Of Gandhi and Assorted Zealots

Nothing to do with the story or anything else in particular, but I'm terribly bored waiting for my stubborn yeasts to get ready to be genetically manipulated :). Decided to ramble while I waited (for my entertainment more than yours). Two weird things that happened to me last week.
First, I got accosted by a Gandhi zealot. I kid you not, you guys. I was talking to this guy (old friend from school) on the phone, and (picking up midway through the phone call) the conversation went something like this:
Me: Have you seen Lage Raho yet?
A (lets call him that cos its easier to type): Nope (A's a man of few words apparently)
Me: (fawning over the movie) Ohhhhhh, you should totally go see it!! I reallly loved it and I'm not even a Gandhi fan and in fact I sometimes find him sanctimonious.
A: (Stony silence)
Me: Hullo? U there?
A: Yeah (told ya, man of few words)
Me: (Sudden epiphany alerting me to a possible reason for the silence. What can I say??! Never too bright on a Sunday morning) Oh... d'ya like Gandhi?
A: (with a hint - or did I just imagine it - of stiffness) Yeah
(Another stony silence while I frantically think of something (anything!) to say)
Me: Er...Not that I have anything against him. (now searching desperately for concilliatory remarks) He was a great social worker, I always thought.
A: Yeah?!
Me: (flustered by now by his monosyllabic answers and extremely polysyllabic silences) Great guy, I'm sure. Just that I never really liked him all that much.
A: Oh yeah? (and this NOT in a tone of genuine curiosity but witheringly sarcastic!!)
Me: (rallying and now a little irritated; no one withers ME with sarcasm!!) Yeah!!! I think that firstly, he probably wasn't all that nice a person to live with, considering he made his wife clean out toilets and slept with naked women every night AND considering that he was not the nicest father to his son! And secondly, towards the end, he became a cranky, old, senile man whose insistence on making Nehru the PM might well have set our country squarely on the path to disaster!!
A: (after a considering pause, pauses being his forte so to speak) Oh really? Do you have any facts to support this?
Me: Facts?? (with scornful derision of the word). This is my opinion. And I dont need facts to support it (haughtily, with my nose in the air).
A: Oh really? (a man of limited vocabulary, as well as a man of few words) Well then, I dont like the way you think!

You can imagine how flabbergasted I was. I do NOT think Bapu would have approved of A talking to people like that. Gandhian philosophy was founded on gentleness and ahimsa, wasnt it? Or did I study from a different history text book (which is all too possible considering the state of syllabi these days)?

Anyway immediately after that (that Monday in fact), I read this paper on the net (by some psychologist) that said that people tend to instinctively gravitate towards other people who're like themselves and hold the same opinions. This psychologist dude gave it like a fancy scientific term, "homophily" and claimed that people do this so that they wont have to justify their opinions to other "non-believers". I must confess I found myself aggrieved that despite all these precautions I have allegedly taken in order to ensure that I was not faced with crazed zealots who spewed venom in my face (a little bit of literary license was in order one felt), I still had to come across this radical Gandhian who didn't "like the way I think". Sometimes, life sucks, and no amount of science or theorising can change that! And also, I think someone should tell Mr.Psychologist-Dude that his theory isnt based on concrete facts (I think I know just the person ;).

Psst! A quote I read somewhere that I suspect was written by A, though the compiler of the web page claimed that it was an old proverb: "Dont speak unless you can improve the silence".

Update: Its quotes like this that really got me thinking about the kind of guy he probably was : All crime is a kind of disease and should be treated as such. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948).
Who says things like this?