Happy Gandhi Jayanti

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Our nation is one of multitudes, of diversities and of great potential.  Today we celebrate the Father of Nation’s day, Gandhi Jayanti, in memory of Mahatma Gandhi.  He preached peace and the futility of war, as this cute Calvin & Hobbes cartoon illustrates:

Today, children will dress up as Gandhi and many people in towns and villages will remember his legacy…

However, a number of people question this legacy.  Gandhi for all his good intentions was very insistent on shunning industrial and urban development, in his views a legacy of the British that was to be thrown out along with the colonisers.  As a result, his protege, and first Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru installed a social revolution that is at the root of many of our problems today, from poor governance, to corruption, to lack of infrastructure as this article highlights.

The voices of many other prominent and influential figures of India’s fight for independence today still remain muted as Gandhi’s legacy has overshadowed our country’s evolution among nations, but the problems are here to see today.  Nevertheless, the rise of India is happening and as a force for good as India’s true destiny finally unfolds.  In the words of Sri Aurobindo, seer, philosopher and  yogi, upon India’s independence:

August 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.