A still from Lage Raho Munnabhai: Too tapori

New Delhi, Oct. 9: As the nation is on a “Gandhigiri” trip, the Congress seems determined to purge the word from its lexicon.

The party purists are insistent that it should be replaced with “Gandhiwaad” (Gandhi's philosophy), which sounds “serious and authentic”.

They made it clear that the centenary celebrations of the Mahatma’s satyagraha would be bereft of any reference to the blockbuster Lage Raho Munnabhai, which spawned Gandhigiri, even if it sounded “orthodox and boring”.

Congress general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Mohsina Kidwai was privately criticised in the party for advocating the “tapori” language used in the Sanjay Dutt-starrer at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee on September 10. She had reportedly said it was the “right way” of taking Gandhism to the next generation.

Kidwai is also believed to have said that Gandhigiri encapsulated Gandhi’s thoughts, inspiring youngsters to read books by and on him, and that Lage Raho was a “clean” film that CWC members should watch.

“Either we are Hindi illiterates or else it’s fashionable to praise tapori. But those who are doing the latter should listen very carefully to the dialogues again because they are full of filthy abuses,” said a Congress general secretary.

In the heartland, he added, a campaign was on among youths to “cleanse” Hindi and “purify” it of the “Bombayya slang”. “The projection of Gandhiji’s views in this tapori language has not gone down well in the Hindi-speaking states.”

The general secretary also objected to the depiction of “violence” in Lage Raho. For instance, he said, in one scene the protagonist holds professors at gunpoint for answers in a radio quiz on Gandhi.

“The film is a Mumbai don’s version of Gandhi. The hero starts as a don and ends as one,” was a Congress functionary’s pronouncement.

Leaders believe that the Mahatma’s “legacy” as inherited by the Congress should not be “sullied or trifled with” by pop clones, sources said.

To “restore” the “authentic spirit” of “Gandhism”, the party will kickstart its satyagraha centenary celebrations with a conference in Gujarat and a cycle yatra from the Sabarmati ashram in Ahmedabad to Porbander, the Mahatma’s birthplace. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi will launch the yatra.

The Congress has also planned to set up camps to propagate the Gandhian ideals of panchayati raj and clean environment and to drive home the importance of khadi and village industries.

Gujarat will be the nucleus of the programme. The sources said the choice was dictated as much by political considerations as by the fact that Gandhi was born in the state. Gujarat goes to polls in November 2007 and the Congress believes the “renewed” interest in the Father of the Nation might yield a campaign and a counter to Narendra Modi’s “politics of hate and divisiveness”.

“But it will be on our terms and not the film,” a source said.