The Unsaturated Reader

Tag: sobriquets

  • Manchester of India

    Manchester is a city situated in north west England, to the south of which lies river Mersey. Infamous for being at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution and consequently the first industrialised city in the world, Manchester was the hub for textile manufacturing, particularly cotton. This is also the reason why the city had been often dubbed “cottonopolis”.

    The city of Manchester is not without parallels, at least not in India. Sitting at the banks of the Sabarmati river, which lines through the state of Gujarat in North-west India is Ahmedabad. This city, the biggest in Gujarat is the hub of cotton textile industry in India. Moreover, the waters of Sabarmati have proven to be a boon for the thriving cotton warehouses in that it helps dye cotton threads. The semi-arid climate of the city too makes for everything necessary for the industries to flourish. The cotton manufactured herein are exported to the rest of the world, much akin to Manchester of England.

    For these reasons, Ahmedabad is fittingly called the ‘Manchester of India’.

  • Mahatma

    ‘Mahatma’ is a Sanskrit word which literally means ‘Great Soul’. Gandhi was so entitled by the Nobel prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1915.

    It must be said that this was indeed a befitting accreditation for Gandhi; for those terse and thoughtful words, and noble and unpretentious endeavours, couldn’t have sprung from a greater soul than his.

    Yet, he never basked in the honour of being bestowed with such a title. Many a times, he relinquished it for he believed that he was not deserving of a title so noble. Here are a few excerpts from his writings which illustrate this point.

    The only virtue I claim is truth and non-violence. I lay no claim to superhuman powers. I want none. I wear the same corruptible flesh that the weakest of my fellow beings wear and am liable to err as any. My services have many limitations, but God has up to now blessed them in spite of imperfections.

    The mahatma I leave to his fate. Though a non-co-operator I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me a mahatma and to touch my feet. Where I can impose the law myself, at the ashram, the practice is criminal.