Brand Gandhi- A Wacky Analysis of a Wacko Mahatma
(this grand brand is in great demand)
There they were, a group of elegant desi women, singing to commemorate this year’s Gandhi Jayanti. Dressed in White salwar kurtas & saris, they were swaying, Gospel Choir-like, as an uncomfortable looking desi guy strummed Guitar chords to their song. The song was not Gandhiji’s favorite “Vaishnav jan to” or even “Raghupati Raghav“, with the Gratuitous “Eeshwar Allah tero naam” thrown in.
No. This was America, & “cool” desis knew that in order to be “mainstream” [i.e. Gora Copy], one had to sing an “English” song, complete with harmonizing, & Guitar chords, & words like “let there be Peace…peace as it was meant to be“, and “God our creator” thrown in. So the predominantly White Christian crowd could nod to each other with self Satisfaction, “Oh! Isn’t that Nice! They’re just like us!“
(Wonder how many say “It’s so nice to know that We’re just like them“…??)
Bhoil ( the bhoot, or imp inside my head) couldn’t take it anymore, & jumped out of the room, out past the parking lot, through the midsized American town, past the Atlantic, Europe, Middle East & Central Asia, past all that fighting, into Bharatvarsh, & into a small town in North India. Back the time warp, through the decades…
Early eighties. Growing up going to Angrezi school. Gandhiji was Everywhere, on the coins & currency notes, on flags, in movies…. We sang to the “father of the nation”…a.k.a “Bapooooo….ji” “De di hamen aazaadi bina Khadg bina Dhaal, Sabaramati ke Sant toone kar diya kamaal…Raghupati Raghav..”
Late eighties, in college, we diligently avoided the label of “Oh yeah, Big Gandhi, you!” cuz that jus’ wasn’t cool….
Moving to the US, while going thru my slave ( oops, student ) phase, I had the unique opportunity to interact with Gandhiji’s Great Nephew, Arun Gandhi. He was visiting our University for the “peace foundation” that he still heads, somewhere in Southern US. You know, jaw jaw, & raise money for “good causes”.
I was supposed to take him to dinner on behalf of the SAS (South Asian Students Association. Yeah yeah…the South Asianization of Indians was already in full swing). I met a nattily suited-booted “gentelman” who turned out to be the “great man” (great man’s greatnephew actually, what a feat to be born that way!). Nothing very Gandhian about our evening, where he insisted on being taken to the “best restaurant in town” & we both gorged to our heart’s content (someone else was paying the bill!), while mumbling big mouthfuls about “global peace”.
Brand AnalysisLet’s throw in some marketing jargon here (gotta keep that MBa up to date, y’know!). The name Gandhi is a Deployable, Marketable asset. Ask Sonia maino & she would confirm, she has both deployed & marketed it well, what with her “Gandhian values” & all. Currently the Brand Managament has been completely “outsourced” to Westernized (mostly pseudo secular) Indians, & their “originals”, i.e. Westerners & their institutions. Gandhi the “son of the soil” the devout hindu, is pretty much a boring, passe afterthought. So, Gandhi the brand has been co-opted & captured by others, or let go by his people.
Among the few (but massive in their reach) brands that are uniquely Indian, i.e. Yoga, Bhagvad Gita, Sanskrit Philosophical & Scientific literature, concepts like Shanti, Ahimsa, etc, Brand Gandhi is probably not quite “up there” (in my opinion anyway), but still, is probably the most accessible to the common man all over the world.
What happens when “your” brand is managed by sophisticated outsiders?
Agency Conflict, as my Mba prof would say. What this means is that the “Brand Management Agency“, be it the CEO & his Management team (who represents the Board, who in turn represent the owners), or a govt. which manages a country “on behalf of the people”, has its own interests foremost in mind, & this may not co-incide with what the “brand owners” had in mind.
Back to the Gandhi Brand. The “Gandhi Jayanti” (especially this year being Satyagraha’s Centennial) can be looked at as an annual “brand renewal exercise”, that reminds us of the value of this particular brand. It is sad indeed to be treating Gandhiji on par with, say Lux soap, but these are the media soaked times we live in. Personally, I think criticism of Gandhiji is justified in many cases (see sulekha blogger Agneya Panja’s blogs , for a particularly trenchant one-especially in his application of “non-violence”, Was Satyagraha a Hindu Movement? at [ http://agneya-panja.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4758 ] excerpted in Ref#1 below) but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him, or what he has done.
It is just that I think of him as somewhere between the “20th century saint deserving worship” & the “Gandhi Brand to be deployed & used for max. gain“.
I’m all for an “Experiments with the Truths” approach to life, as Gandhiji’s Autobio is called, but then my experiments…well…who cares, their consequences do not reverberate thru millions of Indians, & across a century!
Case in point is how the congress party has virtually hi-jacked the brand for the past 60 + years. See how the Lage Raho Munnabhai’s “gandhigiri” effect seems to be playing out with today’s Indian youth “experimenting” with owning brand Gandhi. Better than outsiders doing it, I guess.
In the West, it is particularly interesting to see Gandhiji being regarded as a “great disciple of Christ” (as I’ve personally heard said by Christian Church “Fathers” in lectures organized, ironically enough, by Hindu Temples!). As a “hindu” I see nothing particularly wrong in being a “disciple of Christ”, but then I’m a Hindu ( a lo-brand at best, or a no-brand at worst!) & don’t believe in exclusive identities. From the perspective of common people in the west, when they hear these kinds of “disciple of Christ” characterization, in their minds they are already on to the slippery slope of converting (pun intended) him into a “person of Christian values” and then onto “more Christian than Us Christians”. Anything but the “proud hindu” that he used to often vehemently insist he was.
The whole rationale of this “re-branding” was since Gandhiji, being no different than us other IBCD NRIs (Indian Born Confused Desis, Non-Resident Indians), was more “English” than Indian (he himself hilariously documented this in his chapter “Imitating the English Gentleman” where he goes to learn ballroom dancing..). So like all us “Angrez ki dum“s {“tail of the English dog” if you insist! 
}, he had more occasion during his growing years to read & admire the Bible than the many & multifaceted (& potentially confusing to an uninitiated boy, I guess) Dharmic literature of his mother land. He picked out the “Sermon on the Mount”, a lecture supposed to be from Jesus to his followers, as a great example of wisdom, which it probably is.
We hindus, of course, whisper to each other at this point “but we KNOW he revered the Bhagavad Gita“. Yes, the fair minded “Christian Fathers” always say a line or two about the “Bhagavad Gita” (a powerful & not to be neglected Brand), but the lion share, the bulk of their talk is about Gandhiji’s “Christian Values“. Cuz they do after all, represent the world’s first “modern style” Corporation, a 2000 yr old behemoth with a “growth oriented” model, with it’s own well funded marketing department. (My “hint” of course it towards the Catholic Church, and it’s “rebel Independent franchisees”, i.e.the many many Evangelical Protestant churches proliferated around the world.)
So in this Brand Tug-of-War (yeah…more mixed up jargon!) who won? Who co-opted “Brand Gandhi” from whom, & why ? We really don’t need an MBa to recognize the “winners & losers” in this “game”, do we?
Meanwhile not many of these powerful “Brand Managers” bother about Gandhiji’s strong insistence that “Conversion” by missionaries is pretty much “evil”. Aftre all, where’s the glamour in repeating that truth?
[Contd. in Part II.]
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Ref#1:
“Gandhian” ideas have a lot of confusing elements in them, & there is plenty to criticize (especially in his application of “non-violence”, see Agneya Panja’s blog Was Satyagraha a Hindu Movement? at [ http://agneya-panja.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=4758 ]
Excerpt:
While Gandhi is viewed as a spiritual leader, in reality he was more a politician who used religious ideas. Being a politician, Gandhi should have practiced the dharma of a Kshatriya (ruler, politician, warrior). Of all the Hindu varnas, it is the Kshatriya varna where violence is used frequently. For Gandhi to suggest otherwise, as he often did, clearly violates the tenets of Hinduism. One only need view the Bhagavad Gita to see that violence was viewed as being — depending on the circumstances — necessary for the Kshatriya.
It was on the battlefield of Kurukshreta that Lord Krishna, considered to be one of the many Avatars of Vishnu — urged Arjuna to go to war against his relatives. Krishna’s message — based on the knowledge of the divine and eternal soul — is in chapter 2 of the Gita:
The embodied soul is eternal in existence, indestructible and infinite, only the material body is factually perishable; therefore fight O Arjuna.[1]
Arjuna did not fight with a charkha. Instead he picked up a bow and arrow, and yes, he killed people! Gandhi had to have known this, because he stated on numerous occasions that he had read the Gita. He chose to ignore the obvious, and interpret Krishna’s message in another manner.
……….
