Bihar’s unique tribute to Mahatma Gandhi

Patna:A village in Bihar is holding a unique festival to commemorate the presentation of a bamboo stick to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi is always seen in pictures with a lathi (bamboo stick), his inseparable companion which he did not use to harm anybody; rather it came to him as a symbol of strength.

The three-day festival is being organised at Ghorghat village in Munger district, some 150km east of Patna. Hundreds of people flocked to the site to relive the memory of this unique gift on the first day of the festival which kicked off on Friday. The first-of-its-kind festival was inaugurated by Bihar’s agriculture minister Narendra Singh.

The stick was presented to Gandhi in April 1934 when he visited Bihar in the aftermath of the devastating quake measuring 8.1 on the Ritcher scale.

Local villagers recalled Gandhi had accepted the stick on the condition that the villagers will not supply the same to the British who used them against the freedom fighters. The villagers kept their word though it caused huge monetary loss. The British police were bulk buyers of the treated bamboo sticks from the village which was famous all over the country for lightweight but extremely strong sticks.

“Gandhi accepted the lathi on the very condition [not to supply the same to the British] and the village kept its promise till the end,” an elderly villager and general secretary of the stick festival, Mithilesh Kumar Mandal, told the media on Saturday. According to him, Gandhi had visited his village located on the banks of the Ganges in a steamer called “Seabird 3”.

A prominent Gandhian and secretary of the Patna-based Gandhi Museum Razi Ahmad says the lathi or stick is a symbol of strength for Gandhi who followed non-violent methods to fight the British.

“The lathi gifted at Munger was the first one that Gandhi carried. He saw it as a symbol of strength which would never be used to harm anybody,” explained Ahmad.