In spite of all the controversy and criticism about Mahatmaji, still he stands taller than any other Indian—both of his contemporaries and later. The way he even inspired several people outside India is enough to show his greatness as a remarkable human being. Tagore called him ‘MAHATMA’ = GREAT SOUL.
On this 150th birth anniversary of Mahatmaji, it is worth to listen some of his greatest sayings:
Some Top Most Inspiring Gandhi Quotes
Be the change that you want to see in the world.
A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks he becomes.
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.
Nobody can hurt me without my permission.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.
An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.
If you want real peace in the world, start with children.
The best way to find you is to lose yourself in the service of others.
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.
Hate the sin, love the sinner.
Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it.
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
The future depends on what you do today.
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.
The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.
I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one’s self-respect.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Though Gandhiji is one of my gurus, still it is worth reading the other side of his personality which is critiqued by the greatest anthropologists of our time Prof. Srinivas. When I read his critique about Mahatma, I was wondering how Gandhiji would have responded to such criticism about him. In his life, Gandhiji never shied away to face criticism by others. Another book that I read an objective critique about Gandhi is: Josephy Lelyveld, GREAT SOUL: Mahatma Gandhi and His struggle with India, New Delhi, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2011,
But I am not going to share some extraction from them here. Though many won’t agree with his ideology, few will disagree with him when he is told with conviction that his life is his message. I am happy that he is the FATHER of our Nation, whether he remained a true ‘Mahatma’ [Great Atman] in his life or not.
Here are the criticisms about Gandhiji by Srinivas:
Certain elements in Gandhi’s world-view made him a strong advocate of the village as against the state and the big city; he was a philosophical anarchist influenced by Ruskin, Tolstoy, and Thoreau. He had a deep suspicion of the power of the state, a hatred of the enslaving machine, and unlike most educated Indians was a staunch believer in the necessity of manual labour for everyone. He was also in the tradition of genuine spirituality, practicing plain living and high thinking.— The Indian Village Myth and Reality (First published in Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of Sir E.E. Evans-Prichard, J.H.M Beattie and g. Lienhardt (eds), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975). Pp.3-39, in M. N. Srinivas, Collected Essays, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, (2002) Paperbacks 2004. p. 9
Religion was central to Gandhi’s life, thought, and work, and he regarded politics as applied religion. However, his religious ideas were complex, and his utterances and writings on religion, over a period of four and half decades, varied according to the occasion. He warned his critics that his views on religion were subject to change, thus retaining his freedom to jettison ideas which he thought wrong or outdated, and to espouse new ones which he considered desirable….—ibid. GANDHI’S RELIGION. Pp. 355-361, in, p. 355
….He once committed the great Hindu sin of cow-killing (gohatya) by shooting a calf with a revolver in order to put an end to its pain. His concept of kindness to animals was very Western and modern….—ibid. GANDHI’S RELIGION. Pp. 355-361, in, p. 356
…Gandhi discovered non-violence not only in the Gita but in the Bible and the Koran.
According to Gandhi, in the Koran, ‘non-violence is enjoined as duty, violence is permitted as a necessity’ (Nanda, B. R. Gandhi and Religion. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,1990: 14).— ibid. GANDHI’S RELIGION. Pp. 355-361, in, p. 358
…To him reason was important, and when his reason clashed with another’s reason, he (p.358) would ‘claim in all humility’ that his view was right, and when it came to Hinduism he had another potent weapon at his disposal: he had ‘lived Hinduism’ all his life which implied that his adversaries had either not ‘lived Hinduism’, or that their experience had to give way to his. One wonders whether so introspective a person as Gandhi was not aware that his attitude was arrogant even when it was prefixed by the formula ‘I claim in all humility’.—ibid. GANDHI’S RELIGION. Pp. 355-361, in, pp. 358-59
R. Nanda, the distinguished biographer of Gandhi, has concluded from his study of Gandhis’ religious ideas and practices that ‘Gandhi’s concept of religion had little in common with what generally passes for organised religion: dogmas, rituals, superstition and bigotry. Indeed, shorn of these accretions, Gandhian religion was simply an ethical framework for the conduct of daily life (Nanda, B. R. Gandhi and Religion. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990: 16). I find that while the first part of Nanda’s statement is unexceptionable, I have serious doubts about the second part. Gandhi’s religion cannot be reduced to ethics. On the other hand, it can be argued with justification that Gandhi’s ethics were derived from an awareness of the omnipresence and immanence of God. Nanda has himself quoted Gandhi as saying, ‘The relation between God and myself is not only at prayer but all times that of master and slaves’. Nanda says, ‘Since divinity pervaded everyone and everything, when he [Gandhi] prayed, he was not begging or demanding something from God, but for himself, “my Higher Self, real Self, with which I have not yet achieved complete identification”’ (Nanda, B. R. Gandhi and Religion. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990: 9; emphasis mine {author}. One does not have to be an Upanishadic scholar to be able to say that here Gandhi was (p. 359) only echoing the hoary maxim, ‘tat tvam asi’ (that art thou). While Gandhi believed in the immanence of God in every human being, there were also occasions when he prayed to, what appears an external entity, for a gift or benefit. For instance, when his son Manilal was seriously ill for typhoid in 1901, Gandhi rejected the Parsi doctor’s advice to give the patient chicken broth and eggs, and instead gave him diluted orange juice, and ‘several three-minute hot tub baths a day’. When the boy’s temperature refused to come down with these administrations, Gandhi walked the streets and prayed calling, ‘God, God, God, God, please God’. Gandhi attributed Manilal’s recovery to God’s grace and said that ‘God had saved his [Gandh’s] honour’ (Fischer, Louis , The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1990: 79-81). This incident shows his similarity with the behaviour of other devout people, and is quite different from praying to the brahman that is inside very atman. (Italics original)—ibid. M. N. Srinivasan, ‘Gandhi’s Religion’, pp. 355-361, in pp. 359-60 {italics original}
…Over the decades, as his experience of satyagraha increased, Gandhi evolved a code of conduct, indeed a theology, for the guidance of his followers. One of the basic rules of satyagraha is the absence of hatred for the opponent, and also never abandoning the likelihood of converting him to one’s view.—ibid. GANDHI’S RELIGION. Pp. 355-361, in, p. 361
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