October 2 is Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. He might well be India’s most successful export. Next to curry. Though these days there is more lip service than true devotion to his ideals.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
Gopal Gandhi was only two and a half when Mahatma Gandhi died. But he had a vantage most of us do not have. He was Gandhi’s grandson and I spoke to him after the publication of his book A Frank Friendship Gandi and Bengal: A Descriptive chronology.
He says he would be taken to his prayer meetings.
GG1: I used to go and sit with him and then he used to start the meeting by saying, Shan’t ho jay Murmuring in the crowd. Probably talking to J. J. I used to mimic themselves. And so he sent me and he loved that and laughed.
That phrase “shant ho jaiye,” or please calm down and stop talking, came back to Gandhi’s grandson after Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 when little Gopal was taken to see the body.
GG2: that I'm told that on the day he was shot and I was taken by my parents to the house and I saw him lying down and a lot of Talk happening all around. I said. Bapu so rahen shant ho jay
But while Gandhi was revered the Father of the Nation, he was also criticized for setting impossible standards.
GG9: he was also setting a gold standard. And in an era where we are surrounded by. Base metals and sheer led. It is good to have a gold standard. This is what Gandhi was.
But was it easier to be a gold standard outside the home? To be the Father of Nation rather than Father of the family?
GG3: the gold standard was very hard on the first son Harilal who was made of his own kind of gold.
He felt constrained trying to a businessman in Calcutta and being Gandhi’s son
GG4: Expected to follow his father's well known principles of conduct. perosnal professional. Business. very tough and He paid a tough price for it as well. But the other sons, I think. Understood their father a bit better. Not without difficulties also. But they all. Saw and felt a touch of that standard. touching and entering their own lives.
But perhaps this was Harilal Gandhi’s role in the myth of the Mahatma
GG5: There was a great role Harilal was given by destiny. The image of A father who Fails as a father. Even as he triumphs as a leader. And whose failure as a father, an admission of failure as a father becomes part of that triumph
Gopal Gandhi says the family had to make peace with a father who larger than life, one who belonged to not just them, or even to India but to the whole world.
GG6: And on the day after the assassination, the Chicago Tribune had a fantastic drawing. It can be called a cartoon, but. It is the most moving things I've seen. It has Gandhi walking out of. Planet Earth. Not just India. Not focused in India. Planet Earth working out. He's just holding a piece of paper which says The pursuit of peace and the world is spewing fumes, cold hatred, intolerance, violence.
Gandhi’s message of nonviolence might have won many Oscars but it seems largely swept aside in a world of bloody conflict. Gopal Gandhi says each October 2 he feels both proud and conflicted about the world we live in.
GG7: The future of our country as part of an imperiled planet in which. Nearly.0 How many I believe 12,000 nuclear warheads which can be deployed at any moment. Can turn our planet into a vapor of smoke by terror or error or swagger. And. The prospect of. Global warming, sending oceanic waves into all our coasts
But he takes comfort in the fact that men like Gandhi never truly die even when the world turns its back on them.
The New York Times game Spelling Bee refuses to accept “tiffin” as a valid word but is okay with “mahatma!”
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW.