Here is wishing Gandhi a "SMASHING" birthday!

Gandhi is an icon to many, because of the principles he advocated and also for the role he played in the history of Indian independence. As it is his birthday today we see his name flashed on each and every page of the news papers quoting him. We tend to forget Lal Bahadur Shastri amidst all of Gandhi’s glory. Gandhi has never been my icon yet curiosity made me read," My experiments with truth" and to state it frankly I thought the man was slightly cuckoo in the head. I started reading the book to get an insight into his life and not to know every detail of him trying to control his libido to his 'supposedly' cleaning the toilets. I’m sure the man meant well, but if you go back to the pages where he is describing the day he and his followers went to clean the toilets, he mentions names of individuals, his wife Kasthurba included. Not once does he mention being a part of the whole of the activity, so it’s clear to the reader that he was merely a by-stander. I’d say that was a very cunning way of writing, but heck he is a lawyer and I have to admire him for that. The fact is that the man was being truthful. But how truthful was he really being was left to the reader’s interpretation. Having gained sufficient insight on the man I really couldn’t put him on par with the extremists, who in my opinion were the actual backbone of our freedom struggle. Non violence, honesty, non cooperation are all lessons well learnt. Were they really the reason why we are free today? No, the extremists played a large role and their contribution is always clouded by ‘Gandhi and his band of brothers’.

Let’s fast fwd from 1947 to 2008.

The current scenario of Gandhian principles:

1. Truth: Today people speak the truth only if it is guaranteed that, the “truth” they speak will hurt or cause someone grief.

2. Non violence: Read it as the progressive version of mental trauma/torture. (You don’t need to be physically violent to hurt someone)

3. Non-Cooperation: Yay! No one wants to cooperate when it’s all being done for a good cause.

So now you understand the chaos in our country. All this clearly shows that Gandhian principles have served their purpose well. The above principles are followed to the “T” by our politicians.(no surprises there)

This blog was to be a Gandhi bashing session and I am not done yet. Gandhi is the root to many-sufferings of the common man today, from the Kashmir issue to the Indo-Pak divide. I don’t want the old man cursing me from his grave so I’ll cut him some slack today and round up my bashings in my future posts.