Attacks on Gandhi

 Zulfi Haider As a society we are too into creating hero's, larger than life figures who must be perfect and that too looking at them and their legacy from our times! ....we are not accepting of people as people, who more often evolve, grow into roles and ideologies...and so it should not be surprising that Gandhiji may have held certain views at certain times, and changed later on.

It would stifle emergence of new Gandhians, says P.V. Rajagopal

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, theyare 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 world largest NGO 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’.