Skip to main content

What makes Gandhi a Mahatma



The 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi is round the corner. Gandhi was undoubtedly one of the greatest souls that ever walked on the earth. Albert Einstein was of the opinion that “Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time.” Indeed Gandhi was an enlightened man.
What made Gandhi an enlightened soul, a Mahatma, was the universalism of his vision. His vision embraced everyone and everything. It was not restricted by language, religion, nationality, or any such narrow human constructs.
Gandhi would never accept the kind of narrow nationalism that is being peddled in India today by the dominant political party that has vowed to rewrite the country’s history. In its narrow meaning, nationalism seeks to glorify one’s nation at the cost of certain sections of population. Gandhi would not accept such nationalism though he wouldn’t deny the need of self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation. Self-sacrifice, not sacrifice of other people. The individual may have to sacrifice himself for his family. The individual may have to die for his nation too. Gandhi died for his nation. But he would not sacrifice others for the sake of the nation. “It is not nationalism that is evil,” Gandhi wrote in Young India on 18 June 1925, “it is the narrowness, selfishness, exclusiveness which is the bane of modern nations which is evil.”
Inclusiveness was an integral part of Gandhi’s vision. That is why the partition of India into two countries in the name of religion agonised him interminably. He would have nothing to do with any kind of exclusivism.
Gandhi’s words, “The chief value of Hinduism lies in holding the actual belief that all life is one, i.e., all life coming from one universal source, call it Allah, God or Parameshwara” (Harijan, Dec 1936), reveal his concept of religion. Religion is a means of connecting the individual soul with the cosmic soul. Religion is a means of discovering the divine within you and in other creatures. Everyone, irrespective of which god he prays to or whether he doesn’t pray at all, everyone is a spark of the divine, according to Gandhi. You can’t be religious and hateful of some people at the same time. If your religion makes you hate anyone, it’s not religion.
Gandhi would never impose anything like religion, language, culture, or food habits on anyone. Instead he would inspire people with his vision, his life.
The question today is whether anyone is looking for inspiration.


Comments

  1. Very well put it..Relevant all the more todsy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. Yes, more relevant today than ever in Indian history.

      Delete
  2. The current regime plans to homogenize the country by crushing people's human rights underfoot and create a totalitarian state. This is happening in the land of one of the greatest champions of inclusivity. We need some leader, perhaps another Gandhi to awaken people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Leaders like Gandhi are born once in a century or even more rarely.

      Delete
    2. Like all human beings, like all leaders, Gandhi too had his weaknesses and failings.

      But when seen in totality, when we look at some of his beliefs and the way he practised them, one has to accept the greatness of that human being.

      However, I feel really sad that after all that he did, he could not see his dream come true. India became free, but not in the way Gandhi wanted.

      Do read my post on 'Gandhian thoughts'.

      Delete
    3. I read your piece on Gandhi and liked it.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

The Life of an Activist

Book Review   Title: I am What I am: A Memoir Author: Sunitha Krishnan Publisher: Westland, Chennai, 2024 Pages: 284 Sunitha Krishnan is more of a conqueror than a survivor. She was gangraped at the age of 15, and that too because she had started working for the uplift of the girls in a village. She used to interact with the girls, motivate them to go back to school, give them remedial classes, and discuss topics like menstrual hygiene “and other intimate issues”. Some men of the village didn’t like such “revolutionary” moves coming from a little girl. Eight such men violated Sunitha Krishnan one evening as she was returning home from the village. “Any sexual assault is a traumatic event and leaves deep scars on the psyche of the survivor. The shame, the guilt, the feeling of being tainted, the self-loathing that it brings in its wake is universal. I was no exception.” That is how the third chapter, title ‘The Girl Who Did Not Cry’, begins. Sunitha Krishnan didn’t l...