A gar­land­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the statute of Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi will take place to­day at 9 am at Kew Place, Port-of-Spain to mark the 142nd birth an­niver­sary of the late In­di­an spir­i­tu­al and po­lit­i­cal icon. In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Shri Malay Mishra will lead In­di­an na­tion­als and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, which will in­clude CARI­COM's Am­bas­sador Makan­dal Daa­ga and May­or-of-Spain Louis Lee Sing. Gand­hi's name would linger in the minds of hu­man­i­ty for sev­er­al more cen­turies be­cause of his deep com­mit­ment and firm con­vic­tion to­wards a world free of nu­clear war­fare, peace­ful co-ex­is­tence, law, or­der, hap­pi­ness and sta­bil­i­ty.

Gand­hi was a mas­ter of spir­i­tu­al tech­niques. He de­vel­oped po­lit­i­cal and so­cial the­o­ries dur­ing his 21 years of ac­tive po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties in South Africa. This prac­tice and ex­pe­ri­ence set him in prop­er stead dur­ing his 34-year strug­gle against the British for In­di­an In­de­pen­dence. Aris­ing out of his South Africa and lat­er In­di­an ex­pe­ri­ences, he pos­tu­lat­ed sev­er­al spe­cif­ic moral and eth­i­cal pil­lars for hu­man sur­vival in a di­vid­ed world. He de­fined them as: the equal­i­ty of man, the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son, the tran­sce­dent na­ture of the soul of man, the su­prema­cy of the spir­i­tu­al over the ma­te­r­i­al, the ul­ti­mate vic­to­ry of truth over false­hood, the ul­ti­mate de­feat of brute force by the all-per­vad­ing strength of the in­ner moral force of man.

In­dia's first Prime Min­is­ter, Pan­dit Jawa­har­lal Nehru writes about Gand­hi: "Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi showed us that the hu­man spir­it is more pow­er­ful than the might­i­est of ar­ma­ments. He ap­plied moral val­ues to po­lit­i­cal ac­tion and point­ed out that ends and means could nev­er be sep­a­rat­ed, for the means ul­ti­mate­ly gov­erns the end. If the means are evil, then the end it­self be­comes dis­tort­ed and at last par­tial­ly evil."