Eric Hobsbawm famously stated that history is as important to (sectarianism) nationalism as poppy is to an opium addict. The right wing is surging with great speed; its ideologues keep a matching pace to construct the history which suits their political agenda of exclusion of some and glorification of their past. In this direction, medieval Indian history was the major one to be mauled by showing particularly that the medieval period of Indian history was an era of Islamic imperialism and by projecting the Muslim kings in a bad light, which helped them create hate against today’s Muslims.

Even ancient Indian history, a golden period for them, was manipulated to show the Aryans, their ancestors, were the indigenous people of this land. Coming to the freedom movement, they first focused on Nehru, the colossus who articulated and practiced secularism in India. He was aware that practicing secularism in India is not easy as large sections of Indian society are in the grip of blind religiosity. He was the one to see the threat of majoritarian (Hindu) communalism and equated it to fascism. He said minority communalism was at worst separatist. His mentor Gandhi, though murdered by the one who was trained by the RSS and was working for the Hindu Mahasabha, could not be demonized easily. Gandhi’s place in the global arena and in the hearts of the Indian people was at its peak.

Now, as the communal right wing feels it is on firm feet, its ideologues are beginning the exercise of over-projecting some of his shortcomings and undermining his contribution to freedom. This 30th January 2025, as the nation was paying tributes to the Father of the Nation, many portals were relaying videos to propagate that Gandhi’s was just one of the efforts in India getting freedom. In various podcasts and social media channels, they are propagating that Gandhi’s efforts had just a marginal effect on the British leaving India.

For the last few years, glorification of Godse in the form of Twitter storms for ‘Mahatma Godse Amar Rahe’ (Long Live Godse) has been witnessed painfully. The ilk of Poonam Prasun Pandey enacting the shooting of Gandhi’s effigy and then blood dripping from it has been a common sight. Observing national mourning on 30th January by a siren being sounded at 11 AM for a two-minute silence has been muted. This year, the Maharashtra state circular on the two-minute silence at 11 AM did not mention even the name of Gandhi.

As we observed Gandhi Martyrdom Day on this 30th January, many of these irritants flashed to our minds. He was given the honorific Mahatma by none other than Guru Rabindranath Tagore. It is propagated that the Gandhi-Congress ignored Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. The fact is that Bose and the Congress had some differences on strategy, but the core agenda of freedom from British rule remained the same. It was Netaji who addressed Gandhi as ‘Father of the Nation’. He also named one of the battalions of the Azad Hind Fauj (Free India Army) as the Gandhi Battalion. It was the Gandhi-Congress who fought the cases of the prisoners of the Fauj by forming a committee with top lawyers like Bhulabhai Desai, Kailashnath Katju, and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Also, the propaganda that Gandhi did not do anything to save Bhagat Singh from hanging is being instilled into the social common sense. They hide the fact that it was Gandhi who wrote to Lord Irwin to cancel Bhagat Singh’s hanging. Irwin showed his inability to accept this request as all British officers in Punjab had threatened to resign if Gandhi’s request was accepted. Most interestingly, Bhagat Singh requested his father Kishan Singh to support the ‘General’ of the freedom movement (Gandhi), which his father did by working for the Congress.

The attempt to undermine Gandhi comes in the form of nitpicking the three major movements which Gandhi launched. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920, which was the first real attempt to involve average people in the struggle against the British, as per them was ineffective as it was withdrawn due to the Chauri Chaura incident, where the crowd had burnt down the police station, killing many policemen. Also, they allege that Gandhi’s support for Khilafat was demoralizing, as it related to supporting the restoration of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Let’s remember it was this move which brought Muslims in large numbers into the vortex of popular anti-British struggle. Also, the Mappila (Moplah) rebellion is supposed to have been an aggressive move by Muslims against Hindus. The fact is this rebellion was a rebellion of poor Muslim farmers against Janmis (landlords, who were mostly Hindus), and the British authorities were protecting the interests of the landlords.

As far as the Civil Disobedience of 1930 is concerned, the counter is that it just led to the Gandhi–Irwin Pact. This pact was a major step in furtherance of the pressure by the Indian freedom struggle. The accusation is that the Salt March did not lead to the abolition of the salt tax, which it aimed at. The fact is people could produce salt after this; its illegality was lifted.

As far as the 1942 ‘Do or Die’, ‘British Quit India’ movement, it is true that as Gandhi and the major leaders of the Congress were arrested, the movement did take a violent turn. The point is, it created huge awareness about getting freedom from the British; it came as a culmination of the long process of creating mass consciousness which began picking up after the 1920s Non-Cooperation Movement.

There is no denying that revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and his likes, Subhash Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj, and the revolt of the Naval ratings were valuable add-ons to the whole process of rising consciousness among people towards longing for freedom and cementing the bonds of Indianness. Gandhi’s contribution is monumental as it created fraternity and Indianness among the people, as Surendranath Banerjee very aptly described it: “India: A Nation in the Making.”

These were twin aspects of the freedom movement. One was to struggle against the British and two to ‘build a nation: India’ through this. Gandhi understood that bringing people together is the core of the process of getting freedom. A recent flourishing attempt by right-wing communalists totally ignores the process of people, the masses, waking up and constituting India as a nation. This was the greatest endeavor for which Gandhi is really the ‘Father of the Nation’.