The poet who wrote Gandhi’s favourite bhajan

A documentary by Mayank Chhaya traces the history of Narsinh Mehta and ‘Vaishnav Jan to’

Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajan, ‘Vaishnav jan to’, played in all his prayer meetings, was written by Narsinh Mehta, a poet-philosopher who too hailed from Gujarat and lived 400 years before Gandhi was born. Gandhi’s Song, a documentary written, directed and produced by journalist Mayank Chhaya, sheds new light on the saint who inspired the Mahatma to the extent that the latter made ‘Vaishnav jan to’ his moral weapon, putting it at the epicentre of his Ahimsa philosophy. So who was Narsinh Mehta? In the documentary, Tushar Gandhi, the Mahatma’s great-grandson, says, “To Gujaratis of at least my generation, he is an icon and one can never take away from him his creation.”