Since his resurrection in Lage Raho Munnabhai, Mahatma Gandhi seems once again to have receded from public consciousness in India. In fact, the last I saw of him was on Andrew Marr’s brilliant series on BBC – The Making of Modern Britain. The episode showed footage of Gandhi on his visit to Britain. Gandhi, self assured and smiling, met the public – kissing babies, chatting with little old ladies and charming all who met him. This was also the visit that led to the famous Gandhian quip on his meeting with King George V.  Gandhi, when asked why he had refused to change out of his loincloth for the visit to Buckingham Palace, replied: “The King had enough on for both of us!”

A prominent feature of Gandhi’s brilliance was his ability to tap into the immense appeal of the underdog.  Between David and Goliath, Pandavas and Kauravas, Hobbits and Orcs, tortoise and hare, Amir Khan’s eleven and Captain Russell’s team, we all know which side the overwhelming majority would be rooting for. With his single witticism, Gandhi brought home to the British public the vast and unjust disparity between the rulers and the ruled.

I think the Indian state does Gandhi’s legacy great disservice by putting him on a pedestal, to be worshipped but never honestly studied or analyzed.   Indeed, there is a lot that the government in this land of a million mutinies can learn from Gandhi’s statecraft. Admittedly, Gandhi’s methods lend themselves more easily to struggles against the state than to the establishment, but even so, the state could take away many lessons from him on what makes a resistance movement tick.

Separatist movements or indeed any other resistance movements seldom succeed without public support. Take the recent momentum gained by the Kashmiri struggle for independence (or secession if you prefer). Till the time that the face of the struggle was a militant, armed to the teeth through funding received from generous foreign benefactors, the international community showed little sympathy for the cause. But the tragic appeal of schoolboys armed with stones, pitted against the might of the Indian armed forces has been much more difficult to resist.

The experience with the Naxal movement in Bihar and Chhattisgarh has been similar, although the events have taken place in the reverse. When the Maoists were depicted as bow-and-arrow wielding tribal youths set against the nexus between greedy companies and state governments, the voices opposed to Operation Greenhunt were loud and confident. However, ever since the military and strategic power of the Naxals has come to light, the poor, ill-equipped CRPF foot soldier, marching bravely to his death has been the potentially game changing poster boy for the public.

If the Indian state is to prevail over these mutinies, policies need to be designed to make the fight seem more even. Thus for instance, the AFSPA in Kashmir must be withdrawn or diluted, not only because of its vast potential for misuse, but also because it provides ammunition to the struggle in the form of broad based sympathy. If the leaders of the movement find that they are losing public support, willingness to engage with the state will follow. Gandhi’s successful mobilization of support from the Indian masses and the international public alike showed clearly that while it is important to do what is right, it is far more important to be seen to do what is right.  Satya and Ahimsa were preached not only for their own sake, but also for the huge traction that the idea carried across national boundaries.

Therefore, if there is one lesson that the Mahatma can teach the nation that he fathered, it is of the irresistible appeal of the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth.

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A completely unrelated Gandhi story – the most memorable part of my visit to the Sabarmati Ashram a few years ago was a letter from Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler. The letter began – “My dear idiot, …”