You find him everywhere anywhere you go in India today in every hamlet in every village in every town, in every city - north, south, east or west. Yes my friends he smiles on every “note†of the Government of India, he goes everywhere! He is currency! Relevant in anything and everything – 2G scam, Radia tapes, CWG, ISRO et al!
A giant of a man with his frail body, his short dhoti, his walking stick, a khadi shawl over his bare shoulders and his round spectacles. A man whose footprints are found in every corner of this country, a man of the soil, a man who lives India its ethos, its culture, its fabric! A giant of a man who yet epitomizes the common man of India. An extra-ordinary man, a cut above the rest and yet the empathy he had with the poorest of the poor, with every human being he came across, be it of this country or from abroad. A British trained barrister by profession, an Englishman to the core – the diction, the mannerisms, the etiquette and the way of life. From England to South Africa where he faced racial discrimination and humiliation where he realized that the color of his skin was brown and not white and where he realized that the glass ceiling was very rigid because of this! The awakening it brought in his life shook him and the rest of course is history. It is all so well depicted in Richard Attenborough famous film. This in itself shook the conscience of the world. The changes that Gandhi Ji went through are well known and I will not delve further into the changes he brought in his perception and his journey back to his roots. His return to India was his tryst with destiny for he had to re-learn his own perceptions and to find his own roots so as to bring in changes in the thinking not only in his own thinking but also in the thinking of the entire subcontinent. The British Raj was at its glorious best. There was a clear division of the haves and the have nots. The so called rule of law was a