Comments on: Gandhi, migoodness!

By: bushra alvi

bushra alvi — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 10:18:17 +0000

heyy mr. vohra

now don’t you think you are asking for too much? after all you did mention that the youngsters you asked were NRIs. and these guys do know that 2 october is a special date, that gandhiji said “hey ram” and that he was shot dead. they also know that he was thrown off a train compartment because of some tussle with white people!

what more do you expect?

try asking a bunch of school kids in india why 30 jan is important. you bet they wouldn’t know. 2 oct is another thing ‘coz it’s a national holiday and that’s its relevance left now. some places though even 2 oct is a working day! i taught in a school in jodhpur where, the year i joined, 2 oct was a full working day – no special assembly, no remembrance of the great leader!

pathetic, but true nevertheless.

By: Bhavdeep Kang

Bhavdeep Kang — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:59:42 +0000

Somebody once said Godse shot the Mahatma once but the politicians who invoke his name murder him every day.

There’s considerable truth in that. Nothing Gandhi stood for has been actualised today.

Not surprising, I guess, considering Nehru had already rejected Gandhi’s ideas on governance (check out Collected Works of MG, 88, letter of Oct 5, 1945).

As for youngsters, here’s what he said in 1929: “…We must perpetuate the present rural civilization and endeavour to rid it of its acknowledged defects. This can only be done if the youth of the country will settle down to village life. . .”

Dudes, rural India rocks. And am happy to report there are still places where Ganchi rules!

By: Rajesh Ramaswamy

Rajesh Ramaswamy — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:51:53 +0000

Brilliant summation Mr Guru.

By: sari

sari — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:13:49 +0000

@guru – What a thought guru ji …

By: Rajanikant

Rajanikant — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:04:44 +0000

Kudos !!!!

By: neelima dalmia adhar

neelima dalmia adhar — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:02:34 +0000

it’s sad to see ths push-a-button generation so lost to human values and the real world…perhaps the virtual is their real…!
farewell gandhi…welcome rahul..!!

By: guru

guru — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:53:32 +0000

“have made him so inaccessible as a human being that we are in danger of losing him entirely” – true.
Gandhi is slowly becoming a super human in our collective consciousness (those of us who know what he advocated and did) as the years roll by and as new generations come. No longer do we think about Gandhi (if at all we do) as a human being with his own set of weakness and strengths. Gandhi was able to advocate non-violence and was able to stand up to atrocities and was able to unite the masses to fight for a cause because he was “Gandhi”. We no longer know or care about the M.K.Gandhi who was a normal human being with his own hurts and wants. We don’t care about the story of his struggle with himself and with the outside world.

This happens because we deal in extremes, either Gandhi is a faultless and perfect being OR he is a selfish individual who started a political dynasty etc. Our society is so childish in such thoughts, it’s like a child who sees his parent as either the perfect hero or the vicious villain (as per the occasion). As a child cannot understand that a person is neither black nor white (there it goes again, white is ‘good’) but is a shade in between, so does our society fail in understanding Gandhi (hey he is the father of the nation, so that how its supposed to be).

Raja Ram is now Lord Ram. How long before Gandhi becomes a god? And once that happens, Gandhi is lost for us, forever. Because we don’t try to do what our gods did (even those acts which are humanly possible). We just say he did that (or was able to do that) because he is a god.

By: Rajesh Ramaswamy

Rajesh Ramaswamy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:35:58 +0000

sigh…i would clap and say well written…if i wasn’t abt to cry.
the same dudes woulda prolly given u a full bio of martin luther king, or mandela, or haille selassie even.
but yanno bikram, we have similar sorts here too, though they come from the other end of the knowledge tunnel.
these are the ‘i’m too intense 4 my boots’ types who wear world weary cynicism as a badge or club membership.
u’ll usually find em dismissing gandhi and nehru over a whisky soda, as hyped up politicians who’re responsible for all of india’s ills. after all, those ‘losers’ were responsible for ’socialism’ weren’t they? and the bloody beurocracy! And…
sometimes i dunno which is worse. the uninformed swagger of fashionably cool ignorance…or the enlightened pout of intellectual posturing….same difference, as u put it:-))