efforts to further fragment India as Independence approached. Even at this stage, Gandhi refused to accept Partition as the only solution. We are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a great chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.

After Bengal, Bihar and Punjab, it was Delhi’s time to burn. Independence had been achieved, but the streets were deserted. Riots had erupted and corpses lined many streets. As the refugees poured into the city, their anger at having lost everything was incandescent. Lord Mountbatten observed: “If we go down in Delhi, we are finished.” Once again, the political leadership looked to Gandhi. Once again, they asked for a miracle. And, once again, Gandhi stepped up. We are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a great chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.

On January 30, 1948, Nathuram Godse elbowed his way through the crowd, joined his hands as if in supplication and then fired three bullets from a Beretta pistol. Gandhi collapsed in a pool of blood that seeped into the earth. He began chanting “Ram! Ram! Ram…”. The chanting faded as his life ebbed away. A saga came to an end. But did it? Isn’t Gandhi more relevant today than ever? Isn’t his life so powerful that even those who subscribe to the ideology that killed him want to claim him as their own? Everything that Gandhi warned us about – inequality, our downward slide if communalism held sway, the pivot away from villages and its pitfalls – has come true. In the final episode of Gandhi – The Final Years, we attempt to step into the Mahatma’s mind to explore its complex vastness. We are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a great chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.

Mahatma Gandhi’s last years were the most tumultuous of his life. They marked his greatest triumphs, his greatest losses and the crumbling of his dream. India achieved Independence in 1947, but at the cost of Partition and enormous suffering. Gandhi’s final years show us why India took the path that it did. They are a study in how one of the most effective mass leaders the world has seen turned into a lonely pilgrim. This series, Gandhi – The Final Years, launches on his death anniversary. This episode begins in 1942. Gandhi had given two clarion calls: “Quit India” and “Do or die”. World War 2 had swept through Europe, plunging the world into danger and uncertainty. The British Empire was shaken and it was accepted that it was no longer sustainable. Gandhi’s broadside against the Raj unnerved the British and he was arrested on August 9, 1942. We are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a great chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.

On Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, All Indians Matter launches a six-part series that takes you on a journey through the last years of his life. Those years were a saga by themselves, in many ways the most dramatic of his extraordinary journey and also perhaps the most significant for a nation about to be born. His end was India’s beginning. That’s why these years are so important. This series was born from a realisation that Gandhi is more relevant today than ever before. His life and message are still powerful and have the potential to provide solutions to India’s gravest challenges: sectarian division, a crumbling rural economy, inequality, caste... Gandhi told Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the freedom fighter known as ‘Frontier Gandhi’, once: “A satyagrahi knows no failure.” That is why perhaps the greatest satyagrahi of all is still trying, even beyond the grave, to tell us something, to perhaps start anew. For this series, we are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist.