Viewpoint – “Father of the Nation”

When I saw the statue of Mr.Gandhi being unveiled in London’s parliament square; Mr.Cameroon giving a speech to mark the occasion while sharing the stage with India’s number one celebrity Mr.Amithab Bachchan, the ludicrousness of it all became unbearable. So I thought it was time I explained to the younger generation why Mr.Gandhi is the father of India.

Mr.Gandhi is the father our nation because he was the only leader who went through untold suffering while leading the masses to freedom.

Being one to shun the spotlight, he decided that he would leave politics as soon as his beloved nation was granted freedom by the Colonial British. In comparison, Mr. Nelson Mandela who did hard labor in a prison for only twenty-seven years; could not have enough of the fame and glory and decided to become the first president of the apartheid free nation, so that he could wisely maneuver a young nation fraught with historic hatred and violence through its very difficult adjustment period into relative peace.

Bapu however – being the self-sacrificing martyr – decided to hand over the teething problems of a new-born nation to his favorite son and spoiled brat Jawaharlal Nehru. This decision by dad drove his other equally rich and spoilt son Mohammed Jinnah to such levels of outrage that he demanded a country of his own.

When freedom rang at midnight, the poor sons of the two new countries washed the Radcliffe line with a river of blood, while the father of the previously undivided nation went on a fast. After all there is nothing much a father can do when his children go on a murder rampage, killing each other, except scold them and go on a fast.

That was Gandhi’s way of non-violence, when things become unmanageable, go on a fast. Today many of his political protégé have taken this form of passive-aggressive non-violence to a level of political manipulation that can only be described as absurd.

He is also the father of the nation, because he is emphatic about women being equal to men. He also believed that a woman’s natural place was with her husband and in raising children, while a man’s place in the world is that of a bread-winner.

This position of being a homemaker makes a woman more virtuous than a man, because she is self-sacrificing, humble and great at silent suffering. By the way, such sublime virtues cannot be found in men, simply because nature did not make him that way. Thus, if a man is abusive it is because he cannot help himself, which works out really well with a wife whose nature it is to suffer silently in humility.

By the way, ladies, daddy says jewelry, cosmetics a definite ‘No, No’, makes you less virtuous. Jeans, skirts ‘Ugh’.

Probably, these are the reasons why he believed that a woman cannot be raped. According to Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, “It is physically impossible to violate a woman against her will. The outrage takes place only when she gives way to fear or does not realize her moral strength.”
Translation: A woman can be raped only if she is immoral. Now isn’t that a nice way of saying ‘She got raped, because she was asking for it.’?

As father of the nation, he helped perpetuate many of the old traditions such as excusing men for mistakes, while holding women to impossible ideals. To his credit he did dilute these unfair stereotypes and repackaged it nicely with the barrister’s brain.

Hence his life was an experiment with truth, not necessarily getting to the truth, but just an experiment which is still carried on by the successive generations.

This is why Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is still the father of our beloved nation.

Related:
Mother India’s Daughters