Attacks on Gandhi

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: When the most noted Gandhian 

activist of the country responded to writer Arundhati Roy’s

diatribe against Mahatma Gandhi, he seemed to do it not because

he was agitated but because he was seriously worried about the 

polemicist. “Gandhi’s moral capital was accumulated over years of 

sacrifice and it would be foolish to attempt to destroy it for mere

intellectual pleasure,” said Gandhi Peace Foundation vice

president P V Rajagopal here on Wednesday.

He said that the increasing attacks on Mahatma Gandhi would 

not touch the man but such polemics were stifling the emergence 

of new Gandhians who can change the world. “By attacking 

Gandhi,  they are only trying to prevent the emergence of world

 leaders like Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King and 

Aung San Suu Kyi, all of whom were inspired by Gandhi,” P V

 Rajagopal said  while delivering a lecture on ‘Gandhi in 21 st

 Century’ at the Gandhi Bhavan here on Wednesday. “They are 

actually reducing the world’s possibilities,” he added. Rajagopal, 

who runs the   Ekta Parishat, said that perhaps if they read about 

the Mahatma more they would understasnd him better. He cited 

the example of communist leader  Bayan Roy who was once a 

strident  critic of Gandhi. But then, after he came across a series of 

letters sent by officials in India to the British Queen, Roy revised

his opinion and wrote a book ‘Gandhi’s Campaign Against 

Untouchability, 1933-34: An account from the Raj's Secret Official 

Reports’.