Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2. If you were a school student in India, you must have studied this and written the sentence while preparing essays, answers and passages. We all learnt about him and his roles as a leader, social reformer and humanist in language text books, social studies and history too. We encounter his smiling visage in currency notes, and M.G. road (Mahatma Gandhi Road) is invariably the best address in a city. What else do we remember about the father of the nation, whose birth anniversary is being celebrated today?
“Gandhiji’s life was his message. What has guided me for the last 17 years has been a quote that has been attributed to him: ‘Be the change you wish to see.’ That has been the principle that I have followed while setting up my company and in conceptualising its vision. He believed that each individual can drive the change by being the change that he wishes to see. If each individual can be agents of change and he/she can make a difference,” says Anoop John, chief executive officer of Zyxware Technologies.
In fact, in 2008 Anoop and two of his colleagues had begun a walk from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram on October 2 to inspire youngsters to be agents of change. The young CEO insists on not paying a bribe or requesting for undue favours and “I have succeeded in that,” he adds. He says more than any particular lesson in school, it was his extensive reading in college that enabled him to get to know more about Gandhiji.
For 27-year-old Namitha V.P., a former teacher preparing for competitive examinations, there were many inspiring moments in Gandhiji’s life that remain in her memory. “Gandhiji was very clear about how children should be taught. He was against the examination system and emphasised on a system that enlightened students. He had his own way of assessing students and made it a point to encourage those students who were weak in their studies, something that he implemented in Phoenix Farm, outside Johannesburg. It would be very nice if our teachers also felt the same,” she says.
In the case of Divas Sadasivan, a corporate communications manager in Technopark, it was Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiments With Truth that gave a true picture of the leader. Although he read it in his teens, he still “vividly” recalls the incident where Gandhi was thrown off the train at Pietermartizburg in South Africa, after refusing to move from the first class compartment for being a coloured person. “It was, perhaps, the one incident that sowed the seeds of what would, much later, become the Indian Independence movement. Until then, I imagine, Gandhiji was a normal man who had extraordinary thoughts. It was a definitive moment in his life, a trigger that made lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Gandhi that we know and love,” says the 34-year-old, adding “I am inspired by his amazing self-discipline; how relentless he was in his pursuit of his dream of an independent India.”
Gandhi also pointed out how one need not have a publicity machinery to drive home a point. “He stood for simplicity and there is no better example for this than his dress code – homespun dhoti and a shawl. Even when he was ridiculed for his attire, he did not go in for a makeover,” says Nirupama Suneetha, a college student. “He taught us that what really matters is what we are. This becomes a very relevant thought today when we pretend to be something more than what we are,” she adds.
Yes, Munnabhai popularised Gandhigiri but these youngsters insist it is Gandhi’s ideals that they hold close to their heart. And they are ready to walk the talk.
