Mahatma Gandhi: his ideology of peace and love
Gandhiji practiced non-violence and made people follow it. Not just in treating fellow humans kindly, but he also helped make ‘Ahimsa’ a tool of social and political action.
He sought to break the cycle of violence and reprisal. According to him, humans continuously striving for moral self-improvement causes violence. We have to choose between violence, the law of the jungle, and peace, the law of humanity, he said.
In 1906, when Gandhiji went to South Africa to become a barrister, he saw that the people had acquiesced to the harsh treatment to which they were subjected. The indentured workers chose to run away from their contracts or to commit suicide as a result of the harsh treatment meted out to them by their employers. He built an Ashram to serve discriminated and diseased people, and later a hospital for leprosy patients there. So what started as a service to people spread as a service to humanity in Gandhiji’s life.
Truth, non-violence, and purity of means was his ideology. in the midst of the Second World War, when he was asked what he would do if India became independent during his lifetime, he replied: ‘If India became free in my lifetime and I have still energy left in me … I would take my due share, though outside the official world, in building up the nation strictly on non-violent lines.’
Mahatma Gandhi taught us that we can bring harmony to our world by becoming champions of love and peace for all.
“The world lives because there is more love than hate and more truth than untruth in it.”
Credits: Varshitha Parthiban
