Before writing this extract, I want to make it very clear that I don’t bear any grudge on “father of the nation”. It’s just that I’ve few questions and my teachers and parents have not been able to give me the appropriate answer, therefore I’m putting it here and looking for answers that can satisfy my long-awaited reasoning mind.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is the father of the nation, but who made him “mahatma”, is a question that has been haunting me since I understood the meaning of mahatma. What did he do, to be entitled as mahatma?
People may say that he
fought for the
freedom of his countrymen. Then my query is thousands of martyrs did the same! He must have fought for the rights of the “blacks”, but it was more because he had to face lot of humiliation due to his skin colour. Hadn’t he been thrown out of train, he would have taken the wow to fight back!
How many
mahatmas have been fortunate enough to get space in the currency of India. But see he’s there in all the notes, may it be 100, 500 or 1000-rupee note. Mahatmas don’t crave for any titles, positions or acknowledgement of their work.
His biography my experiment with truth, instantly became the bestseller, again I would like to ask why? Was it because of his life or the twist of the language, he gave? If I’m posing all these questions, that doesn’t mean I don’t have any faith in bapu, (my father always taught me to respect the elders) it’s just that since childhood I’ve been unreasonably reason seeking. And
history has been my most favorite subject, since it reminds you of your wrong doings and teaches us not to repeat our mistakes.
Now again we tend to ignore his relation with his wife and other family members? Why was it that most reverend Kasturba Gandhi always seemed to be subdued to the will of her husband? Why was it that he never liked the ways of other martyrs who adopted way of violence to attain freedom? Gandhi fought for the upliftment of the untouchables, but was he alone to take such an initiative!
Why 2nd October is so significant? Many freedom fighters were assassinated but we don’t even remember their names so
forget about their dates of birth or assassination. Everybody seems to forget Lal Bal Pal, Bhagat Singh, Rani Lakshmi Bai and so on so forth!
I may sound lunatic to the makers of history but these questions are sure to arise, and it’ll be good if we start looking for answer today.
Published: October 18, 2005
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