Incremental Gandhigiri!
Finally watched Munnabhai today...the movie that has relaunched Gandhiji. He is the Father of the nation, though wherever he is today, might not want to stake claim to that title!
The movie is an entertainer for sure and like Rang De Basanti has apparently done lots apart from just running to packed halls and selling more popcorn….Sales of My Experiments with Truth have gone up and all kinds of Gandhi merchandise have taken off…
Personally, until now, the Mahatma was just that, a Mahatma. He was, to use a crude comparison a bit like Sachin….everybody looks up to him and wants to emulate him but when it comes to doing things his way its tough man, bloody tough.
The movie gave me a fresh perspective or should I say rekindled one.
Munnabhai tries to simplify things and that’s where its success lies. It tries to convey I guess, that all of us have a Gandhi in ourselves. I remember a public service message that used to be run by the Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad on DD many years ago that showed this Gandhi outline being drawn with the Raghupati Raghav tune playing in the background. The message signed off by saying “Let’s try and discover the Gandhi in ourselves”. That message stayed with me in some corner of my mind and it came back today as I watched the movie unfold
The challenge today, in my mind, is two fold, maybe three. At a fundamental level we don’t have anything called a value system or even something called a conscience. It has probably been mortgaged for a new car or something. Ask someone from our generation or half a generation down and they’ll surely struggle to define what they stand for.
Second we don’t FEEL the need for a value system in the first place. Our lives seem perfectly ok without it. We don’t question ourselves enough on the righteousness of our actions.
Third it’s quite a challenge to translate Gandhian ideals to the current context. As we get more materialistic and worldly, the concept of Gandhi stands in anathema Gandhi is passé also because we don’t see a relevant avtaar in the current context that carries his ideals and translates it for us. The closest that we come are with some public figures with his surname.
We probably need to try and analyze our day to day lives and see where Gandhigiri fits in practically. It might be about not paying extra for the cab, it might mean not throwing garbage wherever it is generated. Small steps in the right direction is probably the answer, there’s still miles to walk if we wish to be, as Bapu said “the change that we wish to see in the world”
The movie is an entertainer for sure and like Rang De Basanti has apparently done lots apart from just running to packed halls and selling more popcorn….Sales of My Experiments with Truth have gone up and all kinds of Gandhi merchandise have taken off…
Personally, until now, the Mahatma was just that, a Mahatma. He was, to use a crude comparison a bit like Sachin….everybody looks up to him and wants to emulate him but when it comes to doing things his way its tough man, bloody tough.
The movie gave me a fresh perspective or should I say rekindled one.
Munnabhai tries to simplify things and that’s where its success lies. It tries to convey I guess, that all of us have a Gandhi in ourselves. I remember a public service message that used to be run by the Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad on DD many years ago that showed this Gandhi outline being drawn with the Raghupati Raghav tune playing in the background. The message signed off by saying “Let’s try and discover the Gandhi in ourselves”. That message stayed with me in some corner of my mind and it came back today as I watched the movie unfold
The challenge today, in my mind, is two fold, maybe three. At a fundamental level we don’t have anything called a value system or even something called a conscience. It has probably been mortgaged for a new car or something. Ask someone from our generation or half a generation down and they’ll surely struggle to define what they stand for.
Second we don’t FEEL the need for a value system in the first place. Our lives seem perfectly ok without it. We don’t question ourselves enough on the righteousness of our actions.
Third it’s quite a challenge to translate Gandhian ideals to the current context. As we get more materialistic and worldly, the concept of Gandhi stands in anathema Gandhi is passé also because we don’t see a relevant avtaar in the current context that carries his ideals and translates it for us. The closest that we come are with some public figures with his surname.
We probably need to try and analyze our day to day lives and see where Gandhigiri fits in practically. It might be about not paying extra for the cab, it might mean not throwing garbage wherever it is generated. Small steps in the right direction is probably the answer, there’s still miles to walk if we wish to be, as Bapu said “the change that we wish to see in the world”
Comments
Also, i think 'Gandhism' has been largely interpreted as some ascetic discipline which puts off people. Throw in the stupid 'socialists' who have appropriated his name and thus brought disrepute to his ideas...but like you point out, the idea is much larger ...