Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Celebrating Gandhi



"I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, an India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people; an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony. There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability, or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs. Women will enjoy the same rights as men. We shall be at peace with all the rest of the world. This is the India of my dreams"

This is the Gandhian Pledge that the Prime Minister of India took on Oct. Sixty years after Independence and we are still pledging. Take a look at his dreams. We have got started on, forget about achieving, NONE of them. Why kid ourselves when we care the least about what he said?

We have to be honest to accept that

1. we know very less about Gandhian ideals and hence lose the right to fallaciously admire him or judge him
2. even a great man like Gandhi cannot be correct in *all* his ideals and *all* his ideals need not apply transcending time.

So, if we are interested in celebrating his birthday, we have to read about him. Read about his ideals at least to the point that we find at least one of his ideals that we disagree with. And we find at least one of his ideals which we feel will not be applicable to the present day.

Now that would be an honest celebration of his greatness on his birthday. At least better than the false idol worship we indulge in. What do you say?

3 comments:

Aish said...

An apt observation, I would say. Two main streams of apathy that I see are:

i) Hypocrisy of the public institutions and governments, as you have stated. Mahatma Gandhi gathers dust at the back of their coffers and comes out for a rath yatra like Lord Jagannath, once a year. Except here, it is more a case of getting paraded.

ii) The indifference on of a large part of the general public, most of whom are brought up on a few so-called Gandhian tenets. As you said, we need to read up on Mahatma Gandhi and look at his ideals in light of ever-changing social-economic paradigm

Maayaa said...

i have much to say.. again.. will come back after oct 5th..

Flowergirl said...

Nice blog you have got!
cheers!