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On the occasion of Bhagat Singh’s death anniversary on 23rd March, Bhagat Singh was a trending topic worldwide. Most tweets were characteristic with incomplete, if any, knowledge of history and its implications. Swapan Dasgupta writes a piece titled Gandhi, the only visionary among many patriots. I haven’t studied the Mahatma enough to judge the veracity of his praise, but the article makes some good points :
Rubbishing the Mahatma has become an unofficial national pastime. Militant Hindus charge him with betraying Hindu interests and facilitating Partition; Muslim separatists always perceived him as a wily Bania; radical Marxists see him as an upholder of the status quo; and a new breed of Dalit activists accuse him of social condescension towards the community. Compared to his passionate critics, the Mahatma’s defence seems piteously proforma. No eyebrows are even raised at his transformation into an icon for selling fountain pens and tabloid newspapers. The few remaining Gandhians have painted themselves into a faddist corner, obsessed with temperance, vegetarianism and naturopathy.
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During my teens years, a play based on the trial of Nathuram Godse (the assassinator of Gandhi) was hugely popular. I don’t know if it was because Nathuram Godse was from Pune, but the play found resonance among the youth who watched it. The writer, director and actor of the play deserve high praise for it. But it was silly when someone watched the play and thought they knew enough to rubbish Gandhi.
I can’t say I know Gandhi — the person or the idea — but I have read enough to know that I don’t know. I could paint Nehru after reading the first hundred pages of Discovery of India, but I wasn’t sure I knew Gandhi completely after reading My Experiments With Truth.
Link via Salil B.
If you thought Gandhian ideals were a lost cause, look no further than the Sena. They have not only held them in utmost regard, but are now fighting for it to remain alive.
We all know that the Shiv Sena attacked CNN-IBN channel offices — that’s old news. They beat up reporters and staff — big deal. But few people know that a Shiv Sainik too was beaten up in the fracas :
“We have demanded action against journalists, who beat our activists. A party worker was seriously injured and has been paralysed,” Sena group leader in Assembly, Subhash Desai, told reporters here.
I am sure the biased channels haven’t covered this news. Action must be taken against the journalists who have done this. Don’t people even remember what the old man taught us ?
If the Sainiks attack you, you don’t resist. If you do, they’ll beat you up till you don’t resist. So really if you see, they’re just converting us all to Gandhians.
And here we are, criticizing them.
This is the second time I am finding both sides of an argument stupid.
First was Mayawati calling Mahatma Gandhi a nautankibaaz (fake) on the issue of Dalit sympathy. This I can understand, I do not expect better.
But this was quite amusing for people defending Gandhi :
Congress workers burnt Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati’s effigy today for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Mahatma Gandhi recently.
Then was this absurd piece :
He also said the Prevention of Insult to National Honour Act, 1971, “must be amended to make a suitable provision to protect the fair name of the Father of the Nation”.
The name of the Mahatma “deserves to be legally protected,” Mahmood, also a former chairman of the National Minorities Commission, added in a statement.
Apart from the proposed posthumous legal protection, doesn’t this blatantly violate freedom of speech ? But then again, there isn’t too much of that anyway.
It is funny that self-proclaimed guardians are often the ones with least knowledge of the protectee.
I am not good at photoshopping so please imagine the Mahatma's sandals instead of Shilpa Shetty here.
Vijay Mallya has done it ! He has scripted the most unimaginable ending in the never ending saga of the most futile debate ever, by successfully bidding for Mahatma Gandhi’s items at a staggering cost of $1.8 million (with a reserve price of around $30,000) proving once again to critics that his stint with the Bangalore Royal Challengers wasn’t his only nonsensical deal. In the process, he outbid the Indian government’s bidder as also the Indian American group headed by Sant Singh Chatwal.
This follows his great tradition of buying items and gifting them to the Indian government, the previous being Tipu Sultan’s sword which was allegedly snatched by a 10 year old kid in a brawl with Sanjay Khan during the shooting of his epic TV series after which the shooting had to be called off because ironically, the series was named The Sword of Tipu Sultan.
Vijay Mallya was ecstatic for some time after the successful bid before an employee pointed out that the Mahatma was against alcohol and his birthday was the biggest cause of losses for Kingfisher, the second being the Bangalore Royal Challengers, at which he gave out an audibly loud cry of anger and frustration .. for buying the Banglore Royal Challengers.
Meanwhile, the original owner James Otis was happy that the items were going back to where they belonged, but unhappy that he couldn’t make the Indian government agree to his conditions for returning them back to India without holding an auction :
The first condition is that the Indian government must agrees to increase it’s Budget spending on health care for the poor and the second condition is to provide financial support and the good offices of Indian embassies to support educational events that use Gandhi items to promote Gandhian non-violent resistance in 78 countries around the world. He has mentioned about 78 countries around the world which is one for each of the number of years Gandhiji lived.
It is learnt that while the government agreed to the above two, his third condition was the cause of disagreement. He wanted Sanjay Dutt, the lead actor of Lage Raho Munnabhai, to shift to America and teach Gandhigiri to school children. Sanjay Dutt was obviously excited considering America’s record of school children possessing guns, but he had to back out when learnt that his exit from Indian politics would take the Congress percent of convicted people contesting elections below 40%, which would debar them from the elections according to election commission rules.
In this whole episode, probably the only person who did not make any sense to me personally was the Secretary of Sabarmati Ashram, Amrut Modi. He said and I quote :
“Gandhi is a universal personality. It does not matter where his articles are. It should be seen as a normal thin”.
When the Mahatma was contacted by news reporters (yeah the Indian media can reach anywhere, from hundred feet deep pits to dead people) and asked the customary “How are you feeling ? “, he just said two words before returning to oblivion, “Hey Ram !”, which will henceforth be officially considered as his last words.
Image Courtesy : Oneindia.com
Disclaimer : None of the above mentioned incidents are true, in case you already did not get it.
I am back to regular writing after exactly a month-long hiatus. For people who have been checking this blog, you would know what I was upto : Link.
Foreword : This is a very long post. Actually, even longer. And heavily judgemental [:)].
As much as I am going to miss freaking out people by saying that I am going to visit Ladakh alone, I must add that the best way to travel is undoubtedly doing it alone ! If experiences, people and adventure is what you are looking for, there is no better way than doing it alone. And in that sense, I had a terrific trip.
The highlights of the trip : The winner, hands down, meeting people. Be it the senior citizen, a photographer, whom I met at a park in Jaipur to the Bulgarian mountain guide who was on his world trip to a person who is a professional ‘vote-buyer’ to the security guard at the airport who chatted for over an hour ! The runner-up, visiting villages in India. Put the above two together and you have an experience.
The trip started off with my landing in Delhi, where I was graciously hosted by a friend at his apartment. But not before 4 of us squeezed into an 800 with 3 suitcases of mine. I was home. The first evening was exactly what Rabbi meant when he wrote Dilli. The next day was a trip around Delhi. I was really happy to visit Rajghat (I have gone through the fan-of-Godse phase, but thankfully, I am back to wiser days). Next, Jama Masjid. In my humble opinion, before making any generic statement for/against the Muslims of India, please spend some time around Jama Masjid, and I really hope the Javed Akhtar’s and Shabana Azmi’s are listening. Connaught Place was good, but by then I had already judged the crowd, not very flattering I must add. It reinforced the popular notion that Delhi is a bit unsafe for women, and not just the adventurous kind.
The next day was my long awaited trip to Agra, Mathura and Fatehpur Sikri, with a group of friends and the above mentioned 800. Getting past a toll-naka without paying up courtesy a police sticker is a joy and experience only an amit_123 (Definition) would know about. The Taj Mahal was beautiful, but a tad disappointing to my expectations but atleast I have that legendary snap in front of the Taj. The Mathura temple had all the ingredients of a successful temple : Huge crowds, loud chants, even louder chatters and a 1-second darshan. The return back to Delhi and boarding of a bus to Jaipur happened that night; just the routine drill of visiting-all-sightseeing-places-in-a-day.
The next day was big. Having the Free Hugs Campaign with a friend of mine. Details here : Link.
For more about the Free Hugs Campaign, this might be a good view : Link
The next morning I was in Leh, the biggest city in Ladakh, which in case you didn’t know IS in fact in India. I gave acclimatising a day and a half, considering Leh is at over 11,000 ft and did some small hikes around Leh the next evening including the Shanti Stupa, Old Caslte and Leh Palace. This was when I met Aleksander, a Bulgarian mountain guide, on a world trip, and arguably one of the happiest people I have ever met ! Although his main concern was why foreigners had to pay up anything from 2 times to 40 times the entry fees for Indians at all places. To quote Aleksander : ‘All foreigners are not rich !!’.
Continue reading part 2 here.
