The Little Man In The Loincloth In Los Angeles

Photo: Gandhi, also known as the Father of India, was assassinated 78 years ago on January 30, 1948. There are seven full sized Gandhi statues in the U.S., pictured here is the one in Cerritos, CA.

By Bhuvan Lall

In Los Angeles, where the endless streets are filled with dream factories and the enticing glow of the Hollywood sign burns eternal, a statue of an Indian stands, in a corner, on a quiet street crossing. It is small but looms large in cultural significance perhaps with far greater impact on humanity than all of Hollywood’s glamour.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born in 1869 in Porbandar, a dusty speck on the Kathiawar Peninsula, gazes out as a statue in Southern California. The bronze statue is less a monument or a work of art than a gesture representing passive resistance, soul force and reconciliation. But Gandhi is not merely a figure cast in metal, nor a name consigned to history’s ledger.

In the world of today, his shadow flickers, distorted by time and argument. He is a paradox, a saint to some, a riddle to others, his legacy dissected by the nation of his birth that both reveres and reviles him. The young, scrolling through digital noise, question his place in the freedom struggle of India, their skepticism sharpened by half-truths and the internet’s reckless churn. Politicians invoke him, their voices slick with opportunism, draping his name over ideologies he might scarcely recognize.

Yet no torrent of doubt can erode the moral weight of this small man, whose loincloth and spectacles made empires tremble. Even Jan Smuts, the Afrikaner general who stood against him in South Africa, saw it: “Men like him redeem us from a sense of commonplace and futility.”

In 1915, Gandhi returned to India, stepping onto the Apollo Bunder in Bombay after decades of battling injustice in South Africa. From that moment until the Union Jack fell in 1947, he shaped a movement that was less a campaign than a philosophy, a stubborn insistence on non-violence that rippled across the globe. Subhas Chandra Bose, broadcasting from the jungles of Southeast Asia, called him the “father of the nation,” while Gandhi, in turn, named Bose a “prince among patriots.” Their mutual respect was a rare bridge across the fractious currents of India’s struggle.

Gandhi’s life was a pilgrimage through his own country, a journey marked by eighty visits to Delhi, where he lingered for 720 days. On January 28, 1948, two days before his death, he spoke with eerie prescience: “If I am to die by the bullet of a mad man, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.”

And so it was, on January 30, at 5:17 p.m., in the garden of Birla House, (now Gandhi Smriti) that he fell, struck down on his way to prayer.  The world came to mourn, dignitaries and commoners alike, drawn to the enigma of a figure who owned nothing yet moved millions. The New York Times, in its elegy, captured the void: “The loss of Mr. Gandhi brings this country of 300,000,000 abruptly to a crossroads.”

Fear mingled with grief, for the man who had been India’s moral compass was gone. Will Durant, the historian, saw in him a sanctity not witnessed since Buddha or St. Francis, a life of gentleness and forgiveness that shamed the world’s brutality. Albert Einstein, peering into the future, doubted that generations would believe such a man had walked the earth.

Gandhi’s shadow stretched far. In 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in India, not as a tourist but as a pilgrim. At Rajghat, he laid a wreath on Gandhi’s ashes and declared satyagraha, the philosophy of non-violent resistance, the only moral path to justice. Others followed: David Ben-Gurion, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, the Dalai Lama, even Steve Jobs, who stood before Gandhi’s portrait in 1997 and spoke of the “crazy ones” who change the world.

In 2010, Barack Obama, addressing India’s parliament, credited Gandhi’s message for his own path to the White House. Earlier in 1983, even Hollywood with its history of exclusions, and scandals, recognized Gandhi’s  greatness as a private man, without wealth or title, who led his nation to freedom. The bio pic directed by Richard Attenborough starring Ben Kingsley won 8 Oscars – the ultimate symbol of success in Tinseltown.

Yet Gandhi’s true heirs are not the famous, not the statesmen or tech moguls who quote him. They are the unseen, the nameless ones who toil in obscurity, teachers in remote villages, volunteers in harsh climates, souls who light up the lives of the forgotten. They seek no statues, no headlines, no wealth. Their lives echo Gandhi’s talisman, scribbled in 1948: “Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest… and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.” These are the ones who embody swaraj, the freedom of the spirit, the liberation of the hungry.

In a corner of Los Angeles, Gandhi stands, silent, unobtrusive, a symbol for those who believe one life can shift the world’s axis. His ideals, individual freedom, social justice, non-violence, persist, not in the clamor of politics but in the quiet acts of those who walk his path. They are the ones who prove, as Gandhi did, that truth, though frail, outlasts empires.

As we mark the beginning of another year, and another India Republic Day, we are called not to worship a man but to wrestle with his ideas. Gandhi’s life was his message, a beacon for a world that too often forgets the power of one.

(Bhuvan Lall is a filmmaker.)