Gandhi is not just a memory, he is hope: Sundar Sarukkai

Gandhiji should not be confined to history as a mere memory, but embraced as a living force of hope, said Sundar Sarukkai, founder of Barefoot Philosophers.

He was responding after watching the art exhibition ‘Freedom, Gandhi, 169 Days’ at the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, jointly organised by Samadarshi and the Janadhipathya Mathethara Koottayma, Dr. Sarukkai explored the theme ‘Memory and Ideology: The Poetics of the Past and the Future’.

“We all know who Gandhi was — the Father of the Nation, a moral leader, a man of many names. Yet, talking about him is never easy because of the many points of agreement and disagreement that surround his life,” he said.

He pointed out that deeper engagement with Gandhi inevitably brings up difficult questions — about caste, religion, and the true meaning of non-violence. The current exhibition, he noted, offers not nostalgia, but genuine hope by retracing Gandhi’s final months across places like Noakhali and Bihar.

“What did these artists discover in those places? Nothing tangible. So, was they searching for memories of Gandhi? No , they were seeking hope,” Dr. Sarukkai said.

The exhibition also contains records of Gandhi’s assassination, yet, he noted, people often avoid discussing them. “This is because memory itself has been reconfigured. Forgetting is just one part of this reconfiguration. The real fact is, it has been removed from our textbooks and collective consciousness,” he observed.

Both history and memory, he said, share the same dilemma: deciding what to speak about. “History wants to talk about the past as if it existed in a particular way. Memory too talks about the past, but memories do not create histories,” he concluded.