THE PATHBREAKERS

On our 75th Independence Day, we remember the titans who have helped us in the journey so far. In politics and in sports, in business and in literature, they have shown the way with their extraordinary deeds

- RAJ CHENGAPPA

While describing two extra­ ordinary pathbreakers who changed the world, US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr observed, “Man has thought twice in our century, once with Albert Einstein and then with Mahatma Gandhi. Einstein’s thought transformed the understanding of the physical world, Gandhi’s thought transformed the understanding of the political world.” Einstein himself would say of Gandhi, “In our time of utter moral decadence, Gandhi was the only true statesman to stand for a higher hu­ man relationship in our political sphere. Generations to come will scarcely be­lieve that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked the earth.”

What made Gandhi one of the most influential personalities of the era? Harvard psychologist Howard Gar­dner, in his book