Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was too modest to be comfortable with
the title of 'Mahatma', and too candid to be readily understood
by his contemporaries. Throughout his life he saw himself and
his ideas distorted or oversimplified by others. Patiently, he
kept on affirming and amplifying his ideals so that those who
cared might comprehend. Politically, he sought to touch people's
hearts so as to awaken their faith both in themselves and in his
abiding vision of social transformation. At the same time, he
was able to sidestep those contentious pundits who prefer verbal
combat to patient assimilation or courageous experimentation.
Through his remarkable capacity for self-criticism, his freedom
from the complex reactions of others, and his firm insistence
on essentials, he nurtured an enormous strength and moral toughness.
Revered as a saint and reviled as a demagogue, Gandhi made so
powerful an impact that we are still not ready to assess it. If
he has already suffered the fate he was anxious to avoid – being
lionized at a safe distance, only to be overlooked in daily practice
– he nonetheless left mankind a challenging, and even haunting,
image of the nobility of self-conquest. This memory will grace
the corridors of history for centuries to come. It will long serve
to disturb the complacency, and to question the unspoken assumptions,
of modern life.
Within the tangled worlds of both polities and religion Gandhi
moved freely; challenging sacrosanct dogmas about the limits of
the possible, he explored daringly simple alternatives. Owing
to his early experience of the meretricious glamour of modern
civilization, he could at once declare that its influence was
insidious, and deny that it was inescapable. Rather than retreat
into stoical aloofness, he lived insistently in the world to show
that even an imperfect individual could strive to purify politics
and exemplify true religion – thereby restoring the lost meaning
of humanity. By holding out at all times for the highest potential
in every person, he raised the tone and refined the quality of
human interaction.
An unsuspecting reader might be rather surprised at the range
of Gandhi's writings. Although he recognized the power of the
written word (his collected works fill ninety large volumes),
he wrote no extensive treatises, devised no definitive theories,
and refused to cultivate a written style in the usual sense of
that word. A remarkably pellucid thinker, he was always a man
of action, a karma yogin devoted to the moral transfiguration
of mankind. For himself he asserted, "Action is my domain,
and what I understand, according to my lights, to be my duty,
and what comes my way, I do. All my action is actuated by the
spirit of service."1
As a thinker, Gandhi was more resilient than rigorous. Having
laid down the foundations of his thought during the pioneering
days of his campaigns in South Africa, he elaborated upon its
diverse applications as problems arose in his eventful life. With
his superb sense of occasion and his assured faith that God provides
what is needed by the aspiring soul, he used the enquiries of
correspondents, speaking engagements, and the demands of day-to-day
business to set the pace and scope of his pronouncements. Convinced
that he should never take the next step until he was ready, Gandhi
preferred to lead when persuaded, without claiming any messianic
mantle. He would not be prompted or pushed; instead he waited
for his inner voice to show the way, and often halted large-scale
movements because that voice was silent. On one such occasion,
when many were clamouring for his counsel, Gandhi simply explained
his reticence by saying: "I am trying to see light out of
darkness."2
He was unerring in perceiving opportunities without becoming
an opportunist, serving as an effective leader without recourse
to expediency.
Gandhi was more inclined to underrate than to overstress the significance
of his written words, largely because of his deep distaste for
fathering a sectarian cult. Just as he disdained the title of
'Mahatma', he also disowned the notion of anything like 'Gandhism'.
Leaving The Story of My Experiments With Truth to stand
as his sole account of himself, he unwittingly invited readers
to imagine him as an unusually honest, but self-absorbed, individual.
In his pathbreaking social experiments, Gandhi saw himself as
an ethical scientist conducting an incomplete laboratory study
of an imperfect specimen. He was, he stressed, an ordinary man
who evolved by setting himself extraordinary, seemingly impossible,
standards. As he wrote in more than one place, The Story of
My Experiments with Truth was never intended to serve as an
autobiography. It originated, rather, as a series of short notes
on his life, written in gaol during the twenties, and subsequently
issued in book form. By themselves, these fragments portray a
deeply sensitive personality, but they do not, of course, touch
upon the last twenty-five years of his life. A thoughtful reader
can gain a more rounded perspective of Gandhi by consulting his
wide-ranging correspondence, his significant speeches and his
weekly essays.
Gandhi's moral and political insights grew out of a coherent set
of concepts, the nuances of which he explored over six decades.
Even the claim that he was a man of action rather than of introspection
could be misleading. Gandhi worked from within outwardly. Through
praying each day, repeatedly consulting his 'inner voice', probing
his own motives, he would reach general conclusions. Then, after
carefully considering the views of others, he would decide upon
a course of action. This elusive and indefinable process, which
he called 'heart churning', itself arose out of his unwavering
conviction that constructive thought and timely action are inseparable.
If skill in action can clarify and correct thought, soul-searching
deliberation can purify action. Gandhi stressed fidelity to the
greater good even when it remained hidden from view, together
with the perseverance that springs from trust. Maintaining such
faith was for Gandhi true bhakti He also demonstrated that
this practice need involve neither indecisiveness nor ineptitude
in worldly matters. A keen alertness to detail can, he showed,
be accompanied by a cultivated disinterest in immediate results.
Upon a basis of unalterable conviction, one can confidently refine
thoughts and redirect action. For Gandhi, this bedrock was spiritual
truth gained through intense search and deep meditation; a developed
art of fundamental commitment to satya and ahimsa, a
moral dedication to self-chosen vows and sacrificial action.
Gandhi did not think that all human beings are alike, but he did
fervently believe that all humanity originates in the same transcendental
godhead. Recognizing that he could not define that sacred source,
he found in satya or truth its best expression. God is
Truth, and Truth is God. Since every human being can know and
exemplify some truth – and indeed cannot live otherwise – every
human being participates in the Divine. From this conviction,
one is compelled to affirm universal brotherhood while attempting
to enact it through authentic tolerance, mutual respect and ceaseless
civility. If Truth is God, man, who cannot exist without some
inward truth, must at some level be sincere. Each individual enjoys
both the ability and the sacred obligation to grow in Truth whilst
acknowledging disagreements.
Gandhi could say without exaggeration that his all-absorbing goal
in life was to seek and to serve God as Truth. Longing to obtain
moksha, spiritual freedom, he maintained that it could
not be won through great learning or preaching, but only through
renunciation and self-control (tapascharya). Self-control
was to be won through action, and the course of action to which
Gandhi gave his life was the service of the downtrodden. Service
of humanity alone could generate the disinterested self-control
essential to spiritual emancipation. Through the selfless embodiment
of ahimsa and satyagraha, Gandhi believed theophilanthropists
could ameliorate human misery whilst freeing themselves from worldly
hopes and fears. Freedom, he felt, lies in anasakti, selfless
service. He was certain that he could never be a votary of principles
which depended for their existence upon mundane politics or external
support. While even social work is impossible without politics,
political work must ever be judged in terms of social and moral
progress, which are in turn inseparable from spiritual regeneration.
Gandhi viewed civilization as that which assists moral excellence,
moving individuals and society to truth and nonviolence. True
civilization aids self-realization and nurtures universal brotherhood.
Gandhi decried moderm civilization because he felt that it is
less an instrument for soul-growth than a supposed end in itself.
Its vaunted intellectual and technological achievements deflect
it from any authentic concern with moral welfare. Its 'isms' and
social structures, sciences and machines, are not evil in themselves
– though in a true civilization many of them would not exist –
but they actively participate in the contagion of corruption that
pervades it. Modern civilization is diseased in the Socratic sense
because it blinds the soul and eclipses the truth. It is, as Tolstoy
also thought, bondage masquerading as freedom.
Gandhi contended that the earth has enough resources to provide
for human need, but not human greed. He held, therefore, that
every man, woman and child would eat adequately, clothe and shelter
themselves comfortably, if there were a greater sharing of wealth
in all parts of the world. Spurning equally the insatiable acquisitiveness
of capitalism and the mechanistic materialism of communism, Gandhi
condemned the very basis of modern civilization. In his notion
of authentic civility, a sense of spiritual and social obligation
is fused with a spontaneous sense of natural reciprocity. He further
upheld the belief, steadily undermined since the eighteenth century,
that social institutions and political actions are by no means
exempt from ethics. For social institutions are, he felt, the
visible expression of moral values that mould the minds of individuals.
It is therefore impossible to alter institutions without first
affecting those values. Since modern civilization is one complex
tissue of intertwined evils, no plan of partial and gradual reform
from within the system can produce a lasting remedy. Gandhi sought
to destroy systems, not persons; but he argued that the 'soulless
system' had to be destroyed without its reformers themselves becoming
soulless.
Holding that one should repudiate wrongs without reviling wrongdoers,
Gandhi could not bring himself to condemn the British for their
mistakes and even their misdeeds in India. They too, he felt,
were the hapless victims of a commercial civilization. The theme
of Hind Swaraj was not just the moral inadequacy and extravagant
pretensions of modern civilization, but its treacherously deceptive
self-destructiveness. "This civilization is irreligion",
he concluded, "and it has taken such a hold on the people
of Europe that those who are in it appear to be half
mad."3
Yet, he added, "it is not the British that are
responsible for the misfortunes of India but we who have succumbed
to modern civilization."4 For Gandhi, the villain is hypocritical materialism,
the judge is he who frees himself from the collective hallucination,
and the executioner is the Moral Law (Karma) which inexorably
readjusts equilibrium throughout the cosmos.5
Gandhi did not preserve his feeling for common humanity by remaining
conveniently apart from it. He knew poverty and squalor at first
hand; he knew too the desperate violence found in those who have
lived on the edge of starvation. Yet he could still extol the
Indian peasant with ringing authority:
The moment you talk to them and they begin to speak, you will
find that wisdom drops from their lips. Behind the crude exterior
you will find a deep reservoir of spirituality.... In the case
of the Indian villager an age-old culture is hidden under an encrustment
of crudeness. Take away the encrustation, remove his chronic poverty
and his illiteracy and you have the finest specimen of what a
cultured, cultivated, free citizen should be.6
Gandhi's longing to transform contemporary civilization was mirrored
in his political thought and action. No more than civilization
is politics an end in itself. Gandhi invoked Indian tradition
in rejecting the modern dichotomy between religion and politics,
but he went much further than most classical Indian thinkers in
dispensing entirely with notions of raison d'etat and in
hoping to counter the propensity of politics to become corrupt.
Even if all wished to shed their pretensions and nurture the 'enlightened
anarchy' of an ideal world community, politics would be necessary
since human beings differ in their perspectives, needs and desires.
Accepting, then, that politics cannot simply be abolished, Gandhi
sought to purify politics by showing that its sovereign principle
is neither coercive nor manipulative power, but moral and social
progress.
Gandhi rejected collectivist theories of both State and society.
He argued that only the individual could exercise conscience,
and, therefore, morally legitimate power. Refusing to hold political
office himself or to endorse those compatriots who did, he saw
power as a by-product of social activity at the family and community
level. Through satyagraha he sought to introduce religious
values into politics by extending the rule of domestic life into
the political arena. Ascribing the underlying continuity of mankind
to the sacrificial exercise of soul-force within families, he
was convinced that the same energies could be brought to bear
self-consciously in the larger sphere of life. For the satyagrahi,
the individual committed to Truth, the only power that can
be legitimately exercised is the capacity to suffer for the errors
of others and on behalf of the welfare of all whether it be the
family, the nation or the world.
The individual is therefore always to be treated as an end in
himself, while social institutions are always to be treated as
corrigible means to some greater end. The satyagrahi should
be active in politics if he can stand firmly for social justice
and initiate constructive change. Where he cannot, he must practise
non-cooperation. One can at least refuse to participate in evils
that one cannot directly alter, even if the satyagrahi soon
finds that he can alter more than he previously supposed. Far
from denying the existence of conflicts of interest, Gandhi evolved
ahimsa so as to resolve such conflicts by limiting, if
not wholly removing, their himsa (violence). Gandhi further
advocated voluntary poverty as an essential prerequisite for any
social or political worker who wished to remain untainted by the
wasteful greed of power politics. He even maintained that possessions
are anti-social: it is not enough to continue possessing goods
in practice under the sincere illusion that one has given them
up in spirit. Possessions, he believed, should be held in trust
at the disposal of those who need them. Furthermore, those who
trusted the community to provide for essential needs could come
to experience true freedom.
Firmly believing in the fundamental unity of life, he rejected
any distinction between public and private, between secular and
sacred, and ultimately, between politics and religion. Religion,
for Gandhi, signifies a spiritual commitment which is total but
intensely personal, and which pervades every aspect of life. Gandhi
was always concerned more with religious values than with beliefs;
more with the fundamental ethics that he saw as common to all
religions than with formal allegiance to received dogmas which
hinder, rather than aid, religious experience. He staunchly refused
to associate religion with sectarianism of any kind. 'Isms', he
thought, appeal only to the immature; through religion he sought
nothing less than the Truth itself. In his vision, each soul resembles
a drop of water from the ocean of divinity, fallen into a muddy
pool. To experience consanguinity with God it must cleanse itself
of the mud. Whatever its tenets, assumptions or practices, every
true religion holds out this hope of self-regeneration. All true
religions are therefore equal in Gandhi's estimation. He regularly
advised enquirers to discover the true meanings of the faiths
they were born into under karma. The seeker pledged to Truth must,
however, abstain from proselytizing others. He should rather encourage,
or inspire, others to elevate the inner and outer practice of
their own faiths. Different religions and sects emerge only because
no tradition and no individual can be the exclusive receptacle
for boundless Truth.
Gandhi found no difficulty in accepting his own religion, while
also acknowledging that he was at heart a Christian, a Jain, a
Muslim and a Buddhist. He thought that accepting the Bible did
not require rejecting the Koran, just because one scripture speaks
more directly to an individual than another. The Bhagavad Gita
was Gandhi's "spiritual dictionary",7 but his continued recourse to it
did not negate any other sacred texts. He thought that the Bhagavad
Gita was the most accessible text in the Indian tradition.
As it affirmed that God represents perfect Truth, and that imperfect
man, whatever his path, can follow its precepts and come closer
to God, the Gita has universal application. Gandhi felt
that enduring help could come only from within, from what one
learns through tapascharya.
For Gandhi, religions and religious concepts grow through human
experience just as individuals mature morally, socially and spiritually.
No religion can claim to be complete in time. No formulation is
final. He could thus say, without condescension, that Hinduism
included Jainism and Buddhism, while freely criticizing Hindu
sectarian disagreements and dogmatism; he praised Islamic brotherhood,
while decrying the intransigence of some Muslim zealots; he upheld
Christianity as a "blazing path of bhakti yoga" and
the Sermon on the Mount as a model, while dismissing most theology
because it invidiously tends to explain away what should be taken
to heart and applied. Gandhi's radical reinterpretation of Hindu
values in the light of the message of the Buddha was a constructive,
though belated, response to the ethical impact of the early Buddhist
Reformation on decadent India.
Given such beliefs, religion is ultimately priestless, because
the capacity for prayer lies latent within human nature. Prayer
and all devotion (bhakti) are, for Gandhi, a kind of petition.
The noblest and purest petition is that one should become outwardly
what one is inwardly – that one's thoughts, words and deeds should
ever more fully express the soul's core of truth and non-violence.
Prayer is to God as thought is to Truth, but since God and Truth
are beyond all limiting conceptions, they cannot accommodate egotistic
petitions. Prayer is truly an intense supplication towards one's
inmost ineffable nature, the source of one's being and strength,
the touchstone of one's active life. Just as politics and religion
should endeavour to reduce the gap between theory and practice,
so too prayer must narrow the gulf between one's real being and
one's manifest appearance.
Gandhi's heartfelt reverence for all religions and for their spiritual
founders and exemplars, together with his restraint in attributing
to any of them uttermost divine perfection, arose from his concept
of Deity. God is alien to no human being, not even the atheist
who risks sundering himself from his own source. "To deny
God", Gandhi believed, "is like committing suicide."8 Since the divine is reflected within every individual as his inalienable
core of Truth, God will appear in as many forms and formulations
as there are possibilities of human thought. There are, at least,
as many definitions of God as there are individuals, and God transcends
them all. Beyond the boundaries of reason and imagination, God
is ineffable, indescribable, without form or characteristic. Gandhi
thought that the concepts and images used to express the divine,
including his own formulations, were at best derived from glimpses
of immense but partial truths. As aids, these images may assist
human growth; but as dogmas, they tend to breed sectarianism and
violence. As aids, they may foster the universal religion of duty
and detachment (dharma and vairagya); but as dogmas,
they tend to reinforce a harsh insistence upon rights and privileges.
For Gandhi, all conceptions of God are merely means to be used
in the service of Truth.
By upholding vows, any person, Gandhi held, can align his conduct
to the motionless centre of the wheel of life. But the individual
must first adopt stern measures to control the mind in its everyday
vagaries, monitoring or even selecting his every thought. Only
in this way can one become single-minded and so incarnate one's
beliefs in one's sphere of dharma. Gandhi felt that conscience
is kept alive not by a preoccupation with intention, but by concern
for rectitude of action. He deliberately shifted emphasis from
the spiritual emancipation of the individual to the collective
benefit of all.
Gandhi's fundamental convictions constitute a world-view of far-reaching
dimensions. They cannot be proved, for "truth is its own
proof, and non-violence is its supreme fruit."9 But Gandhi never doubted
that if these ideals were practised with sincerity and humility,
aimed not at the applause of the world, but at the support of
the soul, they would gradually prove to be self-validating, helping
the individual, painfully but assuredly, to mature into a joyous
state of spiritual freedom and self-mastery. It is awe-inspiring,
but hardly surprising, that upon receiving his assassin's bullets,
Gandhi made a final gesture of forgiveness and whispered, "Hey
Ram! Hey Ram!"
Gandhi did not wish to be considered an inspired prophet. His
metaphysical presuppositions only deepened his disarming faith
in a human solidarity that admits of no degree. He persisted in
seeing himself as a somewhat unworthy exemplar of his exacting
ideals. And yet, by his lifelong fidelity to his vows, Gandhi
demonstrated the liberating and transforming power of any attempt
to fuse metaphysics and conduct, theory and practice, through
an enormous effort of the will. A few months before the assassination,
Sarojini Naidu, the poetess who had played a leading role in the
Salt March, tried to capture something of the enigma of Gandhi
in the context of the twentieth century:
With Christ be shares the great gospel that love is the fulfilling
of the law. With the great Muhammad he shares the gospel of brotherhood
of man, equality of man and oneness of man. With Lord Buddha he
shares the great evangel that the duty of life is not self-seeking
but to seek the truth, no matter at what sacrifice. With the great
poets of the world, he shares the ecstasy of the vision that the
future of man is great, that the future of man can never be destroyed,
that all sin will destroy itself but that love and humanity must
endure, grow and reach the stars. Therefore, today, a broken world
ruined by wars and hatred, a broken world seeking for a new civilization
honours the name of Mahatma Gandhi.
In himself, he is nothing. There are men of learning, greater
than his, and there are men of wealth and power, and men of fame,
but who is there that combines in one frail body the supreme qualities
of virtue enshrined in him: courage indomitable, faith invincible,
and compassion that embraces the entire world? This transcendental
love of humanity that recognizes no limitations of race, no barriers
of country but gives to all, like a shining sun, the same abundance
of love, understanding and service. Every day – today and yesterday
and tomorrow – every day is the same story of the miracle of Gandhi
in our own age.
Who said that the age of miracles is past? How should the age
of miracles be past while there is such a superb example of embodied
miracle in our midst?... He was born like other men, he will die
like other men, but unlike them he will live through the beautiful
gospel he has enunciated, that hatred cannot be conquered by hatred,
the sword cannot be conquered by the sword, that power cannot
be exploited over the weak and the fallen, that the gospel of
non-violence which is the most dynamic and the most creative gospel
of power in the world, is the only true foundation of a new civilization,
yet to be built.10
