In the world of violence, it’s time Non-violence found its voice back

While sipping through coffee at work one afternoon, I came across this 300 word article on who was great , Gandhi or Jobs? Dumbfounded. I was trying to rationalize If such a comparison, could even produce a rational argument.

I am not siding either ways here, as both parties in this case, have their devotion to disciple ratio greater than 1. Which makes them Super G’s ie. Super Gods in their own right.

Pure logic tells me,

If a > b and b > c, then a > c

If Gandhi made it to Job’s wall in his studio apartment and featured in Steve Jobs homecoming ‘Think Different’ campaign, he certainly has the upper hand. But what made Gandhi different ?

Growing up in India, I always thought of him, as the chief architect of the India-Pakistan partition. My biggest bone of contention with the thought, was not being being not able to see a joint India-Pakistan Cricket team. But the immaturity was put to rest, when I read Steve Martin’s quote that changed it all.

“You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies — all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies”.

Which is exactly what happened to India in 1982. Ben Kingsley won the Oscar for Best Actor, for his iconic role of Gandhi. Making Gandhi suddenly exist for India once again.

I followed suit.

Later in life, when I got my hands on Gandhi’s autobiography ‘My experiments with truth’, I started to find semblance of his thought process. Before Gandhi, the world always thought that there was only one way of winning wars. Wars were always won, with swords and daggers. It was Gandhi who propelled the world, to think differently.

No kickstarter, no YC and no Venture Capital money. Just, sheer grunt work, working his way from village to village, using ‘Harijan’ as his personal blog and ‘word of mouth’ as his best marketing campaign. Slowly converting onlookers to followers. All traits of a classical startup founder incubating his idea of Non-violence through the World’s biggest startup — India’s Independence.

With ISIS releasing yet another video, Hong Kong protesting for Democracy and Gaza fiasco’s, it is time Gandhi’s idea needs a ‘Pivot’ in today’s world.

So, can some Investor, VC or risk taker please stand-up ?