|
Gandhian philosophy on various aspects of our life continues to be a pillar of strength and inspiration to provide guidance to generations - present as well as future. As the years pass by, the immortality of Gandhiji’s thought is further reinforced. The prophetic insights of Mahatma Gandhi in the sphere of economics becomes very relevant in these days of a global village and market-driven economy with chances for capital to make an unlimited free-play, enabling it to attract further capital unto itself, strengthening its centrality infinitely while it fights shy of concessions to the less privileged of the society. Gandhiji spent a considerable part of his life, pondering over the problem of even distribution of wealth, consulting economic advisors from all around the globe, in developing an economic concept based on a cottage and small-scale industrial sector which was decentralized and agriculture-based. He envisioned an entire socio-economic structure that would make the common people, a majority of which live in the villages self-reliant and self-sufficient. The cure for the now-rampant ‘consumerist culture’ that throws traditional values to the winds, was inbuilt in his simple, need-based economic concept of restricting one’s needs. ‘There is enough in nature for every man’s need, but not for his greed’, Gandhiji said. In the present set-up, the go-getting ‘generation now’ would take Gandhiji to be a naïve old man—a supreme leader of the day who advised landlords to be just trustees of their lands, and asked entrepreneurs to consider their labourers as equal share-holders because these poor people constituted the labour-component. At a glance, one can see that all the ills of the contemporary society stem from our not giving serious thought to looking up to Gandhian ideals at least as guiding concepts, if not practical guidelines.
All this may give one the wrong impression that Gandhiji’s was not a modern mind. On the contrary, he was one of the earliest of our modernists; he was one of the most well-educated and well-travelled man of his times. For his higher education and legal profession, he bravely defied the age-old prohibition against crossing the sea. Gandhiji was the greatest social scientist mankind has seen. About the other sciences too, he had very clear and balanced views. Being one given to spirituality, he weighed every sphere of human activity against its relation to the human spirit. Science deals with the physical and the material. Gandhiji believed that science would be "lame without spirituality." He kept a very scientific diet, and was keenly aware of the fact that the country needed core industries like iron and steel, and modern transportation networks like the railways and lauded the usefulness of these. He was wary of science being put to evil uses, as in war, and as an instrument of oppressing the poor and the deprived, as we are witnessing on a large scale, right now.
Gandhian thought in the area of religious harmony is centrally based on tolerance and respect for all religious systems, while retaining one’s own faith. With the kind of communal riots the country faced before, during, and immediately after Partition, and the convulsive violence gripping the society during frequent intervals thereafter, Gandhiji’s relevance in this area becomes all the more well-etched. Even when the average citizen rues the fact that Gandhian ideals haven’t gained enough ground so as to obviate the recurrence of such violence, the image of Gandhiji once again looms large on the scenario in other ways. Because, after each such eruption, the healing and rebuilding processes are invariably initiated by Gandhian volunteers, organizing all-religious prayer meetings, and peace-committees, small groups who go a long way in infusing confidence into the fear-stricken victims, by spreading the message of good-neighbourliness through their own examples.
The central principle of non-violence or satyagraha that Gandhiji put forward contained the subordinate principles of truth, love, discipline and justice on an absolute scale. If these elements were to be tampered or compromised, adding an element of ‘cleverness’ or ‘smartness’ (as we find in the jargon of modern management), the whole idea would collapse. However, all religions hold forth on these self-same principles; all social systems that aim at man’s all-round development and ultimate happiness have to take these absolutes into account. All else is ways and means to exploit the disadvantaged. What we see nowadays in all walks of public activity is adulteration of these four guiding principles of social conduct. Is it possible for an ordinary human being to practice non-violence observing these four principles? In fact there isn’t a middle path; either we decide not to harm others and live our lives in harmony with nature and fellow living beings, or hasten the process of destruction and disintegration. This is becoming all the more clear to the thinking people of the world, who have given up lifestyles that directly or indirectly lead to the over-exploitation of other beings and nature, and are opting for alternate living, though in a small way. To such people, though in minority groups, Gandhiji still stands tall as a beacon.
Gandhiji’s contribution to conflict-resolution and world peace by the teaching of his ahimsa (non-violence) —which Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr.) adopted in his Civil Rights Movement for equal rights for the blacks in the U.S., and which motivated Dr.Nelson Mandela to persevere in his resolution to liberate South Africa from the grips of Apartheid, spending 27 long years in prison in solitary confinement, and led scores of other world leaders on a moral, upright path of struggle against unjust systems— stands out as unique. Gandhiji’s assertion that political power is a trust bestowed on the rulers of the day to be used for public good, and that it turns immoral the moment it is used against the well-being of the people at large, sets the standard for morality in political decision-making. In the era of wars fought to dominate other countries with an eye on their natural resources, on the pretext of pre-emptive strikes, virtually reducing the world’s foremost societies of the 21st century to the hunter-gatherer-aggressor ancestors’ level, Gandhiji’s insistence that the end should never justify the means stands out. All terrorism is banished through this mantra. All public morality is ensconced in this dictum. And the mess that we witness in world affairs, with the top leaders of the world’s democracies ‘confessing’ to the people and ‘apologising’ to them in seeming expiation of their ‘mistake’ in miscalculating the potential for danger of the perceived enemy, after unleashing untold seeds of future terrorist-strikes worldwide, are all because of the lowering of moral standards of the rulers of the world.
Institutions, political institutions included, are built by the people, for the people, in a democracy. The wielders of power who are but trustees of it, misusing it and acting to further their own agendas, hasten the process of the final destruction of the human society. In any system where the political process does not begin with the people, violence is inherent. Just as in the case of a violent individual, a violent state, nation, or group of people necessarily turns out to be anti-human. Gandhiji’s vision of power, as a tool for the greater common good, is the only sustaining concept for the perpetuation of mankind. Love and concern, or at least tolerance for the other, is a must for the survival of all. Gandhiji, who took the essence of the teachings of the Buddha, Mahaveera, Christ, Mohammad, and others, actually devised a system for the preservation of the human race, drawing from the best of the humanist elements found in all religions. There isn’t another panacea for us.
*Asst.Editor, Indian Literture, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi
|
