Why a National Holiday on Oct 2nd?

Every year India is having a National Holiday on this day. Can anyone recall the purpose? A person born 141 years ago who was destined to work all through his life for making India independent and he performed his duty, no more and no less. We Indians believe in the Theory of Destiny. India was simply destined to get freedom from British rule with the collective effort of some of our ancestors and he was to be at the helm of affairs. No more significance can be attached to his role.

Over 95% of Indians on rolls today are born after Mahatma Gandhi died. Of the remaining 5% or less, majority of them were in their loincloths (or nappies, if you prefer) during his time. Only few individuals, having one leg already in their respective graves now, have any vivid recollections of him.

Mahatma was not too popular with everyone. Sir Winston Churchill blurted on Mahatma:

It was while addressing the Council of the West Essex Unionists on February 23, 1931, that Churchill remarked of how, to him and most likely to much of his audience, it "was alarming to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."

Sir Stafford Cripps, British Minister for Aircraft Production said cautiously on Mahatma fasting in jail:

He is such a semi-religious figure that his death in our hands would be a great blow and embarrassment to us.

Nobel Peace Prize committee never felt Mahatma as a worthy candidate for Noble Prize during his lifetime and only expressed cursory regret, at a later stage, for not awarding him the coveted prize!

Mahatma was not present at the function marking the transition of India from the holds of British Raj to independent India. India itself did not deem it fit to honor Mahatma, for whatever reasons, with Bharat Ratna or instituting a greater recognition for him while every T, D and H is aspiring for Bharat Ratna these days!

Most importantly, it will be a shocking revelation to many to know that Mahatma is unrelated by blood to the more famous and omnipresent and omnipotent G-family whose names adore and render grace and dignity to all major airports, stadia, arterial roads and so on. It is a sheer coincidence that Mahatma shares the same surname as the dynasty of illustrious saviors of the nation. India looks for the leadership and deliverance at the hands of the members of every new generation of G-family and has no more need for the memories of fakir, as Churchill of yore called him.

Mahatma literally long ceased to live even in the minds of today’s Indians. Forget old G and look forward to new Gs. By the way, why are we torturing our beloved national leaders by making them garland statues year after year? It is indeed backbreaking. There is no doubt that Mahatma deserves peace and rest in his grave and we need not make him turn in his grave as the garlands might prick his conscience.

Tarantula is certain that Mahatma himself, in respect of wastage of national productivity of one day in a year in his name, would have disapproved.