Prisoners of conscience

RIDDHIMA SEAL / TNN / Aug 11, 2007, 00:00 IST

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Munnabhai’s cast-iron morality may have transformed a nation but to pardon Sanjay Dutt would be to imprison justice. Harilal may have been the first Satyagrahi but he wore his Gandhi identity like a curse around his neck. Is Gandhigiri a foolproof formula?

Munnabhai’s cast-iron morality may have transformed a nation but to pardon Sanjay Dutt would be to imprison justice. Harilal may have been the first Satyagrahi but he wore his Gandhi identity like a curse around his neck. Is Gandhigiri a foolproof formula?
At a time when diet colas, fast moving cars, branded denims and holidays abroad are the order of the day for most high salaried youngsters, sometime last year, a film Lage Raho Munnabhai gave us a new word — Gandhigiri entered popular lexicon.
The movie preached Gandhian philosophies of Satyagraha and non-violence in such a way that even as you laughed your guts out and cried buckets, somewhere deep down you actually wanted to believe that the philosophies worked.
Such was the impact of Munnabhai, that gangster with the golden heart who is the alter ego of a new Mahatma, that it caused youngsters all across India to take notice of Gandhi and his forgotten ideals.

It’s a character that took the country by storm, increased Sanjay Dutt’s popularity, influenced several ad campaigns and even inspired educational institutions to include his brand of ‘Gandhigiri’ in their teachings. Irony lies in the fact that our much loved Munnabhai who stirred up this new-found interest, is now fighting the darkness of the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune, doing some real lessons on the Mahatma.

As the lines between art and reality blur again, we wonder whether it is Dutt or Munnabhai who has been sent to jail? Or is it just our sense of fair judgement that has been imprisoned?
But ever since the release of the film, the Gandhi that the nation rediscovered through this film, has caused enough debate. While most historians sheepishly admit that this film had done much more for Gandhi among this generation than they could in all these years, they also did not refrain from saying that there were certainly much more philosophies of the man that were left to be discovered.
The Father of the Nation’s far greater philosophies that include total honesty, nature therapy, virtues of vegetarianism, etc., all of which have been highlighted in the recently released Gandhi my father. And even as he went on to become nation’s favourite Bapu, the film highlighted him as a failed father to his son Harilal, a fact little known to most of us.
Conflicts with his son arose because of Gandhi’s strong adherence to his own beliefs on several instances. Gandhi refused to let Harilal gain any kind of professional help that involved using his name, be it foiling Harilal’s attempts to sail to London to become a barrister or taking loans for his textile business. Unable to bear failures, Harilal took to alcohol and even converted to Islam in protest.
The last scene where Harilal is even unable to utter his father’s name or express grief while the entire nation mourns Bapu’s death, is a clear marker of the toll that Gandhi’s rigid philosophies took on his family. He was father to millions barring one — his own son.
This brings us to a far bigger question now — would Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence work well in the face of terrorism? Does his advocating total honesty and leading a spartan life actually hold good in today’s consumer driven society?
Says adman Prahlad Kakkar, “I wonder if his principles of Ahimsa and honesty would find favour with most in today’s times. At the moment India is riddled with corruption. Even schools claim donations and most parents have to succumb to such demands to give their child a firm footing in the competitive world, whereas Gandhi did not let his son avail of a scholarship that was being given to him for just having Gandhi as his surname.
According to him, the solution lies in ending the iconisation of Gandhi. Amiya P Sen, coordinator, Centre for Gandhian Studies, Jamia Milia Islamia University is, far more concerned about the question of violence having shifted context. “It is difficult for Gandhiji’s ideals of non-violence to find a place for itself in today’s times as violence has lost the moral sanctity that it had under colonialism.
Now it is more about mental than physical violence.” But Boman Irani who has acted in Lage Raho Munnabhai and played Mahatma in the stage production Mahatma Vs Gandhi, says, “The Gandhigiri shown in the film shouldn’t weigh down heavily. Look at the case where Indians in the US were seen protesting peacefully with slogans and flowers instead of resorting to violence. Who says Gandhigiri can’t be a foolproof formula? One just has to modulate things and make them work.”

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