That the Supreme Leader’s ‘we must learn to value Gandhi and help spread his message across the world’ interview quote is taken (rightly, since that was what it was meant for) as a signal for his cultists to badmouth Gandhi and his legacy (those of you who are active online might be puzzled at the spate of recent attacks on him) only shows how the RW hive-mind knows exactly what the dog whistle was for, while the liberals (who are then put to task of finding and putting up the ample and easily available evidence of Gandhi’s fame and popularity during his lifetime and after) scratch their heads wondering if they heard wrong!
There is a phrase in Hindi that fits this perfectly. What Narendra Modi is great at, and did via this interview once again, was सबको काम पे लगा दिया! The real issues are once again pushed to the rear while everyone is debating Gandhi, and not even in the sense of the relevance of his message, its applicability in today’s politics, his life’s work, or how we can learn from him in our daily private and public lives. We are reduced to discussing how Charlie Chaplin met him once, how Einstein had a good word to say, how MLK Jr was a Gandhian, how Nelson Mandela was inspired by him, and so on.
Basically, we are once again on the back foot, trying desperately to tap away the googly while the cultists run around uprooting the stumps and shouting ‘Gooooooooalllll’ as the crowd erupts, the cheerleaders flay about their pom-poms, and the band starts up, even as we are frantically trying to explain how this is cricket and not football, but nobody’s listening as the trophy is stolen by our opponents, photo opportunities and interviews to the press done & dusted, and they clamber on top of the team bus and start their victory parade, leaving us alone in our whiny little voices complaining about it not being cricket (well, guess what, it ain’t; that’s the whole point they made).
Honestly, we are the idiots here.
