India’s Global Icon

Wherever the ‘Mahatma’ is today, he’d be both deeply concerned, and much amused. Concerned not about the hullabaloo around him personally, but at the trajectory of his beloved India and its citizens (all of them, without any distinction, preference, or identity marks). He would certainly be amused, even embarrassed, by his invocation in the modern discourse.

Speaking about his dream for India and its crippling socio-economic inequities, Gandhi had noted in 1931, “Nearly one tenth of the population is living in a condition of semi-starvation. They have no more than one meal per day consisting of stale chapati and a pinch of dirty salt”.

Imagine his discomfort today with many ironically gloating and suffering from unreal hubris, even when an estimated 800 million out of 1400 million Indians are surviving on rations doled out by the government!

Equally, the large-hearted soul will miss the chance to take a potshot at himself with some self-deprecatory humour, as only truly confident leaders, and dignified statesmen, can.

Never one to claim any divine purpose, make-believe piety, or postured-martyrdom, his sense of humour, which was usually aimed at himself, and not for making fun of others, helped him withstand the rigours of his path and purpose.

When a reporter questioned, “Why do you choose to travel by third class in a train”? The wise man responded immediately with a smile, “Simply, because there was no fourth class, as yet”. The light-hearted reply had no place for theatrical pathos or ponderous justifications aimed at elevating oneself to superhuman proportions.

Gandhi was after all a ‘Mahatma’, as recognised and revered by even those who may have differed with him on certain facets and policies. At the end of the day, the ‘Mahatma’ was usually the first to own up to his own mistakes, shortcomings, and follies.

He did err, and never hid it. He knew that he was a mere mortal, not less or more. Yet another leader of immense character, dignity, and man-of-letters (albeit, from a different ideological fount and beliefs) was the late Atal Bihar Vajpayee.

Vajpayee had sagely noted about Gandhi that “Throughout his life, he (Gandhi) preached and practised mutual tolerance and understanding among people belonging to all religions of the world. In this, he echoed the age-old conviction of India’s civilisation that truth is one, the wise only interpret it differently”.

Such lofty flourish and wisdom could have only accrued to Vajpayee who in a single expression, not only demonstrated depth and decency of a thoroughbred statesman, but by conflating Gandhi to the civilisational essence of India, shone glorious light on the timeless and mellifluous ‘Idea of India’.

Many question rather small-heartedly if Gandhi was truly so relevant to the world, then why did he not get the Nobel Prize, as an example? Answering the same tantamount to showing light to the sun if one were to belabour the details of the number of times that he was nominated (factually, not claimed), technicalities surrounding his case, or of his sudden death just before yet another nomination.

Perhaps the best answer was given by the Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad, who counter-reflected, “Gandhi could do without a Nobel Peace Prize. Whether the Nobel Committee can do without Gandhi, is the question”.

Implying that it was Nobel that was infinitely poorer for not having a Gandhi (for whatever reasons), rather than otherwise. This is a reality that can only be understood if one has read what Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, Romain Rolland (the list can go on endlessly…) said about the most enlightened man to prick the conscience, gently inspire, teach ethics and insist on the dignity of every individual, irrespective of his/her identity or bearing in any form.

Many mock Gandhi’s pacifist or non-violent anchorage, often forgetting that he had prophetically pointed to the fundamental lacuna in the regressive and petty idea of a religion to be the basis of a nation: the flawed ‘two-nation theory’.

Gandhi had argued passionately that, “the idea that Hindus and Muslims are two distinct nations was ahistorical”. One side of the wounded border had heeded to that wisdom and the other chose religion to be the basis of a nation.

By 1971, Mahatma Gandhi’s farsightedness was to manifest in the creation of Bangladesh. The country rationalising itself on religion is further imploding by putting religion over humanity.

Gandhi knew then that the genie of religion in its absolutist, revisionist, and unchecked form can never be put back in the proverbial bottle. India should never become Pakistan.

This too is a lesson that remains little understood today as passions of hate reign supreme. Gandhi has never been more questioned or diminished than today, ironically not by the ‘rest of the world’ but by some of his own.

But Gandhi is an idea that will sustain because ultimately as the lilting words, based on a mantra from the Mundaka Upanishad that is inscribed in the Devanagari script at the base of the Lion Capital of Ashoka (Indian national emblem) reads “Satyameva Jayate” or Truth stands invincible. Conversely and implicitly, falsehood is unsustainable.

As the iconic 1997 Advertisement of Apple Computers i.e., ‘Think Differently’ theme, capturing 17 iconic global personalities, with only one Indian finding a mention i.eThe Mahatma, said hauntingly about such people, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules…

“You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do”.

The ‘Mahatma’ had indeed changed the world and in return the world had recognised his genius, his humanity, and above all, his ways. He needed no PR agency, troll army, or endorsement, or a movie, to become what he was already recognised as, by all as a ‘Mahatma’.

It was not a title that he gave himself or encouraged. Rabindranath Tagore had called him so. Subhash Chandra Bose called him ‘Bapu’ or father, it just became him, rightly and across humanity.

Lt. Gen. Bhopinder Singh is the former Lieutenant Governor of The Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Pondicherry and an Indian Army officer who was awarded the PVSM. Views are the writer’s own.