The Mahatma, the Gujarati millennial & an iffy Trump
Ahmedabad collegian Akanksha Seth says she is not baffled by the media frenzy and excitement over the impending visit of US President Donald Trump to Ahmedabad on February 24. “This happened when other world leaders came here too,” she says but admits that unlike other heads of state, Trump visiting Bapu’s Sabarmati Ashram seems odd. “This might have to do with how he stands for everything un-Gandhian,” smiles this Prahlad Nagar resident.
She may be on to something there, given how the government machinery, which is going all out (ginormous hoardings and poverty-invisiblising walls) to welcome the POTUS, has still not confirmed whether Trump’s itinerary includes paying obeisance to the Mahatma on the Sabarmati banks. Over 500 km away, in the country’s financial capital, Vidushi Solanky underlines how Barack Obama had acknowledged the part Mahatma Gandhi played in inspiring the movement that made him the first coloured POTUS. The Juhu-resident
also hopes Trump visits the ashram and goes back with ideas of non-violence and freedom from greed as takeaways.
She recounted one of the Mahatma’s best-known sayings: ‘The world has enough for everyone’s needs but not enough for everyone’s greed.’ “This encapsulates the Mahatma’s concerns about the Western consumerist model, without regard for overall development for all. While many uninformed mock his rejection of the Western model of capitalist development for holistic rural development, today the world is looking at the same ideas afresh, as a way out of the mess we are in.”
Her friend Kevin Kavani, who is pursuing medicine at Nantong in China, is listening intently. “People who scoff at non-violence should see where that idea has brought us,” says the young doctor-to-be, who has been forced to extend his vacation, following the coronavirus scare in China. “Today it has become fashionable to be eco-friendly, but Gandhiji advocated this so much before. Apart from politically driving the freedom movement, he also insisted on better sanitation and cleanliness, and spoke of their connection to health.”
Their friend, 20-year-old Jash, who shares the Mahatma’s second name, admits while he agrees with the Father of the Nation’s principles, he feels the process he followed took too long. “He was a good leader but he should have chosen another way of protest. After 1920, other leaders and schools of thought emerged even within Congress. But Gandhi shrewdly veered the party and movement away from their methods. Had he supported them, we would’ve got freedom earlier.”
Like the others, he too admits Gandhian ideals should be explored again for their contemporaneity.
Kolkatan socio-cultural historian Meghna Kashyap laughs at how Gandhism has come full circle. “Their parents may have moved away from Gandhi, blinded by the bling of globalisation but the millennials, with more exposure, know better and are coming back to celebrating Gandhi. Unlike their grandparents, this is not mere blind pedestalisation but belief born of conviction, shaking off which won’t be easy.”