Gandhi Jeyanthi - Hurray, It's a holiday!!

This weekend has been a long weekend for everyone, thanks to Gandhi Jeyanthi. I know most of my friends who had planned for a vacation for this whole week as both Monday and Friday are Holidays. I am pretty sure most of them would have forgotten the reason why Oct 2^nd is a national holiday.

To me is it really necessary Gandhi Jeyanthi, or to this any leader’s birth or death anniversary should be a national holiday. It is to give respect for their sacrifice and the service they rendered to our nation, the government gives a day off. But are we really thinking Gandhi on his birthday or try to follow the principles he preached? The answer is a straight “No”. To add to this, all news channels telecast special movies on the day (Vijayakanth fighting against terrorism and bull shit… ). Atleast I don’t remember any news channel telecasting the life history of Mahatma Gandhi and the ideologies he taught. Obviously it will be boring to many of us watching the life history of Gandhi, but make it in such a way it’s interesting.

During my school days, we had so many programmes and competitions during Gandhi Jeyanthi. All programmes in one way or the other are related to the life history of Gandhi or which arouses patriotism in everyone’s mind. Should that be paused when we work? It should be made mandatory to observe silence in all schools, colleges and working places in India to respect our father of our nation on Gandhi Jeyanthi.

To make this happen, Gandhi Jeyanthi should not be a national holiday. Let us not think about work or studies on that day. Go to school or college or your office for half a day and do(learn) something that will make you remind Gandhi’s sacrifices and his ideologies; organize programmes, conduct quiz, or display videos that talks about Gandhi’s life and his ideologies. It is in practicing his ideologies, and making others adopt his ideologies, we respect him and not by enjoying this day as one of the days of our vacation.