Gandhi Jayanti Special(!): Gandhi and Indo-Pak Relationship!

Over the years, I have gathered much respect for the Mahatma. During teens, I also hated the Mahatma and it was a fashion of the times to be a Subhas-Bose fan, which implied a hatred for the Mahatma. Things changed during the period when my mother was suffering from cancer. We were in this small shabby hotel room in Bombay waiting for the next appointment. There was not much to do and I went through a vernacular translation of Mahatma's autobiography. (PS: I still think that the English version of Gandhi's Autobiography is not the right kind to inspire people! My vernacular version inspired an instant awe and drew an immediate intimacy with the Mahatma.) Since those days, I have been a Gandhi fan (though not at the cost of losing Subhas as one of my hero!).

It was just yesterday that I was wondering what would have happened to Indo-Pak relationship, had Gandhi been alive and in power! Few years back I was listening to one of Gandhi's speeches in the immediate aftermath of separation. He could never take the separation as real and was saying: "This will all be over soon. And then we all will go to Lahore. We will have sweets and will all crack crackers!" I was wandering how he would have tackled the Kashmir problem (when the King asked for Indian help to secure his Muslim-dominant kingdom!), or the 1972 war over the formation of Bangladesh (when the Bangladeshis were fed up with Pakisthan's imposition of Urdu and when the Pakisthani General was mercilessly massacring Hindus!), or the recent Kargil conflict.

May be if he were in power, none of these would have happened in the first place. For example, be it Jinnah or Nehru, does it matter who governs the nation? Once someone is in power, he/she behaves in an almost typical pattern. Secondly, if the Kashimiris want a separate nation, in what way is their claim less important than then the claim of Bangladeshis (whom we supported)? I would rather have a good and loving neighbor than a rebel in my own home! And those who talk about national integrity, let me be very clear that "India the nation" means very little to many of the peripheral regions and to most of the tribal regions. After 60 years of independence we don't have a primary school over stretches as long as 60-80 km in North Eastern states; and it still takes an officer almost two days to go to his tribal posting from the nearest town! The central/regional government can never be excused for these lapses.

One thing is for sure. The Mahatma would have continued with his work of "village Swaraj" (real independence of the villages) and "Sarvoday" (rise of all). And may be he would have done it in all the neighboring nations (even if we were divided into 10 smaller nations). Its the cultural heritage that binds (or can bind) us together, not any political boundary or force. And of course, if he were in power we would not have fell into the trap of Lord Mountbatten and would still have had a single nation (at the cost of a delayed independence and may be a different first PM).

We have missed a complete different thought process. We have completely missed an opportunity to be developed. And I don't think we will get a second chance!!

Deja Vu: Insignificant vs. Significant

(PS: Deja Vu blogs are the blogs from a while ago and are not new and fresh!)

In my last few blogs, I have been talking about how insignificantly insignificant is life, creation and all that's here around. Yesterday I came across a wonderful notion. I was reading through an essay by Swami Vivekananda, where he was talking about how creation is created by the merger of Prana (energy) and Akasa (mater); how it comes into being, goes through a cycle and again vanishes, just to reappear again. Even modern astrophysics to some extent supports this view. I.e. the universe was created because of big bang and there are ultimately two possible ends to it, viz. it will expand for ever till it becomes energy less and hence dark; or it may contract again and merge into a black-hole yet again. Its the second possibility which has been supported by Advitik philosophy.

Anyway, my point was something different. Given that its a cycle and given that this world follows a strictly cause-n-effect rule, where is the notion of significant or insignificant? When I breath, I just do it subconsciously without counting and without thinking which breath is better or worse than which other one. Its childish to compare one breath with another. Similarly its childish to put epithets against events. Events are just events. Lives are just lives. Creations and just creations! Neither significant nor insignificant. We are helplessly parts of it. Whatever we are doing, thinking or speaking, has no novelty to it, all these are just events with no adjectives whatsoever.