Commentary/Dilip D'Souza

Gandhi does not need anyone to pronounce him anything. He is who he is, his legacy is what it is.

The 15 seconds at the bar opposite Regal Cinema in Bombay finally convinced me: We are slap-bang in the middle of silly season. What's more, there's no shortcut: We are just going to have to ride this one out. I don't know if it has anything to do with the election to the Bombay municipality that are coming up in February -- elections being times when silliness truly overflows the banks -- but there's quite definitely a fragrance of the absurd in the air.

Three of us tried to get into the bar to grab a beer late one Saturday night. A burly man in a tie blocked our way: "Where are you going?" he asked. "Into the bar" seemed like the obvious answer, there being no place else to go but back out from where we stood. "I'm sorry, we don't allow people dressed in Indian clothes into the bar," he said. That was when I remembered that my wife was in a pink sari and I was in a long blue kurta.

It hadn't mattered all evening what we were wearing. Clothes, after all, are best when unobtrusive, never insinuating themselves into your thoughts. But at this little bar on this cool night, ours suddenly did matter, they did enter our thoughts. Because suddenly, our attire was enough to turn us away from there.

Two weeks ago, the morning newspaper carried a report about just such an incident: Two smart lawyers were not allowed into a disco because they wore saris. His dance floor denizens, the manager of that establishment explained, objected to women in saris. Besides, saris don't go with the sartorial genre normally on display, or normally encouraged, in the disco. Ha, I thought to myself as I read the report, must be some obscure disco, must be the exception rather than the rule.

Little did I know that I would be at the receiving end -- in mere days, at a busy bar in the night-time heart of Bombay.

You'll forgive me for reading big meaning into small events, but the thought did burrow its way into my mind. And after all, as I mentioned, it is silly season. Struggling for freedom from the British half a century ago, we were gladly, even fervently, ridding ourselves of foreign fabrics. We wore Indian clothes made of Indian cloth as a badge of honour. We were inspired by the example of a giant among men who even spun his own simple clothes.

Does it mean anything that today, that a man's clothes would bar him from a bar in Bombay? Or if you don't like that question, try this one: Does it mean anything that today, reporters ask the chief minister of a state about this critically important issue: Whether his government considers that same man the 'Father of the Nation'?

Oh yes, it is silly season.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you probably know, has been 'under attack' in Maharashtra. The insinuations came from Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena, always game for some random Gandhi-bashing. The relationship Gandhi had with his two young nieces -- his constant companions towards the end of his life -- was not quite above board, Thackeray suggested. Gandhi could not be considered the father of the nation, he went on.

The contortions this set off scaled new heights of absurdity. First there was Manohar Joshi, chief minister of the state. Asked to react to this innuendo about Gandhi and his nieces, made when he was on the same platform at the same function at the same time his remote-controlling boss spoke out, Joshi said he had not heard it. Ah yes, just like Clinton had not inhaled.

And what about Gopinath Munde, deputy chief minister of the state, what did he think? He hadn't 'studied' what Thackeray had said, so he could say nothing. Not even why the remarks needed study at all. Then Pramod Mahajan, state BJP head honcho, told a press conference that Gandhi was a great son of India, but did not qualify as the father of India. Not satisfied with just that much familial logic, he offered this gem: India is our 'motherland', so the question of a father of the nation simply does not arise.

But reporters at a later Manohar Joshi press conference outdid Mahajan, Munde and Joshi himself. Does your government consider Gandhi the father of the nation or not, they demanded from Joshi. What this question was designed to reveal, I don't know. What bearing it had on anything at all, I don't know.

Nobody had stopped to think that Gandhi hardly needs anyone to pronounce him anything. He is who he is, his legacy is what it is. A puppeteer's small-minded attempts at slander can't change that; nor can the pretended deafness of his puppet; nor can tortuous reasoning about sons and mothers and fathers. It matters not one tiny bit today whether his contribution towards freeing India, his influence on India, is or is not acknowledged: he made it and that's all.

I never knew Gandhi, but I suspect he would sport a small smile at the strange goings-on in his name. There would be things far more important to him than whether he is called the father of the nation or something else.

There would be things more important to him, as well, than where, or if at all, we must put up his portraits. But try telling that to whoever brought the case that resulted in a recent high court judgment in Bombay. Only portraits of Gandhi and Shivaji, ruled the court, may be hung in government offices. Yes sir, the high court is playing at being interior decorator.

What has this landmark judgement resulted in? Followers of Dr Ambedkar, the 'Father of the Constitution' -- another title I suspect its owner would not care substantially about -- are outraged. Why did the court not also decree that Ambedkar portraits may also hang in offices? This is an insult to a great son of India. Last Friday, a march Ambedkar's followers staged to protest this oversight was broken up by the police. Much laying about with police lathis ensued, many slogans rent the air, and at the end of it all, I wondered what it was all for anyway.

Do we really respect the memory of departed heroes by insisting that their portraits adorn dusty offices in whose corners you can find accumulations of spat paan? Or are there other ways to do it?

For example, let's say we demanded that the Constitution be observed. To choose just one facet of it, suppose the equality of justice it assures us all is translated into the punishments that assurance implies. Say, swift and heavy punishment for the men who have drowned us in scams and riots over the last few years. Suppose this effort brought the law to bear on -- picking three at random -- H K L Bhagat (Delhi riots, 1984), Sukh Ram (telecom swindle, 1996) and Bal Thackeray (Bombay riots, 1992-93) for their violations of it.

Now think about it for a minute. Would such a conscientious application of our laws, and therefore of our Constitution, be a fitting tribute to Ambedkar? Or should we content ourselves with plastering his portrait on the walls of government offices?

It's silly season, forgive me. We're agitating for the portrait.