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.
|