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A tribute to the memory
of the greatest Indian of recent times.
Mahatma Gandhi
A Personification of Power from Practice of Precepts
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He personified the ancient Indian heritage of spirituality.
That heritage made millions of followers of eight religions
as one.
He was an embodiment of the power one receives by living in the common
essence
of all religions or spirituality.
With his spirituality he invoked the power of 400 million followers
already united for centuries. With their power, he broke the greatest
ever empire in three decades (1916-1947) to wrest India's freedom.
Rejecting Mahatma Gandhi, modern educated Indian leaders who were
ignorant of the empowering nature of common single spirituality in all
religions rejected it, broke the country and enshrined the trinity of
science, reason and secularism by article 28(1) of the Constitution of
India in 1950.
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Article 28(1) of the Constitution reads:
(1) No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational
institution wholly maintained out of State funds.
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Independent Indian State denies people its patronage to sustain through
education and knowledge their ancient heritage of prosperity and innate
power through spirituality that can be and so is one in all religions.
Indian State perpetuates ignorance of
the core of eight religions that the British hammered in us to make us
paupers and powerless?
Wither India?
One wonders.
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A few of the precepts that Mahatma Gandhi practised
which bestowed on him unasked his empowered mind and inward power show
their origin in the truth of oneness of Advaita in Vedanta that
stands only on love for all as one with us in reality.
I find the greatest consolation from the Bhagwad
Gita and Tulsidas'
Ramayana.
Young India September 25, 1925 (MKG 55)
It is the spirit running through the book (Ramayana) that holds me
spell bound.
Young India August 27, 1925 (MKG 66)
I am a stranger to yogic practices. The practice I follow is a practice
I learnt in my childhood from my nurse. I was afraid of ghosts. She
used to say to me: There are no ghosts, but if you are afraid, repeat
Ramayana.
Harijan December
5, 1936 (MKG 48)
I derive the greatest consolation from my reading of Tulsidas Ramayana.
Harijan December
5, 1936 (MKG 48)
I have felt that the Gita teaches us that
what cannot be followed out in day to day practice cannot be called
religion.
Young India August 6, 1931 (MKG 18)
Politics bereft of religion are a death trap because they kill the
soul.
Young India April 23, 1924 (MKG 68)
For, I reiterate my opinion that every Hindu boy and girl should know
Sanskrit.
Young India August 25, 1927 (MKG 29)
He is no Sanatani Hindu who is narrow,
bigoted and considers evil to be good if it has the sanction of
antiquity and is to be found supported in any Sanskrit book.
Young India September 2, 1926 (MKG 58)
Any tradition, however, ancient, inconsistent with morality, is to be
banished from the land.
Young India September 22 1927 (MKG 65)
Where there is fear, there is no religion.
Young India September 2 1926 (MKG 59)
The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwara of Hindus.
Harijan May
14, 1938 (MKG 59)
His laws are immutable. Where should we all be if He changed them
capriciously?
Young India November 12 1925 (MKG 136)
I disbelieve history so far as details of acts of heroes are
concerned…. I positively refuse to judge men from the scanty material
furnished to us by history.
Young India April 9, 1925 (MKG 138)
Hinduism, not to speak of other religions, is ever evolving. …Gita itself is an instance in point. It has
given a new meaning to Karma, Sannyaasa
and Yajna, etc.
Harijan October
3, 1936 (MKG 150)
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From : http://www.mkgandhi.org/epigrams/r.htm
Rama, Allah and God are to me
convertible terms.
XXVI-28
For me, Rama and Rahim
are one and the same deity.
T-2-37
Rama was not only on the lips of
Hanuman. He was enthroned in his heart. He gave
Hanuman exhaustless strength.
TIG-48
My Rama, the Rama
of our prayers, is not the historical Rama,
the son of Dasharatha, the king of Ayodhyaa.
TIG-110
Hinduism would not have been much of a religion, if Rama had not steeled his heart against every
Temptation.
T-2-150
It is the function of God Rama to destroy
evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable
self-government.
T-2-297-128
Ramanama is for the pure in heart and
for those who want to attain and remain pure.
TIG-114
Ramanama can be used only for a good,
never for an evil end, or else the thieves and robbers would be. the
greatest devotees.
T-7-79
Ramanama purifies while it cures, and
, therefore, it elevates.
TIG-114
Even Ramanama is by itself lifeless, but
it has become a living symbol of the deity because millions of people
have consecrated it.
T-5-92
By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj,
Divine Raj, the
Kingdom of God.
T-2-375
Rationalists are admirable beings, but rationalism is a hideous monster
when it claims for itself omnipotence.
TIG-91
The freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth.
TIG-37
Divine knowledge is not borrowed from books. It has to be realized in
oneself.
TIG-94
Reason has to be strengthened by suffering, and suffering opens the
eyes of understanding.
T-2-182
In man, reason quickens and guides the feeling; in brute, the soul lies
ever dormant.
T-4-62
Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without
the purview of reason.
MM-64
If I know Hinduism at all, it is essentially inclusive and
ever-growing, ever-responsive. It gives the freest scope to
imagination, speculation and reason.
XXV-178
Nothing in the Shastras which is capable
of being reasoned can stand if it is in conflict with reason. T-4-42
There is no doubt that our last state will be worse than our first, if
we surrender our reason into somebody’s keeping.
T-2-62
Faith becomes lame when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason.
T-7-36
Islam appeals to people because it appeals also to reason.
XXVI-415
There can be no Ram Raj in the present
state of iniquitous inequalities in which only a few roll in riches,
while the masses do not get even enough to eat.
T-7-404
Execution of the constructive programme in
its entirety means more than Swaraj. It
means Ram Raj Khudai
Sultanat or the Divine Kingdom.
T-7-32
Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya.
MM-326
My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions. In this lies the
secret of Ramarajya.
MM-327
A reformer’s business is to make the impossible possible by giving an
ocular demonstration of the. possibility in his own conduct.
XXVI-68
A reformer has to sail not with the current, often he has to go against
it, even though it may of the. possibility
in his own him his life.
T-7-114
Every Reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not
be satisfied with reform only in one department of life.
T-2-227
Religion is a thing to be lived. It is not merely sophistry.
T-7-129
Religion is one tree with many branches. As branches, you may say,
religions are many, but as tree, religion is only one.
T-3-244
All religions were, at bottom, one, though they differed in detail and
outward form even like the leaves on a tree.
T-8-285
Even as a tree has a single trunk, but many branches and leaves, there
in one religion, but any number of faiths.
TIG-65
The essence of true religious teaching is that one should serve and
befriend all.
T-7-385
Religions are different roads converging to the same point.
X-29
Religion is the tie that binds one to one’s Creator, and
whilst the body perishes, as it to, religion persists even after death.
T-4-41
God-given religion is beyond speech.
TIG-65
Religion should be dearer than life itself.
T-8-153
Religion taught us to return good for evil.
T-8-120
Religion all the world over offered God as the solace and the comfort
for all in agony.
T-2-212
Religion to be true must satisfy what may be termed humanitarian
economics, that is, where the income and the expenditure balance each
other.
T-2-268
A religious act cannot be performed with aid of the bayonet or the bomb.
T-4-314
Religion of non-violence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints.
T-2-5
Religion was entirely a personal matter. Each one could approach his
Creator as one liked.
T-8-51
Religion is not like a house or a cloak which can be changed at will.
T-4-41
All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal
rejections and acceptances.
T-2-45
All the great religions of the world inculcate the equality and
brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of toleration.
T-3-257
Purest religion is highest expediency. Many things are lawful but they
are not all expedient.
XX-58
Religion is no test of nationality, but a personal matter between man
and his God.
MM-103
All religions enjoined worship of the One God who was all-pervasive. He
was present even in a drop of water or in a
speck of dust.
T-7-115
Unity among the different races and the different communities belonging
to different religions of India is
indispensable to the birth of national life.
XXVI-241
Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant
to bind them.
MM-68
All religions are branches of the same mighty tree, but I must not
change over from one branch to another for the
sake of expediency.
T-7-283
All religions of the world describe God pre-eminently as the Friend of
the friendless. Help of the helpless, and
Protector of the weak.
T-3-192
No religion taught man to kill fellow-man because he held different
opinions or was of another religion.
T-7-204
That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of earth
which pins its faith to injustice, untruth or violence.
It is a tragedy that religion for us means, today, nothing more than
restrictions on food and drink, nothing more than adherence to a sense
of superiority and inferiority.
T-3-280
A religion cannot be sustained by the number of its lip-followers
denying in their lives its tenets.
T-3-220
The highest fulfilment of religion
requires a giving up of all possessions.
MM-191
To befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the
quintessence of true religion.
T-7-385
The external is in no way the essence of religion, but the external
often proclaims the internal.
T-2-273
True material welfare is never inconsistent with performance of
religious obligations.
T-3-225
A man without a religion is life a ship without a rudder.
T-3-223
To change one’s religion under the threat of force was no conversion
but rather cowardice.
T-7-274
It is not part of religion to breed buffaloes or, for that matter,
cows.
T-2-267
Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currently under the name of
religion.
T-7-128
Physician, heal thyself’ is more true in
matters religions than mundane.
T-2-132
It was a travesty of true religion to consider one’s own religion as
superior and other’s as inferior.
T-7-132
It is impossible that God, who is the God of Justice, could have made
the distinctions that men observe today in the
name of religion.
T-3-236
Where there is fear, there is no religion.
T-2-230
I cannot picture to myself a time when all mankind will have one
religion.
XXVI-285
I believe that religious education must be the sole concern of
religions association.
EWE-30
I desire no honour if I have to conceal my
religious beliefs in order to have it.
XIV-235
I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without its
house of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a
synagogue or agiari. (Flame)
T-4-194
I have felt that the Gita teaches us that
what cannot be followed out in day-to-day practice cannot be called
religion.
T-2-311
By religion I have not in mind fundamental ethics but what goes by the
name of denominationalism.
EWE-31
In matters concerning religion, I consider myself not a child but an
adult with 35 years of experience.
XIV-74
I claim to represent all the cultures, for my religion, whatever it may
be called, demands the fulfilment of all
the
cultures.
T-5-272
It was through the Hindu religion that I learnt to respect Christianity
and Islam.
XIV-74
Mine is not a religion of the prison-house. It has room for the least
among God’s creation.
XX-74
My religion is a matter solely between my Maker and myself.
MM-116
My religion has no geographical limits.
T-2-6
My knowledge of the letter of the Shastras
is better, but of true religion they are able to give me but little. Bunch-108
My religion enables me, obliges me to imbibe all that is good in all
the great religions of the earth.
MM-100
My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God.
Non-violence is the means of realising
Him.
XXV-558
My religion teaches me that a promise once made or a vow once taken for
a worthy object may not be broken.
T-2-154
My personal religion peremptorily forbids me to hate anybody.
MM-183
My religion forbids me to belittle or disregard other cultures, as it
insists, under pain of civil suicide, upon imbibing and living my own.
EWE-19
My religion says that only he who is prepared to suffer can pray to God.
T-2-152
My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot
remove, one must fast and pray.
T-2-148
My religion teaches me that I should by my personal conduct instil into the minds of those who might hold
different views the conviction that cow killing is a sin.
XXV-518
My respectful study of other religions has not abated my reverence for
or my faith in the Hindu scriptures. T-2-230
My life is dedicated to the service of India through the religion of
non-violence which I believe to be the root of
Hinduism.
T-2-6
My Hindu instinct tells me that all religions are more or less
true.
T-2-132
My politics and all other activities of mine are derived from my
religion.
MM-102
Fasting and prayer are common injunctions in my
religion.
T-2-152
To me the Mahabharata is a profoundly religious book, largely
allegorical, in to way meant to be a historical record.
TIG-95
Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of
illustrations to prove the
truth.
XXVI-158
Hinduism has become a conservative religion and, therefore, a mighty
force because of the swadeshi spirit
underlying
it.
MM-410
Hinduism is not a codified
religion.
T-2-285
Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. In it there is room for the
worship of all the prophets in the world.
MM-92
Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me the most glorious religion
in the world.
MM-93
Hinduism had absorbed the best of all the faiths of the world and in
that sense Hinduism was not an exclusive religion.
T-8-120
Hinduism would not have been much of a religion if Rama
had not steeled his heart against every temptation.
T-2-150
Hindu dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems.
TIG-85
If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves
of this poison of enforced widowhood.
MM-299
We cry for cow protection in the name of religion, but we refuse
protection to the human cow in the shape of the girl-widow.
T-2-227
Calling them devadasis, we insult God
Himself in the name of religion.
T-2-280
In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakhs of girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony.
T-2-227
It is no religions to have for one’s wife a girl who is fit only to sit
in one’s lap, but it is the height of irreligion. T-2-273
Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and
defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion.
T-2-227
It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in
his conduct to be a religious man. XXVI-58
The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler
than that of the rose.
TIG-72
Religion of our conception, thus imperfect, is always subject to a
process of evolution and
re-interpretation.
TIG-65
If we import compulsion in matters of religions, there is no doubt that
we shall be committing suicide.
XXVI-270
Dharma is one and one only, Ahimsa means moksha,
and moksha is the realization of truth.
MOG-17
Ahimsa is the height of Kshatriya dharma
as it represents the climax of fearlessness.
XXV-563
Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions.MM-67
That is dharma which is enjoined by the holy books, followed by the
sages, interpreted by the learned and which
appealed to the heart.
MM-65
Even a little of this dharma saves one from many a pitfall.
T-2-89
Truth is my religion and ahimsa is the only way of its realization.
T-4-250
Politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to be shunned.
MM-102
The final goal of all religions is to realise
the essential oneness.
MM-419
True religion being the greatest thing in life and in the world, it has
been exploited the most.
BINCH-42
To benefit by others’ killing and delude oneself into the belief that
one is being very religions and non-violent is sheer self-deception.
MM-429
To reject the necessity of temples is to reject the necessity of God,
religion and earthly existence.
T -3-195
"Do not worry in the least about yourself, leave all worry to God,"
this appears to be the commandment in all religions.
MOG-19
Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test
every one of our action in the light ethical principles.
XX-201
No Indian who aspires to follow the way of true religion can afford to
remain aloof from
politics.
XX-201
Love is the basis of our friendship as it is of religion.
MM-398
God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never
have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one-fifth of our
vast population as untouchables. T-3-280
Conversion without a clean heart is a denial of God and religion.
T-4-79
The practice of truth and non-violence melted the religious
differences, and we learnt to see beauty in each religion. T-5-225
Any imposition from without meant compulsion. Such compulsion was
repugnant to religion. T-8-61
Every person, as every institution, and, above all, every religion was
to be judged not by the amount of atrocities or the wrong committed but
by the right conduct. T-8 -25
The renunciation of the Gita is the acid
test of faith.
T-2-310
The secret of happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation of life.
MM-192
Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the test of
renunciation of the fruits of action.
T-2-309
The sanyasa of the Gita
is all work and yet no work.
T-2-312
The sanyasa of the Gita
will not tolerate complete cessation of activity.
T-2-311
Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness and peace and
repose in our daily life.
TIG-43
All research will be useless if it is not allied to internal research.
T-2 -272
Let India become alive by self-purification, that is, self-restraint
and self-denial, and she will be a boon to. herself and mankind
T-2-56
Justice should become cheap and expeditious. Today it is the luxury of
the rich and the joy of the gambler. T-4-182
I own no property and yet I feel that I am perhaps the richest man in
the world.
XXVI-561
The true source of rights is duty.
T-2-179
If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek.
XXV-564
No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who
thought of duties.
XXV-573
Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and
performed their duties came naturally by the rights.
XXV-573
A man can give up a right, but the may not give up a duty without being
guilty of a grave dereliction.
T-2-324
There being no absolute and universal standard of right, terrorism must
be held to be wrong in every case.XXV-442
Immediately I arrogate to myself the exclusive title to being in the
right, I usurp the function of the Deity.
XXV-442
One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied
in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.
MM-440
The only things that separates us from the brute, with which we have so
much in common, is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong.
T-4-158
Violence becomes imperative when as attempt is made to assert rights
without any reference to duties.
T-4-13
Swaraj would be real Swaraj only when there would be no occasion for
safeguarding any rights.
T-3-92
Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya.
M-326
My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions. In this lies the
secret of Ramarajya.
MM-27
If all
simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion
and chaos.
T-8-31
If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us
like a will-o' -the wisp.
TIG-152
I believe in Advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for
that matter of all that lives.
XXV-390
The most distinctive and largest contribution of Hinduism to India’s culture is the doctrine of ahimsa.
T-2-341
True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and
hate and an overflowing love for all.
T-2-318
Ahimsa and love are one and the same thing.
TIG-19
The removal of untouchability is one of
the highest expressions of ahimsa.
T-4-239
A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the
greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest
good of all and die in the attempt to realize the ideal.
TIG-139
Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. (Ahimsa means infinite love. Which again means infinite capacity for suffering.)
T-5-227
In Swaraj, based on ahimsa, people need
not know their rights, but it is necessary for them to know their
duties.
MM-135
The scriptures of Christians, Mussalmans
and Hindus are all replete with the teaching of ahimsa.
XXV-521
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For readers
interested in EPIGRAMS FROM GANDHI JI arranged alphabetically for each
subject, the exhaustive web site is
http://www.mkgandhi.org/epigrams/contents.htm
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