FROM ROSES TO RAGE

Gandhi Jayanti 2007 has been worlds removed from Gandhi Jayanti 2006. Last year the media discourse centred around Lage Raho Munnabhai, and how the film desmystified Gandhi for the masses and the youth. Gandhigiri was the buzzword and there was story after story about peaceful protests with flowers. For that matter, any kind of peaceful protest was likened or twisted to a show of 'Gandhigiri.' To be precise, what 'Chak De' is now, Gandhigiri was then.

A year later, forget Gandhi and what he stood for, the 'instant noodles' Gandhian message of Lage Raho Munnabhai has been relegated to history. If Munnabhai was a redemption song for Sanjay Dutt, the actor was behind bars for a while this year after being sentenced in the Bombay Blasts case, and awaits an uncertain future. The last few months have seen a spate of incidents of mob fury, ranging from Bhagalpur to Siliguri. And news channels and newspapers are agog with road rage deaths.

Gandhi would have been shocked by Muthuvel Karunanidhi's vituperative outbursts against Ram, as the DMK supremo anointed himself as the Head Priest of atheism. The soundbyte-happy Ram Sethu debate has been all about disrespect and intolerance. And even more shockingly on Gandhi Jayanti eve, when the DMK's hunger strike call turned into a virtual bandh in Tamil Nadu, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi had the gall to say that by going on hunger strike, Karunanidhi was only respecting the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence. Karunanidhi would have emerged with more dignity and no Supreme Court censure if he had restrained his followers from extending the definition of a hunger strike.

This is also the year of an introspective film 'Gandhi My Father' depicting the difficult relationship between Gandhi and his eldest son Harilal and how the Father of the Nation failed to understand his son. Depicting Gandhi the fallible human being seems painfully appropriate in a year which reminds me of the Julius Caesar line, "O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason." A year when a news channel airs a week-long series called 'Murdering the Mahatma.'

Also the year when the Government of India is a mute spectator, while non-violent protests by Buddhist monks are ruthlessly crushed by the ruling military junta in neighbouring Myanmar.