Gandhi is past 150 this week. He had wanted to live for 125 years, only to lose the appetite for life in his last years. On the occasion of...
Gandhi is past 150 this week. He had wanted to live for 125 years, only to lose the appetite for life in his last years. On the occasion of his 79th birthday , which was to be his last, a well-wisher wrote, “…May I suggest that the present situation should not depress you?”
Gandhi did not agree with him. It was not a state of depression he was in. What he was saying was a plain fact. He was perhaps not the fittest instrument to carry out the divine purpose. Perhaps a more courageous, more far-seeing person was wanted for the final purpose.
“If I had the impertinence to declare my wish to live 125 years, I must have the humility, under changed circumstances, openly to shed that wish,” he wrote. “I have done no more, no less. This has not been done in a spirit of depression. The more apt term, perhaps, is helplessness.”
The fires of hatred raged around him and he felt helpless, defeated by his own people. His dearest dream of Hindu-Muslim unity lay shattered. The untruth of the claim of Ahimsa had bared itself and he had to admit that what he and his country people had practised was not...
