The Light that is Gandhi

 

Gandhi is a revered figure worldwide. Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Obama are among those who count him as their inspiration. The story in India is a little different though. There are M.G. roads (Mahatma Gandhi Road) in most cities, and he stares out from currency notes and Government publications but social media is full of ugly comments about him. His assassin Godse is now quite visible too in movies and birthday celebrations. 

It is difficult to kill Gandhi however. Lincoln played his part in trying to end slavery and Gandhi was the man who ended the other ill that afflicted the world - colonialism. If slavery was justified by assuming blacks to be inferior, colonialism rationalised the white man's superiority over natives. Power, money, and technology from the ebbs and flows of history are used as proxies for superior natural ability. Silly it may be, but this is what was the intellectual bulwark for all the principal social ills in history like slavery, colonialism, and caste.

To mobilise masses in a country with multiple languages, religions and a burden of feudalism was an enormous achievement by itself. To use that force in a non-violent way to drive out the British without too much rancour with both the victims (Indians) or the vanquished like the British is unprecedented.

Add to that his incredible personal simplicity, transparency in relationships, adherence to principles despite any obstacle, use of truth and love for all bar none yet remaining primarily a political leader is impossible to replicate.

He was also a deeply original thinker, fearless, and never afraid to take risks. He did not follow any defined path and built his own ideology and modus operandi for the freedom struggle.

There is nothing more noble on Indian Independence Day than to remember this great man, a frail-looking lawyer infused with the highest ideals of humanity. 

The Shadow of History

 The rebellion of 1857 in India against the British forces is a landmark event. In early May, sepoys in the cantonment in Meerut captured the government buildings and started the uprising. The next day they rode to Delhi and appointed the 82-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Moghul emperor, then feeble and ruling actually over a small fraction of the city's area as their titular head. This gathered momentum and in a few weeks, sepoys all over the whole of North India had joined the rebellion. The Nana Saheb of Cawnpore, Laxmi Bai, and Begum Hazrat Mahal were the prominent rulers who also joined the fight.

There were many bloody battles. Two gruesome episodes in this period stand out. In Cawnpore, many British civilians were killed by the sepoys in the Bibighar massacre. After prolonged fights, the British managed to turn the tables and in September, captured Delhi again. The British forces were in a mood for revenge and they blocked Kashmere gate, the entry to what is now known as old Delhi. Over a period of 4 to 5 days, the English soldiers were allowed to kill all adult males. Many eyewitness accounts of those days speak about the streets and the river turning red with blood. It was horrific.

As a consequence of this, the crown formally then took over the administration of India from the East India Company. The next 90 years under the Raj had its own stories of loot, injustice and blood. 

India came down from contributing a quarter of the world's GDP in the early 18th century to just about an estimated 3 % in 1947 when the British left. It was wealth extraction on a massive scale.

At the same time, modern India today cannot live without Cricket( a sport it is obsessed with), bread, rail and even its passport to the world, the English language. Apart from the relatively new justice and administrative systems. 

The bad came with the good. Can this be undone? No, and it does not make sense to. The only purpose of history should be to understand it and to be aware of our current status and the structural forces that can affect us. The same dynamics existed between the allied countries like UK, US and France with Germany and Japan or even England with the US. Going back in history, similar patterns of conflicts and then mutual absorption occurred between kingdoms within India.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it but those who obsess over it and try to live the present with the battles of the past are also condemned to go inside its dark tunnels once again. 

Missing Federer

 The first decade of this century was his. He won his first slam in 2003 at Wimbledon and the last at the Australian Open in 2018. But his true period of dominance was from the 2003 Wimbledon to the 2010 Aus Open when out of 26 slams, he won an unprecedented 16 and was a runner-up in another 6.

The precision of movement, a scintillating backhand, the faint twitch in his facial muscles when under pressure, and supreme athleticism combined with sublime skills kept millions hooked to TV sets when he was playing especially on those Sunday evening finals. That sound of the racquet hitting the ball that was not excessively loud, just a hint of power; the almost supernatural sense of anticipation, and his shots landing on the lines like guided missiles made watching Fed so mesmerising. One of the regrets of my life was when he played in Delhi and I could not go and one of the blessings of the last decade was Federer continuing to play as long as he played. Sports at its finest elevates human experience like nothing else and Fed was the quintessential symbol of that.  

Nadal, Djokovic and maybe Laver did reach his superhuman heights but for accomplishments combined with aesthetic appeal and elegance, he remains unmatched.

Alcaraz is a treat to watch with his drop shots, top spin forehands and athletic ability. Djokovic continues to make us marvel with his tenacity and all-round ability but the void left by Federer can never possibly be filled.