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Gandhiji endless search for a better world
Today is a very important day in the history of India and, if I may say so, in the history of mankind itself. Gandhiji is not, and never Was, the exclusive property of India. The accident of his birth in our country was a good fortune to India but, wherever be might have been born, his life, his thought and his teachings would still have had their impact on the people of India whose ancient history and tradition make them value moral force; as greater than physical force.
Mahatma Gandhi, as we can see now, was a farsighted person who reduced complex political, social and economic questions into fairly simple propositions that every man could understand. He emphasized that man and his moral sense, which he called "that small inner voice". had a continuing dialogue, throughout life and only when man listens to his inner voice would he be able to resolve the conflict within himself. If he did not solve the conflict within himself, he could never even begin to understand the conflict outside himself. He put this to the test in a very simple fashion in an area where today the world's attention is concentrated, namely, Southern Africa.
A Flaming Light
The greatness of Gandhiji lay in the fact that he would not accept the basic principle of colonialism, namely, that a group of men had the right to dominate others merely because of military, technical or industrial superiority. He had basic faith in that God created all men equal and that this equality should be translated into man's relations with his fellowmen. No institution however powerful, no government however strong and no race however skilled could long perpetuate a system in which this fact was ignored. In the South Africa of that time, Gandhiji found that there were different laws for different men, and he challenged them immediately with the basic belief that an unjust order of human society was anathema to God himself. The spark that he lit in the minds of subject peoples in Southern Africa of that period can be seen to have grown into a flaming light that illuminates the minds of the people in that area today. The eminent statesman, President Nyerere of Tanzania, said in a television interview broadcast in the United States.
"I really cannot say when apartheid is going to be ended in South Africa. What I am saying is that the oppressor has one weapon. It is ruthlessness. ‘I will kill you if you demand your rights’. This power he loses the moment the oppressed says, ‘Go ahead and kill’. The moment the oppressed says, ‘Go ahead and kill’, that power is gone and sooner or later he is powerless ... the oppressor is virtually harmless."
