Prime Minister Narendra Modi has caused a political storm with his statement that “until the
movie was made nobody knew about Mahatma Gandhi” referring to Richard Attenborough’s
1982 biography. The response has been instantaneous and brutal, with Jairam Ramesh of
Congress leading the charge against Mr.Modi, accusing him of trying to obliterate the legacy
of Gandhi.
“Is this the reality in which our Prime Minister lives?” Ramesh questioned vehemently on X,
previously known as Twitter. “Mahatma Gandhi was an international figure long before. If there is anyone who has sullied his name it is this current regime which
systematically pulled down Gandhian institutions in Varanasi, Delhi and Ahmedabad.”
This controversy sprang from Modi’s interview with ABP News where he claimed that the
global interest in Gandhi began only after 1982. He argued that India should do for Gandhi
what others have done with Martin Luther King Jr., or Nelson Mandela
Ramesh’s rebuttal didn’t stop at Gandhi’s legacy. He blamed the RSS for creating a toxic
environment that led to Gandhi’s assassination by Nathuram Godse. “These are RSS
workers, they don’t know about Gandhi’s nationalism; it is this ideology which helped toward
Gandhi’s murder,” he noted. Let’s explore some reactions of netizen’s on this brewing
controversy –
