As the soft beats of Raghupati Raghava faded away on a stage in Thiruvananthapuram in the afternoon of January 30, Tushar Gandhi took the mic. Exactly 78 years ago, at quarter past five, outside another venue in Delhi, three gun shots were fired against a frail little man called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
In 2026, Gandhi, who had made weapons out of non-violence and truth to lead a people to freedom, does not have to be relevant, said his great grandson Tushar. But the question is, he asked, do we deserve a leader like Gandhi today. Tushar, an author and a social activist, was giving a short lecture at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (MBIFL) on Gandhi’s remembrance day.
Highlighting the plight of undertrial political prisoners who are denied bails and the processes that force people to prove their right to vote, Tushar Gandhi wondered if we, as a nation, have been reduced to a slavish mentality. “India won freedom not because of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh or the leadership of Gandhi, but because every Indian decided that they did not want to be slaves. Do we have that spirit today? How have we, once a population of freedom loving citizens, become now a people of slavish mentality?” he asked.
“Gandhi stood for constitutional democracy. The question is, are we any longer a constitutional democracy or is the Constitution merely a book for reference and not one for practice?” Tushar asked, remembering BR Ambedkar, the father of the constitution, and the hope he had for India.
He questioned the thinning revolutionary spirit of a people who do not move a finger when an Umar Khalid (undertrial student prisoner) or a Sonam Wangchuk (imprisoned Ladakh activist) are languishing in jail while convicted criminals close to the ruling powers like Ram Rahim Singh or Asaram Bapu get paroles whenever they want.
“Mahatma Gandhi had said that when a citizen feels the government is not acting for their benefit, it becomes their duty to speak against such a government and if they refuse to hear you, to fight that government. He said that he would preach revolution in that situation and if that becomes sedition then it is the citizen’s duty to be seditious,” Tushar said.
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