"Why should I study Gandhi?" a college student asked recently. I blinked. Not because I did not know the answer but because the answer was obvious.
The irony is that Bill Clinton, who was the President of the U.S. wanted to study the philosophy of the Mahatma, and students in Germany named their new school after him and an Indian student asks — "Why Gandhi?"
Albert Einstein said, "It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi’s method on a large scale."
Martin Luther King said, "From my background, I gained my regulating Christian ideals from Gandhi, I learned my operational technique".
Rev. Dr. John Haynes Holmes, Minister of the Community Church of New York had said, "Already Gandhi’s place in history is sure. Our age is blessed by the presence of one more of the pure leaders of the spirit. Amid the fury of force and violence, bloodshed and slaughter, these save mankind from death, and patiently and ever steadfastly point the way to life".
Louis Fischer, American Correspondent and Commentator wrote: "I have met Lenin, Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wilkie, Stalin, Lituvinov, Attlee, Einstein, Lloyd George, Eleanor Roosevelt and many other famous people. I have never met a more remarkable person than Gandhi".
Rabindranath Tagore sang his praises: "He (Gandhi) stopped at the thresholds of the huts of the thousands of dispossessed, dressed like one of their own. He spoke to them in their own language. Here was living truth at last, and not only quotations from books. For this reason the "Mahatma", the name given to him by the people of India, is his real name, who else has felt like him that all Indians are his own flesh and blood.
At Gandhi’s call India blossomed forth to new greatness… " What was the secret of Gandhi’s uniqueness? What were the fundamentals by which he developed his style? Truth. The truth that he realised every moment gave him the direction. We need to be truthful. The fasting, silence and prayer were just a dialogue between him and God. God for him was truth.
Are you able to decide what is right and wrong at any point of life. And the truth does not belong to Gandhi alone. "It is as old as the Himalayas," said Gandhiji and he tried to climb the mountain. Violence, terrorism, fundamentalism, drink and drugs, gambling, hankering after political power, corruption and so on are like quicksand.
We spend our life trying to get out of the quicksand and never have time to even look at the beauty of the mountain in front of us and venture to climb it.
So if one would like to climb the mountain, the study of Gandhi is essential. As humans we need to learn to live with others.
Do we live our life with a feeling of togetherness? We have developed caste and religion based organisations to serve our priorities. Indulgence is the order of the day and not service. Whatever Gandhiji did with intuition to make his life simple is today adopted as an agenda for protection of nature. If you want to know how he did it, study Gandhi.
Gandhiji replied to all letters he received, sometimes he replied to even 200 letters. He wanted to revive the village industries not because he fancied the village industries but he loved man. He took care that the innovative skills were not destroyed. He promoted the charkha, because he found it the perfect machine that served as an extension of the human hands.
Empowering oneself by following the path of truth, developing a feeling of togetherness for the whole creation and expressing these through one’s innate creativity was the unbeaten track Gandhi followed which we do miss in our present day lives.
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