Gandhiji’s complex personality remains uninterpreted: Parekh

Vadodara: “Mahatma Gandhi was a complex personality which many have failed to understand till date,” — said Lord Bhikhu Parekh, member of UK’s House of Lords, at an event in the city on Saturday.
Parekh, former vice-chancellor of M S University and an eminent political theorist, was delivering a lecture on ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy: A critical assessment’ at the city-based Navrachana University (NU) as part of NU’s ‘Samvaad’, a celebrity lecture series.
The Padma Bhushan awardee said that no biography of Gandhi so far has been able either fully capture or illuminate the complexity, tensions and apparent contradictions of Mahatma’s personality. He said nobody has been able to elucidate the sources of his powerful emotional hold over so many of his associates as well as his countrymen in general.
It was his (Bapu’s) conviction that India should not be partitioned, but he was not prepared to impose this view on others, said Parekh, who himself has penned several books on Gandhi. Parekh added that at times even he believes that they could have been better.
He said that even the then Congress leaders could not understand Gandhi. “It is very obvious because of the complexity of his personality,” said Parekh.
Responding to query whether political leaders of the country are using Gandhi’s name to serve their own purpose, Parekh said that world over, names of eminent political leaders are used by the political leadership. India is no exception to the general rule, he said.
Opining that today’s youth are moving fast towards consumerism, he said that it is totally different from what Gandhi used to believe.