Gandhi

For those who think that "politics is dirty", please read Gandhi. For those who argue that politics is a ruse, please read Gandhi.

"With all humility, I can say that those who think religion has nothing to do with politics, they actually do not know what the religion means."

If he said it, no one would conclude that the definition of "religion" there was akin to fanaticism. Politics even sounded as devotion - without hostility.

 Indeed, he was a Bhagavad Gita reader who was impressed by the poems that discussed the possibility of  an abomination of desire. He was also a reader at Gospel in part when Christ was preaching on the hill. "I tell you, "Jesus said, "Do not harass those who do evil to you."

That does not mean that Gandhi's motion is completely without resistance. In 1916, speaking at the opening of the Benares Hindu University, he said something that caused Annie Besant -- founder of the theosophical movement -- called out to him, "Please, do not continue it." A high official of the British colonial government even muttering, "We have to stop this guy of what he says is so dirty."



Slob? What was said by Gandhi was the courage to confront the local feudal, facing the detective, even the King of England, who supported a system where farmers were so hungry and the princes were encrusted with jewels.

But still he was Gandhi. He claimed to refuse cooperation with the colonial government, and December 15, 1921 he even declared the "war" and "his rebellion". He held a mass movement. But as said by his biographers, he remained very human and even almost sentimental, also in politics at a time when sentimentality was booed. Gandhi, deep in his heart, still believe there was something good in the British colonial rule.

At the end of 1921, his writing in Young India said, "The institutions that seem generous from the British government actually is like a snake in a fairy tale: crowned with brilliant diamonds in its head, but full of poison in its fangs. "

At that time he was no longer speaking as in 1915, when he declared his loyalty to the British Empire. But Gandhi nonetheless still stated, "There is no country that does not have its good side."

And perhaps he was right. If it was seen again today, the British colonial government in India at that time had a good thing which had often lost in the administration of its former colonies. The one good thing was the ideal to provide flexibility to devote its energy,  to display its honor, and, in the words of Gandhi, "Anything that is considered worthy of conscience". Gandhi was the one who fell in love with an ideal like that.

A reviewer of Gandhi's biography -- Ved Mehta -- also said that the Gandhi's struggle methods -- Satyagraha, non-violent, fasting and so on -- would be successful if implemented in societies such as the British Empire and the United States, ie people who have freedom to publish and speak, where there is public opinion, and where to receive the influence of the mind is not a sin. Also where governing power is controlled by moral absolutes, so that the sense of guilt will arise at each step of oppression occurs.

Does it mean that Gandhi's method is not universal, and lies, violence and machination can be justified for politics?

"Hundreds of people like me should go away, but let the truth reign," Gandhi said in the introduction to his autobiography. "I have to stoop to zero."
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