India is a country of over a billion people. A country with multiple castes, creeds and as a result people with diverse thinking and belief’s…yet when it comes to a freedom struggle that lasted for over a 100 years, all of us invariably think of one man- Gandhi. We do think of some other leaders too. Infact there are cases where some others like Vallabhai Patel, Bhagat Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose, Ambedkar, Tilak, et all. However try playing that game wherein one has to quickly associate one word with the other like- cloud: rain, heart: beat/love, etc and throw Indian Independence at someone and the answer invariable will be Gandhi!
Is it because he got us independence? Is it because he was a great leader? I have had my debates on these questions and not always have I been pro-Bapu because I believe the Freedom struggle was only a stage that revealed to us The Mahatma Gandhi who was to live far beyond the freedom struggle and in some way be a way of life, a portion of the Indian psyche.
Gandhi became our father because- he gave us what every father gives his children- he gave us an identity, whether that identity was right, whether it was helpful or not is another matter of contention but when he walked in his loin cloth with a walking stick or sat peacefully churning the charkha or asked us to extend out right cheek when slapped on the left, he took us from the crowd and and coerced the world to take notice.
To me Gandhi is the one who started clapping loudly and consistently in a crowd of people who were beating drums. May be the sound of the drums was louder but because it was a crowd one drummer could not be distinguished from the other however someone did hear a different sound- that of a clap!!
Think of the other freedom fighters and you will invariable find a tinge of an alien element in each of them- Nehru(socialism from Russia and the aristocracy of Europe), Bose (the aggression of Japan), Patel (the discipline and focus that not all of India could relate to), Ambedkar (What could a muslim or a Brahmin identify in a suit clad Dalit leader)…and so on. But Gandhi does not remind us of anything un-Indian. He propogated peace as the means to fight, he flaunted poverty with élan and did insist on maintaining a discipline in his lifestyle- the religious, the poor and the classy- all taken care off!!
By doing what Gandhi did, he did not walk on the roads that were already constructed. He made a road and walked on it, we followed. We followed because for years we had been walking on the existing roads and took us nowhere, this new road atleast had hope. A tiring India needed that hope to propel its fight for freedom.
Hence, Gandhi is not just restricted to the freedom struggle but he is required at every place where the systems have begun to fail and available solutions although seem effective are redundant and corrosive!
Gandhi’s solutions….is my next post.
