5 measures suggested by mahatna gandhi ti judge a moral action
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Gandhi was a deeply moral person and it is difficult to separate his politics from his moral values. He helped popularize the notion of "be the change you want to see," which is another way of saying one should not be afraid to live from a moral center. Gandhi did strongly believe, however, that moral formation needed to precede political action, and based his morals on three principles: the inherent dignity of all people regardless of caste, nonviolence, and speaking truth to power. The concept of Satyagraha or standing firmly in the truth encapsulates these ideas. Gandhi believed that Satyagraha was more powerful than any kind of violence, and he is most remembered for his utter rejection of violence, stating that an eye for an eye leaves both men blind.
Moral formation was so important to Gandhi's vision that when he embarked on his Salt march, an embodiment of his moral principles of standing firmly and nonviolently against injustice, in this case against a tax the British imposed on salt, he initially would only take with him people fully trained in Satyagraha. The black civil rights movement in this country was strongly influenced by Gandhi and its members also spent time in moral formation to overcome natural responses such as hitting back when you are struck. In a world saturated with violence and lies, Gandhi's morals based in nonviolence and truth continue to stand as a challenge to humanity to find its better self.
Gandhian nonviolence is often misconstrued as a static moral injunction against violence or simply a condemnation of violent resistance. Gandhi himself is often portrayed as a saintly idealist, pacifist, or purveyor of conviction politics a moral critic of politics, speaking from standpoint of conscience and truth. Gandhi’s political thought bridged developments in both Indian and Western intellectual traditions and political repertoires to produce a novel synthesis and provocation. Gandhi’s distinctive understanding of the means-ends question, placing Gandhi alongside Max Weber and Reinhold Niebuhr, thinkers particularly significant for the development of realism in the twentieth century. The Indians were considering the relationship between means and ends, from political debates on the proper political means to attain swaraj (selfrule) to competing interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita, a key source of modern Indian conceptions of political action. Most political and social thinkers have been concerned with the desirable goals of political system or the common and competing ends that men actually desire, and then pragmatically considered the means that are available to rulers and citizens. Most schools of thought accept a sharp dichotomy between ends and means; and discussions about means are always related with their moral implication and property, or about the extent of their theoretical and contingent compatibility with desired ends. It has been observed that in the western tradition there is a tendency of claiming that the end entirely justifies the means moral considerations cannot apply to the means except in relation to ends.