All of us have known Gandhi through books, anecdotes, films and documentaries; even then only few have succeeded in deciphering the godly charm and heart-warming nobility which made him the great soul he was.
Mahatma Gandhi could be termed as a miracle of modern times; his simplicity and kindness have made him the modest person we have known him as.
He led an ordinary life and ended up becoming an extraordinary visionary who stood tall for humanity, singing songs of life and freedom, walking his path of peace and non-violence, tirelessly. It’s no coincidence that Gandhi was a man of ordinary origins, and yet ended up being the extraordinary man he became with time.
Gandhi Continues to Be a Phenomenon in The Times of Hate
If only he existed in the times of sages and seers, he would have been nothing less than a deity; all were equal in his sight and he believed that the entire world is one family. He was the man who graced the untouchables and called them people of God, Harijan to be precise.
For most people in the world, Gandhi continues to be a phenomenon beyond his time as he had foreseen the dangers of future.
In the times of racist profiling and hate mongering we are surviving in, Gandhi haunts us all. He quashed the idea of avenging things by saying, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind”.
It was Gandhi who demanded truth and justice by waging peaceful resistance through Satyagraha, it was him who led the crusades against apartheid and became an inspiration for later visionaries like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela and Cassius Clay aka Mohammed Ali. Gandhi continues to inspire people across the globe and I am no exception.
Gandhi Is An Entire Way of Life
Every time the pitch of my voice peaks before my parents, I feel like having killed Mohandas somewhere inside me. Every time I look for excuses for my own follies, I feel like having killed him again.
Every time I notice my bulging paunch, I feel like having mocked that lean and thin man who barely ate his meals. Every time I enter a mall for getting myself some elitist pricey clothing, I think of him marching to Dandi wrapped in one piece of cloth and feel like a sinner, introspecting if I have earned it or not.
He never ceases to question me about the deeds that I did throughout my life. Every time I vent my frustration at traffic signals while in my car, I can’t help feeling like having butchered Gandhi in me.
I vividly remember my classmates calling Gandhi as Gandhi Ji, and I believed it was necessary to put that graceful suffix, so I followed without pondering it. I started reading Gandhi when I grew up, and developed the belief that Mahatma is the best possible prefix to be put before Gandhi, for he is love and peace personified.
I am less interested in knowing who killed Gandhi because the bigger question to me is, “What killed Gandhi?”, for Gandhi isn’t just a name or person; it is an entire way of life.
We live in times when Gandhi has been reduced to a monetary symbol, and the sardonic smile on his face seems to be questioning our collective conscience. The embodiment of Gandhi might have fallen prey to the demons of hatred but the phenomenon he is would never die, for it’s not every day that we find a man who dares to experiment with the truth.
(Naved Ahmad is a Delhi-based blogger who identifies himself as a writer by instinct, sports coach by profession and a harbinger of universality. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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