I got a call last evening from a friend Sumeet who knew about my respect for Gandhi. He said to me "Nilesh, you are Gandhian right?"  I didn't know how to respond to that question. I wasn't sure respecting the man qualified me a to be a Gandhian, may be not.  He reminded me about how as a lawyer Gandhi was thrown off the first class compartment of a train in South Africa.

Well, he and a few friends of his were planning to mark the birth anniversary by inviting citizens to spend a night on the railway platforms in Hyderabad in memory of the man. You may look up the link at the end of the blog it has the details of the event. He even told me we hardly did anything to mark his birth anniversary. I humbly apologised and refused his invitation to Hyderabad since I was already travelling but it got me thinking about Gandhi.

Among other things I was thinking about why do I respect Gandhi?

Gandhi was the torchbearer of India's struggle for independence. This struggle got him millions of followers and India got independence. But do we owe our independence to Gandhi? Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Mine says no. Infact I would say we probably would have got it years before by other means, the means of the Bhagat Singhs' and Savarkars'.

Simply put India got independence when the Britishers chose to give it to us. In a hurry and without a care for the consequences. Once they had orders from the monarchy and the administration in London, they bothered about nothing and left and as soon as they could leaving behind a bloody partition. The effects we continue to suffer to this day.

So then why is Gandhi credited with a feat he never achieved. Well my opinion says he was the torchbearer, his means and ways very powerful, yet none of those really got us there. But the event happened with him at the helm so he was a case of being at the right place at the right time.

India would have got independence in and around 1945 with or without Gandhi. The reasons were the Second World War, changing global political scenarios, acceptance of democracy as the only means of administration, growing awareness for human rights, so on and so forth.

Then why do I respect Gandhi?

My respect for Gandhi is not for achieving any ends but purely the means and not restricted to his struggle for independence. Gandhi to me is not a politician. He is an institution. And there are not many human beings in history who can be termed as that. The Nobel committee was right when they did not give Gandhi a Nobel prize because he was simply beyond one. Giving him that accolade would be an insult to the man rather than an honour.

Can you believe in your values and hold stead fast in the face of any crisis for a life time? Gandhi was one who did it and without an instant of dilemma. His actions were never determined by outcomes, instead they were determined by the very values he lived for - Truth and Peace. Two morals the man stood all his life for. He always believed the means were more important that the ends and yet got a country full of hopefuls to follow him, without a promise or any surety of result. He did not measure his actions by the success of its outcomes.

If I were to talk to today's generation its crude way to put it, but he was a robot with a value system programmed in him. That was the only thing that drove him. Can any of us do that for a few minutes let alone a life time!

I haven't seen God but Gandhi is next best. He never needed to follow the values he believed in, he was the value himself. Therefore I call him an institute. He never had to attempt, it was embedded in him and merely reflected in everything he ever did and said. He influenced nobody, he was beyond praise, his actions were his lessons like he said and I quote, "Be the chance you wish to see in the world."

And once I answer that to my self, I smile, with gratitude and respect for the great man. He will never cease to amaze me. It wasn't for nothing that Einstein said about Gandhi and i quote "for generations to come it would be hard to believe a man of flesh and blood like him walked on the face of this Earth"

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