Come back, Bapu!

Dear Bapu,

Today, your birth anniversary, does not fill me with joy, but with a deep melancholic yearning. I am saddened by the events that do not augur well for your dream of Ram Rajya, which stands perverted by violence, chicanery and hypocrisy.

I ask myself every moment of my life, “Is patriotism about demonizing and killing compatriots?” Today's rulers appropriate Netaji and try to build him up as your rival, when they should know that Netaji was the first to describe you as Father of the Nation. Then they build a huge statue of Sardar Patel anointing him as the pride of Gujarat, when the Iron Man of India was actually your follower and a pan-Indian icon like Pt. Nehru, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and many other stalwarts of our freedom struggle. And now these hypocrites have stopped swearing by these two martyrs because they are no more useful in their quest for votes. Now they swear by you, Bapu, yet revere Godse! Diabolical hypocrites!!

During India’s freedom struggle idealism and patriotic zeal pervaded the subcontinent. So inspired were the freedom fighters by you, Bapu, that they vied with each other to sacrifice their all for the cause of India’s freedom. Indeed, today, we find it difficult to believe that there was a sparsely clad man who walked through the length and breadth of the Subcontinent and, wielding no clout other than sheer moral force, pursued the mission of freeing India not just from the British but also from our age-old prejudices, superstitions, and regressive mindsets. Unlike today, you did not have to go to Delhi to stage protests. Wherever you decided to launch the Satyagraha, such place became the country’s, nay, the world’s, focal point. Even if you went on a fast in some remote corner of the country, alarm bells rang right from the Viceroy’s palace in New Delhi to the Whitehall and the Buckingham Palace in London. Such was your persona that the mightiest power of its time dared not treat you lightly. It is no wonder that you inspired millions of Indians to achieve the impossible – win freedom through nonviolence.

Bapu, I am hugely disappointed with the Indian National Congress. It was the most potent political movement during India’s freedom struggle – an epitome of sacrifice, idealism, patriotism and such values as mutual respect and tolerance, uprightness and honesty as well as inclusiveness. Indeed, the evolution of the Indian National Congress presented a mirror image of the evolving India. Inspired by you, the Congress party was able to fashion a secular, socialist and democratic polity that became a role model for other newly independent countries the world over. Let us not forget that the civil rights movement in the bastion of democracy, the USA, was inspired by you, Bapu!

This ethos helped India overcome daunting challenges to its very existence as a united democratic country. Indeed, the Congress party was like a banyan tree, which was the home to a unique ecosystem accommodating conflicting viewpoints and ideologies. Where people might disagree with each other and yet unite in the face of threats to India from outside and within – be these wars, insurgencies, or natural catastrophes. Tragically, this banyan tree is reduced to a bonsai showpiece today. The Congress Party owes it to the nation to reinvent itself, reconfigure its policies and reclaim its premier position on India’s political stage. For this, they must reacquaint themselves with the country's as well as the party’s history, and your role in it. When I contrast today’s chest-thumping politicians with you I am filled with a deep sense of sadness. They dare belittle you, forgetting that you had converted an elitist club into an all-encompassing and powerful people’s movement! A movement that remains unequalled in its size and success. You humbled the mightiest colonial power on earth without having to thump your chest, or resort to boast and bombast. Inspired by you, the Congress Party’s stalwarts and freedom fighters willingly bore bullets and lathi wounds on their chest during the freedom struggle.

And how did the pseudo-patriots express their gratitude to you, Bapu? The Father of our Nation was shot in his chest by Nathuram Godse, in whose name temples are being planned now. Worse, now a megalomaniac president of USA dares to anoint another Indian as Father of India! And, the pygmies here endorse this perfidy!

Oh Bapu, if only you could return and tell the Indian National Congress that it owes it to the nation to revisit its roots and core values; that the politicians need to emerge from the quagmire of greed, lust and violence and return to the path of pristine morality.

Come back Bapu, just this once, and help the nation to redeem its vanishing values!