Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. This was the same man who I hated from the bottom of my heart when I was in school. Every year, every subject all we had to do was to study about him. Every language had lessons on him, history classes always used to praise him and to add to the misery, we had to watch movies made on him by each and every producer on every Gandhi Jayanti – which meant a national holiday sacrificed to learn more about a person, we already knew enough about!

But wait. Did we really know enough about him? Do we still? Honestly, as a kid, I always used to wonder why Gandhi was given so much of credit for the freedom of India. I was of the opinion that, he in fact delayed the freedom for India and it was he who was responsible for the partition of India. I strongly used to believe that either Subhash Chandra Bose or maybe the revolutionaries in Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Chandrashekar Azad, if they had their way, would have given us freedom much earlier.

But as I have grown up, perspectives have changed. If not for anything, today I salute Gandhiji for his ability to organize people. His sheer capacity to gather people in a matter of no time was perhaps his greatest strength. People were willing to do whatever he asked them to, without questioning him. And he led by example. He had no two faces like most of the politicians of today do. He was a man of simple living and high thinking. That he was hated by many and made a few enemies in the process is immaterial. What needs to be remembered is that he was strong enough to mobilize an entire nation with his thoughts and vision for the country. Even though the freedom might have come a bit late than it could have, what great have we achieved in the last 60 odd years of freedom? Everyone comes with a set of positives and negatives. It’s best when we can leverage the positives and make the negatives redundant to as much an extent as possible.

Salute to the great man on his 141^st birth anniversary.