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the leaders of modern India, Gandhiji alone had the perspicacity to
recognize that India's soul responds to embodiments of dharma. It
was not merely good tactics that led him to give up the European
dress for the sanyasi's loin cloth; he had an instinctive
understanding of its appeal to the people. He was able to mobilize
the Indian masses as no one else before or since precisely because
he made himself into a Mahatma. Ordinary Hindus looked upon him as a
saviour and educated Hindus found him irresistible. One has only to
read an account of his one-day visit to Gorakhpur by Shahid Amin in
Subaltern Studies29 to appreciate what it meant to be Mahatma
Gandhi. The people came to be convinced that to be loyal to Gandhiji
won them rewards from heaven and to be opposed to him brought
disasters on them.
It was therefore not an accident that
Gandhiji invoked the mighty spirit of Lord Ram, whom the Hindus
regard as the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. For Ram of Balmiki is
no mere cultural hero as he has been made out to be. He is, above
all, an exemplar for the ordering of the community's polity. That is
why shakti (power) is regarded as vital a component of his
personality as sheela (conduct suffused with a moral vision but not
bound by traditional, received wisdom).
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