When one fathers a son, he should be prepared to bear the anxiety and pain associated with it. It was the same with Gandhi. It was, rather more. He fathers a nation. So consistent concern and persistent agony what this man was fated to suffer. He bore the ache throughout. As Jesus Christ had to succumb, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, too, had to. The blood of Jesus flowed down to Gandhi and merged for a common cause they shared in their ideals fearlessly: LOVE. It is small wonder, then, that at bedtime, Gandhiji loved to read Bible.
The man with suit and boot in South Africa became a man of loincloth in India. It took a fakir to plunge National Congress into mass movement thirty three years after its existence. When his first non-violent, non co-operation movement, in India, gained in maximum momentum, he called it off. Because Chauri Chaura happened, where arson, looting and rioting took place. A non-violent programme can never be violent. There should be no short-cut in achieving one’s goal. Truth should be the cornerstone of your approach to success. The father gave his sermon to his nation-aspiring people.
Wheeling a charkha is what Gandhiji symbolized as self-reliance. He was against big industry. He was for small-scale that could enable people to be self-reliant, both individually and collectively. If this socially practical, economically pragmatic and environmentally conducive counsel was heard the world over, this world might have been saved from being terminally paralytic.
In Lord Ram, he got the essence of that quintessential value which binds one to truthfulness, morality and honesty. All his actions, political or otherwise, all along, are informed by them. The Father of Nation practised politics, abhorred poly-tricks and, hence, politicking.
In these testing times, when civilization goes under face-cover and sanitizing becomes the new order of the day, let Gandhi come like a “stream of kindness”, to quote Tagore’s words, to take the bleed-happy world to take ablution in lasting peace and harmony under the grove of love, the much-used and much-forgotten word.
It is easy to draw an outline of bald head, round lines of spectacle. It is difficult to get drawn to Gandhi. Because the Father of Nation epitomizes uncompromised truth; again, the much-used and much-more-abused word.