Gandhi in Delhi on Good Friday

Rajiv Chowk is not quite the metro rail station that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would approve of, notwithstanding the splendour of its architectural complexity. The underground station has quite a few tunnels and escalators carrying thousands of commuters at any given time to their respective platforms on the Yellow and Blue lines.

“The metro is Delhi’s lifeline,” I tell Gandhiji who is visibly impressed by the sparkling cleanliness and systematic orderliness of the entire station. There is something un-Indian about the place. But the jostling is very Indian, Gandhi realises.

“Is the country – or the world, for that matter – any the better for such sophisticated instruments of locomotion?” Gandhi asks me. “How do these instruments advance man’s spiritual progress? Do they not in the last resort hamper it?”

“We are building more and more temples, and splendid ones too, for our spiritual progress,” I point out. “We are becoming a spiritual nation, a Hindu Rashtra, a Rama Rajya.”

Gandhi smiles wryly. He had noticed a lot mammoth hoardings all over Delhi which made many claims and exhortations and proclamations about various things such as Atmanirbhar Bharat, Achche Din, and Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. The huge smiling face of the Prime Minister would not have escaped the notice of the shrewd man. Even the hoardings celebrating Azadi ka Mahotsav did not have anyone else’s pictures. Not even that of the father of the nation.

Does Gandhiji know that he is being erased from the country’s history? I wonder. The newspapers carry the information that a lot of history is being deleted and a lot of others are being added to the history textbooks of CBSE. The Mughals were already erased. Now Gandhi goes. Nehru was already discredited and character-assassinated a thousand times. Even his descendants were not left alone. Ridicule, sarcasm, direct assault on character, erasure from history… Strategies are aplenty. Is Gandhi aware of all this? I wonder. Maybe, it doesn’t matter to him.

It was not Indian independence that Gandhi had fought for; it was for an India worthy of independence. India of 2023, celebrating Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, is just the opposite of all that Gandhi had dreamt of.

“Do you think the temples and holy corridors and other such constructions are making Indians any better?” Gandhi asks interrupting my contemplation. “Violence is increasing in people’s hearts.” He pauses with a sigh. “You know, a violent person is a lazy person. Unwilling to do the hard work of problem solving, he throws a punch, or reaches for a gun. Cliched responses. All violence represents a failure of imagination.”

“Chhattarpur station,” the announcement is heard in the metro train’s PA system. “Please mind the gap.” It gives a friendly warning about the gap between the train and the platform.

Gaps are aplenty in India now, I reflect. Gap between the haves and have-nots. The wealthiest people of the world are in India. And hundreds of thousands who don’t get enough food to eat. Atmanirbharta belongs to hoardings. There’s a lot of gap between the slogans and the reality. Between word and deed. Not only in the most polluted city of the world but all over the country.

I am taking Gandhiji to my residence near Chhattarpur. Gandhiji is impressed by the enormous statue of Hanuman in the Chhattarpur temple complex.

“His kind of devotion is what makes people noble,” Gandhiji tells me. “It is a total surrender of the self to the divine. As Jesus did.”

Today is Good Friday, I remember. What more can you give than your life itself for any cause? That was the question of Good Friday. Didn’t Gandhi do the same? He gave his life for a cause. The cause was not Indian Independence. Indians never understood him. Now they are erasing him from history.

“Please, forgive us the gaps, Bapuji.” I utter in my mind.

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

Yesterday’s: Friendship

Tomorrow: Hurt in the Heart