It is my opinion that the mental and functional balance of a society is maintained by the rationalists rather than by a great genius or a revolutionary. The latter category of persons are good only for a specific purpose. Once the objective is achieved, society should eschew them, discard them. Churchill was discarded immediately after the II World War in favour of Attlee. Great men of genius are often eccentrics and have their own fads and foibles. They shine brilliantly on certain aspects of human affairs, but on many other aspects, they cast their dark shadows and this might even spell danger to individuals and the society if accepted blindly.

In our country, Mahatma Gandhi was one such genius who had many dark spots on his sun - like personality. There were even occasions and instances that even eclipsed this great, luminous human sun of India.

Let me illustrate with a few examples. There was a tragic earthquake that rocked Bihar on 15th January 1934. The Mahatma, who was at that time leading a crusade against untouchability in South India, described this as divine wrath against the sin of untouchability. "A man like me cannot but believe," he declared in a public statement, "that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins."

No wonder many educated persons and rationalists including Rabindranath Tagore were shocked to see the Mahatma resorting to a characteristically priestly tactic of invoking the bogey of sin to din fear into the minds of a people who are superstitious. Nehru called this statement of Mahatma as a "staggering remark" which he read with "great shock".

A year later, there was an earthquake in Quetta (then part of India) and when Gandhiji was asked for what sin was this wrath of nature, the Mahatma blandly said that if he knew Quetta as well as he knew Bihar and Biharis, he would have known the sins of Quetta! I wonder what he would have said, if he were alive today, about the devastating Tsunami that hit Japan.

What was unreasonable in Gandhiji's assertion was his cocksureness that the physical law follows the moral law, that he has the key to the latter and that what happened in Bihar and Quetta were its illustrations. Truly Bertrand Russel has said that the tragedy of this age is that while the wise are full of doubts, fools are cocksure! I don't say Gandhiji was a fool, but sometimes he appeared like one.

There were many fads, foibles and idiosyncrasies of Gandhiji with great moral or ethical base, but which in real practice, looked absurd or turned out to be contradiction in terms. To illustrate again, he said food is the only acceptable form in which God can appear to a hungry man. At the same time he invited the hungry masses to join him in his daily prayers and sing "Ramdhun"! He should have invited them for prayer meetings after daasoha — mass feeding.

Incidentally, it was Gandhiji who first declared that egg is vegetarian. He meant the commercial egg produced by the poultry farms because these eggs can't be hatched and as such, there is no killing of life involved in eating such eggs. Hence, such an egg is vegetarian! The famous Venkateshwara hatcheries grabbed at this idea of Gandhiji and used it extensively in their advertisement for eggs.

The Mahatma insisted, for his own reason, that virtuous women should shave their heads and married couples should not mate. This was said to be the reason why Jaya Prakash Narayan and his wife Prabhavathi Devi practiced celibacy and did not have issues. Paradoxically, Gandhiji himself did not practise his own precept in this regard as he had children from his marriage. Could be, this happened before he became a Mahatma. I am reminded of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sharada Devi who also remained celibates after marriage.

Gandhiji was against drinking tea because tea leaves came from estates owned by the British who exploited Indian labourers and as such, he had prohibited its use in his Ashram. But he forgot that tea leaves also came from estates owned by Indian planters as well. He also forgot that the British - owned tea estates employed Indians, giving them a livelihood. But then that is the way of great men.

Again, think of this. In Japan, tea drinking is elevated to the level of a religious ceremony or a spiritual experience by holding what is known as “Tea ceremonies” where tea is prepared with love, served in a ritualistic manner and savoured as if it is a divine potion.

The tragedy is that once we submit to the leadership of this kind of people, we are being led blindfolded by these leaders like sheep being led to, well, you know where!