Why we should leave Mahatama alone and accept Gandhi

I have never been able to understand that why we fail to acknowledge Mahatma Gandhi as a man who was similar to all of us and yet different in his own ways. I agree that he was a great leader and also someone who practiced and preached a lot of things, which we as a common man can’t even think of accepting and including in our lives. Yet, inspite of his greatness, he was still a man and has all the characteristics of a normal human beings, then why all the hue and cry when someone tries to bring out that simple human side of his personality out in the open. Why is that we fail to recognize the man behind the mahatma, who made all the sacrifices, difficult for a common man, which made him a cut above the rest, but aren’t all great men suppose to be like that? We always see the success and the greatness, seldom we realize that the one who has achieved that state was one of us only some time back.

We have a very low tolerance level for any discussion which tries to deviate from the normal Mahatma and greatness topics. That is why we are always opposing the people, writers and books, who try to shed some light on Gandhiji’s life as a human being, because we can’t accept that image of his. Let’s forget Gandhiji for a moment, and ask a question to ourselves, can we ever acknowledge that our parents are just like all other men and women, and have needs and desires like any normal human being. I don’t think for most of us this is even possible, because of our upbringing which teaches us to idolise anyone who commands respect.

We always try to find a hero whom we can worship, as a child we worship our parents and idolise them, from then onwards they cease to exist as a man and woman for us, they become different, someone who is incapable of making mistakes and have no weaknesses. As we grow up, the list of these idols in our life increases, we include our teachers, leaders and sportspersons etc., anyone whom we respect gets a place in this list and ceases to be a human for us. We have done same with Gandhiji and many of our other leaders and sportsperson, hence the low tolerance, because if someone tells us that god is also human, our mind will not accept it so easily.
The recent movement against corruption is one example of this idolism we have built in our DNA, suddenly Anna Hazare has been termed as “modern mahatma” , instead of understanding what he is fighting for and how, we are happy just following him and terming him as our messiah. I think it’s time now that we stop making any more mahatmas, it will serve us better if we can just try to accept the fact that he is a simple human being who is fighting for a very big cause.

Raising normal humans to level of mahatmas have given us people like Chandraswami also, who will make sure that they use this status of theirs to their fullest advantage and then we feel cheated and betrayed. We should keep in mind that the people who are capable of fighting for greater cause, sacrificing the smallest of things which all of us as humans cherish, are also humans, capable of making mistakes, giving in to their desires and sometimes deviating from their cause. The greatness of these people lies in getting back on track quicker and stronger than the normal human beings and not in being completely immune to all these normal human weaknesses. The moment we realize this, not only we will leave Gandhiji alone, but also will work “with” today’s modern mahatmas rather than “following” them blindly for the welfare of our society.