Hero-worship (Gandhi-jayanti special)

In the recent years there has been a lot of opinions and views against Mahatma Gandhi. There have been arguments and counter-arguments. When you listen to these they tend to give a deja-vu of atheists arguing with theists. You tend to find a lot of "opinions" and very little "facts" from both the quarters. One thing that both these arguing parties tend to do is to assume that Gandhi was a super-human and the pro-Gandhi try to fight to prove that yes he was a demi-god and the anti-Gandhi try to argue otherwise.

This reminds me of a movie (the title of which I can not recollect) in which the main actor was a teenager student who was very mature for his age and was depended upon by many of his friends and towards the end even by the school principal. Then something difficult happens for which even our hero has no solution and he says "common; am just a boy!".

How true! I am not going to tell anything in favor of against of the Mahatma. I shall just reaffirm that he was just a man. He had his limitations. But one thing that we should appreciate about him is something that is there in every great leader, which is that they absolutely totally believe in what they think and say. This total conviction about what they want from life gives them that charisma which then makes most others follow him.

So on this great occasion of the birth-day of the Mahatma let us try to think deep about what we want of our lives. (PS: I have been thinking of this very deeply for past few months...!). 

Inspiration to tryst with destiny!

I joined Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2006. With an attire of khaadi kurta and pony-tail I soon got the name of “Rocky-sir” amongst students. In 2007 August 15 I asked students to join us for a group discussion on the major problems in India and what “we” (i.e. you and me) can do towards it. The squirrel from the Ramayana has always been one of my biggest inspirations. For those who may not know the story, in the epic Ramayana Lord Rama builds a bridge from Indian mainland to Sri Lanka. All the mighty animals from the jungle came to help the Lord. Even a tiny squirrel did not let his size deter it and came to help. To have the maximum contribution it found a novel way. It would dip in ocean, then roll on sand and then shake off the sand on the bridge. Pausing the story here I an just say that I have always believed that irrespective of our size we can contribute in our own ways. Few days after that group discussion one student came to meet me with a lot of his ideas. We tried to work together on some of those which later gave rise to the Zero-Illiteracy-Zone (ZIZ) activities in the IIT where our students would teach the children from local schools over the weekends. 

Long after that phase a few weeks back the same student asked me to discuss and muse over the problems of the nation and what can be done. And we had the first meeting over which we tried to discuss the major problems of the nation. And on this independence day blog I shall try to put down what I feel as the major issues in the nation right now. 

One aspect we discussed was the range of welfare majors the government has been trying to take. Some tend to suggest that the government should not give anything for free. However, in a civilised society it is just inhumane to deny our own citizens the right to the bare minimum basic amenities like food and medical aid. However there are two major problems in these schemes. First of all many of these do not reach the intended sector because of corruption. And secondly many times those who get the benefit of things like free food choose not to work at all. Corruption is in lime light anyway. So we shall try to focus on the second problem of laziness. This comes when a person loses inspiration to improve his own lot. 

The second biggest issue we found was “inequality” be it based on caste, religion or sex. Female foeticide and infanticide are still happening as we muse. Caste based politics and discrimination is still a big deterrent in many regions. That made me think of how things are different in South Africa and India. In SA they tend to think that the white minority is still successful because they have inherited lot of capital over generations. In India (and also in many cases in SA) the real inheritance is not money, rather heritage. Because my ancestors were of high caste, learned and respected I "believe I can do it as well”. So the actual problem we found (besides the usual age old stigma and the lack of education) was that we need to inspire people growing/living under oppressive environment that they can do it. 

I do not want to tell that corruption or the lack of education is are not big problems. I just want to thrust that the real and the biggest challenge will be to “inspire” and make Indians "tryst with destiny”.

Foresight

Many want to know the future and that explains the market for fortune-tellers. Let us assume that we have a real fortune-teller who can exactly tell the future. Will that help us? The common answer will be yes, we will be more prepared for what is coming. However there is a small misunderstanding in this. In true sense if someone is with foresight then she can see what is going to happen. Nothing can change it. Because if you can change it then it is not happening then the forecast goes wrong! So let us accept that prediction by a genuine person will always happen.

Now let us analyse the two characters of a forecast. Either it is a good thing (that will happen) or a bad thing. If it is a good thing then we know it beforehand. It takes away all the fun, is not it? There is no surprise factor and hence no real joy in left in it.

And if the event predicted is a negative one then we worry about it from now (even when it has not happened) and our time till that event is miserable or at least not as joyful as it could have been. Again the lack of the surprise factor makes it worse.

So ultimately we can conclude that a foresight is a useless thing to go for.