Is Mahatma Gandhi relevant today? One may as well ask, is truth relevant? Is nonviolence relevant? Is peace relevant? Is belief in a higher level of humanity relevant? Is love for the other relevant?
These eternal values ran like a fine chain through all Gandhi’s ideas, actions, experiments and ideals. Looking back over the 54 years since his death, one is astounded that any man could aspire to such a high level of ideals, not just for himself but for a whole country.
Gandhi made the impossible possible. He made it possible for ordinary human beings to demonstrate the courage and compassion of a sage, to lay down their lives unresistingly before armed police forces, to refuse to submit to injustice and tyranny, to free themselves from under the tyrant’s foothold and stiffen their spines, to rise above feelings of ill-will, spite, hatred and revenge, and regard their opponent if not with love, then at least with forbearance, to overcome the conditioning of centuries and remove the stigma of untouchability and female suppression.
To inspire and manoeuvre the whole creaking machinery of a country as huge as ours, to rise above its brute nature, is a feat so astonishing that one can hardly believe a human being did it.
“He trusted the peasants of backward Bardoli to resist provocation and violence. His trust exalted them. Gandhi did not regard nobility as a monopoly of the great man or the artist or the elite. Gandhi’s uniqueness lay in working with common clay and finding the soul spark in it.”
Gandhi’s value lies in his demonstration of what is possible for human society. Through his influence and inspiration he engineered a noble independence for India-an independence that was civilized and elevated, leavened by the values of nonviolence and truth. More, he leaves behind the blueprint of a way of life that is truly holistic. A life that is politically, economically, socially, culturally oriented around the larger whole.
He gave the world satyagraha, a practical way in which victims can gain redress without hurting their oppressors. He popularized khadi as the solution to India’s deep-seated poverty. He initiated the concept of trusteeship through which the haves could prevent themselves from exploiting others.
He introduced radical ideas of education and social reform that could transform society. Gandhi was a social reformer, a politician, an economist, a doctor, a nutritionist, an environmentalist, a spiritual master-all rolled into one.
In his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, he writes: “To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face we must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life.”
If self-realization was the goal, then the whole pageantry of Gandhi’s life was simply a spiritual journey. It also means that the only way to evaluate him is through the spiritual perspective, for there is no other way to understand his experiments, his economic, political and social ideas, and indeed his entire worldview.
If Gandhi forged his experiments in the furnace of his own life, if the truths emerged from his single-minded pursuit of self-realisation, does that guarantee that his ideas are true and relevant for all time?
Were his insights into the nature of modern civilisation right? Does his vision of the ideal society stand the test of time? Are his political and economic prescriptions valid today? Should humanity move along the Gandhian route?
For some he was a man of action, not thought, and was too hostile to modern civilisation to offer an adequate understanding of the nature of modernity, let alone provide answers to its problems…
His critics argue that his basically conservative, puritanical, pro-bourgeois and pacifist thought hindered the development of radical political movements, harmed the cause of the Dalits, burdened the Indian psyche with a paralysing sense of guilt about economic development, hampered the emergence of a strong and powerful state, created a national schizophrenia about the need to acquire and exercise political power.
Moreover, those in favour of today’s consumerist society see little to recommend him to them. Gandhian thought, one could say, is the polar opposite of what they stand for. The basis of all his social and economic solutions was based on the concept of sarvodaya, the welfare of all.
In place of industrialization, Gandhi advocated the formation of village industries and crafts, primarily spinning and weaving of khadi. Spinning would be a way of supplementing the meager income of the villager. It also gave self-determination to one of life’s necessities-clothing.
To his admirers, he is one of the greatest saints and visionaries of all time. To his detractors, he is a crank whose outlandish notions are impractical and outdated. We might still wish to conclude that he was caught in the trap of his own utopianism. He can oppose modern civilisation so totally only because he can seriously believe that his idealistic alternative is possible and feasible.”
“But, since the alternative is constructed on the basis of a purely spiritual understanding of the human and historical situation, it cannot even begin to be feasible.”
Gandhi’s spiritual perspective is at the root of much criticism. He understood what rationalists cannot comprehend, that the universe is founded on moral principles.
His quest for truth was nothing more than the discovery of the spiritual laws of life-the power of love, of nonviolence, the interconnection of life on which he based his life’s work.
He said: “Western civilisation assures progress by the progress of matter-railways, conquest of disease, conquest of the air. No one says, ‘now the people are more truthful or more humble’.”
His entire political strategy, satyagraha, ahimsa and fasting was based on the superiority of ‘soul force’ to physical force. He once said: “Nonviolence…means the pitting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant.”
His objection to modern science was based on the ground that, “It attaches undue importance to the body rather than the soul, which is infinitely more real than the body.”
That being so, much of his thinking is inaccessible to those who do not share a spiritual perspective. His concept of trusteeship is based on the Isha Upanishad which asserts that God is the owner of the world, and that we own nothing.
His concept of satyagraha, in which the victim steadfastly defies tyranny and force through the practice of civil disobedience while at the same time responding to the oppressor with courtesy and love, is again the expression of a spiritual law.
The seeker knows that what you resist, persists. His concept of equality was based on the interconnection of life, his rejection of force and tyranny was based on respect for the divinity of all things.
His rejection of all institutions, including parliaments, armies and law courts arose out of his conviction that love was superior to force.
He writes: “The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, the state can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.”
If faith in Gandhian nonviolence needs a reminder we only have to look at the examples of Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi, all of whom have been inspired by Gandhi in fashioning their nonviolent protests against tyranny, oppression and racism.
Towering figures, all, they have proved once more that nonviolence has a moral power that exacts our respect and reverence in a way that violence never can. Gandhi lives even outside the ken of Gandhian circles.
Gandhian thinking was never meant to be implemented today or tomorrow. It is meant for the time when mankind is ready for it.
Shopping Cart
