Marking Questions

And indeed a quick glance appears to confirm these fears. Imhasly’s itinerary covers vast distances to include places as far apart as Porbunder, Kolkata, Champaran, Imphal, Delhi and Hyderabad. His list of interviewees reads like a ready reckoner of contemporary India: Praveen Togadia, Aruna Roy, Chandrababu Naidu, Naranyana Murthy, Abdul Kalam. And then there is the familiar whiff of dismay in his description in the opening chapter about hardships in small town India.

A few pages into the book, however, these concerns melt away and the reader joins Imhasly on a journey that, though familiar to media savvy Indians, is nevertheless made interesting, at times even moving, by the writer’s clear sensitivity and skill. One retains a sense of disquiet about the framework though: is it fair to view a country as ancient and peopled with sages and wise men as India through the prism of only one man, however great and influential he may have been? Ironically it is the writer himself who raises the question when he quotes a BSF officer’s reference to ‘Mahatma’ Gotam (Buddha) and the Mahabharata.

That said, it cannot be denied that Imhasly tackles his theme with dexterity making connections that are sometimes obvious but often unexpected and subtle. To begin with the obvious is the point, often made by local commentators, about the Mahatma being reduced to a symbol and frozen in monuments, statues, road names and the politician’s khadi. Imhasly also throws in more intriguing digressions where he describes the grander commemorative gestures made by followers of other significant figures such as Ambdekar and Vivekananda as compared to Gandhi.

For the most part, however, Gandhi and his ideas are a reference point to judge how far the country has moved away from or towards in the decades following Independence. And here the verdict is a mixed one. When he describes the corruption in Bihar, the venality of the elected representatives of the people, the depredations of the state in the Northeast, the preferential treatment of the urban versus the rural and so on, it would seem as if Gandhi’s influence has been a strictly limited one.

But when Imhasly profiles the individuals fighting battles on behalf of the underprivileged, each in his or her own special way: Aruna Roy demanding the right to information for the common man, Irom Sharmila fasting in her lonely corner to obtain justice for her people, Narayana Murthy and his unique corporate vision, one senses the spirit of the loin-clothed revolutionary is still alive. Even more touching are the unknown individuals such as the 84-year-old Mathura Bhagat who washes and maintains a shrine to Gandhi in a small northern village where Gandhi had stopped at in 1938.

Imhasly’s is a sympathetic and perceptive eye and Goodbye To Gandhi?, with the question mark looming over the title is an illuminating read.