Gandhi's Mastery of Self

HARMONY OF RELIGIONS

In his adolescent years, he was fortunate to learn about other religions through the discussions that were held in his home. This provided an early grounding in Islam, Jainism, Vaishnavite Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism. This knowledge of different religions made me realize as he says that "all the great religions of the world inculcate the equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of toleration."

When he was16, after an early grounding in Hinduism and its sister religions, Gandhi noted that "one thing took deep root in me - the conviction that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective. It began to grow in magnitude every day, and my definition of it also has been ever widening."

Other reading seemed to have played a major role as well. A particular verse by the Indian poet Shamal Bhatt "gripped (his) mind and heart." He says, "Its precept - return good for evil - became my guiding principle." An English translation is as follows:

For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
For a simple penny pay thou with gold;
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
Every little service tenfold they reward.
But the truly noble know all men as one,
And return with gladness good for evil done.

During his stay in England between the years 1887-91 where he was studying law, 18-year old Gandhi was prompted to study of the scriptures of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Gandhi remembered this period when his "young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, The Light of Asia, Prophet Mohammed, and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly." This period was especially self-defining because he synthesized various teachings into a code of ethics that he later lived and worked by, not just in spirituality but also in the socio-political context.

It also helped Gandhi espouse a position that "Mankind is one.... Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal?" Gandhi strived for a national unity, religious harmony with profound faith that "all men are brothers." Nazareth observes that, "Gandhi commenced every public meeting (during the independence struggle) with readings from various sacred texts and often declared he as much a Moslem, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and Parsee as he was a Hindu. The noted American biographer Louis Fischer writes, "Mahatma Gandhi, a supremely devoted Hindu was incapable of discriminating against anyone on account of religion, race, cast, color or anything."

Gandhi himself states his position clearly and passionately,

"All my actions have their rise in my alienable love of mankind. I have known no distinction between relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white and coloured, Hindus and Indians of other faiths whether Muslims, Parsees, Christians or Jews...All men are brothers and no human being should be stranger to another. The welfare of all...should be our aim."

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