Mahatma

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"

A quote that you may be forgiven for thinking was made by some gun toting general during a war. It was a war alright, a war against an empire and instead of a gun toting general, there was a thin, half naked old man with a stick. Win he did and how !!.

I realise that this is my second post on Gandhi (after ‘In memory of a Legend’) but I ask your forbearance on this and I hope to not bore you with repetition.

Discussing or debating Gandhi is futile and never ending. I, for one, believe that he can only be discovered. We can aspire to know ourselves better by knowing him. Because at some level we all share the same characteristics that make us human and Mahatma proved what happens when the best of human nature is exercised to conquer the baser aspects.

When I finished reading Louis Fisher's excellent biography on Mahatma Gandhi, the first thought I had was this man died for all that is wrong with us.

In this strife torn state of affairs where the word 'religion' has come to mean division and polarization, Bapu showed what being truly religious is all about.

Two thousand years ago one man was put on a cross and around sixty years ago another was pumped with bullets. Both of them died due to religion albeit under vastly different circumstances. But what is common is that the people responsible for their ends were alike in their thinking. As Einstein once said great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Gandhi was as religious a man as one can get. His outlook towards religion was fundamental nay essential in his political progress and his personal convictions. But his vision of religion was quite tangential to that of those who ended his life and they could never comprehend what it meant.

This post is not intended to defend religion or religious beliefs. I hardly consider myself religious. The intent is to show that religious beliefs can be as powerful in effecting positive change as they are in effecting negative ones.

The concept of God has created so much exclusive groupism and destruction that it perhaps has no parallel in the history of conflicting ideas. But when we perceive God in the way Mahatma did, the debate vanishes.

To quote Bapu,
"for I can see that in the midst of death life persists,
in the midst of untruth truth persists,
in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that
God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good"

-Excerpted from a speech by Gandhi, recorded in Kingsley Hall, London 1931

Irrespective of whether you are a theist or an atheist, you simply cannot argue with Gandhi's concept of God. Be it his autobiography or his public talks, one can find a persistent and oft repeated view by Gandhi that Truth was God.

Some readers here may opine that having read all the glorified texts on him, I may have developed a filter to only the positives of Gandhi. I would like to say that I have spent almost as much time on anti Gandhi literature, some of them being the Godse speech during his trial and Pradeep Dalvi's controversial drama 'Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy' and a whole lot more that one can find on the web.

Ironically, the more hate speeches I read, the more my admiration for him grows.

I am aware of the controversies Gandhi generated during his lifetime and these are frequently wielded by the Gandhi bashers, be it his so called “castist" comments allegedly defending the Hindu caste system or his bizarre brahmacharya experiments during the later years of his life. I do not want to delve into refuting these allegations or justifying his actions in this write-up, that's not my point.

But I do know that what ever his limitations, his was a life of unquestionable integrity, unbound tenacity, an unmatched vision and above all a spiritual conviction so great that it transcended religion as everybody else understood it.

In conclusion, I believe that as long as there are people who continue to draw their inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi, there is hope for mankind. To paraphrase a popular quote…………… “Gandhi is dead, long live Gandhi”

Bapu, you rock !!