Revisiting the Virtues of Gandhian Philosophy: Relevance and Applicability Towards Inclusive Growth

Abstract

“What I have done will endure, not what I have said or written.”

“I want the culture of other countries to blow through the windows of my house, but I do not want to be swept off my feet by any of them.”

So wrote Gandhi ji, and, indeed, there is no single repository of his thoughts and ideas, no radical or systematic philosophy as such that he offered. We have to glean his ideas and thoughts from his letters, articles and random writings, and above all, from the way he lived his life and motivated people in the national struggle for freedom. Indian opinion, a South African weekly, Young India and Harijan were major media through which Gandhi Ji expressed his views. His books, My Experiments with Truth , The Voice of Truth, Path to God, Hind Swaraj are the sources in which we may seek and get the ideas that shaped Gandhi’s life and activities. He was much influenced by religious ideas pertaining to all major religions of the world. He was equally conversant with Indian traditions and western intellectual principles such as liberalism and rationality. There are some concepts basic to Gandhian thought. All his actions are to be seen as applications of these concepts to real life. “As the microcosm, so the macrocosm”- is an idea that informs all his thought and action. Principles have to be practised by oneself before getting others to follow them. The principles to be followed are truth, ahimsa, non-possession, non-stealing and Brahmacharaya. Truth is God to Gandhi ji and the way to that God is through ahimsa or non-violence, for God is also love and ahimsa is the manifestation of the love for all. Gandhi Ji  views the ultimate object of man’s life as self-realisation which implies the greatest good for all. Believing in the principle of spiritual unity, he advocates that the only way to find God is to see Him through His creation and to be one with it. Undoubtedly, non-violence as an ethical norm is generally considered basic to Gandhi’s philosophy, a kind of ‘foundation stone’. For Gandhi Ji Truth is the highest value, the only intrinsic value, the only thing good in itself, the endeavour for truth is also at the same time the highest of virtues. Morality is a means or a method of realising this goal. Morality, to Gandhi ji is the fundamental presupposition for the knowledge of truth and for self-realisation. “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as hills.”