Mahatma Gandhi's Leadership

Gandhi’s leadership was unique, strong, and modern, yet he faced many critics who loathed what they viewed as Gandhi’s forced universalism of his ideals. The three main areas of contention with regard to Gandhi’s leadership were: communalism, untouchability and gender issues. These issues were part of a deeper debate on Indian identity and social reform as part of its move towards independence. Most - if not all - leaders of the time were concerned with defining the culture of the (potentially divided) Indian state in a manner that would ensure the continuity of such a state and therefore was as much a part of pre-independence politics as the struggle for independence itself. These issues were not and arguably could not have been resolved entirely, but highlighted incidents and views that fell in the realm of Gandhi’s ‘blind spot’.

Communalism

The notion of communalism was discussed in two very different ways. The first was the role of communities in a polity, and the second was the rising tension between Hindus and Muslims. The role of communities was disputed largely due to the manner in which Gandhi took a communal view of justice and upset those nationalist leaders who felt that such a form of governance would undermine the power and legitimacy of the newly minted Indian state. Gandhi was a proponent of village-centered communities in India as he considered villages the source of civilizations. Jayaprakash Narayan, a Gandhian, agreed and contended that the local or primary community “is a creation of man’s social nature and the unit with which the structure of society has to be built” (Hay, 375). These primary communities would combine to form regional communities, which then formed district communities that were a part of p...

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...campaign demonstrated his progressiveness. A number of other Indian men took on the issue of gender equality. One, Rammohun Roy, condemned the unequal practice of men having one or more wives whereas women were not even allowed to remarry after the death of their husbands. Despite that, some spiritual leaders were less supportive of such endeavors. After a trip abroad Vivekananda said, “Nowhere on earth have women so many privileges as in America. They are slowly taking everything into their hands and, strange to say, the number of cultured women is much greater than that of cultured men. Of course, the higher geniuses are mostly from the rank of males.” Nevertheless, such statements ignore the common backdrop in the period leading up to the partition and Indian independence, of cheers of “Bharatmata ki Jai” that evoked a feminine, maternal image of the new state.