Relevance of Gandhi

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

October 2, 2005

We are living in critical times. The world seems to be under siege. Besieged by fear, besieged by anxiety, besieged by suspicion, besieged by war and rumors of war, besieged by knee-jerk responses to curtail civil liberties, besieged by jingoism that passes for patriotism, besieged by uncertainty, besieged by escalating violence, instability, and despair and, above all, besieged with questions.

Where is the world headed? Is war, destruction, violence the legacy of humanity? What must I do? Will it make a difference? Where do I go from here?

We are like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. We have left home. We seem no longer to know what our moorings are, what will give comfort or meaning or peace. The future is uncertain, and we live in the shadows of despair.

Yet something deep inside of me quietly yearns of a possibility that we are capable of something more than vengeance, more than violence. Something warns me that military victories often come at the price of moral defeats. And somewhere, in the depths of my being, there remains a hope that we can climb out of the despair and degradation and make of the twenty-first century something better than what we have been able to accomplish thus far.

Today is a good day to reflect on that possibility. It is a good day because we have gathered to celebrate and honor the life and message of a man who stood for peace, for non-violence, for justice, and for the betterment of humanity - Mahatma Gandhi. It is a good day to learn from his example and make a commitment to inculcate in our lives some of the values that he embodied.

Gandhi's biographer, Louis Fischer, once said that Gandhi's greatness "lay in doing what everyone could do but doesn't." Mahatma Gandhi provided a signpost for moral living, he left us with some valuable insights about the way life should be oriented so as not to become dysfunctional to the self, society, or planet, and provided valuable guidelines to help us with difficult decisions.

For example, his seven social sins warn us against politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, education without character, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

I turn now to a more conceptual justification for Mahatma Gandhi’s relevance. In doing so, I hope also to respond to the question asked by the psychiatrist Erik Erikson near the beginning of his classic work, Gandhi’s Truth. Erikson spoke for many, I believe, when he described what so captured his imagination by the Mahatma. Erikson‘s question was: What held [Gandhi] together and what gave him, and through him millions, a special kind of vitalizing aliveness which does not seem expendable in this world?

I believe an answer to both questions, why Gandhi is relevant and what gave him a vitalizing aliveness, may be addressed under two headings: First, his conception of religion or spirituality. Second, the way he joined ideals with action.

Gandhi saw himself as a devout Hindu. He believed in the inherent divinity and dignity of every person. As a Hindu he also believed that the world has an inherent moral order: the cosmos is coherent, and fairness and duty make it so. He believed that humans were morally sensible beings and could be persuaded to do what is right and good.

Gandhi saw the core of the Hindu tradition to be what he called a relentless pursuit after Truth or Satya. In fact, after a time, Gandhi came to say, that for him, Truth is God. This enabled him to include atheists and agnostics who had trouble with the notion of God in the pursuit of truth.

Gandhi also had, according to Margaret Chatterjee, author of Gandhi’s Religious Thought, a sensitive ear for the demands of reason.

He said, Every true [religious] scripture only gains by criticism. After all we have no other guide but our reason to tell us what may be regarded as revealed and what may not be. The early Muslims accepted Islam not because they knew it to be revealed [by God to Muhammad] but because it appealed to their virgin reason.

For Gandhi, Truth is to be found as the result of a person’s own quest, in the trial-and-error of daily living. This is why he subtitled his Autobiography as The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Truth is not dogmatic but experimental, not intellectual but practical. As such, Gandhi followed the karma marga, the Hindu religious path of action, deeds, and work. He would’ve heartily agreed with our motto, Where Deeds, Not Creeds Define Our Faith. But he also recognized that truth may come via other paths, that of knowledge (jnana), devotion (bhakti), or psychophysical exercise (raja) -- according to our own personalities and gifts.

Yet, at the same time, Truth for Gandhi, while pragmatic and individual, was by no means a mushy relativism like that seen too often in New Age spirituality. He believed that our faculties for recognizing Truth, reason, intuition, and action -- must be purified and refined through commitment to daily spiritual practices.

He was a passionate advocate of self-discipline. He himself did it in many ways. He dressed very simply, and shaved his head. He didn't go to concerts or the theater. One whole day every week he refrained from speaking. He did physical work a couple of hours every day. His eating was very disciplined: not only was he a vegetarian, but also on each day he would take only five articles of food, and none after sunset. He and his wife, Kasturba, took, at the age of 36 or 37, a vow of chastity, and then kept it.

Gandhi thrived on all that discipline; but it seems rather puritanical, doesn’t it? One suspects and there is some evidence to support this - that he was naturally so inclined to excess that he needed a lot of self-discipline in order to function well. It seems to me a saving grace that in his later years he would advise his friends not to overdo it but instead to know themselves and to tailor accordingly their undertakings in self-discipline. He would tell them, for instance, not to take a vow unless they were sure they could keep it.

This aspect of Gandhi’s way of being religious may be less easily accepted by today’s religious liberals. None of this ritual business for us! Gandhi analogized the need for self discipline to the scientist’s adherence to the scientific method. Chemists do not randomly splash liquids into a beaker, stir vigorously and have confidence that the result will reveal scientific truth. In the same way, is it not reasonable that truth seekers hone their spiritual selves with practices that are known to facilitate genuine religious perception and provide inner strength and clarity?

Related to spiritual self-discipline is Gandhi’s opposition to consumerism and the ‘more-is-better’ concept of civilization which dominates the world today. He said: “Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary restriction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment.”

According to Gandhiji, the civilized person is not the one who would like to eat and drink magnificently, live in a large house, or drive fancy cars or whatever, but finds it necessary to settle for less; instead it is the one who has considered these matters thoughtfully and chooses to live sustainably, simply, and sensibly.