By Barkha Dutt
October 8
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi during a ceremony in
Parliament in New Delhi on Oct. 2. (Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images)
India is celebrating the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi with widespread tributes. Such was the moral force of the father of the nation’s nonviolence agitation for independence against the British, that he remains the one historical figure about whom little political disagreement is permissible.
Writing in the New York Times recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Gandhi “envisioned Indian nationalism as one that was never narrow or exclusive but one that worked for the service of humanity."