Let me say it without equivocation: I am not a Gandhi devotee. I only have a vague idea of the sacrifices he made for the freedom of this country. Apart from that, he is just a forgotten history lesson for me. Nothing more, nothing less.
That said however, it amuses – at times saddens- me to see my generation’s disdain for Gandhi. Ironically, it’s the new *cool* to hate him. Admiring Gandhi is passe, apparently.
So let’s scroll through THE MOST atrociously amusing comments you hear every Tom, Dick and Harry doling out on Gandhi these days.
“Had he not been there, India would have achieved independence at least 50 years before it eventually did”
Had he not been there, we would have had too many martyrs and too less freedom. Mahatma Gandhi brought a sense of structure to our freedom struggle.
Anyways, the argument is that Gandhi was overtly non-violent and defensive in his endeavour. Allegedly, British saw him as a weak link in India’s struggle for freedom and thus they ‘used him to their advantage’.
Gandhi was friendly with British for his own ‘personal interests’
Aahan! And what would those personal interests possibly be? A man who quit a lucrative career just to live in an ashram, wearing nothing but a dhoti! Going for miles-long marches just to make British pay notice to his and his country’s demands. Being a jail inmate much too often. I fail to understand why he didn’t exploit the ‘luxuries’ British had allegedly bestowed him with.
“Gandhi Wasn’t Firm While Asking British Not to Hang Bhagat Singh”
This is something Gandhi was probably guilty of. There is no physical proof, but let’s go by the popular opinion here.
Still, I would like to close by saying that Bhagat Singh was a martyr, and so was Subhash Chandra Bose and so was Gandhi. Let’s not bring one man down to celebrate the other.
“He despised the revolutionaries because he wanted to be the only hero of our freedom struggle”
This one comes from the movies. Not worth discussing.
All said, there is no arguingthe fact that Gandhi did commit mistakes- at times blunders – but the current generation would want you to believe that those mistakes were his only legacy.
My ire against people claiming to be Gandhi-haters has nothing to do with sentiments – I have none for Gandhi. But let’s be honest for once: Our virtue is not “Sacrifice” – We will never quit our career and our homes to live in an ashram, only for the sake of our country. Jail is definitely not on our agenda for the love-of-country, and well, Dandi marches, even the thought is bit of a stretch really.
So why don’t we just stop condescending!
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Hi, thank you for this post. I was reading several articles portraying Gandhi to be a cunning, selfish person who betrays India. The authors of those articles call Gandhi’s murderer Godse a hero in trying to protect India by killing Gandhi. They claim that Godse did the right thing.
Those articles elicit many reader’s responses in feeling hatred towards Gandhi. The whole time I was like, did anyone of them who left a hatred comment ever do anything that helps your community or society that they can so “righteously” condemn Gandhi for what they think he did?
They claim that Gandhi approve partitioning of India (who the hell really knows what goes on behind the scenes?). India doesn’t belong to Gandhi. There are many other people in the 2 different governments (India & Pakistan). The people in the governments were not puppets and will not just do whatever Gandhi wants.
Exactly! How do we know what went on behind the scenes. It’s a norm to view his contributions dispassionately. Everybody knows what a hard-nosed leader Jinnah was, yet Gandhi was the villain.
About the statementas like Godse did the right thing, that is what you would hear mostly from the youth. It gives them a sense of “I am a bad-ass” feeling (something that I explicitly discussed in the article)
My only concern if really Gandhi was such nice person why did he ask sardar Vallabhai patel to step of from the prime minister’s seat