Gandhi's Life As His Message

Rev. Amy Russell - 2009-02-01

“My Life is My Message”
February 1, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell
Mohandas Gandhi, who was given the honorary title “Mohatma” or “Great Soul” was a reformer and activist who based his actions on a deep understanding of the teachings of both Christianity and Hinduism. He studied both the Christian bible and the teachings of Hindusim including the Bhagavad Gita and found within those teachings a commitment to finding peace with others and an inner journey to finding peace within oneself.
The Hindu teachings taught him many ways of being that we see exemplified is his life. First, to seek a sense of individual freedom. Secondly, a self-discipline that comes from understanding oneself as a part of the whole universe. Seeking individual freedom as described by Hindu teachings did not mean individual license to do what one wanted, but rather a journey to understand freedom within one’s spirit. Gandhi believed and exemplified the Hindu teaching that one’s unlimited freedom is a spiritual freedom of one’s soul and its connection to others.
The term that Gandhi used to describe India’s goal of independence from Britain was “swaraj” which means self-rule or self-control. The word is an sacred Vedic word that speaks of the inner journey toward spiritual freedom, instead of independence as a negative term about ridding oneself of bondage.
Gandhi’s ideas about non-violence stem from this spiritual awareness. He spoke about the awareness we must have of the unity of all being. When we understand this oneness, then we understand that our sacred connections to others would not allow us to hurt others because it would be the same as hurting ourselves. His movement toward complete inclusivity of others aimed at ridding India of the Caste system stemmed from this spiritual understanding of unity in diversity.
Gandhi didn’t see his goal as separation from British rule, but rather a movement toward India becoming able to rule itself in a way that didn’t oppress its own people. He often spoke about India finding the right way to rule itself and then freedom from British rule would occur. He believed that India’s freedom also meant change in India’s internal religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, eliminating the caste system, and creating economic equality. These internal quests were just as important to him as his movement toward freedom toward British rule. He thought that India would never be truly “free” if the government continued to oppress their own citizens. He also believed that the means were as important as the ends. He didn’t want to win freedom through violence because that would mean that India would have degraded itself in its search for independence.
In our reading today, Gandhi expressed this freedom by saying that “Everyone’s freedom is within his grasp. . There are two alternatives before us. The one is that of violence, the other of non-violence… We reap as we sow.”
The term that Gandhi used to describe his non-violent resistance goal was “satyagraha” which translates as “truth holding firmly”. He said that this term described non-violent resistance more accurately than “passive resistance” because the latter term might allow harboring anger toward one’s enemy. Again, Gandhi saw non-violent resistance as a spiritual practice where the practitioner must not be acting with an intent of “winning over” someone else or defeating them. His belief in non-violent resistance was a practice to transform a conflict into a mutual resolution. In both the concepts of swaraj and satyagraha, using the right means was just as important as the ends. Employing violent or angry means meant that the result was full of hostility and internal turmoil. He said, “The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree…We reap exactly as we sow.”
Two weeks ago when we discussed Martin Luther King’s views on non-violent means, you might remember that he used exactly the same analogy.
In learning more about how Gandhi employed these concepts, I want to take a look at some examples of how Gandhi acted toward his goals of self-rule for India, elimination of the caste system, creating economic equality, and resolving the conflict between Hindus and Muslims.
In working toward self-rule for India, Gandhi used non-violent resistance as a way to show Britain that their ruling over India was oppressive and was not consistent with British ideals of democracy.
Non-cooperation was the term Gandhi applied to his dealings with the British controlled Indian government. In 1930, Gandhi led a march to the sea to demonstrate against the salt tax. The government would not let anyone manufacture salt unless they had a license and the salt was sold with a substantial tax. This might remind us of the tax on tea that our founding fathers protested against in the Boston Tea party. However, the difference in these stories is great. The Salt March of India was completely non-violent and peaceful, which cannot be said of the Boston Tea party.
Following Gandhi’s belief in living a life of integrity, he expected the same from his followers. The group of Gandhi’s supporters who followed him to the sea, were expected to follow strict guidelines about their daily habits. They were expected to dress simply wearing homespun cloth, to eat only products that could be obtained along the journey, and were asked to use candles, not to use kerosene burners that would have to be carried on the heads of the marchers. Everyone was to walk not to ride in cars. He said that “Extravagance has no room in this campaign.” Gandhi saw every action in life as having potential impact on others and taught his followers to be aware of that impact.
Here is a fictional account of the march as a young student leader, Moorthy who supported Gandhi tells of the march:
Story about Salt March
An example of the non-violent resistance against British oppression in India happened in 1930 when Gandhi led a march to the sea to demonstrate against the salt tax. The government would not let anyone manufacture salt unless they had a license from the government and the salt was sold with a substantial tax. This might remind us of the tax on tea that our founding fathers protested against in the Boston Tea party. However, the difference in these stories is great. The Salt March of India was completely non-violent and peaceful, which cannot be said of the Boston Tea party.
The group of Gandhi’s supporters who followed him to the sea, were also expected to follow strict guidelines about their daily habits. They were expected to dress simply wearing homespun cloth, to eat only products that could be obtained along the journey, and were asked to use candles, not to use kerosene burners that would have to be carried on the heads of the marchers. Everyone was to walk not to ride in cars. He said that “Extravagance has no room in this campaign.”
Here is a fictional account of the march as a young student leader, Moorthy who supported Gandhi tells of the march:
“Now,” said Moorthy “we are out for action…Do you know, brothers and sisters, the Mahatma has left Sabarmati on a long pilgrimage, the last pilgrimage of his life, he says, with but eighty-two of his followers, who all wear [homespun cloth] and do not drink, and never tell a lie, and they go with the Mahatma to the beach to manufacture salt…”
Moorthy told us of the pilgrim path of the Mahatma from day to day; for day after day the Congress Committee sent him information… he would tell us of the hundred and seventy local government officials that had resigned their jobs…and of the thirty thousand men and women and children who had gathered at the roadside, pots and beds and all, to have the supreme vision of the Mahatma and Britishers will leave India and we shall be free…And when the Monday evening came, we knew it would be the morrow, it would be at five the next morning that the Mahatma would go out to the sea and manufacture salt and bring it home..
And the next day the White papers told us the Mahatma had taken a handful of salt after his ablutions, and he had brought it home, and then everybody went to the sea to prepare salt, and cartloads and cartloads of it began to be brought back and distributed from house to house with music and clapping of hands…And day after day men go out to the sea to make salt, and day after day men are beaten back and put into prison, and yet village after village sends its women and men , and village after village grow empty, for the call of the Mahatma had sung in their hearts…
Taken from Mahatma Gandhi: NonViolent Power in Action, Dennis Dalton
When Gandhi opposed British rule, he felt he was moving the English toward a better understanding of their own actions. But he expected the change to come first in Indians. Gandhi said:
Non-cooperation is a plea for a change of heart, not merely in the English, but equally in ourselves. Indeed, I expect the change first in us, and then as a matter of course in the English.
As Gandhi worked toward Indian independence, he also spoke out against the caste system in India. He believed that India must demonstrate its own respect of its own citizens or the British would not respect them. Let’s hear a fictional story written by an Indian novelist that describes what Mohatma, as he was called, meant to these lower castes.
Story about Untouchabales
At once the crowd, and Bakha among them, rushes towards the golbach. He had not asked himself where he was going. He hadn’t paused to think. The word “Mahatma” was like a magical magnet, to which he, like all the other people about him, rushed blindly. The wooden boards of the footbridge creaked under the eager downward rush of his boots. He was so much in a hurry that he didn’t even remember that he was an Untouchable, and actually touched a few people. But no having his broom and basket with him, and the people being all in a flurry, no one noticed that a sweeper boy had brushed past him.
At the foot of the bridge, by the motor-lorry stand, the road leading to the fort past the entrance of the golbagh looked like a regular racecourse. Men, women, and children of all the different races, colors, castes and creeds, were running towards the oval. There were Hindu lallas from the piece-goods market of Bulandshahr, smartly dressed in silks; there were Kashmiri Muhammadans from the local carpet factories, immaculately clad in white cotton, there were the rough Sikh rustics from the near-by villages swathed in handspun cloth, staves in their hands and loads of shopping on their backs; there were fierce-looking red-cheeked Parhans in red shirts; there were the black-faced Indian Christian girls from the Salvation Army colony, in short, colored skirts, blouses and aprons; there were people from the outcastes’ colony, whom Bakhar recognized in the distance, but whom he was not to anxious to greet; there was here and there a stray European- there was everybody going to meet the Mahatma, to pay homage to Mohandas Gandhi. But he became aware of the fact of being a sweeper by the contrast which his dirty, khaki uniform presented to the white garments of most of the crowd. There was an insuperable barrier between himself and the crowd, the barrier of caste. He was part of a consciousness which he could share and yet not understand. He had been lifted from the gutter, through the barriers of space, to partake of a life which was his, yet not his. He was in the midst of a humanity which included him in its folds, and yet debarred him from entering into a sentient, living, quivering contact with it. Gandhi alone united him with them, in the mind, because Gandhi was in everybody’s mind, including Bakha’s. Gandhi might unite them really. Bakha waited for Gandhi.
Gandhi gave a speech about breaking down the social barriers of intolerance and making society “open to the Untouchables”. Gandhi “smiled like a child”.
Bakha stood on the branch of the tree spellbound. Each word of the concluding passage seemed to him to echo as deep and intense a feeling of horror indignation as his own at the distinction which the caste Hindus made between themselves and the Untouchables. The Mahatma seemed to have touched the most intimate corners of his soul.
Taken from Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action, Dennis Dalton

Gandhi as a Hindu believed in reincarnation. Hindus would seek not to be reborn, since that would mean attaining enlightenment. But Gandhi spoke about what he desired if he was reborn:
But if I have to be reborn I should wish to be born an “untouchable,” so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings, and the affronts leveled at them, in order that I may endeavour to free myself and them from that miserable condition. Therefore, I prayed that if I should be born again I should be so, not as a Brahmin,… but as an “untouchable.”
Gandhi welcomed untouchables and all castes into his community where they were all treated with respect. His whole life style demonstrated his belief in the total economic equality of the masses. His community was self-sufficient and everyone who came to live there, was expected to take their turn at cleaning latrines, making food, and creating community. Gandhi advocated the making of homespun cloth as a means for the poor to have a means to survive. He spun thread himself on a spinning wheel and taught others to do this as a means of self-sufficiency. He believed that by teaching a simple skill to the poorest people of India that would prevent them from considering violence as a means to change their lot in life. Since the main occupations of poor people were agricultural and there were six months in which they were idle, Gandhi saw spinning as a means for people to be engaged in taking care of themselves year round. He asked his followers to spend some time spinning each day no matter what their prior occupation because he also saw this task as a great humbler, an equalizer of people.
Finally, Gandhi was equally dedicated to resolving the religious conflict that tore apart his country especially after Indian independence was granted by the British in 1947. While the British left India with no violence and with mutual respect, the religious violence that erupted internally created a new challenge for Gandhi to apply his principle of satyagraha, or non-violent truth telling.
When violent conflict erupted in Calcutta between Hindus and Muslims, Gandhi decided he needed to demonstrate how the two peoples could come together. He and his good Muslim friend, Suhrawardy, moved into a Muslim’s widow’s house and lived there together peacefully appearing before the people to show solidarity. When the Hindus accused him of being a Muslim lover, he reminded them of his devotion to Hinduism and again spoke of Muslims as his brothers and sisters. At the Muslim house, he received both Hindus and Muslims in conference to show them they could work together.
Throughout all these examples, the concept of an inner spiritual centeredness, directed Gandhi toward intentionally moral actions. While his goal was Indian independence, his larger goal was Indian responsibility for their own morality in their way of life. While showing his dedication to non-violent resistance, he always showed that this was not a “method”, but a spiritual understanding of how one lives with others. His deep commitment to having people live together peacefully as brothers and sisters is shown continually by every choice he made in his life.
Integrity in life is what inspires me in learning about Mohatma Gandhi. That indeed, our life is our message.
We might imagine meeting this great man in some dream world. We might imagine him humbly asking us why we have come to visit. We might answer that we wanted to learn to live as he does with integrity.
He might look at us with that special gleam in his eye and ask us if we have spiritual practice?
And while we’re thinking about meditation, prayer, or other acceptable answers, he might add,
“Does your spiritual practice include how you live your life? Does it include how you dress, how you eat, your work, your personal relationships, and your commitment to your community, your country and the world? ?
Answering these questions for ourselves may just take a lifetime.