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Bapu lives on…
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‘Goodbye to Gandhi?’ mirrors Mahatma’s legacy in new India
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Ponder over Jyotirmaya Sharma and Bernard Imhasly
Is Gandhi relevant in today’s context and do people relate to him and the ideals he stood for? Every year, especially on October 2, we’ve been bombarded with this question. Gandhigiri reinfused the confidence that the Mahatma’s meth
ods still work. Swiss journalist Bernard Imhasly, who worked as the South Asian Correspondent for European newspapers since 1990, travelled the length and breadth of India meeting people across the social spectrum. He presents his insights drawn from new India through Goodbye to Gandhi? Travels in the New India.
A reading of the book and his conversation with writer Jyotirmaya Sharma at Kalakriti Art Gallery touched upon the author’s impressions of new India. Imhasly’s journeys are dotted with conversations with people from Hyderabad, Imphal, Bangalore and Goa among other cities. In Hyderabad, Imhasly puts forth his meetings with the chosen personalities – the head honcho of TCS, former chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and Balladeer Gaddar. Imhasly finds a society where Gandhi is alive but his virulence is missing and political groups that worship Bapu forgetting his principles. He finds Gandhi a yardstick for many in India despite a few who run down his doctrines.
Imhasly highlights the contrasts both starkly and subtly through his travels in strife-torn North East, Bihar to the South. He draws attention to contrasts around us: statues of Ambedkar outnumbering that of Gandhi in villages, while statues of Gandhi outnumber that of Ambedkar, in the cities. Looking back, one may recall from history that Gandhi wanted to be identified with the villages while Ambedkar with the cities!
SANGEETHA DEVI DUNDOO
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