GANDHIJI, FATHER OF THE NATION?

GANDHIJI, FATHER OF THE NATION?

Netaji called him so. Gandhiji was a son of the soil. This eithet conferred on him was with respect to the prevailing times when his figure loomed large over the political scenario that precipitated independence and brought into being the modern nation state of India. But as times have passed historical India in all her past glory has emerged from behind the cloud cover of her recent colonial past and set into shadow her current foisted identity of a newly built republic. Here India's eternal status has put things into perspective and cast aside all such epithets accorded to men of modern eminence as puerile propositions bearing no more meaning than what titular honours bear. Thus, Gandhiji has been reduced to his due status as a luminous soil of the soil whose life's labour was his offering to his mother, the motherland Bharatvarsha, and not the other way round as the mother being born out of the son which is blasphemous to even conceive of. Bharatvarsha has a hoary heritage, a pristine past and has borne worthy children through the millenia, children such as Buddha, Mahavira,  Rama, Krishna, Yajnavalkya, Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, Nanak, Meera, Chaitanya, Rammohun, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Guru Gobind Singh, Shivaji, Manarana Peatap, Samarth Ramdas, Kabir, Dadu, Ashvagosha, Nagarjuna, Shilabhadra, Atisha, Panini, Patanjali, Veda Vyasa, Valmiki, Kalidasa, Janaka, Janaki, Ashtavakra, Gargi, Maitreyi, Kshana, Varahamihira, Aryabhatta, countless Rishis of yore, in short, uncountable seers, savants, sages and saints, Avataras and Vibhutis who have contributed their ploughshare of work, their labour of love to bring into being today's India in consequential terms. Thus, to eliminate all our forefathers and posit Gandhiji there as the sole father of the nation is to put the cart before the horse which can ill move the nation forward along its evolutionary path. History deems a re-reckoning, events need their proper placement, modern movements need to be put in perspective and our nation's modern heroes need to be accorded due recognition in historical terms and not as per effusive emotional hyper-approbation that tends to obliterate the seminal past of this glorious Bharatvarsha. 🕉

Written by Sugata Bose