The Poor man's Gandhi

The Poor Man’s Gandhi

India should certainly be happy to have a young leader who has the welfare of the poor in his heart. One leader happens to be a prince in waiting of an important political party and is scion of a family with a prominent political heritage. His proclamations, predilections   and predicaments are the grist of the media mill.  Yet he is reluctant to take on the burden from his ailing mother and take the plunge into the whirlpool of Indian politics.  He wants to remain for ever and ever, the poor man’s leader visiting Dalit homes and eating the simple bajra roti with raw onions.

However this personality happens to be the butt of many internet jokes and anecdotes. The Parsi community of Mumbai declared that anyone in their community earning less than Rs. 90,000 was “poor”.   Based on this was the joke that the Prince, who slept in the humble huts of the poor in Rae Bareli, would make a beeline for the houses of Parsis who are “poor” and eat with them.  Of course, there is an invisible link in this joke. His grandfather, hailing from the Parsi community was a promising, progressive and pragmatic parliamentarian.    Indians do wish that his grandsons could have shown themselves to be close clones of this fearless crusader who took on his own father-in law. Somehow neither cousins of the first political family of India have shown their real mettle in Parliament.  That is unfortunate as the party goes from crisis to crisis; the government is like a rubber raft spinning down rocky rapids.  And a tired, aging leadership is at the helm of affairs.

Indians now how have two princes in waiting under the wings of two mothers who don’t talk to each other any longer and exist at opposite poles of the political spectrum.  What can we do to enthuse two reluctant gladiators, force them to come on the political ring and slug it out?  Not many in either parties support this move.  We have too many aspirants for the higher jobs and too little seats of power.  Though the young workers want to desperately ride on the shoulders of the political family, they do not want to be seen as supporting a closed family rule, a dynasty. And the opposition is ready to stone them for this particular dementia, forgetting that they too would support dynastic rule if they just manage to get sufficient parliamentary seats and come to power.  Coming to power is the mantra of the unwashed masses of India.  Even the heavy rains of the monsoons cannot wash off the dirt of corruption from the faded khadi shirts, dhotis and saris.

The Indian poor really do not matter to the Indian politician, excepting when making silly speeches before the bodies of farmers who ended their hapless lives due to the harassment of an insensitive bureaucracy.  The poor are ready to extend hospitality to the visiting political princes with the hope that they would get their voices heard in the corridors of power.  But the poor man’s Gandhi is not yet ready.  The aspirants for this job are still reluctant, hesitant and lack confidence in their own talents.  How long can they hide under the shadows of their peers?

What once prompted a   Gujarati  lawyer in South African  to give up his vocation, travel to India and take on the job of    liberating the  enslaved masses of a sub-continent; working  against an empire that had the world in its cruel talons ?   It was his oversized ego that prompted the Mahatma that he may be the poor man’s saviour.  The very same Indians, who made him into a Mahatma, then shot him in cold blood.   That is perhaps what makes the princes in waiting reluctant to become the Poor Man’s Gandhi in present day India.  Indians could turn on their mentors and sacrifice them, if they felt their leaders were not capable of leading them any longer.  So why take the risk and become victims to terrorism and needless violence? The Revolution would soon eat up its own children.  I give no names and the readers can make their own guesses.