The campaign rhetoric was not referring to the Gandhi that Narayan Desai wants to make available to us. Their references were entirely bereft of meaning. This vacuous speech is best illustrated by Gordhan Zadaphia’s claim that his rebellion in the BJP was akin to Gandhi’s satyagraha. They were also not referring to the mythic Gandhi.

Myth is also a mode of remembering. As memory, myth creates a present that is lived. As retelling, myth is illustrative of a possible future. The references were also not to the Gandhi of the popular imagination, a la Munnabhai, because even that recognises the transformative possibility of a Gandhi.

It is without a doubt a failure of the political parties in India to deal with Gandhi’s politics and his lok seva. But this has been long recognised. The inability of the political parties to speak meaningfully of Gandhi signals a deeper failure. It signifies a failure of our capacity to hear. Gujarat of today does not wish to be reminded of either the possibilities of Gandhian politics or of his absence. Gujarat today sees itself as a future of India. It is a future that is built upon the petrochemical and energy complexes that dominate the industry of Gujarat. The large coastline that we are so aggressively privatising is our commercial link to the rest of the world. Our speculative tendencies are very profitably employed in the bullish stock market. In this scheme, the poor are a source of cheap and hopefully perennial supply of migrant labour that would help us build the urban spaces that we dream of. Gandhi and his constructive programmes are not part of our economic imagination.

... contd.