3 October 2001, 01:15am IST
C Jayanthi.
The thoughts of the apostle of truth and non-violence, mahatma gandhi, are particularly relevant today in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the us. gandhi was the kind of person who never hankered after position or power; he never claimed to be superior to the rest.
gandhi's practice of non-violent, non-cooperation caught the world's imagination. louis fischer, an american correspondent, quotes the mahatma in his book: ``nothing but organised non-violence...can check the organised violence of the british government...this non-violence will be expressed through civil disobedience...my ambition is no less than to convert the british people through non-violence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to india''. the terrorist organisations and nations that seem to believe that the answer to violence is retaliatory violence would do well to heed this philosophy.
war and violence can never achieve the goals of peace. this world has been through two world wars, several wars to overthrow colonial regimes, yet we are far from wiping out destructive intolerance that gets expressed in armed conflict. we therefore need to renew the pledge to non-violence. peaceful agitation won this country its freedom. india stood tall in the comity of nations. says bhiku parekh in his book colonialism, tradition and reform, "gandhi's nationalism was based on amity and accord between major religious communities. his insistence on non-violence created difficulties for the freedom movement...many religiously minded as well as secular young radicals, who had enthusiastically joined the non-cooperation movement, were deeply angered and frustrated by his unilateral withdrawal of it. gandhi's decision was motivated by his determination to make it clear...that he would have no truck with violence''.
gandhi's simplicity, clarity and conviction of beliefs led a great country from slavery to freedom. his search for truth led him to the path of non-violent struggle. his actions reflected his speech, which in itself became a powerful weapon in the fight for freedom. those who indulge in double-speak should beware, as their words carry no weight. it is obvious that there cannot be one truth for the rich and powerful nations and another for the rest of the world. no one wants war and no one wants violence. death and destruction affect every human being no matter which part of the globe the same way. it is high time nations of the world understood that. in this autobiography gandhi has said, "our creed was devotion to truth, and our business was the search for and insistence on truth. i wanted to acquaint india with the method i had tried in south africa, and i desired to test in india the extent to which its application might be possible." truth and non-violence therefore belong to the art of the possible. it was put to effective use and one can now say that it is a tried and tested method. yet, we find that the nations of the world are at war with each other, flexing muscles and indulging in a crass show of power.
wealth, power and expensive arms and armaments can only go so far. human civilisation has proved this time and again. yet what have we learnt from all this? nothing at all. we continue with the perennial blame-game and pursuit of the philosophy, `might is right'. there appears to be no evolution of the human race from the cave age. we are as primitive as ever. our being in the telecommunications age does not appear to have exactly made us an evolved race. we still prefer the gun to the negotiating table. fischer mentions in his book that gandhi `pleaded for negotiations' with the british. the mahatma said, "i respectfully invite you to...open a way for a real conference between equals." but are we following this dictum? far from it. gandhi says, "the symbol of a court of justice is a pair of scales held evenly by an impartial and blind but sagacious woman". the reason he says is that a person should be for "his intrinsic worth" rather than an external, superfluous reason. we should therefore learn our lesson from a man who shaped the destiny of an entire nation and consequently the world. we should make the distinction good and evil, war and peace and make this world a better place to live in.
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