Mind you Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, now in the eye of a legal storm of high-manifestations, is not the sort of counsel who will apologise or seek, what they call in Dubai’s Malabari-influenced Arabised Hindi, ‘Maafi Mushkil!’ This s/o Shanti Bhushan, one-time Union Law Minister, is tougher than nails, a walnut not easy to crack, ask any squirrel and squirrels are wonderful collectors of walnuts.

So, Prashant Bhushan refused to apologise to the apex court or slow walk back his so-called demeaning tweets, which in turn and time rubbed salt on the wounds he inflicted on CJI Sharad Arvind Bobde and on CJIs who took office before Bobde, the ones he charged with being incorrigibly corrupt.

Prashant Bhushan charged with contempt of court must be punished, the SC ruled. “He must go to jail,” was the refrain in circles rare.

Let him get a taste for Indian-style toilet life. And “no air-conditioner.”

That’s the life Mahatma Gandhi ‘enjoyed’ in jail and Nelson Mandela lived with. Jawaharlal Nehru was imprisoned nine times during the freedom struggle and faced “brutal punishment.” But he never compromised nor complained. PrashantBhushan is of that ilk say Indians who haven’t developed a taste for life under Narendra Modi.

To reiterate, nobody wants to be jailed, deal with the horrors of ‘behind bars,’ least of which is to be spied upon every minute of the day and night. But, like the Bhushan-ites say, what’s there to hide, when life is an open book? It’s only now that people have come to know that Prashant Bhushan has quite a following on Social Media, and mainstream media.

In the time since the latest bout of the "contempt" outrage saga spilled over, almost every Prashant Bhushan acolyte has spoken and tweeted. Each one of them wearing his/her ire on the sleeve, questioning the Supreme Court’s conduct and Prashant Bhushan’s magnanimity in refusing the top court’s magnanimity!

A different tit-for-tat. Not the eye for an eye! Wasn’t it the Mahatma Gandhi who said if everyone wanted eye for eye, the whole world would go blind! And Prashant Bhushan is an “avatar” of Mahatma Gandhi.

Also, because Bhushan's courage goes beyond India and the subcontinent, to inside the “dark continent,” Prashant Bhushan is also tragic dark prince Nelson Mandela who was incarcerated in solitary for 28 years!

Those were the solid men of salt who were refused the sun’s ray for days on end, years… And yet they did not stumble or crumble. They spent time behind bars studying books, and writing books. Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India,’ for example. Did Gandhi pen his ‘Experiments with Truth’ when in the British penitentiary in Raj-time India?

Prashant Bhushan is gifted and lucky man. He has both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and Jawaharlal Nehru to lean on. And if he’s not being compared to Ram Manohar Lohia and Jai Prakash Narayan that is because they are not the icons who can ideologically stand with Bapu and Chacha Nehru.

Prashant Bhushan’s Gandhian refusal to apologise is being hailed. Gandhi went to jail six times in India and on seven occasions in South Africa. At one such arraignment, he’s believed to have told the English judge, “I do not ask for mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.”

Now let’s examine Prashant Bhushan’s “bonafide beliefs” and while at that refrain from clapping in cheerful appraisal or break out in impromptu MJ-like break-dance! Prashant Bhushan knows his Gandhi too well and remembers it better than most. He also quotes Gandhi when he must. As he did when told to apologise. Why even attorney-general KK Venugopal wants the SC to show leniency to Bhushan for all the good things Prashant has done.

For those with faint memories about Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhism, here’s what Prashant Bhushan remembered of Gandhi, and it sounds so much like Gandhi that you could mistake one for the other. “I can only humbly paraphrase what the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi had said in his trial: I do not ask for mercy. I do not appeal to magnanimity. I am here, therefore, to cheerfully submit to any penalty that can lawfully be inflicted upon me for what the court has determined to be an offence, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.” Amen. Uncanny similarity. (IPA Service)