Ask a Teacher

Search



Speech on the topic "Relevance of Gandhian values in the present day"
The life of Mahatma Gandhi should serve as a beacon of light to guide humanity to a better world. He taught a lesson to all political leaders on how to work great social and political changes for the betterment of humanity in every walk of life. He said, “An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to give to a groaning world.”
According to one writer: “If Gandhi had lived in India thousands of years ago, his life would have been wrapped in myths and miracles.”  But Mahatma Gandhi is a man of our times, “which shows that his origin was ordinary, his childhood normal, his student days uneventful, and his early professional career unsuccessful.  Yet, he “was the spokesman for the conscience of mankind.”
One of Gandhiji’s principles is Satyagraha.  Satya means Truth and agraha means firmness or force.  Racial discrimination in South Africa awakened Gandhiji’s social conscience  and  this lead him to coin this word. Satyagraha is also translated as Soul-Force.He not only preached the tenets of Satyagraha, but also lived and acted them.  He showed by actual examples how these basic principles could be used to transform the world into a better place.  As Gandhiji wrote, “Satyagraha is the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one’s self.”  This principle reverses the idea of an-eye-for-an-eye policy which, as he says ends in making everybody blind, or blind with fury.  Instead, it returns good for evil until the evildoer tires of evil. (Fischer).
Gandhiji preached this idea over a century ago, but this an-eye-for-an-eye vindication is everywhere in the world today.  Isn’t this policymaking all of us blind in the world today.  Furthermore, he calls it a force which can not only be used by individuals, but by communities – men women and children.
We have seen the strength of the frail Gandjiji in many different ways.  Just to mention a few – the Salt March, Champara village.  After the Jallianwalla Bagh incident in Punjab and the deposing of the Turkish Sultan (Khilafat Movement), he returned the medals which he had received in South Africa, to the British Viceroy and said:  “I can retain neither respect nor affection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immortality.”  Fasting for Gandhiji is his way of going inward for solutions to solve the Indian problem.  How many of our leaders today would respond in this way to violence.  Instead, we meet in the battle field to settle our differences.  Of course, he was accused of using fasting as a political blackmail.  But for him he saw it as introspection to problem solving and gaining spiritual strength.
The life of Mahatma Gandhi should serve as a beacon of light to guide humanity to a better world. He taught a lesson to all political leaders on how to work great social and political changes for the betterment of humanity in every walk of life. He said, “An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to give to a groaning world.” We can see his greatness expressed in his own words: “I have known no distinction between relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white and coloured, Hindus and Indians of other faiths, whether Musalmans, Parsis, Christians or Jews. I may say that my heart has been incapable of making any such distinctions.”


comments powered by Disqus