M. R. Lalu
Mahatma Gandhi is an enigma which the present and the generations to come would look at as a sheer impossibility. A man in flesh and blood with the innocence and purity of a child held an empire on its toes with his overwhelmingly simplistic and powerfully invasive connection with the Indian public. He was definitely surrounded by an aura of versatility and his ability to embrace multiplicity was his profundity. He was nothing but this versatility fulfilled in the real core of his character that in a later part of his life made him the Mahatma of India. He, otherwise, was often seen from the angle of politics as a leader, who largely mobilized aspirations of generations of Indians to the terrain of a non-violent revolution that caught the British Raj by surprise. This fight against the colonial dominance was not momentary which began with the advent of Gandhi, but it remained active and solid irrespective of it being subdued by the colonial muscle power, visibly surfacing occasionally well before Gandhi came into the scene and the ripples of the agitation was the background that Gandhi began his mobilization.
His entry into the scenario of discontent that ran across the country against the British Raj was instrumental in redefining this essential struggle for freedom. There stands Gandhi with his uniquely invented method of non-violent agitation against the domination of invasion. While wandering through the pages of India’s pre-independent political history, you experience the spiritual impact of the Gandhi presence. You witness a silent but gradual transformation of a man who jumped into the mobilization of the nation’s freedom struggle, into a spiritual being. Gandhi was of course a political persona, but he was a unique representation of someone who could deeply delve into the realm of spiritual greatness through his simple understanding of life. He thought life would never flourish into its actuality without truth and compassion. Turning these universal ideals into weapons of agitation Gandhi was probably raising his eminence as a leader into unassailable heights and the invariable momentum that he could channelize the country through was unique and unprecedented.
Was Gandhi a great soul or a normal human being? This understanding of the most popular man in India’s freedom movement could be treated as a genuine assessment on the Mahatma. He was, indeed, a genuine being who otherwise could have manipulated his aura of greatness with unreliable facts and sophisticated illustrations. But throughout his autobiography, Gandhi chose to represent the common man in him with dim decoration. His mistakes and confessions inexorably take us to a deeper sense of understanding and self-discovery. They, urgently but silently, urge us to go with the inner voice of truth that if not excavated properly would lay hidden deep under the complexity and mishmash of life’s daily ordeals. And to understand Gandhi with all the controversies he had left for his critics and his benign contribution to go beyond the legitimate thirst for freedom being applauded by his followers, he is an unmistakable source to tap inspiration from. Churchill’s “Half-naked Fakir” still holds relevance in a world that is totally enmeshed in ruthless violence in the name of religion, region and expansionist political madness. There stands Gandhi, even after the country gained its freedom almost seven decades ago, with full relevance and ideological commitment, solidly representing the genuine aspiration of the common man.
Here, in this write-up, I would rather look at his personality from a spiritual angle. For various reasons I understand the momentum he created and catapulted, the momentum that later stormed into the minds of millions was substantially present in him in its miniscule form. It was essentially spiritual in nature. His delving into the agitation against the British had this spiritual endurance showering power and what he was successful in was the level of space he could utilize his spiritual essence for the political mobilization. Deriving from the combination of the Vedic wisdom and the Bhagavad Gita’s Dharmic revolutionary theories, Gandhi intelligently chiseled an amalgam of personality out of him which in the first place was an imperfect common man and in the second a great soul, a Mahatma. Both found equal relevance and place and propelled the imagination of millions of Indians. From an individual to his family to his village to his nation, the idea that Gandhi envisaged for an average Indian was an ideal strengthening of his inner purity. This, according to him, was a composition of minute elements such as personal purity to national stability ultimately finding their meeting point in one collective purpose, which according to him was the most important, the wellbeing of a single national entity. He believed that this could not be possible with mere political understanding alone. That’s why, I, in the first place, pronounced that Gandhi’s persona is a blend of various qualities. But I firmly believe that the spiritual depth in Gandhi had actually separated him from the rest of the luminaries who spelled out their disagreements with the British. Interestingly, extreme spiritual power had turned leaders like Aurobindo into serious spiritual introverts while they liked their life to be lived in spiritual seclusion. Gandhi remained grounded and active and mobilized the mass; yet his spiritual effulgence shone bright and that gave him a saintly image. Even Nathuram Godse was not skeptical about Gandhi’s spiritual strength. He accepted and probably revered this quality in Gandhi. Godse’s reason to flush blood out of his skeletal body can’t escape severe condemnation. But the assassin in him did not hesitate to touch the Mahatma’s feet before he tested the accuracy of his weapon on the latter’s chest.
Going into a sequence of events that had gradually turned Gandhi a spiritual seeker as well as a political leader, what we hit upon is his familial traditions; a childhood that he had lived with listening to the stories of the epics and other texts must have undoubtedly put the seeds of spirituality in him. Profoundly rooted in the Vaishnava traditions of Hindu spirituality, the boy in him had grown into a seeker, which he knew would not have fully articulated into its actuality, if he had not brought its flavor into his non-violent revolution. He was deeply influenced by the Jain traditions and the Christian religious philosophy, especially the New Testament and the Sermon on the Mount. But the chief source according to Gandhi was Bhagavad Gita that he says had transformed him completely. Gandhi gave a series of lectures on the Hindu text which was later published under the title the Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi.
Surprisingly, Gandhi’s depth in Gita was unquestionable, whereas critics question him for using the holy text as a philosophy of peace alone. For them, Gita is a reservoir of a great philosophy that pushed a devastated Arjuna into action even if it was violent. Lord Krishna had to amply bring narratives to convince the warrior prince to see life from various angles. But Gandhi’s pressure tactics succeeded all through his life and ever since his death there were many occasions across the world that came to be known for following the Gandhian form of resistance, a mixture of pressure strategy gaining sympathy tactfully. But there were tremors of resistance to what the Mahatma propagated, and violent force was used to eradicate the impact of his method of resistance on 30 January 1948. But truth never gets eradicated; it may remain concealed under the dust of the brutal force of time. The desire to survive with full force was the power that Gandhi generated through Satyagraha, which was a political tool sharpened on a spiritual framework.