The woes of Mahatmas are known to Mahatmas alone.
— MK Gandhi, Young India, April 21, 1927
Bapu could have written this to the new Mahatma among us, ‘Mahatma’ Hazare nee ‘Anna’. On October 2 this year, coincidently or I believe not really, the Gram Sabha of Ralegan Siddhi passed a resolution that henceforth, the man they affectionately called ‘Anna’ will be called ‘Mahatma’. Anna Hazare promptly refused to accept the honorific and asked that he be allowed to remain an ‘ordinary’ human being, and I would like to believe he was honest.
Bapu considered the title ‘Mahatma’ a burden. He wrote reams to repudiate the honorific. “I would support any movement to drop altogether the use of the word ‘Mahatma’ before my name. My simple name sounds sweet without the adjective. The latter often stinks as when it is applied to promote violence or untruth,” he wrote in Harijan on October 15, 1938.
Today, we see all sorts insincerely invoking his name to gain legitimacy and respectability. Narendra Modi launched his campaign for prime minister’s post with a farce he called Sadbhavana, Bapu would have cringed to see his photographs used as a backdrop on Narendra Modi’s stage and on the stage of the farce enacted by the Congress leaders on the road outside Sabarmati Ashram to counter Modi’s 5 star farce.
Bapu would have also cringed seeing his photograph as a backdrop on Anna Hazare’s stage at Ramleela Maidan, as day after day Anna roared that the corrupt should be hanged and the traitors done away with. Anna admirably managed to keep the emotions of his supporters in check for the entire period of his agitation and ensured there was no violence, but his speeches and utterances were extremely violent, from a stage where the backdrop was a large picture of Bapu.
Since April, when Anna first sat on a fast at Jantar Mantar to force the Government to act on the Jan Lok Pal Bill, he inspired people and became an iconic figure, those who manage him very assiduously built him up into an iconic figure and right from then there began comparisons with Bapu. In recent times, Anna comes closest to personifying the image of Bapu; that I agree. Since April, there have been whispers of ‘Aaj ka Gandhi’ and a campaign has been launched to turn him into a modern day Messiah, Mahatma, ably assisted by the media.
By August, he had been christened the ‘Naya Gandhi’ and slogans were raised comparing him to a tornado, which would sweep corruption away and annihilate the corrupt. ‘Anna nahi ye Aandhi hai, Aaj ka Gandhi hai’. Sounded very good but those who coined this slogan seem to be too overawed by Bapu and Indira Gandhi because she was the first Indian leader to be called a tornado, ‘Indira Nahi ye Aandhi hai!’ was a favourite slogan of her sycophants in Congress. Anna’s managers definitely can’t claim to be original.
To me what is distasteful is the fact that ever since Anna launched his movement or, truly speaking, Anna’s supporters usurped the anti corruption segment for him, they have forced him to run a race, a race with a dead man — MK Gandhi.
At every step, comparisons have been made with Bapu, culminating in the people of Ralengansiddhi anointing him Mahatma on October 2, Bapu’s 142nd birth anniversary. It feels as if they are desperate to fast track Anna’s ascent to be placed on par with Bapu.
They and Anna will be better off reading and understanding what Bapu had to say about these kind of comparisons and ambitions of followers to aggrandise their leaders: “In the majority of cases addresses presented to me contain adjectives which I am ill able to carry. Their use can do good neither to the writers, nor to me. They unnecessarily humiliate me, for I have to confess that I do not deserve them. When they are deserved, their use is superfluous. It cannot add to the strength of the qualities possessed by me. They may, if I am not on my guard, easily turn my head.”(Young India: May 21, 1925.)
I hope Anna reads this, it is a warning Bapu left behind for all those who strove to be or on whom ‘Mahatmaship’ was forced.
I conclude with Bapu’s words from Young India, dated January 12, 1930: ‘Thank God, my much vaunted Mahatmaship has never fooled me.”
(The writer is founder president, Mahatma
Gandhi Foundation)
