QUINTESSENCE OF MAHATMA

In the final scene of “Lage Raho Munnabhai,” Mahatma Gandhi says that whether people remember him or not, he will, from time to time bring about some “chemical locha” in a few people’s minds. And when he said that, he certainly stirred up a chemical locha in my brain.

Why was Gandhi such a great leader of masses? Firstly, because his life was an open book. Thousands of leaders had a meteoric rise and when some skeleton tumbled out of their cupboards, they bit the dust. But Mahatma, right from the start, made his frailties a public knowledge. Whether it was stealing some thing or maltreating Kasturba, he made a clean breast of his wrong-doings. So, when his detractors tried to dig his past, they couldn’t find anything that Gandhi didn’t tell his public. People accepted him with open arms and he was never fearful of slander.

Secondly, the gandhian thoughts are special for their sheer simplicity. Even the most illiterate person could grasp what he said. He was the man who led by example in it’s truest sense.

Leaders come and go. But a Gandhi comes but once in a millennium. Albert Einstein said soon after Mahatma’s assassination, “for centuries to come people will scarce believe that a man such as this in flesh and blood ever walked on the face of this earth.”