Mahatma Gandhi !!

 Mahatma Gandhi is Mahatma to many and a despicable character to several others who blame him for our ills.

the latter have elevated Nathuram Godse to the level of a patriot.

both schools of thought have forgotten the historical currents at play then as now.

it was my good fortune to have met and conversed with a responsible person who was heading a defence establishment at the time.

we walked together for a few kilometers because his house was adjacent to my office.

it was a cool night and the topic veered round to his early days in Lahore.

he revealed to me how mindsets change, how people respond to emotions and instantly change from friends to foes.

all that it took for his neighbours was a few hours.

and he was a school going kid then.

partition was never intended to be , by both parties .

egos come into play , opportunists take centrestage and the good ones become stooges of the vile elements.

so it was in the case of Mahatma.

further down the line appeasement advocates call the shots and what we get is what we deserve.

it is good tentative steps are being taken to restore to us the glory that was.

again , at what cost?

in defeat defiance, in victory magnanimity thundered the British bull.

was it so when partition was effected ?

two things are buried in this ongoing drama.

Jinnah had not many months to live.

a fact which might have been known to the British.

Bapu , they knew , would play to set rules.

that is why Mountbatten sent him to the hottest trouble spot . still peace reigned there.

godse could be forgiven to think that Bapu was favouring the others more than our own folks.

this does not mean the riots and the mayhem that followed should be ignored.

there is a lesson hidden somewhere.

our differences serve as the meat for someone's dish.

a wag said Britain and the usa are two nations divided by a common language. so are we.

in addition , the Ppectre of reservation , reservation within reservation etc

divide us further.

as for the foreign scenario less said the better.

Tibet was a British protectorate.

our leniency towards Chinese cost us dear.

the united nations was and still is the monopoly of superpowers.

who signed the un charter on our behalf ?

a civil servant.

for we were still a slave nation.

does not matter whether the present players were active in the freedom struggle or not.

it is a thing of the past.

the more pressing question is ..... is the present dispensation living upto the preamble in the constitution .

we are what we are today because of the sacrifices made by sung and unsung patriots.

the past is ever bitter, whether it  is the Moghul past or the imperial legacy.

yes, we have glorious future ahead of us .

for that, we have to work hard.

and form a phalanx cutting across barriers .

only then jai hind will get transformed into jai jai hind.