A lost teacher.

It's not now that I thought of writing about this great personality, I have been wanting to do this since 3 to 4 months and today I just let the cat out. I was never so fond of this man and I didn't think he was my role model or could be anybody else's. No negative thoughts but just that he wasn't that impressive till I took up reading about him.

He was a lawyer by profession but he took teaching over arguing, I bet it was more difficult for him than playing devil’s advocate! I said that because the kind of pupil he chose to teach were not innocent, meaning not kids but ignorant. You know how difficult it is, don’t you?

• Let me quote some of the things that he had said and done around 60 or 70 years ago;
  His view about religion – Morality is the basis of all religion and truth is the substance of morality.He was not here to spread religion. Around 60 or 70 years ago in India I don’t really think people had tolerance for other religions especially when it was close to the movement of independence and it was spoken around then.
• When he was punished by the White Govt., all he said was “I’m only sorry for their ignorance and their narrowness.”This is something we believe Jesus Christ said and Goutham Buddha said. My point is not who said it first but he was one among those great souls. It’s not easy for one to say something like that when self is experiencing that kind of treatment.
• When he was a student, his regard remained the same for his teacher though he came to know many failures of that teacher.This is something which doesn’t exist now at all. Especially those teens who try to judge every person they come across have lost the values for individuals. If you cannot correct somebody you shouldn’t be negative as well.
• Today in our schools, the teaching starts with slant lines, straight lines, inclined lines and so on. This style of teaching is absorbed from west and is implemented now. This man had already penned down his thoughts about them long ago. He said “Children should be first taught the art of drawing before learning anything else to improve the hand writing”.
• He was also against corporal punishments.

These are a very superficial examples but this lawyer turned teacher has done a lot to the country that we have failed to recognize as our view and opinions are totally different. Tell me, who would want to leave the fame, wealth, and good contacts behind earned in a foreign country like South Africa and return to the motherland when it was a slave? Except for The Gautham Buddha and The Ashoka ,I don’t really think someone else could do it.

We may say a lot of things today that how differently we could have got independence but had we done even half of what he did to save the country probably we could get the eligibility to talk. He drove the entire nation which amazes me today to learn that he had such great powers. In a team of 13 to 15,how many can we get to listen to us to commit to work and perform? There was a leader in him.

He was a Baniya whose kids were never so famous and we have another Baniya whose reliant kids are spending crores to buy cricket players today which means his motto was improving people of the country and not accumulating wealth.It could have been a different scene but why can’t we appreciate whatever is worth doing.

I salute to this teacher Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and it was a good learning to read “My Experiments with the Truth.”