Mahatma Gandhi

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Mahatma Gandhi


Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી, IAST: mohandās karamcand gāndhī, IPA: /moɦənd̪as kərəmtʃənd̪ gand̪ʱi/ (October 2, 1869 – January 30, 1948) was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement.

He was the pioneer of Satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is commonly known in India and across the world as Mahatma Gandhi (IPA: /mə'hɑt.mə 'gɑn.di/) (Sanskrit: महात्मा mahātmā – "Great Soul") and as Bapu (Gujarati: બાપુ bāpu—"Father").

In India, he is officially accorded the honour of Father of the Nation and October 2nd, his birthday, is commemorated each year as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday. On 15 June 2007, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring October 2 to be the "International Day of Non-Violence."

As a British-educated lawyer, Gandhi first employed his ideas of peaceful civil disobedience in the Indian community's struggle for civil rights in South Africa. Upon his return to India, he organized poor farmers and labourers to protest against oppressive taxation and widespread discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for the alleviation of poverty, for the liberation of women, for brotherhood amongst differing religions and ethnicities, for an end to untouchability and caste discrimination, and for the economic self-sufficiency of the nation, but above all for Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination.

Gandhi famously led Indians in the disobedience of the salt tax on the 400 kilometre (248 miles) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and in an open call for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years on numerous occasions in both South Africa and India.

Gandhi practised and advocated non-violence and truth, even in the most extreme situations. A student of Hindu philosophy, he lived simply, organizing an ashram that was self-sufficient in its needs. Making his own clothes—the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl woven with a charkha—he lived on a simple vegetarian diet. He used rigorous fasts, for long periods, for both self-purification and protest.

Alternate name: Mahatma Gandhi
Date of birth: October 2, 1869(1869-10-02)
Place of birth: Porbandar, Gujarat, British India
Date of death: January 30, 1948 (aged 78)
Place of death: New Delhi, India
Movement: Indian independence movement
Major organizations: Indian National Congress


Early life
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into the Hindu Modh family in Porbandar, in 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan (Prime Minister) of Porbandar, and Putlibai, Karamchand's fourth wife, a Hindu of the Pranami Vaishnava order. Karamchand's first two wives, who each bore him a daughter, died from unknown reasons (rumored to be in childbirth). Living with a devout mother and surrounded by the Jain influences of Gujarat, Gandhi learned from an early age the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between members of various creeds and sects. He was born into the vaishya, or business, caste.


Gandhi and his wife Kasturba (1902)In May 1883, at the age of 13, Gandhi was married through his parents' arrangements to Kasturba Makhanji (also spelled "Kasturbai" or known as "Ba"). They had four sons: Harilal Gandhi, born in 1888; Manilal Gandhi, born in 1892; Ramdas Gandhi, born in 1897; and Devdas Gandhi, born in 1900. Gandhi was a mediocre student in his youth at Porbandar and later Rajkot. He barely passed the matriculation exam for Samaldas College at Bhavanagar, Gujarat. He was also unhappy at the college, because his family wanted him to become a barrister.

At the age of 18 on September 4, 1888, Gandhi went to University College London to train as a barrister. His time in London, the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of the Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India, to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity. Although Gandhi experimented with adopting "English" customs—taking dancing lessons for example—he could not stomach his landlady's mutton and cabbage. She pointed him towards one of London's few vegetarian restaurants.

Rather than simply go along with his mother's wishes, he read about, and intellectually embraced vegetarianism. He joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and founded a local chapter. He later credited this with giving him valuable experience in organizing institutions. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu Brahmanistic literature.

They encouraged Gandhi to read the Bhagavad Gita. Not having shown a particular interest in religion before, he read works of and about Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and other religions. He returned to India after being called to the bar of England and Wales by Inner Temple, but had limited success establishing a law practice in Bombay. Later, after applying and being turned down for a part-time job as a high school teacher, he ended up returning to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, but was forced to close down that business as well when he ran afoul of a British officer. In his autobiography, he describes this incident as a kind of unsuccessful lobbying attempt on behalf of his older brother. It was in this climate that (in 1893) he accepted a year-long contract from an Indian firm to a post in Natal, South Africa.

When back in London in 1895, he happened to meet Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, the Radical-turned-ultra-Tory, whose son Neville became Prime Minister in the 1930s and helped suppress Gandhi. Chamberlain Snr. agreed that the treatment of Indians was barbaric but appeared unwilling to push through any legislation about this however.

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Legacy

Statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Tavistock Square Gardens, London.Gandhi's birthday, October 2, is a national holiday in India, Gandhi Jayanti. On 15 June 2007, it was announced that the "United Nations General Assembly" has "unanimously adopted" a resolution which has declared October 2 to be "the International Day of Non-Violence."

The word Mahatma, while often mistaken for Gandhi's given name in the West, is taken from the Sanskrit words maha meaning Great and atma meaning Soul.

Most sources, such as Dutta and Robinson's Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, state that Rabindranath Tagore first accorded the title of Mahatma to Gandhi.Other sources state that Nautamlal Bhagavanji Mehta accorded him this title on January 21, 1915.

In his autobiography, Gandhi nevertheless explains that he never felt worthy of the honour.[44] According to the manpatra, the name Mahatma was given in response to Gandhi's admirable sacrifice in manifesting justice and truth.

Time Magazine named Gandhi the Man of the Year in 1930, the runner-up to Albert Einstein as "Person of the Century" at the end of 1999, and named The Dalai Lama, Lech Wałęsa, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benigno Aquino, Jr., Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela as Children of Gandhi and his spiritual heirs to non-violence.

The Government of India awards the annual Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize to distinguished social workers, world leaders and citizens. Nelson Mandela, the leader of South Africa's struggle to eradicate racial discrimination and segregation, is a prominent non-Indian recipient.


The centennial commemorative statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the center of downtown Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.In 1996, the Government of India introduced the Mahatma Gandhi series of currency notes in rupees 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 denomination. Today, all the currency notes in circulation in India contain a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1969, the United Kingdom issued a series of stamps commemorating the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi.




In the United Kingdom, there are several prominent statues of Gandhi, most notably in Tavistock Square, London near University College London where he studied law. January 30 is commemorated in the United Kingdom as the "National Gandhi Remembrance Day." In the United States, there are statues of Gandhi outside the Union Square Park in New York City, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, and on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D. C., near the Indian Embassy.

The city of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa—where Gandhi was ejected from a first-class train in 1893—now hosts a commemorative statue. There are wax statues of Gandhi at the Madame Tussaud's wax museums in London, New York, and other cities around the world.


The Martyr's Column at the Gandhi Smriti in New Delhi, marks the spot where he was assassinated.Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, though he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948, including the first-ever nomination by the American Friends Service Committee.

Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award. Mahatma Gandhi was to receive the Prize in 1948, but his assassination prevented the award. The war breaking out between the newly created states of India and Pakistan could have been an additional complicating factor that year.

The Prize was not awarded in 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate" that year, and when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi."

In New Delhi, the Birla Bhavan (or Birla House), where Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, was acquired by the Government of India in 1971 and opened to the public in 1973 as the Gandhi Smriti or Gandhi Remembrance. It preserves the room where Mahatma Gandhi lived the last four months of his life and the grounds where he was shot while holding his nightly public walk.

A Martyr's Column now marks the place where Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated.



On January 30 every year, on the anniversary of the death of Mahatma Gandhi, in schools of many countries is observed the School Day of Non-violence and Peace (DENIP), founded in Spain in 1964. In countries with a Southern Hemisphere school calendar, it can be observed on March 30 or thereabouts.

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Criticism and Controversies


As a rule, Gandhi was opposed to the concept of partition as it contradicted his vision of religious unity. Of the partition of India to create Pakistan, he wrote in Harijan on 06 October 1946:

[The demand for Pakistan] as put forth by the Moslem League is un-Islamic and I have not hesitated to call it sinful. Islam stands for unity and the brotherhood of mankind, not for disrupting the oneness of the human family. Therefore, those who want to divide India into possibly warring groups are enemies alike of India and Islam. They may cut me into pieces but they cannot make me subscribe to something which I consider to be wrong [...] we must not cease to aspire, in spite of [the] wild talk, to befriend all Moslems and hold them fast as prisoners of our love.

However, as Homer Jack notes of Gandhi's long correspondence with Jinnah on the topic of Pakistan: "Although Gandhi was personally opposed to the partition of India, he proposed an agreement which provided that the Congress and the Moslem League would cooperate to attain independence under a provisional government, after which the question of partition would be decided by a plebiscite in the districts having a Moslem majority."

These dual positions on the topic of the partition of India opened Gandhi up to criticism from both Hindus and Muslims. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and contemporary Pakistanis condemned Gandhi for undermining Muslim political rights. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his allies condemned Gandhi, accusing him of politically appeasing Muslims while turning a blind eye to their atrocities against Hindus, and for allowing the creation of Pakistan (despite having publicly declared that "before partitioning India, my body will have to be cut into two pieces").

This continues to be politically contentious: some, like Pakistani-American historian Ayesha Jalal argue that Gandhi and the Congress' unwillingness to share power with the Muslim League hastened partition; others, like Hindu nationalist policician Pravin Togadia have also criticized Gandhi's leadership and actions on this topic, but indicating that excessive weakeness on his part led to the division of India.

Gandhi also expressed his dislike for the idea of partition during the late 1930s in response to the topic of the partition of Palestine. He stated in Harijan on 26 November 1938:

Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question. My sympathies are all with the Jews.

I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me.

The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.

Gandhi was criticized for this and responded in his follow-up articles, "Questions on the Jews", "Reply to Jewish Friends," and "Jews and Palestine."


Rejection of violent resistance
Gandhi also came under some political fire for his criticism of those who attempted to achieve independence through more violent means. His refusal to protest against the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Udham Singh and Rajguru were sources of condemnation among some parties.

Of this criticism, Gandhi stated,

"There was a time when people listened to me because I showed them how to give fight to the British without arms when they had no arms but today I am told that my non-violence can be of no avail against the [Hindu–Moslem riots] and, therefore, people should arm themselves for self-defense"

Gandhi commented upon the 1930s persecution of the Jews in Germany within the context of Satyagraha. In the November 1938 article on the Nazi persecution of the Jews quoted above, he offered non-violence as a solution:

The German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter.

The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.

But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of both?"

In the same article, Gandhi continued by stating that:

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.

Also, in Harijan, December 17, 1938, Gandhi asserted that Jews "so far as I know, have never practised non-violence as an article of faith or even as a deliberate policy," and alleged that Jews sought to "punish Germany for her persecution and to deliver them from oppression."

Gandhi was criticized by a number of people for these and related remarks. He responded by stating that, "friends have sent me two newspaper cuttings criticizing my appeal to the Jews. The two critics suggest that in presenting non-violence to the Jews as a remedy against the wrong done to them, I have suggested nothing new....what I have pleaded for is renunciation of violence of the heart and consequent active exercise of the force generated by the great renunciation.

Gandhi would later withdraw some of the statements that he made in an article published in Harijan on May 27, 1939.

A friend of Gandhi's Martin Buber, wrote a critical open letter to Gandhi on February 24, 1939. Buber asserted that the comparison between British treatment of Indian subjects and Nazi treatment of Jews was inapposite.


Early South African articles
Some of Gandhi's early South African articles are controversial. As reprinted in "The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi," (Vol. 8, p.120), Gandhi wrote in the "Indian Opinion" in 1908 of his time in a South African prison:

"Many of the native prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal and often created rows and fought among themselves."

Also as reprinted in "The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi," (Vol. 2, p.74), Gandhi gave a speech on September 26, 1896 in which he referred to the "raw kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness".

The term "Kaffir" is considered a derogatory term today (it is worth noting, however, that during Gandhi's time, the term "Kaffir" had a different connotation than its present-day usage). Remarks such as these have led some to accuse Gandhi of racism.

Two professors of history who specialize in South Africa, Surendra Bhana and Goolam Vahed, examined this controversy in their text, The Making of a Political Reformer: Gandhi in South Africa, 1893–1914. (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005).

They focus in Chapter 1, "Gandhi, Africans and Indians in Colonial Natal" on the relationship between the African and Indian communities under "White rule" and policies which enforced segregation (and, they argue, inevitable conflict between these communities). Of this relationship they state that, "the young Gandhi was influenced by segregationist notions prevalent in the 1890s."

At the same time, they state, "Gandhi's experiences in jail seemed to make him more sensitive to their plight the later Gandhi mellowed; he seemed much less categorical in his expression of prejudice against Africans, and much more open to seeing points of common cause. His negative views in the Johannesburg jail were reserved for hardened African prisoners rather than Africans generally."

Former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela is a follower of Gandhi, despite efforts in 2003 on the part of Gandhi's critics to prevent the unveiling of a statue of Gandhi in Johannesburg.

Bhana and Vahed commented on the events surrounding the unveiling in the conclusion to The Making of a Political Reformer: Gandhi in South Africa, 1893–1914. In the section "Gandhi's Legacy to South Africa," they note that "Gandhi inspired succeeding generations of South African activists seeking to end White rule. This legacy connects him to Nelson Mandela in a sense Mandela completed what Gandhi started."They continue by referring to the controversies which arose during the unveiling of the statue of Gandhi.

In response to these two perspectives of Gandhi, Bhana and Vahed argue: "Those who seek to appropriate Gandhi for political ends in post-apartheid South Africa do not help their cause much by ignoring certain facts about him; and those who simply call him a racist are equally guilty of distortion."

Recently, Nelson Mandela took part in the 29 January – 30 January 2007 conference in New Delhi which marked the 100th anniversary of Gandhi's introduction of satyagraha in South Africa.

In addition, Mandela appeared to the audience via video clip at the South African premiere of Gandhi, My Father in July 2007. Of this clip, the film's producer Anil Kapoor said, "Nelson Mandela sent a special message for the film's opening. Mandela not only spoke about Gandhi, he spoke about me. What was heart-warming and humbling was that he thanked me for making this film, whereas I should thank him and South Africa for letting me shoot 'Gandhi My Father' in their country and allowing me to hold the world premiere there. Mandela identified deeply with the film." The current South African president, Thabo Mbeki, attended along with the rest of the South African Cabinet.


Other criticisms
Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar condemned Gandhi's use of the term Harijans to refer to the Dalit community. This term meant "Children of God";

it was interpreted by some as saying that Dalits were socially immature, and that privileged caste Indians played a paternalistic role. Ambedkar and his allies also felt Gandhi was undermining Dalit political rights. Gandhi, although born into the Vaishya caste, insisted that he was able to speak on behalf of Dalits, despite the availability of Dalit activists such as Ambedkar.

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Nobel Peace Prize


Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, in 1937, 1938, 1939,1947 and finally in 1948, a few days before his assassination. However he was not awarded the Nobel Prize because he was “neither a real politician nor a humanitarian relief worker".

The Executive Director for the Nobel Foundation Michael Sohlam has gone on record to state that not awarding him the Peace Prize was "a big regret" of the Nobel Foundation.

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Further reading

Bhana, Surendra and Goolam Vahed. The Making of a Political Reformer: Gandhi in South Africa, 1893–1914. New Delhi: Manohar, 2005.

Bondurant, Joan V. (1988). Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of

Conflict. Princeton UP. ISBN 0-691-02281-X.

Chernus, Ira. American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea, chapter 7. ISBN 1-57075-547-7

Chadha, Yogesh. Gandhi: A Life. ISBN 0-471-35062-1

Dutta, Krishna and Andrew Robinson. Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, 1997,

London: Picador/Macmillan. ISBN 0-330-34962-7.

Gandhi, Mahatma. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi:

Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1994.

Gandhi The Man, biography by Eknath Easwaran ISBN 0-915132-96-6

Fischer, Louis. The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life,

Work, and Ideas. Vintage: New York, 2002. (reprint edition) ISBN 1-4000-3050-1

Gandhi, M.K. "Zionism and Antisemitism." The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His

Life and Writings. Homer Jack (ed.) Grove Press, New York: 1956:317–322.

"Questions on the Jews." The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and
Writings. Homer Jack (ed.) Grove Press, New York: 1956:322-3.

"Reply to Jewish Friends." The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings. Homer Jack (ed.) Grove Press, New York: 1956:323-4.

"Jews and Palestine." The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings. Homer Jack (ed.) Grove Press, New York: 1956:324-6.

Gandhi, M.K. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (available at wikisource) (1929) ISBN 0-8070-5909-9

Gandhi, Rajmohan (1990). Patel: A Life. Navajivan Publishing House. ISBN 81-7229-138-8.

Hunt, James D. Gandhi in London. New Delhi: Promilla & Co., Publishers, 1978.

Mann, Bernhard, The Pedagogical and Political Concepts of Mahatma Gandhi and

Paulo Freire. In: Claußen, B. (Ed.) International Studies in Political Socialization and Education. Bd. 8. Hamburg 1996. ISBN 3-926952-97-0

Rühe, Peter. Gandhi: A Photo biography. ISBN 0-7148-9279-3

Sharp, Gene. Gandhi as a Political Strategist, with Essays on Ethics and Politics.

Boston: Extending Horizon Books, 1979.

Sofri, Gianni. Gandhi and India: A Century in Focus. (1995) ISBN 1-900624-12-5

Gordon, Haim. A Rejection of Spiritual Imperialism: Reflections on Buber's Letter to

Gandhi. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, June 22, 1999.

Gandhi, M.K. Satyagraha in South Africa

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1888-1891: Studied law in London

1893: Sailed for South Africa

1906: Began Satyagraha campaign in South Africa to protest the requirement that Indians be fingerprinted and carry identification cards

1915: Returned to India from South Africa

1917: Initiated Champaran Satyagraha to alleviate the condition of indigo planters

1919: Instituted Satyagraha campaign in India to protest the Rowlatt Acts, which deprived all Indians of important civil liberties.

1922: Ended Non-Cooperation movement against British Raj after his followers were involved in a series of riots and disturbances that violated his policy of nonviolence

1930: Led Dandi March to collect salt in protest of the British salt tax.

1931: Signed a pact with Lord Irwin to suspend the Civil Disobedience Movement and went to London to attend Round Table Conference.

1932: Fasted to protest the treatment of people who belonged to no Hindu caste, the Harijans or Untouchables

1942: Launched Quit India Movement against British Raj.

January 30, 1948: Assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.

Quotes:

• I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.
• Abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature.
• Action for one's own self binds, action for the sake of others delivers from bondage.
• What is faith worth if it is not translated into action?
• You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance.
• Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly.
• Ahimsa is the eradication of the desire to injure or to kill.
• Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and ahimsa don't go together any more that water and fire.
• True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all.
• The removal of untouchability is one of the highest expressions of ahimsa.
• The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die.
• Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity.
• No power on earth can subjugate you when you are armed with the sword of ahimsa. It ennobles both the victor and the vanquished.
• The votary of ahimsa has only one fear, that is, of God.
• The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.
• The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.
• I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence.
• God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.