Amberish K Diwanji

Kobad Gandhy’s arrest has generated reams and reams of newsprint in Mumbai. Every report has unfailingly mentioned how this scion of a wealthy family gave it all up for the sake of the poor; how he and his wife Anuradha, who also hailed from a middle-class family, lived with the poorest of the poor in the deep jungles, and how she finally succumbed to cerebral malaria while he today suffers from various ailments.

Why does Gandhy’s story generate so much interest? Why are so many of us so keen to know more about this man who’s family ran an ice-cream business (according to one report, his family introduced fresh strawberry ice-cream to Mumbai and India) and lived on Worli Sea-face, still one of Mumbai’s most posh localities?

Perhaps the most compelling reason is that deep down in our conscience, there are many of us who secretly admire him. In college, most of us (but certainly not all), dreamt of working for a better India, working directly for the poorest rather than believing in some economic trickle-down theory that doesn’t seem to be making a difference at all?

Yet, soon after college, life doesn’t allow us the luxury to chase our dreams. Many simply lack the conviction to actually do what is easily spoken of over cups of tea in the college canteen, while for many others, family takes precedence – debts to pay off, ailing parents to take care of, sister to marry off, etc. Not that these reasons are trifle: it is difficult to help the world if one cannot help one’s own family.

Then there the few brave souls do take up various causes, but among that lot is a huge divide: there are a few who really care for oppressed but believe the cause is better served from within the system (rights’ activists are an example). Finally, there a few who raise the loudest slogans (often during and immediately after college), and but who soon thereafter end up settled abroad or as wealthy bankers. For this lot, such causes are just another forum for serving their own egos rather than the poor.

Thus, when we read of an Anuradha and Kobad, or Vernon Gonsalves or Binayak Sen, or of the less revolutionary but equally path-breaking Baba Amte and his sons working in areas where civilisation hasn’t reached, we admire them for it, we envy them for doing what we could not do though we wanted to.

Meanwhile, the government has said it will launch a major operation against the naxals. A word of caution: while most Indians disapprove the use of killings by the naxalites, even fewer see them as terrorists of the Jihadi variety. Deep down, many of us have a deep sympathy for the naxals, seeing them as using the wrong methods while fighting for the right cause.