Sunday, October 02, 2016

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...!).