The Day after January 30

For the generations who grew up thinking of Gandhi--the man India reveres still as its father, and as a Mahatama--as Ben Kingsley, or as the apparation from the Munnabhai movie, something real gets lost.

Gandhi was above all, a man of simplicity. And I don't mean simple as in uncomplicated, but simple as in rapier-sharp, getting to the heart of the matter, to the center of an issue, with unerring accuracy simple.

What would you do if you were told that the foreign power who ruled you would now levy tax on the salt you eat? Would you start walking 400 km towards the sea to make your own salt? Would you do so despite the threat of violence, despite not really knowing that others would follow? Would you care? Perhaps that was his true power? He started walking and others followed...thousands of them in a simultaneous protest against the British. And millions more across India engaged in acts of what Gandhi *never* called passive resistance....but active Satyagrah.

For Gandhi, non-violence was never *passive*...it was active in a way that took on the truncheons and batons rained against human skulls by a massive war machine. Was it not active? That taking of a single step...after step...after step...walking towards a waiting force whose only objective was to injure you...kill you even. It was active, not to run away but to advance, knowing that your satyagrah (satya=truth + agraha=holding firmly to) involved no retalation, for even by injuring the one injuring you, by resisting the injury you might lost your moral ascendancy.

And what else did a once-rich country systematically looted of its riches have left? Its people could not rule it, they did not own it, and sovereigns in another land, far away, reduced it to merely the jewel in *their* crown. It was Gandhian simplicity then that captured the imagination and the hearts of Indians...and not just the rich, elite, Oxford-educated Indians of the Congress Party but the poor destitute ones, the real power of a humbled country.

It was one such simple yet controvorsial decision that might have cost Gandhi his life. Heart-sick over the bloody partition that gave India and Pakistan their freedom, but tore apart a nation, he resolved to, and announced something we still argue about. He picked up his trust wooden staff, walked away and said he would go to Pakistan, barely a year after independence to mend fences. Non-violence and principles were paramount for him, humbling himself...humbling India even in the quest for these principles was fine by him. This decision of his was viewed askance even by the Congress Party but he was not beholden to it, for he never held any office. He was not a politician, and even in independent India he remained a maverick, a thorn in the side to the establishment, even to those who loved him and called him their mahatama. But no one viewed this affront to India more severely than certain members of the RSS.

There were five attempts on his life, and it was the fifth by Nathuram Godse that took it. That was January 30, 1948. One gun-shot in the chest is what finally killed the satyagrahi.

It happened as---as always without security--Gandhi met his assassin on his way to his public prayer meeting. He was shot, and for some, Godse became the true patriot, the true Indian, willing to risk it all for a principle. It was ironic, this battle of principles. It still remains so.

Gandhi became an icon, for India, and of the world. An icon even for Albert Einstein who said of him, "“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.”

It was later that same day in late January, that a shaken Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made the speech that every schoolchild of my generation memorized. For truly, for a young and nascent India carved out through violence and suffering the light must have seemed to have gone out of our lives. How would we survive this?

Whether you agree with all of his thoughts and ideals, of all his decisions, no one can ignore that Gandhi lived his own life by those same exacting ideals. And as we enter into the second decade of the twenty-first century, when simplicity is a quaint construct, perhaps we should remember the essence of Gandhian simplicity.

It involves not fasting and protest and eating only fuits and vegetables or weaving your own cloth. Perhaps in our new world simplicity means using the shortest and simplest route to your dreams. If Gandhi could dream of an independent India and inspire others to do it, perhaps we can take the shortest, most direct routess to our own dreams. Perhaps! Perhaps we can all be Gandhian in that sense!

So on this day, the day after the 62nd anniversary of the death of a visionary, we can at least dream our dreams and think about how we can achieve them. And perhaps we can set apart a minute from our busy day and truly ponder what Gandhi meant for India...and for the world.