Mahatma Gandhi: The unlikely poster boy for Pravasi Bharatiya Divas

It’s always been a little odd that the Father of the Nation is also put forward as its most famous NRI. The Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas began during Vajpayee years and the date chosen for it was the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa. This year marks the 100th anniversary of that return and the NRI celebrations have kicked off with much fanfare in Gujarat. It will come complete with a reenactment of that return. Poor Gandhiji. He not only has to be the face of our currency, the topi on the heads of politicians and the father of the nation. He must also be pressed into service as the NRI poster boy. [caption id=“attachment_1740033” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Mahatma Gandhi. Getty Images[/caption] “A hundred years ago a pravasi Bharatiya had returned to India to serve this country,” Narendra Modi told this year’s gathering in Gandhinagar. And then added “today, a hundred years later, a pravasi Gujarati is welcoming you here”. Of course, the irony is if you asked the average NRI about who is the most famous NRI they can think of, the chances are none would say Gandhi. Gandhi is for most of us a very “resident” Indian because the part of his life we are taught most about was the part in India. He does not feel like an NRI because he feels so settled in our consciousness as an Indian, devoid of all the push and pull, the hyphenated identity that involves being an NRI. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, who is being honoured this year is indeed more what we imagine an NRI to be. The other irony is many who became NRIs in the West went there because license raj under Congress rule in independent India felt so stifling to them. The soul of a nation long suppressed was still not finding utterance as Nehru had promised it would. And that led to a massive brain drain. The idea of Gandhi was one thing but the India being built by Gandhi’s handpicked successors was another. The Gandhian India felt to many of them to be yesterday’s India which they had left to pursue the American Dream. Gandhi was a wonderful Indian export. They liked forming committees to erect his statues in London or San Francisco but the NRI dream was quite far from the Gandhian vision. There was of course another kind of NRI. The ones who did not go to Silicon Valley and New Jersey but as construction labour to the Middle East or to build rail roads in East Africa or even early as girmitiyas to work sugar plantations in British colonies. That migration was never part of the NRI narrative until more recently. The first Pravasi Bharatiya Divas-es were not about fete-ing them. The first PIO/OCI cards did not include them. When the indentured labour tried to come back to India they were not welcomed back with open arms. There was no Pravasi Bharatiya Divas hoopla organized for them. In her book Coolie Woman, Gaiutra Bahadur writes when the indentured did come back, the returnees, especially women were not welcomed back home. Coolies deserted their wives from Guiana at Howrah station. Many just camped out in the slums of in the docklands of Calcutta. When a ship with returnees docked in Calcutta, Nehru, already with his hands full with refugees from Pakistan, complained “Thetar log aagaye (the stubborn people have come)”. When Gandhi came back to India Gopal Grishna Gokhale suggested he travel across the country to understand India. That led him to places like Champaran in Bihar. “It was Champaran that introduced me to India,” Gandhi wrote in one of his letters. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas had far more prosaic aims for its NRIs. The last thing the Indian government wanted was already uppity NRIs coming and leading satyagraha agitations across India for farmers rights. They wanted a different kind of investment – dollars and pounds. India, in fact, did not want its NRIs back ala Gandhi. India wanted their remittances from abroad. And while NRIs complained about being regarded as a sort of step-child and derided for having turned their backs on India, the NRI Day was a sort of song-and-dance ego stroke moment. It led to more concrete gains like the OCI card though never to the actual dual citizenship many NRIs had fantasized about. Even when Narendra Modi spoke to the ecstatic NRIs at Madison Square Garden he asked very little of them. He spent most of the speech patting them on the head and telling them what he would do for them and thanking them for all the work and money they raised on his behalf. He did remind them about Gandhi’s return to India in 1915. But he didn’t ask his audience to do the same. Or do very much for India. He said every Indian-American could persuade five non-Indian families to visit India. And yes, there would be visa on arrival waiting for them. Gandhi’s return to India was an exercise in humility, to understand that despite everything he had achieved in South Africa, he did not have the answers and needed to spend a year understanding his homeland. The stereotype of the NRI sadly is quite the opposite as I observed after that Madison Square Garden speech – Mr. Moneybags, Ms Know-it-all, Mr. Self-Entitled and Ms I-Want. But it always feels good to be told you are walking in Gandhi’s footsteps, as the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas suggests, whether or not it’s true. However if Madison Square Garden was any indication, chances are NRIs were actually nodding more enthusiastically at Venkaiah Naidu when he told them in Gandhinagar “If Gandhiji was the man of the moment 100 years go, Shri Narendra Modi is the man of the moment now. It seems to be a divine coincidence that both share the same place of birth.” The Pravasi Bharatiyas might do lip service to Gandhi but there’s clearly a new icon in town these days. And if you are a lucky NRI, he might even tag you in his #SwachhBharat campaign.