India Today

Gandhi for a new generation

How does one make the Mahatma relevant to a generation that has no context to place him in?

We are a nation of 1.3 billion Gandhi exp­erts. Every Indian and his WhatsApp group co-member has an opinion and a half on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (MKG). And why not? We grow up feeling familiar with MKG, seeing his image over and over-on currency notes, street names, busts, pictures.

Event org­anisers too lazy to find a suitable topic find ceaseless recourse in 'Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi' (spoiler alert: he is always adjudged relevant). There is a rich range of apocrypha attributed to MKG; he is misquoted over and over by those looking to elevate their own thoughts with bumper-sticker wisdom.

One reason for this mistaken familiarity is the extent to which his life is documented along open-source principles-and published in 100 volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. For decades now, his name has diligently serviced the demand for

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