Learning is a progression through abstractions, each abstraction adding details to what you already know. As in a video game, the complexity increases with each level, needing you to use skills from the previous levels to secure passage to the next.
Consider what you learnt about India's independence. Initially, you were told that Mahatma Gandhi got India freedom. Then, lest you should view Gandhi as an all-conquering comic-book superhero, you learnt that he used non-violent satyagraha and fasts unto death to defeat the colonizers. Often, it is the fasting that is iterated. But, this incongruous way of beating someone makes you wonder if the British were so compassionate that they departed a wealthy colony to let one man live.
With more effort, you likely found out that Indians refused to submit to the British. Indians, desiring freedom, were infused with a passion that hadn’t manifested as violence largely due to the restraint enforced by Gandhi. If Gandhi were to die, this passion would find a severely belligerent expression, one that could be quelled only by a significantly larger contingent of British forces. Britain's involvement in the Second World War had taxed the empire's resources, probably making an exorbitant deployment of troops in the subcontinent infeasible.
Nevertheless, you cannot dispute Gandhi’s sway over his compatriots, and much like the British occupation, Gandhi's influence relied on their acquiescence. It was their scruples and compassion for his suffering that impelled them to yield to his demands so that he may end his fast. Bapu was not Gandhi, but a greater phenomenon spun from the fibres of morality in Indian hearts, though Gandhi was the hub of the spinning wheel, given his commitment to his people’s cause and his formidable sacrifices in full public glare. Gandhi recognized his compatriots’ responsiveness to this tug at their conscience and leveraged it to have them abjure violence. This reigning in of the agitated masses also signalled to the British that his hand held the tenuous thread tethering millions. And once the British understood Bapu, they couldn’t be adventurous in dealing with this man clothed in homespuns. Bapu triumphed.
As we remember Bapu, perhaps we should be the change we want to see: look inwards, find Bapu's strain that lives on in us as a nascent stream of compassion and cause it to spring forth. Then, we may empathize with our fellow humans, at least those eminently fighting our battles; then we may walk the likes of Irom Sharmila Chanu from the realm of unconscionable torment into that of spirited struggle, and to our victory.
Consider what you learnt about India's independence. Initially, you were told that Mahatma Gandhi got India freedom. Then, lest you should view Gandhi as an all-conquering comic-book superhero, you learnt that he used non-violent satyagraha and fasts unto death to defeat the colonizers. Often, it is the fasting that is iterated. But, this incongruous way of beating someone makes you wonder if the British were so compassionate that they departed a wealthy colony to let one man live.
With more effort, you likely found out that Indians refused to submit to the British. Indians, desiring freedom, were infused with a passion that hadn’t manifested as violence largely due to the restraint enforced by Gandhi. If Gandhi were to die, this passion would find a severely belligerent expression, one that could be quelled only by a significantly larger contingent of British forces. Britain's involvement in the Second World War had taxed the empire's resources, probably making an exorbitant deployment of troops in the subcontinent infeasible.
Nevertheless, you cannot dispute Gandhi’s sway over his compatriots, and much like the British occupation, Gandhi's influence relied on their acquiescence. It was their scruples and compassion for his suffering that impelled them to yield to his demands so that he may end his fast. Bapu was not Gandhi, but a greater phenomenon spun from the fibres of morality in Indian hearts, though Gandhi was the hub of the spinning wheel, given his commitment to his people’s cause and his formidable sacrifices in full public glare. Gandhi recognized his compatriots’ responsiveness to this tug at their conscience and leveraged it to have them abjure violence. This reigning in of the agitated masses also signalled to the British that his hand held the tenuous thread tethering millions. And once the British understood Bapu, they couldn’t be adventurous in dealing with this man clothed in homespuns. Bapu triumphed.
As we remember Bapu, perhaps we should be the change we want to see: look inwards, find Bapu's strain that lives on in us as a nascent stream of compassion and cause it to spring forth. Then, we may empathize with our fellow humans, at least those eminently fighting our battles; then we may walk the likes of Irom Sharmila Chanu from the realm of unconscionable torment into that of spirited struggle, and to our victory.
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