Does Mahatma Gandhi matter?
It may sound like a blasphemous question to ask about someone hailed as the Father of the Nation, whose portrait hangs in every government office and court hall, whose picture is emblazoned on currency notes, whose statue in the familiar loin cloth and staff in hand adorns India’s every city, town and hamlet, and after whom every major arterial road is named. There is no point in burking the truth: Gandhi and India are fast going to be at odds with each other. If you want corroboration, here is what a mainstream daily has found out by interviewing a cross-section of the aam aadmi in Chennai, Pondicherry, Thiruvananthapuram and Hyderabad. Those quizzed by the paper comprised school and college students, catering stewards, a housewife, a sales executive, a hotelier, a security guard and a domestic help. Except the hotelier with a foreign-sounding name who is savvy enough to recall the highlights of Gandhi’s life, all the rest were ignorant of where he was born, what his wife’s name was,
