MAHATMA GANDHI ... 1
Partition eventually could proliferate into a nuclear holocaust for the subcontinent. It is here that we need to heed Gandhi who we tend to blame. He was a visionary who could see through the mist of the times to a distant future where violence would no more be a viable method for resolving differences and non-violent peaceful methods of resistance would eventually have to be resorted to. To be able to keep his sanity in a world gone insane in the first half of the twentieth century was no mean achievement for a politician struggling for the freedom of his motherland. That he did eventually fail in his mission to free India thus and that it was the violent resolution of forces of the Second World War that helped liberate India from colonial clutches does in no way reduce the significance of Gandhi's achievements when the world scenario is viewed today where a single misstep can annihilate civilisation in the wake of a nuclear war.
Gandhi was ahead of his times and will remain so for times to come for he was a man of messianic status come to deliver humanity from the spectre of obliteration. His was a voice of the Vedas speaking to humanity as a whole and in a language that few even today can understand for myopic they are and cannot quite comprehend the totality of the vision that prompted Gandhi to choose his path of truth and non-violence.
Gandhi remains the one hope of humanity if it wishes to survive the impending annihilation of human civilisation. Today, the greatest challenges facing humanity are environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation both of which threaten to wipe out their masters from the face of this earth. Gandhi's ways of simplicity of living and non-violence are the answers to both and Gandhian methods must be explored afresh to seek solutions to the current conflicts, environmental and political, although, Gandhian applications must be modified in practice to suit the current exigencies without, of course, compromising on the essential principles involved.
End of Part 1
To be continued...
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Romain Rolland and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi at Villeneuve, Switzerland, 1931.
Partition eventually could proliferate into a nuclear holocaust for the subcontinent. It is here that we need to heed Gandhi who we tend to blame. He was a visionary who could see through the mist of the times to a distant future where violence would no more be a viable method for resolving differences and non-violent peaceful methods of resistance would eventually have to be resorted to. To be able to keep his sanity in a world gone insane in the first half of the twentieth century was no mean achievement for a politician struggling for the freedom of his motherland. That he did eventually fail in his mission to free India thus and that it was the violent resolution of forces of the Second World War that helped liberate India from colonial clutches does in no way reduce the significance of Gandhi's achievements when the world scenario is viewed today where a single misstep can annihilate civilisation in the wake of a nuclear war.
Gandhi was ahead of his times and will remain so for times to come for he was a man of messianic status come to deliver humanity from the spectre of obliteration. His was a voice of the Vedas speaking to humanity as a whole and in a language that few even today can understand for myopic they are and cannot quite comprehend the totality of the vision that prompted Gandhi to choose his path of truth and non-violence.
Gandhi remains the one hope of humanity if it wishes to survive the impending annihilation of human civilisation. Today, the greatest challenges facing humanity are environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation both of which threaten to wipe out their masters from the face of this earth. Gandhi's ways of simplicity of living and non-violence are the answers to both and Gandhian methods must be explored afresh to seek solutions to the current conflicts, environmental and political, although, Gandhian applications must be modified in practice to suit the current exigencies without, of course, compromising on the essential principles involved.
End of Part 1
To be continued...
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Romain Rolland and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi at Villeneuve, Switzerland, 1931.
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