Gandhi bashing

Today an article in The Hindu talks about aversion of intellectuals and chattering classes to identifying with Gandhian thoughts. Gandhi is at best someone to be tolerated with.

During my school days and even today, Gandhi bashing is a fashion statement among my contemporaries. I read blogs proudly proclaiming that they have issues with the way Gandhi handled-------------- (fill anything you want here).

But what the "thinking" class can not understand is how Gandhi was able to move the millions of people. How people identified themselves with the "half naked fakir". You can write treatise on economics, you can use super computers to calculate what is the right way to reduce poverty in the country, but you are still living in your cathedral in New Delhi, Chennai or in a foreign town.

Nothing beats emulating the lives of the meekest and the poorest. That helps to understand what they go through and how they think. With that empathy, whatever decision the leader takes will resonate with the masses, because they would have done the same as a leader.

If you expect to solve starvation deaths by discussing about funding plans with Wold Bank officials at Ashoka Hotel lobbies, it can get you only a little distance.