Read before you speak...

M.K.Gandhi
That name is known by almost every educated person in the world, because of reason you very well know(assuming that you're educated). Surprisingly he is despised by many Indians today, especially the youngsters.

I feel like kicking balls of every single person who has a go at him. (and his has nothing to do with Munnabhai). The reason for this is when I ask people about him, they reply with all kinds of expletives they could think of. And more annoyingly they make so many ridiculous allegations against him. A few of them are, 'He was a coward not to use weapons', and 'suppressed great leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose and etc.', and the biggest and the most common one of them all is 'was responsible for partition of India' and the most disgruntling 'He paid 80 crore to Pakistan'.

Well as far as being a coward is concerned, I must say even a fraction of the courage he possessed would be more than enough for a common man to brave all disasters today. Suppressing leaders is out of questions because great leaders cannot be suppressed in any case.

I will forgive those who think that non-violence or satyagraha was a bad idea. Yeah maybe with violence things might have turned out differently for India, perhaps better or worse, which cannot be said. But that was his way of doing things, like every great leader has his own philosophy, and it wasn't totally futile either.

But what I cannot excuse is when people blame him for partition. I mean these people are the ones who hear stories from other friends and make up their opinion. Partition of India was much of an incident engineered by the ever lousy British lads, and in my opinion Gandhiji like every other Indian just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Of all the things that happened during the violence and partitioning I don't really suppose that even for one moment did the thought of splitting up appealed to a leader of his eminence. As far as Godse is concerned he was a maniac. After all he didn't really achieve anything by the assassination. If he were really concerned about the revenge he so boasted, he would have rather gone to Pakistan and killed Jinnah, which would have taken immense efforts and courage, rather than shooting an unarmed man without any security cover. Yeah I'll might be willing to accept that the words "HEY RAM" didn't really escape Ghandiji's tongue.

But the biggest misunderstandings among everyone was over that '80 crore to Pakistan' crap. If people would really be so sentimental and patriotic towards their country, and boast about so called values possessed by Indians, of what they call "Sankar' in hindi films, perhaps if they would have bothered to read all the historic books, which describe the incidents that happened during that era, they would have learned that India was indebted to Pakistan for about 150 to 200 crore rupees and that we great Indians as good as swindled Pakistanis in terms of fair business.

Before the Congress agreed to partition it was agreed among the two nations to pay the other, the difference in asset values at that time, which will be generated as a result of large 'shift of population'. In that event all the people abandoning their estates here in India were to get compensation in Pakistan in terms of incentives and other things. India had hence, agreed to pay Pakistan approximately 200 crore(as stated in Gen. Mushraff's autobiography), which after the British left, we never paid. This fact is never stated in any school history textbook here in India, and I don't think any history teacher is aware of it either. Because of Gandhiji, we at least paid Pakistan those 80 crore. Pakistan does have enough reasons to despise us. In my opinion this was cheating. And remember that these events happened before the Kashmir war, so we didn't have any dispute against them at that time, when we proudly claimed that we were a secular state.

This maybe a debate, but in my opinion Mahatma Gandhi did the right thing, since he so believed in not cheating anyone. There is one thing you cannot deny, that Gandhiji persisted till the end, against every odds, and that is what makes him one of the greatest leaders in the world. Today if you ask any foreigner about the first Indian face that comes into his mind, I am sure he would be anyone other than Gandhiji. And to bring about such result it takes an entire life of hard work, persistence and struggle, along with immense courage. So before you have a go at the Mahatma again you might want to ask yourself, 'to question his greatness, do you even possess a single attribute of his?'