Gandhi Jayanti 2026

 

Gandhi Jayanti 2026

Looking at the Lesser spoken aspects of Mahatma: His brief love for Stars & some things that he got Wrong

On every Gandhi Jayanti 2^nd October, tributes will pour in, as will new books written or planned and so also new films and documentaries, rightly so for a man who we call the father of the nation.

On this Gandhi Jayanti, I would like to remember him differently this year: as a man who looked up at the night sky with wonder, and who was also fallible, as every great person is.

Gandhi’s Love for Stars

We usually picture Gandhi with the spinning wheel, not a telescope. Even in the Gandhi and science debate, he is often cast as the man who warned against machines and modernity. Yet during his imprisonment in Yerwada Central Jail, Pune, between February and May 1932, he fell in love with astronomy.

Kaka Kalelkar, a philosopher and devoted follower who shared the jail with him, kindled the interest. With a telescope, sky charts and books, Gandhi began reading and observing seriously. He slept in the open yard and shared the sky with his fellow prisoners. Two large telescopes in that bare prison yard struck visiting reporters as an unusual sight.

He told them that astronomy had always interested him and had now become a passion. He devoted every free minute to it. To lie on your back on a starry night and regard universe after universe, he said, is to become a worshipper.

He wrote two articles titled "Watching the Heavens" for the inmates of Sabarmati Ashram. In them he sketched the Orion constellation and noted that sky charts differ with the observer's location. He suggested that the changing position of the Saptarshi could be used to tell time. He urged beginners to observe from a fixed place at a fixed hour and to draw what they saw for themselves. He also called the mythological creatures of the constellations "beautiful fancies", not real figures in the sky.

He wanted lucid books written on the lives of great astronomers, men of courage and noble character, and he knew that physics underlies the stars. To a friend he wrote that he had woken up late in life, but that it did no harm to wake up even on one's deathbed if watching the stars gave a glimpse of the soul.

For Gandhi, sky observation was spiritual, a lesson in humility. For Meghnad Saha, the same sky led to the hidden laws of nature and the ionisation equation. Both are valid ways of looking up.

Gandhi was not anti-science. He announced a ₹1 lakh prize for a better spinning wheel. He wanted technology to serve the last person in the queue, not widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. He also admitted to contradictions, writing that he had never made a fetish of consistency and was a votary of truth. That is a scientific temperament in its own way, since it means being willing to revise your position.

The fallible Mahatma

This brings me to the other side of Mahatma. The man who stargazed with such wonder was also capable of serious error, and his own willingness to admit his errors is part of what makes him great.

In January 1934, a devastating earthquake struck Bihar and killed thousands. Gandhi declared it divine chastisement for the sin of untouchability. Rabindranath Tagore, a rationalist in thought and deed, publicly and firmly disagreed. He feared that such a statement would strengthen superstition and cause real damage in a country where it was already widespread. Earthquakes, Tagore argued, are caused by natural forces, not by our social sins.

Tagore's critique has not aged; Gandhi's explanation has. A man who studied the heavens and urged others to question and observe had, that day, replaced evidence with moral causation. The cause of untouchability was just and Gandhi's concern for it was real. His reasoning about the earthquake was misplaced/wrong.

There are other chapters that historians still debate, where Gandhi arguably went wrong. His support for the Khilafat movement and his remarks on the Malabar violence of 1921 remain contested. His late experiments with brahmacharya troubled even his admirers. Gandhi was no stranger to confessing error. He openly called one of his own political miscalculations a "Himalayan blunder."

Why Gandhi’s Fallibility matters now

There is no perfect human, and there never was. The real measure of a leader is how they respond to being wrong: whether they listen to critics, own the error and correct course.

We should extend the same measure to those who govern us today. In recent years, I have seen every honest mistake by a politician or administrator become an occasion to bay for blood. Often the response comes from political rivals and vested interests, not from any search for accountability. A flawed decision taken in good faith is treated like a crime.

I am not pleading for leniency toward corruption, malice or deliberate wrongdoing. Those deserve scrutiny and consequences. But we must distinguish an honest error from a dishonest act. If we cannot, no capable person will take the risk of deciding anything, and public life will fill with those who do nothing and so never err.

If we can hold the Mahatma's greatness and his fallibility together, we can accept that a person may be admirable and mistaken at once. That is a rare kind of respect: for the person, for the truth and for the process of learning.

This Gandhi Jayanti, I am tempted to remember Mahatma Gandhi looking up at Orion in a prison yard, humbled by the vastness of the universe and, I hope, willing to be humble about his own errors too.

Jai Hind.

My earlier blog on Gandhi and science:

https://khened.blogspot.com/2020/10/commemoration-and-culmination-of-150th.html