GANDHI AND INDIA'S FATHERLY CRISIS: A PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEW

Mahatma Gandhi is called the "Father of this 77- or 78-year-old nation we call India, or Bharat". Who called him so? Probably Subash Chandra Bose while he was in exile. Now, the relations between Bose and Gandhi were quite interestingly analyzed and the tensions regarding the views on freedom struggle is well known. I do not know whether we should, but we definitely can view Bose and Gandhi's difference as the difference between a paternal authority, a father and an adolescent Male child. This view, in my opinion, will also be considered a taboo in the field of political thought. But, here, I am not going to dwell in this. 

My concern is with Relations of India as a nation and Gandhi as a leader. What do leaders usually contribute to the Nation building of a particular nation? Is not it quite comparable to the psych-sexual development of a child and a child's personality and how A paternal, a father figure contributes in it? I believe yes, it is. What is the role of paternal in the development of a child? My analysis or may be the correlation I try to make here may seem absurd to some, may seem wannabe to others and to some few, I may also seem a little creative and a little intelligent. I cater to none of these people, I cater to my needs of writing and writing about Politics and Psychoanalysis and their interface.  

Father's role and mother's role towards the development of the child are quite different. Mother's role in the beginning years, are more of nourishment. While Father's role is more intricate. There are four roles of a Father in the Psycho-sexual development of the child, Namely, 

First, The castrating influence. The influence sets ultimately some generational and incestual boundaries in the mind of Child. Now, recall, what was the role of Gandhi when, in his numerous speeches, he wants to set a boundary between Ethnic nationalism, communalism and a more civic kind of nationalism based on healthy democratic ideals? Is not it the same? There must be some boundaries regarding a concept when the concept is taking shape in the psyche of an individual or a collective. Sexuality and notion of affection, as it is differentiated in the minds of a child by the paternal, is to create an awareness that not all affections should be considered sexual, and not all sexual desires should be acceptable. Similarly, Gandhi's intervention to the India's collective psyche is to make them aware of the fact that not all national sentiments should be acceptable. Those national sentiments that are based on race-superiority should be rejected for good. Not all notions of a nation should be welcomed. The Ancient Hindu Rashtra narrative and projection of Muslims as outsiders, this notion is the generational boundary setting by Gandhi. One must love one's mother, here, in this case, Bharat Mata. But that love must not be a longing to crawl back to her womb, that is a kind of Revivalism that India's ethnic national sentiments and communal Hindu sentiments project. Gandhi discarded both of these sentiments. Let us summarize the correlations here. 

India as a nation: Child 

Gandhi: Father figure 

Ethnic Nationalism, Communalism: incestual sentiments

Political Revivalism: Generational sentiments (Crawling back to mother's womb) 

Civic nationalism: Healthy psycho-sexual development.

Second role of a father is also to provide an alternative attachment, other than the mother. Gandhi's role in the beginning of coming to Champaran and numerous other places and his consolidation of himself as the central figure of the freedom struggle reflects that role of Gandhi. This nation is still attached to Gandhi in many ways. Cleanliness and Gandhi's commitment to it, the nation aspires to it after 75 years of independence. Protests and Gandhian methods and sticking to them is, in my opinion, more than a political choice. It is like, walking in the shoes of the father and showing the father, "Look! Daddy, I have grown old now!" This is not a rebellious phase. This is in fact, a cooperative phase of a child's development and this corresponds to the Nation during the phase of the Gandhian Struggle. 

Third role of the Father, in the development of the child is cutting the metaphoric umbilical cord. To separate the Child from his/her mother. This is intended not to create a rift but to expand the child's horizon to a broader reality and to the concerns of the world. The imagery that comes to the mind is the mother's way to introduce the child with the world is through her fingers, "Look son! this is the world!", While the father's way is like the Lion King scene where the Lion takes his cub to the top of the mountain and shows him, "Look son! this is the world you have to rule!". Where do we find this in Gandhi? I say, we find this role of Gandhi in two different ways, one is religious, and one is social. On the religious side, Gandhi's engagement with other religions, his work in religious pluralism and an attempt to show to the Indian Psyche, especially to the Narcissist Hindu Psyche that, "Look son! there is a world out there with equal credibility as your mother's bosom." Another social dimension of Gandhi's role is to again awaken the Hindu society to look inwards into the neglected other of its own society, that is, towards the Harijans. Gandhi made Hindus, especially caste Hindus of the social identity that they need to form in order to be a healthy grown-up nation. It is like, A child, for the first time, looking in the mirror and not identifying that the leg he is seeing is his leg. The arm is his arm and to hurt his arm is to hurt himself. The expansion of Indian self has a social aid of Gandhi's constructive work in between Satyagrahas that he undertook.

Fourth role of the Father corresponds to the involvement of the Father's body with the child. Numerous playing sessions with the Child, hitting of the child on Father's palm and arm wrestling and such. Father's invite to hit him harder teaches the child aggression and the limits of aggression. Here, we see, Father' role to teach the child his capabilities, his assertiveness, and this fact that, you can assert your demands on the world aggressively and the world would not collapse. And another lesson, that like I suffered and sustained your attacks, one day, you will be able to sustain other people's blows on you. Gandhi's Satyagraha and Non-violence and numerous movements were like these teaching cum playing sessions for the nation-in-making. Satyagraha, an assertion to truth, non-violence, is actually a metaphoric aggression. Let me little bit expand on that. Non-violence as a mode of political struggle, how does it correspond to Aggression. It is aggression towards self. You, instead of attacking, receive attacks on your body and you keep on showing the right cheek, as if saying to the opponent, "I can sustain more, my dad trained me well, Let's see how hard can you hit". No wonder, when the revolutionary activist Ram prasad Bismil wrote this song, "Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai, Dekhna hai Zor kitna Baazu-e-Qaatil mein hai!" 

It is literally an invite to the opponent, to test his waters. Not to say, Gandhi meant this only when he preached non-violence, of course not. But this is how the correlation works. This is meant to be interpretative. 

Fifth Role of the father is to die. Now, if a father is absent, the child usually creates a symbolic father. But, in our nation's case, the father was present, at least in the initial years of its making. But He died in front of the nation, outside the Birla house. Usually when the father remains absent, the child creates an ideal image of the father in his mind sand and an idealization occurs in the mind of the child and it cannot be de-idealized in the minds of the child. The child in the sub-conscious, keeps this image that his father is all-knowing and all understanding. This nation's obsession with Gandhi is the same. The nation never saw Gandhi's drawback when he was alive. The nation never de-idealized Gandhi. So, the perceptions like, what would have Gandhi ji done in this situation? is more than a "What if" question, it is a pathological question for this country. The obsessions with Gandhian models of economy and Gandhian forms of protest and in Hinduism also, the right wing's push of Indigenous medicine and Selling Indian living as simple living is a fixation with Gandhi, which reflects the unresolved father issues the nation has with Gandhi. Gandhi's engagement with Village economy, Liquor abandonment, and so many other Gandhian ideals, still persist and the Nation and some state try to implement it and fail but they never de-idealize these methods. 

Gandhi's death in 1948 was an unfortunately an actual one and not a symbolic one as is usually considered healthy. Healthier would have been if Gandhi would have lived for another 20 years and would have tested the boundaries and limitations of his methods and self, and the country would have safely outgrown Gandhism and moved on to some real-world problems. Nehru's attempt to centralize an industrial and scientific economy was an attempt in this regard. But unfortunately, this country's psyche never fully outgrew Gandhi as the father figure as a result of which, Communal clashes as a rebellion child sentiment and revivalism and False father idealization still exists in the country. 

For a nation to fully outgrow his own maker is not completely possible. But to recognize the elements of your father and to be able to rectify through your own intellect, where Your father was wrong is what a healthy child is supposed to do. A healthy nation, similarly, has to one day try and test and accept or reject the father and Let the father finally die, symbolically of course, so that the Nation lives forever as a grown up.