MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI (2 October, 1869 --- 30 January, 1948)

MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI (2 October, 1869 --- 30 January, 1948)

One of the greatest souls in human history was born this day. Imperfections he had many but his humanity outstripped all such as he 'bestrode the world like a colossus' (courtesy, Shakespeare, 'Julius Caesar') and fought lifelong to save the human race from impending self-destruction. Caught in the world of realpolitic, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi could not always live up to the high humanistic ideals he preached as the exigencies of the hour caused him to stoop beneath his high levels of ethical behaviour. But his concerns were always universal that catered to the preservation of life and peace, and transcended national boundaries to embrace the whole of humanity. His Tripuri dealings with Subhas Chandra Bose have perennially soured Bengali feelings towards him and now the ill-feeling has spread throughout the country as online easily accessible information has made such below-the-belt body-blows dealt on the 'Prince of Patriots' unpalatable to most.

Caught in the dual whirl of national politics and global well-being where he had to switch roles between politician and humanist, Gandhi messed up the freedom movement which resulted in Partition and its horrors. But his motives were noble, his methods elevating, if often unpractical, as future events duly proved it, and his concerns outstripping national boundaries to embrace the whole of humankind. This dual role of national political leader and world spiritual leader clashed inevitably and created confusion in his actions for which the motherland had to pay a very dear price. The contradictions of life met in Gandhi but could hardly be resolved or synthesised, for at the gross material level conditions are not so fluid as to find harmonic fulfilment. Towards the end Gandhi very much understood his follies, his massive miscalculations which caused the motherland dear, but inveterate adversary that he was to armed resistance to tyranny, conservative to a fault that he was, Gandhi remained intransigent in his political position, that of preserving peace at any cost, even at the cost of an eventual acceding to the perfidious partition of the country, a dastardly deed done by Jinnah and his Muslim League colleagues in collusion with the wily British. Gandhi's apparent extreme unconcern for the security of the Hindus and a perceived appeasement of the Muslims enraged his assassin unto snuffing out his life when he stood of the threshold of making further and further concessions to the newly born state of Pakistan, albeit justifiable perhaps on strictly ethical grounds. 

Gandhi fell to Godse's bullets at 17.10 hours on 30 January, 1948, 75 years ago. But his presence pervades the subconscious of the polity still as the Government of India actively patronises the Mahatma-cult to suit its own convenience. Today, Gandhi has lost much of his glamour, his simple power over the masses, his magical, mesmeric influence, as an altered age has its citizens in altered appreciation of history and denunciation of its villains, whosoever they may be. The past is being re-evaluated. Gandhi's life and actions, his character and commitment to the nationalist cause, his principles and philosophy---all these are being scrutinised and reassessed, and the Mahatma of the masses being put in his proper historical place.

A complex figure of an age in churn, Gandhi walked alone a lonesome path against all odds and charted out the future course of history in fresh fraternal terms, although, in doing so he precipitated a perilous fate for emerging India. Gandhi, a Mahatma at home, turned out to.be a successful organiser of the Congress, an unprecedented mass leader with hazy ideas about revolutionary means and modes, and a much feted world spiritual leader whose ideas have since inspired passive resistance to tyranny across the globe. This is his birthday and I bow down to his memory in reverence even as I reject his political and social doctrines largely in the light of pragmatism and realpolitic. But when since the Buddha was one man so followed by millions, one whose every word for good or for ill became the mantra for the masses? 

Written by Sugata Bose