Whether Mahatma Gandhi Was Misinterpreted Through the Dilemma of Irrelevant and Relevant Philosophies?

Introduction

After 1980s, the influence of postmodernism was well marked in several ethnographic works and it turned a reflexive eye upon itself while becoming critical on traditional ethnographic studies. In other words, autoethnography now challenges canonical ways of doing social science research in the new era. As the new era was described as “crisis of confidence” (Ellis et al., 2010), it earmarked tacit influence of postmodernism in 1980s and introduced new opportunities to reconceive the social science inquiries. Autoethnographers also write about “epiphanies” and the remembered moments that may have significant impact on their life event trajectories (Bochner & Ellis, 1992; Couser, 1997). My own interest in autoethnography was festooned by the renowned anthropologist Late Prof. Vinay Kumar Srivastava, the then Director, Anthropological Survey of India. In most of his speeches he used to talk about postmodern outlook on autoethnography which gave a fresh panorama to many of the scholars of Anthropological Survey of India. In one event I tried to convey my present discourse on Mahatma Gandhi to Prof. Srivastava and he was continuously urging me on to pen down my thoughts. The present attempt got its nourishment from the same outlook where I have tried to explore some of the facets of Gandhian philosophy interpolating my own life experiences.

My First Encounter with Mahatma

Many anthropologists have started documenting life stories of individuals since the beginning of the discipline itself (Langness, 1965), but very few have seen the light of its final form of publication owing to its obvious limitations. The limitations are not confined to anthropologists only but to the sciences related to human condition. According to Sapir (1949), our normal inquisitiveness in human behavior hesitates between what is imputed to the culture of the group as a whole and what is imputed to the psychic organization of the individual himself. Let me not fall into the prey of these situations and speak at least some points on Mahatma and his importance into our day-to-day life.

There is a difference between the direct and the indirect encountering with people and gaining emphasis on their life experiences. For epistemological reasons, the emphasis in phenomenology has been always on direct encountering and it can also be proclaimed as decisive in nature. But for an amateur like me who has nevertheless gained any opportunity or rather cannot think of getting a direct encounter with this phenomenal personality, indirect encounter remains only the option and that too on the reliance of different secondary sources and also with the help of updated technologies like YouTube and several web links. It was probably during my early childhood days when I was able to introduce myself with the word “Gandhi.” He was familiar as the father of the nation and it was merely some of the reminiscence which I am still able to carry into my amnesiac brain. It was probably 1984 that marked the intervention of television into my family. At that time, I was able to witness only five of my birthdays in life. My age was a deterrent factor to observe and interpret the things that I used to see. For many years the surname “Gandhi” was a matter to celebrate a holiday with my parents as on 2 October we used to get a closed holiday in our schools. When I crossed my 9th birthday, a tele serial was telecasted by Doordarshan, an autonomous public service broadcaster founded by the Government of India. It was titled Bharat Ek Khoj, directed by Sir Shyam Benegal, the Hindi version of the book Discovery of India written by India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The first part of the tele serial on “Gandhi” was And Gandhi Came. The philosophical contribution of the tele serial was new to me but the very name of Mahatma Gandhi and his influence among the people were well marked in my newly raised vision. The excerpts from the novel Kanthapura by Rao (1938) were the main dimension they touched in that episode and one could easily understand the diversity of Gandhism and its influence among the people of India by merely observing that single episode. Within the same period Doordarshan had already started to telecast movie songs under the title Chitrahar on every Friday night and a Hindi movie every Sunday evening. Maybe, it was one of the evenings on 2nd October the movie “Gandhi” directed and produced by Richard Attenborough was telecasted. Maybe I was in my 11th year of existence, but the movie vibrated me like anything. The movie started with the quote of Elbert Einstein, “generations to come, will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” The portrayal of Mahatma in his own way could satisfy my newly bloomed vision. There were only two casts in the movie with whom I was familiar at that time. One was Mr Roshan Seth who was already an acclaimed artist for the character Pandit Nehru in the tele serial Bharat Ek Khoj and the 2nd one was Mrs Rohini Hattangadi who took the role of Kasturba Gandhi in the movie. I was familiar with the face of Rohini as she acted in one of the newly released Bollywood movies at that time Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai (in 1980). In the initial scenes of the movie “Gandhi,” two veteran Bollywood actors, Mr Amrish Puri and Mr Alok Nath also appeared for some time and I could find a strong conversation about the racial prejudice prevalent in South Africa during that period. Gandhiji was thrown off a South African train for entering in a “whites only compartment” and it created the defining moment for the movie and in fact in Gandhiji’s life in particular. I could educate myself very late that the person who acted as Gandhi was not an Indian but Sir Ben Kingsley having English origin. But in later years I could also discover that Sir Ben’s father was of Gujarati origin. Richard Attenborough, the director of the film could justify the philosophy of Gandhi within a period of almost three hours. In the following years, the Indian National broadcaster Doordarshan used to telecast the movie “Gandhi” on almost every Independence Day. At that time there was hardly any other movie that chronicled the journey of the Indian freedom movement in such a parallel way.

My next encounter with the philosophy of “Mahatma” was in a very enlightened way. When we were in our 9th standard, we had a chapter on his autobiography My Experiment with Truth (Gandhi,1927). We were assigned to read the 5th chapter of his autobiography At the High School. We used to get enough time to read in between each and every line in that chapter. We had to describe some of the stanzas during the exam and we used to get several questions on English grammar from that chapter. Therefore, I was able to recollect each and every line more deeply than most of the other complete novels that I have read in my life. In a single chapter, one could find so much of understanding on life, the beauty of clear handwriting and importance of gymnastics in school curriculum which he could also understand very lately. But I was fortunate enough to follow his footsteps right from my childhood. In the same year, Camlin Mumbai (now Kokuyo Camlin Ltd) organized one school level handwriting competition where I grabbed the 1st position. Same year I also grabbed the 3rd position in Inter school relay race and 2nd position in table tennis competition. I was a constant participant of all the school sports activity and it really helped me to keep my body and mind active. But whatever I could comprehend about Gandhiji in that chapter was sparsely confined to my bookish knowledge. I could not relate the words of Gandhiji in my life until I went through the similar experiences in my own life. Once he mentioned in the same chapter “there was no way. I cried in deep anguish. I saw that a man of truth must also be a man of care.” I could understand the meaning of this sentence very strongly when I was pursuing my graduate studies. Though in many of my life episodes I have dealt with the consequences of truthfulness but the incidence that happened during my college days left some pockmark in my personal life. Disclosing it publicly may become a careless affair on my part. What is more important, I could literally perceive that a man of truth must also be a man of care. Sometimes, I could relate some of my life events with the teachings of Gandhiji. Sometimes I feel very uncomfortable to see him eloquently describing about truthfulness in his autobiography without thinking much of the result that he cautioned in his own writings. Nevertheless, if a single chapter could influence me during my childhood, then what would be the influence on the people who were closely associated with him? Even as one of the most prolific scientists of the world Einstein also did not have any doubt that Gandhiji was the greatest person during that period. Citing an example, Guha (2001) proclaimed that in the early 1930s, when Einstein was teaching in Berlin, portraits of three icons used to hang in his study room. These were the posters of the physicists Max Planck, Michael Faraday and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. In the early 1950s, when Einstein was based in Princeton, a photograph of Gandhi was still displayed in his office. But Planck and Faraday had disappeared gradually. When asked about this, Einstein replied that the discoveries of physics had recently resulted in the atom bomb. On the other hand, the reputation of Gandhiji had been further enhanced in the last decades of his life. In the following paragraphs, I shall confine my writeup on some of the facets of Gandhiji’s life history and while doing so I will touch some of the points in a new dimension.

Relevant Vis-a-Vis Irrelevant Philosophies

I consider Ramachandra Guha to be one of the most prolific contemporary writers on Gandhian thoughts. Guha (2011) in his writing clearly stated the relevant as well as irrelevant philosophies of Gandhian thought. As I proclaim Guha to be a perfect Gandhian, I would rather try to clear the cataract of so-called irrelevant philosophies from the commoner’s eyes. For Guha, within the broad category of irrelevant ideas include Gandhiji’s view on food, medicine and sex. Most of the Indian thinkers rejected Gandhiji’s idiosyncratic views on sex and diet (Guha, 2001). Before I take forward my discussion let us understand the whole cosmos of health as perceived by Gandhiji. Gandhiji was quite able to establish a network of understanding between food, medicine as well as sexual life putting into a nutshell the concept of health. Gandhiji perceived health in his own understanding. I could gather the information from his book Key to Health (Gandhi, 1948) written way back in 1942–1944 when he was in Aga Khan Palace, Pune. Though the book was written in Guajarati but Dr Sushila Nayar translated it to both Hindi and English. My whole idea of Gandhiji’s emphasis on health will be based on this translated version. For him,

It is necessary to understand the meaning of the word health, before entering upon a description of the human body. In health, it means body ease. He is a healthy man whose body is free from all disease; he carries on his normal activities without fatigue. Such a man should be able with ease to walk ten to twelve miles a day, and perform ordinary physical labour without getting tired. He can digest ordinary simple food. His mind and his senses are in a state of harmony and poise. This definition does not include prize fighters and such like. A man with extraordinary physical strength is not necessarily healthy. He has merely developed his musculature, possibly at the expense of something else.

I was rather unaware about the perception of health from Gandhian perspective until I went through the book, but I was taken aback by observing the similar philosophy which I could encounter in one of the tribes of Assam on whom I submitted my Doctorate thesis way back in 2009. As a student of Anthropology, we were accustomed with the general definition of health put forward by the World Health Organisation (1948) as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The Mishing community from Assam perceive health in a similar fashion. Some of my informants from the Mishing community proclaimed that, “a person is considered to be healthy if he can walk for a distance consuming three betel nuts without any fatigue.” Among the Mishing tribal population of Assam consumption of betel leaf and nut is very common and considered as normal activity. If one cannot walk up to the prescribed limit before he ends up consuming the betel leaf and nut, questions may arise on his health status. One can walk for 1 km by chewing one betel leaf and nut, so it is quite obvious that one can go upto 3 km by consuming three betel leaves. This concept of walking was one of the basic criteria of health for Gandhiji also. It seems Gandhiji’s concept of health can be related with the mental makeup of the tribal people of India. Although I have very paltry knowledge of the perception of health from most of the other tribal communities of India. But it is quite obvious that for Gandhiji walking was one of the key constituents to keep oneself healthy. Gandhiji perceived the human body as a temple to the human soul and persuaded us to become the caretaker of our body to keep it healthy. He said,

Man came into the world in order to pay off the debt owed by him to it, that is to say, in order to serve God and (or through) His creation. Keeping this point of view in front of him, man acts as a guardian of his body. It becomes his duty to take such care of his body as to enable it to practise the ideal of service to the best of its ability.

Gandhiji was a strong believer of the science of natural therapeutics. According to him the human body is composed of five elements viz earth, water, ether, sunlight and air. He emphasized that good working of the human body depends upon the harmonious activity of its various components. He asserted on the use of mud poultices to treat headache, ordinary boil, discharging abscesses as well as relieving pain from wasp sting. According to him hydrotherapy is a well-known form of remedy in India. He talked about the Kuhne’s book on nature cure and its simple and effective way to treat many diseases. Hip bath and sitz bath are the most important items of Kuhne’s contribution to hydrotherapy. Gandhiji considered steam to be a very valuable therapeutic agent. In cases of common cold and sore throat he suggested the use of a steam kettle. The importance of steam therapy is now well established in such a pandemic situation of COVID-19. Whenever I caught cold and infection in my throat, I was advised by the doctor to get steam therapy which made me relaxed every time and helped me to subside my infection within a short period of time. Here I want to share another incidence of my life where hydrotherapy has acted immensely in one of my health issues. I was a frequent sufferer of migraine for two years. It was affecting my daily life as well as my work culture tremendously. It was on May 4, 2019, when I got a chance to join one of the workshops at the Eastern Regional Center, Anthropological Survey of India, Kolkata. In the evening I was just sitting with our Director of Anthropological Survey of India, late Prof. V. K. Srivastava. Incidentally I shared with him my recent inadequacy to take part in one of the important talks of my fellow colleague at Dehradun due to the same issue of migraine. After listening to my problem, he suggested that I should drink warm water with some addition of lemon and honey after getting up from the bed. Though it was a part of hydrotherapy, the end result was very good and could effectively give me relief from my long-lasting pain.

Gandhiji’s next focus was on the blue canopy that encircled us that he described as Akash or ether. He suggested not to put any partition between ourselves and the sky. If our bodies could be in contact with the sky without the intervention of houses, roofs and even clothes, we are likely to enjoy the maximum amount of health. For him, “he who will establish contact with the infinite possesses nothing and yet possesses everything.” My personal experience with infinity has its own significance. Though most of my interactions with infinity were restricted to night sky only. At night, one can wonder the limitless of the universe and the smooth essence of the beauty that could fulfil the inner soul. To me, a happy soul only can inculcate the existence of a better health. Although this perspective is totally personal and may not have to do with practical implication. Gandhiji kept on talking about the emptiness of the Akash and also to identify the same characteristics in our own body. We should not fill our digestive system with unnecessary foodstuffs, rather it should be empty as far as possible, according to our needs. He kept on talking about the benefit of fasting and avoidance of overeating. It is not that only Gandhiji was the administrator of fasting. Fasting has a strong basis in every religious text. All the oriental orthodox churches practice fasting in their own way. All the churches require fasting before one receives Holy Communion and this is called Eucharistic fasting (Grumett & Muers, 2010). As per the Vinaya rules in Buddhism, monks as well as nuns do not eat anything after lunch. In Islam, fasting is more than that of abstaining from food and drink. It not only involves abstaining from falsehood in speech as well as action but also abstaining from fighting and lustful thoughts. Sikhism allows fasting only to adopt compassion, well-being and ask for the goodwill of everyone. In Hinduism too, fasting is not an obligation but a moral and spiritual act where the aim is to purify the body and mind to acquire divine grace. All the holy scriptures described the benefit of fasting in their own ways. It was until 2016 when the Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for describing how cells recycle and renew their content if one fasts (a process called autophagy), the real advantage of fasting came to the knowledge of the commoners. In other words, fasting activates autophagy that helps slow down the aging process and has a positive impact on cell renewal. Now, it depends on us how we perceive the things and how we can materialize the ways in our own life trajectories. I seldom went for fast but I use to limit my diet to minimum level and it always helped me to keep my body lighter. I found Prof. Vinay Kumar Srivastava was a strong follower of the same principle and I always found him keeping his diet to very minimum level. There were incidents where both our principles juxtaposed with each other and I had to compromise with my own. We shared many conferences together and being the Director of Anthropological Survey of India, all the catering staff used to pour different delicious food items as much as they could. Prof. Srivastava being one of the humble persons never objected them but every time he used to come to me and put most of his foodstuffs into my plate. He used to tell “you are young so you can easily digest it.” I never baulked but accepted whatever he offered. It was February 22, 2020, at Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists (INCAA) conference Kolkata where he offered me food for the last time. It was food packets with different items and he offered almost all the packets to me. First, I accepted all the packets but as a prime follower of Gandhian principle I kept all the packets including some of mine under my chair. Some of the students were staring at me by merely observing the amount of food I heaped under my chair. But I did not eat or throw away the extra food. After the conference ended, I hurriedly put all the packets into my laptop bag, took it to my hotel, handed over all the packets to one of the security guard and enjoyed his expression of thanking me. What I have learned from Gandhian principle is that, if we cut some amount of food from our daily routine it can not only make us healthier but also it can mitigate the issue of food insecurity to some extent.

Gandhiji’s next mantra was to make use of sunlight to its full extent. He talked about sunbath or heliotherapy extensively and also its benefits in tuberculosis. Last but not the least he talked about the importance of air for our health. He suggested understanding the system of breathing and those who do not know how to breathe should take breathing exercises. Further he also made us understand the importance of cleaning the nostrils and importance of sleeping under open sky.

For Gandhiji, the diet chiefly consisted of nuts, fruits and boiled vegetables which could hardly find any favor from the majority of people. It was also described that Gandhiji was interested to treat cancer with water bath. As far as sex is concerned, he imposed a strict celibacy on his followers. I would rather clear these points one by one from my utopian point of view. The National Guide Analysis of Canada, United Kingdom and United States already recommended fruits and boiled vegetables for a healthy lifestyle (Slavin & Lloyd, 2012). The facts on nuts, fruits as well as vegetables are well reflected in the fact sheets recently submitted by the World Health Organisation (2018). Now it is rather hard to disqualify such a scientific base to justify Gandhi’s philosophy of food. Next, I will discuss a little bit on cancer and water bath. Recently, Gao et al. (2013) have done extensive work on water bath hyperthermia and its effect on colon cancer. They have found that water bath hyperthermia at 40 °C results in a decreased percentage of side population cells and also weakens stem cell self-renewal properties (i.e., tumor colony formation ability) and down-regulates the expression of stem-like cellular markers in colon cancer cells. They have already concluded that hyperthermia has an important effect on the stemness of colon cancer cells. What more do the preachers of non-relevant philosophies need?

I shall talk about Gandhian philosophy of sexual life in a different perspective. Imposing celibacy is not a new phenomenon in Indian culture to attain spiritualism. Hinduism considers celibacy (brahmacharya) as an important virtue and an essential aspect of spiritual life. Hindu Rishis used to believe that abstinence from sex is essential for sublimating sexual energy (retas) into spiritual energy (tejas). It was also believed that when a person controls his sexual impulse, instead of going out and dissipating, his sexual energy would change its direction and go up through the back of his spine and activate his higher chakras, or centers of spiritual energy. In ancient Hindu scriptures it was firmly believed that observation of celibacy was very much essential to reach the world of Brahma. Celibacy was also considered sacred among the unmarried youth because according to Hindu beliefs, souls that are awaiting their rebirth are said to reside in the semen, before they are transferred to the womb. According to Hinduism, sex is not a sinful activity. However, sexual activities are subject to the principles of dharma. Ancient Indian social thinkers divided the human life in four ashramas (stages). Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (householder), Vanaprastha (retired) and Sannyasa (renunciate). Only in the state of householder a person is allowed to have sexual intercourse and there are only certain types of sexual activity which is considered lawful according to the predominant qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas. As per the Hindu scripts Sattvic sex was practised with a pure mind out of love for the purpose of procreation. Rajasic sex was practiced out of egoism in which personal pleasure and demonstration of one’s strength is the chief aim. It seems Gandhiji was a strong supporter of the ancient scriptures of Hinduism. Though his experiment with sex alienated many of his close assistants and some of them had to quit the Indian struggle movement also. But Gandhiji meant it to test his chastity and commitment to celibacy. Many scholars accused Gandhiji of exploitation of young women in their teens and early twenties. It can be taken for granted that in the era of #Metoo, Gandhiji’s act would have been taken as an act of a sex maniac. Some may have the doubt that Gandhiji used his position to sexually exploit the females. But it will be foolhardy to label it as exploitation until we have the exact notion from each and every individual who were involved in that experiment and vice-versa. Most of the Gandhians described it an instance of Brahmacharya yajna. Gandhiji might be well practicing the traditional and historic form of Indian celibacy which hinges on the control of lust. Gandhiji once told that, “one who never has any lustful intention, who by constant attendance upon God has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner sexually excited” such a person, he affirmed, would be incapable of lying or harming anyone. Whatever be the cause of initiating the experiment we should not intensify the discussion and suppress the consequences. In history, there are lots of experiments that went out of the human values and ethics but the society could enshroud its very existence owing to its practical value. Why should we rummage around for the justification of going through such an experiment by Mahatma when we have the conclusion in our hand? We can however nourish the lesson he broached by his experiments. As he was in the notion that fathering as well as nourishing children took most of his precious energy when he wanted to devote himself completely to public service. Over the timescale of several years of celibacy he was even breaking the vow on several occasions but he could discover that the benefits of brahmacharya was far exceeding the birth control. In his autobiography he said, “what formerly appeared to me to be extravagant praise of brahmacharya in our religious books seems now, with increasing clearness every day, to be absolutely proper and founded on experience.” As a student of Anthropology, I was taught about the difficulties to study human being due to the presence of several ethical boundaries. Experimenting with humans is more dangerous when it comes to the emotional significance of the study. Needless to say, when Gandhiji was experimenting with his truth or celibacy there was neither any consideration about the Helsinki declaration (1964) on human ethics nor even the Human Right Commission was so active. It was over the lapse of so many years that we could perceive the ethical dilemma to understand human activity and understand the deep spiritual thoughts underlying Gandhiji’s experimentations. While describing the essence of Gandhiji’s plea to celibacy as sexual predatoriness, Rita Banerji in her book Sex and Power (Banerji, 2009) often criticizes Gandhiji about his eccentricities towards involving the young women for his experiments. But there is another way to think over this matter. I may be reluctant about Gandhian experiments but there are lots of questions that may creep while discussing the issue holistically. Gandhiji’s experiments were open secrets and known to all. He never kept anything surreptitious subjugating the truth. Now if someone is trying to experiment with celibacy, people will be taken aback if someone tries to do so keeping an individual with advancing age. The methodology he adopted for his experiment with celibacy was no doubt against societal norms and that too the practise of celibacy was a new doctrine to the Grihastha life. There were a lot of personalities who were against Gandhiji’s doctrine of new experiments and who left Gandhiji’s ideology well in advance. Even his suggestions were met with a great deal of skepticism. Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, the pre-independence Prime Minister of Travancore described Gandhi as “a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac” (Adams, 2011). But whatever be the situation, I was wondering what was the force that kept the two participants bonded for so many years. Questions may rise about indescribable consent that might have prevailed among the researcher and the participants. After several years of Gandhiji’s death, Sushila Nayar provided an account of Gandhiji’s brahmacharya experiments. Quoting Sushila Nayar, Lal (2000) writes, “it is she who shared Gandhi’s bed, but she was to recall, she never experienced any sexual desire, and felt as she would with her mother. At the outset it was no more than a part of Gandhi’s program of nature cure.” The dogma became more pragmatic when I came to know about some of the traditions that already exist in our society. I came to know, though very late in my life, that this type of mutual consent is not new to Indian culture when the efficacy of celibacy and women’s position are concerned. Before going into the detail let me describe the phenomenal cultural significance of sexual life among the Baul of West Bengal, a religious sect from West Bengal. The Bauls of Bengal consider menstruation sacred and also believe that men should not release their semen, a similar philosophy that Gandhiji was adhering to. Before discussing more on the Bauls let me discuss some points on menstrual taboos which have significant relevance to the topic. American Anthropological Association published an article (Montgomery, 1974) about the menstrual taboos on the basis of cross-cultural research and they found very common beliefs in most of the societies like “(a) belief that menstrual blood is disgusting, contaminating, or even dangerous, (b) women shouldn’t have sex whilst the decorators are in, (c) that menstruating women must not touch ‘man things’—such as weapons, tools or even personal items, (d) that menstruating women must not cook for men, (e) menstruating women must be confined to menstrual huts.” These menstrual taboos may be a widespread cultural phenomenon but one cannot generalize their universality. The most remarkable exception is that of the already stated Bauls of West Bengal. The Bauls are one of the unorthodox devotional tradition and a wandering musical community that has been influenced by Hindusim, Buddhism and Islam, yet they are distinctly different from all the religious ideology. Their tradition is eclectic and mainly influenced by tantric (sahajiya) Buddhism, tantric Hinduism (basically Vaisnava Sahajiya and Saiva-Sakta), Bengali (Gaudiya) Vaisnavism and Sufi Islam (Dimock, 1989). They sustain their livelihood on the basis of musical performances. Bauls regard menstrual blood as well as semen as seed for spiritualism. They practice sexual intercourse with seminal retention during a woman’s menstrual period. They seek to reverse the cosmic process that leads to death and rebirth. It is one form of their sadhana and to become successful in such a drive it is necessary to bring under control six enemies (lust, anger, greed, infatuation, vanity and envy). Both male and female experiment with their body to realize the truth of the universe. These experiments are beyond human ethics and understanding of modern-day scientific methodology. I wonder whether Gandhiji along with his associates were practicing similar experiments with their body? A question that remains unexplored without having the conclusive result of the same.

In my last confrontation with “Gandhian understandings,” though not directly, was with several social scientists in one of the seminars on “Gandhi” in 2018. I felt that Gandhiji was misunderstood, I saw in one moment the whole scientific crowd was filled with laughter on a talk about his experiments with celibacy. My contention was that in the age of social media where more likes and shares of YouTube videos represent more acceptance in the society. I searched about the assassination of Gandhiji and found a video on YouTube titled Why Nathuram Godse Killed Gandhi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49QyCAXNeeA) and one can wonder how the video could attract 15k likes than only 1.7k dislikes (in 2021). Here I would like to quote Guha (2001), “Inside every thinking Indian there is a Gandhian and a Marxist struggling for supremacy.” What was the perception that triggered Nathuram to kill Gandhiji is totally a different story, but it was not in the year 1948 that Gandhiji was assassinated. “Gandhi” is a perspective and we used to kill that perspective every day when we adhere to violence on the basis of religion, when we used to Westernize ourselves everyday with the help of language, clothing and full belly diet without having fasting. And sometimes I feel myself to follow the path of Nathuram Godse.

But whatever be the situation, the thoughts of truth, secularism and non-violence existed well before the existence of Gandhiji. In every religious text, one can find the existence of all these moral virtues. If we talk about non-violence, Quran and Sunnah, tell us that Islam always teaches non-violence. According to the Quran, “God doesn’t approve violence (fasad). Fasad leads to disruption of the social system, causing losses in terms of lives and property.” There are other instances in the Quran where peace is considered one of God’s names (The Quran 59:23). The Chapter 5, verse number 16 says, “Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by His will, unto the light, guideth them to a path that is straight” (Ali, 2006). In Hinduism, it is speculated that beliefs, attitudes and actions interact to produce peace or violence. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (IV, 4, ii, 6) says, “A person consists of desires and as is his desire, so is his will. And as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap” (Muller, 1884). Two thousand years ago the famous saint from South India, Tiruvalluvar said, “All suffering recoils on the wrongdoer himself. Therefore, those who desire not to suffer refrain from causing others pain.” Because of the knowledge of reincarnation, the Hindu knows that he may one day be in the same position of anyone he might be inclined to harm or persecute. The Hindu who is consciously aware within his soul knows that he is the time traveler and may incarnate, take a body of flesh, in the society he most opposed, in order to equalize his hates and fears into a greater understanding which would result in the release of ignorance. The knowledgeable Hindu is well aware of all these possibilities. Ahimsa is certainly not cowardice; it is wisdom. And wisdom is the cumulative knowledge of the existing divine laws of reincarnation, karma, dharma, the all-pervasiveness and sacredness of things, blended together within the psyche or soul of the Hindu. In Christianity, they decisively place nonviolence at the center of the Church and of individual discipleship. It was fully understood that to be a disciple of Jesus meant to be comprehensively nonviolent. The Christian community in Jerusalem refused to participate in the violent insurrection against the Romans (66–70 C.E.) and for 300 years the church resisted service in the Roman military. The Church nourished a culture of spiritually-grounded nonviolence through the corporal works of mercy, practice of forgiveness and reconciliation and resistance to the culture of violence. Buddhism, from the beginning itself, has a deep commitment to non-violence and caring for others. Buddhism and non-violence cannot be separated. All of Buddhism is about non-violence and here non-violence is the way of life, born of the fusion of spiritual insight and practical action. One of Buddhism’s unique contributions to today’s nonviolence movement is its emphasis on the importance of spiritual training to develop the self-knowledge and awareness that create skillful responses in a violent world. The Jain principle of ahimsa is an ecological ethic. Apart from ahimsa all the other four principles of Jainism are equally important viz. non-stealing, truth, aparigraha (non-possession) and brahmacharya (abstinence from sexual lust). It is very difficult to follow the path of the virtues of most of the religious texts in a single life. I consider Gandhiji to be a practical example of a person who could follow the path of most of the religious text within a single life span. May be calling him with Mahatma signifies the impeccable use of the term, and I wonder whose name will be the best fit to handle the in-depth weight of the same.