The Hollow Gandhis!

Gandhi Jayanti is here again. Flowers on statues, tributes in Parliament, and the familiar whitewashing of history. But this year, while the nation lit incense before the Mahatma’s portrait, Rahul Gandhi chose a different stage — Colombia. Not New Delhi, not Wardha, but Bogotá. The audience? Perhaps a dozen people. Back home, however, the PR machine presented it as if South America itself had been conquered by his charm.

Rahul thundered that India’s “structure is broken.” Strong words, but predictable. What is less predictable — and conveniently absent — is what the new structure should be. For Rahul, diagnosis is easy; prescription is always missing. The suspicion is that the “perfect structure” he dreams of has one permanent fixture: the Nehru-Gandhi family at the helm, with the rest of India queuing up obediently behind.

On Gandhi Jayanti, Rahul decided to attack the RSS. He said anyone who attends its shakhas cannot possibly understand Gandhi. But the irony is cruel. How well does Rahul himself understand Gandhi? Invoking Gandhi from a foreign podium is more political theatre than philosophical reflection.

And what of Gandhi himself? The ritualistic worship each October 2nd hides more than it reveals. Gandhi preached nonviolence — yet was silent when mobs butchered Hindus in Malabar and Noakhali. He championed truth — yet peddled political bargains dressed up as moral crusades. The Khilafat agitation he embraced was not about Indian freedom but about restoring the Ottoman Caliph even as the Turks wanted its end. His “Quit India” fizzled out in a week, and he later apologised to the British for its violence. Was this the Mahatma of courage, or a master tactician of Congress politics?

For those who chant “truth and nonviolence” as Gandhi’s eternal gifts, it is worth asking: did his movements truly liberate India, or did they mainly consolidate Congress’ stranglehold on power? Who can forget the moment when Gandhi intervened to nudge Sardar Patel aside, despite Patel securing the majority, so that Nehru could take the reins of the Congress presidency? Gandhi sowed seeds of timidity, compromise, and self-doubt — fruits we are still chewing today.

And so Rahul’s sermon from Colombia rings hollow. Preaching about India’s structural flaws while sitting abroad, exaggerating problems without offering solutions, and using Gandhi as a political crutch — this is not leadership. It is public relations dressed up as philosophy.

Until Indian politics finds the courage to speak of Gandhi as he was — flawed, and often contradictory — and until Rahul Gandhi finds the courage to offer real answers instead of foreign homilies, October 2nd will remain what it has long become: a day of speeches, not reflection.

Jai Hind.