Be the change you want to see not Mahatma’s quote?

Hyderabad: Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi expressed his disappointment over people linking the name of Mahatma Gandhi with quotes which he never said or wrote.

Addressing a gathering at Alladi Memorial Trust and the Centre for Human Rights of University of Hyderabad, Gopalkrishna Gandhi said, “One needs to be careful, while using somebody’s name for a quote.

It gives a completely different picture about that person’s personality. For example, ‘Be the change you want to see, Enough for everyone’s need not anyone’s greed, An eye for an eye will end up making the whole world blind, Western civilization is a good idea’ were not Gandhiji’s words.”

He further added, “The Seven sins were also not written by Gandhiji, anyone who is familiar with his ‘Bani’ can easily make out the difference as to whether it was written by him or not.” He also said that, the language used by Mahatma Gandhi used to appeal masses as it was simple most of the times.

He wrote what he practiced and preached which made him popular. Some of the lines which he used on a large-scale included, ‘My life is my message’ sometimes he used Bengali phrases like ‘Amar jibon ei amar bani’ which used to catch the attention of the then masses.

His words were so poetic that, a separate work can be woven out of it. His pattern of English writing was influential than memorable. The absence of high voltage jargons in Gandhiji’s works made his literary style frugal, sparing rather than demonstrative, nourishing rather than lavish.

The programme was chaired by Prof Raghuram. Alladi Sitaram gave the details of the activities of Alladi trust and former Union minister of state for Defence MM Pallam Raju, TPCC president N Uttamkumar Reddy and MLA N Padmavathi attended the programme.