IN THE NAME OF GANDHI

In an interview, Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson reportedly told this story about his grandfather. One day when he was coming back from school, he threw away a small pencil that had almost been used up and asked his grandfather for a new one. Instead of giving him one, Gandhi asked him a lot of searching questions. He wanted to know how the pencil became small, where did he throw it away- that sort of thing and finally asked him, to his utter disbelief, to go out and look for it in the dark, equipping him with a flashlight. After two hours, the pencil stub was found and the Mahatma was satisfied. His point to his grandson- throwing away natural resources was tantamount to violence against nature and overconsuming resources when there are so many deprived people in the world, violence against humanity.

Perhaps some people at Montblanc needed to have read this story before embarking on their curious attempt to appropriate the Mahatma by creating a Rs 11 lakh pen in his name (along with a 26foot gold thread representing the charkha spindle, just in case the price tag was not excess enough). For someone who would not allow a pencil stub to be wasted, to be lavished with this kind of commemorative excess is surely an act of silliness, if not worse. The logic for this is hard to find, and the argument that both the Mahatma & Montblanc understand the power of the pen to change the world is seductive but ultimately shallow. If anything, as the above example shows, the power to change the world lies in one's ideas and words and not the writing instrument that carries them.

Is there another way to look at this? As brands and consumer culture become a ever bigger part of our lives, isn't it natural that they will interact with and use symbols from our life? Brands are in any case becoming as much culture as commerce, and therefore isn't it natural that they will use the same references that we use otherwise in our everyday lives? Can we selectively cordon off some areas from the purview of commerce? And in any case, isn't the use of Gandhi in today's time almost always symbolic and exploitative? Do political parties use him less cynically?

It is natural for commercial entities like brands to use people who have become common cultural property. When Apple pays tribute to Gandhi while celebrating those who dare to think differently, one can see the link. The problem in this case is not the fact that Gandhi is used as a symbol but that he is used as a symbol for the wrong value. For Gandhi to be badge of status to be flashed by people whose only redeeming feature is that they have money to burn on a transparently false symbol like this is too ridiculous to be even faintly ironic. Gandhi himself understood the power of symbols better than virtually any other leader in the modern era. But if his use of symbols was inspired, in that the symbol always amplified the essence of the core issue at hand, what we have here is a symbol that negates the meaning of what it attempts to symbolize.

And as for politicians using Gandhi only as a convenient symbol, the problem here is not the choice of the symbol but the insincerity that underpins the use of Gandhi as a symbol. Invocation of Gandhi by politicians has become a tired ritual bereft of any connection to his ideas or the mode he proposed of resolving intractable problems. To his followers too, the memory of Gandhi seems to reside more in his practices rather than his ideas.

Which is why the most suitable response to Montblanc is not anger but sarcasm. If we react as owners of the Gandhi brand, as we did in the case of the auction of Gandhi memorabilia, we will be guilty of the same offence that we are accusing Montblanc of. To believe that we can become trustees of Gandhian ideas by outbidding others and spending huge sums on Gandhian things is perhaps more misguided than a luxury's brand attempt to invert the meaning of Gandhi. We do not own Gandhi, nobody does, and we do not even remember him except on occasions like these. Perhaps, we need to thank this luxury brand for reminding us about what Gandhi did not stand for. Perhaps Gandhi's ideas are too stubbornly radical to be a source of inspiration for today's times. Perhaps the only way to absorb Gandhi is to make him a brand and to buy him as one would a product. Even so, spending Rs 11 lakhs on a pen in the name of Gandhi is a tough sell.