Is the Nation turning its back on the Father?

Yesterday India celebrated, or at least I think it must have celebrated, the 136th birth anniversary of its greatest child, a child whom it honoured by calling him the Father of the Nation. This it did, not because he was a member of some aristocratic family to whom the nation was indebted, not because he was one of its former Prime Ministers or Presidents, but because through his simplicity, he drove the colonial powers from the shores of India, unveiling a new sun of freedom and hope. For achieving his goals, he didn't take recourse to arms a la Bolivar; for him, to be able to befriend even one's enemy is the finest outcome that can emerge out of a struggle. But, even in that, there is no paradox, no contradiction.

Befriending someone never means one gives up one's right to criticise and to question the actions of that friend. So it was even with satyagraha. Only perhaps the mode of criticism was starling different from the rest. The revolutionaries before him, and even after his struggle showed results, always believed that criticism masked in violence is often the best understood. They may be right, but in the end, such comprehension is filled with rancour, and as such can never end well.

That his aim was appreciated by not only those to whom he spoke and preached personally, but appealed to all across the globe, is a mark of the universality of his message. Sometimes, it makes no sense to take recourse to violence, what matters is you must never abandon the truth. Whenever I hear the word 'satyagraha', I tend to feel it means 'insistence on the pursuit of the truth', as in 'satya' or truth' + 'agraha' or 'insistence'. And where truth is the aim, the final goal, no wrong can ever occur in the path.

And yet, 57 years after his demise, the Nation stands accused of ignoring the man, in whose grief it cried out that the light had been extinguished. It is accused of forgetting his message of sarva dharma samabhava, and adopting the rubbish termed 'secularism' nowadays. It stands guilty of ignoring his insistence on a value-based system, preferring a materialistic society instead. His appeals to his colleagues to abandon self-gratification and to embrace the greater good of humanity have gone unheard. His 'heartlands' remain as they were in his days, and cry out seeking redemption of his promises to them. Promises of a new dawn which would come along with independence. Promises of liberation from shackles innumerable, once the foreigners left.
Promises that now bite. Because whence we were ruled by the British, our under-development could at least be attributed to their inherent desire to enrich their own nation. But now when our own rule us, what reason can we attribute to this? I am sure that if today he were to live, he would jump into the ocean, and cry out, 'Fie be upon me, for I have begotten the demon!' Simply singing 'Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram' on the 2nd of October is not enough; to truly honour him, we must live his dreams, his dreams of an India, where there would exist no divide, where religion would be a source of healing, not of pain. Until then, every moment the flame flickers at Rajghat, we mock the sacrifice, guidance & leadership of a man whom history knows as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a man whom the world knows as MAHATMA GANDHI.