Mahatama Gandhi and Periyar E. V. Ramasami were giants among men. They set their sights on different goals, and with their focus and passion, brought about cataclysmic changes in the Indian sub-continent. They were two of the biggest gifts bestowed on India by the Almighty in the modern times. And they were also two of the biggest curses to befall the land.

The narrative of Mahatama Gandhi�s life is firmly woven into the history of India�s freedom struggle. His single-minded pursuit to seek freedom from the British Empire through non-violent protests bore fruit, but his spiritual mind brought calamity to pragmatic India.

It is said that a spiritually advanced person sees humans only as spirit souls and his conscious mind is unable to discriminate between people based on age, gender, ethnicity or religious affiliation. When freedom came to India, Pakistan was specifically carved out for muslims, at their request. As the spiritual side of Gandhi did not see any difference between people of different faiths, he encouraged muslims not to migrate to the newly formed Pakistan, and to stay and enjoy equal rights as citizens of secular India. This was done when every Hindu was either being killed or driven out of Pakistan. The result of this one sided benevolence was that more muslims stayed on in India than the entire population of Pakistan. During the British Raj The muslim league had demanded the creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for the muslim inhabitants of the sub-continent; but allowing over half the muslims to remain in secular India defeated the very purpose of the split. A segment of this Indian muslim population openly supports the foreign based Islamic terrorists. This group has created problems never fathomed by the Mahatma or by his na�ve followers in the political establishment of that era. This curse has progressively worsened the security situation in the holy land of Krishna and Rama and will ever be a hindrance for the ancient Hindu culture to regain its glory and to secure its rightful place at the world stage.

Periyar Ramasami made liberation of the disadvantaged among the Tamils, his passion in life. After failing to get attention of the existing social and political elite, he went on a mission to free the lower caste citizens in his state from the social and economic bondage that kept them down. His movement, over the years, succeeded in securing university admissions, government jobs and allotment of government contracts to the disadvantaged. Capturing control of the state government machinery by his followers capped the success of his mission. But to bring about these huge changes within a few decades, he tore at the very fabric of the core values of the populace. He viewed the Hindu religious order as the reason for the misery of the downtrodden. To liberate them, he aimed to destroy the religious order by rejecting the existence of God, thereby eliminating any chance of his followers ever experiencing spirituality. Furthermore, he galvanized the masses by turning them against the northerners. The north Indians, the so called �Aryans�; he told them, were trying to subjugate them through the imposition of national language Hindi. The spiritual values were sacrificed at the alter of material gains for the disadvantaged. A sense of national identity was replaced by a deep seated hatred of all people north of the Indian �Mason Dixon� line. Communism was praised as an ideal political system since it gave lip service to equality for all and denied the existence of God. So blind did his followers become about the virtues of communism that one of the prominent ones even named his son Stalin, after the reviled Russian leader. People were encouraged to convert to Islam and Christianity for the supposed absence of �caste system� in these religions. Little did the people at the bottom rung of the social order know, that after conversion, they would be barred from entering the churches of the �higher caste� Christians, or would not be able to associate with the �higher caste� muslims. Even after conversion, they continued to be classified as �Dalits�.

Mahatama Gandhi and Periyar Ramasami, the grand visionaries who set out to eliminate human exploitation; led the masses in realizing their goals. But, they also inflicted deep wounds to the psyche of the country; the land, many call Mother India.