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Passage 18
Read the following passage carefully and answer questions 86 to 90.
It should be remembered that the nationalist movement in India, like all nationalist movements, was essentially a bourgeois movement. It represented the natural historical stage of development and to consider it, or to criticise it, as a working-class movement is wrong. Gandhi represented that movement and the Indian masses in relation to that movement to a supreme degree, and he became the voice of Indian people to that extent. The main contribution of Gandhi to India and the Indian masses has been through the powerful movements that he launched through the National Congress.
Through nationwide action, he sought to mould the millions and largely succeeded in doing so. He changed them from a demoralized, timid, and hopeless mass, bullied and crushed by every dominant interest and incapable of resistance, into a people with self-respect and self-reliance, resisting tyranny, and capable of united action and sacrifice for a larger cause. Gandhi made people think of political and economic issues, and every village and every bazaar hummed with argument and debate on the new ideas and hopes that filled the people.
That was an amazing psychological change. The time was ripe for it, of course, and circumstances and world conditions worked for this change. But a great leader was necessary to take the advantage of those circumstances and conditions. Gandhi was that leader, and he released many bonds that imprisoned and disabled our minds, and none of us who experienced it can ever forget that great feeling of release and exhilaration that came over the Indian people.
Gandhi has played a revolutionary role of greatest importance in India because he knew how to make the most of the objective conditions and could reach the heart of the masses, whereas groups with a more advanced ideology functioned largely in air because they did not fit in with those conditions and could, therefore, not evoke any substantial response from the masses.
It is perfectly true that Gandhi, functioning in nationalist plane, did not think in terms of the conflict of classes, trying to compose their differences. But the actions he indulged in and taught the people has inevitably raised mass consciousness tremendously and made social issues vital. Gandhi and the Congress must be judged by the policies they pursued and the action they indulged in. But behind this, personality counts and colours those policies and activities. In case of very exceptional persons like Gandhi, the question of personality becomes especially important in order to understand and appraise him. To us, he represented the spirit and honour of India, the yearning of her sorrowing millions to be rid of their innumerable burdens, and an insult to him by the British Government or others was an insult to India and her people.