Question

How did gandhiji emerge as a moral force in india?

Answer 1

Mahatma Gandhi devoted his entire life waging a relentless fight against segregationist policies and practices and the rule of divisive politics. In a world where politics thrives on efforts to create differences among people of various castes, religions and creeds, and fomenting hatred in their hearts for other fellow beings, his life and work acquire greater significance as the eloquent example of how it is possible to remove the social and cultural barriers by accepting suffering as a weapon and bringing all human beings together in a firm unity of brotherhood. Unfortunately today the term ‘globalisation’ has been reduced in meaning to suggest a free flow of trade and commercial interests only, sans an urgency to create a harmonious affinity among people of diverse faiths and cultures which in the true sense should define it. Besides, there also appears to have emerged a feeling that “we are living in a world which is divided increasingly by global unrest, fear, anger , hatred, discontent, despair, immorality, etc., and the number and intensity of ethnic and religious conflicts seem to grow, gaining higher and higher intensity all round the world.” (Szenkovics 2013) Totalitarian tendencies appear to enjoy greater freedom under whose shadow flourish terrorism and murderous assaults on the voices of free opinion.Mahatma Gandhi too spent his childhood and youth in an age scarred by imperialist wars, oppressive regimes established by colonial powers to exploit Asian and African peoples, and inhuman treatment of the poor masses. When he experienced personal insults and was treated as “coolie”, a term generally used by the White people in South Africa to address an Indian for being coloured without regard for his education or profession, he began to analyse the situation critically and started looking for a suitable weapon with which to fight this horrendous menace. Basically of an analytical and introspective bent of mind, he scoured religious books of different faiths in search of valid explanations of what was being practised in the name of religion and fair politics. Part of his visionary idealism, one may say, took shape from imbibing the moral precepts he found in the scriptures.