There is no scope for comparing two personalities a century apart as Mahatma Gandhi was a unique phenomenon that the world accepted. As Albert Einstein had said in his homage on death of Mahatma Gandhi, “future young would hardly believe that such a man, in bones and flesh, had ever walked on this earth.”

Seven centuries of alien rules over most of India indicated that Indian masses had never bothered with the concept of political freedom as long as the rule of Indians or aliens did not bother with their daily routines. Even freedom fighters from upper classes had confined their freedom fight from 1884 to 1918 to pass harsh resolutions with strong oral condemnation of the alien rule as if their resolutions would force them to end their Empirical rule and walk away.

In 1918, Mahatma Gandhi, appearing for the first time on the Congress platform at Lucknow told them that their resolutions would not drive away the British from India unless masses came to street with courage in their hand and determination in their mind to resist the aliens denying them freedom. His call was not merely to seek political freedom but also liberation from restricting social concepts. He inspired them to bear the brunt of the British lathi without raising even their arm to resist. He converted their non resistance in a moral force and the British did not have, or could even think of inventing one, weapon to counter the resistance movement.

Mahatma Gandhi aroused political consciousness among the classes that had survived for three thousand years to serve the needs of small sections of upper classes in a society classified in four divisions. The supremacy of upper class was in dormant political conscious of lower strata. Mahatma Gandhi was disturbing the age-old concept of societal classification. Hence he invited ire and dislike of the conservative minds in the top class. In that conservative ire was written his assassination. It was a conflict between conservative closed minds and liberated liberal minds. Nathuram Godse was merely an instrument. He commands praise even now but only in very small section of closed minds who want return of India what she was before a century earlier.

I cannot claim to know working of the mind of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he indicated his earnest desire to adopt some concepts of Mahatma Gandhi for social reforms. He clearly reflected that Mahatma Gandhi was not, to his mind, an anathema to India but was need of India. He spoke of Mahatma Gandhi more often than any Congress premier. A clean living in every part in five years can be the essential condition of homage to Mahatma Gandhi to celebrate his 150th birth anniversary in 2019. He had said while launching the movement of Clean India in 2014. He had set his priority of toilet before temple in October 2013, immediately after he was accepted to lead the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2014 electoral battle. He did not change his priority despite pressure over the temple issue from January 2015. On the contrary he reiterated it from the ramparts of the Red Fort in his second national address on Independence Day.

His drive to construct toilets was to convince others that Indians do know and can live in clean environs. One cannot say assertively how many of few million toilets constructed are in use or usable due to lack of assured water supply to keep them clean for further use. No state government has claimed addition in number of villages with assured water supply. It would be greater achievement and remarkable achievement in providing relief to millions of women from daily drudgery of bringing water for home consumption from long distances.

Nevertheless popularization of use of toilets released women in villages from evil impact on their metabolism due to need of suppressing their biological pressure as walking through villages while village elders watching the water filled utensil in hand was sure invitation to stigmatize their fair names. Only village women can describe the great relief delivered to them with or even without conscious awareness of it. It is reflected in their vote that enabled Narendra Modi to win a clear and clean mandate in his lonely battle in 543 constituencies. He was able to disprove all estimates and projections of his defeat as secular minds could not comprehend what he had delivered in his first term rule.

His Jan Dhan Yojana under which 230 million bank accounts were opened as it had offered for the first time social security to unorganized sector as bank accounts were supposed to be linked to insurance of Rs one lakh. The measure of bank accounts even without balance was a social reform but it escaped notice of the intellectuals as they took it to be an empty economic measure. It was enough to inspire every family in the lower strata.

The most bizarre event in the election 2019 was Pragnya Thakur polling double the votes of her opponent, former chief minister Digvijay Singh in Bhopal even after her praise of Nathuram Godse and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaring in unambiguous terms that he would never be able to forgive her. It only indicates that candidates in each constituency became insignificant for the belief was they assumed that they were voting for NaMo. It makes a difference as two individuals, a century apart inspired masses to move ahead with them. Next five years will tell whether NaMo was able to live up to and act according to the inspiration he delivered.