Mahatma

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"

A quote that you may be forgiven for thinking was made by some gun toting general during a war. It was a war alright, a war against an empire and instead of a gun toting general, there was a thin, half naked old man with a stick. Win he did and how !!.

I realise that this is my second post on Gandhi (after ‘In memory of a Legend’) but I ask your forbearance on this and I hope to not bore you with repetition.

Discussing or debating Gandhi is futile and never ending. I, for one, believe that he can only be discovered. We can aspire to know ourselves better by knowing him. Because at some level we all share the same characteristics that make us human and Mahatma proved what happens when the best of human nature is exercised to conquer the baser aspects.

When I finished reading Louis Fisher's excellent biography on Mahatma Gandhi, the first thought I had was this man died for all that is wrong with us.

In this strife torn state of affairs where the word 'religion' has come to mean division and polarization, Bapu showed what being truly religious is all about.

Two thousand years ago one man was put on a cross and around sixty years ago another was pumped with bullets. Both of them died due to religion albeit under vastly different circumstances. But what is common is that the people responsible for their ends were alike in their thinking. As Einstein once said great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Gandhi was as religious a man as one can get. His outlook towards religion was fundamental nay essential in his political progress and his personal convictions. But his vision of religion was quite tangential to that of those who ended his life and they could never comprehend what it meant.

This post is not intended to defend religion or religious beliefs. I hardly consider myself religious. The intent is to show that religious beliefs can be as powerful in effecting positive change as they are in effecting negative ones.

The concept of God has created so much exclusive groupism and destruction that it perhaps has no parallel in the history of conflicting ideas. But when we perceive God in the way Mahatma did, the debate vanishes.

To quote Bapu,
"for I can see that in the midst of death life persists,
in the midst of untruth truth persists,
in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that
God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good"

-Excerpted from a speech by Gandhi, recorded in Kingsley Hall, London 1931

Irrespective of whether you are a theist or an atheist, you simply cannot argue with Gandhi's concept of God. Be it his autobiography or his public talks, one can find a persistent and oft repeated view by Gandhi that Truth was God.

Some readers here may opine that having read all the glorified texts on him, I may have developed a filter to only the positives of Gandhi. I would like to say that I have spent almost as much time on anti Gandhi literature, some of them being the Godse speech during his trial and Pradeep Dalvi's controversial drama 'Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy' and a whole lot more that one can find on the web.

Ironically, the more hate speeches I read, the more my admiration for him grows.

I am aware of the controversies Gandhi generated during his lifetime and these are frequently wielded by the Gandhi bashers, be it his so called “castist" comments allegedly defending the Hindu caste system or his bizarre brahmacharya experiments during the later years of his life. I do not want to delve into refuting these allegations or justifying his actions in this write-up, that's not my point.

But I do know that what ever his limitations, his was a life of unquestionable integrity, unbound tenacity, an unmatched vision and above all a spiritual conviction so great that it transcended religion as everybody else understood it.

In conclusion, I believe that as long as there are people who continue to draw their inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi, there is hope for mankind. To paraphrase a popular quote…………… “Gandhi is dead, long live Gandhi”

Bapu, you rock !!

Remembering Ramanujan

“An equation to me is meaningless unless it expresses a thought of God” – Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dec 22 1887 – April 26 1920 )

A man whose leaps of inspiration enriched the domain of number theory so much so that research into his works are still in progress. Only as recently as February, a group of mathematicians announced that they have finally solved the mystery of the mock theta functions that Ramanujan wrote about, just two months before his demise (http://www.news.wisc.edu/13497.html).

It has been almost a hundred years now since he parted ways with the world and we are yet to see a genius of his caliber in mathematics from India. We do keep reading about precocious kids who can add and multiply numbers really fast and somehow this gets portrayed as mathematics. These gifted people however extraordinary they may seem make no more mathematicians as knowing the names of planes makes one a pilot.

It is a pity that we have not been able to produce another genius of his kind in all these years. We may have not uncovered many Ramanujans who have faded into obscurity and mediocrity due to lack of encouragement and focus.

The current education system does not offer this luxury. We almost lost Ramanujan to the rigidity of the system.

Ramanujan was never able to pass his higher education simply because the system refused to take cognizance of his genius in mathematics and insisted that he pass every subject in his course. It was only persistence on his part and that of his friends, most notably Professor Hardy that he was able to achieve what he did in his brief lifetime.

The gift of mathematics is a rare one indeed and it would be a shame if we let these prodigies go undetected or force fitted to be compliant with the crowd around them. Because when it comes to mathematics, there are only two kinds of people…those who know maths and those who don’t. And we simply cannot afford to lose those who know….

This post is in memory of the genius that was Ramanujan.

Post Script: If you would like to know more, I strongly recommend the book ‘The man who knew infinity’ by Robert Kanigel. It is one of the best biographies I have read. Kanigel has handled some of the sensibilities and the problems unique to the Indian psyche extremely well without being judgmental about them.

In memory of a legend

59 years ago on this day, three bullets from a 9mm beretta ended the life of one of the greatest men ever to have walked on earth. A man whose power of convictions changed the destiny of a nation.

I am an unabashed admirer of the Mahatma.

From my childhood days, I have held Gandhi in high regard. Initially, it was mostly because of what I was told in school. I must confess for a very brief period in school, I did switch over to the other side - that of Gandhi bashers (you see, talking peace and non violence were for wimps and I did not want to be one).

As I read more about this man, what struck me most was his stubbornness of holding on to a principle no matter what the odds. My respect turned into awe. He was fighting a political cause and yet today one can still find books on him in the 'Philosophy' section. It is common to hear Indians referring to 'Rama, Krishna, Gandhi and Buddha' in the same breath. Remember, the other three are generally regarded as Gods and we have a politician creeping into this list.

Christians believe that Christ died on the cross for our sins. As a non-christian, I have not been able to really comprehend that line of thinking. But when I think of Gandhi and how he was killed by someone with an outlook a lot more limited than his, I can understand what christian thought implies.

Once during a short visit to Sydney, on my way back to the Sydney Airport, I tried chatting up with the cab driver who happened to be Turkish and I mentioned about the Australia India cricket match that was being played that day. His reaction was something I least expected, he got pretty wild at cricket, cursing(using some flowery invectives) that this was a game invented by the British and questioned how as an Indian and having been subjugated by them can I still retain love for their game.

The hatred that this man had towards the British is something that I can never share. Violence always leaves a bitter relationship that persists across a much longer time period than the violence itself. Today, if Indians do not harbour animosity towards the British, it is simply because of the efforts of one man who had the courage to act different.

The India today though, still has it's moods of violence, a lot of mess that existed before continues to exist now. The silver lining is that if in spite of all the rot the Indian society is steeped in, if we can have a Gandhi coming out of it, then we must be doing something right.

In 1948 the Nobel Committee decided not to award the Nobel Peace Prize to anyone on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate". Gandhi not being awarded the Nobel prize is perhaps the best thing that the Nobel committee has done. Awarding him would have been like trying to measure the earth with a foot long scale.

I do believe that Gandhi was not correct in all his stands and he made his set of mistakes as well but what he did achieve and advocate were far greater than his failures.

Strength comes not from the ability to destroy but from the ability to protect and there in lies the greatness of this man.

Come back Bapu, we need you now as much we have ever needed you before...