Gandhiji once said, “The future depends on what you do today,” but that future seems very futile to me, watching what we are doing today. On Gandhi Jayanti, the day that is celebrated globally as ‘International Day of Non-Violence’, “#गोडसे _अमर _रहें” (roughly translates to May Godse live forever) was trending on Twitter all day along in India. The very person who killed the Mahatma was being hailed by mahatma’s own people.
That pandora’s box (tweet thread) was filled with many strange posts that would have made you think WTF are these people thinking? If not, I am sorry, you also fell prey to this planned radicalisation, like many others.
Majority of the tweets held Gandhiji responsible for Partition, which significantly shows the ignorance of these ludicrous people. In reality, Gandhiji never supported the idea of partition and was sidelined during the final decision-making process by Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel. Eventually, the Congress Working Committee accepted the Mountbatten plan to divide the country into two parts. On June 3, 1947, the day the Partition plan was announced, Gandhi told Rajendra Prasad, “I can see only evil in the plan.”
This is not the very first instance when the ‘Godse glorifying club‘ worked with their full ‘zeal‘ to showcase their ill-advised thoughts. There have been a lot more instances like that, but this time it shook me a lot. Previously there used to be one or two people who would make such dazed statements, but this time it seemed like people started committing to this ideology without worrying about checking facts and what they are encashing. It is said that bigotry and ignorance go hand in hand, which was quite evident from this whole event.
I was not concerned about what Gandhiji would have thought after seeing this. He has done a lot and his contribution can’t belittle by such tweets. But, I was concerned with the fact that people are being seemingly pumped with such nonsensical, bigoted and dangerous ideology which is somewhat ‘forcing’ them to support a murderer. If this is what people are really started to believe in, we need to introspect a lot.
I don’t know whether these were the thoughts of some radicalised ‘bhakts‘ or a planned genus of threating ideology which is all laced up to take India down towards disparity.
Still believing in what Gandhiji said, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it-always,” and signing off hoping that time will change, and tyrants and murders will fall, not preach.