Five favourite photos of Gandhiji
For my first favourite photograph, I have this picture of young Gandhiji wearing a dapper-looking suit with a white shirt underneath, all buttoned up to the top. He wears a neat necktie to complete his look. His hairs are all combed and he probably spruced them up before he came for this photograph. Photography was a new technology back then and was probably expensive as well. Here we see Gandhiji as a Middle-class Indian man getting himself photographed.
Why is this photo my favourite? Because this photo reminds me of Gandhiji not as a stern, spiritual leader but as an ordinary Middle-class Indian who tried to identify with the European upper class. One who took French ballroom dancing classes and tried his hands on the violin. And he did this not to learn something new. But his main intention was to mix with the “culturally sophisticated” Europeans. He was simply playing along the white man’s burden. The photo serves as a reminder for me that he was not some unidimensional character groomed from his childhood for the role that he took later on. He was a man who saw the world before he turned his feet back home.
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