Every Gandhi Jayanti produces a curious modern ritual. Gandhi is commemorated for helping mobilise a nation against empire, and somebody on social media discovers that he was imperfect. One imagines Gandhi's reputation trembling. The serious question, however, is whether finding perceived failings in a historical figure diminishes their claim to greatness. Greatness is a judgement about the scale, difficulty and consequences of achievement, informed but not necessarily extinguished by personal failing.
Gandhi held views and made judgements that can legitimately be criticised. Some evolved substantially during his lifetime. His politics can be questioned. Good. Question them. But identifying an objection is the beginning of historical analysis, not its triumphant conclusion. Gandhi's claim to greatness rests principally upon something else: his role in transforming resistance to British rule into mass politics, his extraordinary development of non-violent political action, and the influence his methods subsequently exercised upon civil-rights movements around the world.
What one cannot intelligently do is pretend it disappears because somebody has located an objectionable quotation on Google. This exposes the weakness of presentism, the habit of placing historical figures before a twenty-first-century tribunal and congratulating ourselves when they fail the examination. There is also a confusion between commemoration and canonisation.
Celebrating Gandhi Jayanti does not require believing that Gandhi was correct about everything. Britain commemorates Churchill without requiring citizens to endorse every opinion Churchill expressed. Americans honour Martin Luther King Jr. without asserting perfection in every dimension of his life. We commemorate exceptional contributions. We do not issue retrospective certificates of infallibility. The mature position therefore requires holding two thoughts simultaneously, an ability social media has not noticeably encouraged. Gandhi was flawed - maybe he should have held to violent chest thumping rebellion and thrown out the British by force, refused any Indian troops to participate in the World War in Europe or Asia, and kept India as one country and forcibly expelled or converted all those not Hindus and made the world's first constitutionally Hindu nation? Even Sardar Patel could not manage all of that. For his failing to do that, Gandhi, was shot. He paid the ultimate price in life, let alone on social media comments sections.
Finding a flaw does not make you cleverer than Gandhi. It merely proves you have found a flaw. The difficult task is weighing an imperfect human being against an extraordinary historical achievement. That is history. The rest is comments-section cosplay.
Alpesh B Patel OBE