Is the Mahatma still relevant?

Every year at Gandhi Jayanthi we are told to remember Mahatma Gandhi. But that doesn't really seem to affect most of us. In fact the common refrain on most lips is "what exactly has he done anyway?"

The feeling is to be expected. It has been six decades since he died. He is barely a memory even for his surviving peers.

We have also taken a radically different path since his day. Our new capitalist economy geared towards industrial development is very different from the village-centric utopia Gandhi had envisioned. So he feels like a distant memory from a detached past.

In fact many of ideas were 'eccentric' then and downright impossible to understand now - his infamous 'silent days' in the midst of major political dialogues and his even more infamous advice to the Jews to lay down their lives willingly before Hitler's troops come readily to mind. There were many more.

We cannot and do not need to follow or even know each and every idea or word he said. He isn't and he never pretended to be some divine entity giving out laws that all believers must obey.

What we can try to do is understand the ideals that made him such a game-changer. Because that part of him is still a great guide. Let’s consider some of them -

He was dedicated and self-motivated. He had to be since his life equation was ‘white man threw me out of a train = I will work for next five decades to get white man to leave my country entirely.’

(Today we like to change jobs every two years, citing the need to 'find ourselves', whatever that means.)

He routinely asked people to kill him in place of someone else and he tried to starve himself to death on several occasions. So a willingness to go the extra mile was just another day in the office for him.

He actually was for the people. His ragged appearance looks quaint in those black and white pictures. But let's not forget, then and now, most of India does dress in those rags.

He was simple. The food he ate was so down-to-earth that Lord Mountbatten allegedly was horrified by the mere prospect of having to taste it.

He took it as it came. He walked when he could, slept wherever he was offered hospitality - from poor Dalit huts (long before Rahul Gandhi made it the 'it' thing to do in politics incidentally) to the sprawling Birla mansion.

This is not to say that we should do all of these things. (He wanted us to but that part can be put in the 'eccentric' category.) It simply means he was willing to be deeply immersed and engaged in his causes, not merely an orator but a participant. And this is an important concept to keep in mind as we try to change our country for the better.

Which bring us to one of his best features - He practised what he preached, a feat so rare that it must be an endangered species.

In a country where someone who has more than three followers feels that he or she no longer has the need to open doors or speak directly to the 'masses', Gandhi actually, literally, did what he told his followers to do. That should be enough to shock the daylights out of anyone in modern India.

Here are some new age examples –

Narendra Modi spent most of his efforts during his three-day fast in keeping the common people as far away from his exalted presence as possible.

Arundhati Roy once gave an interview about the starving, oppressed poor while staring out of a window in her bungalow and eating fresh mangoes that a servant fetched for her.

And these are just two examples from across the political spectrum.

Gandhi was just a man with a few good ideas. The feat was that he managed to convince millions to listen to him, to believe in him. Not for votes, not for power, just because it was the right thing to do.

We all have ideas. But I am yet to inspire anyone to follow my ideals. Who have you inspired? Unless the figure is in millions, then Gandhi still has something to teach us.

Whatever his flaws or success rate, Gandhi inspired an entire nation and played a part in changing the world he lived in forever. He was not one man in great times. His presence and actions made his times great.

That's the benchmark. If and when we ever reach that mark, THEN we can officially declare that Gandhi is no longer relevant.

Until then he was, and he will remain, the only Mahatma among us all.