India at the crossroads
Events in India this week highlighted the fact that the nation stands at the crossroads, where its future will be dictated.
While international and national media looked on with considerable interest, few citizens took any notice Thursday as Mohandas K. Gandhi's "final ashes" were solemnly poured into the confluence of India's three major rivers at Allahabad.
Widespread doubt remains as to whether those fire-bleached remains were in fact those of the once universally revered Mahatma, and more significantly whether their "discovery" after all these years warranted any media attention. But even if they were authentic, the incident spoke volumes about how hard and how far the "Great Father" of the nation has fallen.
That his arch-rival in the debate leading up to India's independence from Great Britain in 1948, Chandra Bose, received similar honors only days earlier (and with similar apathy from the general public) says a great deal about the realities of Indian politics and culture today.
India is a far greater nation today, thanks largely to the galvanizing influence of Gandhi, Jawaharal Nehru and Bose, and in no small way to the subsequent, ostensibly unifying efforts of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.
History will primarily record Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, also lost to assassins, as the prime movers behind India's modern nuclear policy which sets the country apart from the rest of the world.
New Delhi today is a long way from the Mahatma's espousal on non-violence, insisting its nuclear program is intended for entirely peaceful purposes.
This clearly is a nation on the brink, a proud nation on the verge of truly global prominence in trade and technology, yet a nation still short of coming to terms with its extant internal problems and its past.
It had to be a poignant moment for foreigners to see Mohandas Gandhi's great-grandson empty the long-lost and newly- rediscovered ashes of the "Great Soul" into the holy Ganges -- albeit a moment that drew a mere 2,500 local spectators.
Gandhi biographer Rudrangshu Mukherjee said India no longer "gave a damn" about Mahatma or whether the ashes were truly genuine. His colleague Shahid Amin said, "In any case, we are frittering away his ideals by chasing his ashes. People are forgetting him -- this is the saddest part.
"I am reminded, in an unfortunate way, of what Albert Einstein said about him. He had written:'Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this, ever in flesh and blood, walked upon the earth'."
No one can justifiably deny India's right to move on. In its present circumstances, New Delhi and the millions it claims to rule must collectively consider what the past represented, the changes wrought, and how they are to reinterpret that in the modern world.
-- The Bangkok Post