Questioner: The question is concerning Gandhi Jayanti. Acharya ji, every year in the rest of the world Gandhi Ji is remembered as a great person on his birthday. But if we look at our own country and find a social media post regarding him, then people of our own country are abusing him. I agree that no person can be completely right. But how it is right to prove someone completely wrong, to abuse him instead of learning so much that could have been learned from him. There have only been very few people in the country who are appreciated worldwide but they are always insulted in our own country and I find the same thing happening with you too.
Acharya ji, please tell me why all of this is happening and what we can do about it.
Acharya Prashant: No, nobody really is interested in abusing Gandhi Ji. In fact, those who are abusing Gandhi Ji are the least interested in Gandhi Ji. They don't know anything about Gandhi Ji, they have never been bothered about Gandhi Ji. They are still not interested in Gandhi Ji. But they are abusing Gandhi Ji. There is a reason. They're trying to accomplish something and Gandhi Ji stands in the way. Therefore, Gandhi Ji has to be abused. Gandhi Ji stands as a symbol of something that they are hellbent on destroying. Therefore, Gandhi Ji has to be abused. Otherwise, these people have nothing to do with Gandhi Ji. Are you getting it?
If you want to create a society that is highly illiberal, then the symbol of liberalism has to be abused and brought down. If you want to create a society that is deeply fractured on communal lines, then the symbol of communal harmony has to be disparaged. That's what is happening.
Otherwise, you know, have they read Gandhi Ji? Who is Gandhi Ji? Gandhi Ji is not some person really. Gandhi Ji is a particular thought. Even if you want to criticize him, you have to first read him. He's a philosopher. He was not just randomly walking naked on roads. There was a philosophy behind his actions. Have you read the philosophy? No, we don't know.
But he has to be abused. He has to be abused because today you are trying to achieve something that cannot be achieved without killing Gandhi Ji again. Gandhi Ji was killed once and that didn't suffice. Physically killing him was very insufficient. So now, they are trying to kill him in many other ways. The problem with that is that certain things cannot be killed.
So, the same thing is with me as the questioner said. Nobody's interested in me. Day by day the army, I don't want to glorify them by calling them an army. The army is a very, very disciplined institution and you require a certain qualification to be called an army man. Let me call them some, what… Crowd. Huh?
Questioner: A troupe of dacoits. Maybe.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. The mob. Unruly mob. Or maybe, there is a better word. I don't know. Righteous mob. How is that? Righteous and riotous. Right. Riotous. 'Righteously riotous.'
So, that number is increasing every passing day. And they abuse me to no end. In fact, it's very interesting. One of their favorite abuses is, ‘He is emerging as another Gandhi Ji.’ He is Gandhi Ji number two. That's their abuse. They don't even realize what a huge compliment that is. They throw that at me as their favorite abuse. See another Gandhi Ji emerging. What they mean by that is that another one needs to be killed now. But I have no issues with being abused, right? That's okay.
But do you know me? Have you read me? Do you understand me? What are you throwing these invectives at? You don't even know your target. The huge empty darkness within you is shooting in the dark without even knowing who the target is. Worse still, without even knowing who the shooter is.
Just that you want ignorance to rule and therefore anybody who symbolizes illumination becomes an enemy to you.
The fellow does not even know that he has become an enemy. I don't even know how I gathered so many enemies. I have no idea at all. But every passing hour, this mob is swelling. And I have no idea why they are ganging up against me.
What are you angry against? It is complicated and yet it's very straightforward. I stand for something that they want to destroy. And therefore, every single person who stands for those things has to be reviled, disparaged, assassinated in as many ways as possible. When you cannot fight the force of truth, or even the might of ideas then you become slanderous in a personal way. They don't realize that when you call someone the new Gandhi Ji, that's a compliment. The 2nd of October is upon us and you'll witness a massive orgy. And the environment in India will be totally at odds with the environment of the rest of the world.
The world will celebrate Gandhi Ji and India will spit at Gandhi Ji. It was Einstein who said that the coming generations will have a hard time even believing that somebody like this walked upon this earth. Oh, he was prescient. See how quickly his words have become facts. I'm no big Gandhi Ji fan. Gandhi Ji spoke on the Gita and I find innumerable holes in his interpretation. I went to his ashram at Kasauni: 'Anasakti Ashram' long back.
And some of the stuff that I found there, either written or edged on the walls that left a lot to be desired. The interpretations, the message was not quite accurate. But what I can definitely say is that the intention isn't malicious. Here, you had a person who in spite of all his weaknesses was trying to do the best he could. I don't want to turn him into a larger than life thing or venerate him as some kind of god but the fellow deserves some respect for what he was and to deny him that respect is to deny humanness itself.
Think of any weakness, any vice and Gandhi Ji displayed it at some point in his life and credit is due to him to openly accept everything.
He couldn't speak. He was so frail, introverted, and timid. That was one of the reasons why he didn't want to appear before a court, a judge, because that would have required him to open up and speak and then so many other things.
You look at his personality and you find the very normal and usual kind of weaknesses alongside great flights of greatness. Today he is being one of the accounts on which he's being slandered is his sexual life. People take perverse pleasure in peeping into others' bedrooms, rather into others’ undergarments directly but Gandhi Ji himself is quite forthright about it.
How he wanted to once dominate his wife. How when his father was on his deathbed, Gandhi Ji in a moment of sexual mindlessness rather chose to go to his wife and in that moment, he lost his father and that remained with him. He was not hiding those things. A point came when he said the Gita is my mother. And there was a point when he was on the verge of converting to Christianity and he doesn't hide that.
Several of his views seem a bit regressive today and I would be the first person to admit that and we would and we don't want to accept those views. We don't want to raise a new India based on any kinds of views that are outdated today. But not everything is outdated. There are certain things that last, that are timeless. Actually, that discretion has to be there. What is respectable remains respectable. What is agreeable remains agreeable and what is time bound becomes outdated. There is no obligation to keep honoring that.
If we are to list the number of times Gandhi Ji expressed views that have no relevance today and probably had no utility even when they were expressed, the list will be very long. From memory, I can quote at least fifty instances where one would not want to agree with Gandhi Ji. And that is all right. That does not mean that you have to assassinate him once again. That does not mean that you have to doubt the man's integrity. Even Nehru did not agree wholeheartedly with Gandhi Ji. We know of the equation Ambedkar had with Gandhi Ji. Even at that time, nobody could agree 100% with him. Not even Patel and we know of the tiff he had with Bose.
Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Bose. Nobody was saying, ‘Well! you know, we have a god here.’ No. What to say of Jinnah or Churchill? So, we have a man in flesh and blood with all his weaknesses, with all the human frailties. Respect him for the courage that he showed. Respect him for the transformation that he underwent.
Look at his power, the naked fakir and he would say, ‘I'm not eating anything 'Anshan'. And the entire India would rise with him.
His power to mobilize the masses was unprecedented, charismatic. There was surely something India saw in that man. Right? Or our parents and grandparents were utter fools? They were the ones who were idolizing Gandhi Ji, right? Were they totally deluded? No, they were not. They were seeing something special in that man.
There might also be some truth in the allegation that because of Gandhi Ji, the role of several other freedom fighters has not been fully pronounced. Gandhi Ji has been such a huge tree that a lot has become invisible in his shadow. That's right. So, let's bring out the real life stories of those we have not honored enough. Huh? Let's felicitate them. But for that, you don't need to revile Gandhi Ji. It's simply indecent. Forget about ethics. It's aesthetically so unpleasant. The man is not there. And now, you are shooting allegations at him. Will he come to defend himself?
He tried eating meat. He either went to a prostitute once or was on the verge of going there. He tried an alternative school of medicine as well, similar to naturopathy, which was quite unscientific. Obviously one cannot agree with everything that Gandhi Ji said or did and he was keeping that goat. I think it was Sarojini Naidu who said it takes a lot to keep Gandhi Ji poor. It takes a lot of money to keep Gandhi Ji poor because he was carrying that goat wherever he went. He said, ‘You know, goat milk is better than cow milk.’ Even from the point of view of animal rights, one won't agree with Gandhi Ji here and one doesn't need to. But why kill the man again and again?
One can question whether it was right to participate in Khilafat. Yes, definitely because it was a totally religious matter and a totally foreign affair. Something was happening in Turkey. Why are you aligning Indian Muslims with that and along with that Indian Hindus as well? One can question that, definitely one can question the withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement. There are so many other things one can question whether Pattabhi Sitaramayya had to be favored at the cost of Bose.
So many other things, you can continuously question. And like any other curious student, I too have been continuously questioning Gandhi Ji. I'm no big fan. But all this; that is going on is simply ugly. Very ugly.
You are blaming him for India's partition. How is he to be blamed? What more could he have done to avoid partition? If there was one man who said India will not be partitioned, it was Gandhi Ji. But when the fires of communalism have been stoked to the extent that you have de facto genocides going on—in cities, villages, and many provinces—what do you do? So many lakhs have already been killed. How many more are to be killed?
If partition were to be averted, that right actions should have been taken the decades prior to partition. Once the two communities have been deeply steeped in hatred against each other, partition became inevitable. Two people are refusing to stay with each other. How can you now avoid partition? Because it's not in your hands. Two people don't want to stay with each other. How can you force them to stay with each other? And if you do want them to stay with each other, then you should have taken the right action several, several years and decades earlier. 46 or 47…. the equation had already been sealed.
And even if we are to say that had Gandhi Ji acted differently, partition could have been avoided, that could probably be an error in judgment. So we can criticize him for that. Everybody is susceptible to criticism. So is Gandhi Ji. Gandhi Ji should be criticized. But criticism is one thing and vituperative slander is totally different.
Being a student of both technology and economics, I very well know that Gandhi Ji's views on the self retained village economy are not practical. I also know that India's textile sector could have done better had it not been for Gandhi Ji's emphasis on the handloom. I know of all these things and it is fair to offer a trenchant criticism of Gandhi Ji on these counts. But let criticism be criticism. I think there were occasions when he also acted quite unreasonably. He offered a very superstitious account of the…. Which particular earthquake was that? I don't remember.
Questioner: Floods in Bihar probably. And the famine in Bengal for which he said that it’s god's punishment for what they were doing.
Acharya Prashant: It's God's punishment. So when there were floods and famines.. there was also an earthquake?
Questioner: Yes. Probably something happened in Bihar.
Acharya Prashant: So there was some natural calamity and Gandhi Ji said, ‘There is god's punishment for something that you have done. No, that's just so irrational and superstitious. And I would be the first one to strongly criticize that kind of thing from a leader. But come on, the man was much more than these statements. And if you don't see that, go and ask Churchill. He will tell you who Gandhi Ji was. If you don't see this, go and ask Jinnah. He will tell you who Gandhi Ji was. Or Mountbatten. Ask them.
People pit Patel against Gandhi Ji these days and Bose against Gandhi Ji these days. Do we know the kind of deep respect both Bose and Patel had for Gandhi Ji? Who called Gandhi Ji as Mahatma for the first time? Who was he? And Tagore. Think of his differences with Gandhi Ji. He said freedom attained by spinning the charkha is not worth it. And he didn't like the kind of nationalism Gandhi Ji was promoting. He said this nationalism is the very mother of all kinds of mischief. But still Tagore had such a healthy respect for Gandhi Ji.
You know in the spiritual domain, Ramana Maharshi, he used to say, ‘There are a lot of people that I send to Gandhi Ji's ashram and there are a lot of people, Gandhi Ji sends to me from his ashram.' And we are talking of the stalwart, the top most spiritual figure of the first half of the last century —Ramana Maharshi. And Ramana Maharshi is displaying from his top spiritual position such respect for Gandhi Ji.
Questioner: Sir, I was just adding to it. It was Rabindra Nath Tagore himself who criticized Mahatma Gandhi Ji for his views on the flood that was in Bihar and Bengal. And it was him who called him the Mahatma. And then Subhash Chandra Bose called him, ‘The Father of the Nation.’
Acharya Prashant: ‘The Father of the Nation.’ Yes. Yes.
'Rashtrapita' that came from Bose. Mahatma that came from Tagore. So, you see the healthy exchange. Not the kind of sloganeering and absolutely indecent environment that we are a part of today. It is so strange.
You see the fellow who brought religion to the political discourse in the biggest way possible, he is being accosted by the forces of so-called religion. He gave up his western formals and he said, ‘I am now becoming a monk, de facto monk.’ Right? Everything that he did say was inspired by religion. Religion as he understood it. We can argue over whether his religiosity was truly spiritual and authentic. That can be debated. That's all right. But he was very clear that public life must be inspired by religion. Even the last two words attributed to him are, ‘Hey Ram.’
So if we really are a religious people then Gandhi Ji did what we ask for. He said, ‘No politics without religion.’ He said the ideals of religion will guide politics. So that way you should embrace Gandhi Ji. And it is so strange that instead of embracing him, the ones who call them religious are shooting him down.
You see, we want a militant masculine type of alpha religion, right? We want a Hinduism inspired by Andrew Tate. Now, Gandhi Ji! Look at the meek figure he is. It hurts our aspiring masculinity. Rashtrapita can't even stand properly and doesn't look impressive or smart or handsome or sexy. In fact, borderline ugly.
Look at his ears. Monkeyish. And he doesn't hit anyone with this Laathi that he carries. His greatest weapon is ‘Satyagraha’, 'Anshan’ ‘Aamaran Anshan,’ fasting till death. We don't like that. We want to be more testosterone driven. We don't realize that courage is not about your balls or your body. Courage is something far deeper. And it's not just about Gandhi Ji. It's been the very Indian message through the millennia.
The entire line of seers, sages, saints and knowers has said that it takes tremendous courage to, first of all, fight against yourself. Gandhi Ji's message is so close to that of the Jains. And you know what ’Jin’ means? The winner. Why is he a winner? Because he has conquered himself. There is the ‘Jain Ramayana’ in which Ram becomes so liberated that he doesn't even kill Raavan. Laxman kills Raavan. Ram becomes a Jain. He says all this killing etc. is for… (making gestures.)
Ram just becomes liberated.
It's not as if it's just Gandhi Ji who is coming and saying that the greatest courage lies in first of all conquering yourself. That has been the message through the centuries. Now, how many of them will you kill?
If Gandhi Ji is to be killed for saying that, first of all, you need to fight yourself then you will need to kill so many others as well because the entire tradition of Indian seers and sages has been saying exactly the same thing. Go kill all of them. Bring down their statues. Erase their memories. Despise them. Turn them into villains in your history books. The entire line starting right from Gautama Buddha. Is Ahimsa a Gandhian innovation or invention? Ahimsa is coming from there. Before Gandhi Ji, go shoot Gautama.
How do you become a coward if you, first of all, decide to fight your own inner vices? How is that cowardice? Kindly illuminate me. Because that's the charge being levelled. Gandhi Ji turned all of us into cowards. How is it cowardice to face your own reality? How do you become brave if you are shying away from your inner fact?
If you say, ‘I'll not look at how I am. I just want to fight the external enemy,’ how do you know? How do you even know who the external enemy is if you do not know who you are? We talk of ’Shatrubodh’ (knowledge of the enemy) so much these days. That's fine. But to have an enemy, first of all, you must know who you are. If instead of knowing myself as a man, I think I'm a mouse then all the cats are my enemies. Even to know who is my enemy, first of all, I must know who I am. And that is the process of self-knowledge—first of all, looking at your own reality.
If I'm a mouse then I'll keep chasing cats to kill them. These are my historical enemies. ’Shatrubodh’ but you are not mouse at all. So why are you fighting the cat then? And that's the accusation against Gandhi Ji. He made Indians into cowards. If that is the accusation that accusation should not be reserved for Gandhi Ji alone. Level that against, I'm saying, all your rishis, sages, seers, saints, everybody the entire line, the whole tradition, all the branches of the spiritual tree.
Accuse them because all spirituality is fundamentally about looking at yourself first and then fighting the external battle. Nobody is asking you to not to fight external battles. You are being told, first of all, fight the inner battle and only that will give you the clarity and the power to fight the right external battles.
Look at the battlefield of Kurukshetra, for example. Shri Krishna is not supplying Arjuna with weapons. He is supplying Arjuna with self-knowledge and Arjuna wins. Even to win the external battle, first of all, you have to win the internal battle. Gita is about helping Arjuna to win the internal battle. Not without reason, Gandhi Ji used to say the Gita is like my mother. Though I'll have my reservations on whether Gandhi Ji really interpreted Gita accurately. Today if he could come, I would contest him. I would say, ‘No sir, your interpretation of Gita is way off the mark in many ways but that's all right.
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. There is a beautiful line there. How many times How many times? Come on. Come on. No Dylan fans here now.
Now they'll accuse me of singing so badly. That's what I'm going to do next. Bring me the lyrics. You see, look at these and see how relevant they are to today's discussion.
‘The song “Blowin' in the Wind” by Bob Dylan’
(Lyrics with meaning w.r.t current discussion explained by Acharya Prashant.)
How many roads must a man walk down? How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?
How many times do you want to test a man, without testing yourself even once. You keep testing the other man, without having tested yourself even once, right?
How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand? And how many times must the cannonballs fly Before they're forever banned? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
So beautiful.
Yes. And how many years must a mountain exist Before it is washed to the sea?
You understand the mountain in context of our discussion? The mountain of ignorance.
Yes. And how many years must a mountain exist Before it is washed to the sea? And how many years can some people exist Before they are allowed to be free?
The thing is it's not the British now who are not allowing you to be free. It's your own internal ignorance and bigotry and prejudices that are not allowing you to be free.
Yes. And how many times can a man turn his head And pretend that he just doesn't see?
How long will you keep pretending that you don't see the obvious? How long will you ignore the very direct fact?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind. Yes. And how many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky?
The answer is bring down the sky. Just bring down all the towering statues. Right? If I can't look up. Why should I allow them to stand up? Bring them down, raise them to the ground.
And how many years must one man have Before he can hear people cry? Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows That too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
Questioner: So there's a small follow-up question that online participants are asking. They're asking that Acharya Ji, we do not want you to be the second Gandhi Ji. We do not want people to misunderstand you. So, what is it that we can do in this?
Acharya Prashant: See, I'll meet my fate. Huh? The beautiful thing. ‘Amor Fati’, “Love of fate” comes from Nietzsche. One of his most intriguing, mystical utterance he says, ‘There's nothing I value higher than my fate.’ Resonates to me in some way with Shri Krishna when he says ‘Niyat Karmam Kuru,’ Niyati and your Niyati that is inexorable.
So, I'll meet my fate both in the inner and the external sense. You make, ‘Use of Me’ in whichever way possible. ‘Use Me.’ One doesn't know, how long the whole thing will last, and also doesn't know what twists and turns are there in the tale to make hay while the sun shines.