A MERE MORTAL, NO MAHATMA

A MERE MORTAL, NO MAHATMA 

As I read more on Gandhiji his words seem increasingly hollow. Wonder how Swamiji would have reacted to them were he alive decades longer to give the Mahatma fair company.

Nivedita had not minced her words when Gandhiji had sought audience with her.

Sri Aurobindo regarded men like the Mahatma with all their idealistic idiosyncrasies 'a bit cracked'.

Tagore paid him ready reverence while repudiating his outlandish ideas as regressive and superstitious.

Netaji called the Mahatma 'Father of the Nation' to outwit the wily British at their divisive political game but he elsewhere denounced Gandhiji's dictatorial attitude and his policy of compromise and agrarian regression.

Nehru called him 'Bapu', 'the light of our lives' and so forth, and lived to milk the milch cow to Prime Ministerial portfolio.

But Ambedkar was unsparing in his assessment. He saw through the Mahatma completely and critically cut him down to his true mortal size. Ambedkar's interview on BBC radio in 1955 is an exercise in exposure of the real Gandhi.

Written by Sugata Bose