Should we retain the title "Father of Nation"given to Mahatma Gandhi or not?

 Forget Gandhi Ji even Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj cannot be the father of nation. There are two reasons.

One.

The nation which is made, which is created can have father of the nation and the person who create becomes the father of the nation. Pakistan was made in 1947 by Jinnah so Jinnah is the father of nation. India was never made if you go back it existed as long as you can go back.

Two.

Did you know Mahatma addressed India as Bharat Mata. So how can he be father of the nation? In fact he was the one who inaugurated India’s first Bharat Mata mandir in Varanasi.

When you make your country as your goddess, deity or mythological figure you cannot make a human as the father of the nation special when the human himself as the son of Bharat Mata.

Similarly Chh Shivaji Maharaj was one of the greatest son of Bharat Mata no one can be the father to this nation.

Does India need Mahatma Gandhi in this era?

 The time of Mahatma is long over.

India today needs a leader like Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) who built Singapore with his hard work and gigantic vision.

He was the first Prime Minister of Singapore, governing for three decades.

• He is recognized as the nation's founding father.
• He eschewed populist policies in favor of pragmatic long-term social and economic measures.
• He promoted meritocracy and multi-racialism as governing principles.
• He brought discipline in the people of Singapore with strict laws and even stricter enforcement.

Singapore moved from the "third world to first world in a single generation" under his leadership.

[1]

We need a leader like Lee Kuan Yew to take India forward now.

Source of pictures: Google Images

EDIT: Vinoth has shared an excellent video of LKY. I can’t help sharing it to let people know what he was.

Footnotes

[1] Lee Kuan Yew - Wikipedia

Why is the relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudharyan often in disputes?

 One of the most mysterious things about Mahatma Gandhi was his relationship with Sarala Devi.

He spoke "Adhikmat Wives".

Who was Sarla Devi?

● She was born in 1872, the daughter of Rabindranath Tagore's sister. Being a Tagore family, she was highly educated, married to Rambhuj Chaudhary of Punjab as Chaudhary was speaking the word Chaudharyan in Bengal and hence became Chaudharyan.

Meet Gandhiji

● Her husband used to be active in Gandhiji's movements, due to which he was also introduced to Gandhi

● Gandhi used to stay in his house in Lahore when his husband was in jail, during that time, he became close with Gandhi. Beginning around 1918–19. What kind of closures were there?

● Gandhi's own marriage thus survived. See what Gandhi wrote in letter to Sarla Devi

Why did Gandhi come close to a married woman?

● Gandhi or Sarla did not mention this, but an American family planning worker visited his ashram to meet Gandhi. Gandhi spoke to a woman at that time about his attachment to his wife and the intellectual level of his wife.

Did fingers get on it during that period?

● Gandhi's family life was neither better than Kasturba's as a husband and his elder son Harilal Gandhi was so bad that he got converted to Islam after getting angry with Gandhi and later returned home at the behest of Kasturba Through the Arya Samaj. Devdas was opposed to why he is calling Sarla his spiritual wife, why he does not speak "spiritual sister".

● At that time, Sarla used to claim Gandhi in public places too (you can understand when such a woman does,

The strongest protest was made by Rajagopalachari, who was Gandhi's brother. In a letter, he wrote to Gandhi.

Why did Nathuram Godse assassinate Gandhi?

 Godse did not kill Gandhi. Yes, Gandhi was assassinated but not by Godse. This answer will give you a new perspective on Gandhi's assassination.

When Gandhi was shot down, the police was also present there, and Manu and Abha had been carrying Gandhi on their shoulders when Godse came to shoot him, but surprisingly police never filed the FIR, and nothing was asked and enquired from Manu and Abha who were the eyewitnesses of Gandhi's assassination.

Gandhi had been alive after being shot down and he even asked for a glass of water but was never rushed to a hospital which was at just a shorter distance, and it could have taken 10 minutes only to reach there.

Instead, he was laid down on the ground for about 40 minutes. When the charge sheet was filed, it was found that three bullets were fired.

But Godse had shot only two shots from his Italian gun which never matched with the bullets which had assassinated Gandhi.

English newspapers, The Hindu and The New York Times had published that four bullets were fired. Postmortem was never performed on Gandhi's body.

Flights were expensive during post-independence and on 26 January 1948, four days before Gandhi's assassination, Godse landed in Delhi by AIR India.

But, nobody investigated how he was able to fly with limited resources. Even Mountbatten did not arrest him.

Gandhi's assassination gave suzerainty of India to Nehru, and nobody could match his popularity and defy his hegemony.

I repudiate from stating that he was behind the assassination and reckon that Gandhi was botched, but this case should be reopened and investigated thoroughly to know who was precisely behind all this.

Information Source:

Tracking the fourth bullet that has given new life to Mahatma Gandhi murder case

Disclose FIR and chargesheet of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination: CIC

Gaps In Mahatma Gandhi's Assassination Trial, Supreme Court Told

Nathuram Godse pulled the trigger, but who really killed Mahatma Gandhi?

Last moments of Gandhi and Godse

Two assassins, four bullets and a foreign hand: What PIL seeking fresh probe into Mahatma Gandhi’s murder says

Why did Mahatma Gandhi choose Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister of India instead of Sardar Patel? Why didn't Patel object?

This is fairly accurate and has been accepted by several historians as how the events transpired.

Gandhi had two reasons to dissuade Patel , who was actually picked by an overwhelming majority of the members of the INC to become the PM , according to several historians of the era .

1. Gandhi preferred Nehru’s more modern and secular vision and leadership of Nehru over Patel because of his educational background and overseas education and believed he will be able to lead India better with a more modern vision. After all, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah were all educated in England so maybe he saw Nehru as more modern and more secular and the vision and leadership India needed as a freshly minted nation. Patel was
2. Gandhi also suspected that if not picked PM, Nehru might start a mutiny just like Jinnah did and that was not good for a fledgling country that was facing the prospect of partition and both Jinnah and Nehru were almost similar people from similar privileged backgrounds with similar aspirations… power. So a potential rift is another reason cited as Gandhi’s motive behind dissuading Patel who was picked overwhelmingly by the regional voting members of the INC. I don’t know if Nehru would have actually started a mutiny but that was the suspicion of Gandhi and India, shortly after its independence, went to war with Pakistan so a factional India would not be very good.

Patel was seen more Hindu-centric leader than the secular and British educated Nehru and Patel was fairly old then compared to Nehru and I think he died a few years after the independence and the calculation was right that Nehru could lead the country longer and into stability though the age factor was not Gandhi’s main consideration or at least described in history. He became Home Minister, a role he was better suited for and was more strong willed and instrumental in unifying all the princely states into the Union of freshly minted India.

This is actually one of the core themes of the 1975 book “ Freedom at Midnight “ by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre which is a popular book based on historical events though it’s dramatized but well researched, according to critics.

Both Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre were given exclusive access to Lord Mountbatten for the book and also his personal diaries and all his material so there is little dispute on the historical accuracy of the events depicted in the book whose chronology starts about a year before the independence of India and Pakistan and ends with the assassination of Gandhi.

The theory that Gandhi dissuaded Patel in favour of Nehru and his reasoning has been supported by several other books written on the same theme around the same events and historians and not just Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre and “ Freedom at Midnight” and both had a lot of exclusive access to Lord Mountbatten and his personal diaries and material and he was the only surviving member then out of the 4 main characters the book revolves around… Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten.

I guess Patel eventually deferred to Gandhi despite his initial reluctance and objection is the only reasonable conclusion you can draw from it. The book delves into details of what a firestorm it causes among leaders of the Indian National Congress about Gandhi’s decision to favour Nehru over Patel who was overwhelmingly picked by the voting members.

“ Freedom at Midnight” was made into a TV series last year and I kept seeing the trailers for it last year during the same time of the year but unfortunately, it’s not available in my geography on either Netflix or Amazon prime so I haven’t seen the TV series but read the book long time ago. There was also a movie based on the book called “ Viceroy House” which came out several years ago which I have seen but it’s a very condensed version of the book.

While “ Freedom at Midnight” is a dramatization of the actual historical events during the last year of the British rule in India and the events revolving around the power struggle, the partition and the post independence assassination of Gandhi, the historical accuracy of the material has been acknowledged by most historians as fairly accurate and sourced from reliable material, most of all from one of the four main characters of the book who was alive then and gave the authors exclusive access.