Each time I see Mahatma Gandhi’s Statue near Parliament Square in London…
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For the past one year, I have been travelling around Europe and have got many opportunities to interact with people from several countries. Topics ranged from Social Entrepreneurship, Business, Sports, Politics, Cuisine and Bollywood to every other thing in India but one point that was common with almost everybody was — Mahatma Gandhi. On some occasions, I felt my knowledge is not adequate and tried to listen but topic of Gandhi intrigued me. Each time, I discussed about Gandhi, my conviction in his thoughts and approach became deeper. I was overwhelmed to learn about the knowledge as well as curiosity that people (outside India) have about Gandhi.
The statue of Gandhi in London was unveiled by Arun Jaitley and David Cameron in the presence of Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Gandhi’s grandson) and Amitabh Bachchan in 2015.
The park near parliament square in London which has Mahatma Gandhi’s statue also has Winston Churchill’s. Churchill is respected in Britain but many don’t know, because of his policies, over three million people died in Bengal famine in India (1943) and he allegedly said ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits”. ‘History is strange’ replied a friend when I told her that I would like to explore how Britain ruled us for so long.
In India, we have a culture of forgiveness and it is often regarded as a virtue. Well, forgiving is great but forgetting is bad. We must not forget the past, at the same time should not let the past affect our present or sabotage our future. India through its strength of soft power is progressing steadily but strongly. When I say soft power I also mean software. From Sabeer Bhatia who invented Hotmail (in 2004) to Sundar Pichai who leads Google.
We have come a long way since Mahatma Gandhi left this world. Our literacy rate was 18.33% in 1951 and now it is close to 80% (Source: Census of India). The infant mortality rate, which was 163 in 1960, declined to 34.6 in 2015 (Source: World Bank). We are now the third largest economy in the world and estimated to be the second largest around 2040. However, I would be more optimistic and would like to predict that India would be the largest economy or at least very…
