Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi taught the world the doc­trine of non-vi­o­lence, as an ac­tive and pos­i­tive in­stru­ment for the peace­ful so­lu­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al dif­fer­ences. The de­c­la­ra­tion of Oc­to­ber 2nd, as the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Non-vi­o­lence by the UN bears tes­ti­mo­ny to the vi­sion shaped by Gand­hi. Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi is re­mem­bered to­day for the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion he made not on­ly to the free­dom of In­dia, but to the cause of world peace. He taught us the doc­trine of non­vi­o­lence, not as a pas­sive sub­mis­sion to evil, but as an ac­tive and pos­i­tive in­stru­ment for the peace­ful so­lu­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al dif­fer­ences. He showed us that the hu­man spir­it is more pow­er­ful than the might­i­est of ar­ma­ments. He suc­ceed­ed in trans­form­ing po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, with his in­tense faith in Truth and Non­vi­o­lence, in­to mass move­ments, which he de­scribed as Satya­gra­ha.

Mar­tin Luther King

Satya­gra­ha is found­ed on the con­cept of hu­man dig­ni­ty and en­deav­our that grad­u­al­ly evolved in­to a the­o­ry of non­vi­o­lent so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tion, which he launched on 11 Sep­tem­ber 1906 in South Africa. The word Satya­gra­ha is San­skrit in ori­gin. It is a com­pound word formed of satya and ?gra­ha. The word satya (truth) is de­rived from San­skrit 'sat', which means be­ing or to ex­ist eter­nal­ly and ?gra­ha means hold­ing fast, ad­her­ence. To­geth­er, they im­ply an in­sis­tence on Truth come what may. The jour­ney of Satya­gra­ha, which com­menced from South Africa, trav­elled to the shores of Dan­di, to the sprawl­ing fields spread across the sev­en hun­dred thou­sand vil­lages of In­dia and then to the dis­tant shores. The term Satya­gra­ha found pop­u­lar ex­pres­sion dur­ing the In­di­an In­de­pen­dence Move­ment, and has be­come a part of the coun­try's po­lit­i­cal lex­i­con. It was sheer prov­i­dence which took the Ma­hat­ma to South Africa, the great the­atre of ac­tion.

The fight against racial prej­u­dices in South Africa ini­ti­at­ed by him was tak­en to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by the South African peo­ple un­der the charis­mat­ic lead­er­ship of Nel­son Man­dela, who came to ac­quire a dis­tinct icon­ic sta­tus of his own. Nel­son Man­dela was in­spired by Rev. Mar­tin Luther's firm be­lief in Gand­hi­an prin­ci­ples. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., the promi­nent US civ­il-rights leader of the 1950s and 1960s, was in­tro­duced to Gand­hi's teach­ings while study­ing to be a min­is­ter. The young man was cap­ti­vat­ed by the phi­los­o­phy of non­vi­o­lent re­sis­tance. He saw that Gand­hi's rad­i­cal tech­niques had brought about great so­cial changes in In­dia and won­dered if those same tech­niques would work in his own coun­try. King was im­pressed that Gand­hi had learned to free him­self from the ha­tred of his op­pres­sors. He ap­pre­ci­at­ed the Gand­hi­an thought that if you freed your­self from rage, you could ac­com­plish good for all mankind.

Nel­son Man­dela

Gand­hi took Je­sus's mes­sage of "love your en­e­my" to a new lev­el. In the words of Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., leader of the civ­il rights move­ments in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, "the choice is not at all be­tween non­vi­o­lence and vi­o­lence but be­tween non­vi­o­lence and an­ni­hi­la­tion". King claimed that Gand­hi had been the first to grasp the truth that "Dark­ness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness, on­ly light can do that. Hate can­not dri­ve out hate: on­ly love can do that... what was new about Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi's Satya­gra­ha move­ment in In­dia was that he mount­ed a rev­o­lu­tion on hope and love, hope and non­vi­o­lence." Like Gand­hi and Mar­tin Luther King Jr., Nel­son Man­dela of South Africa be­came a leader be­cause of ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances. An ac­tivist who spent 27 years in prison, Man­dela helped free South Africa from apartheid and be­came the first black pres­i­dent of that coun­try in 1994.

Per­haps the great­est im­pact of Gand­hi's teach­ings on Man­dela and the ANC was that of tol­er­ance. Man­dela's par­ty brought to­geth­er Hin­dus, Mus­lims, Chris­tians, and Jews. These di­verse peo­ple were bound by a com­mon goal � free­dom from colo­nial rule. For his abil­i­ty to find this 'com­mon ground', as he called it, Man­dela was award­ed, in 1993, a spe­cial ho­n­our � the No­bel Peace Prize. In his ac­cep­tance speech, Man­dela echoed Gand­hi's words. He in­sist­ed that he "was mere­ly the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world who rec­og­nized that an in­jury to one is an in­jury to all". Dur­ing his vis­it to In­dia in 1990, soon af­ter his re­lease he had said, "Gand­hi holds the key for the fu­ture of mankind, fol­low him with all your de­ter­mi­na­tion". In an­oth­er part of the globe in Czecho­slo­va­kia a fol­low­er of Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi, Va­clav Hav­el drew glob­al ad­mi­ra­tion for his ad­her­ence to non­vi­o­lence as a means of so­cio-po­lit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.

Un­der Va­clav Hav­el, the days of pol­i­tics of com­pla­cen­cy were over. When Hav­el emerged as the man of the mo­ment for his coun­try, his qual­i­ties of lead­er­ship and vi­sion caught the imag­i­na­tion of mil­lions all over the world. Small won­der then, to a lot of his fel­low coun­try­men and women 'Hav­el' and 'Czech' be­came syn­ony­mous. Va­clav Hav­el has ac­knowl­edged his deep ad­mi­ra­tion for the Gand­hi­an prin­ci­ple of Non-vi­o­lence. He firm­ly be­lieved that "the Vel­vet rev­o­lu­tion of Czecho­slo­va­kia would have fiz­zled out, if it had de­part­ed from non­vi­o­lent de­mo­c­ra­t­ic protest". He ad­mits that "with­out Gand­hi's ex­am­ple I would have lacked the right kind of in­spi­ra­tion." Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi's con­cept of cre­ative non­vi­o­lent non-co­op­er­a­tion � Satya­gra­ha � is an orig­i­nal po­lit­i­cal idea. Vi­o­lence as a tech­nique has a his­to­ry of thou­sands of years. Non­vi­o­lence, as a so­cial phi­los­o­phy of ac­tion, is on­ly just learn­ing its first steps. The fu­ture lies be­fore all of us. The great ex­per­i­ment and re­al­i­sa­tions are yet to come.

There is a search for new val­ues both so­cial and re­li­gious, which takes us back to Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi's own di­a­logue with Ruskin, Tol­stoy and sev­er­al oth­er thinkers and lat­er day Gand­hi­an's like Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., Nel­son Man­dela and Va­clav Hav­el. Such is the ex­tra­or­di­nary rich­ness of Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi's ideas that they ap­ply equal­ly to so­ci­eties at the thresh­old of de­vel­op­ment as to those, which are looked up­on as the de­vel­oped coun­tries. Gand­hi him­self be­lieved that his ideas will be con­sid­ered by peo­ple both with­in and out­side In­dia. Gand­hi's words made a last­ing mark, but he want­ed his deeds to be re­mem­bered most: "My writ­ings should be cre­mat­ed with my body. What I have done will en­dure, not what I have said and writ­ten." In­deed, the lega­cy of Gand­hi's deeds is still felt in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi's mes­sage of tol­er­ance and com­pas­sion con­tin­ues to have spe­cial mean­ing even af­ter six­ty years since his de­par­ture from our midst.

Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi sac­ri­ficed him­self as an in­di­vid­ual to the greater caus­es of free­dom and hu­man rights. In death, he be­came a sym­bol of the prin­ci­ples he had lived for � truth and non­vi­o­lence. He felt both were es­sen­tial to at­tain­ing world peace. Gand­hi knew it would take in­cred­i­ble strength for hu­man­i­ty to achieve this goal, but he thought the ef­fort was nec­es­sary: "We may nev­er be strong enough to be en­tire­ly non­vi­o­lent, in thought, word, and deed. But we must keep non­vi­o­lence as our goal and make steady progress to­wards it... The truth of a few will count. The un­truth of mil­lions will van­ish even like chaff be­fore a whiff of wind." Per­haps, a world with­out war, pover­ty, hunger and in­tol­er­ance is, in­deed, pos­si­ble. A ray of hope is seen on the hori­zon. In June 2007, the Unit­ed Na­tions de­clared Oc­to­ber 2, the birth an­niver­sary of Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi as the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Non­vi­o­lence.

It is a vin­di­ca­tion of the be­lief that Al­bert Ein­stein had in Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi when he said: "Let us do what­ev­er is with­in our pow­er so that all the peo­ples of the world may ac­cept Gand­hi's gospel as their ba­sic pol­i­cy be­fore it is too late." It al­so reaf­firms our be­lief that to­day, Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi's phi­los­o­phy is looked at as a live ex­pe­ri­ence with po­ten­tial for trans­for­ma­tion lead­ing to a glob­al awak­en­ing to­wards Non-vi­o­lence. His en­tire life was ded­i­cat­ed to the cause of in­ter­pret­ing the eter­nal spir­it of Satya­gra­ha. It should be our en­deav­our to re­flect on how a colos­sal rev­o­lu­tion took place in In­dia un­der the lead­er­ship of Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi with­out the vi­o­lence that oc­curred in oth­er coun­tries of Asia and Africa. It is an at­tempt to turn the search light on one­self to find an al­ter­na­tive to vi­o­lence, which threat­ens to de­stroy the very fab­ric of a civ­i­lized ex­is­tence. It is the process of a di­a­logue with those who dared to walk the path blazed by Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi.

Above all, it is our hum­ble trib­ute to that rev­o­lu­tion­ary so­cial sci­en­tist Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi and his eter­nal mes­sage to hu­man­i­ty, "My life is my mes­sage". A sim­ple, gen­tle, and frag­ile look­ing man who grew large and pow­er­ful in peo­ple's hearts, Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi un­der­stood the risk of peace­ful­ly op­pos­ing na­tions that were armed with weapons and over-run with abuse � but he was not afraid. From boy­hood to death, he con­tin­ued to find com­fort in his faith and courage in the truth.

When I look for Non­vi­o­lence, Truth says 'Find it out through me'. When I look for Truth, Non­vi­o­lence says 'Find it out through me'. � M.K. Gand­hi

The au­thor is Di­rec­tor, Gand­hi Sm­ri­ti and Dar­shan Sami­ti, New Del­hi.