Why Kanubhai Gandhi is a special senior citizen

For the past few days a maudlin and bizarre story has been doing the rounds in newspapers and on idiot box channels that cater to the endless craving for tamasha of the lowest common denominator. News-starved journalists are virtually tripping over each other to produce treacly copy and matching footage, and then tripping some more to promote what one of them called “a heart-wrenching tale” on social media.

The “heart-wrenching” tale is about Kanubhai Ramdas Gandhi, 87, son of Ramdas Gandhi who was the third son of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. That makes Kanu Gandhi a grandson of The Gandhi, not to be confused with the other Kanu Gandhi, his grandnephew who died in 1986.

This Kanu Gandhi spent more than four decades in the United States, reportedly working for NASA at Langley and the American defence establishment after graduating from MIT, admission to which was facilitated by none less than Jawaharlal Nehru and US economist-diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith. That Kanu Gandhi spent his youth helping his granduncle and his latter years running an NGO named after Kasturba Gandhi, the much-ignored and almost-forgotten Gandhi who spent her life as a silent, long-suffering Hindu wife. He died in virtual anonymity.

The sob story is also about this Kanu Gandhi’s wife, Shiva Laxmi Gandhi, 85, who has a PhD in biochemistry. For some years she taught at Boston and then abandoned teaching as she was bored of it. One of the reports says she joined Boston Biomedical Research Institute after giving up her job at the university faculty. We are also told that, “for a long time, Kanubhai and his wife lived in Hampton, Virginia”.

Apparently, they lived the high life, traipsing through Europe and holidaying at exotic destinations. In one of the reports, there is a claim by Kanu Gandhi that they were guests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “who was a classmate at MIT”. Kanu Gandhi has been quoted as saying, “I used to do research on aircraft wing structures for the fighter planes. So, I had the secret clearances and all that.” They had no children.

Suddenly, the couple landed in India two years ago. They stayed at various ashrams in Gujarat. But the media never got a whiff of  The Gandhi’s once high-flying grandson now living the hard life. Or, to put it less politely, the media was not given a whiff of their stay in Gujarat, either by them or their hosts. That was till they arrived in Delhi and headed straight for Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram, an old age home.

By all accounts, Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram is not a plush facility to live out the last days of your life. There are 125 men and women staying there. They sleep on the floor and live in rather modest surroundings. That would make it more a shelter for the homeless than an old age home. But The Gandhi’s grandson and his wife were spared the hardship of living in this place.

The ‘ICU’ was rigged with an air-conditioner and converted into a bedroom for them.  After all, as someone snarkily told me off on Twitter, “He is not the grandson of any Tom, Dick or Harry. He’s the grandson of the Father of the Nation.” This has been the leitmotif of all the tear-jerking stories out so far. After all, as Sarojini Naidu once famously commented, it cost a lot of money to keep The Gandhi in poverty.

Strangely, none of the journalists who met Kanu Gandhi and his wife has bothered to ask them three simple (and fundamental) questions: Why did they leave the US, their home for 40 years? What happened to their savings? And why do they need to live in an ashram or a shelter when they are entitled to, under American law, a handsome pension and social security benefits, including free medicare?

Interestingly, while tears were being shed over The Gandhi’s grandson and his wife living in dire circumstances, another descendant of the ‘Father of the Nation’, Tushar Gandhi, was busy pouring scorn on them. None of The Gandhi’s descendants, he reminded us, had fobbed off the state. Which is true. We need not go into the reasons why (for instance, Tushar Gandhi licensed The Gandhi’s name for a limited edition Mont Blanc pen) at this moment.

What is interesting is that following the flood of “heart-wrenching” stories, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dispatched his Minister for Culture Mahesh Sharma to meet The Gandhi’s grandson. Mr Sharma visited the ashram on Sunday evening, bouquet in hand, camera crews in tow. Mr Modi then spoke to the person with a famous grandfather and assured him of all help. Not to miss an opportunity, the Delhi Government dittoed the offer.

There’s nothing wrong about photo-op driven courtesies. However, some questions need to be raised, if only to underscore that unique Indian characteristic called hypocrisy. Has the Minister or any of his colleagues ever called upon the grandsons and granddaughters of lesser known men and women who live in old age homes or no homes at all? Has the Prime Minister ever surprised them in the dying days of their lives with a call or a message? Is the Government aware how old age pensioners and senior citizens survive in the era of dwindling interest rates? Does anybody in Lutyens’s Delhi know what Rs 300 a month fetches by way of food, housing, services, clothes and medical care?

But Kanu Gandhi is no ordinary citizen of India. We don’t even know if he and his wife are citizens of India. They are special. They are special because they lived their lives in America, spent their days in service to that country. They are special because he is the grandson of The Gandhi and she is his wife. They are special because the silly media goes into a tizzy over them and spins yarns that can melt the hardest of hearts.

So a Government-dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party that rejects vanshwaad or dynasty, whose worthies and their footsoldiers cruelly mock the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty for its exaggerated sense of divine rights, entitlements and privileges, rushes to console and reassure a Gandhi dynast because his grandfather was The Gandhi.

India was, is and shall remain grateful to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. But must Indians feel obliged to look after and fete his descendants? That too a descendant who refuses to disclose his financial details? Or even explain what made him return to India after more than four decades? If Kanu Gandhi merits so much attention and Prime Ministerial intervention, why not the descendants of those but for whom The Gandhi would have never become The Mahatma?