It’s 2nd October here in India and it’s a well known national holiday. People like you and me are enjoying the extended sleep and a heavy brunch. The newspapers are of course carrying their due share of the Gandhi crap, just making sure we remember why college was off today. Gandhi is believed to be responsible for getting our nation firangi-free using his non-violent tactics. I think of my school days when we used to cram awful load of four-pages-Gandhi-text to gain a few extra points. Now I’ve started to feel that all that they teach at history classes during school is either a lie or incomplete truth.
Is it wasn’t so then how come they never taught us about the great brahamachari experiment Gandhi conducted on himself. To master celibacy he would sleep naked with young girls. In Ved Mehta’s Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Mehta emphasizes on the fact that Gandhi’s experiment was an attempt to overpower Jinnah with his spiritual power. We call this dude the Father of the Nation?
Bhagat Singh was hanged by the British on March 23, 1931. Yes they made us learn this date in history but then again there were no connections with Gandhi and Bhagat Singh. We were made to believe Gandhi was on this road to non-violence and Bhagat Singh was on a whole different road to violence. Here’s an excerpt from Young India written by Gandhi;
Bhagat Singh and his two associates have been hanged. The Congress made many attempts to save their lives and the Government entertained many hopes of it, but all has been in a vain.
Bhagat Singh did not wish to live. He refused to apologize, or even file an appeal. Bhagat Singh was not a devotee of non-violence, but he did not subscribe to the religion of violence. He took to violence due to helplessness and to defend his homeland. In his last letter, Bhagat Singh wrote –” I have been arrested while waging a war. For me there can be no gallows. Put me into the mouth of a cannon and blow me off.” These heroes had conquered the fear of death. Let us bow to them a thousand times for their heroism.
But we should not imitate their act. In our land of millions of destitute and crippled people, if we take to the practice of seeking justice through murder, there will be a terrifying situation. Our poor people will become victims of our atrocities. By making a dharma of violence, we shall be reaping the fruit of our own actions.
Hence, though we praise the courage of these brave men, we should never countenance their activities. Our dharma is to swallow our anger, abide by the discipline of non-violence and carry out our duty.
March 29, 1931
Time and again this has been a hot topic for endless discussions. Could Gandhi have used his influences to save Bhagat Singh? The question here is not whether he should have saved Bhagat Singh or not, the question here is that whether he really wanted to save Bhagat Singh and his team of extremists? Now these young lads had surely started taking a toll on Gandhi’s popularity, not that he cared much but may be somewhere inside he felt if the nation really took to violence then his concept of independence would be lost. I’m not saying Gandhi should have stripped and got into jeans and t-shirt while carrying ammunition, joining Bhagat Singh’s league of extraordinary gentlemen, I’m saying Gandhi could have shown some balls there. Neither the Congress nor Gandhi were even interested in keeping Bhagat Singh and his aides alive let alone trying to save them. It was a clash of ideologies.
If most of you think non-violence was the way to go then you’re not completely correct. Satyaghraha and civil disobedience were cool ideas but they could have wiped off the British in another 200 years. This means I would have been writing this blog post on a piece of paper and submitting it to some British authority who would approve it before I post it online. But then would the British let us log into cyberspace, that’s a different question.
The whole balloon of non-violence ideology is filled with Gandhian farts. If that’s what we believe in then how come we’re spending millions on next generations arms and ammunition. Okay we’re not poking our enemies with nukes but still if you’ve got such stuff in your pocket you’re a part of the crime too. Non-violence isn’t relevant at all times. There are times when you need to tell an intruder that he needs to leave. Staying hungry and wearing a dhoti doesn’t always help.
To say Gandhi alone was responsible for our independence is wrong. To say his role was useless isn’t the truth. To call him the Father of the Nation isn’t justified. To have a holiday on 2nd October…well I’ll take it!
Tags: british, history, independence, India, rants
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
totally awwwwsum…!! even i wanna ask gandhi n his followers can they really cum fwd n solve d issue of terrorism wid d much preached ‘non-violence’ ? if u can, then cum fwd..where r u sleeping n wat r u waiting 4..?!!!
Non-violence is never a true cure for a majority of practical problems our country faces. But then again we’re good at stuffing our pockets with missiles and bombs, not throwing them at someone!
Total loser man.. All that you said and wrote sitting behind the comfort zone of your bedroom is nothing but a smelly and unproductive sarcasm. Gandhi and Bhagat were two different revolutionaries with their own ideals. Why and How can anyone expect Gandhi to do the ‘bhadvagiri’ for Bhagat’s acts? So what he had the power and influence. It takes nothing to write a post and there were millions like you who hated and wrote shit about gandhi but they were f’ing ball-less losers. Just try to convince and prove your point to just 10 people.. This man had the power to convince a freaking nation… A nation with 30 crore ppl. This needs guts under your abs. Obviously no two person think same and not person is perfect. There are things that Gandhi did that were not upto the mark but I say, we should first get into Gandhi’s shoes and then try to rectify the mistake. Have you tried to clean your own bathroom Mr. Harry? That man wanted to clean the shit of the whole nation and he did clean up some of it. Now if you think you have that much shit up your ass, dont delete this comment. I am not a hardcore believer of Gandhi but any sane person with a pinch of common sense would know that what Gandhi did was by no means a piece of cake.
Is the author seriously that retarded? No great world leader was ever totally perfect. Pointing out minuscule mistakes and then flaming him for that is seriously petty and is a clear attempt to garner blog hits.
Next time, realize that you are a really small guy in this world who needs to respect the greatness in other people, rather than being a ignorant hippie who has nothing better to do than writing blog posts.
Peace.
Well said. To call Gandhi father of the nation indeed is complete hypocrisy!
Very easy for somebody to sit in front of a computer, read some demeaning articles and then curse someone whom they don’t know anything about. I was a Gandhi-hater, baiter or basher as you are now. I spoke ill of him just as blandly as you do now.
What I realised later on was that my hatred was not against Gandhi, but against those proponents that gave him a demi-god status. It was the over-zealousness or excessive patriotism induced eulogies that ticked me off. It is then that with an open-mind, I read his book “My experiments with Truth”. You can only respect someone after trying to put yourself in his shoes. I respect him because I am incapable of correcting my ills.
You have 364 days in a year to show your angst against a person. Use his birthday to write something good about him. I’m sure you’ll find a lot to write about. And he certainly deserves it.
No body in this world is perfect. Every body has something to admire and something to hate. Gandhi was in no way perfect but he did follow what he believed in. You may agree with him or disagree but you have to give credit to a guy who stuck to his ideologies and fought for it years after years. I don’t fully agree with all his non-violence theories and movements but i respect him for his persistence and his ability to move masses. Anybody who can move millions and make them do whatever he wants can’t be an ordinary person, there has to be something more about him. We can’t bloody make our brother/sister/parents/friends do something we want let alone general public.!!! Like any other human being he did his mistakes too but that’s no reason to bash somebody.! You can disagree with somebody’s ideology and still respect that person. Try looking at his good qualities too man. You will find lot to admire. Mind you i am no gandhi fan and i disagree on lots of his theories but i do respect the guy.
I’ll say that I am not a Gandhi fan either or a follower of ‘Second’ cheek philosophy. If someone deserves a knuckle sandwich, I’d rather give it to them. But your article is so full of assumptions that I could not help but comment.
I agree when you say that all history is either a lie or incomplete truth. It is the same history that tells you that Bhagat Singh was an extremist and added much needed momentum to the Indian Freedom Struggle. So if you deny Gandhi his share of historical limelight, you deny the same to Bhagat Singh.
“Is it wasn’t so then how come they never taught us about the great brahamachari experiment Gandhi conducted on himself. To master celibacy he would sleep naked with young girls. In Ved Mehta’s Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Mehta emphasizes on the fact that Gandhi’s experiment was an attempt to overpower Jinnah with his spiritual power. We call this dude the Father of the Nation?” –
Now, they never taught you about the ‘Brahamachari’ experiment Gandhi conducted on himself, because
1) Sex education isn’t a part of our syllabus yet
2) 90% of our students cannot look beyond porn and other crap to understand what he was trying to do
3) Gandhi was converted into a vote-garnering symbol by the Congress later in his life and after his death, so historians deftly eliminated the controversial(yet essential) part of his persona in order to render him a father figure
4) All this is my guess, I am not Ramchandra Guha or any authority on History.
And what mister Ved Mehta opines is just another way of posing Gandhi as the anti-thesis of Jinnah, which he was not. His experiments and his theories were more general in nature and not centered around a politician or a country.
If you look at the other fundamental theories that he proposes, Trusteeship and others, you’ll notice that he was very ahead of his times in terms of thinking. Unfortunately most of his life was spent in the petty struggle of freeing a country which he could otherwise have spent in more social experiments and might have got a nobel peace prize for his theories or a booker prize for his books.
Again, when you ridicule his experiments with his family(mind you, any girl at his time would have volunteered to be a part of his experiment, he was an idol then. But he chose his family. Don’t portray him as those swindling yogis who claim freedom from sexual desires and end up on India TV.) ask yourself, would you dare something like that with your family?
Its easy to question whether he had balls or not, but put yourself in his shoes. The whole country and some part of the world are talking about you. If you are even mildly concerned about your reputation, will you risk an experiment like that? Do you have balls for it? And please don’t be ethical here – I will never do something like that. Can you do something like that? Or even imagine that?
And there are bigger sacrifices. Imagine giving up fancy clothes. Imagine going on a hunger strike. Imagine staying with non-violence when everybody else around has proved that violence is the most effective way of gaining freedom. Which brings us to Bhagat Singh.
It is amazing how you quote Gandhi and then misunderstand him.
When you say that – ‘we are made to believe that Gandhi was on this road to non-violence and Bhagat Singh was on a whole different road to violence’ and you quote Gandhi where he ‘clearly’ says that – ‘Bhagat Singh was not a devotee of non-violence, but he did not subscribe to the religion of violence’ – You mix up your understanding of Gandhi.
The question is not whether Gandhi could or wanted to save Bhagat Singh – the real question is whether Bhagat Singh intended to be saved by someone whose influence he had been trying to negate. Look at it this way – Both Bhagat singh and Gandhi wanted one thing – Freedom for the country. Both had different ways and could not compromise with the principles they had set for themselves. So if Bhagat Singh – a symbol of radical revolution, extremism and eye for an eye – was rescued from a death penalty by Gandhi – an exact opposite of all Bhagat preached – would this have made sense.
Would Bhagat Singh have made compromises for an opportunity to live? Of course not. That is too demeaning to think of given everything that Bhagat Singh always stood for. Then why blame Gandhi for not ‘saving’ Bhagat Singh?
Read Gandhi to understand him, at least read what you quote – “These heroes had conquered the fear of death. Let us bow to them a thousand times for their heroism.But we should not imitate their act. In our land of millions of destitute and crippled people, if we take to the practice of seeking justice through murder, there will be a terrifying situation.”
He calls them heroes who have conquered the fear of death, something Gandhi also believed in. But he warns other not to follow their ways. Not because he thought Violence was wrong, but because he knew that very few people can utilize violence the way Bhagat or Sukhdev did.
Understand him when he says that in our lands of millions of destitute and crippled people, violence will lead to a terrifying situation. Something which happened the moment we got our independence.
Let me give you an example. Bhagat Singh threw bombs in an assembly but did not kill anyone. Because he knew the difference between violence and murder. But had those bombs been in any weaklings hands who couldn’t differentiate murder and violence. He would certainly had taken a few firangis down with him. If you see the difference in that, you’ll understand why an understanding of the benefits of non-violence is essential to utilize violence as a potent force.
Gandhi had more balls than you give him credit for. So had Bhagat Singh. The moment you stop seeing them as two opposite forces and start seeing them as two daggers used to kill the same enemy, you’ll understand their actions better.
SatyaGraha and Civil Disobedience were cool and slow. They needed another 200 years but who knows, maybe as a nation we were too immature for independence. Maybe had be gained independence in 2147, Pakistan and Bangladesh and all would still have been a part of us. I am just dreaming, of course no use crying over spilt milk. The problem with Indians has always been co-ordinated effort. Before independence we were divided into Gandhi, Bhagat, Jinnah and like, and post independence we are divided in Maharashtra, UP, OBC, General and so on. At the end of it, we are all scums, some more scum than others.
And the millions on arms and ammunitions is spent because no body gives a rat’s ass to Gandhian farts. But you are right when you say that Non-violence isn’t an answer always. And to say Gandhi alone was responsible for our independence is wrong too. Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Lalaji and even Jinnah were responsible for our independence. Again he was opposed to being called the Father of the Nation or Mahatama. But we are too stupid to understand our heroes. We need someone to throw our brickbats at be it the Father of the Nation, the Father of the Constitution or the Father of the twelve kids.
But why do you enjoy a holiday in his name? There must be a violent way of killing this holiday. Guns are the answer to everything no?
I don’t idolize Gandhi either. My only problem being he needed to be thrown off a train to realize the patriotic side of himself. But then, that is the case with most of us, isn’t it? We go to Australia cursing our country for powercuts and bad roads, want to settle there and earn dollars. But once we get kicked by few people there we are suddenly all Indian – patriotic and brave. Crappy if you ask me, but then we are only human. So was Gandhi.
Hate someone for the right reasons, hatred must not be biased. True hatred is a more potent force than true love. But before you hate someone, understand them.
It was a nice article because it had stuff both for the Gandhi haters and lovers. And something for the impartial too. But you can do better than demeaning his name – Karamchand had nothing to with what his son Mohandas did – Why demean him for the actions of his son?
As for the holiday, enjoy it while it lasts.
Cheers,
Shantanu.
British cld not weed out Gandhi like many other.there lies his power and thats becoz of his principles
You may go ahead and curse Mahatma Gandhi and hope to gain popularity on the Internet and show off that you are that funky dude with such a great knowledge of Indian History that would rival its creators themselves , but remember if he weren’t there when needed , not only you, your children (if you aren’t impotent) would have been writing blogs on a piece of paper and submitting it to the British and washing British crap in India. Your opinion about him craving for popularity is baseless, senseless and hypocritical (and not the principles of nonviolence.)
If you want to curse him , fine , let someone take away that independence thing away from you…and then you are free to say whatever the crap your foul mouth wishes.
Aaaand…
Who cares if you sleep naked with 2 or 200 women if it isn’t against their wishes ? Why would you have a problem with that ???
Good luck with your conspiracy theory dude.
What you don’t understand is that Gandhi was the one person responsible for bringing together this vast nation to fight against the British. It is his leadership qualities that made millions chant the freedom manthra.
If you think violence is the road to freedom, you are totally in false heaven. Please do remeber the extreme violent methods used in african countries to get their so called freedom. They are still living in hell.
Feel free to cherish your freedom, but please don’t curse folks who spent their entire life to get you exactly that freedom.
BhagaT Singh was 23 when he stood eye -to – eye At the Hangman’s ….. Mohandas Gandhi was in South Africa studying law at 23 .
Bhagat Singh operated alone ,the revolutionaries’ whereabouts were more or less unknown … Gandhi here sat right in the midst of thousands on a beach , & picked a handful of Salt .
The newspapers read : Bhagat Singh & associates BOMB the Legislative Assembly …. Gandhi calls for Swadeshi , Don’t buy foreign goods.
……It isnt hard to figure out who would have been the ‘popular’ one …. HEnce the HOLIDAY ON GANDHI JAYANTI .
gandhi realised tat ya black are being discriminated in SA…wen he himself was not allowed 2 travel in d compartment meant 4 whites…!! grrrt! cudnt he c d atrocities done 2 d indians in india wen he ran away 4 studying law..?!! n wat was d use of dis self contrl thing wen he cudnt actually practice commitment as made 2 his wife…!
itta sara padhna padegaaa??? yaar post bahut lamba hai… ek do comment del maaro na jaldi khatam hogaa….
Ok this is a little bit of trolling here. I somewhat disagree with what has been said in the above post. In fact a quite disagree with most of it. YOU BE TROLLIN DUDE!