Know it all

I was shocked to find on Facebook's wall, a comment by a friend of mine, which says, “Mahatma Gandhi is over rated”. How many of us agree to this statement and how many disagree? If I take a poll, many of us would fall in the category of the people who disagree to this statement. Then there would be a small minority who will agree. And of course, if the poll is taken in India, there would be close to one third of those voting who are neutral. I am specifically going to concentrate on this minority who agrees that Mahatma Gandhi is really overrated. For our convenience let us call this group as the “bunch” (for no technical reason but mere convenience). The bunch group can itself be divided into several parts. In this scenario, it comprises of people who have read about the negative side of Gandhi but do not know about his positives, and then there are those who say it just because they do not want to be among the “crowd”.

Many of us can recollect from our past, people who belong to the “bunch” category. They argue because they love argument. They bring up an argument for anything we say, at times even when we try to narrate an incident (I give this example because this is the time when an argument is least necessary). Most of the time, their very argument is just a baseless point of view. They do not have any facts supporting their statements. And when they say something, the presentation is so perfect that most of the times you tend to convince yourself that maybe you were wrong all this while. At times, they even end up winning the argument. This is definitely because of two possible reasons. One is that you are convinced that they are right, or the other, which most often is the case, is because you are fed up arguing with the person simply because, he is not ready to listen to your point of view or the facts that you put forth. The body language of the two people is so funny to note in this scenario. One person goes on talking, and the other is simply nodding his head, at times looking in a different direction not giving the slightest implication that he is listening. This weapon will be used by the “bunch” during the argument when you present your argument and eventually you find it that you are using it to end the discussion.

Now the question arises as to why do these people behave this way. A practical answer to this question is that they think they know it all. Why is it that they don’t listen to your point of view? Because they think you are wrong, so there is no point in listening to you anyway. You are just wasting their time by doing so and you do not deserve their time at all. The attitude of these people itself is as such. What’s worse is that at the end of the discussion just because you nod your head to end the discussion they think they have won the argument or they become irate if you try to end the discussion abruptly because you have found out that the discussion is getting nowhere.

So, from this poll, whether or not Gandhi is overrated, we have come to a conclusion that there are three categories of people. Those who know, those who do not know (or at least those who accept that they do not know) and those who think they know. Those who know will make their statements based on what they have read or witnessed. Those who do not know, agree that they do not know and hence they have an advantage of at least knowing in the future. Those who think they know it all will remain so, and be a problem to those who actually do know.

Commenting on a person is a right reserved only to those who know both the good side and the bad side of the person. Valluvar in one of his Kural says, “Judge a person only after considering both the good and the bad qualities of the person”. Eleanor Roosevelt, a former US diplomat says, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people”. Since I personally like Gandhi from what I have read about him, my opinion maybe a little biased but then you actually cannot say anything against a person who had given the entire world a whole new definition of the phrase “war of independence”. The reason I have italicized the word war is because the meaning of the word war, contradicts with the meaning you find in Mahatma’s dictionary, ahimsa!