Gandhian relevance

POLITICAL SCIENCE

1. POLITICAL SCIENCE

2. RELEVANCE OF GANDHISM IN TODAY'S WORLD

3. Mahatma Gandhi the Indian leader, full name by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbander, India. A lawyer, politician, social activist and writer he became the leader of the Nationalist Movement. He was one of the greatest leaders of mankind. His message is perennially relevant, and few could achieve his moral stature. As a mass communicator he reached and influenced more people in his life time than any other person in history.

4. India’s freedom movement has now become a distant memory and most of its stalwarts have walked in to the penumbra of history. But Gandhi just refuses to fade away. He resides as our bad conscience and the echo of his chanting the mantras of satya and ahimsa spoils the singing of the nightingale. It is not essay to write a research paper about Gandhi. His collected works cover a hundred times comprising thirty million words. He wrote and spoke on all sorts of subjects and did so day in and day out without any regard for consistency.

5. After all Gandhi is our only surviving national icon, even though our reverence to him is confined mainly to the ritualistic observance of his birth and death anniversaries. Anybody who observed Gandhi for the first twenty five years of his life would have at best rated him a person of modest abilities. It was after his return from South Africa that he started discovering his mission and during the next twenty years he had formulated and concretized practically all his concepts and techniques which he used in later years.

6. In the eyes of millions of his fellow Indian’s Gandhi was the great soul. His fame spread the world wide during his life time and only increased after his death. The name Mahatma Gandhi now one of the most Universalist recognized on earth. Time magazine named Mahatma Gandhi, the person of the year in 1930. The United Nations declared Gandhi’s birthday October 2nd as the International day of non violence in 2007 . Gandhiji was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times but never received the award.

7. GANDHIJI AND SWADESI As a matter of fact, India is not only following any of Gandhi’s teachings which are mostly contained to text books in fact, since independence, the country has witnessed many violent communal riots in this multi communal country. Gandhiji’s message of Swabalambi , self-sufficiency with home spun Khadi cloth is not used now a day’s even as a social slogan. Statistics shows that the country is definitely not following sarvodaya , a broad Gandhian term meaning Universal upliftment or progress of all, reaching the masses and the downtrodden, on the contrary, India today has the unique distinction of being the only country in the world which has the richest man in the world while at the same time more than 30% of its population lives in dire poverty.

8. GANDHIJI AND ISM The above shows that today Gandhism is a very confused ism in India. Today many politicians in India the term merely used as a slogan and the common man Mahatma Gandhi almost out of reach of the younger groups by making Gandhiji an unwilling ‘ avatara’. That may be one reason why the only photo use see of Gandhi in India is always that of an old man which brings the image of a very simple and pious man who was meek and mild like Jesus Christ. While Gandhi was not a simple man to say the least, the above does not gives the right image of Gandhi and does not bring any inspiration to the younger group, the group most relevant for Gandhi.

9. GANDHIJI AS A POLITICIAN In real world, Gandhiji was a politician, a shrewd politician, who was trying to bring peace and harmony to India on one hand while trying to bring her independence at the same time. For Gandhiji, the process of change was very important which must be ethical, non violent and democratic giving rights to all minorities. In this respect, he resembles the Buddha for whom the noble eight fold path of right wisdom, right conduct and right effort is the goal and essence of life.One we realize this, we understand the essence of Gandhism and realize that it would be wrong to premise that Gandhism is dead in the world like Buddhism which is mostly prevalent now a day’s outside India, the country of its birth, Gandhism today is alive and active outside India, in fact, today here is hardly any country in the world where some activities are not going on along Gandhian lines.

10. There are very few countries in the world something or the other is not being done, achieved or organized in the name of Gandhi. In short there is global non-violent awakening and awareness after Gandhi. The name of Mahatma Gandhi transcends the bonds of race, religion and nation states, and has emerged as the prophetic voice of the twenty first century. Today, Gandhi is remembered for his passionate adherence to the practice of non violence and his supreme humanism in every corner of the world.One would wonder, that may be the relevance of Gandhi in this all pervading materialistic, agnostic and consumerist culture, what the significance of Gandhiji to the modern world is and what is the secret of his success.

11. Gandhiji has been great light for the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama who puts Gandiji’s success in right perspective. He said, many ancient Indian masters have preached him, non violence as a philosophy. This was more philosophical understanding. But Gandhiji in this twentieth century produced a very sophisticated approach because he implemented that very noble philosophy of ahimsa in modern world politics, and he succeeded. That is very great thing, and that is precisely the greatness of Gandhiji and that is the message of Gandhiji to the modern world in the past century. Many places in the world have been drastically changed through the use of brute force, by the power of gun-the Soviet Union, China, Tibet Burma, many communist countries, and in Africa and South America.

12. But eventually the power of Guns will have to be changed by the will of the ordinary people. As Dalai lama said, we have big war going on today between world peace and world war, between the forces of mind and force of materialism, between democracy and totalitarianism. To fight there big wars the common ordinary people in this modern age need Gandhis.If we try to analyze the secrets of Gandhiji’s success, we would probably find faith, action and populism, the three most important aspects of his life. Gandhiji’s extra ordinary communion with the masses of ordinary people was another of his secrets. In contrast to many of our present day leaders of this highly democratic world, Gandhi was a true leader and friend of the people.

13. The phenomenal success Gandhiji registered in far away South Africa fighting for human rights and civil liberties has great significance. When we find that later his teachings were adopted not only by Nelson Mandela, the South African freedom fighter, but it was also subsequently revealed that the former South African President William De Klerk was greatly influenced by Gandhiji’s principles, in fact from Dalai Lama to Desmond Tutu and from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela. Many world leaders were inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, all in their own different ways.

14. RELEVENCE OF GANDHIAN PRINCIPLES IN TODAY'S WORLD There are six principles that Mahatma Gandhi put forward Truth: learning from your own mistakes and conducting experiments on yourself Non violence : nonresistance connected in way to religion. Vegetarianism: carved in the Hindu and Jain traditions in India Brahmacharya : spiritual and practical purity Simplicity: giving up unnecessary spending Faith: belief in higher power and that all religions are real and are equal.

15. Non violence is control the temper and also the thoughts. What we think, we become and therefore if you always are thinking hurting someone or feeling extremely angry at someone, those are the vibes you, be giving to others. Best way to be non-violent is to think positive and believe that whatever happens, it is for a good reason.Gandhi’s spirituality was a highly evolved and spirituals human being. To him spirituality came first. Other things like politics, public life, etc were by products of his spirituality. Also as a person’s progress on the path of spirituality is, his or her priorities in life change. The focus of life shifts more towards getting personal happiness though mental peace or by helping others and less on material needs, greed and desires. Gandhiji’s experiments on simple and sustainable living followed his own spiritual progress.

16. He also realized from an early age the importance of a great body of a mind in this he was following the tenants of ancient yogic system which stress on a healthy body and powerful mind. Thus all his experiments on food, brahmacharya and fasting came from this belief. Besides he also realized that to fight a powerful enemy like Britain, he had to make his body-temple extremely powerful so that it could sustain long fights. This meant that it had a need least amount of comforts and external inputs and thus Gandhi should that with simple living he could produce the highest quality of thought. To my mind this was an ultimate example of sustainable living.

17. WELCOME