I just recently finished reading Mahatma Gandhi: His Life and Influence by Chandra Kumar and Mohinder Puri (London: Heinemann, 1982). I have seen the film version of Gandhi's life and, while it was very well done - I wished for more of how Gandhi came to the conclusion of acting the way he did. The film was great for highlighting why he is such an impressive man and what he stood for. This book helped me to understand some of the 'why' behind his life and work. I don't want to clutter this entry any more with my words, I want to just add some quotes selected from the end of the book:
"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could do. In doing so, I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and non-violence..."
"I look upon myself as a dull person. I take more time understanding some things, but I do not care. There is a limit to man's progress in intelligence; but the developments of the qualities of the heart knows no bounds. It is literally true in my case that God provides the man of faith with such intelligence as he needs. I have always honored and reposed faith in elders and wise men. But my deepest faith is in truth so that my path though difficult to tread has seemed easy to me."
"I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw myself to cranks, faddists and madmen. If I had no sense of humor, I should long ago have committed suicide."
"I disbelieve in the conversion of one person by another. My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. This implies the belief in truth of all religions and respect for them. It again implies true humility, a recognition of the fact that the divine light having been vouchsafed to all religions through an imperfect medium of the flesh, they must share in more or less degree the imperfection of the vehicle."
"I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world."
"Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents, never revenges itself."
"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good it does is temporary, the evil it does is permanent. I do not believe in violent short-cuts to success...however much I may sympathize and admire worthy motives. I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes...experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence."
"Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy of life. They say 'means are after all ends', I would say that means are everything. As the means so the end. There is no wall of separation between means and end. Indeed the creator has given us control over the means, none over the end..."
"I value individual freedom but you must not forget that man is essentially a social being. He has risen to his present status by learning to adjust his individualism requirements of social progress. Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle...Willing submission to social restraint for the sake of the well-being of the society enriches both the individual and the society of which one is a member."
"Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed."
"By education I mean an all-round drawing out the best in child and man - body, mind and spirit. But unless the development of the mind and body go hand in hand with a corresponding awakening of the soul, the former alone would prove to be a lopsided affair. By spritual training I mean education of the heart."
