myIndiamyGlory

On 7th April 1934, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi completely suspended his campaign of Civil Disobedience. His ‘Quit India’ movement later was a failure too. And then Gandhi was completely out of the scene. By then lakhs of freedom fighters have already sacrificed their lives for the country. Netaji Bose played an instrumental role with his Azad Hind Fauz. 26000 plus Azad Hind Fauz soldiers attained martyrdom for the freedom of India. We all know the consequences of the INA trials and ultimately the Royal Navy Mutinee that resulted into another 1857 type of war for independence, ultimately forcing the British to leave India.

 

While lakhs of freedom fighters resisted, revolted and sacrificed their lives for the freedom we enjoy today, we only know Gandhi gave us freedom. We primarily read Gandhi in our history textbooks. We had a complete booklet on his life in our Standard X in school (too much of Gandhi-Gandhi we read then)! Just regret if that booklet of 100+ pages on Gandhi had short accounts of our freedom fighters who resisted British or short accounts of our warrior ancestors who resisted against Izlamic invaders and rule over a period of 1000 years! Saffron Swords, published by Garuda Prakashan, that contains 52 episodes of valor from 8th century to Independence, is a tribute to our warrior ancestors.

 

Khilafat Movement was started by Muhammad Ali, Shaukat Ali, Abul Kalam Azad for Turkey to restore caliph. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi supported it which paved way for riots and partition and ultimately led to suffering of Hindus.

 

Why would Gandhi need women around him all the while in his later years? Why would he sleep naked in the company of women? His grand-niece Mridula Manu Gandhi started living with him from 1942. Manu was then only 14 years old. During the Noakhali Ri0ts Manu traveled with Gandhi in the riot-hit areas. She, then aged 17, was his personal assistant. To quote from Page 584 from the book Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People, and an Empire by Rajmohan Gandhi on the barbarism of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on how for his scrubbing stone, he sent Manu through the riot hit areas all alone for around 30 miles to get it back:

 

“A harder lesson had been given a few days earlier when Manu left behind Gandhi’s scrubbing stone — given to him by Mira — in the village of Bhatialpur. Discovering the loss later in the day (15 Jan.) in Narayanpur, Gandhi asked Manu to walk back alone to Bhatialpur and retrieve the pumice stone. Though an old woman had thrown the stone away, Manu located it and hurried back.

 

Saying, ‘Take your stone’, she threw the object before Gandhi, who laughed and said that Manu had passed a test. He added: If scoundrels had seized and killed you I would have danced with joy….”

 

In an interview to the BBC, BR Ambedkar had said thus about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, quoted from ‘Dismantling Sainthood: Ambedkar on Gandhi’ by A Ranganathan: “I knew Gandhi better than most people because he opened his real fangs to me, and I could see the inside of the man. Gandhi was all the time double-dealing. He ran a paper in English and another in Gujarati, and if you read them both you will see how he was deceiving the people. In the English paper he posed himself as an opponent of the caste system and of untouchability and that he was a democrat, while in the Gujarati one he supported the caste system and professed all the orthodox dogmas that have kept India down all through the ages. Someone ought to write his biography by making a comparative study of the statements he made in these papers. The West reads only the English paper. Gandhi never wanted real upliftment of the Dalits. All he cared about were issues of absolutely no consequence to us like temple entry. Gandhi was never a reformer.”

 

And yet, we address Gandhi as Mahatma, as ‘Father of the Nation’. If partition had to happen and if he was a true leader he could have facilitated peaceful partition and saved millions of lives that resulted from it. And the same policy of appeasement he followed continues till today!