Rajmohan Gandhi on Revenge and Reconciliation in South Asia

SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN: Welcome to Ideas of India, where we examine the academic ideas that can propel India forward. My name is Shruti Rajagopalan, and I am a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. 

Today’s episode is the second part of my conversation with Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need. He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until he retirement in 2022. His most recent initiative is We Are One Humanity (WAOH), a writers collective responding to the worldwide thrusts against democracy and equality.

We spoke about his reflections on communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, revenge and reconciliation in South Asia, Sikhs and Buddhists, differences between north and south India, constitutional values, and much more. 

For a full transcript of this conversation, including helpful links of all the references mentioned, click the link in the show notes or visit mercatus.org/podcasts.

Rajmohan Gandhi, welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you here.

RAJMOHAN GANDHI: Pleasure to be here.

Eight Lives

RAJAGOPALAN: I want to start with your book, which is titled Eight Lives, and then was also retitled Understanding the Muslim Mind. You cover a range of intellectuals, philosophers, nation-builders whose views on Islam permanently shaped the way the subcontinent looks politically today. If I were to ask you for a list of intellectuals, philosophers, nation-builders, seers maybe, whose views on Hinduism shaped the subcontinent, what would your list look like?

GANDHI: Before I respond to that, I’ll say that these people’s views on Islam were important, but also their views on whether India would be a united India for everybody. The question of the relationship between Hindus and Muslims within India was also a very important feature that I wanted to examine as far as they were concerned. 

Now, yes, if I were to think of Hindus that I would want to study myself, or I would want others to study, also in relation to what the future of India should be like, let’s see, I would certainly have Ramakrishna, Vivekānanda, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, I would have Savarkar, I would have Vinoba Bhave, I would have Radhakrishnan, I would have Rajagopalachari, I would probably have Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo, philosophers, and this can be very large. These are some that I would certainly have.

RAJAGOPALAN: What unites this list? What do you think they have in common, or why should we pay attention to each of them?

GANDHI: A, they were well-known Hindu figures. B, they were well-known figures as far as India’s condition was concerned, India’s future was concerned. They had thoughts about political India. They had thoughts about independence. They had thoughts about whether India belongs just to one community or to everybody. They were not just theological people at all. They were deeply involved in burning issues, current issues, and also some of them at least were thinking of the long future.

RAJAGOPALAN: Do you think they have any intellectuals today who we should be paying attention to, that we’re not paying attention to, who are once again going to reform the fabric of the subcontinent, either Hindus or Islam?

GANDHI: You mean contemporary Indians, Hindus and Muslims? Sure, there are so many, who are thinking and some of them articulating their views very boldly. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this whole region has some wonderful people. Of course, there are many people from these parts of India and South Asia who are now not living in India. One of the biggest realities of today is that many people from South Asia have made the world their home. They are also Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, or Jains. 

RAJAGOPALAN: What I loved about Understanding the Muslim Mind is it gave a very clear framework to understand partition. Also, why India’s trajectory turned out the way it did in terms of being more plural and secular, and why Pakistan went the way it did. The nature of the two experiments. I feel like we’re, again, experimenting with this. Some of these experiments are a little bit more dangerous. Once again, they are redefining, literally redefining national boundaries, state boundaries, and so on.

We don’t quite see the debates the way we had when Iqbal, Nehru, and Jinnah were all writing to each other. One, we’ve lost the letters. The second part of it is, I’m not able to pin down anything beyond what they want politically. What is it in the Hindu philosophy and thought of today, or the Islamic philosophy or thought of today that I should think about, not just politically, but also socially, which will reshape the subcontinent?

GANDHI: That’s a great question. Of course, one tragic reality of today’s world and today’s South Asia is that between Indians and Pakistanis, between Indians and Bangladeshis, real contact is almost lost. There is no travel from one country to the other. Even newspapers don’t write too much about neighboring countries. There has been a great regression, very sadly, a great retreat from earlier, broader canvas on which people thought and operated and lived. I’m now trying to think which Indians writing today are also writing about South Asia as a whole or about the world as a whole.

It’s not so easy to think of individuals, but there are quite a few.

Equal but Separate

RAJAGOPALAN: You’ve written about the United States and India, the parallel trajectory in two revolts. I want to go in a slightly different direction there. In the US, we have the infamous separate but equal doctrine, which allowed segregation to peak at one point. When I think about Hindus and Muslims in India, especially the long arc, the phrase that comes to mind is equal but separate. Constitutionally, we’re equal, but socially, we are separate. Though constitutionally, we are equal, the state has never really supported exogamous marriage. There are all kinds of restrictions socially and politically that have come in.

We don’t exactly have state mandated segregated living, but it has just panned out that we have Hindu and Muslim colonies virtually in every city, town, village, neighborhood. Is this the best case scenario that you can think of for Hindus and Muslims today, that we are really side by side, but we’re never together? Is this our destiny in the subcontinent?

GANDHI: Not only is it not our destiny, it is a very tragic situation. I think we should also feel free to use the correct word, the ghettoization of the Muslims. I think there is now pressure, political pressure, social pressure, on many Hindus that they should have as little to do as possible with Muslims. That Muslims should not really live close to them or certainly not in their gated communities, or in other neighborhoods where they live. This is a not our destiny, nor is it our recent past.

Even during the finest days of our freedom movement when the Hindus and Muslims work together was there very close daily social living, that was not the case. Politically, there were alliances, but socially, a lot of separation did persist. It was reduced to a great extent. Bollywood played a wonderful part. What Bollywood showed on the screen was often both conveying the reality as it existed has also fostered a more positive reality. The ’60s, ’70s, ’80s did see a closer collaboration at the social level between Hindus and Muslims.

This is where the point I made earlier about the South Asians and Indians living all over the world becomes relevant, because here in the US or in other parts of the world, there are opportunities for Muslims and Hindus to meet, for Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis to meet, but we don’t take any advantage of these wonderful opportunities without visas, without problems, without neighbors or relatives attacking you. You can meet one another, and still, we don’t take advantage of the opportunities we have.

RAJAGOPALAN: Meeting one another is one part of it, right? Again, if we look at the hundreds of years long history, as they say, the roti and beti always have to be separate, right? We will be together, we will unite for political causes or other causes, we can build a bridge together, we can fight an army together, but there’s no intermarriage and there’s no breaking of bread in a real way. At least this is the way they say it in the north. The roti-beti ka rishta.

It seems like even in the best of times, there is only really working with each other, but there is never that kind of closeness which will just be okay as we socially accepted or just the economic reality. Even in Bollywood, for instance, one of my favorite movies is Amar Akbar Anthony. Each one of them marries someone from their own religion. The three young men of three different religion can all intravenously transfer blood to their mother, which is the opening sequence of the movie. The mother is the point where that ceases to matter, but we still won’t have exogamous marriage. There seems to be limits even to that. 

GANDHI: Of course, mind you, there were exceptions. Aruna Asaf Ali, who was from a Brahmin family, Tagore’s family, she married this wonderful lawyer, barrister Asaf Ali, and there are many other such examples. They are examples that almost prove that the opposite is the reality. In the rest of the world, it’s not in the United States, in Canada, in the UK, in Australia, in Europe. It’s not at all difficult for marriages like that. For deeper relations, you’re absolutely right that our inability to break bread together has been a very major factor in limiting closer integration.

It’s bound to happen. It’s bound to happen. After all, we want to live with the white race, we want to live with the African Americans, we want to live with Japanese. Many also are willing to live with the Chinese. We may have differences politically with the government of China, but the Chinese people, and why should there be any divide between us? There are places, Malaysia and elsewhere, where there has been between Indians and Chinese. The Indians are integrating more into the human family than before. I absolutely agree with you that the pace is abysmally slow.

RAJAGOPALAN: Are you hopeful?

GANDHI: I’m hopeful.

RAJAGOPALAN: Okay.

GANDHI: I’m hopeful.

RAJAGOPALAN: Again, coming back to the Hindu-Muslim unity, how do you see the trend? Do you see the trend as - we’re largely united with brief moments of division, like partition or the riots we’ve had in Mumbai, the riots we’ve had in Godhra, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, and so on? Do you largely see the arc as we’ve almost always been divided, and then we have brief moments when we come together to accomplish something very difficult, like the mutiny, independence, the constitution, or anything after that?

GANDHI: Although the present picture does look bleak, I absolutely believe that the deeper reality and the deeper trend, the stronger trend, would be for closer relationships among Muslims and Hindus, indeed. It’s not a wishful thought, I don’t believe. I hope not. As I see the world growing, this deeper understanding that we are all connected to each other, really, we are all connected to each other in the whole wide world. Whether it is in our music, some of our great musicians have demonstrated this, of course, quite apart from Bollywood.

It will take some time, it will take some struggle, it will take some effort. But what is happening now, the current divide or current ignorance or sometimes current prejudice or even dislike or even hatred, sometimes even contempt, these strong emotions are exhibited today in the world. I don’t believe these are really enduring ones, that the long-term trend will be. I may not see too many signs of it right now, but definitely the potential for that deeper and more fruitful partnership for the sake of humanity as a whole is, in my opinion, absolutely inevitable.

Revenge and Reconciliation

RAJAGOPALAN: That makes me more hopeful. Now, I want to come to your book, Revenge and Reconciliation. I was telling you that it’s my favorite work of yours. The way you’ve set it up is that on the one side, the way you’ve embodied revenge is through Ashwatthama, who is a very important figure in Mahabharata. He’s also the person who embodies revenge and then pays for it because he’s cursed to be immortal and to live with the consequences of sowing the seeds of revenge. In some sense, he also makes revenge as an idea immortal.

On the other side, you have Buddha—we all know Buddha’s story—who really stands for a particular reconciliation, I would say, not just between people but also between species. His idea of reconciliation is just much more layered and much deeper. When I finished reading the book, the sense I still got was that revenge might be the more powerful emotion and might be the more enduring emotion and one that is passed on intergenerationally, and reconciliation is more fragile and breaks down when it’s passed on generation to generation. Is that the view you wanted to leave me with or leave a reader with when they finish the book?

GANDHI: I want, of course, every reader to make her or his judgment. I have no desire to give that verdict, really. I may give an opinion. Let me say this: Ashwatthama is a remarkably unforgettable character. He’s in some ways an immortal character. He’s a character. Buddha lived. Buddha lived in history. Ashwatthama is a magnificent creation of Vyasa. Vyasa has taught us, Mahabharata author, that the emotion of revenge is so powerful, and it works so systematically and has great stamina like Ashwatthama.

The Mahabharata itself has some wonderful passages of reconciliation, of forgiveness. Yudhishthira says to Draupadi, his wife, “Do not argue or persuade me against forgiveness. That forgiveness is a virtue I love. Please, Draupadi, don’t push me.” Then Vyasa also creates a wonderful scene, it’s an imagined scene, but he does create a very powerful scene of reconciliation, mutual forgiveness. Of course, towards the end of the Mahabharata and the Shanti Parva, there are some wonderful conversations about forgiveness and about reconciliation.

If we look objectively at the world with all its terrible pains, current pains, and current horrors even, compared with 100 or 200 or 300 years ago, the world knows itself and humanity know their relatives much more than we used to know. The trend is so obvious. We may be very hurt, disappointed by the slow progress, or in some cases, by the regress, but I think the trend is absolutely unmistakable. In the world as a whole, humanity knows one another far better than it did 100 or 200 or 300 years ago. India will not be an exception to this path that humanity has chosen.

RAJAGOPALAN: Why is it that revenge is easier to pass down intergenerationally than reconciliation?

GANDHI: I don’t know whether it is. There are times such as today’s time and it is easy to demonize another group, another race, another religious group around the world, not just in India, Pakistan, all over. Again, if 100, 200 years ago, would anybody say, Hindu India or Muslim India have foreseen that so many Hindus from the subcontinent, so many Muslims from the subcontinent would be living all over the world, mixing with, mingling with, sometimes eating with, and in rare instances, marrying people?

Over the last 200, 300 years, changes have taken place that would have been unbelievable 200, 300 years ago. I cannot believe that positive, forward march of humanity will be reversed.

RAJAGOPALAN: If you take humanity as a whole, I agree with you that the trend is clear. If I look at your book on Punjab, and I visited the Golden Temple, there’s a very nice museum inside the Golden Temple, which has a gallery of Sikh martyrs, going back about 400 years, they’ve done a very nice job of documenting all the instances of oppression and Sikh genocide and every battle they fought on the frontier. There seems to be some intergenerational trauma there, which is carried and passed on. I’m not sure if I would call it revenge, but it looks much closer to that than it looks to reconciliation.

Similar with the independence of Bangladesh. Their history with Pakistan is even more fraught than their history with India. That also seems to be taken down intergenerationally. In some pockets, there are Hindus, where a temple might’ve been destroyed 500 years ago, but that has not been forgotten, nor has it been forgiven. When I look at individual pockets where this has really persisted, I’m not able to make sense of it as much as I’m able to make sense of the global arc.

GANDHI: Yes, fair enough. Remember, though, we are living in a particular age. Even till the end of the last century, things were different. What happened in Rwanda, for instance, was regarded as something that could be overcome. It was a terrible thing, but the world thought that we would go beyond that. What happened in the Balkans, again, in the ’80s and ’90s, horrible things happened. Until the end of the last century, democracy was seen, and equality of all was seen, was seen not only as the right norms, but norms that the world was actualizing.

In our 21st century, things have taken a different turn, and supremacy rather than democracy seems to be attracting a deeper passion in many parts of the world. It may be a supremacy of one group in one country, another group in another country. India has its own type of supremacy. Pakistan has its own type. Afghanistan has its own type. Iran has its own type. United States has its own type. I think this is today’s trend. This is last 20 years. Let us not extrapolate this into the next 100, 200, 300 years.

Therefore, our time today is of terrible importance. This is all I can say, but I will not, I cannot¾ The human conscience does exist. Nobody has shown today that the human conscience was a myth. The human conscience does exist. Human sympathy for those who suffer does exist. Whether those who suffer are of your own “blood” or not, your own language or not, your own religion. I am betting on the human conscience.

Justice

RAJAGOPALAN: I’m also betting on it. I am more worried about the pathways. For instance, reconciliation seems ideal, but almost impossible without some specific pathway through which it can be channeled. Another conversation that comes in, which is not there in the book in great detail, but it’s there in your other work, is justice. There are many people who think about retribution as justice versus reconciliation as justice. This is not true just in India. We’ve seen this in the South African experiment. We’ve seen this in the civil rights movement in the United States.

We’ve seen this many, many times play out in many different ways. What would be the conception of justice that is required, but has gone missing, that would reinstate our faiths in the longer arc which tends towards sympathy and reconciliation?

GANDHI: Thank you. If in a country, whether it’s the US, the UK, Germany, France, India, or any other country, if in one or more than one country, current governments decide that justice will be done to the minority group, to the persecuted group, that will play a considerable part. If that can happen, because at the moment, so-called populist tide is working the other way. There is a notion that every country has a legitimate group that has greater rights than any other group. That not everybody is equal.

In theory or yesterday’s theory, yesterday’s practice might have been, but not today. I again say that there are many countries where a great fight is being put up for equality, for justice. That even a person from, you might say, a disliked community, a community that has a negative image, that justice should be given to a person from this community with a negative image or this race with a negative image, this group with a negative image. There’s this notion of the internal enemy, the secret enemy within, the enemy within. Every country has some enemies within.

If some governments give justice to people who are charged just for being or belonging to a particular group, it will happen. It is happening. When courageous people will demand that, will obtain that in their country, the example will be followed.

RAJAGOPALAN: What would you say to people who think justice is to redraw the line or reset to an older time? We have this big controversy in India, which is about the temples, right? Ayodhya has recently been resolved, but it was under resolution for almost 100 years before it finally got resolved. To many people, justice, the idea of justice is we need to revert back to wherever we were 200 years ago or 500 years ago or 800 years ago. To them, that seems like justice.

It sounds a lot more like retribution. What is a good way to think about justice in these conditions? What is the line where we say before this, we don’t consider rights and wrongs, and only after this, we consider rights and wrongs?

GANDHI: A line has to be drawn. Even today, in today’s India, there is a law that says that all religious places of worship will remain exactly as they are, that changing them is illegal and unlawful.

RAJAGOPALAN: Unlawful. Many people think that’s unjust. That’s why I asked the question.

GANDHI: When people say that is unjust, what they’re really saying is that we want dislike, anger, and hatred to continue. They say it is unjust because they say that our feelings are hurt. Actually, they all know that correction of history’s mistakes is not justice. We must fight injustice today. Anybody who is perpetrating injustice today, anybody who is cruel today, common sense will tell us. Brothers and sisters, children in a family, parents, husband and wife may fight, may have disputes today. If everybody is going back to what happened 50 years ago, 60 years ago, it never works.

The world has learned that we have to fight today’s battles and tomorrow’s battles. Any focus on yesterday’s battles, yesterday’s injustices, is to take humanity away from reason, from common sense, from practical wisdom. There will always be some people who will angrily say, “No, we must go back.” I think we all know when we sit down, that is just impractical.

RAJAGOPALAN: It also works the other way, right? This is both on the left and the right or on the majority group or the minority group. The majority group oftentimes wants to go back and correct certain historical wrongs. It might be a particular temple, or it might be redrawing the line on a state border or a city or something like that. 

GANDHI: State border or cities. Nobody says that because 100 years ago, it belonged to us, therefore it should belong to us. The argument is that today, so many people speak this language and therefore should—nobody is asking for redrawing of boundaries because of what happened 100 or 200 years ago.

RAJAGOPALAN: Maybe not redrawing of boundaries, but what the state would be called, what the city would be called. We started renaming places.

GANDHI: Renaming places. Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. There’s something going on there, where the majority group feels we need to revert back to 100 years ago. The minority communities oftentimes also feel we need to sometimes go back hundreds of years to correct historical wrongs. This could be on gender, it could be on caste. When I have this conversation with my friends who are a little bit more small “C” conservative and usually Hindus, or at least believe in bringing back the Hindu project in an important way, they always say, “You criticize us for wanting to rename places or to reclaim religious places.”

Suddenly, when it comes to caste or gender, you’re like, “They’ve been historically wronged. We have to correct what happened hundreds of years ago,” even if we are not the group that’s perpetuating the injustice today. I always find it difficult to argue with this because they do point out an important imbalance in the way we approach this question. Justice does require one, but not the other. What is a good way to think about this?

GANDHI: Let’s examine this. Now, take, for instance, the question of the Manusmriti. I think if anybody says that the edicts of Manu should be obeyed today, in today’s society, we have to object to it. If anybody says that nobody should be called Manu, that the name Manu should be abolished, that would be going too far. The application of the edict that certain people should be treated in an inferior way, that women and some castes should not even hear scripture, that molten lead should be put into their ears, we cannot accept that.

I don’t think that any injustice towards current people based on their religion or on their caste can be accepted by anybody. It is being advocated by many. It is being perpetrated in many countries, but nobody can defend it on moral or ethical grounds or on humanitarian grounds or on the grounds of the progress of humanity. The past is there for us to learn from. The past can be criticized very strongly. Today’s people linked to the past cannot be attacked because of the past. 

Let’s contrast what’s happening today in India and in some other parts of the world with the freedom movement. What the amazing thing about the freedom movement, which people tended to forget, is that our people, our forebears conducted it with tremendous passion. Most of them or a great many of them absolutely accepted that although British rule was terrible, the British individual cannot be hated. Because of this great understanding that although British rule was terrible, the Englishman, Scotsman, or the Welshman or Irishman should not be, need not be hated, has been a very important thing ingrained into us, which, by the way, has also resulted in the easier integration of India in the rest of the world.

Supposing our freedom movement had said that we hate the British, we had nothing to do with the British, we will not use the English language, we will not keep English names. If that had been our attitude, would millions and millions of Indians have even come to America? No. There was something very wonderful about this notion that the evils of the past do not entitle us to hate or persecute or be unjust towards any individual associated with that past.

RAJAGOPALAN: I agree with you. I think a lot of people would agree on the persecution part. What about reparations or corrections? Would you hold that at equal footing?

GANDHI: No, it depends on the reparation concern, depends on the correction. Say, renaming of certain places, in some cases, there could be monetary restitution. I would say that depends on a particular instance. A very important case today are the white South Africans. Some have left, but the vast majority have remained. Mandela said that the whites are also part of South Africa. It was an amazing thing.

RAJAGOPALAN: That was part of that reconciliation.

GANDHI: Part of the reconciliation. Today, if some people were to say that the whites must be pushed out of South Africa, I would regard that as not proper, not appropriate.

RAJAGOPALAN: That would be persecution.

GANDHI: That would be persecution based on their race. Should there be recording, good record and films be made about? Yes, they could be made. Today’s white South African, if they do something that is against the law, they should be punished. Just because they are white South Africans, should they be removed? I think that is the question we should ask about every group and every issue that arises. By the way, the Indian Constitution, which says that no discrimination on this ground, but also says no discrimination on racial grounds. Race was not such a big factor.

The writers of the constitution had the foresight to say that even a white person or a Black person or a Mongolian person, a Chinese person, a Japanese person, or an Indigenous Australian person, if ever a person like that wants to be an Indian and spend some years there, marry somebody, the Indian Constitution, as it stands today, can never permit a bar on that.

Reservations in India 

RAJAGOPALAN: What about something which is a little bit different in terms of correcting historical wrongs like, say, reservation? Would that fit the bar of justice, or are we still very much in the retribution side of the ledger there?

GANDHI: I would say that it depends entirely on the particular law. For instance, if a particular community, caste community, is really badly off, reservation or quotas for that community would be, in my opinion, permissible and could be justified depending on proper grounds, for and against. I cannot see that the policy of reservation or quotas, as such, is a kind of retribution or revenge. It is only obtaining justice for a particular group today, for their needs today, not because of crimes committed against them yesterday.

RAJAGOPALAN: This is actually an interesting tension in the Indian Constitution because the way the reservations were set up initially were to correct historical wrongs, which is also why Ambedkar had these eclipse clauses that he envisaged that after a few decades, it would disappear. What we’ve done instead is, one, every 10 years, we’ve kicked the can down the road, we keep postponing that time. Second, we’ve brought in more and more groups into reservation. Now, there is confusion over whether it was to address historical disadvantages or whether it is for modern-day development outcomes.

Because if it’s the latter, then it needs to go beyond caste, that are also noncaste cross sections or intersections that have development challenges. If it’s the former, then why is that okay for caste but not for something else? This is being fought in courts almost every year in one case or another in India.

GANDHI: As far as I know, Ambedkar and the others, who also argued for reservations, they thought that it might not be needed, it was not because they were correcting a historical injustice. They thought that by introducing reservations, that the situation would greatly improve, that there would be practical improvements which would allow for the reservation policy to be ended. Those practical improvements were not adequate. Therefore, it was extended. It isn’t as if the reservation was introduced to correct past injustices. It was introduced to correct current injustices, current deprivations, as far as I understand.

I can also see, of course, that there is something to be said for at least dreaming of a day when there will be no need for any quotas. That is also true. It’s also absolutely true that many of the so-called forward castes, upper castes, many of them have tremendous needs, problems. There have been attempts to provide some reservations for them, both at the central level and the state level. I think where there is a case of real need and real handicaps for a particular group, even if they are connected to so-called forward castes, absolutely there should be a case for—

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, we have women’s reservation now, politically. This cuts across caste and religion.

GANDHI: In theory. Not yet in the legislatures. Everybody accepts it. When it comes to introducing it, delays always take place.

The Sikhs

RAJAGOPALAN: How much of the current problems of Sikhs in Canada are you able to trace back to Punjab? The way you set up the Punjab book is this incredible continuity from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, I would say up to Indira Gandhi now. Could you extend that continuity to what’s happening with Sikhs in Canada?

GANDHI: There’s six questions in your question. Let me try. Incidentally, when you’re referring to the Sikhs earlier in relation to India, Pakistan, Hindus, and Muslims, as you probably know, there is an increasing body of Sikhs, both in India and in the world as a whole, who feel that one of their great tasks is to bring Hindus and Muslims together, which incidentally, some people say was also one of the great achievements of Guru Nanak himself. 

To me, the Sikhs are an incredible group, as we all know, with so many great gifts and so many great achievements, both in India and in the rest of the world. In a very interesting way, although Sikhism grew up in India, the Sikh religion and Sikh religious practices, Sikh religious temples, bring to India something that resembles practices in other parts of the world. The Sikh temples do not have idols. To many people from the outside, a Gurdwara looks more like a mosque than like a temple.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, with the dome.

GANDHI: With the dome.

RAJAGOPALAN: It has a book.

GANDHI: It has a book. The Sikh religion is a wonderful way in which you might say India’s culture has also absorbed something from outside. That is a very important factor to acknowledge. Therefore, what role that the Sikhs play in the future in the whole world is of very great importance, I think, to humanity as a whole. I’m very glad you bring that out. Incidentally, my Punjab story, which, of course, the partition and its terrible carnage that accompanied it is an important part of it. I wanted to find out not just the immediate reasons for the partition, but the long-term reasons. That is why I went as far back as Aurangzeb.

RAJAGOPALAN: What is the continuity to you between going back a few hundred years in time up to partition? And then we can parse out from partition to Mrs. Gandhi and now. Maybe we break up my question in parts, as you suggested.

GANDHI: No. I think the notion that the Sikhs, when Indira Gandhi was killed by some members of her Sikh bodyguard, the terrible shame that occurred was that many people decided to take revenge on the Sikhs as a community.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. This was in Delhi.

GANDHI: In Delhi.

RAJAGOPALAN: In my lifetime, this has happened.

GANDHI: Yes. You would’ve been eye witness to it. It is a matter of tremendous disgrace and shame that it was allowed. Because some people killed a woman does not mean that the community to which these killers belonged should be therefore suspected or attacked. We should learn that lesson, and we should learn the lesson, apply the lesson to everybody. Neither the Hindu community nor the Muslim community nor the Sikh community can be blamed as a whole, or should be punished as a whole, for the crimes committed by individuals connected to that community either today, yesterday, or a thousand years ago. That is the real lesson to draw from it.

I think that a great many are learning that lesson. It is very important for India as a nation to recognize that, yes, in ’84 we failed lamentably, but then we’re not applying that lesson when it comes to the Muslims. We say that, or at least some people say, that persecuting today’s Muslims or denying them some rights is perfectly legitimate because of what was done a few hundred years ago. That would be, in my opinion, unfair and unjust.

RAJAGOPALAN: An interesting story of revenge and reconciliation is in my lifetime. I must have been a baby when the Sikh riots happened in Delhi. My earliest memory of realizing that I am Tamilian and growing up in—you’ve grown up in Delhi. You’re just a Delhi person. You grew up speaking Hindi. You grew up playing in the bylanes of your posh colonies and so on, but my earliest memory is when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. All our neighbors—and I grew up in a post-partition colony which was full of Punjabis and Sikhs—they immediately showed up at home and said, “What is the plan?” He was assassinated by Sri Lankan Tamils, and we were Tamilian, and identifiably so through our name.

One of our neighbors, Mr. Sikka, who was a Sikh and very close, like just three doors down, the first thing he said was, “Pack your bags, move in with us,” because they had seen this story play out before. My parents said, “I think we’ll be fine, and I don’t think anything terrible will happen,” but it’s my first memory of realizing that we are Tamilians in New Delhi, which is not a Tamilian majority place, and I had never had that recognition until that moment. Of course, it’s also a moment of great reconciliation because of the way Rajiv Gandhi’s family and Sonia Gandhi conducted themselves after his assassination, and that no one was targeted, and it all happened through the justice system.

GANDHI: Right. Indeed. That’s a wonderful story, and I’m so happy to hear that these Sikh neighbors of yours—

RAJAGOPALAN: We are still very close friends with them.

GANDHI: Yes. Who thought that you might also be targeted the way their relatives had been not many years prior to that. That’s a tremendous story. I agree that Sonia Gandhi and her family, I think some of them even went and met some people in prison and expressed their forgiveness, you might say, and their unwillingness to be associated with any kind of persecution. That, I think, is a positive, without a doubt.

RAJAGOPALAN: Does it matter that the community that is persecuted also forgets? When I go to the Sikh martyrs gallery, it seems like they haven’t forgotten. In fact, part of the Sikh teachings is to never forget.

GANDHI: I don’t think that is part of Guru Nanak’s teaching.

RAJAGOPALAN: I agree.

GANDHI: Nor is it necessarily the part of teaching of all the Sikh temples or the Sikh teachers today or the Sikh writers today. Some people may say that. There is something to be said for remembering for the sake of vigilance, for the sake of future. I think if something has happened in the past, it could happen again in the future. From that angle, the past is very useful to us, but to remember the past in order to humiliate some other people today is I think going too far. I think great many Sikhs will agree with me there.

RAJAGOPALAN: I feel like there is a strong connection between remembrance and retribution. I haven’t been able to disentangle the two, but it does bother me every time I go to the Golden Temple, and I still see the exposed brick. There’s one portion of the temple where they have the bullet holes. I’m also a lawyer. I feel like we need to have statute of limitations for historical wrongs, and we have to collectively forget.

GANDHI: This business of forgive and forget, often the phrase has been used, not without some reason, but at the same time, the doctrine of forgive and forget can be taken too far and taken too literally. I think enough thought has always to be applied to where the line has to be drawn and what should be forgotten, by whom should it be forgotten, by whom it should be remembered.

RAJAGOPALAN: Remembered, yes.

GANDHI: In the end, I think, as various people have said around the world, that life in the world depends also on forgetting. It certainly depends on forgiving, but it also depends on forgetting. That also is a broad truth that ultimately all of us have to accept.

South India and Retribution 

RAJAGOPALAN: One thing I’ve noticed in South India, especially, when we talk about temple destructions, for instance, there’s an enormous amount of press and books and WhatsApp videos and Twitter videos today on how the Mughal invaders or Afghan invaders destroyed temples and so on. Those of us who’ve been to South Indian temples—you’ve written an entire book on modern South India—routinely, Vaishnavites and Shaivites would ransack and destroy each other’s temples.

GANDHI: Sure.

RAJAGOPALAN: We have forgotten that, in a sense.

GANDHI: Also, many Hindus destroyed Jain and—

RAJAGOPALAN: Jain and Buddhist Temples.

GANDHI: In South India.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. We don’t have Jains and Buddhists in the same number anymore to have that kind of intergenerational institutional memory. But more than ever before, we have Vaishnavites and Shaivites, and yet they are no longer squabbling amongst themselves and holding onto some crazy historical wrongdoing of, “Oh, you did this in Hampi and we did this in Vijayanagara.” We’ve seen all this happen. In fact, when you go to those temples, you can see how they were ransacked. There’s a very good uncontested record of by whom. How did we manage to forget that? Do you have an insight into that through your work on South India? I’m glad we’ve forgotten it, by the way. I’m almost disappointed I brought it up.

GANDHI: No. Still, we can learn from what you remember and what you forget, and what you bring up. No, I would say, again, to go back to the freedom movement and decades thereafter, it was an amazing thing that Indians learned that we will fight the British for our freedom, but we will not hate today’s Englishman or Scotsman. 

Similarly, we Indians did learn and did remember for some time, and Bollywood also helped us to remember, our poets and our saints and our musicians helped us to remember that whatever individual Muslims might have done in the past, Muslims had made India their home for hundreds and hundreds of years. And Muslims are as much part of India as Hindus are.

This memory has to be now revived. This applies also to destruction of temples hundreds of years ago. If great films are made today about how horrible some Muslims might have been in the past, and if therefore hatred is injected, I don’t say that films should be banned. I believe in freedom. I do say that when this happens, Hindu leaders, whether from a religious platform, or political leaders who are known as Hindus, they have to come and say that this is ridiculous. Merely because something horrible happened two, three, four, five hundred years ago, does not mean that today’s Muslims should be targeted. That is the missing factor.

When Gandhi and Nehru were around, and when Jayaprakash was around or Vinoba was around, Rajagopalachari was around, that kind of nonsense was never tolerated. From the political platform and from the religious platform, from the cultural platform, word went out. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa would never tolerate it.

RAJAGOPALAN: Vivekānanda, no.

GANDHI: Vivekānanda said in Chicago, “Hinduism is great not just because of tolerance, but because of acceptance.” Acceptance. Acceptance of Islam as a truth. Acceptance of Muslims as our relatives. Today, what is happening is that when these stupid things happen, there is no clear compelling voice from the Hindu platform, whether political or religious.

RAJAGOPALAN: What was that voice for the Vaishnavites and Shaivites reconciling and uniting? Was it the Bhakti movement?

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: Okay.

GANDHI: The Bhakti movement. Remember, even today, yes, there may not be a campaign to destroy the other person’s temples, but strong differences even today remain.

RAJAGOPALAN: Sure. No one today is saying we need to revert this temple back to what it was. It was a Vaishnavite temple so many hundred years ago, and we should revert. In fact, now often they have both in every temple—

GANDHI: Yes. Good.

RAJAGOPALAN: —which is quite lovely to see. All Hindus can unite in a different project, which has also been an enormous project in the subcontinent, how to unite the Hindus.

GANDHI: Sure.

RAJAGOPALAN: I’m sort of curious about if the Bhakti movement managed to do that, then do we just need a stronger Sufi movement when it comes to the north, and Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs? What is that missing ingredient? Because through your work, the two threads are revenge versus reconciliation, but it’s also the north versus the south. We’ve managed this well in one, but not in the other.

GANDHI: I think it’s up to the Sufis, it’s also up to the Hindu priests, up to Hindu thinkers, up to politicians who are seen as Hindus, and what they say and what they don’t say. By the way, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, there have been very powerful Muslim figures who have fought for Hindu-Muslim unity.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. Azad.

GANDHI: Azad. Yes, it will take a courageous initiative on the part of all of us.

RAJAGOPALAN: One thing that I was quite happy to see, was when the Ayodhya Temple was being inaugurated, there were a number of Hindu priests and heads of various maths who were quite disappointed with how political it was.

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: They were very disappointed that what should be a sacrament, which is the founding of a new temple, was muddied by politics and a lot of media attention and press, and things that were not very sacred. They did speak out against that. I know they were a small voice, but they did.

GANDHI: Not only that, we all know that in the elections that took place not much later, parliamentary elections, in Ayodhya itself, the BJP lost. It isn’t as if the Hindu masses weren’t affected. The Hindu masses knew the difference between a political movement for freedom and a religious movement, and that there should be a great difference between religion and the state. I think that is very important. Of course, the fact that north Indian masses also showed their clarity was very encouraging at that stage.

Geographical Memory

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. I want to ask you again about what is it about certain places? You’ve written about how Delhi is saddled with revenge. It’s got blood everywhere. If I were to use Dalrymple, it’s the City of Djinns.

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: Is there something about certain geographical locations that contain memory?

GANDHI: Delhi is certainly a location that contains a series of rulers, emperors, rajas, kings, badshahs, viceroys. It has seen lots of revenge, being the capital city, perhaps. I think Delhi also has other wonderful associations. Other very sacred associations and wonderful associations of all kinds. I have not lost hope about the people of Delhi or Delhi itself, the spirit of Delhi.

RAJAGOPALAN: Not so much the people of Delhi, but given how advanced we are in our archaeological work, we’re able to date things, we are now working with AI and machine learning to decode Indus Valley scripts and so on, if there is a place that has constant bloodshed, which are certain parts of Punjab, places like Delhi, are they just doomed for the future in some way or another?

GANDHI: Not at all. Not at all. Absolutely not. Of course, if we can go beyond India, we can speak about the Middle East, we can speak about Palestine—

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, Istanbul.

GANDHI: —and Istanbul. Should all the Sunnis leave Iran? Should all the Shias leave Afghanistan? Should all the Palestinians leave Palestine? Should all the Arabs be moved out of that area? Is that what justice requires? I think, no. There are emotional movements across the world, which are not healthy movements, which at times are popular movements. Should all the immigrants be pushed out of North America? Should all the nonwhites be pushed out of the UK, Germany? They came from outside. Yes, it would greatly help if, from all these communities, individuals would arise and would fight against prejudice within their communities. But we also need impartial voices of the state, judiciary—

RAJAGOPALAN: Press.

GANDHI: Press. Very much the press, which say that whatever is done or not done, certain laws will be applied.

RAJAGOPALAN: When it comes to Buddhism, one of the things I learned from your book, which I wasn’t aware of before, you talk about how there might be—I mean, the Mahabharata has existed for millennia, and we’ve had the teachings of Buddha. It’s unclear which came first and which telling came first. There are parts of the Mahabharata which have more of a revenge story and plot, almost as a response to Buddhism. That’s part one. Where do you think we are on that story? How conclusive is the history or how much is it up for grabs?

GANDHI: Look, I have no ability to establish whether the Mahabharat preceded the Buddha or not, or by how many years. Also, what portions of the Mahabharat? After all, the Mahabharat has a series of—we call it the epic, but it has 20 magnificent dramas.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. It has these subplots, side stories, and characters that are never-ending.

GANDHI: Exactly. Rajagopalachari, who wrote the Mahabharat, translated, his Tamil book was called Vyasar Virundu, the “Feast of Vyas.”

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes, the “Feast of Vyas.”

GANDHI: Yes. The feast, it is a feast. We can take from it the dish we want. It may have a very hot, fiery dish. It may have a very sweet dish. It depends on how we read it. As you know, there is a tradition in many parts of India that the Ramayan, yes, should be kept. The Mahabharat should be kept out of reach of children and out of others because there are aspects in Mahabharat that can impel you to anger, to revenge, and so forth. All in all, the great lesson from the Mahabharat is that revenge leads to an empty stage.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. It’s just destruction.

GANDHI: Literally, all the people we love have gone.

RAJAGOPALAN: Have gone.

GANDHI: This is what revenge does.

RAJAGOPALAN: Including the unborn.

GANDHI: Yes. In a way, the Mahabharat has the most—although it is a powerful story of revenge, it is the most powerful argument against revenge.

RAJAGOPALAN: When you write that this might have been in response to the growing influence of Buddhism, do you think that’s where the—no?

GANDHI: No. I don’t know whether I quite said that, because I can’t establish that in terms of what came first, what came later. I think that it’s not the whole culture that decides to respond to it, but certain political rulers find, “Oh, this Mahabharat story is useful for me, so I will push it. I will make a film about it. A film about a particular section of it.” It is connected with the political rulers of the time. If political rulers are not being intelligent enough or wise enough, then I think nonpoliticians, ordinary people, writers, poets, they have to spring into action.

Buddhism Versus Hinduism

RAJAGOPALAN: When it comes to Buddhism versus Hinduism, do you think one of the reasons that Buddhism eventually ebbed is not just that the political rulers who won were the Hindus, but that Buddhism requires that the unit is the individual and not the community, whereas Hinduism, Islam, the religions that grew in India are more communitarian and not rooted in the individual. Do you think that’s an important distinction between these two strands or these different religions?

GANDHI: I don’t know whether we can establish that Buddhism disappeared from India because it stressed more on the individual rather than on the community. Now, Jainism is not very powerful in India, but it has survived.

RAJAGOPALAN: It has survived.

GANDHI: Some people give the explanation that it’s because the Jains, while they also had their monks, they also mingled with the community, and they were mercantile people. They took part in the business of the community. That is how they survived. Although there may be fairly significant numbers of Jains, it’s by no means the majority religion in any part of India. Both Jainism and Buddhism have not had a very great success in the land of their birth. Mind you, Buddhism has had tremendous success in China, in Cambodia, but we also know the history of China and Cambodia, including very recent history.

What does the survival or expansion of Buddhism really mean for humanity as a whole? I think whether it’s the story of Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism, no story, as far as I can understand, escapes the listener being disappointed or hurt or dissatisfied.

RAJAGOPALAN: You pointed out China, for me, Myanmar.

GANDHI: Yes. My God, yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: It’s so—

GANDHI: Oh, today’s Myanmar. My God, my God, my God, yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: I was thinking about it when I was reading Revenge and Reconciliation, and you set it up as Ashwatthama versus Buddha. I was thinking, “Oh, I wish the people in Myanmar and China would read this because of what they’re doing to the Rohingyas and the Uyghurs.”

GANDHI: Yes. In the name of Buddha, they are practicing Ashwatthama.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes. What do you think is going on there? Is it just politics? Why has that strand of Buddhism not persisted? In India, it’s crystal clear what Buddha stood for. We may not have large numbers of followers, but it’s crystal clear what he stood for.

GANDHI: We may be crystal clear on what Buddha stood for, but how many influential Indians are demanding that what Buddha stood for is practiced in India today? Not many. I’m sure many in Myanmar and in Cambodia also know what Buddha stood for, but they’re not able to stand up to the currents of anger and hatred and domination and tyranny. I think that applies to all parts of the world, including India.

Gandhi and Jainism

RAJAGOPALAN: You didn’t name Gandhi, in this case, Mohandas Gandhi, in your list of Hindus.

GANDHI: I should have, of course. Of course, I should have.

RAJAGOPALAN: I’ve read your biography on Gandhi. I’ve read Ram Guha’s volumes. To me, it almost seems like the religion I most closely associate with Gandhi is Jainism because of the extreme nature of sacrifice that is required and that’s demanded. Did he have any views on Jainism that you’re aware of, or might he have discussed it? I know he was not one for conversion or giving up one’s religion in any shape or form. To me, he seems much more of that tradition.

GANDHI: He was a very devout, very staunch Hindu. He said it again and again and again, and he meant it, as far as I know. It’s also true that Jainism was a very strong influence. His mother was not a Jain, but she was very close to many Jain monks. Very close to many Jain monks. Some people in the rest of the whole world have mistakenly said that his mother was a Jain. She was not. Gandhi was a Hindu, and he called himself a Hindu, a staunch Hindu. 

One of his very great friends was this Raichandra. When he was in his late 20s, Rajchandra was a very famous figure in India, and a very honored figure, venerated figure in Jainism today. He died very early. He was in his early thirties. Gandhi and he, this man, were very, very close friends. This is also something worth recognizing, Gandhi’s relationship with Jainism and with Jains was very, very deep.

RAJAGOPALAN: Is that where he gets that strain of extreme sacrifice? Is that coming from Hinduism? Is it coming from somewhere else, which is outside of religion?

GANDHI: It’s very difficult to say, but in my assessment, Gandhi had very great goals. Very great goals. Not only India’s freedom, not only Hindu-Muslim unity, removing the untouchability, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He also felt that through all this, India would also be an example to the world. He had global aims. Since he also knew himself that he was an imperfect human being, he had weaknesses, he had his human nature. Therefore, how to achieve these great aims?

Gandhi’s turning to, you might say, extreme methods or sacrifice, was his response, in my understanding, that to fulfill very great aims beyond one’s capability, you need something extraordinary and some kind of sacrifice. This is, to me, the basis for Gandhi’s, you might say, being hard on himself, rather than a theology derived either from Hinduism or Jainism.

RAJAGOPALAN: The fact that he was hard on himself, he also insisted that the family must walk that path. He also insisted that anyone who was within the ashram must walk that path. Is it that different from a kind of theology? Can we call it that? Because he did have disciples and devotees, upon whom this was the expectation.

GANDHI: A, he said I do not want any disciples. I do not want any devotees.

RAJAGOPALAN: They existed.

GANDHI: Yes, but not devotees. Disciples, yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: Disciples.

GANDHI: He does not have devotees, and he did not have devotees. On the family, yes and no. He said to them, “If you want to work with me, then you have to accept the rules. Otherwise, do what you want. If you want to work with me, stay where I am.” This was his condition. This was true for family members, for nonfamily members. Many family members felt completely free to do what they wanted. For instance, my father was pretty close to Gandhi. He accepted some of Gandhi’s, you might say, rules, but not all of them.

It was like an army, nonviolent army fighting for freedom, but for the other causes also. If you wanted to join the army, you have to observe discipline. Stay outside the army, I’ll be friends with you.

RAJAGOPALAN: You wouldn’t call this a religious thought?

GANDHI: No. I don’t call this the impact of a religion.

RAJAGOPALAN: Fair. I understand what you’re saying, yes. It could be interpreted as a particular kind of practice, but it’s just Gandhian practice. It’s not influenced by any particular—

GANDHI: It is a response to what he felt his work was.

Indian Subcontinent Today 

RAJAGOPALAN: When you view the subcontinent today, what do you see as the short-term future and the long-term future? I know you said you’re very hopeful. Can we get there through nonviolent means today? Is there any room for the liberal values, due process, or outside of that, civil disobedience, which is not exactly through the legal process? Do you see room for those movements?

GANDHI: Civil disobedience, yes. Applied wisely, as and when appropriate, when the climate is ripe for it, when you have enough volunteers, enough people willing to practice it according to the rules that it requires. Of course, the courts, the press, all the other means available in, you might say, the liberal understanding of the world. Those are also of great value. Mass movements of different kinds, wisely led, all have a role in today’s India. The individual has a role, of course. It goes without saying the women perhaps have a tremendous role.

I would say that a very great need is—and this is a universal need, not just in India—that people who see what is happening, who are troubled by what’s happening, but they’re not able to work together as a team.

RAJAGOPALAN: Yes.

GANDHI: It’s loosely called coalition-building at times.

RAJAGOPALAN: It’s not a movement the way we’ve had movements before.

GANDHI: Right. This is where more work is to be needed. Say, the United States. We have the whites, the African Americans, the Latinos. If there had been greater partnership among these groups, the political scene in the US would have been totally different. Similarly, in India, if the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, and the others, the secularists, nonreligious people could be closer with each other, the Indian scene would be totally different. In Pakistan, if the Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochis, Pashtuns, Shias, and Sunnis were to come together. Likewise, Bangladesh.

I think for people of different backgrounds or different perspectives to come together is a very great need. This is a worldwide need today. I don’t know whether there’s a formula for answering this need. Leadership has a role. If charismatic people emerge who can proclaim this or demonstrate this or urge for this in rousing and persuasive language, that may work. We don’t know how it will happen, but I have enough faith in the human conscience to say that it will happen.

Trade and Travel

RAJAGOPALAN: When I read your book on South India, one more aspect, which I think is very important to all the other ingredients you listed, is trade and travel.

GANDHI: Yes. How true. Absolutely right.

RAJAGOPALAN: Your story of South India depends so much on merchants of different religions and language coming and going.

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: Even in modern times, you’ve alluded many times in this conversation about how Indians going abroad and people abroad coming to India and having this global perspective changes who we are vis-a-vis who the other is.

GANDHI: Yes.

RAJAGOPALAN: How do you see the role for trade playing out today in India?

GANDHI: I think that’s very, very important. I think trade, within different parts of India, between different communities of India, trade between India and neighboring countries, very, very, very important. Travel and trade. Communications, of course, are relatively easier today.

RAJAGOPALAN: With the internet.

GANDHI: And with the smartphones. I think trade and travel have to be greatly multiplied. Yes, I don’t know whether tariffs is the other way to go.

RAJAGOPALAN: Hopefully not. Hopefully, more trade domestically and lower tariffs. On this, any country is free to reduce tariffs unilaterally. We don’t have to follow the US-China trade war that Trump and Xi have initiated and thrust upon the rest of the world. Thank you so much for doing this.

GANDHI: Thank you for reading my books and thank you for asking these very difficult questions.