Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Memorabilia of the world’s unique icon of teetotalism now belong to a vintner of India, who, not for devotion to Gandhism but perhaps for projection of opulence achieved on basis of business in disregard to tenets of Gandhism, has purchased them.
If the items are real claimants to be called memorabilia of Mahatma Gandhi, there should be no doubt that Gandhiji is killed again on the auctioneer’s table.
When Gandhiji was physically killed in 1948, India was under a Congress government with Jawaharlal Nehru at the top. When Gandhiji is posthumously killed in 2009, India is also under a Congress government with the daughter-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru at the helm of affairs. How coincidental and how sad!
There would never have been any Mahatma Gandhi had Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi not promised to his mother to remain away from wine and not have kept the promise till extinguished by bullets from the pistol of a fanatic of right reactionary political activism.
Before leaving for London in 1888 to study law, Gandhi had pledged to his mother that he would never touch wine. In the environment of UK, he fought against all odds to stick to this pledge. This pledge was in fact the anvil on which his real self was in the making. Though South Africa gave him the boost that eventually made Albert Einstein say, “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”, Gandhiji has confessed that for the activism he could adopt there, “the seed however was sown in England”.
So, it is clear that behind emergence of Gandiji as Mahatma, teetotalism was the main factor. In other words, teetotalism stands for Gandhism. Had Gandhism not been violated in India, wine merchants would never have emerged as power centers in the country and Gandhi’s memorabilia, if at all the articles auctioned at the East 57th Street headquarters of Antiquorum Auctioneers at New York are really so, could not have gone to a vintner.
More offending than auctioning of articles that have acquired an aura in Gandhiji’s name are the shenanigans involved.
If Government of India could have acted diligently and with devotion to Gandhiji, India should not have been subjected so helplessly to suffer the ignominy of watching personal belongings of the Father of the Nation, if at all they are that, bearing hammer hits on the auctioneer’s table.
Lest the peoples compel Manmohan Singh government, run by Sonia Gandhi, to get back Bapuji’s belongings, attempts were made to mislead the people through Tourism Minister Ambika Soni, who made a statement that the government has “been able to procure them through the services of Vijay Mallya, who was in touch with us (the government)”.
But the foul play of the Government stands fully exposed when Mallya is reported to have said that even as he was not aware of what Ambika Soni has said, “neither before nor after the auction, anybody in the government was in touch with” him.
So, obviously, either Ambika Soni or Vijay Mallya is telling a lie.
The Congress Government run by Sonia Gandhi through Manmohan Singh has embarrassed India by forcing her to silently watch articles, projected as Gandhiji’s, being subjected to hammer-hits on an auctioneer’s table. Let it not add further injury to this insult. So, let it clarify as to who of these two has told the lie and why.
How many times the peoples shall have to tolerate killing of the Father of the Nation?