The Great Ganesha

The title results from having recently seen Munnabhai Part 2. But seriously, I just wanted to send Gandhiji some belated birthday greetings. On October 2nd (yesterday) he celebrated his 137th birth anniversary. Happy belated birthday, Bapuji.

My family has some close ties with Gandhi, as I’ve written about in an earlier post. The matriarch of my family, my surrogate great-grandmother was a staunch Gandhian and heavily involved with many activities for our freedom struggle. Gandhi met her fairly often when he was in Bombay. She was even on the boat that went out to sprinkle his ashes in the confluence of the three holy rivers.

Notwithstanding Munnabhai‘s light take on it which, if nothing else, puts his message in an easy-to-digest package, I also believe quite strongly that several aspects of his philosophy are alive and well today, if interpreted correctly.

On an unrelated note, it’s interesting that Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about that.

Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award. The Prize was not awarded in 1948, the year of Gandhi’s death, on the grounds that “there was no suitable living candidate” that year, and when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was “in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi”. [link]

As Einstein said, “I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.”

Hear, hear. Here’s to Gandhigiri for at least another 137 years.

The picture’s of a young Gandhi circa 1906 when he was in London. Source: mkgandhi.org.

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