An Aspect of Gandhiji

An Aspect of Gandhiji ¹

BY M. KALIDASU, B.A., B.L.

You cannot properly understand the life and work of Gandhiji without coming into contact at more than one point with those fundamental principles which concern "God's ways

to men". It is not that these ways ever require to be ‘justified’, but rather that since the birth of intelligent life, the attempt has been to understand and express, as best each man can, those fascinating but illusive ways. Indeed the avowed purpose of Gandhiji's experiments with Truth is to analyse, test and appraise, much as a chemist does in his laboratory, the implications and tendencies revealed to a tireless investigator. To Gandhiji, Truth is synonymous with God.

It is not the desire of the writer to assess the worth of Gandhiji's contribution to the Indian movement for Swaraj and the world movement for cleaner international dealings and the elimination of violence in the settlement of both international and sub-national strifes. It is not doubted that his contribution in these matters is not only far-reaching but also unique. It is no small achievement to suggest to, and, let us hope, to convince the world that the tenets laid down by Jesus Christ for the guidance of individual conduct have the same potent operation on national and international dealings.

On the occasion of Gandhiji's Shashti Abda Purthi, the writer's thoughts have taken a turn towards Gandhiji's contribution in relation to the spirit of this Age. Gandhiji's life must have convinced a good many wavering minds, not merely about the existence of the soul as distinct from the body but also of its supremacy. He himself most solemnly asserted before the representative of the mighty British Empire in India that the soul force which he preached and practised, was any day superior to the brute force of which the Empire boasted. He showed in his campaign of Passive Resistance in South Africa that this assertion is not a mere hypothesis but represents an actual fact. His Own Sardar again established only recently at Bardoli the validity of that assertion. He convinced so clear and influential a thinker as Professor Gilbert Murray that in dealing with a man like Gandhiji, the rulers of the world are dealing with a new force of life which cannot be ‘purchased’ by any of the hitherto tried methods. If the later attempt by him in the same direction, in launching the Non-co-operation movement in India, has not so far borne fruit, and if the half-hearted attempt by the Germans in the Ruhr Valley has proved abortive, it does not by any means prove that soul force is a mirage. It only means that Gandhiji's countrymen and the most military nation that the world has so far known, next to the Spartans, have not either understood or practised the fundamental conditions necessary for the fruition of that force.

What then are the pre-requisites for the success of this soul force? The body is of the earth, earthy. It is built up and sustained by the constant play of catabolism and metabolism, that is to say, by a constant process of destruction and construction. Its needs are rooted in desires and passions. It clammers for incessant satisfaction. It preaches the survival of the fittest. Tennyson's horror-struck exclamation

"Nature red in tooth and claw,
Shrieks against the creed"

is its highest contribution to the riddle of this world.

When you come to deal with the soul, you are at once confronted with factors of a totally antagonistic character. Love is its essence. Intelligence is its sole attribute. Happiness is its birthright. The ancient Rishis proclaim that "Sath Chith Anandam" is not only the fundamental but the sole truth of at once God's and man's existence. We are unable to see the wood for the trees. The soul is hampered in expressing itself by its constant partnership with the body and it is small wonder that the best thinkers feel sometimes befogged. As Shelley points out, after all

"Life is like a dome of many coloured glass,
That stains the white radiance of Eternity."

If, therefore, we are dealing with soul force, we are dealing with an aspect of life which, anyone must admit, has not been tried on any large scale in fields other than those that are confined to relations between individual man and man. The history of the world shows that mankind learns its lessons tardily and only after repeated failures. Failures do not furnish

proof of error. Rather they furnish to the discerning eye, opportunities for examination and readjustment. Like the man of vision and scientific thinker that he is, Gandhiji utilises every failure for re-examination and readjustment. The Chouri Choura debacle would have frightened a less clear-eyed leader. But Gandhiji's faith in God and in the truth of his doctrine is so strong that he proclaims his faith more insistently than ever. He explains the necessary conditions more clearly and is never tired of repetition. You satisfy the conditions he demands: you can then pronounce with justice a verdict. Till then, how are you entitled to tell the world that his doctrine is wrong?

The most clear-eyed thinkers and the founders of all religions have taught the same truth that Gandhiji is teaching today. He is labouring in the same fields in which Buddha, Christ, Sri Krishna and others laboured, though his objective is different. One point however which, of necessity, must have influenced the average man in regard to the great men referred to above should be noticed. Whether the miracles and acts of a superhuman nature attributed to them are true or not, the influence exerted by those great men, on mankind in the mass, is in a fairly large measure attributable to the popular belief in their truth. We are living in a scientific age. The top ranks of modern thinkers have constantly declined to admit, as a working hypothesis, the truth of miracles. Those persons who still swear by such superhuman occurrences, like the Theosophists, are seeking to explain to the world that such events are due to the operation of laws which are so far unknown to humanity. Gandhiji told us often that though his faith in God is supreme, he is not yet vouchsafed His full vision. He never claimed the possession of superhuman powers. On the other hand he most emphatically disclaims any pretension to such attributes and in fact to the Mahatmaship thrust on him. As is the case with the laborious inductive scientist, he is an experimentor in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end. In this sense it may be said that his personality is unique. He may be regarded as the representative man whom Humanity has thrown up in this age of science to prove the existence of the soul and the truth of the spiritual life, in the manner and in the spirit of inductive science. He has proclaimed to this age in clarion tones that, judged even by

the standards by which alone this age is prepared to judge truth, all the truths which man has ever regarded as his precious heritage are scientifically verifiable, He is a soul-chemist.

1 Written on the occasion of the Shashtipurti of Gandhiji.