P. A. Chacko
The tallest towering figure of our Indian nation is Mahatma Gandhi whose birthday we celebrate on 2nd October.
Under his leadership, crowds walked with him along India’s lanes and streets, shouting for a halt to the British rule in India.
Scantily clothed, and often with bare body waste upwards, he taught his followers the value of sacrifice. The nation mattered him the most. He paid scant attention to the British sahibs derisively calling him ‘naked fakir.’
He was bothered, rather, about the way the white men lorded over the brown Indians. Their oppressive colonial rule and their looting of the nation’s wealth and resources to fill their coffers were offensive and condemnatory.
He had the courage to enter the Round Table Conference Hall in London as a ‘naked fakir’ to represent our right to self rule.
Humble as he was, he humbled the tie and boot-wearing sahibs by making them realize that what mattered were human values, not ties and flashy overcoats.
Gandhiji was India’s voice for freedom, for self-governance. He was determined that the British had to go.
He had differences with some Indian leaders too. Convinced of his principles, he dared to walk alone too. As most Indians were celebrating India’s freedom, he was walking alone in the streets of Bengal preaching communal peace and harmony in order to stop Hindu-Muslim riots.
Truth was his armour. Ahimsa, nonviolence, was his breastplate. He felt that, we who won our freedom with struggle from the white sahibs, should not become ourselves brown sahibs. Slavish imitations of the white man’s eating habits, living habits, palatial villas and bungalows , his competitive ladder-climbing urge, his lazy sports, (cricket for one), his lavish dress habits etc.were not values for the Mahatma. Dress can cover our nakedness, not our naked soul, so taught Gandhiji by way of life and example.
Today, unfortunately, we have turned brown sahibs. Our political leaders flaunt their worth in the way they dress with gliterring apparel. We lazily watch the weeklong cricket game, certifying it as the white man’s noble gift, as a mantra to forget our poverty, misery and unemployment.
We demand our school children to wear the neck-tie for a ‘gentlemanly look.’ We teach them competitive values to climb the ladder of success.
Gandhiji’s values are not our values. Our values have gone haywire. In the midst of poor masses struggling in huts and slums, sky-high mansions stand tall as if mocking Gandhi’s vision of India. Without cheese and butter, toast and bull’s eye, our morning breakfast will not go down our gullet.
Today, Gandhi haters and Gandhi baiters are a dime a dozen. Running institutions, playing horse-trade politics, roaming the streets with murder calls, or presiding over our democratic institutions to sell their hidden agenda, and the like, are our pastime.
Gandhiji advocated a democratic set up starting with grassroots democracy. But, today, we see quite many denouncing Gandhi, burning his effigies, replacing him with Godse his murderer, and quickening their steps to bury India’s noble democratic pillars.
We appear to be proud of invading the moon like the British invaded our land once. We have given up our village and traditional tecnology and gone for digital India and eyeing for digital Bharat, a new paradise. Our politicians feel proud displaying their broad chest and noble deeds for providing poor Indians with matchbox like latrines.
When Tagore prayed that, “Into that heaven of freedom , my Father, let my country awake”, he was not thinking of the burning Gujarats, Kandhmals and Manipurs, where looters, rapists, murderers, lynching mobs undertaking ethnic violence, or self-styled armies function freelance under the protecting eyes of the ruling power.
Times are fast changing. Gandhiji is getting devalued as an elastic piece in inflationary India. When we shall enter Bharat, Gandhiji will be replaced with his murderers and plotters, with those who slavishly sang the glories of the White Rule.
If Gandhiji were to resurrect and cross our path tody, what type of ‘Bharat Darshan’ he will have?
“There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
