Of Gandhi, and dustballs!
Today, 30th Jan 2006, happens to be the 58th death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. A day as good (or as bad) as any to think about the man, if one wants to. As it happens, I do.
My journey in "knowing" Gandhi started, I suspect, as most Indian kids' do - there was an essay book in class 3 that had an essay on him - born on 2nd October 1869 in Porbandar, son of......so on and so forth. Then I happened to watch the movie by Richard Attenborrough, and was mesmerised. Then read the book "Freedom at Midnight" by Lapierre and Collins, and was even more hooked. What sort of a man could choose to be thousands of miles away from the centrestage on what could arguably be his finest hour? At the midnight of 14/15 August 1947, as India made its "tryst with destiny", Gandhi was in Noakhali, in Bengal, trying to calm down the fires of hatred sparked by the Partition.
And yet, many believed, and still do, that the Partition itself was sparked by Gandhi. I don't know. My further readings, on as well as by, Gandhi, have only generated a sort of love for the man - a love born out of, and not in spite of, his imperfections. He was no Mahatma - he was indeed just another human being - but with staunch belief in himself, and whatever he happened to deem his duty for that period - be it in South Africa fighting against apartheid, in India fighting for the Indigo farmers, the mill workers, untouchables, India's freedom...
Today, Gandhi is little more than a prop for politicians and masses alike. The popular saying "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" may indeed be rephrased as "Gandhi is the last refuge of the scoundrel". We first created a Mahatma out of a man, then forgot what the man stood for, and now care little either for the man or the Mahatma.
P.S. What is it with dustballs? They are all over the place when the last thing you want to touch on a saturday morning is a broom. Then they do a disappearing act when you actually get down to cleaning. And finally, when you are lying down on your bed with the satisfied smirk of a job well done, they again pop from all nooks and corners. It cannot be a coincidence, or am I just being paranoid?
posted by Pankaj @ 10:06 AM
2 Comments:
Its quite fashionable to mock GandhiJi's person and his role in the freedom movement today. I am no historian, but I surely wish people would read more before shooting off their ignorant mouths.
Surprisingly there wasn't much hullabaloo in the media (print, at least) about death anniversary of GandhiJi. Sign of changing times, I guess.
Thank you for writing this piece. My encounter with Gandhi started some 13 years ago when I was a student at Brown University. I had grown up like other Indian kids you described on my "dose" of Gandhi, the Mahatma. However, what I saw around me did not exactly match the writings that had been shoved down our throats in Class 3 and periodically thereafter. With the political parties using and denouncing him to their convenience, the self-professedly intellectual-thinking middle class blaming him for the partition and the general second class status of the Hindus in "their Hindu" India--these are all very loaded and would make for huge treatises in themselves. My views on Gandhi were quite similar to these--no different from those held by my friends and elders. Till I met Prof. Morris. "Abhinav, if you want to understand India, understand Gandhi," he said. And, thus started my tryst with Gandhi. Over the years I have read several books written on and by Gandhi. The man is absolutely fascinating, wonderfully endearing, charming yet fearless. One who could be completely at home with a GD Birla and the "lowest" harijan. A personality wrought with so many contradictions that, somehow, came together seamlessly and formed someone so complete. To steal from Einstein, "The world will scarcely believe that a man such as this walked the face of the earth." (apologise for mistakes in the quote)
Often I encounter people bad-mouthing Gandhi. I challenge them to find me only three qualities or points or flaws in him that he himself did not acknowledge. I am still waiting for number 1.
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