WRITE THE INCIDENTS FROM MAHATMA GANDHI AND GAUTAM BUDDHA'S LIFE WHICH SHOWS GREAT QUALITY OF FORGIVENESS.
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I aim to live to the age of 125,” Mahatma Gandhi once said. An assassin’s bullet snatched him away before that milestone was reached but in many ways, for the hope, the courage, the sense of fairness and justice he infused in the world around him, he lives on, as the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz said, in an “ageless life”.
For both India and Sri Lanka, with intertwined destinies, there is ample reason today to reflect on the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, its relevance particularly for the young, often called the demographic dividend, and what meaning it holds in a world where the speed of connectivity often disconnects the individual from his or her roots and traditions, and where human compassion and the virtues of forgiveness are not accorded the value they deserve. For us in India, we habitually seek answers to current conundrums by referencing Gandhi, just as you in Sri Lanka reference the sacred legacy of the Buddha, another of India’s greatest sons, and in my mind the juxtaposition of Buddha and Gandhi, as the Economist magazine said in 1948, is not at all incongruous. In fact, it is so appropriate and justified. So, I will attempt to speak of both in this lecture for there are organic connections between them. And I will also weave through the warp and weft, a remembrance of the Chakravartin, or wheel-turning monarch, the Emperor Ashoka – he, without sorrow – Dhamma Ashoka as he is known, and his vision of a subcontinent united by the ideals of good and open governance and righteous conduct.