Years ago, an English film Oh God made waves among discerning moviegoers in India. It was a light comedy in which God comes as a vision to a man and guides him through day-to-day problems. It succeeded because it made God as human as He can get, someone we could have a dialogue with. I was reminded of that movie when I read rave reviews about Bollywood blockbuster Lage raho Munnabhai which seeks to de-mystify Gandhi, take him off the pedestal and make him relevant to the post-Independence generation of Indians. If the original Munnabhai MBBS is a pale imitation of Robin Williams' Patch Adams, its sequel draws inspiration from Oh God. Munnabhai II has given Gen Next a new buzz word-Gandhigiri as opposed to goondagiri.

Coming as it does in the centenary year of the sathyagraha movement, the film has generated a debate with some arguing that director Rajkumar Hirani has only sugar-coated Gandhi's teachings to make them palatable to today's generation and others saying he has trivialised his lofty principles and Gandhigiri will be just another passing fad.

The film makes no serious attempt to find out how effective passive resistance will be in a strife-torn world. That would have made it preachy, something Gen Now dislikes. But to put Gandhian principles to work by sending flowers to a tenant who refuses to vacate is, to say the least, trivialisation though such a view may seem cynical.

The reality is harsh as the case of Manipuri woman Irom Sharmila Chanu, a 2005 Nobel peace prize nominee, shows. She has been on fast since 2000 in Imphal to press for the withdrawal of the armed forces, accused of gross human rights violation,and the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. She was arrested, jailed and force-fed through the nose on the orders of the court. After her release from yearlong judicial custody, she shifted to New Delhi and resumed her fast at the Gandhi Samadhi to arouse the nation's conscience, only to be arrested five days later, taken to hospital and fed through the nose yet again. It shows the lofty contempt the State has for hunger strike, one of the potent weapons Gandhi had used in the freedom struggle.
      
As Gandhi's autobiography shows, his life was a constant experiment with truth.

Gradual erosion of Gandhian values over the years since independence and increasing venality and corruption in the system, in which truth has become the first casualty, have made the new generation increasingly cynical of the political class which in any case has had little use for the Father of the Nation and has consigned him to school text-books. This explains in part the popularity of Lage raho Munnabhai among the starry-eyed youth.

It is not as though India has forgotten Gandhi completely. He has seeped into the psyche of the common man. The resilience shown by Mumbai after the July 11 serial blasts in trains is an example of the passive resistance shown by the man on the street to terrorism.   Hindu-Muslim unity, dear to Gandhi, may have come under severe strain after the Babri Masjid demolition, the Gujarat pogrom and the rise in terrorist activity not just in the Kashmir valley but in Maharashtra and elsewhere. But the country's secular fabric is still intact. The plea by leading activists like Arundhati Roy to the President for a remission of the death sentence given to Parliament attack case convict Mohammed Afzal Guru is of a piece with the Gandhian notion that an eye for an eye will make the world blind.

Some 20 years ago, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi made a serious, sincere, attempt to put that great man in historical perspective and explore his persona. Lage raho Munnabhai is not a film on Gandhi. It is an attempt to resurrect Gandhian ethos. If principles of a great man like Gandhi have to be refurbished every now and then and presented as old wine in new bottle to keep with changing times, what price eternal truth?