Mahatma Gandhi

(First published in Small World Ezine on 13 September 2002)

 

As promised, today we'll talk about a man who had fought the British Empire peacefully, and won. He is respected as the Father of the Modern Indian Nation -- Mahatma Gandhi.

"Friends and Comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we call him, the Father of the Nation, is no more....

"The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in our country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented something more than the immediate present; it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom..."

The above is part of the famous speech delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru in the evening of January 30, 1948 the day Gandhi was assassinated.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in the town of Porbander in the state of what is now Gujarat. Then India was under British rule.  

In 1888 he set sail for England, where he had decided to pursue a degree in law, left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old. His mother, disagreed with his decision, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. 

After a year of practicing laws in India, the Mahatma accepted a job offer in South Africa. And it had become a long stay... 20 years.

It is here he'd become the leader of the Indian community after he himself was thrown from a first-class train despite his first-class ticket. He had decided to fight racism. 

It is also here that he had developed 'Satyagraha' for non-violence resistance ('satya' is Sanskrit for 'truth' and 'graha' is 'family holding'). The best explanation of 'satyagraha' is -- If no individual or group could claim absolute knowledge of the truth, no one should use violence to compel others to act against their different but also sincere understanding of it. 

And for the famous 'Ahimsa' (or 'ahingsa'), was explained, "Ahimsa had clear implications for political conflict. Violence used against oppression, Gandhi believed, was not only wrong, it was a mistake. It could never really end injustice, because it inflamed the prejudice and fear that fed oppression. For Gandhi, unjust means would never produce a just outcome. "The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree," he wrote in 1909, "and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. . . We reap exactly as we sow."  

Easily speaking, if you think a law is unjust, you keep doing what is forbidden and suffering the consequences, which could be imprisonment, torturing or whatever, to have your message delivered.

   
The Mahatma returned to India in early 1915. Then He travelled throughout India and he became involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Ahmedabad, where a dispute had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions in such cases earned him a considerable reputation. And it was by this time, because of his saintliness, that he earned, from Rabindranath Tagore -- India's most well-known writer -- the title of 'Mahatma', or 'Great Soul'.

After the Punjab massacre in around 1920, the Mahatma wrote a report calling  upon Indians to withdraw from British institutions, and in 1922 he was arrested and sent to prison.

After the release, he worked hard to improve the Hindu-Muslim relationship by promoting nationalism. He also continued his fight on everything for Indian people, from hygiene and nutrition to education and labor. Most of his ideas around 1930 were published in his own newspaper.

The Mahatma's famous 1942's last call for independence sent him to confinement again. (he asked every Indian to lay down their life, if necessary, in the cause of freedom.) After that, he continued to take care of the riot-wounded people, walking from village to village, where Hindus and Muslim violence arose, and consoling the widowed.

In Calcutta he came to constitute, in the famous words of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, a "one-man boundary force" between Hindus and Muslims. The ferocious fighting in Calcutta came to a halt, almost entirely on account of his efforts. 

Finally, the moment of freedom came, on 15 August 1947. Gandhi was nowhere to be seen in the capital, though Nehru and the entire Constituent Assembly were to salute him as the architect of Indian independence, as the 'father of the nation'.

In the early evening hours of 30 January 1948, Delhi, in the national prayer, where the Mahatma (who had just survive an attempt assassination) refused extra security, a man pushed through the crowd and shot him three times in the chest!

As the Mahatma blessed his assassin, he fell, his time-piece struck the ground, and the hands of the watch came to a standstill. They showed, as they had done before, the precise time: 5:12 P.M.

And that was the moment the light had gone out in India... but in all Indians' minds and souls.

Reference Sites:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Gandhi/gandhi.html
http://www.ourindia.com/gandhi1.htm
http://meadev.nic.in/Gandhi/ahimsa.htm
http://www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/india/satyagraha.html

 

More:

Never had a human being been regarded to by this many world's scholars and leaders...

"Not since Buddha has India so reverenced any man. Not since St. Francis of Assissi has any life known to history been so marked by gentleness, disinterestedness, simplicity of soul and forgiveness of enemies. We have the astonishing phenomenon of a revolution led by a saint." 

- Will Durant


"Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the 'back to nature' optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the non-violent resistance philosophy of Gandhi..." 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.


"He was right, he knew he was right, we all knew he was right. The man who killed him knew he was right. However long the follies of the violent continue, they but prove that Gandhi was right. 'Resist to the very end', he said, 'but without violence'. Of violence the world is sick. Oh, India, dare to be worthy of your Gandhi." 

- Pearl S. Buck


"I and others may be revolutionaries but we are disciples of Mahatma Gandhi, directly or indirectly, nothing more nothing less." 

- Ho Chi Minh.


Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of my Experiments with Truth, by Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was a merciful human being. He did not eat meat or even drink any milk (because milking process at the time could hurt animals). His nobility is widely respected, not only among Indians, his children, but also by the people all over the world. The secret of his success lies in his dynamic spiritual strength and incessant self-sacrifice. 


When you want to go to war, think of how this Great Man had beaten the world's biggest power at the time without a weapon in his hand. 

When anger conquers your mind, and you want to retaliate, to destroy the enemy, think about how this Great Man solve several disputes without violence.

When you hate someone else because he/she is different, think about how this Great man had sacrificed his life for human rights, equalities, and the better-beings of mankind.

The truth is immortal. The truth never dies. The truth is all man regardless of races or religious beliefs are as human as us/you, and they/we deserve equal respects.