Day 310

Toll 617

Oct 2

The irony of Gandhi Jayanthi is such that yesterday the Supreme Court frowned on the largest, longest, peaceful and non-violent protests in the country for blocking key roads to Delhi. The Court is now instructing farmers to become party to the petition as if it does not know the farmers stance: lack of faith in the judicial process.

Ask yourself why did the farmers never contest the Farm Laws in the Courts? Did the Court not last December say, ‘Women and elders should go back home.’ The panel that the Court established presented its report this March end. It is still lying in a sealed envelope. In August the Court said, ‘Farmers have a right to protest.’

Then what was this somersault yesterday?

Of course, Gandhi was flawed, there are many issues with him. Yet, there was merit in the form of resistance he cultivated. Ask yourself if Gandhi were alive today, where would he have been: at the government offices or on the roads protesting alongside the farmers?

In fact, farmers have decided to carry out a token fast today while the PM is busy removing Gandhi’s face from public spaces. All that the government, a legacy of those who killed Gandhi, wants to do with Gandhi is keep his round spectacles, his charakha, his emphasis on cleanliness, for their own publicity. What a dark joke on Gandhi!

Wish you a Gandhi Jayanthi but frankly I see it meaning less and less as years go by and perhaps nothing to the next generations.