GANDHI'S LEGACY

GANDHI'S LEGACY

ARVIND K. PANDEY

Jeremy Seabrook in his article " Of Gandhi's legacy and its inheritors' ( The Statesman, Dec.12,05) rightly states that ' there is world of difference between a conscious and chosen frugality and the cruel visitations of poverty, which industrial plenty has managed to create out of its noisy abundance '. Let me say that world has always been cruel to figures enjoying iconic status .In their times they are often subjected to whims and fancies of the mediocre minds and when they are no more their legacies get replaced by worn out ideals of the contemporaries.More often than not we use them as means to get out of the crisis, ignoring them immediately as the problem dissipates.Nehru, lacking the patience to experiment with usefulness of Gandhian ideals , was interested in industrial development. His blunders also prove that Indians were more interested in driving Britishers away from the 'Motherland' instead of attaining Independence with right set of ideals in sync with spirit of the nation .Today shrinking villages, sandwiched between demands of modernity and calls of traditions , suggest clearly that we have made a grave mistake by ignoring the vision of Gandhi , which wanted Indian villages to retain their bonds with ancient beliefs or Indianness .Ironically, the pathetic developments ensure Gandhi's relevance in a big way .