The Mahatma had his 141st birthday without much fanfare on 2nd October 2010 as India was caught up with the 19th Commonwealth games and the Ayodhya controversy. The latter resulted in a ban on text messages lest there be flare-ups between Hindus and Muslims based on “hi-tech” cell phone text based inciting.
Here’s the opening music score of the 19th Commonwealth Games from AR Rehman of Slumdog Millionaire Oscar award fame.
The very next day, on October 3rd, Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was on US TV addressing a village near Delhi, India trying to tackle infant mortality and malaria. Made me wonder why India seems to be the only country willing to telecast its worst side that China,Latin America or Africa are able to avoid. It’s probably democracy that the Mahatma was able to get re-started from the mythical times of the Ramayana.
A new democracy (like Afghanistan) will be much more “group” or “collectivity”oriented and will resemble an unruly US college frat, most of the time. When we say group oriented – we mean in the opposite sense of Hofstede’s culture dimension of individualism,
If the world succeeds with democracy in Afghanistan- hopefully it’ll look a bit like India and the world will be a more tolerant, happier place.