August 10th, 2001 [Date could be earlier, 1997]

The Editor [possibly New York Times or San Jose Mercury News],

In your “Books” feature of 10th August, Page two you have published a picture of Mahatma Gandhi. The caption is wrong and needs to be corrected as it diminishes the lifework and the mission of the Father of the secular democratic Indian nation.

The caption reads “Mahatma Gandhi leads a Hindu prayer meeting in 1947, the year India became independent.”

The Prayer Meetings of the Mahatma were multi-religious. Texts were read from the Holy Quran, the Bible, the Zendavesta, the Gurugranth Saheb and Buddhist and Jaina texts. It was because of the liberalism of the Mahatma and the eclectic nature of his prayer meetings that he was killed by a Hindu fanatic at another such Prayer Meeting on 30th January 1948. The destruction of the Babari Masjid by RSS/Shiv Sena/VHP/BJP on 6th December 1992 was an echo of the Gandhi murder. Neither outrage has been apologised for by the top Hindus like Rajmata Scindia, Atal behari Vajpeyi or Lal Krishna Advani. To call Gandhi’s prayer meetings ‘Hindu’ is to distort and trivialise him by making him a fellow traveller of bigoted Hindu fanatics.

I hope you will correct the error by publishing the photograph again and captioning it “Gandhi, the conscience of the nation holding a prayer meeting of all faiths to try and heal the wounds inflicted by communal violence.”

Yours Faithfully
Akhilesh Mithal,
Sunnyvale California