India is celebrating 150th year of Gandhi. And rightly so. A fitting tribute to someone who is India’s biggest global icon, whether anybody likes it or not. When his birthday is recognised by The UN as a global affair, the man must be having something. It is important, therefore, to try and understand why this is so. Why do we say that Gandhi is a Global Icon? The man who lived for 79 years and sat on 17 big fasts unto death, staying without food for 144 days in the process. On two occasions his fasting went on for 21 continuous days. In 1921, he took a resolution to observe a fast every Monday. That adds another 1,341 days of fasting. He was arrested 13 times and remained incarcerated for a total of six years and five months. He stayed abroad for 24 years. Gandhi statues are there in more than 100 countries including Pakistan and Great Britain. Interestingly, his statue finds a place besides that of Winston Churchill at the Parliament Square in Britain. The same Churchill who gave Gandhi the epithet of the ‘Naked Fakir’. There are more than 250 cities in some 70 countries where many major roads are named after Gandhi. In all the 719 districts of our country there are either schools, roads, buildings or parks in the name of Gandhi. Some 70 cities here are named MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road. About 150 countries have issued 800 kinds of stamps on Gandhi. In 1969, commemorating his centenary the British Government issued a stamp on Gandhi. Before that only the members of the Royal Family were given place on stamps. There have been 45 films and 500 documentaries made on Gandhi and a film on Gandhi also got an Oscar. Some 90,000 books have been written on Gandhi. And all these were not managed. These were spontaneous actions to respect a man who till date remains the greatest mass leader in the Indian history, and the global, too. The intriguing question is how all that happened. One word that epitomises Gandhi is Truth. His advocacy of truth, his practice of truth and his commitment to truth are the reasons why Gandhi is still living, more than seven decades after his death. From Mister Gandhi in South Africa his names kept on changing periodically. In Champaran, he was called Bapu for the first time in 1917. In 1919 Tagore addressed him as Mahatma and in 1944 Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in his radio message addressed him as Father of the Nation. It was his experiments with truth that went on evolving Gandhi till his transformation from Mohandas to super human. In his 150th year let the young India know, and if possible, understand Gandhi. Particularly, because for the Indian youth today the two greatest sources of knowing Gandhi are Richard Attenborough who made Gandhi and Rajkumar Hirani who made Lage Raho Munna Bhai. But Gandhi has many more attributes that ought to be known. A man who was not even a regular 25 paise member of the Congress Party and who never occupied any position in the party still remains the all-time greatest leader of the Congress. While we are too busy trying to sort out the Ram Janma Bhoomi issue, it is also important to understand Ram from Gandhian perspective. For Gandhi, Ram was different. For him, Ram was both Ishwar and Allah who would give good intentions to all.
Pathak is a professor of management, writer, and an acclaimed public speaker. He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com
