Gandhi minus the Mahatma

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - one of the most enigmatic personalities in the history. A man with different shades when viewed at different angles. Well, he was human after all.

Different people had different perceptions about Gandhi. I, on my part, have had different views about him at different stages of my life.

When I was younger, I had loads of issues with Gandhi. Why did he not save Bhagat Singh? Why did he let the partition happen? Why did he not support Netaji? These questions had skewed my perceptions about Gandhi. Believe it or not, I was a part of that population of India who hated Gandhi.

Now I think of him as a man who was a great human being. He may or may not have been a great leader for our nation. I am still trying to figure out if his policies gave India any better results.

He was a man of many names : Bapu, Gandhiji, Nanga Fakir, Mahatma. But the name that really stuck to him was Mahatma, a great soul (he was first called a mahatma by Rabindranath Tagore). Was he really a Mahatma, a saint? I don't think so. Nor did he, I suppose.

He was a common man (the mango man, aam admi), with an uncommon resolution. He made his mistakes. He was proud. He was honest. He was adamant. He was understanding. He was naked. In short he was all that we are, a normal human being.

But then what made him the superhuman we are supposed to think him to be? The press? The Congress? The skewed historians?

Dunno for sure. India needed a hero to look upto after Independence. Every fledgling country does. So we had our very own George Washington. History was written according to the directives of the rulers of the land (the Congress) and the historians, true minstrels that they are, godified Gandhi. Maybe Gandhi would have liked this. I would like to think otherwise, but then who knows. He didn't stop the angrejs from executing the non-believers in non-violence (the Bhagat Singh fiasco), did he?

Hmmmm.. so Gandhi was not a real mahatma. Why the hell then did so many people followed in his wake?

My answer to this question would be his honesty. I came to this understanding when I read his "My Experiments with Truth". He tells us the truths that demean him, his character and are bound to hurt his family and friends. He tells about all his mistakes from stealing to indulging with his wife when his father was dying. All these when he knew he was being followed by millions of people.

It was written in 1920s when Gandhi had become a public figure. People had started believing in him and his principles. To write an autobiography of such sort could have been a big political blunder (a la "Jinnah" by Jaswant Singh). But still he went ahead with it. Ah! History would have been rewritten if the Nehrus and Patels would have been Adwanis and Singhs.

What my point here is. it takes immense courage to do so. Specially when you know people are looking up to you as their mentor. I salute the man for the truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth principle that he followed.

According to Gandhi (in the Introduction to his book):

"It is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my numerous experiments with truth, and as my life consists of nothing but those experiments, it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography..."

I believe these are the words of a man who considers himself to be honest to his conscience. These are the words only Gandhi could have wrote.

I know Gandhi had his share of controversies. Sure he had his shortcomings. But still, he was better than the breed of gullible politicians we have today. Maybe we need a Gandhi again to clear this mess we have managed to pull ourselves in.