Photo: Indian schoolkids dress like Gandhi

AFP/Getty Images Yesterday, Indian students dressed as members of India’s independence movement for a program marking the 138th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly declared October 2, Gandhi’s birthday, as the International Day of Non-Violence (I guess they didn’t get the memo in Iraq and Burma). Interestingly, in a survey ...

By , copy chief at Foreign Policy from 2009-2016 and was an assistant editor from 2007-2009.
598928_071003_gandhi_05.jpg
598928_071003_gandhi_05.jpg

AFP/Getty Images

AFP/Getty Images

Yesterday, Indian students dressed as members of India’s independence movement for a program marking the 138th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly declared October 2, Gandhi’s birthday, as the International Day of Non-Violence (I guess they didn’t get the memo in Iraq and Burma).

Interestingly, in a survey published last year by the Economic Times newspaper, 37 percent of Indian management students and young business leaders said today’s biggest icon was Bill Gates. Gandhi trailed at 30 percent. Seventy-four percent of the young business leaders and 61 percent of the students said people of their generation could not relate to the father of the nation. Fifty-six percent said it was time to reinvent Gandhi.

Preeti Aroon was copy chief at Foreign Policy from 2009-2016 and was an assistant editor from 2007-2009. Twitter: @pjaroonFP

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