We are trying to re-evaluate Gandhi on parameters structured almost 100 years later. If you try to evaluate Gandhi on yardstick prevalent during the time he walked on the earth, an altogether different picture will emerge.

Let me be very clear at the beginning, I am not trying to white-wash Gandhi for all his shortcomings as a human being. Focus on big picture!

First, his choice for nomenclature of Dalits as Harijan or God's people. At a time when they will not even allowed to enter upper caste mohallas or use their handpump or wear a chappal in their presence, Gandhi's decision to live with them in their bastis looks radical. That was a time when Dalits had to announce their arrival on a road where there was even a little chance of encountering upper caste men or women by ringing a bell! They were also supposed to carry they footwear in hand while passing through the road.

But more than half a century later, Bahujan Samaj Party's leader Mayawati took offence to even calling Dalits as Harijan, a sign of changing times and also of empowerment where a Dalit woman not only could become chief minister of the most populous state of the country but raised voice against Gandhi's nomenclature for Dalit. I don't think without Gandhi, we could have seen Mayawati as CM of Uttar Pradesh.

Right-wing has always accused Gandhi of capitulation before Muslims but the question here is: whether it was possible to get independence from the Britishers without a unity between Hindus and Muslims of the country who the English always wanted to keep apart. Was it possible to form a coalition of castes and religions to demand independent India without Gandhi?

And biggest of them all: Whether it was possible without Gandhi to keep the movement for independence largely peaceful by using innovative tools like non-cooperation which later on became prefered tools of freedom movements across the world?

Gandhi failed as a father and as a husband and uncle as well to a great extent, but we are yet to see perfect human being? No?