The Hindu Business Line : The simple, gentle man of steel

In the current Bollywood hit Lage Raho Munna Bhai, an innocuous radio quiz on Mahatma Gandhi throws up the poignant fact that only a few in today's free Young India are aware of even elementary facts about the Father of the Nation.

Though his photographs look on from the walls of government offices and his face adorns the Indian currency and postage, one has, in fact, forgotten Gandhiji. Not only the man, but also his message of satyagraha and ahimsa, which he preached and practised.

The man, who was killed in body in 1948, has since been killed in spirit too; Gandhism is dead and buried.

In the eyes of another Hindi film, piquantly titled Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara, everybody conspires to kill him all over again by abandoning his path, his ethos, his values, his ideals. I daresay, Hum Sub Ne Gandhi Ko Mara Hai (we all have killed Gandhiji).

Gandhigiri wins over dadagiri

When faced with defeat and debt, Brutus cried out, "O, Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad ... " Shakespeare felt that the spirit of Caesar dead was yet a force enough to defeat his assassins. In Lage Raho Munna Bhai, it takes the ghost of Mahatma Gandhi to bring about a change of heart in a small-time Mumbai don, cajoling him to abjure violence and follow the path of ahimsa and satyagraha.

That this Gandhigiri (as the movie calls it) succeeds where dadagiri (hooliganism) has failed is the message of the film.

One hopes the message has got across to Bollywood's vast viewership that there was great strength in Gandhiji, after all; bande mein tha dum (the man had guts), a catch phrase aptly used in the film to rhyme with Vande Mataram.

The annual ritual of offering floral tributes at Rajghat is almost like a litany learnt by rote, faithfully recited, understood by few, believed by none, and promptly forgotten.

For Gandhiji, swaraj could never be poorna swaraj until the basic amenities were guaranteed, and made available to all. In reality, economic and social disparities in the country has grown and worsened.

With some 16 per cent of the world population, India is home to a third of the globe's absolute poor; over a tenth of the population has no access to basic healthcare; no less than one-fifth has no access to clean drinking water; almost three-fourths of the country lacks basic sanitation; adult illiteracy still rages at 40 per cent; the Constitution provides for education as a birth right, yet some 70 million children have no school to go to; and some 2 million infants die every year for want of simple medicare.

Equality for all

Writing in Young India in September 1931, Gandhiji maintained: "... I shall work for an India... in which there shall be no high class and low class of people; India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony." But the nation remains torn by language, caste, creed, and wealth.

That the frail old Mahatma strode like a colossus on the Indian scene for six decades, led the country from the front, by example, and commanded supreme awe and respect.

When communal disturbances created an incendiary situation, Gandhiji went and lived in the villages of Noakhali. His moral authority came from the instant respect he won by his identity with the poor and the depressed, his spartan disposition that hypnotised the masses.

As Rabindranath Tagore put it, Gandhiji "sat at the thresholds of the huts of the thousands of dispossessed, dressed like one of their own. He spoke to them in their own language... "

Spartan lifestyle

Gandhiji attended the Round Table Conference in London, following the Gandhi-Irwin pact, in March 1931 in a khadi loin-cloth and shawl, also when he called on King George V at Buckingham Palace, representing as he did the masses and depressed classes of India.

Which other statesman with such power and influence as Gandhiji could muster only a spinning wheel, a clock, a cupboard, two filing cases and ten dollars in cash, when the government came to confiscate his property because of patriotic refusal to pay taxes?

Today, the ministers and leaders, masquerading as "servants of the people," hold the masses in cynical disdain, necessary only inasfar as they vote them into power, and of no further use until the next election. Sybaritic life-style, luxury and ostentation, have replaced the Gandhian ideal.

Austere yet strong

For an apostle of satyagraha and ahimsa, these terms implied discipline and self-control, besides simple and austere life, suffering sans fear or hatred. It is this inner strength in him, which enabled him to make heroes almost out of clay. He was simple; he was gentle; yet there was steel in him. He held that democracy was a great institution and is thus liable to be greatly abused. "The remedy, therefore, is not avoidance of democracy but reduction of possibility of abuse to a minimum".

For him, true democracy could not be worked "by 20 men sitting at the centre. It has to be worked below by the people of every village." Gandhiji knew that India lives in villages.

His idea of a village was that of a complete republic, a picture which he portrayed in Hind Swaraj. Gandhiji always asserted that Civil Disobedience was not a state of lawlessness and licence; "voluntary discipline is the first prerequisite of corporate freedom." Again, "The worker is expected to evince a high sense of duty in the discharge of his obligations to the industry.

There is to be no waste of time, no unbecoming demeanour towards those in authority, and no desire to coerce the other party into acceptance of unfair demands."

Gandhiji was certainly not infallible. Today, many of his policies may appear impracticable.

Many of his beliefs may not be relevant. But — this is a very big but — what about the eternal values he held dear? His concern for the masses, probity in public life, and shunning of pomp and show, courage of conviction — these can never go out of date.

(The author is a former Chairman and Managing Director of Concor.)