Priyamvada Gopal writes:
‘…the announcement came as coalition ministers George Osborne and William Hague visited India to hustle for lucrative arms contracts, emerging triumphantly with a £250m deal to supply missiles to the Indian air force and hoping to persuade the former jewel in the imperial crown to buy the partly British-made Eurofighter Typhoon jet.
This plainly opportunistic move has elicited accusations of "false worship" from Gandhi’s descendants. Hague’s glutinous praise for Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence as "a legacy that is as relevant today as it was during his life", while selling killing machines to his countrymen, is certainly specious. Yet the hawkish rightwing Indian regime these ministers are cosying up to is, with even greater irony, appropriating Gandhi to sanitise its own sectarian past. In Britain as in India, the canonisation of Gandhi has become the perfect vehicle for sanctimonious official rhetoric that obscures the links between capitalism’s military-industrial complex, social hierarchies and state violence…’
via Does Gandhi really belong in Parliament Square? | Priyamvada Gopal | Comment is free | The Guardian.