Bapu, you count less and less with the nation

Bapu, if you come here on your birthday, you would not recognise the country you once led to freedom. We are now a high-flying nation. We have the bomb — the possession of which you unequivocally condemned and forbade after Hiroshima. What you would notice straightaway is that we do not have the outmoded belief that wrong means will not lead to right results, our faith is that ends justify the methods. Success is important to us, not how we achieve it.

We are completely opposed to the peaceful approach which you taught us. Communists as well as non-communists, both seem to imagine that a principle can only be stoutly defended by the language of violence and by condemning those who do not accept it. For both of them there is only black and white — no other shades. We have forgotten the approach to tolerance, of feeling that perhaps others might also have some share of the truth.

The new factor that has crept in our life is the contempt for what might be called the moral and spiritual side of life. Our standards and values have changed. Simple living and high thinking which you advocated does not fit into our modern ways. We are different now, result-oriented for our families and ourselves. We weigh everything on the scales of money — goodness, fame or advancement in life. We admire the rich and it does not bother us how they accumulate wealth. We never socially boycott racketeers. We go to the party of the most corrupt or the most unwanted if the table is large.

Honesty is a relative term. What you considered honesty is considered a fad these days. Our standards are peculiar. It is not the intrinsic honesty we are after. So long as a minister or a bureaucrat is not caught, he is honest. Our rulers may not come up to the modicum of honesty you had in view. But they are vociferous in denouncing corruption. They and their family members have played havoc with the country. Their collaborators, the dishonest public servants, have besmeared the country’s face. Bapu, we want to tell you that we are the fourth or the fifth corrupt nation in the world and we have the distinction of adulterating life-saving medicines and food grains at ration shops and godowns. Sab kutch chalta hai (everything is acceptable) is now our motto.

It is difficult to pin point when it happened but the dividing line between right and wrong has now disappeared. Nothing deters us from taking the law in our own hands or violating the norms of morality. We are now a nation without the awareness of what is right and we do not have even a desire to act according to what is right. I recall the days when people sacrificed all to free India, to usher in a new era which you promised would be without tears on anybody’s cheeks.

Western economics as you told us, have little bearing on our present day problems. That also goes for Marxist economics which is in many ways out of date. We have to do our own thinking, profiting by the example of others but essentially trying to find a path for ourselves suited to our own conditions.

Your disciple Jayaprakash Narayan came round to accept this viewpoint, although at one time he was a revolutionary. He tried a bit to bring about changes in the economic scene. But he could only devote his attention to political freedom. He helped people get back their liberty and died before he could attend to the problem of bread.

You said bread is good. Because to a hungry man — we have millions of them — there is nothing more important than the daily meal. But we now face a strange situation: overflowing godowns of food and people dying of starvation. And the government is busy debating whether people are dying of starvation or malnutrition.

Bapu, you count less and less with the nation. We celebrate your birthday or death anniversary. Otherwise, your name is seldom mentioned. The present rulers are not of the same genre. Many from their party had denounced you. Still they invoke your blessings because you still live in the heart of the common man. Neither the RSS headquarters at Nagpur, nor the CPI(M) office at Kolkata (it was Calcutta in your days) has your picture. But then they are so cut off from the people that Vir Savarkar to the first and Joseph Stalin to the second are the frontline heroes.

I recall that the first day I reached New Delhi from Pakistan I went directly to the Birla House to see you — just to see a person who not only gave us freedom but also dignity. I did not go near you. Nor did you notice me. You were pacing up and down in a verandah, resting your hands on the shoulders of the two girls walking on either side of you.

I did not stay there for long. But those few minutes evoked strange feelings within me. I have narrated all this to my children and grandchildren as if those few minutes are my proud possession — my heritage.

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