Who gave the title 'Mahatma' to Gandhi? Gujarat govt says not Tagore, but 'unknown journalist' [View all]

[Recursion]

http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/who-gave-title-mahatma-gandhi-gujarat-govt-says-not-tagore-unknown-journalist-39039

History books say that the title of Mahatma was bestowed on Gandhi by Rabindranath Tagore, but the Gujarat government thinks otherwise, insisting that an "unknown journalist" from Saurashtra actually gave the title.

The matter has now landed before the Gujarat High Court.

Rajkot District Panchayat Sikshan Samiti, which conducted an exam for the post of Talathi in the Revenue department, has cited the work of Narayan Desai, son of Gandhi's secretary Mahadev Desai, to claim that the title was given to Gandhi by the anonymous scribe from Jetpur town.

Sandhya Maru, one of the candidates who appeared for the exam, has challenged this "right answer key" besides two other answer keys which were part of the question paper before the high court as the exam had negative marking system for wrong answers.

Gandhi always hated that term, apparently; he didn't think his soul was "greater" than anybody else's ("maha" = great and "atma" = soul).

Tagore was a contemporary of Gandhi and was the first non-white to win the Nobel Prize for literature. He wrote the songs that became the national anthems of India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh (he is the only person to have written more than one national anthem). It's also widely believed that he coined the name "Mahatma" for Gandhi.

Tagore was also Bengali, an ethnic/linguistic identity that makes up the entire population of Bangladesh (where they are Muslim) and most of eastern India (where they are Hindu); Calcutta is the center of Bengali Hindu culture just like Dacca is the center of Bengali Muslim culture. Bengal is also very very left wing (the Communist Party was in power there until a few years ago) which puts Bengalis in general at odds with the ruling right-wing BJP ("Indian People's Party"; it's pretty much an exact clone of the European right-wing nationalist "People's Parties&quot . So, a court in Gujurat (the center of BJP power, and home of the current PM) is being asked to detach Tagore from Gandhi's legacy somewhat. There are a lot of things I won't miss about India...