It's just like any other day today. Except that dad is at home. This is the second successive holiday. Yesterday was Eid, today is Gandhi Jayanthi. Even before I wake up lazily at 10.30 a.m (one of the few days I have slept so late in the past two months), dad and mom are at the Community Hall at the end of the street. The singer, who used to sing alongwith M S Subalakshmi is there to perform, my mom tells me. She returns after an hour, after I have finished my cup of green tea and an apple and finished reading the papers. Dad is still at the Hall. Am told that he is listening to someone speaking about Gandhi. He returns after an hour. I don't ask about what was spoken about Gandhi.
Gandhi is not relevant today. His ideals are. I dont like Gandhi, the man. Have never liked him. There are atleast a few thousand youngsters like me, who believe the same. Many of my friends detest Gandhi, a few of my teachers have. Gandhi is always a hotly debated topic, be it in schools, colleges, the media or by the politicians.Even US presidential candidate, Barack Obama swears by Gandhi. Obama is now a household name across the world, like Gandhi was, when India was fighting for Independence. Gandhi was fighting for freedom for a country of a few million people. Obama is supposedly fighting for change in a nation. The two big democracies in the world.
Obama said "Gandhi's significance is universal. Countless people around the world have been touched by his spirit and example, his victory in turn inspired a generation of young Americans to peacefully wipe out a system of overt oppression that had endured for a century, and more recently led to velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe and extinguished apartheid in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., spoke of their great debt to Gandhi. His portrait hangs in my office to remind me that real change will not come from Washington - it will come when the people, united, bring it to Washington."
A bespectacled, lean man with no shirt, a stick in hand, made a nation dream. Dream, that is what Dr Abdul Kalam tells the world.
When we were working on a story for Independence Day, I went to meet a freedom fighter,a member of the Indian National Congress who had spent two years in prison during the freedom struggle. While he was talking about what was happening in India during that time, I decided to prod him on the question of Gandhi and Subash Chandra Bose. I, for a large part of my largely insignificant life, have believed that Subash Chandra Bose would have driven the Britishers out of the country sooner and with lesser sacrifices. The freedom fighter doesn't disagree with me. He tells me that even among the people at that point of time, there was a slight dissatisfaction. Some of the youngsters began to believe that violence was a way out. The Indian National Army was gaining ground.
"But, both Bose and Gandhi believed that the time for taking up arms had not come," he said. Bose was waiting for his time. He told some people that the time for violence was not yet there. "This is time for peace. The time for violence will come," Bose reportedly had said. But, before the time for taking up arms had come, Bose died in an aircrash.
If a person like Subash Chandra Bose believed that peace was a way out of problems, Mandela,the Dalai Lama and leaders like them have proved it. 9/11, the 11/11 bombings in London, Godhra, Kandhamal, the spate of bombings across India and even Pakistan, leave us with a sense of distaste. It's even getting boring.What do they get out of all this? Probably, a few lives, at the most. Violence does not make a statement or else Lage Raho Munnabhai would not have been such a hit. No one wants to see violence, want to be a part of it. Probably, Gandhi is relevant. No... his ideals are!
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