Bush at Gandhi's Grave

In India yesterday to negotiate a nuclear deal with the South Asian superpower, Bush visited the Rajghat, the black marble memorial to Mahatma Gandhi located in Delhi. Lawrence Wittner, professor of history at SUNY-Albany, has written a good Gandhian analysis of Bush's visit in "Gandhi, Bush, and the Bomb". Another historian, UCLA's Vinay Lal, chimed in with an entertaining satirical piece entitled "I Believe in Big Dreams".

All of this discussion, however, leaves me feeling ultimately unsatisfied. It seems to me there are many profound questions here that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of. As an historian, and as a scholar-activist increasingly influenced by Gandhian philosophy, I wonder both about the historical significance of this event and the implications it has for progressive social change. First of all, Bush paying his respects to the Mahatma was not some cleverly-orchestrated public relations maneuver. This has been on the standard itinerary of all visiting dignitaries for decades. In "Bush in India: Just Not Welcome", Arundhati Roy reminds us that

[Bush is] by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe, no shrinking violet himself.)

And yet she contends that

When Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

And she is correct. At one location where police expected 50,000 demonstrators, a contingent of 9,000 officers was faced with an estimated 1.5 lakh (150,000) protestors. As historians, how do we understand this phenomenon? And whether or not we are Gandhians, as human beings concerned with the struggle for social justice, what are the opportunities and limitations that emerge from this situation?

In 2000, Bill Clinton visited the Rajghat. He was on a trip with Madeleine Albright, who in 1996 declared that the 567,000 deaths of children under the age of five resulting from Iraqi sanctions were "worth it." This economic policy killed five times as many Iraqi children (no statistics were compiled for adults) than even the highest estimated total casualty counts of Bush's invasion (as of 10/29/2004), and over seventeen times the named and identified civilian casualties to date. Though Albright later regretted vocalizing this sentiment, it was the policy of the Clinton Administration and clearly it had to have been "worth it" to them or they would not have continued it. Furthermore, her actual "regret" warrants further analysis. What she actually wrote in her book was:

I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations.... As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into the trap and said something I simply did not mean. That was no one’s fault but my own.

This is something quite different from regret. What Albright wishes to take back is not a policy that killed 567,000 children under the age of five, but rather a statement that allowed the responsibility for that policy to be placed squarely at the doorstep of those who crafted it.

As Gandhians, or at least as people with a fundamental commitment to the struggle for peace and social justice, we ought to confront the tendency among some people to apply Gandhi only selectively and to consume themselves with their hatred of Bush. As historians, or at least as people concerned with history, we ought to investigate the particular conditions that are responsible for this outrage over Bush-- an outrage that was virtually nonexistent for Clinton or, for that matter, for General Than Shwe. Finally, we must remember that Gandhi is not infallible. He was wrong on many important questions, not the least of which being history:

Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall. Think of it-- always.

Gandhi cannot by himself lead us to an understanding of history. The study of history, on the other hand, is a cold and inhuman science without a pratical framework to guide our active efforts to redirect its course. To deal with questions of history and violence together seems to me a very promising way to move forward.