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ment”. When Radhakrishnan asked him what his concept
of God was, he said “Earlier I believed that God is truth.
Now I hold that truth is God”. He was driven to the Geeta
because he found in it a path to the establishment of moral
superiority through the perpetual contest between Dharma
and Adharma transcending for spoils of victory. Strength
by itself without a right cause remains a victim of history.
The Geeta ends for him on a note of peace and not in
praise of war. To his mind, all religions had a common universal
texture operating within the framework of humanism
and secularism.
He believed in the Geeta where the lord says “what ever
be the form in which each devotee seeks to worship me
with faith, I make their faith firm in that form alone”. His
prayer meetings would start with the hymn, “Eshwar Allah
terah naam sabko sanmati de bhagwan”. To overcome the
estrangement between politics and religion through individual
and collective action was a complex and demanding
project. It was Gandhi’s greatness that he was able to hold
to truth as his guiding principle without being bound to
conventional forms of religious beliefs. Equality of all religions,
or Sarva Dharma Samabhava, was his creed.
He knew that India needed cultural symbolism to awaken
in them a spirit of self-pride which lay slumbering in
them. Once awakened, he knew it would evoke a mass
The High Commission of India in Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain
BIOGRAPHY
upsurge and create a larger national identity. The image of
Ramrajya was an effort to put a halo in the freedom movement.
He wanted the ancient spirit of India to be revived
and become a part of India’s will to recapture its past
glory. Immersed in Indian culture and traditions, he found
strength in adhering discreet to people’s beliefs and experiences.
Gandhi’s End
Gandhi died when he had still something to say. Tagore
had audaciously said that Gandhi would not succeed, perhaps
even fail as the Buddha had failed, as Christ had
failed, to wean man away from inequities. But he would
always be remembered as one who made his life a lesson
for all ages to come.
Albert Einstein said that in generations to come, people
would wonder whether such a man as this in flesh and
blood walked on the earth.
The death of Gandhi is in the same class as the crucification
of Jesus – a rupture between evil and goodness,
between religion and politics. “Must then a Christ die in
every age to save those who have no imagination”.
Gandhi died with “Hey Ram” on his lips – the
final cry of an anguished soul anxious to discover the
final truth. ❖
What I have learnt from Mahatma Gandhi
T
He will give me the strength and show me the way.
The greatest weapon is mute prayer. The cause of
peace is therefore in God’s good hands.
—M.K. Gandhi
hrough my 74 years’ experiences in this world I
have become convinced that the ultimate objective
of every human being is to realize eternal
happiness or joy in his/her own life. In order to
realize this ultimate objective there are two prerequisites for
us human beings: freedom or liberty and peace or security.
Without freedom no one can feel happy individually or collectively.
Similarly, lack of security or peace makes anyone
feel uneasy or unhappy. Here ‘peace’ indicates man-made
state of affairs free from any sort of disturbance, confrontation
or war, and ‘security’ is related not only to artificial safe
condition but also to one devoid of natural disasters.
During India’s freedom struggle, political leaders and
revolutionaries sought to achieve political independence or
liberation of their nation from the British colonial rule. In
the case of Sri Aurobindo, as a revolutionary leader he first
tried to attack and drive out the British from Indian soil
through military resistance. But later he retired to a seclud-
BY PROF. TSUYOSHI NARA
The name of Gandhi, even in his lifetime, has passed beyond
the meaning of an individual to the meaning of a way of
living in our troubled modern world.
—Mrs. Pearl S. Buck
ed place in Pondicherry for concentrating on his inner revolution
or spiritual liberation from any sort of bondages.
In the case of Mahatma Gandhi, he made a unique experiment
on his whole life to realize true happiness not only
by achieving nation’s politico-economic independence but
also by securing socio-cultural independence and spiritual
liberation of his fellow countrymen.
I would like to confess here how deeply I was
impressed and enchanted with his firm determination, sincere
efforts and profound compassion to create free and
peaceful conditions in his own country for the benefit of
not only Indian people but also even of the British people.
He never tried to attack and kill the British people. Instead,
he always persuaded them to become aware of their own
injustice and correct their wrong policies towards Indian
people, as he firmly believed in the essential goodness of
human beings. Gandhiji never hated, treated unfairly or
harmed anyone while resisting any injustice with his full
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