In
this world of war, strife and unrest Mahatma Gandhi is an example for non violence
GANDHI was the greatest exponent of the doctrine of
ahimsa or non-violence in modern times, but he was not its author. Ahimsa has
been part of the Indian religious tradition for centuries: Hindu, Jain and
Buddhist. It was Gandhi's genius that transformed, what had been an individual
ethic, into a tool of social and political action. This he did in the course of
his twenty-year long struggle against racialism in South Africa...
If
the Indian National Congress had not accepted his basic tenet of non-violence in
1920, he would have had nothing to do with its struggle for liberation from
British rule. "I would like to repeat to the world, times without
number", Gandhi said in 1931, "that I will not purchase my country's
freedom at the cost of non-violence..."
We
must remember that Gandhi applied his method of non-violent resistance not only
against foreign rule, but against social evils such as racial discrimination
and untouchability. Indeed, he claimed that non-violence lay at the root of
every one of his activities, and his mission in life was not merely the freedom
of India but the brotherhood of man. His satyagraha was designed not only for
India, but for the whole world; it could transform relations between
individuals, as well as between communities and nations. In the early 1920s,
when he had just emerged as the stoutest champion of nationalism in Asia,
Gandhi unequivocally subscribed to the ideal of a world federation. "The
better mind of the world desires today", he told the Belgaum Congress in
1924, "not absolutely independent states warring against each other but a
federation of friendly interdependent states."
In
the 1930s, when the forces of violence were gathering momentum in Europe, he
reaffirmed his faith in non-violence. Through the pages of his weekly paper,
Harijan, he expounded his approach to political tyranny and military
aggression. He advised weaker nations to defend themselves by offering
non-violent resistance to the aggressor. A non-violent Abyssinian, he argued,
needed no arms and so succour from the League of Nations; if every Abyssinian
man, woman, and child refused cooperation with the Italians, willing or forced,
the latter would have to walk to victory over the dead bodies of their victims
and to occupy their country without the people. The motive power of Nazi and
Fascist aggression was the desire to carve out new empires, and behind it all
was a ruthless competition to annex new sources of raw materials and fresh
markets. In Gandhi's opinion, wars were thus rooted in the overweening greed of
men as also in the purblind tribalism that placed nationalism above humanity.
In the ultimate analysis, to shake off militarism, it was necessary to end the
competitive greed and fear and hatred which fed it...
Gandhi's
ideas have fuelled not only struggles against foreign domination and tyrannical
rule, but also crusades against the piling up of nuclear weapons and the havoc
being wrought by developed countries through wanton and wasteful use of the
resources of the planet. Petra Kelly, a leader of the Green Peace movement in
Germany who was influenced by the ideas of Martin Luther King and Gandhi,
denounced methods of production which depended upon a ceaseless supply of raw
materials and were leading to the exhaustion of natural resources and threatening
ecological devastation. Speaking almost in the Gandhian idiom, she said,
"We cannot solve any political problem, without also addressing spiritual
ones."
Despite
these examples of non-violent struggles over the past two decades, which have
highlighted the power potential of the oppressed, it must be admitted that
Gandhi's ideas and methods are still appreciated by only a small enlightened
minority in the world. Gandhi himself had no illusions about their ready
acceptance. He did not claim finality for his views, which he regarded within a
broad ethical framework as aids for bettering the lives of his fellow men; they
could be altered if they did not work. Though he expounded his philosophy of
life in hundreds of articles and letters, he never tried to build it into a
system. Nevertheless, the truth is that more than fifty years after his death,
his deepest concerns have become the concerns of thinking men and institutions
working for a peaceful and humane world.
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