It’s that time of the year again when #twittergandhi trends, the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) has to update its website with how much each department has spent on ads commemorating Gandhi Jayanti and news channels get to do a montage on the Mahatma and maybe, invite a Gandhian to debate the relevance of Gandhi’s legacy.

While it may seem intellectually prudent to sneer at these cosmetic displays of veneration, they may not be such a bad thing (except for the ads). We’ve evolved in the ways that we collectively remember the Mahatma and that is only natural. The question, though, is have we evolved in the way we politically and personally perceive his relevance in today’s India? Think of whom you would call a “Gandhian” and the image that springs to your mind is either  a) Anna Hazare or b) a khadi-wearing believer in non-violence who pillories anything to do with globalisation or c) Munnabhai (shudder).

Is it the case then that a GAP jeans-wearing, Starbucks latte-sipping person who works in a multinational is necessarily antithetical to the values that Bapu espoused? Most of the books, articles and journals on Gandhi that came my way focused more on the outcome of his philosophy (the Dandi march, Satyagraha etc) than on what propelled him to adopt a certain way of thinking. They didn’t give an insight into why he adopted the ideals that propelled him from being a freedom fighter to being the Father of the Nation. What I was searching for was the answer to the question – what made Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi a Mahatma?

The best way to find the answer was to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, i.e. from “My Experiments With Truth”.  The book is a study in dichotomy – it’s exasperating yet exhilarating, relevant yet antiquated and overly simplistic yet deeply profound. More than anything, the book is testimony to the fact that if the Mahatma has to be relevant today, his actions and opinions have to be left to the pages of history – while we propel forth the crux of his philosophy and the traits which made him a national hero.

If there’s a single “takeaway” from the book, it’s that Mahatmas are not born. Yes, Gandhi was compassionate and empathetic, but not blindly so. His compassion and empathy was laced with shrewdness. While the formulation of Civil Disobedience was embedded in the belief that moral righteousness trumps the advantage of the gun, it had to have been tempered with reality. Having closely seen the military might of the Empire during World War I, the Boer War and the Zulu Rebellion, he perhaps realised that neither Indians in South Africa, nor those back home could ever hope to build a political presence through guns. In South Africa, he had learnt which battles he could fight and win and which ones he had to give in to; like the time he fought tooth and nail for his right to be registered as a lawyer in Natal but decided to let go his fight for his right to wear his turban in the courtroom.

Gandhi’s word carried weight simply because he had the courage to practice what he preached. Whether it was travelling by the 3^rd class trains or forsaking salt and pulses for a year to convince a reluctant Kasturba to do so for her health. Contrast this with our inability to stem or even fight large-scale corruption – a shameful denigration of the legacy of Gandhi who as a boy overcome with guilt on having stolen gold, wrote a letter to his father and said – “In this note not only did I confess my guilt, but I asked adequate punishment for it, and closed with a request to him not to punish himself for my offence”. 

Yet, it’s not just the lack of moral heft because of which India is unlikely to see a political leader like Gandhi. What India in the early Twentieth century required was a leader who was an enforcer of action; someone who was convinced of the correctness of his moral convictions. The sort of leader that we need today is someone who is a builder of consensus.  Moreover, the Mahatma lived in a time when it was possible to conduct politics within the boundaries of moral absolutism – absolute truth, absolute non-violence and absolute non-cooperation. Political morality today, cannot function in a vacuum.

What made Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi a Mahatma was his immense courage of conviction and his gargantuan store of will power. He was willing to suffer the hardest mental strain and physical discomfort for causes which were ultimately moral. It’s important though, to not ignore the people who helped him become a Mahatma. At every point, Gandhi had people around him who formed a part of his ecosystem of activism. On the one hand were the people he looked up to – the likes of Gopalkrishna Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta. On the other, he was surrounded by the people he could trust in – his friend in South Africa, Hermann Kallenbach and his secretary, Mrs MacDonald. They, in turn, respected, venerated and him and his word. He was their hero, not their idol.

That is not to say that one needs to agree with every aspect of Gandhi’s philosophy. One of the reasons I call the book exasperating and antiquated is Gandhi’s need to impose his austerity on those around him and his staunch opposition to anything modern. This is probably what makes it easy to admire Gandhi, but not identify with him.

The biggest lesson that Gandhi’s life teaches me, though, is the difference between a hero and an idol. Heroes have compatriots, idols have followers. It is not that heroes are infallible, or that their decisions are beyond reproach or criticism (Gandhi himself was quick to fault Gokhale for using private instead of public transport). It is just that a hero can make you visualise a dream and an idol can show you the path to it.

The fact that he made lakhs of his compatriots dream of a better India whose values could be embedded in ethics and morality is what made Gandhi command such tremendous amounts of respect. So yes, a GAP jeans-wearing, Starbucks latte-sipping person who works in a multinational can be Gandhian if he chooses to be inspired by Gandhi instead of imitating him.

Bapu is more of an idol today than a hero. Yet, irrespective of whether or not the Mahatma is an idol or hero, irrespective of whether or not one agrees with his political decisions, his was a template to find our own personal heroes to propel us further – to become more honest, more accountable and more resourceful. He showed us that individual excellence is the only path to collective greatness. That’s the true legacy worth preserving.