Mahatma Gandhi Funeral

On Friday 30 January 1948, Gandhi woke up at his usual hour, 3:30 a.m. After the morning prayer he put the final touches to the new constitution for Congress which he had been unable to finish the previous night. The rest of the morning was spent answering letters. Someone mentioned the fact that despite his poor health he was working incessantly. ‘Tomorrow’, he explained, ‘I may not be here’. Gandhi would not permit those who attended the prayer meetings: ‘If I have to die I should like to die at the prayer meeting. You are wrong in believing that you can protect me from harm. God is my protector.’ Mahatma Gandhi’s body lay on the pyre with his head to the north. In that position Buddha met his end. At 4:45 p.m., Ramdas, the third son of the Mahatma, set fire to the funeral pyre.

The logs burst into flames. The vast assemblage groaned. Women wailed; men wept. The wood crackled and seethed and the flames united into a single fire. Now there was silence. Gandhi’s body was being reduced to ashes and cinders. A nation’s father was dead. The information and any attached documents contained in this message may be confidential and/or legally privileged.

 

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.  

Mahatma Gandhi

 

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

Mahatma Gandhi

 

 A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. 

Mahatma Gandhi

 

 A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. 

Mahatma Gandhi

 

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.  

Mahatma Gandhi

 

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.  

Mahatma Gandhi

 

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.  

Mahatma Gandhi

 

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. 

Mahatma Gandhi

 

 Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.  

Mahatma Gandhi 

Salt Satyagraha

The Salt Satyagraha, also known as the Salt March to Dandi, was an act of protest against the British salt tax in Colonial India. Mahatma Gandhi walked from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, Gujarat to get himself some salt, and hordes of Indians followed him. The British could do nothing because Gandhi did not incite others to follow him in any way. The march lasted from March 12 to April 6, 1930.


Background

At midnight on December 31, 1929, the Indian National Congress unfurled the flag of independence on the banks of Ravi at Lahore. The Indian National Congress, led by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, issued the Declaration of Independence on January 26, 1930. The Congress placed the responsibility of initiating civil disobedience on the All India Congress Committee. This campaign also had to achieve the secularization of India, uniting Hindus and Muslims. Mahatma Gandhi was convinced that non-violent civil disobedience would form the basis for any subsequent protest.

Beginning in February, Mahatma's thoughts swayed towards the British tax on salt, one of many economic means used to generate revenue that supported British colonial rule. Gandhi decided to make the salt tax the focal point of non-violent political protest. The British monopoly on the salt trade in India dictated that the sale or production of salt by anyone but the British government was a criminal offense punishable by law. Salt was readily accessible to labourers in the coastal area, but they were instead forced to pay money for a mineral which they could easily collect themselves for free. Gandhi's choice met the important criterion of appealing across regional, class, religious, and ethnic boundaries. Everyone needed salt, and the British taxes on it had an impact on all of India.

On February 5, newspapers reported that Gandhi would begin civil disobedience by defying the salt laws.

Led by an inner voice during this period of strategic uncertainty, Gandhi used the British Government's salt tax as a catalyst for a major satyagraha campaign.

One of Gandhi's principal concepts, "satyagraha" goes beyond mere "passive resistance"; by adding the Sanskrit word "Agraha" (persuasion) to "Satya" (Truth). For him, it was crucial that Satyagrahis found strength in their non-violent methods:

"Truth (Satya) implies Love, and Firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force… that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or Non-violence… [If] we are Satyagrahis and offer Satyagraha, believing ourselves to be strong… we grow stronger and stronger everyday. With our increase in strength, our Satyagraha too becomes more effective, and we would never be casting about for an opportunity to give it up." -- Gandhi

Protesting the salt tax as an injustice to the people of India was an ingenious choice because every peasant and every aristocrat understood the necessity of salt in everyday life. It was also a good choice because it did not alienate Congress moderates while simultaneously being an issue of enough importance to mobilize a mass following.


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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi History

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the town of Porbander in the state of what is now Gujarat on 2 October 1869. He had his schooling in nearby Rajkot, where his father served as the adviser or prime minister to the local ruler. Though India was then under British rule, over 500 kingdoms, principalities, and states were allowed autonomy in domestic and internal affairs: these were the so-called 'native states'. Rajkot was one such state.
Gandhi later recorded the early years of his life in his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Experimentswith Truth. His father died before Gandhi could finish his schooling, and at thirteen he was married to Kasturba [or Kasturbai], who was even younger. In 1888 Gandhi set sail for England, where he had decided to pursue a degree in law. Though his elders objected, Gandhi could not be prevented from leaving; and it is said that his mother, a devout woman, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. Gandhi left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old.
In London, Gandhi encountered theosophists, vegetarians, and others who were disenchanted not only with industrialism, but with the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They themselves represented the fringe elements of English society. Gandhi was powerfully attracted to them, as he was to the texts of the major religious traditions; and ironically it is in London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita. Here, too, Gandhi showed determination and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.


After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians were from being considered full human beings, when he when thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he held a first-class ticket, at Pietermaritzburg. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community, and it is in South Africa that he first coined the term satyagraha to signify his theory and practice of non-violent resistance. Gandhi was to describe himself preeminently as a votary or seeker of satya (truth), which could not be attained other than through ahimsa (non-violence, love) and brahmacharya (celibacy, striving towards God). Gandhi conceived of his own life as a series of experiments to forge the use of satyagraha in such a manner as to make the oppressor and the oppressed alike recognize their common bonding and humanity: as he recognized, freedom is only freedom when it is indivisible. In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid. In 1909, on a trip back to India, Gandhi authored a short treatise entitled Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, where he all but initiated the critique, not only of industrial civilization, but of modernity in all its aspects.
Gandhi returned to India in early 1915, and was never to leave the country again except for a short trip that took him to Europe in 1931. Though he was not completely unknown in India, Gandhi followed the advice of his political mentor, Gokhale, and took it upon himself to acquire a familiarity with Indian conditions. He traveled widely for one year. Over the next few years, he was to become involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Champaran in Bihar, where workers on indigo plantations complained of oppressive working conditions, and at Ahmedabad, where a dispute had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions earned Gandhi a considerable reputation, and his rapid ascendancy to the helm of nationalist politics is signified by his leadership of the opposition to repressive legislation (known as the "Rowlatt Acts") in 1919. His saintliness was not uncommon, except in someone like him who immersed himself in politics, and by this time he had earned from no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known writer, the title of Mahatma, or 'Great Soul'. When 'disturbances' broke out in the Punjab, leading to the massacre of a large crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and other atrocities, Gandhi wrote the report of the Punjab Congress Inquiry Committee. Over the next two years, Gandhi initiated the non-cooperation movement, which called upon Indians to withdraw from British institutions, to return honors conferred by the British, and to learn the art of self-reliance; though the British administration was at places paralyzed, the movement was suspended in February 1922 when a score of Indian policemen were brutally killed by a large crowd at Chauri Chaura, a small market town in the United Provinces. Gandhi himself was arrested shortly thereafter, tried on charges of sedition, and sentenced to imprisonment for six years. At The Great Trial, as it is known to his biographers, Gandhi delivered a masterful indictment of British rule.

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quotations from Mahatma Gandhi

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

The good man is the friend of all living things.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.


Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
 
You must be the change you want to see in the world.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

 










 

Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti

Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti is celebrating on October 2 of every year.Mahatma Gandhi is born in October 2 1869.one of the three official declared National Holidays of India and is observed in all Indian states and union territories. The United Nations General Assembly announced on 15 June 2007 that it adopted a resolution which declared that the 2nd of October will be celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Mahatma also called as Father of nation.