Dear friends, intellectuals, people who dictate the entire world and who direct the human race and also people who preach and practice righteousness in its true sense and those who struggle to keep the culture and heritage of our Mother (India)… this one is for you…
Our beloved Bapuji, in 1901, swearing by the preaching of a lucid consciousness narrated the content of this treasured literature, which is an elixir of life and we are all blessed to have been going through this treasure. Bapu was right. The intellectuals of this century, bound by spirituality, said that this narration reminded one of the narrations of the holy Quran by Hazrat Mohammad who had voiced that God was far above the reach of an ordinary person. This literature is a guide a concoction of purity sieved and refined immortality of mankind. Its purity mirrors the austerity of a sage during his penance. This manuscript speaks aloud the supreme power of mankind and deserves to be a highlight among the treasured library of literature internationally.
This statement is not meant to hurt the religious feelings of anyone……But, this book- Mahatma Gandhi and Freedom of India – A Beautifully Beheld Scenario of Free India- maybe closely considered as a replicate of Bhagavad Gita. This is because the reader maybe considered Arjuna, and the preacher, Lord Krishna, is Gandhiji himself, but for the fact that Lord Krishna had influenced Arjuna and compelled him to carry on the war (Himsa), which of course, was to protect the existence of mankind, at that instance. He had terminated human weaknesses and made a weapon out of human experiences. But Bapu, on the contrary had tried to turn a weapon holding mankind into a humane mankind with his principles of Ahimsa.
So, in Kurukshetra, Lord Krishna had preached Bhagavad Gita to make a weapon out of Arjuna.
In this cold blooded century of Kali Yuga that had an essence of hatred had been turned into a complete and humane mankind by Gandhiji’s efforts.
In the past, man used violence to protect mankind, but there is a choice, the progress of humanity can be achieved through violence or by sacrificing violence and practicing non-violence. But if observed, it may be noticed that victory through violence wouldn’t last long. But, victory achieved by the practice of non-violence stays put for eternity. It was observed that after Kurukshetra war, having lost his kith and kin to the maximum, Yudishtara was not able to reign with peace of mind.
If it wasn’t this, the century (Dwapara Yuga) wouldn’t have come to an end so soon. The practices of that century wouldn’t have been gobbled up by the ogre named ‘Time’. It may be deduced that Lord Krishna is a ‘victorious loser’ as he witnessed victory by the mortal remains of his army…..scores and scores lay lifeless on the war field as a result of Kurukshetra war.
Gandhiji was not assassinated by a person who followed non-violence. His principles are immortal, they are here to stay. The future generations have no way but to bow down to Gandhiji’s principles.
Observing the content of this book, it may be noted that some of Bapu’s statements are practical, very simple, common and predictable. This aspect made the popular leader Gopalkrishna Gokhale say that this literature is just common, fictional, and very predictable and is based on the mind’s eye. He criticised saying that this literature was based on imagination and not experiences, the life style of the people at that time and the happenings in the country at that juncture would make him predict that the country would be messed up by Gandhiji, himself! This criticism had made the literature more influential and popular…
This literature witnesses that intense wavelength of the traditional virtues of Hindus that even an intellectual or a learned would fail to reach out to. That is the reason why our ancestors stated that the Vedas are an ocean of avenues. It is next to impossible to estimate the depth of them. But then, there is no place that a man cannot destine and there is nothing impossible, if not difficult to achieve and there is not a dream that wasn’t tried to be driven along the path of reality. If certain tasks are not successful, it only means that the way to accomplishment of the task was not the right one. A man with this blind belief of good luck is failing to acknowledge his own inner capacities. Acknowledging the inner capabilities by Bapu has resulted in this literary work and it is a commandment to mankind. This book is not fictional as can be observed. The Bhagavad Gita’s principles of karma have been showcased, making the book a pioneer to mankind. The book has deduced that practising spirituality without hoping for any requital makes a sage of a persona.
A man with such supreme powers had been repelling the virtue of truthfulness for the sake of earthly temporary pleasures. And to satiate these materialistic pleasures, he is taking to violence. Man is all to himself in the society, powerless, trying to acquire all that his heart desires but he is yet unable to find a way to slake his desire and the desire is the supremacy that’s been ruling the human race. This book specifies the virtues of non- violence, peace and the practice of Satyagraha, or dedication to truthfulness and the policy of resistance to non-violence.
The gist of this literature is that it is truthfulness and belief in your destination that turns something impossible into possible, with the practice of Ahimsa. With this principle, the then Congress government was ready to fight for independence. Gandhiji mentions in this book that every problem has a solution and finding the root of the problem was the right way to solve it. Now here the problem that Congress faced was the domination by the Britishers. Displacing the British from the lap of Mother India was the ultimatum. We needed to get on the war field and envisage rescue of our Mother and work our way to reach our goal. Leaving aside violence, the power of ethics was made a weapon to tackle the British. The root cause had been assessed. The valour India cannot become slave or bow down to British unless we want to or donate ourselves to. If at all we had donated our country, they would rule us with utmost gratitude. But that was not the case. The power was limited and the step towards victory was weak. This, to some extent is a way to win by following non-violence. Our ignorance was our weakness for the British to step on. But one doesn’t accept the fact owing to reasons like religion, jealousy, ego, pride or self-esteem. Thus, it is lucid fact that it is our weaknesses that had made the British dominant.
Bapu believed that satyagraha was the right weapon to fight them and degrade their self-esteem. He said that self-sacrifice was the right way to achieve freedom. He ignited the masses into a wave of satyagraha.
But this revolution was the first of its kind in the history of India. It was a miraculous tradition that everyone had approved. There is some speciality in Indians which none in the world have…and that believes in the word of an intellectual and also the quality of self-assessment and repentance and the quality of being ever ready to sacrifice anything for the sake of their motherland. These characteristics make Indians get along with their Government and that is how Indians neither agreed nor disagreed to the rein by the British. At this point they were ready to accept the preachings of the leader who had taught them about society and civilisation.
The revolution was to make the English quit India? Or make their culture quit India? This is an issue dealt by Gandhiji in this book. He declared the ethical aspects of life, patriotism and had become a revolutionary.
Use Ahimsa to win
The whole process is one of endless evolution. In working for the end, man also works for perfecting the means. The principle of non-violence and love was articulated by Buddha and Christ centuries ago. It has been applied through these centuries by individual people with success on small clear-cut issues. As it has been recognised, “the world-wide and age-long interest of Gandhi’s experiment lies in the fact that he has attempted to make the method work in what may be called the national scale.” The difficulties of that application are obvious, but Gandhiji trusts that they are not insurmountable.
The experiment seemed impossible in India in 1921 and had to be abandoned, but what was then impossible became possible in 1930. Even now the question often arises: “What are non-violent means?” It will take long practice to standardise the meaning and content of this term. But the means there of is extreme self-purification. What Western thinkers often lose sight of is that the fundamental condition of non-violence is love, and pure unselfish love is impossible without untarnished purity of mind and body.
On occasions that questioned testing one’s faith, the answer has been given by Gandhiji more than once, though he has not completely achieved his Swaraj, for the simple reason that for him Swaraj is incomplete so long as his fellow-beings are unaware of it. But he lives in faith, and the faith in non-violence does not begin to shake at the mention of Italian or Japanese barbarities. For violence breeds the results of violence and once you start the game there is no limit to be drawn.
In these days of commerciality, a person who took down his course in medicine would practice only for the sake of retrieving his investment on the medicine course. This is what had been bothering Bapu.
An ecological understanding is now propelling us to a new and deep realisation of our inter-dependence. We have only one earth, we must learn to share and care. We are but a contingent part of the cosmos, debtors born, whose proper response to life must be the ‘yagna’, service-offering of our lives for others. Thus, with regard to the economy and polity, Gandhi would have the village as his world; but with regard to culture and religion, it was the world that was his village! Surely, here we have a viable example of thinking universally and acting locally. Indeed, our global ecological crisis has begun to press on us anew relevance of Gandhi’s contradictory ideas. For the institutional individualism that seemed to be the very foundation of the democratic quest in the west seems quite inadequate to the ecological crises of today. For it privileges individual rights over the common good. But even enlightened self-interest has no answer to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ accept an external coercion.
However, for Gandhi, “individuality” must be “oriented to self-realisation through self-knowledge... in a network of inter-dependence and harmony informed by ahimsa” [Roy l986a:84]. Nor was this to be an inter-dependence of dominant-subservient relationships so prevalent in our local communities and global societies. His swadeshi envisaged a more personalised and communitarian society on a human scale, yet extending to include both the biotic and even the cosmic community. This was the logical extension of the Jaina doctrine of ‘syadvada’, that everything is related to everything in the universe in ‘a great chain of being’. testifies to a change in his views. Yet even as we critique such Gandhian ideas, we must discover in dialogue what value and relevance they have for us today. For ultimately Gandhi insists on both: that the community is not a mere means for the self-interest of the individual and that the individual in not a mere resource for the concerns of the community. And this would go for the community of communities that our global community must be.
Gandhi’s life was a continuing series of controversies and contestations with those in power on behalf of the powerless. He never lacked opponents, among the British and even the Indian elites, and often found himself isolated and alone particularly at the end of his life, which was far from being one long triumphant procession. Yet one of the great contributions of Gandhi was precisely his centering of the periphery: in politics with ‘anthyodaya’; in religion by de-institutionalising practice and personalising belief; in education by his proposal for ‘nai-talim’ or basic education as it came to be called; in the economy by symbolically urging khadhi. Not all of these efforts were successful or perhaps even practical, but they did make a contribution which is still valid today. And all Gandhi’s original ideas can be found seeded already in his Hind Swaraj.
Today, we need a new developmental model, and increasingly people are beginning to see that it has to begin by reorganising priorities to come back to the last Indian that Gandhi would have as the talisman of our social planning. No one can claim that Gandhi’s reformist appeal has fulfilled the ‘revolution of raising expectations’ of our masses. This only underscores the need for a more refined analysis and a wider dialogue in our society for constructive change given the limits of reformism and the constraints on revolution. If we are looking for a new synthesis for a counter-culture, we must take Gandhi as a dialogue partner in this project but first we must redefine and re-interpret him. Such an encounter will help us to re-examine and reconstruct ourselves.
So, all ye freedom fighters from the past and all you Gandhians the power of the soul is a unique quality of us Indians and let us take pride in it. Let us grasp the Bhagavad Gita’s gist and practice all it has to say about life’s realities. Let us awaken the dormant power of the soul.
Ye intellectuals! Awaken your knowledge and utilise it for the assessment of truthfulness!
All you laymen! Let us announce that all the potentiality is for the development of human race!
The rich gentlemen out there! Let us destruct the pride due to riches and let us take pride in helping the poor destitute…
The machos, hear this… let us use Ahimsa as our power to win!
The students, the men of the morrow, let us spell the culture of India and keep our country on the peak of the world and let us announce the dignity as a great character of India!
Jai Hind ! Jai Mahatma Gandhi !
However, the Gandhian ideal was a community modelled on the joint family and on Varna as a non-competitive division of labour. Later in his life his own promotion of inter-caste marriages