Gandhi & relevance of Gandhism

-

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

There was a time when we were young and we were taught to revere Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (aka Mahatma Gandhi) and he was almost God like to us. 

I still remember seeing his photos hung in the houses just like you would hang a photo of the immeasurable number of Gods that we have or completely forgotten or about to be forgotten ancestors. 

I look back with amusement that I was named as Mohan after this very great man (much to the insistence of my “Chitti pati”)  

Over time, as young men, we read more about Gandhi. His experiments with Truth and his magical power of moving the masses. Some of them with amusement and many with seriousness that they deserved. 

Somewhere down the line as we grew up, MG became more human and was fallible like you and me. He was prone to his own quirks and quixotic ways, or so we understood. His experiments with Bramhacharya or his obstinate way to make things happen or his Machiavellian ways to ease in Jawaharlal whom he anointed as his political successor much against the tide of the then giants like Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel, Chakravarthy Rajagopalachari, the undoubtably and charismatic Subhashchandra Bose, …

All these made him more human in our eyes and while we were ready to forgive him for many a folly, some of us were critical and spoke about his shortcomings and particularly hoisting a family to rule us post the colonial period. 

We also learnt that he was put up that pedestal and kept there so that his earlier selective narrations was to be taken as gospel. 

His name was usurped, branded, bandied and sullied. 

The “Gandhi family” is now almost spoken like it is some mafioso gang.

In the current age Gandhi name has almost become a liability as much as an asset that it was. It has become what we call in Kannada as “Bisi Thuppa - nungOkkagOlla, uguLOkkagalla”  traditional congress people have this predicament.

It is time to do what we call as “Hamsaksheera nyaya”  take the good part of MG, make him more human, pardon his mistakes (some might want to differ on this part though) and move on. 

After all he did motivate and move the masses and made Swaraj and Satyagraha a concept which captured the minds of youngsters of that day, that they were ready to lay down their life for this movement and this non-violence movement.

- Na Sri Mo



Comments

Post a Comment

What is your opinion please comment here

Popular posts from this blog

Those Three months in 2022

-
Image
Have you heard of the phrase “being Blind-sided”?  If there is a way that I can describe, it is that - “I was Blind-sided”.  Blindsided means “Getting an unpleasant surprise from a most unexpected or least expected side” I did (and still do) believe in maintaining one’s health through good exercise and reasonable dietary restrictions (Not overdoing anything and be moderate, even though it sounds a bit boring). Overall, I have had an interesting life with a lot of physical activities built into it. The Day I was Blind-sided. 21st June, International yoga day. At Eagleton, the resident’s association had decided to celebrate it on 19th (Sunday) followed by breakfast. I had planned to go on a breakfast bike ride that morning and changed the plan to attend this. While my wife’s incentive was yoga, mine happened to be purely the nice breakfast that would be served post the yoga session. 19 th June Morning Generally, I’m an early riser (3.45AM) and on that day reluctantly,...
Read more

Those months after ...

-
Image
  Preface A sequel to a blog? It did not sound like a good idea. After all, any sequel never lives up to expectation especially after the reception of the first part. But then again, there have been sequels that have seen success like the movie “Bahubali”, "KGF" or the classic “Godfather”! So, why not, I asked myself. At the end, I decided that I’m writing to chronicle what I went through and to reminiscence and read it in my "Old age". While I do hope that it helps others who read it, I’m doing this to satisfy my writing urge. With this justification, I used my blogger friend and mentor, Sri Srinidhi as a sounding board and asked his opinion off a “sequel blog” He immediately said, “Good idea”. So here it is, sequel to my earlier blog   Those three months in 2022 Any blog needs a title and the first one that I wrote was called “Those three months in 2022” or “TTM 22” Without any further ado, “Those months after..” or “TMA 22” Those months after… Now, was I st...
Read more

My Brother’s friend

-
Image
Long time back, my brother had a very close friend. Being so, he was also like an elder brother to me.  We lost touch with him many years back and even though we had made some feeble attempts to get back in touch, it did not work. Perhaps, more due to lack of intensity of getting back in touch from us and also from him.  He was a very genial and down to earth person. He had many an advice for me as I grew up.  When my brother attended his schoolmates 50th year get-together, he had hoped to see his old friend there and was disappointed not to see him. Enquiries with other classmates lead to an information that one of the classmates spoke to him about two plus years back and this old friend was sounding very sick with a feeble voice. Apparently, he had lost his job and was having health issues. The classmate gave a telephone number of the friend and it was not reachable. The “True caller” app suggested this was in the name of that old friend.  My brother spoke to me ab...
Read more