India: Gandhi looms large

Descendants of Mahatma Gandhi will this week scatter his ashes in the Arabian Sea following their intervention to prevent a museum displaying them. Yet the political and spiritual leader's ideas continue to shape political debate 60 years after his assassination.   

His youngest grandson, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, is currently governor of West Bengal state, where fierce resistance to the acquisition of land for industrialisation -- specifically, for the development of special economic zones -- has involved groups with Gandhian visions of the countryside and the inviolate nature of peasant life.

As India looks to sustain rapid economic growth, long-cherished ideals about rural life are being challenged. Those opposed to liberalisation and privatisation have recently adopted Gandhian-style resistance tactics as well. Their arguments are all the more potent in the absence of strong state authority and with few people strongly making the case for reform.

Caught up in the ideological tussle is the Communist Party of India (Marxist), whose reform drive in its West Bengal stronghold has jarred with its opposition to change on the national stage. It is now hoping to establish a ‘Third Front’, providing voters with an alternative to Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. But its own policy dilemmas and a lack of unity among the leftist parties make this a tall order.