In 2021, almost a year back when Modi told the world that India had arrived and was ready to take its role as the Viswaguru, some in his constituency, freshly recovering from the first wave of Covid and in a delusionary state of victory over it agreed. A few peppy words coming from the peripatetic PM soothed some lungs. Their faith in illusion and the comfort of staying in a state of delusion made them believe that the panacea to COVID-19 has been discovered in Kadha and its management technique at Patanjali Institute of Management.
A fortnight later the country was hit by the second wave of Covid with Delta leading the onslaught. That euphoria in a Kadha Cup in Kochi was short-lived and not discussed much after that.
I don't know about the foreigners, but many sensible persons in India would have fallen off their seats laughing. A strong country that is a role model for others is built silently over decades and stands on its fundamental character, the traces of which are commonly found across its populace in their attitude and behavior.
Great nations in the past were built over human behavioral concepts like enterprise, professionalism, quality, innovation, industriousness, punctuality, integrity, honesty, honor, loyalty, commitment, and many such things and those countries proudly identified themselves with those characteristics and wove their pride and identities around them. It made me search what exactly were those mythical building blocks over which our nation has magically been built overnight which is now presented to us gift-wrapped.
When in our day-to-day life we don't see these values in practice and their appreciation both at an individual or a systemic level, I insist on remaining a Viswaguru skeptic still.
Today, from early morning various reminder posts of mine and many friends on social media reminded me of the importance of this day as the day on which Mahatma Gandhi fell to his assassin's bullet. Gruesome and disturbing; assassination as a last and desperate method of eliminating a person from that prevailing socio-political equation is not new; both a state and radicals use it selectively. Many great men, as well as abhorrible terrorists, have met this end. From Julius Caesar to Martin Luther King and from Bin Laden to Jamal Khashoggi the list is endless.
While some are easy to eliminate with just a few hot lead pellets some because of their work and what they stood for remain permanently etched in the hearts and minds of people.
In India which till 2013 had almost forgotten the characters and the contribution of the likes of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose, and Shastri, the new political dispensation has resurrected them in their reinterpreted avatar. The Nehru, Patel, and Boses have been exhumed and their relationship reinterpreted and represented before a populace that stands distinctly divided on their inherited and recently influenced interpretation of these historical characters. In a country that loves to forget its history, the motives are more political than their quest for truth.
That brings us to this question – what the truth was and who knows it.
Is the documented history which heavily depends on archived letters, notes, and journals as evidence to reconstruct a past event and interpret the role the characters took in it? Role and Contribution, yes; but are they enough to define a person.
Gandhi in his myriad of dimensions as a person, humanist, husband, father, lover, politician, political strategist, social reformer, labor leader, journalist, and leader of the independence struggle is now ripped apart and dissected under various microscopes whose lenses are colored from the manufacturing stage.
Will we ever get to the truth? Or does it matter?
Each of us - those who have a perception of him through secondary sources and - those who knew him personally in his various dimensions naturally would have different stories to tell. Both sides are not fully right and not fully wrong in their opinion. We have to limit ourselves to what his contribution to our nation-building has been. To me,
- He gave us our identity as citizen of a nation rising above region, language, faith, caste, and class which was missing.
- He is still our moral and ethical role model and in these seventy-odd years, no one has come anywhere close to him.
- He gave us a purpose and rallied the nation around him in the freedom struggle.
- He helped us rediscover the merit of our traditional values and mixed it with other great nations' practical and professional principles to build a great nation.
Sarojini Naidu, on 1st February 1948 few days after his assassination addressed the nation to remember his death as a pledge to right action. She told - While we all mourn—those who loved him, knew him personally, those to whom his name was but a miracle and a legend—though we are all full of tears and though we are full of sorrow, I feel that sorrow is out of place and tears are a blasphemy. How can he die, who through his life and conduct and sacrifice taught the world that the spirit matters, not the flesh, that the spirit has the power greater than the powers of the combined armies of the earth, combined armies of the ages? He was small, frail, without money, without even the full complement of a garment to cover his body … how was he so much stronger than the forces of violence, the might of empires, and the grandeur of embattled forces in the world? It was because he did not care for applause. He only cared for the path of righteousness.
Continue maligning him; he doesn't care when he is alive or when he is dead.
If this country ever will become a strong nation and be the Viswaguru, it will be only by practicing the precepts that he espoused. If the world recognizes this subcontinent today, it's because of him and Buddha because what they stood for is not relevant to us as a country but to humanity as a whole. Such people are forever.
