Who would care for Tushar Gandhi if it were not for the Gandhi?

Christie Loh
christie@newstoday.com.sg

HE never met the Mahatma.
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Yet many regard his stories of India's famous apostle of non-violence as gospel truth — because of his blood ties with Mohandas K Gandhi, the Indian leader whose peaceable calls for the country's independence earned him the Sanskrit honorific of Mahatma, or "great soul".
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Mr Tushar Gandhi, 45, is the legendary man's great grandson. He attracted media attention in 1996 by fighting a court battle and recovering his ancestor's long-lost ashes, which had been found in a state bank vault. A year later, he founded the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, one of many similarly inspired organisations worldwide.
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Don't expect him to practise the ascetic lifestyle of his vegetarian loincloth-wearing ancestor. Mr Tushar Gandhi eats meat, wears jeans and owns a mobile phone.
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"I don't follow every tenet of Bapu ("Father"). I wish I could, but I don't," Mr Gandhi said, explaining it as his "individuality".
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Often traversing the globe to give lectures on the Mahatma, he is also writing a book on Gandhi's 1948 assassination.
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He feels certain politicians have been circulating lies to justify the murder by a Hindu extremist. Determined to dispel criticism, such as that of Gandhi's part in the India-Pakistan divide, Mr Tushar Gandhi has won defamation lawsuits against high-profile figures, including India TV presenter Nikki Bedi.
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Recently in March, he organised a re-enactment of the Mahatma's famous 1930 Salt March that sparked civil disobedience.
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He candidly admits that his work to keep the memory of his great grandsire alive is born partly of a "selfish motive".
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"If the world forgets my great grandfather, then I lose my identity. Because who would care for Tushar Gandhi if it weren't for the Gandhi?" he told Today.
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He was in Singapore to speak at the inaugural Annual Gandhi Lecture held yesterday to coincide with the late Mahatma's birth anniversary.
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By his own admission, Mr Gandhi sees himself as "a failed kind of guy" who never made it to university.
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He has a printing technology diploma, but found the work boring and switched to website designing. Although the latter venture spawned one of India's major electronic archives on Mahatma-related information, Mr Gandhi feels his ancestor's identity overwhelms his own.
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When invited by lecture organisers to talk about his great grandfather, Mr Gandhi usually gets a fee, sponsored executive-class airfare and accommodation for telling anecdotes he had heard as a child from his grandmother and father.
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"They don't want to know what I do personally," he said. Most of his time is spent perpetuating the legacy of the Mahatma, who is unrelated to India's former ruling Gandhi family.
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His grandmother told him when he was a child: "You're like a sapling that's taken root under a massive tree which casts a huge shadow. No matter what you do, you're always going to be under that shadow. It's up to you whether you shrivel up or you thrive."
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Deciding to do the latter, he signed a licensing deal in 2002 with CMG Worldwide, an American firm that reportedly offered to be the sole agent for the commercial use of Gandhi's name.
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The agreement was quickly scuttled when an irate Indian media questioned why, among 54 living Gandhi family members, Mr Tushar Gandhi should own the copyright.

taken from www.todayonline.com, Oct 2, 2005