Dr. Abhay Bang & anti-lockdown satyagraha

Dr. Abhay Bang and his wife Dr.Rani Bang represent the finest flower of present day Gandhianism in India. The late Thakurdas Bang, Abhay's father, was a Gandhian economist like Kumarappa. His son and daughter-in-law are Medical Doctors who gained post-graduate qualifications from John Hopkins in Public Health. They have remained in India working at the grass-roots level while contributing to Medical Science and Public Health Policy.

Sadly, Dr. Bang has written a foolish article in the Hindustan Times titled 'What would Gandhi do?' The fact is Gandhi only did one thing under all circumstances. He collected money for crackpot schemes promising a magical result. The reason his fraud was not discovered was because he kept going to jail every few years on some excuse or the other. After Independence, this option was off the table. That is why Gandhian swindles have petered out. Perhaps, in some dim, animalistic, way people like Dr. Bang understand what mars their felicity- it is the impossibility of martyrdom, or even a little jail time. Thus, this Gandhian writes-

The current global crisis is multi-layered.

No it isn't. It is about only one thing- a virus.

The Covid-19 pandemic, economic recession and climate crisis are compounded by the lack of political and moral leadership.

The recession is a product of the virus. There is no climate crisis. There is anthropic climate change but that has been true for many years and it will remain true unless technology greatly changes.

What would Mahatma Gandhi do had he been faced with this crisis?

He'd have talked worthless shite and raised money for stupid schemes. Gandhi achieved nothing. He asked for a crore of Rupees to deliver 'Swaraj'. The money came in but Swaraj became more distant. He said 'khaddar' would cure poverty- it made it worse. The thing was a money pit. He thought 'Nai Talim' would get rid of illiteracy. It got rid of money and talent till both money and talent abandoned it and it perished.  Abhay attended a Nai Talim school as a kid and describes the experience as magical. It was- for a bright kid taught by interesting eccentrics- but it inculcated magical thinking. To become a Doctor, he had to go to a proper School. Nai Talim, as even Dr. Zakir Hussain realised, was a fraud. It is sheer magical thinking to assert that kids can pay for their own education by doing manual labor. But magical thinking was Gandhi's specialty. Why pay expensive school fees? Kids can learn as they earn. Why spend money on medicines and Doctors? Spread some nice mud on the afflicted portion of your anatomy. Why have an Army and a Navy and an Air-force? If you say 'I believe in Ahimsa' no one will attack you. As for jobs and money- just spin a little cotton. The one thing you can't do is get rid of the Brits because first Hindus and Muslims must be united but they mustn't be united because they belong to different religions.

Can Dr. Bang suggest anything as stupid as the Mahatma? Let us see-

This thought experiment yields a nine-point action programme. One, far deadlier than the virus is the fear pandemic that has paralysed the world. Gandhi would ask us to first shed this fear, as he asked the Indians to shed the fear of the British.

There is no 'fear pandemic'. People don't want to get sick. That's not fear, that is a rational preference.

Nor was there any Indian 'fear of the British'. Gandhi's Mummy would scarcely have let her son go to London if she thought the English would eat him.

So, Dr. Bang's first point is stupid and useless. What of his second?

Two, caring for the sick was his natural instinct. People with Covid-19 need physical care and nursing.

No they don't if they are asymptomatic. This may be 80 percent of all people.  Sick people need nursing- from proper nurses and Doctors. Crazy and stupid people should suppress any natural instinct they have to confine people to bed and nurse the fuck out of them.

Gandhi would have nursed them. He would be fastidious about hygiene and mask usage.

But what would he have done about 'test and trace'? Nothing. The guy didn't really believe in the germ theory of disease. More scandalously, neither did Dr. Pranjivan Mehta. Gandhi and him would cluster with the anti-vaccination nutjobs.

Gandhi’s emphasis on a healthy lifestyle, empowerment for self-care, and care in the community would make perfect sense.

No. They would be highly mischievous. 'Test and trace'' is the way to go. Thus Dr. Bang's second point is as worthless as any Gandhi may have suggested.

Three, Gandhi gave us his famous talisman to guide us to our duty towards “the most helpless and wretched human being that you ever saw”.

But Gandhi made a point of dressing that part.  So Gandhi's talisman reduces itself to everyone having to serve that old cretin. He even took money off some very poor women in Orissa whose threadbare garments scarcely protected their modesty. What did Gandhi do with that money? He paid lawyers not to attend Court. He may as well have set fire to the cash he was collecting. The man was shameless.

The displaced urban migrant workers, hungry and humiliated, would unquestionably be his talisman.

Yes! Gandhi would have set up a relief fund for them and then pissed the money up a wall on one of his stupid schemes.

Gandhi would rush to them.

Till they realized he was a nuisance and told him to fuck off.

He would help preserve their dignity and hope and join the walking bands of migrants as a symbol of unity and protest against the government’s apathy and irresponsibility. That would be his New Dandi march.

Wonderful! He would help migrants spread the virus to their natal villages. Gandhi's Dandi March failed. The salt tax was not abolished till after Independence. But it was then quickly reinstated and continues to this day.

On the other hand, Gandhi would have supported 'One Nation, One Ration Card'. He was less stupid than Dr. Bang. But then he didn't have a Masters from John Hopkins.

Four, communal unity was the last but incomplete cause of Gandhi’s life.

No kidding! His Party presided over the biggest ethnic cleansing of Muslims in India's history.

When the virus had arrived, some leaders were busy stoking communal hatred.

Others were busy stoking hatred of the BJP

Uniting against communal divisions would be Gandhi’s foremost cause,

though Gandhi presided over the largest genocide against Muslims on Indian soil

even risking assassination.

Sardar Patel seems to have done his best to ensure the risk was maximised.

He would try to unite people of all religions and castes and send them as volunteers to serve in each other’s areas.

But the Tablighi Jamaat were sending 'volunteers to serve in each other's areas'! That's what people- including Muslim organizations- objected to.

Once again, I think Gandhi would not have been quite as cretinous as Dr. Bang.

Five, the fear of infection and strict lockdown has forced people to shut their doors and shun social contact. Gandhi would question — how can there be neighbourhood and community without contact? I suspect Gandhi would go to the extent of launching a satyagraha by challenging the ghettos created by the lockdown. When the veil is suddenly removed, one sees clearly the depth of alienation the pandemic and fear has led to. It has made everybody “an untouchable”.

So this Doctor says 'oppose lockdown'. However he is wrong about Gandhi launching a satyagraha on this issue. Why? Modi is more popular than Gandhi. Thus Gandhi's satyagraha would be an abject affair. He would look a fool. Donations would dry up. Nobody would bother to assassinate the old fool. However, some Banias and Marwaris might face hostility. They would swiftly get Gandhi to change his tune.

Six, faced with Covid-19, the global and national leadership have committed blunders and changed the goalposts. Armed with little knowledge about it, judgement errors are natural, but where is the honest admission of failure?

Will Dr. Bang admit that he is wrong about the lockdown? No. Yet he is a Doctor. Global and National leaders who have relied on their statutory Scientific Advisors have not done anything wrong. But if any listened to this cretin, they are welcome to admit that it was a mistake.

Gandhi would admit to his errors.

No. He would insist that he was fundamentally right. If people thought he had failed it was because they were stupid. Any way, his Will was God's.

And, surprisingly, that would make people trust him even more.

It is not surprising if stupid clowns trusted him even more. Why? Because he was saying what they wanted to hear.

Seven, in the past 12 years, we have seen that a globalised economy crumbles in the face of faraway tremors such as the financial crisis in the United States or the emergence of a new virus.

This cretin does not seem to know that the longest bull run in history ended just recently. He believes the 'globalised economy crumbled'. Under which rock has he been living?

Gandhi would remind us of the stability of local production and local consumption (gram swaraj).

Which is how come there are no migrants. Thanks to gram swaraj, nobody needs to leave village to work.

Eight, consumers will ask, “What about our needs?’

No they won't. I'm a consumer. I don't go around asking people stupid questions. Instead I spend money satisfying my needs and desires and fancies. There is competition for my cash which is why there is more than enough for my greed.

Gandhi would explain that this unlimited desire to consume is not a need. If we limit our greed, we can happily live without several excesses of modern society.

We can live even more happily if we don't limit our greed. This is because, absent some medical disorder, we don't really have any.

Nine, Gandhi’s final piece of advice to us would be to pray.

Sadly, a genuine prayer, as opposed to an abject importunity, can't be made on the advise of another. It must be unmediated. God is not a barrister to whom you are referred to by a Solicitor. This does not mean one should not advise others to pray. It is a polite way of telling them to fuck off and stop bothering you.

At the end of each day, sit quietly, reflect, and submit yourself to god, to life, to nature, to truth, to history.

Or don't. Neither God nor Life, nor Nature, nor Truth, nor History, wants you to do stupid shit.

You have done all you could have.

This is never true. We could always do less stupid shit.

Now do not continue to carry the burden on your back.

There is no burden. You may be tired. Take a nap.

Realise the limits of your efforts in this infinite cosmos. Submit and say: “Thy will be done”. “Inshallah”. “Hey Ram”.

Hey Ram, buddy, how's it hangin'?

We should not be waiting for Gandhi.

Because he is dead.

We should be acting on what he would have done.

No. He was stupid and ignorant and every single one of his crackpot schemes failed.

Dr. Bang and his wife probably do have expert knowledge of medicine and public health in a tribal areas. With help from the MacArthur Foundation, they may have done a lot of good there. But this was because they had useful knowledge and learned about local conditions. However, the moment Dr. Bang speaks of ultracrepidarian matters- i.e. things outside of his sphere of competence- he sounds like an utter cretin. Gandhi did know about fund-raising and talking bollocks and organizing cretins. But, that was in the context of British Rule. It may be the Indians genuinely wanted to make the task of British Governors and Viceroys easier, not harder, while still reserving themselves a place at the top table after they left. That was over 70 years ago. What may have had a point then can no longer do so now.

Why does this man, an Indian citizen born after Independence, write as though India is ruled by an alien power? Is it because Gandhianism was always alien to India? It shrank and turned putrid after the last Viceroy left. Dr. Bang, being a Doctor, was less useless than most Gandhians. Yet, in the end, his mind had been destroyed by a Nai Talim which wasn't New and which wasn't Education. It was senile shite.

It may be that country's with a youthful demographic should let COVID run its course. That may be the verdict of Scientists come to. Dr. Bang may be right that Indians should defy lockdowns. But the reason he gives for defying the lockdown is foolish. Wanting to help people can hurt them. The path to Hell is paved with good intentions. Dwelling wilfully in ignorance, as Gandhians do, is not a sacred vocation. It can become a public nuisance.