After calling Indian soldiers who fought First World War as “hired assassins”, questioning selection of judges, describing 90% Indians as idiots, labelling gay marriages “unnatural”, Justice Markandey Katju is here once again.
In a personal blog, he has claimed that Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, was a British agent. His appetite for remaining in headlines has gone too far to blame the Father of the Nation mixing religion into politics. Former Supreme Court judge, who also retired recently as head of Press Council of India, says he believes that, “Gandhi was objectively a British agent who did great harm to India.”
“By constantly injecting religion into politics continuously for several decades, Gandhi furthered the British policy of divide and rule,” he wrote in his blog. He goes on to say that Gandhi “diverted the freedom struggle from this revolutionary direction to a harmless nonsensical channel called Satyagrah. This also served British interests.” He also called Gandhi’s economic ideas ‘thoroughly reactionary’. He writes that self-sufficient villages advocated by the Father of the Nation were ‘casteist and in the grip of money lenders and landlords.’
“If we read Gandhi's public speeches and writings (e.g. in his newspapers 'Young India', 'Harijan ', etc) we find that ever since Gandhi came to India from South Africa in 1915 or so till his death in 1948, in almost every speech or article he would emphasise Hindu religious ideas eg Ramrajya, GauRaksha (cow protection ), brahmacharya (celibacy), varnashram dharma (caste system), etc (see Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi),” the blog reads.
He also questioned Gandhi’s efforts to douse communal fires during Partition. “Some people praise Gandhi's bravery in going to Noakhali, etc to douse the communal violence at the time of Partition. But the question is why did he help setting the house on fire in the first place by preaching religious ideas in public political meetings for several decades, which were bound to divide the Indian people on religious lines? First you set the house on fire, and then you do the drama of trying to douse the flames,” he writes.
