A Lost Bid
March 6th 2009 – A date when Indians successfully lost a bid for everything that Gandhi represented.
No, I’m not misinformed. Rather, most of the people are who were in support for acquisition of those Gandhi memorabilia. We Indians (or rather Vijay Mallya) won those items for everything which they did not represent.
They were GANDHI’s items. A man bigger than his glasses and watch and blah blah.. A person whose ideologies were infinitely more precious than those items worth. And yet none of us see it. Instead, we prefer being patriotic and showing the world our financial muscle indicative of how well we are doing. It does not matter whether we deserve them or not. It does not matter what purpose would the money obtained from the auction would have served.
We should ask ourselves the hard question. Do we really deserve anything remotely associated with Gandhi?
More than 50 years after independence, we are far from achieving harmony. Non-violence seems to have been sent for a stroll in the park. Rather than demonstrating peacefully, unless some buses, houses are burnt, some people shot or burnt, no agitation is successful.
Also Gandhi would have been the first person in this world to part with his items if it would have fetched adequate money for the poor. But with 1/3rd of poor in India, we can happily pay for such items rather than help eradicating the poverty. And why should we? We love to flaunt our poverty. It brings recognition in terms of Bookers and Oscars.
Plus, we are for some reason clouded with the mindset that anything having to do with anything remotely Indian should rightly belong to us and our museums. Only one more thing would be added along with those items – GANDHISM.
When I read about the bid in the paper, and the results of it, I myself was quite surprised as to the extent to which we can flaunt our monetary power. After all, it was a liquor baron, living the flashy, flambouyant life, who shelled out the amount to procure Gandhi’s possessions. The question that should be asked right now is, do we really know what Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, stood for?
Well written Ankit.
@Arnab
Appreciate your comment!!
Ankit,
Appreciate your thoughts. I have ambivalent views on this. However my pissoff & frustration stems & rightly so – from the fact that we indians leave everything half baked & this has been brought up strongly by me with Tushar Gandhi (a friend) also with DNA on twitter – which is….after the activism of buying….why is it not taken to its logical conclusion of being brought back to India without the levies that the government is not willing to write off. AND mind you there has been a precedence of it happening with Sachin’s Ferrari!
Cheers
Rightly said.. HALF BAKED is the word..
Well written post..
I like every point that you have made,,,,
keep writing such contemporary posts
Very aptly pointed out!
I felt quite disgusted at how the media just went on and on about the whole thing as if as a country we have no other evils being done unto living breathing humans. And thus we could afford to dwell on the belongings of a person who asked for so little when alive!
I am in partial agreement with you. It was not absolutely necessary to get those items to India. Bring back those items was not an example of “flaunt our monetary power” but it was mere obsession with Individual rather than ideas,philosophy and vision.
The mahatma has left so many things for us which we just lost. Complete Works of Mahatma Gandh is not even available in major bookstalls.