Fwd: HINDUISM AND GANDHI

[Guest guest]

advaitin , " R.S.MANI " <r_s_mani> wrote:

 

Hinduism & Gandhi

 

- By Jagmohan, Former Governor of J & K and former Union

Minister

 

- (From the Statesman, Calcutta, 2/10/05)

 

On Gandhi's birthday, instead of going round the samadhis and

attending prayer meeting ritualistically, the ruling elite will do

well to think how strong and healthy India could be built on it

spiritual traditions and how Hinduism as viewed by Gandhiji could be

used to refertilize and revitalize that tradition. Dr. S.

Radhakrishnan, in connection with his study of religion posed three

questions to Mahatma Gandhi. What is your religion? How are you led

to it? What is its bearing on social life?

 

Gandhi answered the first question thus: " My religion is

Hinduism which, for me, is the religion of humanity and includes the

best of all religions known to me. " In response to the second

question, Gandhi said: " I take it that the present tense in this

question has been purposely used, instead of the past. I am led to

my religion through truth and non-violence. I often describe my

religion as religion of truth. Of late, instead of saying God is

Truth, I have been saying Truth is God. We are all sparks of Truth.

The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as yet unknown

Truth, which is God. I am daily led nearer to it by constant

prayer " .

 

To the third question, Gandhi replied: " the bearing of this

religion on social life is, or has to be seen in one's daily social

contact. To be true to such religion, one has to lose oneself in

continuous and continuing service of all in life. Realization of

Truth is impossible without a complete merging of oneself in and

identification with this limitless ocean of life. Hence for me,

there is no escape from social service; there is no happiness on

earth beyond or apart from it. In this scheme, there is nothing low,

nothing high. For all is one, though we seem to be many " .

 

Gandhi elaborated: " The deeper I study Hinduism, the stronger

becomes the belief in me that Hinduism is as broad as the universe.

Something within me tells me that for all the deep veneration I show

to several religions, I am all the more a Hindu, nonetheless for it " .

 

On the Mahatma's birthday it seems necessary to bring home these

fundamentals, particularly to those who go on condemning Hinduism

without even studying it and also to those members of the ruling

elite whose attachment to fake and fraudulent " gods " have made the

country a den of corruption, callousness, confusion and criminality.

 

Gandhi's elucidation makes it clear that true Hinduism is

nothing but spiritual secularism. To relegate such a religion and to

follow a shallow and superficial secularism is one of the worst sins

that the false problems of contemporary India are committing. They

call Gandhi the Father of the Nation. Yet in practice they do

everything to negate all his beliefs.

 

Throughout human history, religion has remained a potent force

despite all the pounding it has received from thinkers like Marx who

called it " opiate of the masses " , and Freud who termed it as " a

collective neurosis of the masses " . It may be relevant to recall a

talk between Cardinal Gonsalvic and Napoleon. The Cardinal was

pleading the case for the church. Napoleon got annoyed on some point

and shouted at the Cardinal " Your Eminence, are you not aware that I

have the power to destroy the Catholic Church? " The Cardinal smiled

and replied, " Your Majesty, we the Catholic Clergy for the last 1800

have done our level best to destroy the Catholic Church. We did not

succeed. You will not succeed either. " This conversation brings

out in a telling manner the staying power of religion,

notwithstanding its internal and external destroyers.

 

While religion has its influence in every country, it is more

so in India. Swami Vivekananda, with his characteristic clarity and

insight, has observed: " Each nation, like each individual, has one

theme in life, which is its centre, the principal note around which

every other note comes to form the harmony. If anyone attempts to

throw off this central note, that is, its national vitality, the

direction which has become its own through the transmission of

centuries, that nation dies. In India, religious life forms the

centre, the key-note of the whole music of national life. Take away

region from India nothing would be left. "

 

Power in present-day India has become an end in itself. Justice is

being buried deeper and deeper. Means however unscrupulous are

resorted to and then rationalized. Corruption in public life has

attained alarming proportions. Most of our institutions have lost

their underlying motivation of service and become effete and venal.

 

Why has this happened? Why have our state and society become

soulless entities? Why have criminals enlarged their hold on

politics? And why have power and pelf become everything and justice

and truth nothing?

 

The answer to these questions is that the ethical foundation of

Hinduism, as seen by Gandhi, which could provide " an awakened

conscience " to an individual and make him an honest, just and

compassionate component of society has been destroyed partly by the

stink and slush of our past degeneration and partly by the type of

spurious secularism which has been exploited in post-independence

India.

 

Hinduism, as made clear by Gandhi, sees all human beings

as " sparks of truth/divinity " . As such, it neither goes against any

other religion nor is it incompatible with the constitutional goals

of equality, fraternity, liberty and justice. If the same divinity

constitutes the core of all individuals, they cannot but be equal.

Further, divinity in one person cannot in any way be unjust to the

same divinity in another person. As the Gita puts it, " Seeing the

same God equally present in everything, one does not injure the self

by self; and goes to the highest goal " .

 

In Hinduism, Gandhi saw a unique quality: " In it there is room

for the worship of all the prophets of the world. It is not a

missionary religion in the ordinary sense of the world " . Gandhi

underlined: " God is not encased in a safe to be approached only

through a little hole in it, but He is open to be approached through

billions of openings by those who are humble and pure of heart " .

 

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