Mahatma Gandhi - An Average Man
2 October 1869 - 30 January 1948

10 May 1998

"...When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always... Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war..."

[see also   Gandhi & Pirabaharan Gandhi & Tamil Eelam and Mahatma Gandhi and Salman Rushdie ]

Mahatma Gandhi was an average man - at least, that is how he regarded himself. He laid no claim to be either a saint or a mahatma. He declared with humility:

"I claim to be no more than an average man with less than average ability. Nor can I claim any special merit for such non-violence or continence as I have been able to reach with laborious research. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. Work without faith is like an attempt to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit."

These words were not the expression of a pretentious modesty. They reflected Gandhi's fundamental conviction that each one of us can achieve that which he had achieved - and more. For Gandhi, life was a permanent experiment with truth. He walked his talk - and where his walk did not coincide with his talk, he changed either his walk or his talk.

"I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps. I own that I have an immovable faith in God and His goodness and unconsumable passion for truth and love. But, is that not what every person has latent in him?"

Stephen Covey, the author of the best selling Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, often refers to a story from Gandhi's life. The parents had brought their young child to Gandhi. They wanted Gandhi to advise the child against eating sweets. Gandhi told the parents to bring the child to him the next week. Seven days later, Gandhi advised the child. The parents then inquired from Gandhi why it was that he had not advised the child on their first visit. Gandhi replied: "I myself was eating sweets then."

That Gandhi's words are increasingly quoted by today's management gurus is a reflection of the deep underlying truths that Gandhi had touched in his own life - deep underlying truths which have a broad relevance to all human endeavour.

If Aurobindo was a raja yogi who openly declared his will to see God in his lifetime, and Jiddu Krishnamurthi a jnana yogi, to whom reality was the interval between two thoughts, then Gandhi was the karma yogi beyond compare, engaging in action, and consciously evolving by seeking at every turn a coincidence of word and deed.

Ahimsa and the Chakra were the twin pillars on which Gandhi founded India's bid for freedom.

For Gandhi, Ahimsa or non violence was not an expression of cowardice or weakness. In a famous article 'The Doctrine of the Sword' Gandhi wrote in 1920:

"I do believe that when there is only a choice between cowardice and violence.... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless victim to her own dishonour. But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.

Forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish; it is meaningless when it proceeds from a helpless creature. A mouse hardly forgives a cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her... But I do not believe India to be helpless, I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature... Let me not be misunderstood. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will...

I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of non violence is not meant merely for rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Non violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law - to the strength of the spirit.

I have therefore ventured to place before India the ancient law of self sacrifice. For satyagraha and its offshoots, non co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering.

The rishis who discovered the law of non violence in the midst of violence were greater geniuses than Newton. They were themselves greater warriors than Wellington.

Having themselves known the use of arms, they realised their uselessness and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence but through non violence.

Non violence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil doer, but it means the putting of one's whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul, and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or regeneration.

And so I am not pleading for India to practise non violence because it is weak. I want her to practise non violence being conscious of her strength and power...

I want India to recognise that she has a soul that cannot perish, and that can rise triumphant above any physical weakness and defy the physical combination of a whole world.

I isolate this non co-operation from Sinn Feinism, for it is so conceived as to be incapable of being offered side by side with violence. But I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non co-operation a trial. 

It will not fail through its inherent weakness. It may fail because of poverty of response. Then will be the time for real danger. The high souled men, who are unable to suffer national humiliation any longer, will want to vent their wrath. They will take to violence. So far as I know, they must perish without delivering themselves or their country from the wrong...."

And from his early days of political activity in South Africa, Gandhi was stubborn and unshakeable in his commitment to that which he believed. At a meeting of Indians in Johannesburg on 11 September 2006, to protest against the South African government's registration law he said:  

"To pledge ourselves...in the name of God or with him as witness is not something to be trifled with. There is wisdom in taking serious steps with great caution and hesitation. But caution and hesitation have their limits, which we have now passed. The Government has taken leave of all sense of decency. We would only be betraying our unworthiness and cowardice, if we cannot stake our all in the face of the conflagration which envelops us and sit watching it with folded hands....But every one of us must think out for himself if he has the will and the ability to pledge himself. Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote. Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it...A word about my personal responsibility. If I am warning you of the risks attendant upon the pledge, I am at the same time inviting you to pledge yourselves, and I am fully conscious of my responsibility in the matter. It is possible that a majority of those present here might take the pledge in a fit of enthusiasm or indignation but might weaken under the ordeal, and only a handful might be left to face the final test. Even then there is only one course open to the like of me, to die but not to submit to the law. It is quite unlikely but even if every one else flinched leaving me alone to face the music, I am confident that I would never violate my pledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying this out of vanity, but I wish to put you, especially the leaders upon the platform, on your guard.." 

Gandhi, some years later later spelt out in his own words, the path that had led him to non-violence:

" Up to the year 1906 I simply relied on appeal to reason. I was a very industrious reformer......But I found that reason failed to produce an impression when the critical moment arrived in South Africa. My people were excited; even a worm will and does sometimes turn - and there was talk of wreaking vengeance. I had then to choose between allying myself to violence or finding out some other method of meeting the crisis and stopping the rot; and it came to me that we should refuse to obey the legislation that was degrading and let them put us in jail if they liked. Thus came into being the moral equivalent of law.....

Since then the conviction has been growing upon me, that things of fundamental importance to the people are not secured by reason alone but have to be purchased with their suffering. Suffering is the law of human beings; war is the law of the jungle. But suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut, to the voice of reason.....I have come to this fundamental conclusion, that if you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart too. The appeal to reason is more to the head but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding in man."

If ahimsa sprang from the ageless spirituality of India, then the chakra gave the peoples of India self worth in the 'modern' material world. Gandhi pointed to the evils of modern day industrialism. He was reviled for looking backward and rejecting 'modernism'. But, perhaps he was an early 'post-modern'.

The chakra, just as much as ahimsa, brought the vast masses of India into the freedom struggle. Gandhi reached out to rural India. The chakra gave the peoples of India tangible proof of their own capacity to satisfy their material wants. It gave them 'thanmaanam'. They were not beggars always trying to 'catch up' with the 'modern' West. They were not a part of the 'third' world. They were part of the 'majority' world - the post modern world of the future, where India's spiritual heritage would make its special contribution, especially to a developing 'First' World no longer content to regard gross national product as the measure of 'development'.

Again, Gandhi was not an elitist who predicated social change to the transformation of a select few. The power of the salt march to mobilise a people surprised many, including Jawarhalal Nehru. On 31 December 1929, the Indian National Congress declared Poorna Swaraj (complete independence) as the goal of the Indian people. On 2 March 1930, Gandhi, after reflecting for two months, wrote to British Viceroy Lord Irwin:

  "...The British system seems to be designed to crush the very life out of the peasant. Even the salt he must use to live, is so taxed as to make the burden fall heaviest on him. The British administration is the most expensive in the world. Take your own salary...It is over Rs 21,000 per month. The British Prime Minister gets Rs 5,400 per month... If India is to live as a nation, if the slow death by starvation of her people is to stop, some remedy must be found. If my letter, makes no appeal to your heart, I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram that I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws." 

Initially, the British Viceroy, decided to ignore the march - 'a few Indians, picking up salt from the beaches, were not going to topple the British empire'. But as thousands upon thousands of the peoples of India flocked to the beaches to openly breach the law, the Viceroy concluded that there was an immense organisation behind this open defiance.

The British then set about arresting the 'organisers'. But as more and more 'organisers' were arrested and detained, the defiance increased and thousands more joined. The truth was that the salt march succeeded not because of skilful 'organisation' - the salt march was a 'self organising idea'. Yet again, Gandhi had dug deep and touched base with his fellow Indians.

A story is told about Gandhi and Bhagat Singh, a militant/revolutionary in the Indian freedom struggle. In the 1930s, Bhagat Singh was charged and convicted for dacoity and sentenced to death. In prison, awaiting death, Bhagat Singh declared:

" I have been arrested while waging a war. For me there can be no gallows. Put me into the mouth of a cannon and blow me off."  

When asked by newspaper reporters for his response, Gandhi replied: ‘‘His way is not my way. But I bow my head before one who is ready to give his life for the freedom of his people.’’ 

Martin Luther King was one of those who was inspired by Gandhi - and today, Gandhi continues to inspire all those concerned with political change - change for the better, change so that the essential goodness in each one of us may find settled expression. His legacy remains.
 

"All the wills made by me previously may be treated as cancelled and this may be considered as my final Will. 

I do not regard anything as my personal property.

Nevertheless, of whatever may be regarded in custom and in law as my property, movable or immovable, and of the copyrights of the books and articles, published or unpublished, written by me hitherto before or that may be written by me hereafter, I appoint "Navajivan", of which Shri Mohanlal Maganlal Bhatt and I made a Declaration of Trust, which was registered on 26-11-1929, and of which Shri Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, Shri Mahadev Haribhai Desai and Shri Narahari Dwarkadas Parikh are the present Trustees, as the sole heirs. 

From the net profits accruing from the sale of the said books and from their copyrights "Navajivan" shall contribute twenty-five per cent every year to the Harijan Sevak Sangh for Harijan work.  I nominate Mahadev Haribhai Desai and Narahari Dwarkadas Parikh Executors for the purpose of this Will. In their absence, through death or any other reason, others will have the right to administer the property.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 

Malikanda, February 20, 1940

Witnesses: Pyarelal Nayyar, 20-2-40 Koshorelai G. Masiruwala, 20-2-40 From Gujarati: C.W. 2686 Courtesy: Navajivan Trust - The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, LXX1page 230

 Probated on 9-5-1949 "

"நாம் மனிதர் என்ற முறையில், எங்கள் திறன் உலகை மாற்றி அமைப்பதிலல்ல தங்கியிருக்கின்றது - எங்களை மாற்றி அமைப்பதில்தான் இருக்கின்றது. நாங்கள் உலகில் விரும்பும் மாற்றத்தை, நாங்களே வாழவேண்டும்."

In its positive form, non violence means the largest love, the greatest charity. If I am a follower of non violence, I must love my enemy. I must apply the same rule to wrong-doer who is my enemy or a stranger to me, as I would do to my wrong-doing father or son. This active non violence necessarily includes Truth and Fearlessness…. A man cannot then practice non violence and be a coward at the same time. The practice of non-violence calls forth the greatest courage."

Winston Churchill, 1930 "...It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor..."

If all Hindus were annihilated for a just cause he would not mind. If there was war, the Hindus in Pakistan could not be fifth columnists. If their loyalty lay not with Pakistan they should leave it. Similarly Muslims whose loyalty was with Pakistan should not stay in the Indian Union. Gandhi had immediately stated that the report was correct, but incomplete. At the meeting he had added that he himself had not changed his mind and that "he had no place in a new order where they wanted an army, a navy, an air force and what not"...

Gunnar Jahn (Nobel Peace Committee Chairman, 1947) in his diary quoted himself as saying: "While it is true that he (Gandhi) is the greatest personality among the nominees – plenty of good things could be said about him – we should remember that he is not only an apostle for peace; he is first and foremost a patriot. (...) Moreover, we have to bear in mind that Gandhi is not naive. He is an excellent jurist and a lawyer.""