Mahatma Gandhi, The Greatest Hero of Our Age

Anil Navindra Persaud

I live in Toronto, Ontario – Canada’s largest city and by some accounts, the most multicultural city in the world. I was born in Georgetown, Guyana, one of the many countries of the Indian diaspora, a country with a population that is 50% Indian. In a Toronto suburb in 1987, three years after I had moved to Canada, a committee put forth a list of names for new schools in the school board, including that of Mahatma Gandhi. At a public meeting, then school board trustee David Horrox claimed that Gandhi was not a positive role model for children because he was “a crank in his personal life,” had a “shameful” attitude towards women and a “shallow” philosophy. Gandhi’s name was removed from the list and Horrox refused to apologize claiming that he had “not fabricated information.” A few months later, Toronto’s growing Indian community organized a peaceful protest and a march of over 10,000 people through Toronto’s streets. Gandhi had been dead for almost 40 years and still evoked powerful emotions in people who had never known him or his India. Toronto Star columnist Frank Jones wrote, “The outburst by Horrox has no more significance than a fool kicking a rock at the foot of Mount Everest.” He continued saying that Gandhi was “perhaps the greatest hero of the age.” It is a sentiment that has been reiterated many times.

Gandhi profoundly affected people during his lifetime and does so still, almost 60 years after his assassination (January 30, 1948). Many people, including, not surprisingly, young people born years after his death, are very sensitive to the man and his messages. But what is that so appeals to people? How is it that so many people of differing backgrounds, ages and cultures identify with this “half-naked Indian fakir” as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once diminutively called him? If we look closely, there are universal messages and themes surrounding Gandhi’s life, teachings and struggles, messages of victory that fight the disease of apathy and complacence in the human soul.

The range of men and women that Gandhi has influenced around the world include Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benigno Aquino Jr. and the current Dalai Lama, among others. The Dalai Lama, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech said, “I accept it as a tribute to the man who founded the modern tradition of nonviolent action for change - Mahatma Gandhi - whose life taught and inspired me.”

Introduction and Early Influences
 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Leader, Philosopher, Revolutionary, Hero, was born in Porbandar, Gujarat, India on October 2, 1869. Over the course of his life, Gandhi would come to be known by the people as Gandhiji, Mahatma (Great Soul in Sanskrit) and Bapu (Father in a number of Indian languages). Today his birthday is celebrated in India as an annual national holiday – Gandhi Jayanti.

Gandhi describes himself as painfully shy in his youth and a rather mediocre student. He had lived in India his entire life up to age 18, at which point he left for England to study law. England was one of the first turning points in his life, not because of his exposure to English society or his acquisition of a degree in Law. Rather, it was in England that Gandhi first came into more intimate contact with the universality of the ancient spiritual legacy of his motherland. Gandhi met two gentlemen, members of the Theosophical Society and with them, for the first time, read The Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Indian text of wisdom and the book that would have the most profound influence on Gandhi’s life. Gandhi would call the Gita his “spiritual reference guide” and turn to its pages for guidance when in doubt of a course of action.

Colonial life in India had infused in Gandhi’s mind notions of the inferiority and backwardness of his people and their culture. In England, Gandhi came across another book that would significantly influence his life. He later wrote in his autobiography that The Key to Theosophy (by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky) had “stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries, that Hinduism was rife with superstition.” Gandhi met Mrs. Blavatsky and in 1891, joined the philosophical study group The Blavatsky Lodge shortly before returning to India. He was still young, but a little more mature, reflective and introspective. His inner eyes had been opened and his life would soon take another drastic turn.

Discovering Inner Resources in a Far Away Land
 

After being admitted to the bar in 1891, Gandhi returned to India and spent a short and unfruitful period in the practice of law. He discovered his great fear of speaking in public, even in a court of law!

At age 23, Gandhi accepted a 1-year contract for legal work in South Africa, what he would later call “an act of grace”. Shortly after arrival in South Africa, Gandhi was confronted with the reality of racism and discrimination in that land. He was thrown off of a train for being in first class (with a valid ticket) and refusing to move back to the “coloured” third class baggage compartments. This was a major turning point in Gandhi’s life. He spent the night at the Maritzburgh train station, upon which he had been physically thrown, shivering and meditating on his experience. Years later, he would call this one of the most creative experiences of his life. That night, a light went on for Gandhi – something that often happens in life when we are faced with confronting and shocking experiences that make us suffer. Gandhi’s ordeal led him to reflect on man’s inhumanity to man and compelled him to act. This same man who had difficulty speaking in a court of law to advance his own career would now find within himself the resources necessary to perform various actions including speaking in front of thousands of people to help relieve the distress and suffering of others. His life in the service of others had begun.

But where had these inner resources come from? The obvious answer is within. These resources had always been within Gandhi, but in latent form. Resources and virtues he could not release by narrow and self-interested actions bloomed when he put himself at the service of something higher and greater than himself. By putting himself at the service of others, at the service of great ideals and noble principles, Gandhi was able to overcome his fears, doubts and lack of character. He was beginning to learn to master himself and so, master his actions and his circumstances, which, as long as he had something to say about it, would never again dictate his action or his destiny. Instead of staying in South Africa for one year, he spent 21 years, during which time he underwent many trials, suffered physical abuses and attacks, and spent time in prison. He would now be the master of his destiny, never again bowing to circumstance or situation, always fighting for Justice (not necessarily law) and Goodness.

Gandhi returned to India a hero and would spend much of the remainder of his life in the struggle to free his country from a foreign, unjust and dehumanizing rule.

Uplifting the Human Being
 

Though many know Gandhi as a politician from his later years in India, Gandhi was always more interested in improving human means and human beings than in attaining any political ends. For him, it would serve no real end if an individual had their political status elevated, but they themselves remained in unclear and muddy waters at a moral and ethical level. In fact, just before political freedom came for modern India, Gandhi stated that he did not believe that Indians were ready for the kind of freedom that he proposed. He did not believe that harmony or peace could be brought about by signing papers or prejudices removed by legislation. Rather these things come only through patient toil and an education of the soul. In fact, nothing real changes in the outer world unless there is first some change in the inner world of the human being. The courage, strength, equanimity, love, intelligence and will – all virtues that Mahatma Gandhi exhibited – were the result of an inner work and evolution. Recognizing his own lacks of character, he undertook this inner work of the soul. He undertook the battle of the Bhagavad Gita, striving to control the lower, animal-like forces within (those forces who love and perpetuate fear, doubt, comfort and stagnation) so that the higher forces of the true Self could emerge – forces of truth, certainty, love, compassion, dignity, intelligence, justice and honour. To bring back dignity and honour to others, Gandhi realised he needed first to find dignity and honour within himself. And so, Gandhi turned his eyes to that which philosophers say “is of supreme importance”; he turned his eyes inward to the soul, seat of virtue within the individual, and opened his hands outward to serve his brothers and sisters in the world. He undertook this work of selfless service from his days in South Africa until his passing several decades later in India. Words on this subject that Gandhi would have read many times are found in the Bhagavad Gita:

He who shirks action does not attain freedom; no one can gain perfection

by abstaining from work. Indeed, there is no one who rests for even an

instant; every creature is driven to action by his own nature…

Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to

selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life. Do your work with the

welfare of others always in mind.

Ahimsa and Satyagraha

Gandhi conducted many of his personal and social actions according to two important ideas: ahimsa, oft translated as non-violence and Satyagraha, the heart of the movement of non-cooperation.

Behind Gandhi’s famous non-violent non-cooperation or civil resistance is the great spiritual teaching of Satyagraha, which has been translated as soulforce or holding fast to truth [from the Sanskrit satya (truth)/sat (that which is) and agraha (firmness)]. The idea is that truth alone exists and is always true, regardless or time, place or historical circumstance; it is beyond change and the fluctuations of time. Truth is both an attribute of the soul and its supreme quest. Gandhi taught that evil, injustice and hatred have no existence on their own; without our cooperation, intentional or not, they have no separate existence. This is why Gandhi said that “non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.” So, Satyagraha then, is not necessarily about the simple systematic opposition to a government or societal structure, but it is about resisting evil, lies and injustice wherever they exist.

Ahimsa, a central tenet of Gandhi’s life and teachings, has come into English as ‘nonviolence’. However, the English non-violence connotes something negative and passive. Ahimsa, on the other hand, is about proactive and vigorous activism and is a “state of love”. In Gandhi’s words:

“Ahimsa is not the crude thing it has been made to appear. Not to harm

any living thing is no doubt a part of ahimsa. But it is its least

expression. The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by

undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to any body. It is also

violated by holding on to what the world needs.”

There is nothing at all passive in ahimsa or Satyagraha, but both require an intense inner fortitude. There is no passive resistance in civil disobedience. Both require a strength that comes from a surety of self, a faith in the ability of humankind to elevate from his present state and the courage to live or fight for our convictions whenever and wherever needed. Though adamant about ahimsa, Gandhi stated that were there only a choice between cowardice and violence, he would advise violence. For the path that Gandhi walked was not one for the faint of heart; it was a path for the brave, for those unyielding in their dedication to truth, love, justice and harmony. And harmony (in ourselves or in the world) is never gained by halfway, half-hearted actions. Harmony is achieved only by those who are ever willing to give the best of themselves, who strive always to better themselves and who have the courage to live their deepest convictions.

Such a man was Mahatma Gandhi. Though small in stature, he remained a moral giant. His advice to the people of his day was to cease their adulation of him and instead follow in his footsteps, living life with a soul seeking in each of its actions a conformity with truth, his highest god.

Bibliography

• Dalai Lama (The 14th) – 1989 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech,

http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1989/lama-acceptance.html

• Easwaran, Eknath, Gandhi The Man, 2nd Edition. Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1983.

• Fischer, Louis, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World. New York: Mentor,

1982.

• Gandhi, Mohandas K., An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

• Gandhi, M.K., “Non-violent resistance.” Social Justice in a Diverse Society.

Complied by Rita Manning and René Trujillo. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield

Publishing, 1996, pp. 394-409.

• Yelaja, Prithi, “Statue of Gandhi came to call Richmond Hill home,” The Toronto

Star, 12 August 2006.

• The Bhagavad Gita (translator: Eknath Easwaran), Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1996.

• “The Children of Gandhi,” Time, 31 December 1999, pp. 82-83.