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GANDHIAN MARCH TO PORTALS OF FREEDOM
There are certain pages in the
histories of nations which are referred to by later generations with
pride and reverence. Our age is one such which will be remembered as
the era of the resurrection of our nation, when our country passed
from a state of subjection to a foreign power to one of freedom.
This great transition is consummated by the consecrated will of the
people and their determined non-violent resistance to the greatest
imperialist power. This emergence of our nation is achieved without
a long drawn out armed conflict with its aftermath of hatred,
bitterness and decline in moral standards. We owed this in the main
to Mahatma Gandhi who vitalized the country, awakened its will,
roused its energies and inspired its political thinking with a new
ethical passion.
A Saint and a Revolutionary
In his book on “The Yogi
and the Commissar” Arthur Koestler observed that the future of
European civilization depended on the refashioning of the human
mind. “Neither the saint nor the revolutionary can save us, only the
synthesis of the two.” We have had such a synthesis in Gandhi, who
was at once a saint and a revolutionary. His saintliness had little
in common with sectarian orthodoxy. For him, the Ultimate Spirit was
greater than the scriptures, the One Supreme whom all religions
adore. The sacred fire is the same in its essence wherever it may be
burning. Historical accidents account for the varied expressions we
employ to represent the same meaning. Gandhi’s faith in God made him
an incorrigible optimist about the future of man. From his faith
flowed his devotion to truth and love, his singleness of purpose,
his soul of honour, attributes that have endeared him to us all. His
call to us was to deepen our spirits and enlarge the scope of our
affections. The nobler a soul is, it is said, the more objects of
campassion it has. The greatest souls look upon the whole world as
their family, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
Though Gandhi
contributed a great deal to the recovery of our nation, to the
revelation of its mental and moral resources so long repressed by
enslavement, though he led, guided and controlled for over a
generation our liberation movement which has to its credit many
sacred memories and sacrificial efforts, our national revival is not
the chief or the highest part of his great work..
Prophet of Truth
When the strife of these
days is forgotten, Gandhi will stand out in history as the great
prophet of truth and love in the settlement of national and
international disputes. In clear and confident tones he tells us
that this would of blood of tears is not what the world should be.
We must build a world of peace and we cannot do so unless we secure
for it a truly moral foundation. We may hold different metaphysical
views, adopt different modes of worship and there are millions today
who do not desire or place their faith in any God at all. But every
one of us will feel highly offended if he is pronounced destitute of
any moral sense, if he is said to be untruthful or unloving. All
religious and systems of morality are agreed that respect for life,
respect for intangible possessions, good name and honour, constitute
morality and justice. Do not do unto others what you would not like
to be done to you. Atmanah pratikulani paresam na samacharet.
Even primitive savages accept this principle. Only for them its
appreciation is limited to their own tribe and race and those
outside are not regarded as human beings. As our horizon expands, as
our moral sense deepens, we feel that these moral precepts are valid
for all human beings. The great German philosopher Kant, who was
very sensitive to right and wrong, declared, “No evil shocks the
mind like injustice; all other evil that we suffer is as nothing
compared therewith”. He continues, “If justice should perish, it
would no longer be worth living for human beings to live on earth”.
Fear of our own safety or the peril of our country should not
prevent us from protesting against injustice and resisting wrongs.
Neutrality between right and wrong is a sign of moral perversity.
This aching world longs
to live but it does not know how. Our projects for reshaping life
which began in hope have ended in failure. Our sorrows and
sufferings are being repeated under other forms. All this is not due
to the defects of the political machinery of the League of Nations
or the United Nations Organization but to the failings of men who
operate them. The political and economic factors, geography, and
geology, scientific discovery and industrial development are no
doubt important but more important than all these is the human
element which is a complex of wisdom, judgement, disinterestedness,
a sense of fairplay, self-mastery or their opposites of greed,
ambition, vanity, pride and jealousy. The real problem is the human
one. History is made more by the emotions of men than by the forces
of economics. Whether the world makes for achievement or frustration
depends on the nature of the human material. There-education of man,
the discipline of his will and intelligence which will cure his
weaknesses to which he is inclined and strengthen the virtues which
he requires is what we need. We should endow human beings with a
sense of right which will burn up the grosser elements of our nature
in its consuming flame.
Today the world is like
a ship with no captain, heading for the rocks. It is swept by
passion and folly. We do not know whether it is passing through
birth pangs or death throes. If we adopt the path of greed, hatred
and self-interest, we will become sometimes less than human. If we
take the other path of fortitude, unselfish service and sacrifice,
we will reach heights of splendour in body, mind and spirit of which
we can hardly dream. Irreligion is our malady and religion as an
adventure of spirit, as radical transformation of human nature is
the cure for it.
Concept of Non-Violence
Such a religion will be
revolutionary in character requiring us to embrace by an act of
faith a vision of humanity based on justice, racial and national.
Enslavement of one people by another, whatever may be the reason, is
an act of injustice. Those who suffer from such injustice wish to
get rid of it by armed resistance. It is Gandhi’s supreme
contribution that he substitutes for this method of force the method
of love.
It is said that
non-violence is the dream of the wise, while violence is the history
of man. It is tru that wars are obvious and dramatic and their
results in changing the course of history are evident and striking.
But there is a struggle which goes on without arms and violence in
the minds of men. The consequences of this deeper struggle are not
recorded in the statistics of the killed and the injured. It is the
struggle for human decency, for the avoidance of the physical strife
which restricts human life, for a world without wars and famines,
for raising humanity to a higher plane. Gandhi was the most
effective fighter in this great struggle. His message is not a
matter for academic debate by intellectual highbrows. It is the cry
of exasperated mankind which is at the crossroads. Which shall
prevail the law of the jungle or law of love! Every child that is
born into the world offers by its advent the assurance that love is
the basis of life. The common people are simple and kind. They love
their neighbours and go out of their way to help them. It is wrong
to assume that human nature is warlike and it is difficult to change
it. Violence is not born in men but is built into them. Human nature
is plastic and is capable of improvement. Cannibalism and human
sacrifices are abolished. The diseased and the insane are not cut
off. We are not happy about the execution of murderers. We look
forward to a time when criminals and lunatics will be treated as
objects of remedial care.
It is argued that it
will not be possible for one nation to adopt non-violence while
others are heavily armed. Such a view will make all progress
impossible. The human race did not get on its hind legs as one man.
However general the consciousness that the posture is possible may
have been someone had to make a start with the gesture. Even now
someone thas to express consciously the half-realised resentment of
the ordinary human being to the organization of war. Gandhi felt
that he could make a start with the Indian people who, in his
opinion, had an innate love of truth and hatred of force. If India
by the practice of non-resistance overthrows foreign rule, she will
help to build a new humanity out of the ruins of a war-weary and
worn-out world.
Gandhi believes that
non-violence is the most effective remedy in all conditions. In this
battle he who wins gains freedom, he who falls is already free. “To
experiment with Ahimsa in face of a murderer is to seek
self-destruction. But this is the real test of Ahimsa. He who gets
himself killed out of sheer helplessness, however, can in no way be
said to have passed the test. He, who when being killed bears no
anger against his murderer, and even asks God to forgive him, is
truly non-violent. In a world curse by obstinate prejudice, held
together by unfading memories of ancient feuds, who can measure the
value of this matchless weapon of reconciling love”.
One with the Poorest of the Poor
“Physician, heal
thyself,” is the challenge of the successful nations to the people
of India. Gandhi has accepted this challenge and has spent his life
in the task of the healing of the nation. He has known the physical
poverty intellectual inertia and spiritual decadence of his people.
He has seen in his life thousands of ragged skeletons of human
beings crawling to the wayside ditches to die. He has seen workers
huddled together in tenements leading a poor careworn existence on a
petty wage condemned to insecurity and poverty never far removed
from destitution. He has seen middle classes grow up, Eurasian in
mentality, insensitive to ideals. He has felt the moral injury
inflicted by political subjection. Patiently he has addressed
himself to the task of the regeneration of his people. He has roused
their sense of self-respect, goaded them to strive for better
conditions and look at their masters, white or brown, with
fearlessness. None are so fitted to break the chain so as those who
were them. He symbolizes the struggle of the common man and has
identified himself with the starving millions by for going
privileges which others cannot share. His loan cloth, his spinning
wheel, his third class travel are symbolic of his community with the
poorest of the country.
Freedom is not merely
the improvement of physical conditions or the achievement of
political independence. It is advance into a new life when all
things undergo transformation and all forms of human oppressions
cease. Gandhi seeks to emancipate us from the network of social
restrictions imposed on us by centuries of tradition. He enlarged
the progress of the Congress and made in include the removal of the
curse of untouchability, the evil of drink, the pride of caste and
the prejudice of religion. The caste and the outcaste, the rich and
the poor, the Muslim and the Hindu, the Sikh and the Christian, are
all brethren in his integrated vision of the new India which is in
the making. Every period of transition is one of friction,
resistance, conflict, distress of mind, a cruel clash of rival
loyalties. The old dose not yield without protest, the new is not
accepted without resistance. In our generation there has been a
considerable dislocation of society, decay of conventions and
beliefs and breakdown of authority. Our society is heaving like some
huge animal in pain. We feel that there has been no age so
disillusioned, so electric, so unbelieving as ours. In such a period
when all things are on the move, Gandhi asks us to hold fast to the
great loyalties of spirit, to virtue and to truth.
Ends and Means
In his anxiety to get
rid of British rule he does not resort to falsehood or cunning,
deceit or violence. He would rather postpone the achievement of
Indian freedom than resort to wrong means. When he returned from
Second Round Table Conference, he said, “I admit that I have come
back empty handed, but I am thankful that I have not lowered or in
any way compromised the honour of the flag that was entrusted to me.
It has been my constant prayer that I may not in an unguarded moment
of weakness betray myself into act or word that may be unbecoming to
the dignity of my country or the trust which my countrymen have
reposed in me. Thanks to his leadership, the struggle for Indian
freedom has been unmixed with any racial animosity. There lurks no
ill will for Ireland or is expressing itself in Palestine today we
will see how the Indian movement for independence has been a clean
one. That times are exceptional and tempers frayed, there is a
temptation to commit excesses but Gandhi does not tolerate them.
When the Bombay naval disturbances occurred, he scolded those who
started them. He was fully aware of the extent of corruption in high
places, of the failure of services, of masking of secular ambition
by the profession of religious purpose, of the irritation of the
people and yet he warns us not to lose grip over fundamental
principles. He advises us to view the affairs of our disordered and
long suffering country in the light of great ideals.
That we established
freedom without any bloodshed and anarchy was a great triumph for
Gandhi and his principle of non-violence. He certainly did not ask
us to acquiesce in wrong or submit meekly to injustice. He advised
us again and again to resist injustice as embodied in British rule.
Suffering there has been but it has been the suffering of our own
people. Thousands lost their lives. Many more lost their property
and still more suffered in prison. The British Government’s
realization that it was impossible to carry on the old line was due
to the organized resistance of the Indian people to British rule.
The war of course gave great impetus to the liberation movements.
Public opinion of the world was insistent that imperialism should be
liquidated. The British Government’s acceptance of independence to
India was a response to the necessities of the case.
His Faith in Human Goodness
There were many among
the younger members of the country who viewed the British
Government’s proposals with profound misgivings. They saw in it
under cover of a generous gesture a manoeuvre more complication but
similar in trend to the old policy of divide and rule. But Gandhi
advised us not to lose faith in ourselves or even in the British. To
suspect motives is a species of weakness. When division of country
was forced on us, Gandhi opposed it passionately to the last moment
and when this division bore its gory fruit and fierce and brutal
fratricidal was raged and sanity and goodwill were totally lost,
Gandhi along remained steadfast in his all embracing compassion, in
his faith in human goodness and his endeavour to bring the people
back to sanity and goodwill. Full freedom for the country could not
be achieved by the transfer of political power. The achievement of
political freedom was a step but only a: step towards realization of
the ideals which the Congress wet to itself when established in
1885. Gandhi was the embodied voice of sixty years of our struggle
for freedom and the unity of our people.
When we pass from the
ease and security of servitude to the risk and adventure of freedom,
we have to face dangers and differences. The tragic chain of events
starting from August 16th, 1946 in Calcutta with all
their frightfulness and brutality, in Noakhali, Bihar, and other
places. Reaching culmination in unabashed mass terrorization and
massacres in the Punjab and the N.W.F. Provinces were unfortunately
the result of the doctrine of hatred preached and provoked openly
by some of our leaders.
Impact of League Action
The Indian National
Congress adopted direct action under the names of non-cooperation,
civil disobedience and Satyagraha but it was generally controlled by
the principle of non-violence. In the murder, arson and loot that
followed the Muslim League programme of direct action which and not
exclude violence from its conception, the human bonds were united
and the beast in man loosened. Those who talked incessantly of
violence, of bloodshed, of civil war, could not escape
responsibility for the excesses of the mobs and violent attacks on
person and property.
Terrorism became a
regular instrument of politics in the months after Second World War.
It was a new and disturbing force in the politics of the world. It
emerged from the practices natural to total was where the justice of
the means was derived from the righteousness of the end. A
deliberate cult of toughness spread and we were feeling ashamed of
pity as of a crime. Gangster methods were used as a form of pressure
on the Government by those who believed that the march of events was
too slow and needed a kick.
History demonstrates
that murders breed murders and we can cut across the vicious circle
only by getting behind and trying to understand. That the end
justifies the means, that morality may be subordinated to the
interest of the groups, race or nation is an anti-social doctrine.
Though Gandhi was deeply disturbed by the rising wave of violence,
he felt that the spirit of violence would be killed and would not
continue as it was contrary to the spirit of this land. These
terrible happenings in the country demonstrated not only that there
were barbarians in all groups but also that there were finer
elements capable of quiet charity and elemental goodness.
The great Buddha said
that the republic of the Lichchavis would prosper so long as the
members of their assembly met frequently, showed reverence to age,
experience and ability, transacted business in concord and harmony
and did not develop selfish parties engaged in perpetual wrangling
for their narrow and selfish ends. If we are to adopt his advice we
must produce a framework which will reduce internal conflict and
foster the virtues which make for the values of civilization,
humility understanding and justice.
Indians Are One
The people – whether
they are Hindus or Muslims, Princes or peasants – belong to this one
country. Earth and Heaven have combined to make them belong to one
another, if they try to disown it, their gait, their cast of
countenance, their modes of thought, their ways of behaviour, they
will all betray them. It is not possible for us to think that we
belong to different nationalities. Our whole ancestry is there. Take
the problems from which we suffer: our hunger, our poverty, our
disease, our malnutrition – these are common to all. Take the
psychological evils from which we suffer – the loss of human
dignity, the slavery of the mind, the stunting of sensibility and
the shame of subjection – these are common to all: Hindus or
Muslims, Princes or peasants.
I remember how Anatole
France went up to the Musse Guimet on the first of May 1890 in Paris
and there in the silence and simplicity of the gods of Asia
reflected on the aim of existence, on the meaning of life, on the
values which peoples and Governments are in search of. Then his eyes
fell on the statue of the Buddha. Anatole felt like kneeling down
and praying to him as to a God, the Buddha, eternally young, clad in
ascetic robes, seated on the lotus of purity with his two fingers
upraised admonishing all humanity to develop comprehension, and
charity wisdom and love, prana and karuna. If you have
understanding, if you have compassion, you will be able to overcome
the problems of this world. Asoka, Budha’s great disciple, when he
found his Empire inhabited by men of all races and religions said:
“Samavaya eva sadhuh”
“Concord alone is the
supreme good”
A Symphony – that is India
India is a symphony
where there are, as in an orchestra different instruments, each with
its particular sonority, each with its special sound, all combining
to interpret one particular score. It is this kind of combination
that this country has stood for. It never adopted inquisitorial
methods. It never asked the Parsis or the Jews or the Christians or
the Muslims who came and took shelter there to change their creeds
or became absorbed in what might be called a uniform Hindu humanity.
It never did this. “Live and let live” – that has been the spirit of
this country.
If we, therefore, stand
out for the great ideal for which this country has stood, the ideal
which has survived the assaults of invaders, the ideal for which,
unswervingly and even along, Gandhi stood amidst a contagion of
madness and brutality, if we are able to do it, the flame which
sustained us in overcoming foreign rule, would fire our efforts to
build a united and free India.
To what destinies our
nation is marching we do not know. But this at least we know that
those destinies have been perceptibly affected by the life and work
of this great soul, this central figure of our age who has disclosed
to an unheeding world the beauty of truth and the power of love.
Gandhi belonged to the type that redeems the human race. His life
which has been a testimony of devotion to freedom, of allegiance to
faith, of the undying glory of duty fulfilled, of sacrifice gladly
accepted for all human ideals, will continue to inspire countless
generations for nobler living.
S. Radhakrishnan
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